Page 253 – Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Open Mic: Progressive Except for Palestine

Aug 17, 2021

Open Mic: Progressive Except for Palestine

A couple of months ago we learned that the Sebastopol Living Peace Wall committee is planning to honor Rep. Barbara Lee as a “peacemaker” Sept. 11, along with three local activists. But wait a minute, we thought, she has a terrible record when it comes to supporting peace and justice for Palestinians.

For example, in 2016, when Lee was on the Democratic Party platform committee, she rejected a rather mild amendment, put forward by Bernie Sanders, to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the construction of illegal settlements there, and to aid in rebuilding Gaza. She also refuses to co-sign a bill by Rep. Betty McCollum, which would prevent Israel from using the $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid it receives annually, for the military detention of Palestinian children, for the seizure and destruction of Palestinian property, forcible transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank and illegal annexation of Palestinian territory.

Thirty members of the House have signed on as co-sponsors, including Rep. Jared Huffman—but not Barbara Lee.

And most recently, as chair of a House appropriations sub-committee, she shepherded a bill which continues to give Israel its annual military aid with no conditions. The bill also provides $225 million in aid for Palestinians, but with conditions so egregious that it would prevent them from acting on their own behalf in the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

It is unlikely that the Sebastopol Living Peace Wall committee had any knowledge of Lee’s position on Palestine/Israel—at least until we met with the Wall’s director and sent letters to him and his board members.

But that is just the point. For more than 70 years Americans, including our elected officials, have been led to believe that supporting Israel, and ignoring the Palestinians, was the right thing to do. But in the past year, three human rights organizations have crafted reports calling Israel an apartheid state.

So, Barbara Lee, and others who are Progressive Except for Palestine (PEP), isn’t it time to reexamine your unconditional support of Israel, and step out onto the side of justice for all?

Lois Pearlman is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Call Out PEP’s.

The views expressed in Open Mic do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bohemian or its staff.

Two Local Lawsuits Raise First Amendment Questions

Will Carruthers

Aug 17, 2021

Two Local Lawsuits Raise First Amendment Questions

Two lawsuits that made local news last week feature questions about freedom of speech in Petaluma.

A resident is suing the city for free speech violations one month after he was kicked off a city committee tasked with discussing race relations and policing. And a local company won the right to advertise its plant-based products with words historically reserved for traditional dairy.

City Committee

On Thursday, Aug. 12, an attorney representing Stefan Perez filed a lawsuit alleging that the City of Petaluma violated Perez’s freedom of speech when the city council voted last month to remove him from a 28-member advisory committee formed earlier this year.

In March, the Petaluma City Council appointed Perez to the Ad Hoc Community Advisory Committee (AHCAC), a group formed to offer the city advice on race relations and police reforms.

In the months before the council voted on July 12 to remove him from the AHCAC, Perez’s past social media posts came under scrutiny. While many committee members and Petalumans consider the posts racist, Perez and his attorneys insist they were meant as jokes.

The July 12 resolution used to remove Perez from the AHCAC relied on the city council’s inherent power to remove or replace members of it with or without cause. A 7-page staff report explaining the resolution does not mention Perez’s social media posts and does not cite a specific reason for Perez’s removal.

The lawsuit alleges that the council’s action was “motivated at least in part by Stefan Perez’s participation in the protected activity of making social media posts.”

Perez’s attorney, D. Gill Sperlein, separately asked Northern District Court Judge Jon Tigar to enact a temporary restraining order forcing the city to halt two upcoming AHCAC meetings unless Perez is able to participate as a member of the committee. In an Aug. 13 response, Tigar denied the request, allowing the city to hold an Aug. 17 meeting without re-appointing Perez.

In his response, Tigar noted that Sperlein’s legal filings do not explain why Perez waited to file for an emergency temporary restraining order against the city days before the AHCAC’s Aug. 17 meeting instead of when the city council removed him from the committee a week before the committee’s July 20 meeting.

“Plaintiff’s unexplained delay in seeking relief undermines his claim that he will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a [temporary restraining order] TRO,” Tigar wrote in part.

Perez’s social media posts first received broad public attention in May after Chad Loder, a Twitter user with over 100,000 followers, shared some of Perez’s past posts online.

Initially, the city seemed to want to discourage discussion of the issue.

On June 9 the mayor and two city council members signed a letter urging committee members to refrain from “participating in disparaging behaviors on social media and elsewhere.” Although the statement does not name Perez, it came as discussion about his past social media posts raged online.

The statement also says that “the First Amendment prohibits the City from regulating Committee members’ speech, or participation in the AHCAC based on protected speech.”

However, according to a timeline laid out in Perez’s lawsuit, city officials soon started to ask Perez to resign from the committee.

Hours before a June 15 AHCAC meeting, three city employees requested that Perez step down from the committee. Perez agreed to skip the June 15 meeting but did not resign.

In a July 1 phone call, city attorney Eric Danly again asked Perez to resign, this time allegedly stating that the city council would vote to remove him if he did not leave on his own accord by 5pm on July 7.

At the July 12 meeting, the city council voted 5–1 to remove Perez.

During the meeting, Councilmember Mike Healy, the lone dissenting vote, condemned the resolution as a violation of Perez’s First Amendment rights. City attorney Danly and other members of the council defended the action’s legality during a public discussion of the item.

At an Aug. 2 meeting, the city council privately discussed a letter from Sperlein, Perez’s attorney, threatening legal action unless they reinstated Perez to the committee. The council did not act and Sperlein filed the lawsuit on Aug. 12.

The city’s response to Perez’s allegations remains unclear as of press time on Tuesday, Aug. 17. Tigar ordered the city to respond to Perez’s request for a restraining order by Wednesday, Aug. 18.

NOTE: The city’s Aug. 18 responses to Perez’s request for a temporary restraining order are available here and here. Perez’s original complaint and request for an emergency order are available here and here. Judge Tigar’s response is available here.

Freedom to Label

On Aug. 11, the Animal Legal Defense Fund announced a court success on behalf of companies selling plant-based dairy alternatives.

In early 2020, Petaluma-based Miyoko’s Creamery received an enforcement letter from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) telling the company not to label its products using terms such as “cheese” and “dairy” even if they used qualifiers that noted the food was plant-based. The CDFA alleged that the company’s labeling practices violated Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules.

In response, the company filed a lawsuit alleging that the order was a violation of the First Amendment. The court granted the company temporary permission to use the terms last year and, on Aug. 11, ruled in favor of Miyoko’s indefinitely.

Miyoko’s founder Miyoko Schinner and her supporters seem to view the victory as part of a larger fight, as the market for dairy alternatives continues to grow.

“Food is ever-evolving, and so, too, should language to reflect how people actually use speech to describe the foods they eat. We are extremely pleased by this ruling and believe that it will help set a precedent for the future of food,” Schinner said in a press release last week.

Indeed, consumption of plant-based dairy products has grown quickly in recent years, but still makes up a fairly small portion of total consumption.
“Fifteen percent of fluid milk sales in retail are now plant-based, plant-based butter is at 7 percent, and plant-based coffee creamer 6 percent,” Vox reported this April.

Open Mic: The Truth About Andy Lopez’s Death Comes Out

Kathleen Finigan

Aug 13, 2021

Open Mic: The Truth About Andy Lopez’s Death Comes Out

After twice seeing Ron Rogers’ powerful documentary “3 Seconds in October: The Shooting of Andy Lopez,” this concerned citizen was more than a little interested to see what Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch would have to say about it at the Oakmont Democrats meeting on July 22.

The film revealed that the Santa Rosa Police Department, which was charged with investigating the death, applied a heavy layer of twisted logic into its investigation of Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus, who shot the 13-year-old boy as he quietly walked down the street with an airsoft rifle in his left hand.

As shown in the documentary, Gelhaus mistakenly took the toy gun as real. He jumped out of the squad car, shouted “drop the gun” and began shooting “within a couple seconds,” after issuing the command. All told, Gelhuas pumped seven rounds into the boy in six seconds.

In the immediate aftermath of the death, Gelhaus was escorted to meet with his union rep and an attorney in a hotel room for six hours before reporting to the police to give his testimony. At the outset, Detective Brian Boettger advised Gelhaus that “this is a criminal investigation and you are being interviewed as the victim, strictly the victim at this point.”

That astounding revelation with its undeniable bias made clear that the singular purpose of this investigation would be to clear Gelhaus of any criminal charges. During a 2014 press conference, Ravitch exonerated the deputy, saying that his actions had been “reasonable.”

At the Oakmont meeting, Ravitch tried to defend her decision by repeating some of the old tropes in the case, i.e. “He didn’t know that [Andy] was a child. He saw who he thought was a young adult.” And the most egregious of the lot: “He saw what he believed to be a weapon pointed toward him and he reasonably believed that he was at imminent threat of great bodily injury and harm.”

As we all are now well aware from Gelhaus’ 2015 deposition in the Lopez family’s civil suit, when asked “Did he actually point the gun at you,” Gelhaus responded, “I don’t know.”

A bit later in the testimony, Gelhaus was given a replica weapon and asked to demonstrate just how Andy turned. He held the rifle in his left hand and turned his torso slightly to the right. “It was this,” he said. And, as clearly shown in the film, the rifle remained squarely pointed at the ground.

At this juncture at the Oakmont Dems meeting, this member of the public emphasized the emergence of significant new information about this case and implored Ms. Ravitch to reopen the case. She responded that, if provided new information, she would “take a look at it.”

You already have all of this information but here it is again, Jill. We expect you to take action before mid-September. We demand justice for Andy and we’re not going away.

Kathleen Finigan is a Sonoma County resident and longtime law enforcement accountability activist.

Letters to the Editor: Hiking Fees and Kind Strangers

Bohemian Staff and Contributors

Aug 11, 2021

Letters to the Editor: Hiking Fees and Kind Strangers

Fee Hikes Rankle

Recently, the City of San Rafael approved fee hikes for the public library, parks and recreation, and child care services. It’s been 10 years since the citywide fee schedule has been updated. The City hired MGT Consulting to assess the fees, comparing fees with similar communities. Not mentioned in the assessment was the seven-year agreement between the City and Terrapin Crossroads to lease Beach Park, a publicly owned, three-quarter-acre waterfront site adjacent to Terrapin, which is up for renewal in September. The lease could be renewed, or the park could revert back to the public.

Terrapin Crossroads has turned this public property into a successful family-friendly concert venue serving food and beverages. It now appears to be an important and profitable part of the operation. In the initiating lease, Terrapin was to pay the City $15,000 a year in rent which would be offset by any improvements made by Terrapin. Terrapin holds many events at Beach Park, and it seems likely that Terrapin could net $15,000 with a couple of events. During any lease renewal meeting, might it be wise for the City to propose a profit-sharing arrangement with Terrapin? Also, the terms of the lease called for the installation, within 60 days, of an ADA-compliant public access dock. This has not been done.

To date, no dedicated park public restrooms have been built. If the park is ever to revert to public use, the promised dock and additionally some permanent ADA compliant restrooms are necessary. Since Beach Park has become integral to the business of Terrapin, I believe the current or a future city council would be loathe to wrest it back for the public. However, going forward, an equitable—say 50/50—profit-sharing arrangement is worth exploring in any new lease agreement. Any money from such an agreement could be used for the maintenance of other city parks. Since Terrapin is located in the Canal area, maybe profits could benefit the local community.

J.S. Danielson

San Rafael

The Kindness of Strangers

I had to take my dog to her vet on Center Boulevard in Fairfax. I turned into the parking area at the end of her building to turn around so that I could park in front of the vet clinic. I turned right out of the driveway and, rather than going into the traffic, I made a sharp right turn, hoping to slide into a parking space. I couldn’t see the funny, curved structure jutting out into the street, and got stuck on it. A crowd of men quickly appeared, suggestions were made, various things tried but they couldn’t move my car. A man with a truck offered to tow me out. Another man got into the driver’s seat and they skillfully moved my car and parked it for me, then came into the vet clinic to tell me that all was well. I didn’t get any names, nor did I get to say, “Thank you” to most of them. I hope some of them see my letter.

I also hope that the public works department in Fairfax sees this and removes this weird fixture. I was told that people get stuck on it all the time.

Ann Troy

San Anselmo