Conscious Beat: Kayatta drops debut album on Juneteenth

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Conscious Beat: Kayatta drops debut album on Juneteenth

It’s been a roller coaster of a year for Sonoma County educator and hip-hop artist Kayatta.

“The last few months have been life-changing,” she says. “Life has been different than what I’m accustomed to.”

Originally from Oakland, Kayatta has lived in Sonoma County for several years. Last summer, Bohemian and Pacific Sun readers awarded Kayatta the NorBay for “Best Hip-Hop Artist” in the North Bay, and soon after Creative Sonoma awarded her an arts grant to help produce her full-length, debut album.

The album was originally scheduled to come out in March of 2020, but Kayatta faced early setbacks when she lost material in last year’s Guerneville flooding, and again more recently with the statewide, Covid-19 shelter-in-place that took effect in March.

Undaunted, Kayatta spent the last two months finishing the record remotely with her producing partner Shinobi-1, and she is ready to release her debut, Beautiful and Messy, with a live online release-party on June 19; a date which also marks Juneteenth, the oldest nationally-celebrated remembrance of the ending of slavery in the United States.

“I don’t know if the universe was aligning everything up, but with the Black Lives Matter movement happening, I get to drop my album on this day,” she says.

While Kayatta wrote the majority of the album’s 11 tracks well before the pandemic and the recent protests against police brutality, her socially-conscious lyrics are just as relevant today as they were when she wrote them.

“The name of the album changed, the artwork for the album changed, the content has pretty much stayed the same,” she says. “The songs were written a long time ago, so to have these songs be aligned with where we are today, it’s like, OK, maybe we were supposed to drop the album now.”

Musically, the album recalls the beats and melodies groups such as A Tribe Called Quest and female rap artists such as Ms. Lauryn Hill pioneered in the ’90s, and Kayatta also includes some spoken word tracks, adding a poetic aesthetic to the album.

The album’s title, Beautiful and Messy, is inspired by Kayatta’s recent life experiences and a panel discussion she heard on the topic of God’s plans.

“I didn’t even know if I wanted to be there,” she says, of the discussion. “But this lady on the panel started talking about our relationships in life, and she said, ‘God never intended for your journey to be smooth, it’s going to have some complexities to it.’ She said, ‘It’s going to be beautiful and it’s going to be messy.’ And that sounded like my story.”

“My friends will tell you I’ve been doing music a long time and the whole journey to get here has had so many roadblocks,” Kayatta says. “But when you finally get to the core of everything, that’s the beautiful part.”

Beautiful and Messy not only describes Kayatta’s journey, it also perfectly encapsulates many of the feelings surrounding the recent nation-wide protests and renewed Black Lives Matter movement.

“With the Black Lives Matter movement, racism is on full display and it’s ugly,” Kayatta says. “But the beauty is our youth who are up and on the front lines. People are actually listening and they want to educate themselves to really impact change. This is the first time I’ve ever felt hopeful about it, this is the first time I’ve felt that maybe something will change.”

Beautiful and Messy gets its official Internet release on June 19, when Kayatta hosts a live event on her Facebook and Instagram pages. In addition to playing the album, she will give backstories to the songs, discuss June 19’s historical significance and talk about how today’s current events reflect the ongoing progress towards equality.

“This is the first time I’ve had my white friends hit me up and really want to have conversations or say, ‘How are you doing or what can I do?” she says. “The answer is, always educate yourself, but also be willing to have uncomfortable conversations. What happens a lot of times is we just dip out when conversations get heavy, and I do it too as a Black woman, but I think if we find a tolerance to remain present in those conversations, there’s so much value in that.”

“Being a Black person in America, nobody will understand that unless they’re Black; period,” she says. “If you listen to music and you listen to the music that we’ve created over the years, we’ve been saying the same story over and over again, just in different ways. Music is a great vehicle to tell our stories.”

Kayatta hosts the album-release for ‘Beautiful and Messy’ online Friday, June 19, at 8pm on her Facebook and Instagram.

New Exhibit Marks a First for Longtime North Bay Artist

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New Exhibit Marks a First for Longtime North Bay Artist

Veteran artist and educator Anna B Francis has lived in Point Reyes Station for more than a decade, though there are still some neighbors who didn’t know she was an acclaimed watercolor and oil painter until they saw her work hanging at the gallery at Toby’s Feed Barn earlier this month.

“I’ve been in three shows since I came out here (in 2008), but this is the first time I’ve exhibited this whole body of work in California,” Francis says. “Since I really haven’t exhibited out here much, there are people I’ve known over the years who didn’t even know I did this sort of thing.”

On display for in-person viewing, “The Art of Anna B Francis” is the artist’s first-ever retrospective exhibit and features more than 60 works spanning 40 years of her career in art and education. Portraits of flowers, people and more hang on the wall at Toby’s during the essential store’s open hours, and the show will remain up until June 30.

Francis is a lifelong artist, who discovered the talent and the passion as early as kindergarten. An East Coast native, she received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from Syracuse University and her Bachelors Degree from University of Kentucky. She also attended the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design while living in New York City between 1979 and 1982.

In 1983, Francis entered the educational world after publishing her children’s picture book, Pleasant Dreams.

“The idea of teaching came about when the book was in the process of coming out,” she says. “I wanted to teach children’s picture book illustration. I was also interested in teaching watercolor because I am self-taught.”

She first taught at the Silvermine Arts Center in Connecticut, where she led classes in drawing and children’s picture book illustration. Over a 24-year teaching career, Francis instructed over 2,500 students; teaching drawing and watercolor at Longwood Gardens for 15 years, teaching oil painting as an adjunct professor at Villanova University, and offering classes and workshops at several other institutions.

In her own artwork, Francis is a master of color. She draws her portraits of people with realism in mind, while her floral portraits take much more artistic license.

“In the people-portraits I focus on accuracy and recognizable likeness, my work on those portraits are close to life-size,” she says.

All of her people-portraits were drawn from live models, except for two pieces in the show. One is a dog portrait, and the other is a recreation of a baseball card of then-Mets player Darryl Strawberry.

“I was commissioned to do that by one of my teachers in my Masters Degree program, Murray Tinkelman,” Francis says. “Murray was putting together a show called ‘The Artist and the Baseball Card.’ He gave me a couple of baseball cards of Darryl Strawberry. I did some drawings, and then I saw him on TV and said, ‘these cards don’t look anything like him.’”

Living outside of New York City at the time, Francis drove into the city to rent VHS tape of “Let’s Go Mets,” the team’s official theme song, and paused the tape on Strawberry to get a more accurate look, despite the static lines on the VHS freeze-frame.

That painting traveled around the country for many years on exhibition, and in the spirit of baseball cards, Francis traded the piece to Tinkelman, a famous sci-fi and fantasy illustrator, in exchange for one of his drawings. The Baseball card piece in the show at Toby’s is a recreation of that original artwork.

For her floral art, Francis is big on color. She’s actually a color expert, having developed her own color wheel while teaching at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, and she has taught color theory. Like her people portraits, many of the floral portraits are also very large pieces, with the largest being over 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide.

“I actually wrote an article for The Artist’s Magazine on how to paint large watercolors,” she says. “They titled it ‘How to Paint Large Watercolors with Ease,’ which isn’t really true—but I wanted people to know how to do it.”

Francis’ preferred floral subject is the Amaryllis, a flower that boasts large bulbs on top of leafless stems. Francis paints her flowers with saturated watercolors, giving them a lush spectrum of color.

“I liked Amaryllis because they were easy to grow in the winter, and at the time I was living in New York, and because they would change like a live model,” she says. “They just seem to have a lot of personality to me.”

Francis has a series of Amaryllis portraits she calls “Conversations,” in which she paints the flowers as if they are in various stages of interaction with each other or the viewer. Many of those pieces are part of the retrospective exhibit.

The show also features other artifacts, such as reproductions of her children’s book.

The retrospective was meant to be up in April, though Marin County’s shelter-in-place orders in March delayed the exhibit until now.

“People are very serious about sheltering-in-place, and of course that’s good,” she says. “But, Point Reyes is a very artistic and creative community, so the show has been a huge hit here locally. People have gone two or three times because they can go and see some art, and it’s been a wonderful personal experience for me to see people happy about it; that was the real major purpose of it.”

“The Art of Anna B Francis” is on display now through June 30 at Toby’s Feed Barn, 11250 Hwy One, Point Reyes Station. Current hours are Mon–Sat; 9am–5pm, closed Sundays. 415.663.1223.

UPDATED: Two Mayors Face Constituents’ Ire After Statements Responding to Protests

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UPDATED: Two Mayors Face Constituents’ Ire After Statements Responding to Protests

On June 1, in the early days of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, both Mill Valley and Healdsburg held City Council meetings streamed online. At each meeting, the towns’ mayors were asked questions inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and recent protests against police brutality.

Mill Valley Mayor Sashi McEntee and Healdsburg Mayor Leah Gold’s answers disappointed and angered residents of both towns, prompting online recall petitions, letters from constituents and protests.

Tonight, in response to the criticisms, both towns’ governing councils are scheduled to discuss racism and possible police reforms.

Healdsburg’s City Council meeting begins tonight at 6pm. Information about how to view the meeting is available on page 6 of the meeting agenda. Healdsburg’s Police Chief will give a presentation about the department’s use-of-force policies towards the end of the meeting.

[NOTE: On Tuesday, June 16, Healdsburg Mayor Leah Gold announced that she will resign from the Healdsburg City Council, effective June 30. Gold’s letter explaining her decision is available here.]

Mill Valley’s City Council meeting starts at 5:30pm online. The council will devote the entire meeting to a “Community Discussion Regarding Black Lives Matter and Development of a City Action Plan to Address Racial Injustice and Inequities in Mill Valley.” Public comment must be received by 4pm.

In Mill Valley, the controversy began when Mayor Sashi McEntee dismissed a question submitted by a constituent wondering, “What is Mill Valley doing to show that Black lives matter?”

Mayor Sashi McEntee replied, “Okay, thank you very much … . It is a Council policy that we do not take action on issues that are not of immediate local importance, but I do appreciate hearing everyone’s comments.”

The policy she referred to is California’s Ralph M. Brown Act, which guarantees the public’s right to comment at meetings of local legislative bodies and somewhat limits the council’s responses to the public.

On the same night in Healdsburg, Councilmember Joe Naujokas asked his fellow council members to schedule a discussion about police use of force in Healdsburg and how the elected leaders of city government can lead their community in having difficult conversations about the town’s relationship to police.

Mayor Leah Gold replied to Naujokas, “My reaction to that is we don’t have that particular problem in Healdsburg, because we have a very good police chief who is on top of these issues and trains his staff in appropriate conflict-resolution methods. To me … it’s a solution looking for a problem …”

After further conversation, the Healdsburg City Council failed to add the topic to an upcoming agenda and moved on.

Naujokas said he was “absolutely surprised” by fellow councilmembers’ reactions. During the meeting, he told the Council, “I think, if anything, it would be a way for us to highlight the fantastic work that our [Police Department] is doing and to quell any concerns from our public.”

Many Mill Valley and Healdsburg residents were shocked by their respective mayor’s responses, hearing both as assertions that their towns don’t have problems with racism.

In the weeks since the June 1 meetings, criticism of their original statements has continued, despite attempts by both mayors to address the issue at public protests. At the time this article was published, a petition calling for Mayor Gold’s resignation had 1,845 signatures and a petition calling for Mayor McEntee’s resignation had 8,694 signatures.

Both towns are similar in size and majority white—Mill Valley’s population is approximately 83 percent white and Healdsburg’s is approximately 62 percent white. In Healdsburg, more than one-third of the population is Latinx. In Mill Valley, less than eight percent of the population is Latinx. Both towns have fewer than one percent Black residents.

Studies show that while populations of color in the North Bay are growing, economic inequalities persist.

Between 2010 and 2014, Sonoma County’s total population grew seven percent; however, its population of people of color grew by 46 percent. During the same period, Marin County’s total population grew 4 percent, while the number of people of color grew by 34 percent.

In 2014, National Equity Atlas created an Equity Profile that looked at economic disparity along racial lines in the Bay Area’s nine counties. This study found that, with racial equity, Latinx Bay Area residents would see their average annual income increase by 131 percent and Black residents would see a 102-percent increase.

In a speech at a June 4 protest in Mill Valley, McEntee acknowledged that she had used a “poor choice of words,” but reiterated that “we do have a council policy that we don’t take up national issues.”

In an impassioned speech in response to McEntee’s comments caught on video by Lorenzo Morotti of Marin Independent Journal, Mill Valley resident Monica Morant said, “If we continued to follow rules and laws, I would still be sitting at the back of the bus.”

During Morant’s speech, someone in the crowd called for McEntee to step down. Morant replied, “I’m not calling for resignation, I want action … I want all of us to work on this, [to] look at each other.”

At a June 11 protest in Healdsburg, a crowd of about 250 people gathered by 6:30pm. Chants of “Mayor Gold resign now” reverberated loudly as various Healdsburg residents of color spoke to Gold and the council. Gold said that the people who voted for her were not at the protest and that they still support her.

In preparation for the event, two Latinx Healdsburg residents, Lupe Lopez and Cristal Perez, invited Black and Indigenous people of color living in Healdsburg to share their experiences of racism in writing. Over 90 of these stories of racism were then displayed on notecards in Healdsburg Plaza’s gazebo for the public to read before and during the June 11 protest.

While 36 of the stories centered around school and childhood experiences, at least 50 of the notecards described experiences that took place outside of school. These experiences ranged from stories of workplace discrimination to discriminatory service at restaurants to housing and healthcare experiences. Eight stories described police encounters in which residents say they were racially profiled by officers and/or the people who called the police on them.

Gold told the Bohemian, “It makes me feel very sad to read about their experiences, of course. They’re all talking about hurtful things and I think mainly most of them seem to have written about things that happened growing up and as young people in school.”

Lopez and Perez said that, while they don’t know of any recent cases of police use-of-force in Healdsburg, the local police department should be speaking out about this nationwide issue and be taking action to make sure that there’s justice for the lives of all Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color taken at the hands of police.

“We have to remember that it’s not only about justice for the lives lost, but a fight for change and reform of a system that protects those in uniform rather than those without one,” they said.

No Country Summer for North Bay Fans

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No Country Summer for North Bay Fans

When the Covid-19 outbreak hit California in March, music festivals were among the first planned gatherings to change their summer plans in the face of statewide shelter-in-place orders.

At first, North Bay music festivals moved their events from the summer to the upcoming fall. One such festival, Country Summer, a three-day event held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa each June, was originally rescheduled from this month to October 23–25.

Now, Country Summer has confirmed that the festival is postponed until next summer, June 25­–27, 2021.

“Our team worked diligently and secured a top-notch lineup, including most of the same country music entertainers, for the October dates,” said Alan Jacoby, executive producer of Impact Entertainment, in a statement. “However, fan’s health and safety are our top priorities.”

A major reason for the festival’s yearlong postponement is that, in announcing the state’s re-opening, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s four-stage plan will not allow for large festival gatherings for many more months, likely not until a vaccine is available or most people are immune to the virus. That timeline is still unclear, as reported cases of Covid-19 continue to rise even as restaurants and other businesses open their doors.

“We were hopeful the coronavirus situation would improve significantly, and rules would be relaxed enough for us to stage a spectacular event in October,” Jacoby said. “Unfortunately, circumstances beyond our control are prohibiting mass gatherings this year. Our festivals are not social-distancing-oriented events. They’re thousands and thousands of like-minded country music fans coming together for a big celebration. While disappointing for this year, we’re committed to producing a phenomenal fest in 2021.”

Country Summer is honoring all 2020 three-day passes, single-day tickets, Country Club memberships and even parking passes for the 2021 festival. Refund options will also be available.

An updated lineup of performers will be announced on the Country Summer website in the coming months. Originally, the festival’s 2020 headliners included country music stars Eric Church, Kelsea Ballerini and Chris Young.

While those performers will not be able to perform in the North Bay this year, country music fans can still hear their music this weekend during Froggy 92.9 FM’s Country Summer Radio Fest, broadcasting from 10am to 3pm on Saturday, June 20, and noon to 5pm on Sunday, June 21.

In addition to playing country hits, the Sonoma County–based radio station is also bringing in radio personalities to conduct exclusive artist interviews and to look back at Country Summer’s last six years of festivals, with video highlights on the station’s website and on its social media.

As of now, several other North Bay music festivals are still holding out for this fall. BottleRock Napa Valley, the massive 3-day festival featuring five stages of music, wine, food and brews, is still scheduled to take place in Napa October 2–4, 2020. BottleRock’s music headliners include the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, Stevie Nicks, Miley Cyrus and Khalid, with dozens of other bands, chefs and celebrities scheduled to appear.

The Huichica Music Festival, which boasts 2 days of live music set in Sonoma Valley’s Gundlach Bundschu Winery, is scheduled for October 16–17. Huichica’s scheduled lineup features indie-rock royalty Yo La Tengo performing two full sets, as well as many other bands and artists including Mac Demarco, Jonathan Richman, Vetiver and Once & Future Band.

Huichica Festival co-founder and winery co-owner Jeff Bundschu offered a message on the Huichica website, writing: “We’ve always strayed away from calling Huichica a ‘music festival’ because we designed it to be spread out across bucolic, open spaces. Since its inception, we’ve limited our guest count and ticket sales to ensure that Huichica remains a very intimate experience—so we don’t anticipate our guest’s experience to change that much. Of course, we’ll be taking all appropriate measures to ensure that our staff and volunteers are safe and adhere to guidelines from the state and county.”

Virtual Possibilities: San Francisco Black Film Festival Adapts to Covid-19

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Virtual Possibilities: San Francisco Black Film Festival Adapts to Covid-19

For more than 20 years, the San Francisco Black Film Festival has been “healing the world one film at a time” with African-American cinema that reinforces positive images and dispels negative stereotypes while showcasing a diverse collection of films from both emerging and established filmmakers.

In 2020, amid the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, the multicultural festival adopts the theme “Virtually, It’s Possible” to screen its online film program from June 18 through August 2.

“Given our changed world, the San Francisco Black Film Festival has adjusted based on our new reality,” says Kali O’Ray, festival co-director and son of festival-founder Ave Montague.

“The Coronavirus, although regrettable, has resulted in some positive things as we are cloistered in our homes, young and old,” O’Ray says. “Devouring media together creates family discussions and growth. Workers are breaking out of the ‘brick and mortar’ of going back to work and that is a path for entertainment as well, especially among young people, as I see it.”

The San Francisco Black Film Festival always takes place in conjunction with Juneteenth, the oldest nationally-celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, which occurs annually on June 19.

This year is no different, with SFBFF’s virtual version opening on June 18. This year’s staggered-online film-release schedule features a variety of independent films ranging from drama to comedy that will each be available to stream over a two-week period. The Festival will also revisit some of the most popular films from its 22-year history.

“There is that old saying that something is virtually impossible; yet the San Francisco Black Film Festival is ‘Virtually, Possible,’” said Katera Crossley, who co-directs the festival with her husband O’Ray.

“The San Francisco Black Film Festival is flipping the script during this grave time in America and the world,” Crossley says. “The show must go on despite the worldwide pandemic. We are celebrating 22 years of bringing films from the African Diaspora from around the world to San Francisco to create positive dialogue between people about universal human experiences and as a result giving people a better understanding of each other.”

Films scheduled to screen virtually in this year’s festival include hip-hop musical It’s a Wonderful Plight, which manages to attack the serious issues of racism and systemic oppression in a light-hearted way; mystery-thriller The Birth of Deceit, the feature-film debut from rising director Yaw Agyapong; writer-director Derrick Perry’s dramatic Pink Opaque, which tackles themes of love, family, hardships and life in Los Angeles; the arresting 2015 dark comedy Driving While Black, based on the real-life experiences of writer and lead actor Dominique Purdy; the 2013 biographical drama Nzinga, Queen of Angola, about a 17th-century warrior woman who fights against Portuguese colonizers for the independence of Angola in Central Africa; and many other films both new and old.

When Ave Montague­—an arts publicist and manager and a fashion executive—founded the nonprofit San Francisco Black Film Festival in 1998, she wanted to create a platform for Black filmmakers, screenwriters and actors to present their art. Now run by O’Ray and Crossley, the festival continues to remain an inclusive and multicultural expression of the African-Diaspora experience. As a competitive film festival, SFBFF has screened more than 10,000 films from around the world and continues to seek out emerging filmmakers, screenwriters and actors and celebrate established artists and contributors to the cinematic legacy of African Americans; expanding the notions of Black filmmaking on a global scale.

San Francisco Black Film Festival sponsors include, to date, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Commission, Bill Graham Productions, Mayor London Breed, Key to the City of San Francisco, KPOO, KPFA, San Francisco BayView Newspaper, The Boom Boom Room, New Community Leadership Foundation, Inc., LaHitz Media, Film Bread and Wright Enterprises.

For more information about San Francisco Black Film Festival XXII, visit sfbff.org.

North Bay Progressives Raise Funds for Blue Candidates in Red States

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North Bay Progressives Raise Funds for Blue Candidates in Red States

The national, grassroots nonprofit-organization Sister District Project supports progressive Democratic political candidates in red or swing states by organizing political volunteers in blue districts to lend a hand.

Much like how Sister Cities promote cultural and social ties between socially-distant populations, the Sister District Project matches politically-blue districts with politically-red or swing districts elsewhere, so that Democratic activists in places like Sonoma County can channel their volunteers and their economic resources toward races that are both significant and winnable for progressives across the country.

In 2019, Sister District Project supported 27 races, with more than 23,000 donations averaging $24.57 each and over 31,000 volunteer-hours logged in the field.

For 2020, the project’s focus is to end gerrymandering in red districts, end widespread voter suppression in red states and help defeat President Trump by getting Democrats elected to state legislatures across the country.

In the North Bay, the East and West Sonoma County chapters of the Sister District Project combined their resources to host an online virtual fundraiser, Auction for Action, in support of three Democratic candidates running for state offices in Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The 10-day Auction for Action virtual fundraiser opens for online bidding June 17 and runs through June 27, ending with a live virtual event on June 27 at 4pm. The online auction is uniquely designed to safely raise political awareness and funds during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

“This upcoming election is especially important as the state legislatures in 37 states will be redrawing district lines,” says Rebecca Casciani, cofounder of Sister District Sonoma County East Chapter. “It is time to stop partisan gerrymandering.”

The West and East Sonoma County chapters of the Sister District Project are among the fastest-growing groups of the project’s progressive volunteers, and both chapters are striving to make an impact in the November 2020 elections by helping candidates in red states turn their state legislatures blue.

The Sonoma County West Sister District is specifically raising funds to support Shea Roberts, who hopes to join Georgia’s state legislature in November. The Sonoma County East Sister District supports Brittney Rodas, who is running for Pennsylvania State House, and Robyn Vining, an incumbent Democrat in the Wisconsin State Assembly.

Although the global coronavirus outbreak brought an immediate halt to planning in-person fundraisers, Sister District organizers quickly realized that online events offer a convenient way to reach even larger audiences.

“We’re not going to let a quarantine keep us from winning in November,” says Mary Radu, cofounder of the West Sonoma County chapter, which has supported eight candidates since its inception in 2017 in a variety of community-building fundraisers, including a paella feed and a popular annual clothing swap. “We think 2020 is our best chance to turn red states blue.”

The two Sonoma County chapters’ combined Auction for Action includes art created by talented local artists such as Marylu Downing and Elizabeth Peyton alongside many other artworks and crafts by various artisans. Bidders can also choose to bid on packages such as handyman services from Mark Miller, Sonoma County’s “Mench with a Wrench,” stays in several vacation homes, VIP wines and cheese tours at Cline Cellars in Sonoma, a tasting tour of Benizger’s Sonoma Mountain Estate and winery tram, an annual pass to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, gift certificates at local restaurants and stores, and much more. Direct donations can also be made to the project on the auction site. Additionally, an anonymous donor will match the amount raised for candidates.

The Sonoma County Chapters of Sister District Project host Auction for Action online Wednesday, June 17 through Saturday, June 27, when a live virtual auction caps off the event at 4pm. Visit Facebook or email sd***************@***il.com for more information.

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Let My People Be Free to Breathe

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Let My People Be Free to Breathe

Returning back to school this year—50 years old, an Afro-Latina, a disabled student—I chose to dive into the community headfirst. I did not wish to allow my adversity to define my experience but to influence how I chose to engage with other students, faculty, and staff at Santa Rosa Junior College. I began joining various clubs, meeting students, planning events, and through time, began to understand that there was a real need for black and brown students to be more active, present and supported on campus. I joined various racial-affinity groups, social groups, and more. I ended the first semester with a 4.0 GPA and was appointed Vice President of Clubs of Petaluma.

Once the Pandemic had begun its onslaught of altering my communities and what we knew as normal, I believed nothing could get worse. That’s when the Black Lives Matter movement re-emerged in the wake of the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Tony Mcdade and George Floyd. 

Immediately, the Black Student Union, various community leaders and I began planning a community event that promoted the leadership and presence of black voices and protested against police brutality and injustice. We came up with a series of demands, a program that will ensure Santa Rosa Junior College promotes racial equity and inclusion. 

We will no longer be silent. These are our demands. 

  1. We DEMAND FREE tuition for Black and Indigenous students.
  2. We DEMAND Black Scholarships.
  3. We DEMAND an Office for Black Student Development starting FALL 2020.
  4. We DEMAND a more racially-diverse faculty and staff.
  5. We DEMAND the hiring of a Black Counselor, specifically, Dianna L Grayer.
  6. We DEMAND a Black/Ethnic Studies Department be implemented.
  7. We DEMAND Proper Comprehensive Racial Awareness training to all Staff, Faculty and Administration. 
  8. We DEMAND SRJC Create a Strategic Plan that will increase Retention Rates for marginalized students.
  9. We DEMAND the IMMEDIATE Removal of Don Edgar from the Board of Trustees. ANYONE in Leadership, Staff, Faculty or Administration who has been accused of Embellzelment, Bribaries, Discrimination, Bullying, Stigmatizing or Harassing should be removed from their positions IMMEDIATELY.
  10. We DEMAND that Campus Security shows fair and equal treatment regarding events that are hosted by the BSU.
  11. We DEMAND that Summer Classes not have Due Dates or Deadlines.
  12. We DEMAND that Dr. Chong come to our BSU meeting once a semester to keep us posted on the progress of our DEMANDS. 
  13. WE DEMAND THE JOBS OF THE FACULTY, STAFF AND ADMINISTRATORS THAT SUPPORT US NOT BE THREATENED DUE TO THEIR SUPPORT OF BLACK STUDENT UNION STUDENTS.

We don’t want to be pacified. It’s time for a change.

Delashay Carmona Benson is a re-entry college student at Santa Rosa Junior College where she advocates for inclusivity, diversity and equity.

Reps Cosponsor Police-Reform Legislation

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Reps Cosponsor Police-Reform Legislation

North Bay Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson are among dozens of democratic Congressmembers to co-sponsor federal legislation aimed at reforming law-enforcement agencies across the country.

Introduced on Monday, June 8, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 is the Democrats’ response to the daily protests across the nation.

The list of changes proposed in the legislation includes a countrywide ban on chokeholds, carotid holds and no-knock warrants. The bill would also require state and local law enforcement “to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras” and create a National Police Misconduct Registry intended to prevent officers with a history of violence or problematic behavior from transferring to a new department.

All of this sounds good, but it may not match the urgency many people on the street want. Even if the police-reform legislation passes, meaningful law-enforcement agency reform will require ongoing oversight and a change in officers’ mindsets, not just new rules.

Rules, as Americans have witnessed over and over again, can be broken or blatantly ignored when a law-enforcement agency lacks a culture of accountability.

PG&E Plans Move to Oakland

As the Pacific Gas and Electric Company awaits word on whether its bankruptcy exit plan will be approved before June 30, the utility announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from downtown San Francisco to Oakland beginning in 2022.

“Oakland is the perfect fit for us for a host of reasons,” a PG&E executive said in a statement on June 8. “It is a thriving hub of industry and innovation in our state, and we look forward to establishing our headquarters and contributing to life there.”

The bigger issue question still remains: How will PG&E fare once it successfully exits bankruptcy court—an outcome that looks likely in the next few weeks—while the state heads into yet another fire season?

Nobody knows, but adding another round of widespread power shutoffs or wildfires—PG&E-induced or not—to an ongoing pandemic and protests against police brutality could make the next six months even more eventful.

Our unhelpful advice? Buckle up and buy some extra batteries.

Head West Marketplace supports purveyors in pandemic

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Head West Marketplace supports purveyors in pandemic

The journey for the modern maker from concept to customer is not an easy one, especially for small artisan producers and brands trying to find an audience for their products and services in a crowded online marketplace.

Jimmy Brower was one such creative, a North Oakland retail professional who left the corporate world to pursue his own desert-inspired lifestyle brand, West Perro, in 2016. Through the brand, Brower creates and sells sun hats, jewelry and other items in his online shop. In figuring out how to sustain and survive as a self-employed creative in an expensive Bay Area, Brower knew he had to create a community.

“I would find myself participating in craft shows and markets, and my network broadened,” he says. “All these things that are a benefit in the small business world; but the things I saw that were lacking in these larger fairs and markets was accessibility, affordability and diversity.”

In 2018, Brower founded Head West Marketplace to provide a diverse array of local purveyors a pop-up platform with which to share and sell their products and services in a physical space akin to a farmers’ market, only this one features art and crafts instead of fruits and vegetables.

“I wanted to build something that was affordable for new or emerging artists, or small businesses, or makers, or shop owners,” Brower says. “And I wanted to make it accessible to people in their own community, their own neighborhood.”

The first few months of Head West Marketplace in 2018 happened 10 blocks from Brower’s house, at Bay Street Shopping Center in Emeryville. He and the artisan crafters and makers who participated in those early markets saw immediate results.

“People were coming up to me that had not been exposed to small business in the form of sole entrepreneurs just working out of their households,” he says. “There were a lot of conversations happening about the value of time and materials and ultimately the value of products and services when it’s coming from a human being versus a corporation.”

While the pop-up space in Emeryville could accommodate 20 booths of local purveyors, Head West Marketplace quickly grew beyond that capacity and expanded its market at different venues, moving between Hangar One Distillery in Alameda and the Temescal District on Telegraph Avenue in North Oakland.

“I started to see doors open for all shapes and sizes of makers in the Bay Area,” Brower says. “These individuals needed an outlet from out behind their computer screen to physically connect with people, whether it be their already existing customer base, their followers on social media or just their family and friends to test out their ideas and creations. “

Brower also found that customers were coming to these marketplaces from the North Bay, the South Bay and the far East Bay. In 2019, Head West Marketplace doubled from two venues to four, adding pop-up markets at 1717 Fourth Street in Berkeley and at the Barlow in Sebastopol.

While Brower is still the one-man operation behind Head West, he acknowledges he does not do it alone, and he says he’s blessed to work with partners at these community-minded venues to create space for the makers and creators.

“It’s a passion,” he says. “It’s a passion for seeing people’s dreams grow into physical realities.”

All of this rests, in some way, in Brower’s childhood, growing up in a small town in Illinois, with a mother who worked graveyards shifts at a hospital, a father who worked with his hands as a welder and a stepfather who would come home covered in soot from his job in a coal mine.

“Being inspired by that type of blue-collar hard work helped me to infuse that into what I’m doing today,” he says.

Today looks very different from the 2020 that Brower envisioned for Head West Marketplace, which was poised to hold an outdoor market nearly every weekend at one of its four venues beginning in March and running through the holidays.

“I led with this mentality of, ‘2020 is the year to see things clearly,’” he laughs. “I started hearing those things being echoed, that this was THE year of things happening. And things are happening, absolutely, important things are happening. But if I put myself in the silo of small business and those stay-at-home makers and crafters and designers, it’s been very difficult.”

Head West did host its first market of the year on March 7 at the Barlow Center in Sebastopol.

“I was elated,” Brower says, of the event that drew 3,000 people. “There was so much success, so much optimism and so much positivity with that bellwether marketplace.”

Less than a week later, most of the Bay Area issued a stay-at-home order to stop the spread of Covid-19. Brower was disheartened to have to cancel his Head West markets, ultimately through June.

Yet, Brower says he’s also seen uplifting news in that time. He’s networked with other like-minded market organizers up and down the coast, inspiring him to continue to support makers and purveyors with online resources and exposure.

To that end, Head West Marketplace has assembled a comprehensive resource guide for Bay Area small businesses dealing with the Covid-19 fallout. These resources include grant and loan opportunities, and Brower’s informed opinion on options for staying afloat during these dire economic times.

“I’m one of those business-minded people that says loans are for growth, not for crisis, and there were a lot of predatory lenders trying to capitalize on panicked individuals,” he says. “I built the online resources in the mindset that it is about making sure you survive after this moment, what that looks like in terms of personal finance and income, and what it means for your business revenue.”

In addition to providing resources for business owners, Head West is also sharing a list of Bay Area–and-beyond makers and designers who have pivoted to creating customizable and artistic face coverings during the ongoing pandemic.

Beyond supporting the shop-local scene, recent events in the U.S. have prompted Brower to join the growing chorus of “Black Lives Matter,” and when Head West returns to public events, Brower is making commitments to support Black makers and businesses, highlighting many planned actions listed on the Head West website such as providing no-cost booth-space scholarships at every marketplace for Black-identified participants.

Brower is also assembling a resource and support directory for Black empowerment in the Bay Area on Head West’s site, with contact information for dozens of organizations including the local NAACP chapter, defense funds, lawyers’ guilds and more.

“I see myself on this rollercoaster—I don’t know how I got on it, but I look around and I see everyone I know sitting on it with me, we’re all experiencing the same thing but we’re all having different emotions because it’s affecting us on an individual level,” Brower says. “We don’t know when it’s going to end, but when it does end we are going to get off the ride together, as one.”

headwestmarketplace.com

Letters to the Editor: Dropped

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Letters to the Editor: Dropped

Because nothing “new” has come to light except the country’s excessive amount of police brutality (“Dismissed: District Attorney drops charges against Graton Couple,” News, June 3). This case was phony from the very beginning. Also, Press Democrat’s original article heavily sided with the police report, which was falsified. The DA and Sheriffs should be sued. They need to euthanize Vader because that dog is a liability. They need to press charges on its handler because he was either massively incompetent or another vicious liability.

The top police-dog trainer reviewed the footage and explained that the officer never gave the heel command and instead pulled on the dog’s harness which tells the dog to bite more aggressively. They never had reason to believe he was the one being identified in the report of a gun-toting individual. They showed up to his house out of harassment. That’s why this whole case fell apart on them. They got the wrong guy and then brutalized him. Luckily someone got it all on video. Now they drop all their charges because they knew they were wrong the whole time. Shame on Jill Ravitch. Shame on Sonoma County Sheriffs. Shame on Press Democrat.

They should all be sued.

J. Nunez

Via bohemian.com

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Head West Marketplace supports purveyors in pandemic

The journey for the modern maker from concept to customer is not an easy one, especially for small artisan producers and brands trying to find an audience for their products and services in a crowded online marketplace. Jimmy Brower was one such creative, a North Oakland retail professional who left the corporate world to pursue his own desert-inspired lifestyle brand,...
Read more

Letters to the Editor: Dropped

Because nothing “new” has come to light except the country’s excessive amount of police brutality (“Dismissed: District Attorney drops charges against Graton Couple,” News, June 3). This case was phony from the very beginning. Also, Press Democrat’s original article heavily sided with the police report, which was falsified. The DA and Sheriffs should be sued. They...
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