Marin Headlands Walk Wildflowers are blooming

Considering that the terrain is breathtaking, the Marin Headlands are surprisingly unphotogenic. Rocky hillsides covered with heather offer few contrasts. But the flowers are out!


The state flower shows its face.


More flamboyant blooms


Once in a while, there was a bank of color beside the trail...


...then something more delicate.

A good day for immigration policy

Various attempts to write a "compromise" immigration reform from the Senate are apparently dead. Why is this good? Because anything they passed, no matter how apparently fair, would have to be taken to conference with the "build a wall and name 'em all felons" bill passed by the House. By the time the "reform" came out of a Republican dominated conference, we can be sure that provisions protecting immigrants as workers would be gone and probably most of the legalization path. So this has been a good day.

The immigration policy debate has stimulated some interesting oped pieces in the last few days.

One in the New York Times by Douglas S. Massey is going to get walled off soon, so I'll quote extensively from it.

The Mexican-American border is not now and never has been out of control. The rate of undocumented migration, adjusted for population growth, to the United States has not increased in 20 years. That is, from 1980 to 2004 the annual likelihood that a Mexican will make his first illegal trip to the United States has remained at about 1 in 100.

What has changed are the locations and visibility of border crossings. And that shift, more than anything, has given the public undue fears about waves of Mexican workers trying to flood into America.

Until the 1990's, the vast majority of undocumented Mexicans entered through either El Paso or San Diego. El Paso has around 700,000 residents and is 78 percent Hispanic, whereas San Diego County has three million residents and is 27 percent Hispanic. Thus the daily passage of even thousands of Mexicans through these metropolitan areas was not very visible or disruptive.

This all changed in 1992 when the Border Patrol built a steel fence south of San Diego from the Pacific Ocean to the port of entry at San Ysidro, Calif., where Interstate 5 crosses into Mexico. This fence, and the stationing of officers and equipment behind it, blocked one of the busiest illicit crossing routes and channeled migrants toward the San Ysidro entry station, where their numbers rapidly built up to impossible levels.

Every day the same episode unfolded: the crowd swelled to a critical threshold, whereupon many migrants made what the local press called "banzai runs" into the United States, darting through traffic on the Interstate and clambering over cars.

Waiting nearby were Border Patrol officers, there not to arrest the migrants but to capture the mayhem on video, which was later edited into an agency documentary. Although nothing had changed except the site of border crossings, the video gave the impression that the border was overwhelmed by a rising tide of undocumented migrants.

Massey goes on to describe how fence building in California pushed immigrants to the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. More people died, but more actually got into the U.S. as the probability of getting picked up dropped from 33 percent to 10 percent. And with more fences, going home to Mexico got harder, so there is more incentive to dig in and simply stay in the U.S., losing ties with home and family.

Massey concludes: "The only thing we have to show for two decades of border militarization is a larger undocumented population than we would otherwise have, a rising number of Mexicans dying while trying to cross, and a growing burden on taxpayers for enforcement that is counterproductive."

Not to be out done, the Washington Post has printed three quite good immigration columns as well. Ruth Marcus recounted how North Dakota, not usually a progressive bellwether, decided that giving in-state tuition to undocumented graduates of state high schools was simply a good investment. Being a place that is losing population, North Dakotans know the score:

As one state senator, a rural Republican, told a GOP colleague who's running for Congress, "You wouldn't have a seat to run for if it wasn't for immigration."

Usually Fareed Zakaria is not someone I expect to agree with. He's editor of Newsweek International, Yale and Harvard educated, and conservative, the kind of immigrant (Indian-born) intellectual who gives "race cover" to our right winger's mad hegemonic dreams. Though he has questioned how it has been carried out, he has supported the Neocon's Iraq war. But he said a lot of sensible things this week, contrasting the U.S.'s relatively open immigration with Europe's inability to absorb people who are genuinely different. He urged:

These people [immigrants] must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming Americans. Otherwise we are sending a signal that there are groups of people who are somehow unfit to be Americans, that these newcomers are not really welcome and that what we want are workers, not potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have similarly cold feelings about America.

Finally, African American columnist Eugene Robinson visited Phoenix to take the temperature on the issue. He nails the story:

This confident, laid-back city is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Immigration reform is more than a political issue here -- it's an acute psychosis.

State legislator Alfredo Gutierrez explained to Robinon what drives immigrant protests.

• "His childhood was an experience of a 'perhaps more benign' form of the apartheid that African Americans had to suffer in the South. Mexicans were allowed to use the municipal swimming pool only on Sundays, after which the pool was drained and refilled every Monday, he says. ...The idea back then was forced assimilation. 'The teacher would put a piece of tape on your mouth if you spoke Spanish instead of English,' he recalls."

• "Within his own extended family, Gutierrez says, he counts immigrants who are American citizens, others who are permanent residents with green cards and still others who are here illegally. That is why there are no simple solutions: If you draw a sharp line between those who have proper documents and those who don't, you break up families."

The undocumented are here. Any "reform" can only acknowledge that reality. Find a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice event to join in your area and say so loud and clear.

South Dakota abortion banVote it down?

South Dakota Healthy Families hopes to put the state's new abortion ban on the ballot in the November election. When I was asked for money for this effort, I wanted to know more both generally and about prospects, strategy and tactics. Neither the proponents of the referendum, nor the national pro-choice outfits had much on their websites, so in the interest of reducing my ignorance about South Dakota, I did some research. Here is what I found out:

Referendums are not new.
It comes as a small surprise here in initiative-mad California, to learn that South Dakota was the first state (1898) to adopt initiatives and referenda. As in most places, putting measures to direct vote was a populist, vaguely progressive effort to overcome the power of entrenched interests. As in most states, the power was relatively little used until the 1970s but has become common since. The Aberdeen News reports that 42 laws passed by SD legislators have been put to referendum, and 83 percent were rejected by voters. Sounds good for pro-choice campaigners, who must gather 16,728 signatures (5 percent of registered voters) by June 19 to force the vote.

Dueling polls
So I wondered, has anybody done the polling to find out how a vote might go? Of course, yes. In mid- March, Focus: South Dakota, a Democratic group which employed Robinson and Muenster Associates of Sioux Falls, interviewed 630 voters. They reported:

Sixty-two percent said the legislation is too extreme, 33 percent said they support the bill and the rest were undecided.

When people were asked if they thought the abortion ban should be put on the November ballot, 72 percent answered yes. Pollsters found that 79 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of independents, and 65 percent of Republicans favor a statewide vote on the issue.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled said they would then vote to override the proposal, 36 percent would keep the ban and the rest were undecided about the measure.

Anti-abortion leaders scoffed at the results, claiming 64 percent of South Dakotans are "pro-life."

Probably all results on this highly charged issue depend on how the question is asked. In early March, the reputable, Republican-oriented Rasmussen Reports surveyed South Dakotans and found them absolutely evenly divided on the ban, 45 percent in favor, 45 percent opposed. Interestingly, "the poll also found that most South Dakota voters (55 percent) know someone who has had an abortion. Sixty percent (60 percent) say abortion is morally wrong most of the time."

Campaign messages
The Focus: South Dakota poll certainly point to the right message for South Dakota Healthy Families: The legislature's ban goes too far. The lack of exceptions for rape, incest, or the mental health of the potential mother moves this particular law over into wacko-land for most voters. That "goes too far" message is pretty much the universal message in negative initiative and referendum campaigns, playing well everywhere to majorities of citizens who oppose any measure that can be stigmatized as "extreme."

An interesting potential sub-theme that could play a lot of ways will also be at work. I'm sure that most South Dakotans don't want their state branded as a wacko place, by either side. This referendum will undoubtedly get huge amounts of national attention and money from all concerned groups. The ban does have national implications so there is nothing wrong with that, but South Dakotans can expect to feel somewhat invaded. A local blog, Moderates from South Dakota predicts what is coming:

We as South Dakotan's should start preparing for a media blitz from both sides that if taken too far could have far reaching effects on the final outcome of the vote.

Though what happens in our sparsely populated state rarely matters to those living outside of South Dakota, we can expect national attention and outside intervention the likes we haven't seen since the 2004 Thune/Daschle Senate race with both pro-choice and pro-life groups mobilizing nationwide. ...

Nationally, both groups see this as the latest battle ground for their agenda so you can expect a lot of outside interest and money thrown into a media blitz that could get quite ugly. This campaign, if taken too far by either side, could easily turn off the residents of our state and backfire on either group by making the media campaign the focus rather than the issue itself. If you thought Thune vs Daschle was bad, just wait for the images of unborn babies, aborted fetuses, comments from mothers whom have had abortions, and debates over when life begins that will be coming to a TV near you soon.

I'd predict that the side which convinces more residents that it actually gives a damn about South Dakota will win the vote.

So how does this play on the ground?
Some pro-choice South Dakotans didn't want to take the issue to a referendum. Todd Epp warned on the blog SDWatch that the referendum would take the focus off progressive efforts to replace the right wing governor and legislators. "The problem is Pierre [the capitol.]" He also warned that there is an anti-gay marriage measure on the November ballot, so the abortion ban vote will unavoidably be complicated by the general right wing sexuality panic. That seems darn unpersuasive to me: can we afford to let them veto anything we want to do by hauling out the usual queer bashing? But the presence of the issue on the ballot will certainly increase the already super-heated temperature of the election.

Now that the referendum petition drive is going forward, some reports suggest that South Dakota Democrats have been energized, "contesting far more races than in past years. In fact, the Democratic Party has candidates in nearly 20 more seats than it did two years ago," though still leaving many Republicans unopposed. Republican Governor Mike Rounds who signed the ban saw his approval plummet from 72 to 58 percent.

One exciting member of the new crop of Democratic State Senate candidates is Charon Asetoyer, the Executive Director of the Native Women's Health Education Resource Center. Like Sioux tribal president Cecilia Fire Thunder a supporter of a woman's right to choose. According to the Nation blog, Asetoyer has also long worked to prevent violence against women.

So to donate from afar, or not donate to South Dakota Healthy Families' referendum campaign? I come down on the YES side and I hope anyone following this long post will as well. We can help South Dakotans find a way to advertise their state as a sensible place, a state that refuses to go out on a limb for a minority's obsessions.

South Dakota abortion banA Sioux tribal president's wisdom

Pro-choice demonstrators, San Francisco, 2006

Yesterday I got a fund appeal. That's not extraordinary; it happens every day. A friend asked me to contribute to South Dakota Healthy Families, a coalition aiming to put the state's new abortion ban on the ballot in the November election.

Somehow, I'd missed the campaign to put a stake in this thing by popular vote. That sounds like a good idea. But that's not what I want to write about tonight -- that's a matter of tactics and strategy, worth pondering. But first I thought I'd research a bit more about South Dakota and the folks involved.

Though I'm not an enthusiast for abortions, I come to this believing that no woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy should be governed by a tangle of laws and moral injunctions framed in male-defined societies. Maybe when women have been considered fully human by everyone (including ourselves) for a few millennia, we'll have more perspective on the right relationship between a woman and the fertilized egg she can carry. Meanwhile, I believe each woman has to be free to figure this out through whatever means of moral discernment is her own.

One response to the abortion ban has gotten a lot of press: Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has offered sovereign native land as a site for a clinic to make abortion available within South Dakota. This seems a brave and generous offer. According to Indian Country, she has a lot to say about the issues in abortion decisions:

''I have very strong opinions of what happened. These are a bunch of white guys determining what a woman should do with her body,'' Fire Thunder said. Fire Thunder was a nurse and has worked with women who were traumatized by rape....

American Indian women will be impacted, if the law takes effect, in greater numbers than any other group. According to national statistics, American Indian women are sexually assaulted at a rate 3.5 times higher than all other racial groups. That means there are seven rapes per 1,000 American Indian women....

''If they are going to outlaw abortions [they should] put more money into sex education and pregnancy prevention. It's fine to tell people to abstain from sex. Adult people in our country expect young people to abstain when they don't abstain,'' she said.

''It's my personal opinion that it's a woman's choice. She makes the decision and the only person she is going to be accountable to is the Creator and the spirit of that child,'' Fire Thunder said. ...

''The Creator gave every human being [the right] to make choices for yourself. Another person may not think that is the right choice and a lot of people have made bad choices in their lives, but it's their choice....We have to honor the gift the Creator gave us; one of the greatest gifts is to choose for ourselves.''

One of the core insults that forced pregnancy crusaders throw at women is that we take abortion lightly, that we haven't thought the issues through. Cecilia Fire Thunder obviously has -- she can speak for me on this one.

Tomorrow I'll write about what I learned about the political context and potential of the South Dakota Healthy Families campaign.

"Between the devil and the deep blue sea..."

That's how a Belizean primary school principal describes the discovery of oil in her Caribbean country. Oil is going to change things, that is for sure.

Belize (British Honduras before independence in 1981) has long served as a supplier of desirable exotic goods to wealthy foreign countries. But sugarcane, citrus and bananas don't thrust you into the eye of the storm the way black gold priced at over $60 a barrel does.

Annual per capita income in Belize is $3940. Less than in Mexico ($9600); ahead of neighboring Honduras ($2800). Certainly not affluent.

Aside from its agricultural exports, Belize's main source of income has been tourism, especially ecotourism. (Yes, that's how I came to take the picture above.) Belizean's are proud of their own efforts to preserve and display their natural environment. The national Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) explains:

Belize has become one of the world's most biologically diverse nations with the integrity of its natural resources still very much intact. It boasts 93% of its land under forest covers, the largest coral reef in the western hemisphere (second only to Australia's), the largest cave system in Central America, over 500 species of birds, thousands of Maya archaeological temples and the only jaguar reserve in the world. With only 8, 867 square miles (22,960 sq.. km) and 250,000 people, the population density is the lowest in the Central American region and one of the lowest in the world. The only country in Central America with English as its official language, Belize also boasts a rich mix of ethnicities including Creole, Maya, Mestizo, East Indian, Chinese, Garifuna and Mennonite.

The people of Belize have for years monitored its rate of economic development, agricultural expansion and tourism growth in particular. A conservation consciousness has emerged that challenges the government, private sector, investors and the public at large to balance development with conservation of its natural resources. Consequently, to date Belize has 42% of its land under some form of legal protected status.

Now it is easy to wonder whether there may be a little more talk than walk in PACT's description. Much of the coral in the barrier reef is dying, victim of global warming and too many cruise ships. Demand for hydropower has led to dam construction that intruded on protected forests. But, all in all, Belize has remained out of the maelstrom of international development politics, a slightly sleepy, somewhat protected backwater.

Not anymore.

Because the nation lacks a refinery, pipelines or other basic petroleum infrastructure, the oil must be moved by tanker trucks along narrow, pitted roads to the docks in the southern city of Big Creek for export.

"We simply aren't prepared," said Godsman Ellis, president of the Belize Institute of Environmental Law and Policy, who says that spills and other disasters are inevitable.

Nonetheless, this is about undreamed of wealth in a very poor place. "Minister of Natural Resources John Briceno calculates that at current prices, the government's take from even modest oil production of around 60,000 barrels a day would cover the entire national budget."

Belize is a lovely country. Let's hope oil makes most Belizeans' lives better, rather than destroying a difficult, but sustainable, way of life.

Send a message

This is great. Now you can buy real, honest to goodness, working postage stamps (licensed by the USPS!) with an antiwar message. And the proceeds go to help groups working to bring the troops home.

The stamp features the symbol of the growing "Bring 'Em Home Now!" movement – a yellow ribbon transposed over a peace sign – providing millions of Americans with a unique way to show their support for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq....

All proceeds from the sale of the stamps ... benefit citizen groups working hard to end the war and bring our troops safely home, including Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace.

By participating, you proudly say: "I support the troops. Let's bring them home now! And let's take care of them when they get here."

You'll pay extra to send your mail. The stamps are $20 for a sheet of 20. But since you are already paying for the war, how about something for the peace?

Hat tip to Melanie.

Disaster preparedness

Bird flu. I'm not going to pretend I know a thing about whether it is going to make the leap and become a human pandemic, disrupting societies worldwide and killing millions. I can imagine it might. On the other hand, I can imagine our anxious flu vigil might turn out to be one of the many frightening phantoms we all feel hanging over us. Our species is modifying our global ecosystem so rapidly that we've come to distrust its very predictability.

We'd all be smart to visit the FluWiki and learn more.

But it is interesting to think about what we know about how people respond in a crisis. Since Hurricane Katrina, we're frequently lectured by various government bodies on how we should be prepared to take care of ourselves for 72 hours. Good idea I guess (and one of these days maybe I should get in some supplies.)

But what really cheers me up are stories of how very well ordinary people do when confronted with the impossible. Effect Measure shared a nice, light, story recently of British firefighters who cut through some prospective flu foolishness.

Firefighters in the West Midlands said today they had been told to stop attending incidents involving birds as fears grew over avian flu....

Deputy chief fire officer Vijith Randeniya told staff in the leaked memo: "We are not to attend any calls to stranded or distressed birds even if requested by the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals]."

The move could mean crews refusing to attend fires at pet shops and farms and homes with aviaries and pigeon lofts....

One firefighter said: "We normally attend all incidents involving animals if asked to by the RSPCA. It's utter nonsense and completely unworkable. What happens if we go to a house fire if they've got a pet budgie or aviary?

"Do we say 'sorry mate, we can't put out your fire because we might catch bird flu'?"

No nonsense there.

This accords with what disaster experts say about ordinary human response to unthinkable catastrophe: we tend to be more sensible than the authorities anticipate. Reuters Alertnet posts a "TIPSHEET: Aid experts debunk post-disaster myths." Number One on their list:

MYTH: Disaster-hit people are too dazed and shocked to take responsibility for helping themselves and others. ...

But according to the 2004 World Disasters Report, published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in-depth reports from sudden disasters ranging from earthquakes to the collapse of New York's twin towers show survivors rushing to save people from under the rubble -- with their bare hands if necessary.

Adeel Jafferi, media officer for Islamic Relief, described such proactivity in the immediate aftermath of Pakistan's earthquake in October 2005:

..."On the day it happened, ordinary people were rushing to aid victims, despite the shock they felt themselves. I saw people on the street who were completely out of their minds with fear, and yet when they saw the need to help people and heard the screams from under buildings, they ran immediately and started helping."

It seems likely that one reason our species has lasted this long is that helping save others helps us get a grip when confronted with catastrophe.

The additional five myths on the Alertnet Tipsheet are also well worth pondering. They are

• MYTH: The best international response is to send in rescue teams immediately.

• MYTH: Dead bodies should be buried quickly to avoid disease.

• MYTH: Survivors have lost everything except the clothes they stand up in. The best response is to give them second-hand clothes.

• MYTH: The best way Westerners can help children who have been orphaned in a disaster is to adopt them.

• MYTH: The best way to help survivors is to put them in temporary settlements.

Check out the whole story.

What are we going to do about it?

Anna Politkovskaya writes from Moscow:

Recently two young college students from the Chechen capital of Grozny -- Musa Lomayev and Mikhail Vladovskikh -- were accused by the police and the prosecutor's office of all small, previously unsolved acts of terrorism that had occurred about six months before in one of Grozny's residential areas. As a result, Vladovskikh is now severely disabled: Both his legs were broken under torture; his kneecaps were shattered; his kidneys badly damaged by beating; his genitalia mutilated; his eyesight lost; his eardrums torn; and all of his front teeth sawed off. That is how he appeared before the court. ...

Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism. But it seems to me that the rest of the world has been infected along with it, a world shrunken and frightened before the threat of terrorism.

One has to ask why anyone is giving any credence to the purported deposition in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an "Al Qaeda official and terrorist mastermind" as the Christian Science Monitor characterizes the man. It is not as if he had appeared in court, been cross-examined, his testimony subjected to corroboration. The judge simply allowed the CIA to produce this document that has the world abuzz. Maybe it is true. Maybe it is partially true and embellished (perhaps to make the CIA look better?) Is there really such a person? Was he tortured? Mainstream media has reported that he was "waterboarded."

Politkovskaya lays out where this practice leads. How soon will such methods "blowback" here? Have they already? And what are we going to do about it?

Sonoma County walk

"It rained and it rained and it rained." According to the Winnie-the-Pooh FAQ, the terrible flood "in which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water" and needs rescue by C. Robin and Pooh lasted five days.

Piglet wouldn't have made it in Northern California this winter. This March saw more rain than all but one previous March since settlers started keeping records.

Ordinarily the color of California is brown. Right now it is vibrant green. Here are a few photos from a hike in Sonoma County during a brief pause in the precipitation over the weekend.



Some residents are very happy in the sea of green.


For a moment the clouds seemed ready to part.


The clouds' return only made the landscape more surreal.

Reading material

Off to the country for the weekend for the annual parish retreat. It has been a long wet winter, too much of it spent indoors. I expect to enjoy some country living among friends on the journey.

In case anyone is lacking for reading material for the weekend, here are some interesting tidbits.

black looks has a long post on the growth of African blogging. Women are becoming more active in that corner of the blogosphere and one response has been an outpouring of misogyny and homophobia. She writes:

The blogosphere reflects the non-cyber world in that the lack of shared values, ideological consensus and cultural differences amongst people can and does result in conflicts and confrontations betweens groups and individuals on their blogs. Thus the dichotomies of gender – male and female; sexual preference – heterosexual and homosexual; geographical location – Africa the homeland and Africa the Diaspora; African and non-African all have the possibility of being exacerbated because except in the case of gender these pairs are not often thrown together within the same space.

[She asks] how can we ... create a network of mutual support that values freedom and diversity? We need to seize the time, find each other and work together.

Check it out.

Abu Aardvark (Marc Lynch) has done his scholarly duty and delved into the captured Iraqi documents (said to derive from the Saddam Hussein era) that the U.S. government has dumped on the web. In general, he is not convinced there is much that wasn't known before. But he did find possible evidence that Hussein's regional militia was getting its information from an unlikely source.

Since the three surviving kidnapped Christian Peacemakers were released from their captivity last week, there has been an outpouring of venom from U.S. and British war supporters. The CPT folks must be foolish, ungrateful, and hopelessly naïve. Geov Parrish at Eat the State has written a sensible, sensitive and entirely secular appreciation of the work of the Christian Peacemaker Teams. He points out:

Even having lost a member, the survival rate of Christian Peacemaker Teams delegations is rather better than that of the US military; clearly, they know what they are doing, and in an environment where every American outside the Green Zone is in extreme danger, clearly their good work (usually) protects them.

I'm off to commune with the cows. Unhappily, the weather report predicts hail!

Immigration in California politics

Many of us who lean to the progressive side of things are enjoying the spectacle of national Republicans killing off their future prospects among Latino voters. They let their outright racists, like Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, set the party's legislative agenda. Tancredo and his buddy James Sensenbrunner of Wisconsin want to make our undocumented working class into felons. That's going to alienate even Latinos who think immigrants should play by the book.

What nobody seems to get is that most undocumented people are uncles or cousins or even wives of someone with legal status. Not to mention that their children are U.S. citizens. Where the exclusionists see Mexican invaders, Latinos see their families. Guess who wins that one -- and how they will vote when they are eligible?

So how does this play in California where we've been living inside these issues for years? In 1994, Pete Wilson played with this fire, won the re-election battle by pushing for the anti-immigrant Prop. 187, and the Republicans have been losing the war ever since as Latinos jumped firmly into the Democratic camp.

The frightening reality is that if Prop. 187 were offered to California voters today, it would probably pass again, though perhaps with less than 60 percent of the vote. Anti-immigrant measures reflect white fear that their country and culture is being engulfed by newcomers who speak foreign languages and have different lifestyles. But although California has passed the demographic tipping point at which white people ceased to be the majority (no ethnic groups has a majority these days), the electorate remains about 75 percent white. Most voters are older, better off, and more educated than non-voters; these are the characteristics of the white California population. Also many immigrants have not yet jumped the hurdles on the way to citizenship. So the Anglo vote remains dominant.

Anti-immigrant ballot measures remain a cheap way for Anglo California to say: "My state is changing and I'm scared." Fortunately we are not facing any current restrictionist ballot measures. But we probably will again, and for the time being, they may very well pass.

Meanwhile, this year, California politicians have simply tried to make immigration go away as a topic of political dialogue. Once singed, few want to go back to the racial animosity of the mid-1990s.

Gov. Arnold says "I'll let the geniuses in Washington figure all that out." His Republican base certainly wants more: in 2003 he let them know that he voted for Prop. 187; last year he flirted briefly with supporting the Minutemen vigilantes, then backed off. He has a quandary because anti-immigrant policies not only turn off Latinos, but also independent women of all races, another large electoral bloc with whom he has some problems.

Some California Republicans are less careful. State Sen. Tom McClintock, who is running for lieutenant governor, accused President George W. Bush of failing to protect U.S. borders and said illegal aliens should be deported. "There's nothing radical about that," said McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks."

And the Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist, running as a Conservative for congress in the San Diego suburbs, has been fanning the flames.

"I don't want to sound paranoid, but when you see hundreds of thousands of people rallying around a foreign flag ... it's the next thing to foreign insurrection," he said.

On the other hand, he says, Congress could spur an insurrection from the anti-illegal immigration side if it approves a plan that would legitimize those now in the country illegally. ..."I'm not going to promote insurrection, but if it happens, it will be on the conscience of the members of Congress who are doing this," he said. "I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that."

Meanwhile, the Democrats dueling for the opportunity to take on Arnold have been ducking to the best of their ability. Phil Angelides points out that he opposed Prop. 187. As someone involved in that campaign, I can testify that Democratic politicians who showed any spine in that fight were few and far between. I don't remember his name, but that doesn't say anything -- he was not prominent in my circles. His website doesn't seem to mention the immigration at all, at least that I could find. No search function.

Aspiring Governor Steve Westly (website) has a section where visitors can give their opinions on immigration. His spokesman recently explained that Westly opposes HR 4437:

"It criminalizes undocumented workers in this country, which isn't good for public safety, the budget or the problem of illegal immigration at all."

Definitely advantage to Westly on immigration, simply by being prepared to address what folks are wondering about.

Oakland progressive policy advocate Frank Russo goes after Gov. Arnold about the many anti-immigrant measures introduced by Republican legislators -- and suggests some measures he should support: drivers licenses for the undocumented so we can be sure they have insurance; in-state tuition in community colleges for undocumented young people who have graduated from California high schools; and development of a California Office of Immigrant Affairs. Democrats would be smart to come clean on these issues as well.

In 1994, older relatives of the current crop of Latino high school students took to the streets, much as we have been seeing over the last few days. California has begun to calm down over immigration -- anyone who thinks the state is upset by recent walkouts and marches never knew or has forgotten how heated the atmosphere was 12 years ago. California is working out how to be one of the most diverse societies the world has ever seen. Eventually the pols will catch up with the people.

Neighborhood meeting about the new Valencia Gardens

Slide image of a photo of new Valencia Gardens project.

Last night I attended a community meeting at which developers and managers tried to convince a skeptical public that the rebuilt Valencia Gardens housing project will make a positive contribution to our neighborhood. It was a hard sell.

e Housing Authority (SFHA) is proud of the design of the new project:

Located in San Francisco's Mission District, the new family development will replace 246 dilapidated and blighted public housing units with 260 new mixed income flats and townhouse units with multi-purpose facilities. The revitalization also includes a new ancillary senior housing site with 60 new apartments and a new senior center.

Defensible design features include front door off right of way, private back yards and decks, secured trash access areas and fenced-in play yards.

Sounds good -- and last night's meeting set out to turn the story away from the defensive and toward the good news.

Held in St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church down the block from the new buildings, the community partner Mission Housing Development Corporation (a much buffeted local agency) and the property manager, the John Stewart Company, explained their plans. The 260 apartments will house seniors and families. Fifty-two units will rent for low market rates to households making more than $36,000 a year; another 148 will go to former tenants, people on the SFHA wait list, and/or the Section Eight wait list, all after they've been vetted from criminal records, credit worthiness and rental histories. The place will offer a buzz of activities, with a senior center, a childcare center, and a computer lab on the premises.


Some thoughts and observations:

• A Housing Authority speaker stressed that the new apartments and entrances will face the street; they understand that an inward looking design would isolate the residents from the community. And the units aren't shabby: all but the senior citizen ones will have their own washers and dryers, a true measure of family-friendliness.

• Neighbors worry about "quality of life" makers: questions touched on graffiti, garbage, and play areas.

• People are quite worried about the parking implications of 260 new units. They are right. The development provides only 80 new spaces; things are going to get even tighter in an already congested neighborhood. I tend to think that the only measure that will reduce our addiction to our cars is making it harder to own and use them in the city. But I'll probably grouse about this too.

• The old Valencia Gardens was also mostly Black in a Latino and poor white neighborhood. Developers promise a more mixed population this time around. We'll see. Historically viable diversity has not been a hallmark of anything connected to the SFHA.

• A significant fraction of what Mission Housing plans to offer residents seems to be about their encouraging micro-entrepreneurship. "We'll offer a hand up, not a hand out." Nice phrase. Does this have any reality in one of the richest, most yuppified cities in the country? Or does it merely play along with a current funder fad?

• Above all, I was reminded of the extraordinary density of non-profit service organizations in our Mission neighborhood. A slew of them have some involvement with the new project. Their staffs, a significant number of people, make much of the neighborhood middle class. What does this mean about how we think poor people escape poverty? What does the non-profit density mean about our economy, our values, what we will struggle for? I do wonder.

A "chiseler" meets an honest man

The U.S. envoy to London finds himself in the middle of an amusing little row with leftist London Mayor Ken Livingstone. New Ambassador Robert Holmes Tuttle refuses to pay the "Congestion Charge" levied by the city on all cars using a central zone. The toll cuts traffic and air pollution, though it hasn't raised revenue above the cost of enforcement. Not surprisingly, many Londoners and others consider the levy a terrible, socialistic imposition.

The U.S. refuses to pay. Rick Roberts, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy insisted: "We pay our parking tickets. We honor every commitment we have except tax. We are good citizens." Many embassies in London pay the charge. The British Foreign office insists it "comes under the same category as parking fees and toll charges."

Tuttle's selection to the post was explained by the Telegraph in this bemused fashion:

American appointments to plum postings tend to be seen as rewards for support, usually in the grubby matter of campaign contributions, in marked contrast to the British custom of sending seasoned diplomats to key posts. Mr. Holmes Tuttle was in the elite group of "Pioneers", meaning that he raised more than $100,000 (£55,000) for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. He also contributed $100,000 to fund the inauguration ceremony. ...

Mr. Holmes Tuttle's interests and his family should help him to counter the standard European stereotype of Republicans as cultural barbarians. He is the chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and has a prized collection of modern art. A close friend of both President Bush and his father, Mr. Holmes Tuttle was Mr. Reagan's director of personnel.

His Tuttle-Click Automotive Group was founded by his father and is one of the largest dealers in America.

Ken Livingstone has made his own assessment of Tuttle's refusal.

"This new ambassador is a car salesman and an ally of President Bush. This is clearly a political decision,...It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiseling little crook.''

It is always satisfying when other people's politicians can speak the home truths that ours hide from.

Livingstone's constituents don't seem to mind the plain talk:

"Good on him," said Ann Love, 29, who works in financial services and supported Livingstone's tough words. "I think he just blurted it out -- he's just too honest to be a politician."

Wherever U.S. forces go, the drugs seem to follow

This morning Juan Cole pointed toward a Reuters report that rang a lot of bells.

BAGHDAD, 27 March -- Officials at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs are concerned about a noticeable increase in drug trafficking and drug addiction, especially following the seizure of large quantities of "class A" narcotics by police.

"We estimate that more than 5,000 Iraqis are consuming drugs in the south today, especially heroin, compared with 2004, when there were only around 1,500," said Dr Kamel Ali, a senior official in the health ministry's anti-narcotics program. "We fear the number could be as high as 10,000 countrywide."

Iraqi authorities blame a new drug trafficking route from Afghanistan through Iran, but anyone with a little historical memory has to wonder...

• In the 1950s, the CIA took over the drug business from departing French colonialists in Indochina. In return for siding with the Americans, upland drug lords were allowed to push opium with impunity. By the time the U.S. Army left Vietnam, the troops, mostly draftees, felt misused and abused by their own government. As a result, "about one third of the United States combat forces in Vietnam, conservatively estimated, were heroin addicts."

• During the 1980s the U.S. was challenged by popular revolutions in Central America. The counterrevolutionary forces supported by the U.S. in Nicaragua were riddled with traffickers. Soon the drug traffic from the war zones fed a crack cocaine epidemic in the ghetto neighborhoods of the U.S.

• In the same decade, the U.S. armed and encouraged Afghan war lords fighting the Soviet Union from bases in Pakistan. Pakistan paid a terrible price for the U.S. covert action: "In 1979 Pakistan had a small localized opium trade and produced no heroin whatsoever. Yet by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan had emerged as the world's leading supplier of heroin. It became the supplier of 60% of U.S. heroin supply and it captured a comparable section of the European market. ...In 1979 Pakistan had no heroin addicts, in 1980 Pakistan had 5,000 heroin addicts, and by 1985, according to official Pakistan government statistics, Pakistan had 1.2 million heroin addicts, the largest heroin addict population in the world."

• No sooner had the U.S. overthrown the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the country "retook its place as the world's leading producer of heroin."

You have to wonder -- is the U.S. going to leave a failed state in Iraq, one from which warlords feed the habits of U.S. and European addicts? Will U.S. and European states again see a drug epidemic among their restive immigrants? These are outcomes that any rerun of the last 60 years would suggest.

Immigrants on the march in San Francisco"We are the new civil rights movement!"

Two dozen immigrant hunger strikers took down their camp in front of the Federal Building this morning. They had fasted for a week to protest proposed "immigration reforms" that would make undocumented persons and those who assist them guilty of felonies. Around 11 am, supporters assembled to carry the message of "No on HR 4437" to Senator Diane Feinstein's local office.


"We're here and we are not going away."


The hunger strikers led the way. A couple needed wheelchairs after their self-imposed ordeal.


"We're standing up for our rights -- No on HR 4437." An extremely diverse crowd numbering some 2000 according to the SF Chronicle followed through narrow streets, eventually filling Market Street for a block.


The idea that the people who do the nation's dirty work are "criminals" is deeply offensive to people on the wrong end of it.


What can be wrong with simply hoping to find work?


After all, U.S. consumers like the fruits of cheap immigrant labor.


Not all workers without papers come from south of the U.S. border.






Marchers knew what they would consider "immigration reform."




Tireless young students led chants.


At Fourth Street and Market, the marchers were joined by several hundred others who had come over from the East Bay on their way to the finish of the Latino March for Peace. Fernando Suarez del Solar (father of a soldier killed in Iraq), Pablo Paredes (a Navy war resister), Camilo Mejia (a National Guard war resister), and Aidan Delgado (who served at Abu Ghraib before becoming a conscientious objector) had led a 240+ mile walk for peace from San Diego to raise Latino opposition to the war. The two streams combined for a rally.


Many, perhaps even half, of the marchers were very young. High schools students came from cities all around the Bay to take part. I was reminded of a recent article by local columnist C.W. Nevius bemoaning "the graying of anti-war activism." This protest was not even a bit gray. In fact, this protest was a pretty accurate picture of working class California -- young, Latino, Asian, Brown, Black, racially indeterminate.

"We are the new civil rights movement!" a speaker asserted. I can believe this. As in past civil rights movements, these "outsiders' have begun to refuse to let the "insiders" tell them who they are or who they might become. This is a force.

Immigrant ancestor story

Anticipating the Senate debate tomorrow on immigration "reform," TalkLeft suggests a blog meme: "We are a nation of immigrants and it would be great if every blogger wrote a post today or tomorrow about how their ancestors, grandparents or parents, whatever the case may be, got here."

Here's a little about one of mine: Robert Keating was my grandmother's father. He came to the U.S. from Ireland, County Wexford to be precise, in 1854. Like many immigrants today, he was ambitious and hard working; unlike many he prospered. For reasons I never learned, he found his way to Buffalo, NY, then a vibrant center of industrial innovation and unconstrained commercial capitalism.

Keating worked the next eleven years for the stove manufacturers, Jewett & Root. He then partnered with the owner's son to branch out into tanneries, selling out to the "leather trust" in 1892. That coup enabled him to go on into banking and he succeeded there as well, becoming a well-respected community leader.

The photos below show the raffish young man in 1854 -- and the successful bourgeois citizen fifty years later.

I don't imagine I would have liked the guy much. But at one time, grit and luck made such transformations possible. Are they still?

To Anglo political junkies:Where'd all those marching immigrants come from?

This entry started as a comment on dKos but seems substantial enough to post here. Besides, then I can lead with this wonderful photo from the LA Times of the immigrants in their hundreds of thousands streaming past Los Angeles City Hall yesterday.

We need to understand that there are more ways of knowing what is going on and more ways of doing "politics" than we assume. We've just seen it. I am lucky enough to be far less surprised than many by the wonderful demonstrations in LA and elsewhere in the last two days.

Some thoughts:

• When the Catholic and evangelical Latino churches get up a head of steam, their parishioners turn out.

• Spanish language media is powerful among its consumers. You may not have heard the news, but the immigrants did.

• Many immigrants come to this country with forms of political sophistication that are different from ours. In particular, they are not stymied by finding themselves inside a system that treats them like dirt; that's normal for politics as they understand it.

• For many Latino immigrants, politics is not a horse race. All the horses are corrupt. But they'll participate if the issue is what they think is moral.

• For the same folks, "immigration reform" is a moral issue. It is about their ability to keep their families together and do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. It is about their right as human being to the dignity of human beings. There are principles they will take risks for.

And so the rest of us get surprised, again.

Republicans and Democrats engage in immigrant bashing at their peril. These folks are the future of the country, regardless of what laws we enact. Some of the brighter bulbs know it.

Some Republicans fear that pushing too hard against illegal immigrants could backfire nationally, as with Proposition 187. Strong Republican support of that measure helped spur record numbers of California Latinos to become U.S. citizens and register to vote. Those voters subsequently helped the Democrats regain political control in the state.

"There is no doubt Proposition 187 had a devastating impact on the [California] Republican Party," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant. "Now the Republicans in Congress better beware: If they come across as too shrill, with a racist tone, all of a sudden you're going to see Republicans in cities with a high Latino population start losing their seats."

It would be great if ALL our politicians, especially fearful liberals, learned that lesson.

Movie interlude

Tonight we watched a film on DVD -- once again friends tried to help me become more in tune with my culture.

Actually, maybe that last thought is wrong. I am not at all sure what culture Walk on Water pictures. Made by the U.S.-born Israeli moviemaker Eytan Fox, with sub-titled dialogue in Hebrew, German and English, the movie is the story of a German girl who moves to a Israeli kibbutz, her gay brother who picks up a hot Palestinian, and a Mossad agent whose job is to execute their Nazi grandfather. No shit.

There can be no doubt about Fox' good intentions. According to the movie's web site:

The filmmakers believe that the fact that Israelis are still so obsessed with the Holocaust and their status as victims renders them blind to the fact they themselves have become aggressors, imposing pain and suffering on the Palestinians. The filmmakers believe that the first step in helping the Israelis understand how cruel they themselves have become lies in making some kind of peace with their own traumatic past.

This seems like a little more purpose than so slight a vehicle was able to carry. The story is certainly not traumatic. The ending was, accurately, described by a sympathetic New York Times reviewer as "cloying."

Still there was much beauty to look at, especially Knut Berger as the gay boy. No surprises made me cringe. Walk on Water filled an enjoyable, though slightly absurd, hour and a half.

Hunger strike for justice for immigrants

Immigrants, members of numerous organized groups from many ethnic groups, are holding a week long fast in front of San Francisco's Federal Building. The main stream media isn't giving these outsiders much coverage, but you can read all about it at their excellent blog.

The hunger strikers want Senator Feinstein, long something of an immigration restrictionist, to come out against the horrible House-passed bill, HR 4437, which would make being undocumented a felony. They hope for an immigration "reform" that would provide amnesty to many of the 11 million people working in this country without papers, that would end exploitation and harassment, and that would enable families to reunite.

They and the rest of us are not likely to get any of those things, since the country seems to be descending into one of its periodic immigration panics in which we scapegoat the latest crop of enterprising newcomers. We want their labor; we like the interesting, vibrant society their presence makes for; and periodically we get scared and pass fierce anti-immigrant laws, especially when, as at present, politicians use fear of people of different colors to rile up their base.

But the immigrants don't give up, just as the people in our families didn't. And just maybe the pols will tie themselves in hopeless knots this year and find their way back to sanity in the future.

These pictures are from the opening rally in Dolores Park on Tuesday and then from the Federal Building encampment after a couple of nights of cold and rain.


As always, it is about keeping the candle of hope burning.


A proud Mayan blessing greeted the rally.


Pastor Mauricio Chacon spoke of the Biblical witness to hospitality.






At the Federal Building, there was Tagalog in sight as well as Spanish.


It's cold and wet out there.


Life on the street is disorderly and uncomfortable.


Yes -- immigrant rights are human rights.

For more on the hunger strike, visit the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition. The hunger strikers will lead a march to Senator Feinstein's office (yes, the same one we visited during the anti-torture demo) at 11 am, Monday, March 27. I'll be there.