Bringing together groups and individuals who live and work in the Central Coast and Salinas Valley to identify our varying concerns and how we might work together for social and climate justice, human and environmental health, and mutual aid
Fifth Walk: Saturday, October 19, 2019, in the San Ardo/Bradley area. Please stay tuned here for detailed information on where to meet, or contact us at: laurie.palme (at) gmail.com
PREVIOUS WALKS:
September 8, 2019, we walked in solidarity with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band in their Walk for Juristac (http://www.protectjuristac.org) to support their struggle to preserve their sacred land from being ground up into sand and gravel. We joined 300 (at least) walkers!
August 4, 2019, we walked in Fort Ord, Spreckels, and Gonzales, listening to local participants’ stories, experiences, knowledges and visions about and for the region, concluding with impassioned testimony from Juan Martinez, activist in Gonzales, which you can see here: https://youtu.be/4RUXDP55aUg
June 23, 2019, we walked in King City’s San Lorenzo Park, happy to discover the river hiding behind a front of trees and reeds, but unhappy to see how round-up had been used to clear the path. Marisela Cerda provided important and disturbing testimony about oil industry activities upriver, but also about the inspired activism she is involved in to fight it.
May 11, 2019, we walked in Moss Landing at the former mouth of the Salinas, listening to moving testimony from members of SASS (Safe Ag/Safe Schools) about illnesses caused by pesticide exposure that members saw in children coming into hospitals where they worked, as well as information from Mary and Andy Hsia Coron about starting citizen referendums and the one they are working on in San Benito, as well as useful information about water contamination by fertilizers from Miranda Baker.
Bringing together groups and individuals who live and work in the Central Coast and Salinas Valley to identify our varying concerns and how we might work together for social and climate justice, human and environmental health, and mutual aid
Second Walk: June 23, 2019, 11 am, King City, CA. Meet in Parking Lot A in San Lorenzo Park.
(The park requires a $2 fee per person at entrance; we will make scholarships available!)
The historic Salinas River is a vital lifeline in central
California, linking food systems, ecosystems, histories and communities across
places and differences. Often dry, sometimes diving underground, the Salinas
River gives much of its water to agricultural lands along its banks and in the
Salinas Valley, while it receives runoff from fertilizers and pesticides. As it
threads through the San Ardo oil fields and through lands previously occupied
by Indigenous people, the River draws a physical connection between the effects
of privatized oil industry, big agriculture, and histories of colonization on
shared land, water, and air, and on human, and more-than-human, lives.
This spring and summer we are organizing public walks along
sections of the Salinas River to talk about “common-ness”: what it might mean,
how to negotiate uncommon concerns (what we don’t share but can
recognize in and for each other), and how we might work together to counter the
forces of individualism and privatization that are destroying those vital
aspects of life that we might agree we all need and want to achieve access to
for all.
The Salinas River situates our conversations in local terrain and helps us to remain focused on local issues.
Walk with us!
—Our first walk took place at the former mouth of the old Salinas
River near Moss Landing.
Martin J. Herrera, member of the Indian Canyon community and
former Native American Chaplain at Soledad prison, started the walk with a
water ceremony and prayer circle. Along the way we heard moving testimony from
three members of SASS (Safe Ag/Safe Schools) working on pesticide regulation,
two of whom see the effects of toxins on their patients in local hospitals. We
also heard from a water quality researcher, and from two activists who spoke
about their work on oil industry regulations in Monterey County and on local
citizen initiatives more generally. We walked slowly along the path between the
former river and the sea, and ended up at the Moss Landing cafe for lunch
(fried artichokes).
Join us!
— on the second in our
series of Salinas River walks, June 23, 2019, 11 am, in King City.
We will meet in Parking Lot A in San Lorenzo County Park, 1160
Broadway St., in King City.
We will walk on the park walking trail as well as on the
unofficial trails that parallel the river.
After, we can gather around the picnic tables for lunch. Please feel free to bring a picnic!
Talk with us!
—about what you think a “common,” or an “uncommons”
might mean, or could be; how you have been affected by private concerns
trespassing on what should be shared; how we might work together to promote a
different set of values as well as material mutual aid in the local context;
and how we might get to know the many beings that share this part of the world.
Guides with relevant insights and experience will provide tools for thought as we walk.
For more information, carpooling, and to RSVP please email: apalmer1@ucsc.edu
Stay tuned for future walks in July, and August! And for the
Tribunal in the fall!
Organized by the ecosocialist working group of the Santa Cruz DSA,
and other friends and associates (no affiliation required!)
Bringing together groups and individuals who live and work in the Central Coast and Salinas Valley to identify our varying concerns and how we might work together for social and climate justice, human and environmental health, and mutual aid
First Walk: May 11, 2019, 11 am. Salinas River State Beach Trail, starting at Moss Landing Entrance & Parking Lot.
The historic Salinas River …
is a vital lifeline in central California, linking food systems, ecosystems, histories and communities across places and differences. Often dry, sometimes diving underground, the Salinas River gives much of its water to agricultural lands along its banks and in the Salinas Valley, while it receives runoff from fertilizers and pesticides. As it threads through the San Ardo oil fields and through lands previously occupied by Indigenous people, the River draws a physical connection between the effects of privatized oil industry, big agriculture, and histories of colonization on shared land, water, and air, and on human, and more-than-human, lives.
This
spring and summer we are planning a series of walks along sections of the
Salinas River to talk about “common-ness”: what it might mean, how to negotiate
uncommon concerns (what we don’t
share but can recognize in and for each other), and how we might work together to
counter the forces of individualism and privatization that are destroying those
vital aspects of life that we might agree we all need and want to achieve
access to for all.
The
Salinas River situates our conversations in local terrain and helps us to
remain focused on local issues.
This
fall we will collect and present the fruits of our conversations, connections, and
new understandings resulting from walking together in a Public (Multi-species) Tribunal
that holds private property responsible for trespasses against “the common.” The
goal of the Tribunal is to articulate a more comprehensive understanding
of what “common” could mean, and for
whom, and to promote values that recognize, privilege, and provide open access
to, what should be shared rather than what is privately owned and controlled.
The idea of a “common” is not that far away from many people’s desires and understandings of what matters.
With thoughtful elaboration of what this could mean and how it might function more actively in public life from the perspectives of a diverse range of participants, the project aims to contribute to a fundamental shift in thinking and acting in order to imagine and work together towards a shared, rather than privatized, future.
Walk with us!
— on the first in our series of Salinas River walks, May 11, 2019, 11 am. We will start at the former mouth of the Salinas River at Moss Landing. Meet at the North end of the Salinas River State Beach, at the Moss Landing Entrance and Parking Lot, Rte.1 to Moss Landing Rd. to Sandholdt Rd. https://www.californiabeaches.com/beach/salinas-river-state-beach-moss-landing-entrance/
Talk with us!
—about what you think a “common,” or an “uncommons” might mean, or could be; how you have been affected by private concerns trespassing on what should be shared; how we might work together to promote a different set of values as well as material mutual aid in the local context; and how we might get to know the many beings that share this part of the world.
Guides with relevant insights and experience will provide tools for thought as we walk. The Green New Deal promises a concrete realization of some similar goals for a shared and livable future, and we will discuss its potential to be realized locally as we walk the river.
Unfortunately, there are no dogs allowed on this section, and the path is not wheel-chair accessible. However, our second walk to be planned for mid-June in Paso Robles does allow dogs, and is wheelchair accessible.
For more information, carpooling, and to RSVP please email: apalme@artic.edu Stay tuned for future walks in June, July, and August! And for the Tribunal in the fall!
Organized
by the ecosocialist working group of the Santa Cruz DSA, and other friends and
associates (no affiliation required!)
This speech was given by local ecosocialist T.J. Demos as part of the People’s Climate March, April 29, 2017, in Santa Cruz.
We all know, it’s “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”[1]
But for many, especially for those with a radical imagination and a love for the Earth, we need to end capitalism to save the world.
For, why should we save the world when it’s one of economic austerity and misery, beyond-grotesque inequality, political tyranny, violent militarism, obscene sexism, and white supremacy?
Why would we want to save a world of settler colonialism and homophobia, of illegalized migration and expanding border walls, proliferating military-police violence and institutional racism?
Why save this world so that the eight richest billionaires, who own as much wealth as the bottom half of the human population—that’s approximately 3.6 billion people—so that those eight richest people can escape to their underground silos or private islands or military encampments, when all hell breaks loose, while the rest of us suffer a dystopian future?
Why save the the world if it means a world of the walking dead, of massive sacrifice zones and hunger games, a post-democratic world of neo-fascist governance, a dead world of mass species extinctions, a burning world incompatible with the flourishing of human and biodiverse life? Why would we want to do that?
Why save a world “ruled by imperialism and national oppression and terror, violence, and hunger and poverty.”[2]
In a perverted kind of way, that world, already burning with record temperatures year after year, with 2016 being the hottest in our history, deserves to burn to ashes.
Of course some of us will struggle for climate action despite these awful social and political and economic conditions at present—because the world and what remains of it is nonetheless so achingly beautiful, and the only one we have. And something’s better than nothing, action’s better than surrender…despite all.
But the point is, to build an effective campaign against environmental destruction, then it can’t be according to the logic of endless economic growth and mindless consumerism. It can’t be for a world where everything’s up for sale, where the only proposals for climate action are yet more market-based schemes that guarantee the accumulation of yet more wealth, rather than the lowering of greenhouse emissions. It can’t be for a world of technofixes and geoengineering that don’t address social and economic inequalities, climate justice, and fairness for all. How can the very system that produced catastrophic climate change, and which continues to worsen it today, supply the solutions?
If we’re going to struggle for the solutions proposed by environmentalists like Bill McKibben and James Hansen—putting a price on carbon, investing in renewable energies, and leaving fossil fuels in the ground—that seek to guarantee a limit to global warming, then we also have to struggle for an equitable and just world that will join all in solidarity.
We need to think beyond the economic system in which we’re all trapped. Another world is possible. Climate justice is possible. Radical system change is possible. Eco-socialism is possible.
That world is inseparable from the grievances of Black Lives Matter, peoples’ demands for the progressive redistribution of wealth, and universal health care, sanctuary status everywhere, and the sovereignty of indigenous nations. It’s inseparable from the rejection of the military industrial prison complex, the privatization of education, and rising tuition fees.
That world, a world without borders, without racism and sexism and homophobia, a world of living wages, is inseparable from taking back the political process so that corporations have no personhood status and corrupt financial influence, so that lobbyists can no longer sway democratic assemblies toward the interests of corporate profits over people’s welfare.
Will a return to a Democratic house, senate, and presidency make that world possible? Many doubt it—let’s not forget that it was precisely the administration of Barak Obama that, through so many political disappointments, prepared the ground for the election of Trump. It’s clear: We need to reinvent governmental politics from the bottom up—from Santa Cruz to the capital and beyond—by imagining a world without reality-TV show and alt-Right presidents, without senators in the pockets of industry, without corrupt electoral politics and empty promises.
If we’re to fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Keystone XL, against expanded offshore drilling and extreme extraction projects, against fracking from New York to California, all of which Trump, in collusion with the fossil fuel industry, is pursuing; and if we’re to struggle to protect the EPA and climate science, then it must also be an intersectionalist fight, not just against greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon dioxide, but for an entirely different world.
At the People’s Climate March in New York in 2014, Miya Yoshitani, director of the Oakland-based Asian Pacific Environmental Network, said:
“The climate justice fight here in the U.S. and around the world is not just a fight against the [biggest] ecological crisis of all time. It is the fight for a new economy, a new energy system, a new democracy, a new relationship to the planet and to each other, for land, water, and food sovereignty, for Indigenous rights, for human rights and dignity for all. When climate justice wins, we win the world we want. We can’t sit this one out, not because we have too much to lose, but because we have too much to gain.[3]”
That’s the struggle we have to fight.
Thank you!
[1] Fredric Jameson
[2] Amiri Baraka, “Somebody Blew Up the World”
[3] Miya Yoshitani in a speech during People’s Climate March, New York, September 2014; cited in Klein, This Changes Everything, 155–56.
In a new article in the New Republic, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, probably the world’s most influential climate activist, argues that World War III has begun and that the enemy is climate change.
He goes on to say that we are losing the war, that we should learn from the experience of World War II, that by retooling industry as we did then we can win the war. In making this case, he is largely adopting the position that has been promoted since 2014 by The Climate Mobilization (TCM). A few days after McKibben’s article appeared, TCM’s co-founder Ezra Silk published an extensive “Victory Plan”, which outlines the steps needed to “restore a safe and stable climate”, “reverse ecological overshoot”, and “halt the 6th mass extinction”.
Before going on to say what I think is wrong with McKibben’s and TCM’s position, I want to make it clear that there is much that is certainly right about it. Above all, they recognize the seriousness of the crisis, the fact that many people who are aware of climate change under-estimate the seriousness, and the need for drastic action to solve the crisis.
The problem is that what they are arguing for is not nearly drastic enough. This is because their “war” is against nature, and as such it ultimately relies on technological fixes, rather than challenges to the political and economic system. McKibben rests much of his case on the well-known work of Stanford University engineer Mark Z. Jacobson and his colleagues, who have argued that renewable technologies could replace those based on fossil fuels in the United States within decades. While Jacobson has his critics, his work is undeniably important. What his work shows — and he himself agrees — is that the main obstacles to solving the crisis are not technological but rather political and economic. The question is who controls the technology.
If this is so, then we must look for the enemy elsewhere. In what must be the best-known of all books written on the climate crisis and its causes, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, author Naomi Klein spells it out pretty clearly. The enemy (of the climate and hence of us) is capitalism. Although Klein does not go into much detail about what she actually means by “capitalism”, a number of ecosocialist writers have filled this gap. For an excellent overview, suitable for those who know little about the science of climate change and/or little about capitalism, see David Klein and Stephanie McMillan’s Capitalism and Climate Change: the Science and Politics of Global Warming. A common theme in this work and others, especially Richard Smith’s Green Capitalism: the God that Failed and Daniel Tanuro’s Green Capitalism: Why It Can’t Work, is that capitalism, by its very nature, is completely incompatible with a just and sustainable future. If capitalism has a “solution” for the climate crisis, one can only imagine a dystopian world where elites survive in isolated islands of livability, protected from the masses of climate refugees on the outside.
McKibben and TCM look to the mobilization that took place in the US during World War II as a model for how the US should now respond to climate change. Much as the US declared war on fascism then, they say it should declare war on climate change today. Silk believes that “America is capable of leading the world in this mobilization”.
As McKibben discusses (though in somewhat different terms), there was a division in the US ruling class in the years before the US entered the war, with some preferring to stay out of the European and East Asian conflicts, and others, including President Roosevelt, eager to be involved. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gave Roosevelt the excuse he needed to pursue war on both fronts. McKibben also discusses the remarkable process by which US industry was retooled to support the war effort. The ultimate result, of course, was the victory of the US and its allies.
But let’s not forget another outcome of the war effort: the ascendancy of the US to its unchallenged position as the dominant power in the world. Far from weakening the reigning political and economic system, Roosevelt strengthened it immeasurably. This was certainly no accident. Another outcome of the war was the greatly increased power of the US military, both within the US and the world.
If it is the political and economic system that is the problem, then we should not be seeking inspiration in a top-down campaign that served to strengthen that system, leaving it in a position to further devastate the environment and giving us the crisis we face today. Nor should we expect the leaders of the movement that is called for now to be wealthy politicians like FDR and his corporate allies. One only has to look at the outcomes of the annual UN Conference of the Parties meetings to see how hopelessly ineffectual the world’s economic and political leaders have been in addressing the climate crisis.
As Naomi Klein and others have shown, the ecological crisis coincides with other forms of oppression that are integral to capitalism, and those that are the most oppressed by this system are also those most likely to suffer the effects of climate change and other forms of environmental degradation. If World War III has already begun, then it is a war being fought mainly by these people, those in the Unist’ot’en camp in British Columbia defending their land against pipelines and natural gas; those in northern Greece struggling to keep gold mines out of their territory; those in Andhra Pradesh, India, battling the companies trying to create coal-fired power plants on their land; those in South Chicago who have fought to keep pet coke storage facilities out of their neighborhood. It is these people and their allies elsewhere that should inspire us in the “war” that lies ahead, not politicians and “enlightened” capitalists.
History offers us many examples of people rising up against unjust systems — institutionalized racism, patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism itself — sometimes in armed struggle, sometimes non-violently. History also teaches us that change does not necessarily happen in a linear fashion; crises can create the conditions for very rapid change. In other words, there is actually hope for the sort of revolution that is needed, a revolution that at a minimum will result in democratic control of the economy and a massive redistribution of income on a world-wide scale.
Silk is to be commended for his detailed and extremely useful discussion of the steps that would need to be taken under a full-scale climate mobilization. More than perhaps any other document, his Victory Plan shows the extent of what must be done. But Silk does not tell us how all of this could actually be accomplished within the existing political system. This is beyond the scope of his project: “speculation about the limits of ‘political acceptability’ in the neoliberal era should be left to historians, sociologists, and politicians”.
The choice in the end is simple. Can we win this fight
within the system — by changing the Democratic Party, by hoping to elect “leaders” who will guide us through another mobilization, by expecting “America” to save the world again, by relying on corporate-controlled technology
or only by changing the system — by participating in existing struggles for social justice, by building class consciousness as well as climate consciousness, by enlisting technology in the service of justice, by creating a world-wide network of grassroots movements and a planned global response that radically transforms existing governments, by ultimately taking on capitalism itself, the system that is behind it all?
In Santa Cruz, California for the past year, a struggle has been brewing over the survival of a community garden. Although insignificant in the larger scheme of things, this small campaign has much to teach us about the way different forms of injustice converge, about the relationships among different forces within US cities in the 21st century, and about how to and how not to build a campaign to fight the environmental racism in our midst.
Santa Cruz, the Beach Boardwalk and the Seaside Company
Santa Cruz is a city of 62,000 on the northern California coast. Known for its University of California campus (unofficially and, to some extent, officially, the “alternative” UC campus, which advertises itself as “the original authority on questioning authority”); for its surfing history and culture; for its coastal and forest scenery; for its restored Spanish-era mission (a crucial waystation in the genocide of the local indigenous Californians); but probably, more than anything, for the Beach Boardwalk, one of the Pacific Coast’s oldest and most popular beach amusement parks. Tourists flock to Santa Cruz for lots of reasons, but mainly for the Boardwalk.
The Boardwalk is owned by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, a 101-year-old local business that also owns a hotel, a motel, a bowling alley, several car dealerships, and a number of rental properties.
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Photo: Seaside Company.
Beginning with the founding of the University of California Santa Cruz in 1965, Santa Cruz has had a reputation for progressive politics, so much so that it was the subject of a book by UCSC sociologist G. William Domhoff entitled The Leftmost City. Although the heady days of leftist city councils are now over, it is still safe to say that a significant proportion of Santa Cruzans value diversity, strict limitations on development, and, in particular, sustainability.
Beach Flats
Santa Cruz is a majority white town, characterized by an extreme shortage of affordable housing and rentals. In recent years there has been increasing encroachment by wealthy out-of-towners seeking second homes near the beach. Within the city’s neighborhoods, one stands out demographically. Beach Flats, bordering the Boardwalk’s enormous parking lots, is populated mainly by immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Its 1700 residents are relatively poor, many are undocumented, and the crowded Beach Flats housing affords little space for the yards that most Santa Cruzans take for granted. Not surprisingly, Beach Flats has a history of tense relations with the local police, and city support for the community has had its ups and downs, mostly downs, over the years. Beach Flats residents are a classic example of a “marginalized” population.
Because it adjoins the Boardwalk, Beach Flats has an intimate and complex relation with the amusement park. Several of the cheap motels that accommodate Boardwalk visitors are within Beach Flats, and during the busy summer months, the Boardwalk-related noise, traffic, and partying practically overwhelm the small neighborhood. The Seaside Company owns about half of the land within Beach Flats.
Overflow Boardwalk parking lot adjoining Beach Flats. Photo: Michael Gasser.
The Beach Flats Community Garden
Twenty-three years ago the Seaside Company agreed to lease the City of Santa Cruz a small chunk of land they owned within Beach Flats for a very small annual amount. This plot had been known for the junk left there, including paraphernalia from drug dealing and prostitution. Together with a dedicated group of Santa Cruzans, the City’s Parks and Recreation Department converted the space into a community garden. Since then, the City has administered the garden, with most (though not all) gardeners registering annually. Until February of this year, the Beach Flats Community Garden (BFCG) occupied 26,000 square feet (.6 acres). The current 23 (give or take a few) gardeners are all members of Santa Cruz’s immigrant community, most residents of Beach Flats. The garden is the only significant green space in Beach Flats. (This is not counting the unpaved overflow parking lot shown in the photo above or the patch of AstroTurf within the Boardwalk itself.)
The BFCG differs from other community gardens in the city in several ways. First, it is really more like a farm than a garden. Although gardening does provide much needed recreation, the garden is also an important source of food for the gardeners, their families, and some of their neighbors. There are no significant food outlets in Beach Flats, so the garden provides a degree of food security for the neighborhood. Second, the BFCG brings unique Mexican and Central American gardening traditions and plant varieties to the area. In Santa Cruz there is a great deal of interest in agroecology and other alternatives to conventional farming, not only among local farmers but also on the UCSC campus. University students regularly visit the BFCG to learn about the gardeners’ practices, and the garden is a popular site for school field trips. The variety of plants in the garden has another expected consequence: a UCSC researcher studying gardens in the area discovered that the BFCG harbors the greatest diversity of animal life of any community garden in the county.
Gardener Emilio Martínez Castañeda tends his garlic patch on Jan. 25, 2016. His plot is within the 40% of the garden that the Seaside Company took over at the beginning of February. Photo: Michael Gasser.
Because of the class-based and cultural gap that exists between more privileged Santa Cruzans and the residents of Beach Flats, it is possible to live in the city for years and know nothing of the BFCG, let alone visit it. But a small group of residents from other parts of town have always been involved, sometimes as gardeners, sometimes as researchers, sometimes as advocates for the gardeners.
In spite of its isolation, the BFCG clearly represents many of the values that most Santa Cruzans would rank highly: cultural diversity, sustainability, environmental justice, and the availability of healthy food. One garden supporter argues that the garden should be seen as comparable to the Santa Cruz Mission in terms of historical and cultural significance, though for very different reasons. There are obviously interesting connections between the mission and the garden, worthy of a whole other essay.
The gardeners are a diverse group. The older generation are Mexican immigrants; some have lived for decades in Beach Flats. The younger generation are mainly from Central America. Because they share the space and because they have come together even more as a result of the crisis described below, these two groups have achieved a degree of unity of purpose that is unusual within the larger Beach Flats community.
The Crisis
In the spring of 2015, the Parks and Recreation Department sent letters to the registered gardeners, explaining that the land would be turned over to the Seaside Company when the current lease expired in November 2015. By summer a small coalition had formed to preserve the garden, and the City returned with an alternate plan, presented at a public meeting in the Beach Flats community center at the end of September. This plan would create a permanent, but significantly smaller, garden in a different location. At the meeting the center was packed with gardeners, Beach Flats residents, and supporters from other neighborhoods. The City’s plan was roundly (and often angrily) rejected. Everyone in the room, except the uncomfortable City officials sitting in front, agreed that the garden should stay put in its current form.
March from the Beach Flats Community Garden to City Hall, Oct. 27, 2015. Photo: Calyse Tobias, City on a Hill Press.
The City Council put the future of the BFCG on the agenda for its October 27 meeting, and nearly 250 people marched from the garden to City Hall that evening to support the garden. At the beginning of the meeting, a spokesman for the Seaside Company spoke briefly, presenting a new plan, by which the Company would take possession of 40% of the garden and renew the lease for three more years on the remaining 60%. He said there was no question of a permanent garden on any of the space since the land was not for sale. After speaking, the representative left the meeting, so he missed the public comment from around 20 gardeners and supporters, all arguing (often eloquently and from a wide array of perspectives) in favor of preserving the whole garden.
Following a complicated series of City Council and Planning Commission resolutions and statements, designed to make it appear that the City was in favor of preserving the garden, it became clear that the Council had been on board with Seaside’s 60/40 plan from the start. In early January the gardeners were sent letters, asking whether they wished to continue gardening within the reduced garden. Those with space in the 40% destined for the Company were told to vacate that area. Deadlines for both the return of the letters and the vacating of the 40% passed without a response. Informally the City’s representatives repeatedly threatened that failure to comply with the City’s and the Company’s directives could result in the loss of the entire property to the community.
The Seaside Company’s and the City’s plan to break up the BFCG
Throughout this process, the City was surprisingly ineffective at communicating with the gardeners, relying on either bad translation by its own staff or translations by volunteers from the Save the Garden coalition. The Parks and Recreation Department announced ultimatums in letters, seemingly unaware that some of the gardeners cannot read. It has been rare that anyone from the City bothered to show up and actually talk to the gardeners. It’s as though the gardeners don’t exist.
The Save the Garden Coalition
The threat to the BFCG has touched a nerve in Santa Cruz. One veteran activist, and a mayor of Santa Cruz during the city’s more radical days, described it as a “classic” struggle because of the intersectionality. Here we have institutional racism combined with a whole range of environmental issues, including food security, sustainability, and the availability of green space.
After the September meeting with City Council members, which was widely publicized, the coalition that had formed in the summer attracted a number of new people, including myself. The Save the Garden Coalition holds regular Saturday afternoon meetings in the garden (or in the nearby community center in case of rain). Because most of the gardeners are monolingual Spanish speakers, the meetings are bilingual.
Active members of the Coalition include both gardeners and activists from around Santa Cruz. Among the gardeners most active in the Coalition is Emilio Martínez Castañeda, who has lived in Beach Flats for 46 years and is one of the founders of the garden. Don Emilio spends most of his days in the garden, often arriving before dawn, and has become the unofficial spokesman for the gardeners. Other active Coalition members include some of the Salvadoran gardeners.
It is natural that those who are trying to weaken the Coalition would seek to create divisions between the gardeners and the other members and with the gardeners. So there have been insinuations that it is “outside agitators” inciting the gardeners to oppose the City’s and Seaside’s plans. It is true that the gardeners and non-gardeners play somewhat different roles within the working of the Coalition. As non-citizens, some undocumented, the gardeners are excluded from participation in the formal politics of the city and may even put themselves at risk by resisting what is mandated by the city. Thus it is understood and accepted within the Coalition that it is up to the non-gardeners to make sense of what the City’s plans are, to strategize about how to deal with them, and to make contact with them. Similarly, it is always the non-gardeners who lead the Coalition meetings. At the same time, there is also agreement that it should be up to the gardeners, who obviously have the most to lose and the most to gain, to decide what the general position of the Coalition should be on the deals made between the City and the Company, as they have emerged and been redefined over the months. Thus all of the meetings include pauses in the agenda to make sure the gardeners’ views are being heard.
Weekly meeting of the Save the Garden Coalition in early October. Photo: Michael Gasser.
The first major challenge facing the Coalition was over whether to accept the City’s and the Company’s 60/40 plan or to insist on keeping the entire garden. The 40% of the garden that the Company wanted immediately, important to them because it fronts one of the main streets connecting the Boardwalk to the rest of town, included the plots of several of the most active gardeners, five fruit trees and at least 50 nopal cacti. The 60% that was to be redivided among the gardeners included a large community meeting space and a shed, so in fact the Company planned to take at least half of the cultivated portion of the garden.
Although it took many meetings to reach this point, the discussion within the Coalition eventually centered around how to retain 100% of the garden rather than accept the City’s plan. The main reason this position won out is that it was the position of all but one of the gardeners who have been involved in the meetings. Significantly, those whose plots were within the 60% that was not to be lost also supported fighting to retain the whole garden, even given the threats from the City that failure to collaborate with them on the 60/40 plan could result in the loss of everything. What we have learned during this process is that many of the gardeners come with experiences in their countries of origin and as immigrants in the United States that make them at least as sophisticated politically as the English speakers in the Coalition, in particular around issues of community. It is safe to say that the rest of the Coalition has often under-estimated this sophistication. In any case, if radicalization has gone on, it is the “outside agitators” who have changed, not the gardeners.
In what must be seen as the most significant event since the crisis began, some of the active gardeners wrote a letter to the Parks and Recreation Department saying they would like to continuing gardening but would not sign the Department’s letter that would force them to agree to give up part of the space. This letter was signed by 17 of the gardeners and would certainly have been signed by more if Coalition members had been able to contact them.
Gardeners Emilio Martínez Castañeda and Angelina Morales present their protest letter to the Department of Parks and Recreation, Jan. 25, 2016. Photo: Marc Franklin.
The other main area of discussion within the Coalition has been strategy in dealing with (or confronting) the two other sides in the struggle, the City (City Council, Department of Parks and Recreation, Planning Commission, City Manager) and the Seaside Company. As the crisis progressed, these other two sides looked more and more like one side. Of course a lot of lip service has been paid to what a wonderful resource the garden has been, but the City Council, with the exception of one member, is clearly scared to death of the Company. The Coalition has several times suggested eminent domain as a way for the City proceed with the garden property, and City Council members, again with the exception of the garden’s lone ally, have responded at public meetings that it is now too late for that (without explaining why it wasn’t pursued before). In a closed meeting with five Coalition members in October, the mayor came closer to the truth: eminent domain, he said, would be seen by the Company as a “declaration of war” and is hence apparently unacceptable.
The complicity of the City has confused the Coalition. If you live in what amounts to a company town, whom should your fight (or conversation) be directed at, the City government or the Company or both? The prevailing position has been that since it is the City doing the Company’s dirty work and they are supposed to be representing us anyway, we should be dealing with them. Nearly all attempts to communicate with the Company have been rebuffed anyway. However, in the background there has always been discussion of the Company’s reliance on its reputation within Santa Cruz and its possible vulnerability to a boycott campaign. A whole range of options has been considered and is still on the table.
The City flexes its muscles
In the first months of 2016, the City appeared to concede on some points while actually working as closely as ever with the Company, in a sometimes confusing manner.
In late January in a closed session the City Council voted to stand firm, negotiating the terms of a lease with the Company for 60% of the garden, which would be allotted to the single gardener who had returned the City’s form and to other interested residents, with no preference given to the rest of the gardeners, who chose not to collaborate (“cooperate”) with the City in their implementation of the Company’s wishes. The City manager threatened legal action against the gardeners who remained on the other 40% of the land, including those who had signed the letter to the Department of Parks and Recreation mentioned above.
On February 3, workers from the Parks and Recreation Department showed up in the garden, along with two rangers, and installed a plastic fence separating the 40% from the 60%. As he watched his garlic and nopales fenced off, Don Emilio was distraught. “So many years, so much work,” he said. “Is there any hope left?”
Coalition members ask for explanations from a Parks & Rec staff member as a fence is put up within the BFCG. Photo: Michael Gasser.
On February 9, supporters organized another march from the garden to City Hall, this time to demand that the City negotiate to buy the garden as planned, that no part of the garden be damaged during this period, and that none of the gardeners be punished for refusing to vacate their portion of the garden. At least as large as October’s march, this one attracted far more UCSC students, which had the effect of radicalizing the chants when the marchers reached City Hall.
The march was ignored by the conservative local newspaper and appeared to have little immediate effect on the City. Finally, on Feb. 15, the majority of the gardeners negotiated an agreement with the City. Threatened by lawsuits, they felt they had no option but to agree to vacate the 40% that the Company was demanding. In return the City agreed to grant the current gardeners priority for plots in the reconfigured remaining 60% and to hold off damaging the fruit trees and cacti in the 40% until the fall.
UCSC students in the Feb. 9, 2016 march from the garden to City Hall. Photo: Nopal Media.
Then, without any warning and in violation of the agreement, Parks and Recreation bulldozers showed up on the property on March 24 (during the UCSC Spring Break when most students were out of town) and began knocking down the trees and cacti on the 40%. By the time outraged gardeners and supporters had assembled and gotten Parks and Recreations officials to appear, many plants had been destroyed. The City apologized for this “mistake” and agreed to compensate the gardeners for the lost plants, but few believed in their version of what had happened.
The April 26 City Council meeting took place six months after the City’s resolution in support of making the whole garden permanent, at which time a report was to be made on progress negotiating with the Seaside Company to purchase the garden. The Coalition succeeded in getting the garden on the meeting agenda and chose this day for another march to City Hall to show that garden supporters had not forgotten what had been promised. In fact as far as anyone knew, no such negotiations had taken place; the Company and the City had not even signed the new lease for the property.
150 people marched from the garden to City Hall that evening and again speaker after speaker made the case for the preservation of the whole garden, including the use of eminent domain if necessary. Instead the City Council used to the occasion to announce that a lease with the Company had finally been signed, but one that included an escape clause for Seaside: if they were not granted the use permit they needed for the reclaimed 40% of the property, they could back out of the lease (presumably leaving the gardeners with no rights to the remaining 60%). The idea of eminent domain was rejected by all but the garden’s ally on the Council (one other Council member compared it to the theft of her bicycle). To top it off, it became clear that most Council members now saw the 60% remaining to the gardeners as the property that they would strive to preserve, rather than the original 26,000 square feet. If anyone had had any illusions that the Council really cared about the garden, the gardeners, and the larger Beach Flats community, those illusions were quashed that evening.
With this sort of result already predicted, the Coalition and their student supporters had already planned a further march for May Day, the following Sunday. This one would start at City Hall, stop by a local grocery store to deliver a letter in support of the Driscoll’s Berry boycott, pass by the Boardwalk, and end at the Garden. Explicitly tying the garden struggle to the fight for the rights of farmworkers that is behind the Driscoll’s boycott, the event was billed as a March for Food Justice. About 80 people participated, taking the garden struggle to the Boardwalk for the first time. (Previous actions there had consisted of a few people leafleting.) The students delivered a letter to the Seaside Company, letting them know that the relationship that exists between the University and the Boardwalk (a relationship that results in significant profits for the Seaside Company, especially during special campus-related events) would be jeopardized if the Company did not agree to sell the garden property to the City.
Two sides of the fence separating the original BFCG, July 2016. Photo: Michael Gasser
Two months later, a 9-foot wooden fence separates the two sections of what used to be the Beach Flats Community Garden, and neither the City nor the Company show any signs of budging. On July 7, the city’s Planning Commission met to consider Seaside’s application for a permit “to establish a private garden/landscaping area” on the newly cleared 10,000 sq. ft. of the original garden. Because of Seaside’s sneaky lease termination clause, approval was already more or less guaranteed, but Coalition members showed up anyway to challenge the need for such an area in the neighborhood and to attempt to set some conditions on the permit, for example, limits on the use of vehicles on the property. Folllowing a pattern that was by now familiar, the Commission members each proclaimed their sympathy with all of the points made by the community before proceeding to ignore them and vote unanimously in favor of the permit.
With many of the students gone for summer break and people out of town on vacation, Coalition meetings have now become infrequent. But the core group of active gardeners and their supporters has not given up. This break has given them time to focus on the long term, with plans to involve the Beach Flats community more in the Garden and to influence the City Council elections happening in November.
What has been achieved?
The Coalition has come a long way. A marginalized and vulnerable group of Spanish-speaking gardeners, hardly in a position to lead the fight for their right to continue gardening, joined forces with a diverse group of allies, including well-meaning people who somehow assumed that City officials and Company owners just needed to know the truth about the garden to be won over. Out of this has emerged an organization with impressive achievements, despite the setbacks of the winter and spring.
First, there has been enormous progress in getting the word out. Through press releases, letters to the editor, opeds, leaflets, a petition signed by almost 4000 people, and public events, the threat to this wonderful local resource has attracted a lot of local attention. If the letters to the editor in the conservative local newspaper are any indication, the garden is winning the war of public opinion. (Not surprisingly the paper’s own editorial on the issue took the Company’s side.)
Second, a stated goal of many Coalition members has been to empower the gardeners. The gardeners’ increased participation in meetings and their willingness to challenge the City directly show that here again progress has been made. The City’s assumption that threats and bullying would cause the gardeners to accede to their demands proved naive, and the relationship between Beach Flats residents and local government may end up forever changed.
Third, the fight to save the garden has bridged two of the fundamental gaps that are part of political and social life in Santa Cruz, the one separating the majority white English-speaking community from the minority Spanish-speaking community, and the one separating the UCSC community from the city. These gaps are not peculiar to Santa Cruz of course. In fact there is an earlier history of student mobilization on behalf of town issues. But in recent years, there has been little town interest in the campus issues of tuition hikes, student debt, and divestment and little campus interest in the town issues of homelessness, militarized police, and desalination. The garden fight has changed that. In the past few months, UCSC students have held meetings on campus to consider how they can contribute to the campaign, organized a well-attended event in Beach Flats, gathered hundreds of student signatures on a letter demanding action from the City, and presented a letter to the Seaside Company demanding that they agree to sell the Garden property.
Fourth, as demographic and cultural gaps have been bridged, so too have connections been made between supposedly disparate issues. People joined the fight for different reasons, the gardeners because of the threat to a source of food, as well as recreation, others because of their commitment to green space, to food sovereignty, to racial justice, to fighting climate change, to challenging corporate power over local affairs. As noted above, this is a classic case of intersectionality. There is a bottom line behind all of these issues, and it was inadvertently laid bare by the commissioners during the July 7 meeting to rubber-stamp Seaside’s use permit. For the umpteenth time, we heard a City official say that, yes, it was wonderful what the Beach Flats gardeners had created over the years, and yes, it would be wonderful if they could continue to grow food there in their time-honored way. But, after all, the land belonged to the Seaside Company. In other words, private property trumps everything. Private property! The fight to preserve the Beach Flats Community Garden is a fight that ultimately challenges, in a modest, local way, the very foundation of US economic life.
At the same Planning Commission meeting, a commissioner blurted out what must be seen as a second underlying theme of this campaign and many others like it. After she had heard Coalition members relate the threat to the survival of the Garden to issues of food justice around the world, one commissioner said that, yes, she understood why this mattered so much, but “you can’t expect us to solve the world’s problems”. There are two ways to respond to this statement, one by challenging it, the other by agreeing with it. First, if the world’s problems aren’t solved locally, in places like Santa Cruz, where will they be solved? Second, if “us” means the current crop of City officials, then, yes, it’s clear that we can’t expect these people to solve the really challenging problems. Their job is to cross Ts and dot Is, to maintain the status quo. Solving the real problems will require a whole new set of people, or, better yet, a whole new system.
The threat to the BFCG has galvanized people, reawakening the passions of some of the survivors of the older, more progressive Santa Cruz and drawing in young people and immigrants. Whatever happens in the coming months and years, the Coalition, in one form or another, seems destined to survive, at the very least fighting to prevent the complete destruction of the garden. Coalition activists are involved in the attempts to field a slate of candidates for the City Council elections in November who would stand up to the Seaside Company, invoking eminent domain in the creation of a permanent Beach Flats Community Garden, and would usher in a new era in the relationship between the City’s government and the marginalized people who live on the edge of an immense amusement park.
So the garden is a symbol of where this city is headed. Will private property continue to trump everything else? Or will those values that Santa Cruz thinks it stands for actually matter in the end?
Santa Cruz Ecological Justice 