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Davisite Banner. Left side the bicycle obelisk at 3rd and University. Right side the trellis at the entrance to the Arboretum.

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  • Davis Pride Festival set for June

    RobinFadtkeFest2021

    Festival goers enjoy the Davis Pride Festival on June 13, 2021. (Robin Fadtke/Courtesy photo)

    (From press release) The rainbows return to Davis’ Central Park in June for the Davis Pride Festival. Events include skating, a fun run, live music, drag queens, vendors and more – June 11 and 12.

    The weekend of events, produced by the Davis Phoenix Coalition, begins with the Diva Disco Skate Night, starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 11 under the Davis Farmers Market Pavilion. The night will include music, lights and food trucks.

    Sunday, June 12 begins at 8 a.m. with the Run for Equality, a 5K run or walk from Central Park, and a 1K Rainbow Run for children. At 11 a.m., the Davis Pride Festival begins at the park and pavilion, with local and international bands, a drag queen revue, educational booths, food, drink, and vendors in partnership with the Davis Craft and Vintage Market.

    Other events include the rainbow painting of the crosswalks around Central Park early on May 29; a Drink with Pride Night at Sudwerk Brewing Company (date to be determined); and possibly a Bike Party Davis Ride with Pride.

    June is International LGBTQ+ Month. Davis Pride is produced by Davis Phoenix Coalition, a nonprofit that works to foster diversity, eliminate intolerance, prevent hate-motivated violence and support LGBTQ+ youths. The coalition was founded in the aftermath of a 2013 anti-gay attack on Davis resident “Mikey” Partida. Proceeds from Davis Pride support the coalition’s anti-racism and anti-bullying campaigns, support to LGBTQ+ youths and their families, and outreach with area police departments, churches and schools. To donate, go to https://davisphoenixco.org/donate.

    To support the event, be a vendor, volunteer, visit https://www.davispride.org/. To learn more details as they unfold, follow Davis Pride on Facebook and Instagram.

  • Unitrans Turns 54

    Campus and City Bus System Celebrating 54 Years in the Community

    54thAnniversaryFlyer00001 54thAnniversaryFlyer00002(From press release) ASUCD Unitrans, the City of Davis and UC Davis local bus service, is turning 54 on Friday, March 4! To celebrate, Unitrans is running one of our vintage London double decker buses on a special, free campus to downtown lunch shuttle from 11 AM to 1 PM. In addition, Unitrans will host refreshments and giveaway items outside at the Memorial Union Bus Terminal from 11 AM to 1 PM. At noon, to celebrate our community's transit legacy, all three functioning vintage London double decker buses and two new modern double deckers will "parade" through downtown on 2nd and 3rd Streets from the Memorial Union Bus Terminal. The vintage buses have not been in service since March 2020 and Unitrans has used the last two years to refurbish and repaint the buses. Unitrans hopes to reintroduce the vintage buses into limited service in spring 2022.

    https://unitrans.ucdavis.edu/news/2022-02-22/unitrans-turns-54-celebrate-with-us-on-friday-marc/

  • The Sierra Club Sues Yolo County to Demand Sensible Environmental Safeguards in Open Pit Aggregate Mining

    The Sierra Club joins a lawsuit with a local citizens' group, Yolo Land and Water Defense, calling for changes in flawed Yolo County aggregate mining regulations and for appropriate further protection of lands and waters adversely affected by existing mining practices.

    Sierra-club-yolano

    (From press release) The Sierra Club has partnered with local residents in a lawsuit filed today to hold Yolo County accountable for environmental protection and restoration of farmland while continuing to develop sound open pit aggregate mining policy.

    The lawsuit does not seek to stop aggregate mining in Yolo County. Rather, it will simply require the County to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act ("CEQA") before allowing Teichert Inc. to develop a new 320-acre mine on prime farmland adjacent to Cache Creek and several miles west of Woodland.

    This would require the County to fully disclose and evaluate the real adverse environmental impacts of open pit aggregate mining as currently allowed by the County and to commit to mitigation strategies to reduce those impacts. Adhering to this process is what the law requires, and indeed, these same requirements apply to every other regulated land use in the County and State.

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  • Local Mom and Climate Activist Juliette Beck Considers Run for Yolo County Supervisor

    BeckJuliette Beck, a lifelong social and environmental justice advocate, mother and caregiver, filed over 200 signatures on Wednesday with the Yolo County Elections office to stand as a candidate for District 2 County Supervisor.

    “I am testing the waters to see if there is community support for a strong progressive, woman candidate and climate champion in Davis and Winters,” said Beck.

    Beck moved to Davis with her husband Nick Buxton in 2008 when she was pregnant with their first daughter to be close to her sister and brother-in-law who had moved to Davis a few years earlier. She loves Davis and is grateful to the community for nurturing their young family over the last thirteen years.

    Beck has been an active parent volunteer at Cesar Chavez Elementary and a strong advocate of outdoor learning during the COVID pandemic. Over the years, she has enjoyed coaching soccer, biking as a way of life, working in the school gardens, supporting the local youth climate strike movement, and raising her family including her two daughters and energetic dog, an “Aussiedor,”  Luna.

    “I want to thank the dozen volunteers that pitched in to collect over 200 petition signatures in less than a week. Juggling family, work and personal well-being is not easy during the ongoing pandemic, but clearly people are concerned about climate change and want to help do all we can to make a difference to our children’s future,” said Beck.

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  • Odd Fellows Continue Natalie Corona Scholarship

    Nat-cor-gradThe Davis Odd Fellows will continue to award the 'Officer Natalie Corona Odd Fellows Memorial Scholarship' this year.

    This scholarship was created after the murder of Officer Natalie Corona on January 10, 2019, to honor her service and commitment to our community.  Our goal is to help remove barriers for like-minded individuals who wish to pursue careers in related fields.

    High School Seniors from Davis Senior High, King High School, Da Vinci Charter School, and Pierce High School in Arbuckle who plan to major in Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice, or in a First Responder field, and are going on to either a 2-year or a 4-year institution, are eligible to apply.  Students in standard or independent study programs are welcome to apply.  Scholarships from $1,000-$1,500 will be awarded.  The application deadline is April 1, 2022.

    Applications should be completed on the Odd Fellows Lodge website at davislodge.org.  Go to the 'Lodge Programs' tab and click on 'Officer Natalie Corona Odd Fellows Memorial Scholarship.'  A separate letter of recommendation from an un-related adult, teacher, or coach, should be sent no later than April 1, 2022, directly to Rick Gonzales at etgonzales@sbcglobal.net

  • Toward a Fossil Free UCD

    Fossil free UCD

    UC Davis, long recognized as a leader in environmental sustainability, is taking a bold first step to confront the sizable carbon emissions that result from its own daily operations and contribute to the climate crisis. The campus has officially announced that it is drawing up concrete plans to electrify both of its campuses with the goal to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

    In October 2020, an informal group of UCD students, faculty, staff, and alumni met with Chancellor Gary May and other campus officials to press for a commitment to go fossil-fuel free, eventually resulting in the creation of a new Campus Advisory Committee on Sustainability. Branding itself Fossil Free UCD, the group met with Chancellor May again in December 2021 and presented a petition signed by over 1300 UCD affiliates, including more than 260 faculty, 795 students, and 135 alumni. The petition called for the Chancellor and other UC Davis leaders to commit to ending the use of fossil fuels as a source of energy for UCD’s campuses by 2030, and to develop a plan for doing so in 2022. 

     As members of this group, we are motivated by three ideas: 1) the urgency of acting now to try to avert the worst local and global consequences of global heating, including wildfires, extreme rainfall, extreme heat, hurricanes, drought, flooding, sea level rise, damaged ecosystems, species extinction, and changed disease vectors, 2) UCD’s core missions of education, research, and service to local and global communities and its longstanding commitment to environmental sustainability, and 3) UCD’s power and obligation to lead and inspire others to decarbonize rapidly.  Other universities are also taking steps to eliminate fossil fuels in this way, including Stanford, Oberlin, and Ball State.

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  • Nonprofits: Apply for a Soroptimist grant

    (From press release) Soroptimist International of Davis is accepting applications from local nonprofit organizations for Community Grant funding for 2022.

    In 2022, the club has $5,000 budgeted for Community Grants of up to $2,500 each. Nonprofit organizations that align with the Soroptimist mission are encouraged to apply. The deadline is March 8. Awards will be distributed in late spring. 

    Grant applications are evaluated for their alignment with the Soroptimist mission, vision, core values, community impact and feasibility. Any organization, including previous recipients, is encouraged to apply. Soroptimist is a global volunteer organization that provides women and girls with access to the education and training they need to achieve economic empowerment. Applicants are asked how the requested funds would address the needs of women and girls in Yolo County, and support Soroptimist core values of gender equality, empowerment, education and diversity.

    SI Davis has several fundraisers a year, and reinvests all of its profits in its programs and projects. These include Live Your Dream: Education and Training Awards for Women, and Dream It, Be It: Career Support for high school girls. It also funds high school scholarships, anti-trafficking efforts, and these Community Grants to nonprofits.

    Applicants will receive notice by May 1 of their application’s status. To apply, visit https://www.sidavis.org/grants. Questions may be directed to Lisa Adda, Community Grants chair, at lm_adda@yahoo.com.

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  • Developers deploy paid operatives

    SpaffordandLincolnNote: The following comments made at the City Council's Feb 1, 2022 meeting.  The City Council, as expected, decided to proceed with putting the project on the ballot for voters to decide. 

    By Rik Keller

    I have provided a graphic illustrative of the corrupt local political environment. [Mr. Keller requested that this graphic be displayed during his comments, but unlike a pro-DiSC comment, his graphic was not displayed].  It shows self-promotional information from the local lobbying firm Spafford & Lincoln. In the bottom right corner you can see that they claim credit for deploying and managing 1,000+ operatives. As some of you may be aware, most of their business is done for the biggest special interest in town: real estate developers.

    Developers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaigns to try to push their projects down our throats. This money flows through Spafford & Lincoln and then who knows where? There’s no regulation. It’s a dirty money slush fund.

    One of their strategies is to pay operatives to call, and to organize other callers who often know nothing about the project, some of whom probably don't even live in Davis. It’s a classic “astroturf” maneuver. Ask yourself: how many times have you experienced these meetings being spammed and being played by these operatives reading from their scripts?

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  • 2022 Virtual Celebration of Abraham

    Hope in difficult times flyerHope in Difficult Times: An Interfaith Conversation

    (From press release). The Celebration of Abraham, which is the only interfaith organization guided by the laity in Davis and Woodland, will hold another virtual celebration this year, Sunday February 6, 2022, 3 pm-4:30 pm. We deeply miss gathering with everyone in person and look forward to doing this again as soon as we can do so safely.

    We recognize that the pandemic, environmental destruction, and political unrest continue to affect our well-being and therefore our ability to sustain ourselves as we face these challenges. For this year’s theme, “Hope in Difficult Times: An Interfaith Conversation,” we have chosen three young leaders to offer guidance grounded in their faith traditions: Leah Julian, Rabbinical Student; Tara Rogers-Soeder from the Davis United Methodist Church; and Omar Abdel-Ghaffar from Muslim Davis Engagement and Interfaith Network (DEIN). Our speakers will explore how we can live with hope without turning away from the difficulties that we face in our individual and collective lives. After hearing from the three speakers, we will invite attendees to discussion breakout rooms to share their thoughts.

    Randy Farris will again lead us in singing Children of Abraham. We will raise donations for the International Rescue Committee. To sign up for the free event hosted on Zoom, please go to  http://bit.ly/COAHope. This link is case sensitive. You can also sign up by going to our website at http://www.celebrationofabraham.net.

  • DiSC 2022: Same Old Choices

    Im-with-herBy Larry D. Guenther

    On Tuesday, the City Council will decide whether or not to put DiSC 2022 on the ballot again. DiSC 2022 is a new version of the project on the outside of the Mace Curve that was voted down in its last iteration. It is now about half the size of the previous project. One of the Council’s goals is economic development. Another of the Council’s goals is Carbon Neutrality by 2040. In our current development paradigm, these goals are contradictory. That’s because our current development paradigm is centered around the automobile and commuting workers.

    Approximately three quarters of our community’s total Green House Gas Emissions (GHG’s) come from transportation (78% projected for DiSC) – and the lion's share of that is single-occupancy vehicles; i.e. commuters. Hence the problem. DiSC is designed for commuters – it is designed in the current paradigm. The EIR for the DiSC project says that this project alone will increase the City’s total GHG’s by 4%. The EIR also states that this project will not allow the City to reach its carbon neutrality goal. These are not statements from opponents, this is from the project’s EIR.

    There is scientific consensus that if the average global temperature increases by 1.5°C, our environment (that is to say, ‘we’) will suffer extreme and irreversible negative consequences. There is also scientific consensus that the average global temperature has already increased by 1°C. Additionally global GHG’s – the primary cause of increased temperatures – are still rising. This project would continue that trend.

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