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Category: Current Affairs

  • Do you still believe good will prevail?

    Trump, Mental Health & our Farmers Market

    By Alan “Lorax” Hirsch

    Dear Nora:

    You mentioned your need to curtail your exposure to politics and reading news as it often becomes too much.

    I offer you an opportunity to recharge. Come down to the Saturday Davis Farmers Market between 8 and 1 and table with me as I pass out free “Love Your Neighbor” lawn signs.

    As strangers walk by my booth I call out “Free lawn signs!” And “Make your neighborhood a friendlier place!”  Like a carnival barker. Rudely, Intruding into their conversations, texting, or thoughts of their shopping lists.

     In response I get not ignored, but smiles, hundreds of smiles. And people responding, “glad you’re here!” And “Thanks— I’ve got a sign.” “I wish I had a lawn- I live in an apartment” or “You inspire me.” Half the people respond somehow. And I get hugs from total strangers every Saturday.

    About once a Saturday, someone, usually from Davis who has seen me before, will spontaneously offer a donation so someone else can have a sign, often as they live in an apartment or have a landlord that forbids signs. (Hey city council- this is social equity: why does Davis allow HOA or landlords to forbid signs, even in windows. It makes places impersonal, an abridgement of speech for renters.)

    Today: an older homeless man pushing shopping cart came by. The cart was filled with empty soda cans and liquor bottles he was collecting presumably to recycle for cash. He stopped across from me in the market, slowly read my signs, and then came over to give me $1.17 in change as a donation.

    I frequently have heartfelt conversations with strangers who reflect they struggling to maintain their equanimity in face of The Darkness. People from out-of-town express regret that the 18×24 lawn signs won’t fit in a suitcase. Thought my signs don’t flag they are political everyone “get it” that these values a refutation of Trumpism.

    Today a visiting UCD alumna now living in “deep red” Iowa suggested I was needed there to table. Someone from rural Nevada told me about her neighbors…first demurring on a “Love Your neighbor” sign afraid it would upset them …then came back and took one.

    These Saturday mornings’ experiences are like no other I have had in my entire life giving out my Love lawn signs.  “Love is one thing you get more of when you give it away.”

    But I remember; it’s not about me.

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  • Response to Bob Dunning, re: the nine misconceptions about Prop 50

    By Roberta Millstein

    Bob Dunning featured my “Nine misconceptions about Prop 50” in a recent Substack article, here (requires a paid subscription to see the whole thing). I appreciate the shoutout to the Davisite and my article and his spreading the word about the nine Prop 50 misconceptions with wit and humor.

    Here is my response to what Bob says about the first misconception, which I also left as a comment on his page:

    I should clarify the first misconception a bit more. I saw, on more than one occasion, people having the temerity (SAT word) to say that Texas was constitutionally required to redraw its districts because they were racially biased. Of course the reality is that it is the new, gerrymandered districts are the ones that hurt minority voter representation in Texas.

    (The origin of this misconception is the DOJ itself, who claimed that four districts had been impermissibly created using race. This was such a howler of an excuse that even Texas stopped using it, but the misconception persists out in social media — details here.)

    And not to blab on, but although you’re [i.e., Bob is] right that Trump would surely have leaned hard on Texans if they hadn’t done what he wanted, it’s people like the Texas Democrats, who risked arrest and their jobs to hold up the gerrymandering vote, that we really need right now. People who are willing to stand up to bullies.

  • Nine misconceptions about Prop 50

    By Roberta Millstein

    Back in August, I wrote an article arguing for why people ought to vote “Yes” on Prop 50: “Fight Fire with Fire.” Today I write to dispel some of the misconceptions about Prop 50 that I have encountered.  These will just be quick responses — more can be said about each of them — but at least this should be a starting point.

    But first: be sure to turn in your ballots before November 4.  And, importantly: if you plan to use the U.S. Mail, mail early because Trump’s cuts to USPS mean that your envelope might not get postmarked on Election Day, and, more generally, mail might be slow enough to cause your ballot not to be counted.  On Election Day, use a drop box or voting center; see Yolo County locations here.

    And some news since I wrote the previous article: It’s not just Texas who is trying to gerrymander to increase its Republican representation in Congress — Missouri and North Carolina are now getting into the act too.

    Onto the misconceptions…

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  • Davis Media Access Releases ‘Yolo County News & Information Ecosystem Report’

    Yolo Local maps sector, outlines challenges and opportunities

    (From press release) Davis Media Access (DMA) announces the release of its “Yolo County News & Information Ecosystem” report, which presents ideas for addressing the reduced availability of local information and news in Yolo County.

    The 70-page report follows months of research, conversations and contact with people throughout Yolo County to understand how the decline of traditional local media outlets affects both information providers and Yolo residents. DMA calls its effort to address this decline Yolo Local.

    DMA worked with Impact Architects, nationally known consultants; jesikah maria ross of Davis, a community-engaged journalist, and the 11-member Yolo Local Working Group. The community engagement, which primarily ran from April to August 2025, included a bilingual survey, direct engagement at events, one-to-one interviews, and roundtable discussions.

    The report is rooted in Impact Architects’ framework and methodology for large-scale ecosystem reports, and includes key comparative data about Yolo County, such as race and ethnicity, income, and civic wellness data. It describes the community engagement approach and strategies that Yolo Local used, and includes a list of organizations and individuals involved.


    Key findings in the report include:

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  • Improving Davis’ Inclusiveness & safety

    “Don’t think of a hateful elephant.“

    By Alan Hirsch

    “Love is the only force powerful enough to turn an enemy into a friend” M.L. King Jr.

    Next week, the Davis Hate Free Together program will hold an all-day strategic summit to evaluate its progress and plan its future direction. This collaborative effort—originating from the City of Davis, UC Davis, and Yolo County—was initially created to address bigotry and prejudice toward individuals based on identity (e.g., being gay, Black, Hispanic, or Jewish).

    However, the program now needs to evolve beyond addressing individual prejudice and begin tackling the deeper and more complex challenge of intergroup conflict.

    UC Davis is currently under intense pressure from the Trump administration to dismantle its diversity programs and respond to what has been labeled an “epidemic of hate” focused on one group: Jews. This new directive highlights the limitations—and potential harms—of the Hate Free Together framing. Not only may it be ineffective, but it might also worsen group conflict.

    More fundamentally, the “Hate Free” framework contradicts well-established findings in cognitive science about how the human mind works. If I tell you, “Don’t think of an elephant,” you will, of course, think of an elephant. Similarly, if a government tells people, “Don’t hate those other people,” the instruction may backfire. Talking about the Holocaust has not ended antisemitism.

    The program also treats hate, prejudice, and bigotry as if they were medical conditions, rather than social or psychological phenomena. But tribalism is something all humans are susceptible to, especially under certain environmental and cultural pressures.

    The choice of this “don’t think about hate” framing was likely unintentional. The Hate Free Together branding emerged in 2022, created by a PR team just coming off the Healthy Davis Together COVID testing initiative. Indeed, the hatefreetogether.org website describes hate as a virus, setting a goal of “total eradication”—implying the program will functions like a vaccine.

    But when hate exists at the group level, this disease/victim metaphor sets the stage for a dangerous contest: Who will be politically defined as the viral “haters,” and who as the innocent “victims”? This dynamic incentivizes groups to highlight their own trauma and victimhood while blaming others—rather than accepting responsibility for working to a safe, welcoming, and pluralistic community. There is even an incentive to traumatize your own people: stoking fear is a well-known political tool.   This is not ‘victim’ blaming (again who is the victim?) but suggests the tactics “victims” choose count.

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  • A Lawsuit Waiting to Happen

    By Elaine Roberts Musser

    There was a pretty lively discussion that transpired on social media recently. Many citizens in this town don’t understand why Village Homes is getting a complete pavement makeover, while arterials are going to pot(holes).  Some suspicion was expressed that there may be political leverage involved in the decision making.  Neither do voters understand why their streets are so riddled with alligator cracks, fissures and pits, while the current City Council seems relatively unconcerned about maintaining basic city infrastructure. This is especially true when a recently approved sales tax hike was supposed to help solve the pavement problem. In fact, someone was concerned enough to reach out to both the City and the City Council for an explanation. The City finally responded.

    However, the reply seemed contradictory.  The City’s representative justified prioritizing repairing Village Homes inner streets over major arterials by saying: “Most of the streets in Village Homes are in failed condition”.  Yet later in their explanation the City made the following contrary statement: “Pavement preservation—proactive maintenance of roads in fair or good condition—helps extend pavement life and maximize the value of each dollar spent. This is why some streets may receive treatment even if they appear to be in better shape than others.” 

    The city can’t have it both ways, especially when it comes to fixing very small neighborhood streets in poor condition, at the expense of not repairing main thoroughfares in fair condition. First, considerably more citizens in this town use the thoroughfares than tiny side streets.  And secondly, those major arteries are fast deteriorating from fair condition, and are a good portion of the way to degrading to poor condition.

    As it turns out, a case was just handed down in May of this year from the California Supreme Court, which gives a harsh lesson to cities allowing their roads to unacceptably worsen. In a 7- 0 decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff could sue the City of Oakland for serious injuries sustained as a result of bicycling on crumbled or cracked pavement. It said the City was obligated to “maintain its streets in a reasonably safe condition for travel by the public”. In a statement announcing the $7 million settlement in favor of the plaintiff, the attorney representing the injured party indicated the court’s ruling sent a clear message to California cities that “safe streets are not optional”.

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  • We the People Say No Kings: Second Yolo “No Kings” March and Rally to Take Place Oct. 18

    More than 4,000 Yolo County residents gathered in Woodland in June for the first NO KINGS march and rally. Indivisible Yolo is organizing the next NO KINGS event for Oct. 18 in Davis.

    Countywide event will be held alongside 5 million people and 2500 protests nationwide

    (From press release) Drawing on momentum from the first Yolo NO KINGS march and rally in June that gathered more than 4,000 participants, Indivisible Yolo and Davis Phoenix Coalition will host a second Yolo NO KINGS event Saturday, Oct. 18 from 1:30-3:30pm at Civic Center Park at 6th and B streets in Davis. The event, themed “We the People,” is part of a national mobilization expected to exceed 5 million nationwide as people gather to protest Trump administration policies and remind the president that America is a democracy.

    The event will begin with a march from Civic Center Park through downtown Davis, looping back to the park for the rally at approximately 2:30pm where Yolo County speakers will address the crowd. Learn more and RSVP: https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleyolo/event/840116/.

    At least 4500 attendees are expected. Here is a list of speakers, with additional speakers are still being confirmed:

    • Gloria Partida, Davis Phoenix Coalition
    • U.S. Representative Mike Thompson (CA-4)
    • Dr. Dawnté Early, West Sacramento city council member
    • Deger Carda, UC Davis post-doc UAW 4811
    • Thomas Alvarez, UC Davis, Davis College Democrats
    • Steve Murphy, Indivisible Yolo

    Renowned activist and former U.S. secretary of labor, Robert Reich, sent a video message for Yolo County participants in the upcoming NO KINGS march on Oct. 18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZFOb7fpIHY

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  • Re-sponse-buttal to post “Antisemitism and Trump Defunding UC”

    Jews-are-concerned-about-anti-jew-hatred-but-the-arti (1)

    The primary message of the recent blog essay "Antisemitism and Trump Defunding UC" portends to be anti-Jew bigotry (some call it ‘antisemitism’), but the essay quickly dilutes the subject by layering it beneath crushing layers of unrelated progressive causes. The result is that the central issue, real and rising hostility toward Jews, gets blurred into a cacophony of left-leaning background noise.

    Omissions are glaringly obvious. There is no mention of Hamas, no recognition of the ongoing subtle-yet-very-real ‘not-quite-welcome’ that many Jewish students endure on campuses, and of course no reference to the illegal and disgusting demonstration of May 2nd, 2025 where 100%-masked persons shouted with a bullhorn inside the UCD Coffehouse: “We don’t want no two state, we want all the ’48,” an explicit call to end Israel’s existence. Is the subject really anti-Jew bigotry or is the author, like Gary May, hoping such glaringly anti-Jew events are normalized by pretending they didn’t happen?

    The assertion that “Jews do best in pluralistic democracies” is presented without evidence. Ask French Jews emigrating to Israel, or British Jews living under constant security advisories, how well pluralism protects them. History shows that even the most tolerant societies can turn hostile with remarkable speed. To present pluralism as a guarantee of Jewish flourishing is not analysis, it is wishful thinking. The cherry on top of the wishing-thinking sundae is the author’s:

    “We affirm that as Jews we support diversity and the right to freedom of inquiry and dissent, as we ourselves so long dissented in Christian and Muslim religious-majority-societies where we have lived.”

    Um . . . first of all, Jews are losing this ideal in places like Davis and UC Davis (unless they disavow Israel as a country). Second, Jews not only dissented in Christian and Muslim religious-majority-societies, they were all-too-often killed or expelled from them. Since October 7th, I’ve been in a deep-dive into Jewish history. The number of events in which Jews are killed in 4, 5, even six-figure-mortality events is staggering.

    The idea that anti-Jew hatred must always be fought “along with” other forms of intolerance sounds noble, but in practice it often ensures Jewish issues are sidelined. Jewish concerns are routinely diluted into broader coalitions that rarely prioritize them. That is not solidarity, it is avoidance dressed in moral language. And DEI is a Jew’s worst enemy, as we are classified simultaneously as victims and oppressors by the bigots, for whatever best fits the Jew-hating narrative.

    Jews-are-concerned-about-anti-jew-hatred-but-the-arti

    The “Project Esther” section undercuts the seriousness of the topic with a forced biblical pun and seems more about anti-Trump sentiment than concern for the Jewish Community. Equating Trump with Ahasuerus, reduced to a “fickle ruler swayed by a pretty girl,” trivializes the discussion. Assigning blame to Christians for drafting the plan while dismissing Jewish voices that support it avoids the real question – and that question is, “do Jews face immediate and escalating threats today?”. The evidence is clear that anti-Jew bigotry, racism, and hatred are proliferating online, on campuses, and in street protests. None of that is being driven by strategy memos in Washington.

    As evidence for the online hate, check out the growing and ever-emboldened anti-Jew bigots on YouTube: Rathbone deBuys, Jen Perelman, Peter Hager, Katie Halper, Rania Khalek, Krystal Ball, Kyle Kulinski, Sam Seder, Abby Martin, Norm Finklestein, Cenk Yunger, Ana Kasparian, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Kim Iversen, Amy Goodman, Max Blumenthal and many, many more. A lot of these YouTuber media personalities are Jews themselves — antizionist Jews. They spew hate like daggers from their eyes, yet couch the hate in the concept of ‘antizionism’, as if that is an excuse, and bath themselves in their own self-deluded superior morality.

    There was virtually none of this vitriol – even from a good number of these same personalities – until October 7th, 2023. But even if they hide behind ‘antizionism’, one need only look at the comment sections of their YouTube vids: hundreds to thousands of Jew-hating comments, most not even trying to hide behind antizionism. Where any of these people decent human beings, each would condemn the haters in their own comment sections — but they are all silent.

    With the backdrop of this ever-increasing sea of anti-Jew bigotry, presenting this serious subject in an essay splattered with liberal causes that many people — including many Jews — would agree with — only dilutes the seriousness of anti-Jew rhetoric that the real Jewish Community knows is being baked ever-deeper into the American psyche. And as a participant, you don’t even know it’s happening within you.

    This is how it starts.

    Jews-are-concerned-about-anti-jew-hatred-but-the-arti (2)

  • Supporting Sensible Security at the Davis Food Co-op (Counter Petition – sign it!)

    COOP CopRoberta Millstein is correct that the COOP should have timely sent an email, perhaps with the text from the sign out in front of the store (see below). 

    However, the text with the petition calling to remove the guards drifts into anti-cop and demilitarization rhetoric that is far-far-left even for the average COOP shopper.  The statement "Security personnel in military-style equipment . . . creates the perception of shopping as a criminal act and makes the store feel like a space under occupation." is extreme. 

    Below is link to a counter-petition, thanking COOP management for their leadership on this matter.  Importantly, this petition refers to the guard as a guard (not a militarized occupation), this petition makes no list of demands, and this petition makes no threat of a boycott.  Choose the petition that fits your thoughts/opinion and sign one of them.  The link to the text and to sign the petition are here:

    https://chng.it/jMmWXHDtdh

    ENHANCED SECURITY MEASURES
    AT THE DAVIS FOOD CO-OP

    As many of you have noticed, the retail environment has changed significantly in the past year. Several staff members have expressed concern about safety and the increase in theft incidents in the store. Management has stepped up to become mitigators and although we are grateful for their leadership, it is not sustainable and our priority is safety. Many Members have also expressed their concerns about the changing environment. The overall sentiment is that the Co-op is losing its welcoming and safe atmosphere.

    We have done our best to mitigate the increased activity, however, it is becoming a bigger task than we have capacity and at times, training for.
    Therefore, after careful consideration, a third-party security company will be engaged to enhance the safety and security of staff, customers, and assets.

    This change may feel different to some members who may not be aware of the situations that have been discreetly addressed. However, this partnership will help create a more secure environment for everyone.

    The selected company is highly recommended by Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op. Additionally, the owner is a member of SNFC and is committed to incorporating the Davis Food Co-op's policies and values into how their team will engage with the community and handle situations involving theft or disturbances.

    This measure is essential to ensure that the Co-op remains a safe and welcoming space for all members, staff, and shoppers. We appreciate your understanding and support as this important change is implemented.

    Cooperatively,
    Laura Sanchez, General Manager

  • Mass Starvation Used to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza, Our Federal Representatives Are Responsible

    Gaza15

    Photo modified from multiple sponsored USCPRACT.ORG

    By Scott Steward

    This has to stop.  I could not continue my regular day after listening to the 15-minute interview on Breaking Points 8/1 time mark, minute 33 to minute 48 with Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, Urogynecologist and Executive Director of the International Medical Response Foundation. Dr. Sleemi returned this week from volunteering for several weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. (Note: Breaking Points newscast produces lengthy reporting, and therefore, readers should skip to the time stamp to hear her interview.  The excerpts that follow my editorial are from Democracy Now and have much of the same content as the Breaking Points interview).

    As a taxpayer to the US federal government and a constituent of three US federal representatives, Mike Thompson (Congressman District 4) and two Senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, it is the least I can do to publish an excerpt of this firsthand account of the conditions of mass deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. 

    Mr. Thompson, Padilla and Schiff are guilty of aiding in the mass extermination of a national ethnicity and in the case of Padilla and Schiff, guilty of having recently voted against two Senate Resolutions to block more than $675 million in weapons sales to Israel — only weapons that were offensive in nature, the resolution did not seek to block defensive weapons.

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