Time for more inclusive street names in Davis

 By Colin Walsh

Since George Floyd’s death just over a year ago, Americans have taken to the streets raising their voices against racial oppression. A new desire to reckon with racism has arisen in our country. One form this has taken is in reevaluating the naming of buildings and places though this reevaluation of names also predates the rise of the BLM movement. For example, in 2017 Yale changed the name of one of its residential colleges which had been named after Vice President Calhoun, an infamous white supremacist. The University of Virginia renamed its law school away from that of a former confederate general. Closer to home UC Berkeley renamed 2 of its buildings in 2020 to move away from the names of former faculty members with slave holding ties or well documented white supremacist views. (link)

Sometimes this has been controversial. In San Francisco the school district recently voted to rename 44 public schools, but then later rescinded the decision.

A few years ago in Davis we debated the appropriateness of “Sutter Place”, and ultimately renamed part of it to Risling Court after David Risling Jr. a civil rights activist and founder of DQ University (link). But, the City left both Bidwell street and place, named after John Bidwell, Sutter’s business manager. The Davis Sutter Hospital also still lists its address as Sutter Place. 

Clearly street names with a problematic legacy are not easy or quick to change, but it is time we look hard at the names of other streets and institutions in Davis. This would be an excellent job for the Historical Resource Management Commission, or a specially appointed committee. In the meantime, here is my first look at the subject. We have a few problematic street names in Davis and some serious issues of omission.

(more…)

The following comments from Tia Will are in response to an editorial from David Greenwald, which you may wish to read first for context.

Reality Check – or why I strongly disagree with almost everything you said:

1. “Our biggest concern is that we are going to continue to see preventable cases, hospitalizations and, sadly, deaths among the unvaccinated,” Walensky said.  It shouldn’t be. Our biggest concern should be the possibility of more variants. How do you think the Delta variant arose? It came from our unwillingness to implement and maintain the preventive measures to control the novel virus in the first place. If you look at our county’s website graphics you will see that every time we masked, distanced , chose outside activities and avoided crowds, the virus came under control, every time we didn’t, it surged. Around a year ago I wrote here that my nightmare scenario was the emergence of a variant that was highly transmissible, had high lethality and attacked the young, and was vaccine resistant. Delta was just the virus’ first stab at that. Do we honestly think if we just let the virus spread, even amongst just the unvaccinated,  the nightmare scenario cannot occur?

2.”The good news is that if you are fully vaccinated, you are protected against severe Covid, ” Let’s look at this a little closer. The current vaccines confer a 95 percent chance that an individual who contracts the virus will not have severe COVID or die or a 5% chance you will. Viral Roulette anyone?  This focus on severe disease and death only was useful in the beginning when the biggest concern was to keep people out of the hospital in order to “flatten the curve”. This was a worthy goal when hospitals are overwhelmed but which allowed the “only the vulnerable” will be affected attitude to arise. This neglected other undesirable consequences both economic and medical – shutdowns, deaths of those under 50 ( often our first responders and medical personnel, careers and lives not taken, but ruined by long COVID, and, once again, the rise of variants.

(more…)

A letter to City Council from Trace DeWitt

——–

Dear Mayor Partida and Council –

Like many residents of South Davis I was shocked and startled to learn on Friday morning that the Davis City Council plans, at a meeting this coming Tuesday, July 20, to “direct the Council Subcommittee and City staff to negotiate a tentative master lease agreement with Yolo County” embodying a CalWORKS proposal based on a Yolo County Health and Human Services (Yolo County HHS) presentation for the future use of the City’s Pacifico property that will only be received by the Council as part of the same agenda item at the very same meeting.  The Subcommittee and staff are then to be directed to “bring [that Pacifico  master lease agreement] back to the City Council for a final review.”   

I understand of course that the Brown Act only requires 72 hours’ notice of city council meetings even though 48 hours of that notice period is a weekend. This letter isn’t about the legality notice.  It’s about fairness of notice to the affected community, which in the two business days allotted cannot possibly respond to even the cursory terms of the CalWorks proposal’s most terms l in a way that can provide the Council the input needed for an intelligent decision on whether the CalWorks proposal should be negotiated with the County at all.

As all members of the Council are well aware, the historic mismanagement of the Pacifico property in South Davis as low-income housing since its default acquisition by the City a decade ago has inflicted a number of ills on the surrounding community that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed by the City, and so continue to fester to the present day.  While the City has taken some first, necessary steps to ameliorate the situation, it is far from having resolved the issues that have plagued Pacifico residents and neighboring homeowners, including drug use, alcohol abuse, theft, trespass, physical assaults, verbal violence, noise, littering, and a host of behaviors that adversely impact the lives of residents of South Davis.  The City’s inattention to these problems has been a bane on the lives of vulnerable residents of Pacifico, and of their neighbors at large. 

Now the City proposes not merely to entertain, but to negotiate an agreement with Yolo County that will presumably double the current number of residents of the Pacifico property by the addition of single-parent families to the low-income housing mix.  This increase is of necessity presumed, since Yolo County HHS’s CalWorks proposal – its “project details” comprise all of 20 lines of text (Proposal, 06-5) — does not bother to disclose the number of new residents it will add to Pacifico’s current population (the staff report implies an increase of perhaps 56 beds (Report, 06-3).  The proposal does indicate it plans to utilize the two of four buildings that are currently vacant on the property, and “keep the dormitory style layout” (Proposal, 06-5) that has been a source of complaints from residents in the currently-occupied buildings, with “no budget to improve the habitability of each unit” (ibid.).  And  while proposing to add this new population of single parents and their children to the residents currently housed on the Pacifico property, Yolo County HHS apparently plans to do nothing to address the problems emanating from Pacifico  – only to “manage its own residents” (Report, 06-3) and “[p]rovide additional fencing for site security and control” (Proposal, 06-5) – apparently believing it will wall off its own “vulnerable population in need of safe and secure housing” (Report, 06-3) from the onsite problems that have plagued Pacifico’s existing residents and the neighboring population for the last decade.

Three business days is simply not enough time for citizens having a genuine interest in the welfare of our vulnerable, underserved populations to bring to the Council what it needs to know of their concerns for their Pacifico neighbors and themselves in their daily lives.  The community has a right not to have its concerns dismissed with the bland assurance of the City that “Staff and the Council Subcommittee heard the questions and concerns and believe that many of them can be addressed in partnership with Yolo County” (Report, 06-2).  Citizens have a right to express their skepticism of that belief in the face of the spectacular failure of the past partnership to come to grips with Pacifico’s problems.  The City Council should defer Agenda Item 6 to the next appropriate council meeting to afford a meaningful opportunity to make their views known to their representatives.

– Tracy 

Yesterday, the Davis Vanguard's "Food Assistance Has Tripled in Yolo County in the Past Year – Here's How We Can Continue to Meet These Critical Needs" invited some obvious praise – and perhaps some not so obvious further thoughts…

But to start I'll say: Good going Yolo Food Bank! And Freedge, Davis Nightmarket, Tuesday Table, Buy Nothing (Facebook) and others in your efforts towards nutritional equity. It’s also vital that doubling for Calfresh (EBT/”Food stamps”) at Farmers’ Markets continues.

I’m curious, however: The combined value – monetary, simplified – of the assistance one e.g. single-member household can get from Calfresh and related government-programs with YFB and the other programs is substantial. If one has the capacity, organization, transportation etc. it’s not difficult to receive upwards of $400 of assistance per month. That’s great, but a wealthier person – I didn’t say a “wealthy person” – can simply go  to Nugget, the Davis Food Co-Op, or the many specialty stores for all their needs (yes, one can use EBT for food items on Amazon). No travel around town (a challenge for people without easy automobile access), no waiting out the produce at Farmers’ Market which is distributed for free later in the day.

So it seems that potential calories, proteins, phytonutrients etc. are at a considerably more equitable level than the distribution system itself. A member of a low-income household visiting a half-dozen locations at all times of day for food which the wealthier person can get in one trip is simply far from equitable.

Is there a concept in these organizations to administratively and literally centralize all this food into a seamless operation, for example a $500+ monthly Calfresh allowance for a single-person household, and perhaps even a certain fraction that can be used at a restaurant (Calfresh currently partners with McDonald’s, 7/11 etc, seems contrary to the program’s nutrition agenda but paternalism is not welcome here, okay.)? Is this a goal, that’s stymied – at best – by government actors? What examples do we have from other places?

Hungry for some answers….