Our
problems in Petaluma are nothing, *nothing*, compared to Baghdad’s problems. And
today’s problems are nothing compared to what we’ll face here in Petaluma when
today’s newborn is ninety if we follow the trends of the past ninety years, and
especially the last six. Bush/Cheney may be the worst thing to ever happen to
America since Columbus enslaved Indians in search of gold. This deceitful war,
the corruption and cronyism, the preoccupation with prosecuting the class war
on behalf of their CEO clients, plundering the commons while carbon fills the
skies… it’s sickening.
They lost
their Congress, but with two full years left, they are not backing down. What,
short of impeachment, will stop these rogues? Just last week it was their
Attorney General, Mr. Ashcroft in Alberto clothes. Preparing the assault on Habeus Corpus, AG Gonzales argued the Constitution doesn’t
expressly guarantee this right we inherited from the (eight hundred year old) Magna
Carta. It only says it can’t be taken away, a leap of
logic that left Republican Judiciary Committee member Sen. Arlen Specter
gasping in disbelief. Bush/Cheney wants the power to lock up “terrorists” (as
they choose to define and redefine them) and chew up the key. Our Constitution
is wounded, but her defenders still rise up to protect her, with greater
determination. God, I have always hoped so. The last election gave me reason to
keep hoping.
People do
fight for what they love, though too often they fight in ways that destroy what
they love. And those who stand up to the violence risk becoming its victim.
Here, we don’t expect to have to risk our lives as the Iraqis do, but lives
have lately been lost. A man protects his female cousin from a gang and takes a
fatal bullet. On her regular bike ride through Santa Rosa, a devout eco-cyclist
is crushed by, of all things, a recycling truck. A man entertains some
out-of-town friends downtown and some lost soul brings
him down with a knife. Frightening.
But we
pull together, gather to mourn the loss… and in gathering, we strengthen the
bonds among the surviving, bonds that empower us to go back out and keep
fighting… hopefully with compassion for all. When Nate Reifers
was killed along the edge of the Petaluma River in December, 700 of his friends
gathered at their common ground, the Phoenix Theater, in an all-night music-filled
remembrance. Cyclists honored cyclist Kathy Hiebel’s
death by filling Santa Rosa City Hall to demand the City eliminate gaps in
their network of walkable and rideable
routes.
Petaluma
isn’t Baghdad, or even Washington, DC. Here, the battles are over land development,
and they spawn our own version of dysfunctional behavior. Disagreement with Mayor
Torliatt’s temporary reluctance to release a
confidential memo from the City Attorney doesn’t justify comparing it to the Orwellian
secrecy of the Bush/Cheney administration. You may not like Mike Healy’s
support for certain projects, but the fact that he got more developer campaign
contributions than Pam doesn’t make him a developer puppet. Petaluma’s little
war of words pales in comparison to Sunni-Shiite suicide bombings, yet it grows
out of the same ground: an “us versus them” mentality. Why waste the energy,
and squander opportunities for cooperative problem solving?
I think appointing
Mike Healy to the City Council makes sense, not just for his experience and creativity,
but to honor the desire of that near-majority that recently voted for him. Our own bow to non-partisanship. At the same time, I want to
see a solid majority of Council members committed to progressive values and to
protecting the commons from irresponsible exploitation. If the Council appoints
Healy, I want him (and the whole Council, really) to adopt a longer-term
green-business perspective, demanding more imaginative eco-solutions from land
developers (as well as government agencies, especially those dealing with water
and transportation.) Getting City approval with minimal conditions may mean a
lot to a developer’s profit margin, but once their projects are built, everyone
else must live with it, for a long, long time. Let’s get the best we possibly
can, while we still can.