Extra

On Working With and Working Against – Open Letter to the Mayor and City Counci

Steve Martinot
Wednesday May 22, 2019 - 04:02:00 PM

Somehow it seems that when we (the people) attempt to participate in making policy for this city, and we point out things that are not quite kosher, or that seem to impose something extraneous, or even perhaps nefarious, something that doesn’t seem to arise from the lives of city’s residents, someone in government will say to us, “Don’t work against us, work with us.” Do you have any idea how hypocritical that sounds? 

  • ۰Sometimes what City Council is doing seems like window dressing rather than a substantial resolution of an issue. That was the case with the ban on single-use plastic. Dozens of people, during “Public Comment,” came forward with substantial analyses of the plastics-problem, and its corporate foundation, which was not included in the item.
  • ۰Sometimes what City Council is doing seems more like a war against the people, rather than issue resolution. There is no other way to characterize the low-intensity assaultiveness on the homeless.
  • ۰Sometimes we sense there is money being misallocated. Why would you rather not hear about that? Yet when someone starts asking questions about conflict of interest, or buddy-buddy relations with developers, or the failure of a project to meet the real needs of the people for whom it was intended, shouldn’t those questions be considered warning flags rather than nay-saying?
Nay-saying doesn’t get us anywhere, but warning flags can be important parts of proper policy-making. 

But when a councilmember says, “Don’t work against us, work with us,” there is something wrong. That councilmember is missing something very important. 

During the years that the city raided the encampments of the homeless, continually confiscating their possessions – which left them exposed to the elements – it was the homeless who were saying, “hey, work with us, not against us. We’re human beings, not aliens. We’re part of your society just as you are part of ours.” The city’s response was to hold another raid a few weeks later. It never seemed to get enough of its ability to add torment to those who had been thrown into most dire of circumstances. 

The only thing that stopped the endless raids and confiscations of goods was a Federal Circuit Appeals Court Decision (Martin vs. Boise). So now, the city puts time and energe into finding ways of sidestepping that decision. It passes a law that says all possession and belonging must fit in a square 3x3. The city just doesn’t seem to know how to stop tormenting people. 

 

Yet, this city council wants self-respecting human beings, who still have real human feelings in their hearts, to “work with them”? First, the city must show that it can actually stop “working against” the people. 

Depletion of the black community 

We see this priority of “working against” most starkly in the depletion of the black community. Over the last 20 years, it has gone from 22% of the Berkeley population down to 7%. And that is only the black community, which has a sense of identity (and a sense of cohesion that sees each loss of a resident as a loss to community). We have no access to data concerning other low income families that also feel the brunt of displacement (and exile from their home town). But the displacement has been occurring for years. When is city government going to stop working against the low income people of this city? 

When the city decided to formulate an “Adeline Corridor Plan,” the south Berkeley neighborhoods came forth, and said, “Affordable housing, stop the displacements of our people through rent increases, rein in the rent gougers that are impoverishing us.” The city listened, and said those concerns would be included in the plan. But did that stop the city from permitting market rate housing in the very zone of the plan? No. it did so without a care as to whether the proposed development would harmonize with the eventual plan or not? The city did not have the forthrightness to tell the developers that they would have to wait for the plan to be finished in order to see if their proposals would fit. Instead, the developers got the green light. 

The City Council passed an Inclusionary Housing Act about two years ago, at the height of the displacement crisis. And all it provided was 20% affordable units in any new development – a mere drop in the bucket. And even that was reducible through fees. This was the same moment when a glut in market rate housing was becoming obvious (there were “Now Leasing” signs all over town). The neighborhoods knew what they needed, what the situation was, and all the city gave them was 20%. In other words, the city has been “working against” the neighborhoods all along. 

The opposite would be easy. People in the neighborhoods are always defining their situation, always articulating problems, and always suggesting solutions. And they talk about this all the time among themsselves. But when have the people of the neighborhoods been actually brought into involvement by the city for defining issues, articulating problems, and crafting policy solutions? The city is involved in making policy for the neighborhoods, but without people’s participation (not just "input"), those policies will be imposed. “Input” is monologue. Dialogue involves actual give and take of ideas. Dialogue is necessary for policy-making. 

Nevertheless, the people still turn to the city council and say, “work with us, not against us.” They have been saying that for years. Yet the continued absence of affordable housing (after all this time), the continued hemorrhaging of low income families from this town (teachers can’t even find a place they can afford), the criminalization of homelessness, the torment imposed on those simply trying to survive, is the City Council’s response. 

You see what’s wrong with a councilmember saying, "work with us, not against us”? 

What the people are asking for is the ability to participate in making policies that will affect them as people. Participation does not just mean one has a vote. It doesn’t just mean voting for people with money, or a good promissory rap. It doesn’t just mean speaking monologues at Council meetings. It means dialogue and policy-making. This does not happen in Berkeley. 

Yet the neighborhoods have no one else to turn to (they haven’t yet learned how to turn to themselves), and are left to sigh, “we thought you were going to work with us on this.” Behind its hand, the city snickers and says "Sucker." Which apparently is what the expression “work with us, not against us,” really means in the city’s mouth. 

The fundamental principle of democracy is that those who will be affected by a policy participate in formulating and deciding on the policy that will affect them. 

The Marina 

The latest example is the Marina. After years of mismanagement, with unfunded projects rotting the Marina’s social structure, the City Council decided to hire a million dollar consultant, probably to figure out how to privatize that city attraction. The consultant they chose, in response to a Request for Proposals (RfP), is wracked with financial problems, has declared bankruptcy, and is involved in redoing shoddy work in Miami. Yet a few councilmembers are ecstatic about contracting with them. The kicker is that only two contractors responded to the RfP. Why? Well, the Council says it was because they handled the bidding process badly. The other alternative is that they didn’t want many bids because someone in government already had their eyes on this consultant. Should we flip a coin on that one? 

Did the City Council’s proposal involve any of the people who live or work in the Marina in doing this? No. Had the city tried to find out what the neighborhoods thought, or how they would like the Marina transformed in their own interest? Don’t be silly. The first anyone found about this plan to "privatize" the Marina was when the consultant’s contract showed up on the Council’s Consent Calendar (April 30, 2019). Yet, when someone raised some questions about how they are going about the process, that person is told, "work with us, not against us.” 

Who’s working against whom in this? 

RVs 

The Marina is actually another ghost in the Council’s closet. One of its cruelest and most dehumanized moments of the last few months was the ordinance designed to torment the homeless RV dwellers. In the midst of a crisis of homelessness, the Council actually passed an odinance against the homeless living in an RV. Unbelievable. The city says it wants to find housing for all homeless people, but attacks those who have partially housed themselves in vehicles. 

And what is worse, it intentionally created a situation of conflict between the RV dwellers and people in the neighborhoods by forcing the RVs out of an empty parking lot in Marina, where they were bothering no one, to park in the city streets, and incur some residential complaints. Under these conditions, the city, rather than send mediators to establish dialogue between the RV people and the residents, so that they could find mutual interest and mutual benefit (and there are many opportunities for that), the city sends the cops. 

When the city shut down the "Lordship" parking lot so RV dwellers could not longer park there, and made rules for living in an RV on Berkeley streets, were any RV dwellers involved in making those decisions? Not a one. That, along with erecting a fence around that parking lot, represented a purely despotic spirit. 

We know they have rules and contracts and laws to use to justify evicting the RVs from the Marina. But we also know that in a crisis, in which the wellbeing of human beings is actually at stake, some executive discretion is possible. Instead of creating a means of working with the people facing raw survival, the City Council prefers to work against them. It works against its own people. 

Democracy means that those who will be affected by a policy participate in formulating and deciding on the policy that will affect them. How far this city is from anything like that. 

Give people the power to make policy 

Those who will be affected by a policy must be able to participate in making the policy that will affect them. You, City of Berkeley, have to work with those you make policy about, not work against them as you have been. 

To work with the people would mean setting up structures by which the people could address the issues and policies that they need, and do so in dialogue with each other and with the City Council. When the council asks the people for "input," which means restricting them to Public Comment, it is saying, “you get no dialogue on this issue. You will be stuck with what we come out with.” 

Thus, the City Council advances its own policies, claiming it is doing so in the interest of all the people. But not all the people have the problems that some do. To pass over real solutions for the "some," because that would not fit the "whole," is to rationalize doing nothing for the "some." It won’t matter whether it involves hiring a corrupt consultant, or looking for a loophole to get past the Boise decision, or inventing RV parking regulations that will drive the RV dwellers out of this town, or making deals with developers that relieve them of the "burden" of paying into the Housing Trust Fund (3000 Shattuck). Whatever policy the City Council comes up with will be anti-democratic because it will be derived and developed without the direct participation by those who will be affected by the policy. 

And that means the arrow of representation will be reversed. What council’s elitist policies do is put the people in the position of having to represent the elected officials since it is the people who have to live with the policies imposed on them by the elite. Representation goes the wrong way. 

To change that, there are three things that we will have to do. 

1- Restructure the City Council so that it is based on dialogue involving the people, and not monologue by which the people are silenced. 

2- Create a system of neighborhood assemblies (popular local autonomy) which will be an arena in which the people of each neighborhood can talk to each, and make policy for their neighborhood with each other. 

3- Prioritize the ethic that governance operates according to principle, and not just according to rules and regulations, the chief principle for democratic governance being that those affected by a policy will be the ones to make the policy.