Mendocino County Today: Saturday, April 2, 2022

Sunny Warm | AVHC Addition | Ukraine | Big River | Ed Notes | Eagle Down | Tot Soccer | Too Soon | Ukiah Hospice | Barrow | PD Shrinking | Yesterday's Catch | Oscar Bond | Hikers | Faceless Monster | Garberville Garb | Extinction Rebellion | Palestine Flag | Blackwater/CDFW | Leonard Lake | Transition Town | Folk Music | Laptop Dancing | Pearl Court | Dem Club | Young Charlie | Amazon Union | Marco Radio | Janis Joplin | Fed Horrors | Charles Ng | Stiffing Workers | Moonie Wedding | Local Food | Monetization Pause | Taibbi Interview

MARINE LAYER CLOUDS along the Humboldt Coast will give way to sunshine and another breezy afternoon, with warm temperatures through the inland valleys. Cooler and cloudier weather is in store for Sunday, followed by rain late Sunday night into Monday. High pressure will return with dry weather Tuesday through Friday, along with very warm high temperatures for the interior. (NWS)

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR: WHAT WE KNOW ON DAY 37 OF THE RUSSIAN INVASION

The Red Cross says an evacuation plan for Mariupol has been agreed with “top-level authorities” from Ukraine and Russia. There are thought still to be more than 100,000 civilians in the besieged southern port city. Earlier, Oleksii Iaremenko, a Ukraine deputy minister, said it was 36 days since Mariupol had received any medical or humanitarian supplies.

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are expected to restart on Friday by video, focusing on the peace framework the Ukrainian side presented during a face-to-face meeting in Istanbul earlier this week.

Russian forces have reportedly left the Chernobyl power plant, the Ukrainian Atomic Energy Ministry said, citing personnel at the site. The troops began leaving after soldiers got “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches at the highly contaminated site, Ukraine’s state power company said. Energoatom said the Russians had dug in at a forest inside the exclusion zone around the now-closed plant and “panicked at the first sign of illness”, which “showed up very quickly”, and began preparing to leave.

Russian troops reportedly took an unspecified number of captive Ukrainian servicemen hostage after leaving the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Energoatom said in a statement on Telegram.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, repeated his warning that Russia was preparing for “powerful strikes” in the Donbas region after appearing to withdraw from an assault on Kyiv. The Pentagon agreed Russia may be repositioning some of its forces to send them to the Donbas.

Nato’s chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said Russian forces were not withdrawing, but regrouping. He also said the alliance had yet to be convinced Russia was negotiating in good faith in peace talks in Istanbul, because Moscow’s military objective since launching its invasion of Ukraine had not changed.

Russia is redeploying some of its forces from Georgia to reinforce its invasion, British military intelligence said on Thursday. “It is highly unlikely that Russia planned to generate reinforcements in this manner and it is indicative of the unexpected losses it has sustained during the invasion,” the ministry said.

The White House said the US had evidence that the war against Ukraine had been “a strategic disaster” for Russia. “We have seen incontrovertible evidence that this has been a strategic disaster for Russia,” the director of communications, Kate Bedingfield, said, adding that Russia was “working to redefine the initial aims of their invasion”.

The US president, Joe Biden, said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “seems to be self-isolated” and that “there’s some indication that he has fired or put under house arrest some of his advisers”. He did not provide evidence.

The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, seemingly concurred, saying Putin was “not the force he used to be” as the Russian president became increasingly isolated. Speaking on Sky News, Wallace said: “President Putin is not the force he used to be. He is now a man in a cage he built himself. He’s isolated. His army is exhausted, he has suffered significant losses. The reputation of this great army of Russia has been trashed.”

Russia has threatened to halt contracts supplying Europe with a third of its gas unless they are paid in Russian currency. Putin signed a decree on Thursday saying foreign buyers must pay in roubles for Russian gas from Friday, or contracts would be halted. Germany and France rejected the demands, calling them “blackmail”.

EU and Chinese leaders will meet for a first summit in two years on Friday, with Brussels keen for assurances from Beijing that it will neither supply Russia with arms nor help Moscow circumvent western sanctions. EU officials close to the summit preparations said any help to Russia would damage China’s international reputation and jeopardise relations with its biggest trade partners – Europe and the US.

Britain and its allies have agreed to send more military aid to Ukraine to help defend it against Russia’s invasion, the Wallace, said. As part of the agreement, armoured vehicles and long-range artillery would be sent.

Australia will send armoured Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine after Zelenskiy asked for them during a video appeal to Australian lawmakers.

Russia said it would respond to the EU’s “irresponsible” sanctions. A senior foreign ministry official, Nikolai Kobrinets, told the Russian state media agency RIA: “The actions of the EU will not remain unanswered … the irresponsible sanctions by Brussels are already negatively affecting the daily lives of ordinary Europeans.”

— Guardian

ED NOTES

FIRST CORRECTION: Shorty lives; We confused the Adamses. Shorty Adams is very much alive. The family managed our error with their usual grace and good humor.

SECOND CORRECTION; DA Eyster called to say that Bailey Blunt was tucked away in the County Jail last week and has been in jail for about two months doing a two-year state sentence for car theft. (She’ll probably only serve one.) The woman attempting to pass the fake twenties at the Redwood Drive-in last week seems to have been using Ms. Blunt's name as she and her unidentified male companion drove around attempting to pass counterfeit money.

CALL ME NAIVE, but aren't the Democrats supposed to be the decent alternative to the Republicans, the high road over the low road? And when the Democrats descend to dirty tricks, aren't they assumed to be a little slicker than the opposition? 

COME ON, fess up. Much as you dislike Trump, didn't you at least suspect that the Steele Dossier was a fake, a crude fake at that, so crude it would be easily traced back to Hillary because we know in our bones that she and Bill are as capable of evil as the Orange Monster.

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED. The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign have agreed to a settlement in which they will pay a $113,000 fine to the Federal Election Commission. The Democrat's brain trust lied about hiding money being paid to conduct “opposition research” into then-candidate Donald Trump’s alleged Russian ties. That research eventually produced the Steele dossier that included such unforgettable nuggets as the news that the Russians had film of Trump cavorting with prostitutes. The Clinton campaign said the original expenditure was for “legal services.” 

AS GASOLINE PRICES continue to rise, and blamed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and not the rigged distribution processes that have ripped us off for years, Biden says he'll release a million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move that implies prices will come down at some point. The Department of Energy says it has more than 568 million barrels of oil in reserve. The AVA says “Nationalize the whole system, from the well to the pump.”

AND AN APRIL WELCOME from Mr. Eliot. Take it away, T.S. "April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers."

A READER WRITES: So sad, this afternoon we found this eagle dead in the river at Hendy Woods.

AV SOCCER RETURNS IN APRIL

We are excited to announce an After School Program (ASP) Soccer group for K - 2nd graders run by a parent and High School teacher, Nat Corey-Moran. 

DATES: APRIL 21 - JUNE 2

DAYS: THURSDAYS 4-5pm*

LOCATION: Anderson Valley Elementary School (Front Lawn)

Students may ride the ASP bus home at 5pm

This is a Kindergarten-2nd grade soccer program in a supportive environment, focusing on being physically active, teamwork and fundamental soccer skills. 

EQUIPMENT: comfortable clothing and shoes for running, a water bottle, and a mask if desired. Cleats and shin guards are not necessary. 

AVES STUDENTS: If your student is not currently signed up for ASP but wants to participate they can be enrolled for Thursday practice ONLY - please call Mimi at Anderson Valley Elementary School (AVES) for a form. If your student is already enrolled, please let Mimi know you want them to practice on Thursdays.

NON-AVES STUDENTS: If you want to participate or any questions, contact Nat: (707) 354-3330 (speaks English and Spanish)

SUPPORT HOSPICE

To the Editor:

As many of our supporters know, Hospice of Ukiah operates a large, diverse Thrift Store at 401 So. State Street. It is the only truly “charity” thrift in the area — all of the profits stay in our community, providing resources for our free Hospice and Palliative Care Services.

COVID has affected these profits as sales have dropped and donations have increased due to people using COVID time to clean out the closets and garages. We love the gently used, saleable items, but COVID has also discouraged the wonderful group of Volunteers who used to help us accept, price, sort and display them. We have had to rely on paid staff and they are overwhelmed daily.

Restrictions are lifting, and while we still encourage masking in our store, we are seeking volunteers. Volunteering has many benefits, not just the “feel good” knowledge you are contributing to the care of your neighbors, but the mood enhancers of meeting new people and working in a friendly, interesting and caring atmosphere. If you have a few hours in your week and are inspired to “give back” or “pay it forward”, then give us a call at (707) 462-4038. Oh, and regular volunteers get a 25 percent discount on all the fascinating and useful donations.

Janet Denninger, Administrator, Hospice of Ukiah, Inc.

PRESS DEMOCRAT DOWNSIZES

Here are some important things you need to know:

As we said in January, moving to Fremont means we will have earlier deadlines than we now enjoy at Rohnert Park. Starting Monday, presses will start around 8 p.m., which is about three hours earlier than today. That means late-breaking stories from the previous evening and some sports scores and game coverage will not be in the next-day’s print edition. We will, however, have complete coverage on pressdemocrat.com — continuing our commitment to covering the news as it happens — and on our Facebook page and Twitter account.

For sports fans, we are introducing a new (and free) newsletter called “First Pitch.” It debuts Tuesday morning and will offer the previous night’s scores and stats and plenty of local coverage, but also embedded videos, links to regional and national columnists and well-crafted sports stories that go even deeper than what we now provide.

We’ll no longer publish lottery numbers on Page A2. Nightly drawings are done after our new print deadlines, and we want to avoid being two days behind with that information. However, all lottery numbers will be found at pressdemocrat.com.

The presses in Fremont produce a slightly smaller newspaper — shrunk by about an inch vertically - than what we’re now delivering. That means we had to make some very tough decisions on certain standing features, particularly on our weekday and Saturday comics page.

You may remember I asked for your thoughts in January on which comics to keep and ones to potentially lose. I heard from hundreds and hundreds of you, and I reviewed every suggestion.

After much reflection, we decided to eliminate these three: Rex Morgan, Sally Forth and Mutts from the Monday-Saturday comics page. If you’re a die-hard fan of them, you can still find them on our pressdemocrat.com/comics page and they’ll still appear in the Sunday paper.

We are also adding a new one to the daily mix, Baldo. It’s a critically acclaimed strip written by former California editor and reporter Hector Cantu and illustrated by Carlos Castellanos. It focuses on a Latino teenager named Baldomero “Baldo” Bermudez, who is navigating his teen years — from cars and classrooms to girls — with his family and best friends.

In a community with such a prominent Latino population, we felt it was important to bring more diversity to our morning comics. My hope is more younger Latino readers — and even their parents — will see themselves and their families in The Press Democrat.

We are combining our Sunday Sonoma Life and Towns sections. It will give readers an even broader assortment of community-focused stories and features that showcases dining, the outdoors, books and local historical essays.

We also are separating our Sunday Review. Instead, you’ll have a Nation & World section — just like we produce throughout the week — and a separate Forum & Commentary section. In a community where readers care so much about local issues, we felt our editorial voice and letters from our readers needed to be showcased in a more prominent manner on Sundays.

Finally, we are adding a new daily “Good Morning, Sonoma County” feature on Page A2. It’s a quick and snappy collection of must-read items — from the weather to photos that you provide us - to get your day started. There’s a concept in business known as continuous process improvement, and a big part of it involves responding to changing customer needs and evolving business environments. It's used in newspapers, as well.

The Press Democrat is doing what hundreds of newspapers — big and small — have already done: Consolidate with another regional publisher so energy, resources and critical dollars can be invested in local journalism.

Change is not always easy, I know, especially when the editor is messing around with your comics page.

But we have put a great amount of time, energy and creativity in revamping The Press Democrat in the face of those changes and challenges that confront us. We know thousands of you still start your day with it, and we have worked hard to maintain your high expectations. I am incredibly grateful for your loyal readership and subscriptions. It’s what funds our newsroom and makes possible our pursuit of relevant local information.

Undoubtedly, you’ll have questions, feedback or ideas. Please, don’t hesitate to send them my way.

More than ever, thanks for reading The Press Democrat.

(Richard Green is the PD’s executive editor and chief content officer of Sonoma Media Investments. Contact him at rick.green@pressdemocrat.com.)

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MIKE GENIELLA: The Press Democrat for decades was owned and managed by members of the Finley family of Santa Rosa. In modern times under the leadership of Publisher Evert Person, Editor Art Volkerts, and other managers, the ‘PD’ became the premier regional newspaper from Petaluma to Eureka. For most of the 28 years I worked at the PD, it was owned by the New York Times after Person sold it in 1985. It was the best of times in North Coast journalism. Yes, changes are inevitable given the small screen dominance of today's media. There is no doubt the Press Democrat is still doing an admirable job gathering and disseminating local news. But the loss of 42 good-paying jobs, significantly earlier news deadlines, and smaller size print editions do not reassure this journalist.

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 1, 2022

WILLIAM COSTA, Ukiah. DUI with priors, child neglect.

JERALD DIGGS, Willits. Stolen vehicle, controlled substance for sale/transportation, pot sales.

JESUS MACIAS-SILVA, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BONDAGE AT THE OSCARS

by David Yearsley

If ever there were steps of power that need storming by an angry mob, they are those of the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Oscars Night. Truth be told, I don’t know if the place has steps, but if not, then the storming will be that much easier—if less cinematic.

Back at the 2017 Academy Awards a supposedly unsuspecting busload of tourists was ushered into that same auditorium thinking they were being guided around the usual Tinsel Town sights. Suddenly visitors found themselves—as if in a dream or nightmare—amongst the movie gods and goddesses. Denzel Washington even officiated an impromptu wedding for an awestruck couple.

These representatives of Middle America were likely all trained actors, but whatever their credentials, their appearance in the Oscar broadcast did little to bolster either ratings or any connection between the movie moguls and the plain and trusting folk of the Heartland, that is, the people meant to worship the stars and pay their salaries at the box office or, increasingly, through streaming service subscriptions.

Five years on in Oscar Land, put those same leisurewear-clad visitors to the Capitol of Cinema in skins and camo and watch them be the ones to do the surprising. Action! The decked-out celebs would hit the deck—duck and cover or ditch their high heels and race for the exits only to find them barred. One sees a Tarantino picture (Inglorious Basterds), but yearns for Buñuel (Exterminating Angel).

Whoever the director, that scenario would certainly make for better television than what Sunday night’s show served up.

I’ve never been to the Dolby in Hollywood. The crass retro-styling of its architecture hearkens back, it is said, to Hollywood’s Golden Age. Built in the late 1990s it was initially christened the Kodak Theatre, manufacturer of the film stock of legends and a storied name in the annals of American capitalism and technological innovation.

I have, however, been to Kodak Park in Rochester, New York, a cluster of desolation in a vast sea of cracking asphalt. Even California’s golden light and the most forgiving celluloid couldn’t impart a nostalgic glow to these endless wastes of capitalist desertification. By now the company’s workforce has been slashed by about 90%, down from a high of some 60,000. Renamed the Eastman Business Park and in largely futile search of new tenants, the Technicolor fairy tale has ended. 

Out on the Left Coast one suspects an even more biblical fate for Babylon: earthquakes, floods, and fires, and, worst of all, irrelevance.

Kodak went bankrupt ten years ago, and Dolby dubbed its own brand on the building that hosts Hollywood’s biggest night.

The renaming took on symbolic resonance on Sunday. Troy Kotsur became the first deaf actor to win an Oscar, awarded for his supporting performance in the heartstring-plucker, Coda about a musical teenager born into a family unable to hear her. No music played from the orchestra pit to curtail Kotsur’s heartfelt speech as it stretched beyond its allotted time. The message was more than symbolic: it’s better not to listen to Hollywood’s cues even if you can. The audience signed their applause.

That silence thundered retrospectively when the same audience gave a rousing ovation to Will Smith for his Best Actor Oscar immediately after he’d delivered a resounding slap to the cheek of Chris Rock for a tepid and insensitive joke about his wife’s hair. How much more powerful—and cinematic—that silence would have been had it reigned when Leading Maniac Smith hoisted the statue and stuttered his way into an unhinged defense of his instincts for family “protection.”

Yet the most egregious and dispiriting use of sound came with the award for Best Song. The category itself is a silly legacy of early cinema’s kinship with the nineteenth-century musical hall and vaudeville. It stays in the roster of prizes because the performances of the songs on Oscar night relieve the numbing succession of speeches and related foolishness.

With the Evil Empire once again threatening the globe the winning song had to come from Broccoli’s Bond.

Rami Malek, who played the bad guy in the latest installment No Time Die, introduced the number from the floor of the Dolby, walking among the star-studded booths and telling the camera and the world that the Bond films are an “indelible part of our cinematic experience.” Sadly, he’s right.

The camera panned up to the stage where Billie Eilish was swathed in a thick dark gown that matched the color of her hair. Her brother and with her co-writer of the latest, eponymous Bond song, Finneas O’Connell (who goes by FINNEAS, all caps!) accompanied at the piano. An orchestra silhouetted at the back of the stage stoked the portentousness of the affair, what with specter of annihilation rising out of Russia. The inane paradox of the song asserts that “there is no time to die,” and perhaps there isn’t for Eilish given her clogged schedule of carbon-spewing world tours to save the environment and that infamous appearance to sing “My Future” at the 2020 Democratic Convention, not to mention gigs like the Oscars themselves.

At urgent moments of the melancholic ballad Finneas, I mean FINNEAS, added vocal harmonies, as Eilish sat enthroned on a Manilow stool nearby, laser-like matrices of high-tech light scanning past her. Even if heavily miked and modified, the acoustic performance with a real grand piano and real violins projected not only Bondian classiness but moral fortitude against the techno-threats from the bad guys in the Kremlin.

It was alarming, indeed frightening, how the sibling pair, both born well after the fall of the Iron Curtain, had shackled themselves to Bondage. 

Above wistful minor harmonies, a vaguely exoticized melody of simple contour conjured far-flung Condé-Nast destinations that make alluring backdrops for 007’s beddings and swashbucklings. The music lies limp, ready to be ravished by the ideology of Hollywood and its most potent franchise, born in the Cold War and now ready for a Hot One. Eilish tries to smolder but only emits a humid readiness to give herself into the machine. “Was it obvious to everybody else / That I’d fallen for a lie?” she sings as the strings waft above.

You didn’t have to hear a single note to know that she had.

When Eilish returned to the stage later with her brother to receive the Oscar that was a foregone conclusion, she was overwhelmed. As at the DNC, speech does not become her, at least not in the presence of the powerful.

The few Trumpians who might have tuned in to the show to see what their enemies were up to would have heard a different lie, a bigger lie than the one Eilish thought she was singing about …

What goes on inside the Dolby on Awards night is enough to stoke thoughts of destruction, whether you work for SPECTER or not. Fill the place with stars and industry operators and you have the recipe for revolution. The opportunistic identity politics and hypocritical political postures have long alienated, indeed infuriated, the land between the coasts.

Just as the institutions of government creak and teeter, so too the pillars of celebrity culture and its rituals of self-aggrandizement come ever closer to crashing and burning.

Even a bigger wimp than Will Smith could kick the Oscars past its tipping point.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

PEDRO ALMODOVAR ON THE SLAP

I have deliberately avoided the violent episode that is the only thing talked about the next day. I was barely four meters from where it happened. In the general overhead shots, I am the little white head you see in the photo.

I refuse to let that episode mark the gala and be the protagonist of a ceremony where many more things happened and of much greater interest. For example, “Drive My Car,” without a doubt my favorite film of the year, won Best International Feature Film. And also “Summer of Soul,” my favorite documentary, won its category.

Still, as I said, I was very close to the protagonists. What I saw and heard produced a feeling of absolute rejection in me. Not only during the episode, but afterward, too, in the acceptance speech — a speech that seemed more like that of a cult leader. You don’t defend or protect the family with your fists, and no, the devil doesn’t take advantage of key moments to do his work.

The devil, in fact, doesn’t exist. This was a fundamentalist speech that we should neither hear nor see. Some claim that it was the only real moment in the ceremony, but they are talking about the faceless monster that is the social media. For them, avid for carrion, it undoubtedly was the great event of the night.

indiewire.com/2022/03/pedro-almodovar-oscars-2022-zendaya-will-smith-1234712971/

SID’S SANDWICH

by Zoë Blackler

Over the last three years, more than 2,000 Extinction Rebellion protesters have been prosecuted, mostly in England’s magistrates courts for minor offenses, typically sitting in the road and refusing to move. A handful of cases, with charges carrying more serious penalties, have been escalated to the crown courts to be heard before a jury. Seven Extinction Rebellion crown court trials have now concluded and a clear trend has emerged. Juries are extremely reluctant to convict climate protesters even when they have no defense in law.

The first sign of hesitancy came in December 2019 at the trial of three people for obstructing a train during a protest on the Docklands Light Railway. After the judge ruled their planned defense inadmissible, the jury returned a guilty verdict “with regret.” Outright mutiny followed in April 2021 at the trial of six people charged with criminal damage to Shell’s London HQ. In directing the jury, the judge was clear there were no legal grounds for a not guilty verdict. All the same, the jury acquitted. “Perverse verdicts” of this kind, also known as jury nullifications, are extremely rare. In the English legal system, a jury has absolute liberty to rule as it chooses; its verdict is beyond review or sanction.

One of the defendants, Senan Clifford, told the Shell jurors in his closing statement:

“A true verdict means that you make a conscious consideration of the law, as the judge has outlined it; that you think carefully about what he has said, but then, that you do not necessarily follow it. It is your decision.”

Peter Hain observed in the Guardian at the time that “the law is out of step with the public.” Faced with the prospect of more perverse verdicts by rebellious juries, Hain suggested the Crown Prosecution Service should halt all pending Extinction Rebellion trials “on the grounds that the law readily provides: that they are “not in the public interest’.”

But Extinction Rebellion jury trials have continued to stack up, and so have acquittals. Last December, an Inner London Crown Court jury unanimously cleared six protesters who stopped a DLR train at Canary Wharf station in April 2019. In January, another acquittal followed for a similar action at Shadwell station, also in 2019. Unlike Shell, these were not perverse verdicts. Both trials followed a landmark Supreme Court ruling that reinforced the rights of peaceful protesters, strengthening their chance of a defense in law and giving jurors far greater leeway to find in their favor.

The Ziegler judgment (which upheld the acquittal of four anti-arms protesters in a case that predates Extinction Rebellion) established that a peaceful protest can still be lawful even if “deliberately” disruptive. Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights provide protesters with a “lawful excuse” for offenses committed during such a protest. What criminal courts must decide, the Supreme Court justices ruled, is whether a conviction would be a “disproportionate interference” in those rights when balanced against the rights of others. 

Crucially, in the Canary Wharf and Shadwell trials, Justice Silas Reid gave responsibility for answering that question to the jury.

A phrase often repeated by judges hearing Extinction Rebellion cases is that theirs are courts of law, not “morality.” I’ve followed all seven Extinction Rebellion crown courts trials, as well as countless magistrates’ court proceedings. They turn invariably on the question of “morality.” A not guilty plea is rarely a direct dispute of the charge: defendants do not deny the actions they are accused of, but argue they were justified, either under human rights law or the common law of necessity (when a crime is committed to protect human life, like breaking a window of a burning house to rescue those trapped inside), or because they were seeking to prevent another, greater crime.

There is also an approach based on the notion of consent and known in XR circles as “Sid’s Sandwich,” after the Shell defendant James ‘Sid’ Saunders. According to this defense, the members of an organization targeted by Extinction Rebellion would, if made aware of the true facts of the climate emergency and their own complicity, have consented to the action, much as someone with a nut allergy might at first be angry if you snatched their sandwich, until you explained that it contained peanut butter.

Many hours in all these trials are spent on legal arguments between judge and counsel about what evidence may be put before jurors and how they should be directed. At the Shadwell trial in January, the jury was presented with two sets of undisputed facts:

1) At 6:45 a.m. on 17 October 2019, a female vicar in her late seventies, accompanied by a male vicar in his fifties, used a retractable ladder to climb on to the roof of a train they had just left while another man in his eighties superglued his hand to the outside of the carriage. Members of the public expressed irritation, before police arrived to remove them and the train was returned to service.

2) The scientific consensus on the effects of rising carbon emissions includes: collapsing ecosystems; increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, primarily in the Global South with the North starting to feel the effects; large parts of the world set to become uninhabitable; and the inadequacy of the predictions themselves, as earth’s systems come closer to irreversible tipping points.

One of the defendants, Rev. Sue Parfitt, told the jury that her “outrageous action” was inevitable in view of the UK government’s “outrageous inaction.” She asked them to weigh the minor disruption caused by a 77-minute delay to London commuters against the catastrophe of runaway climate change. The jury returned their unanimous not-guilty verdict after two hours.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, is trying to rein in public protest, and the current crop of prosecutions is under scrutiny. At the most recent trial in January, for the fourth and final railway protest of 2019, Justice Silas Reid dismissed the human rights defense. Uniquely for an XR action, the train stoppage at Canning Town sparked a violent response from groups of frustrated passengers. Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR provide no protection if there is a “danger to public order.” Reid ruled that “a properly directed jury could not reasonably conclude that a conviction in this case would not be proportionate.” Denied the chance to decide for themselves, they duly delivered a guilty verdict. Their foreman was allowed to read a statement to the effect that it was based purely on legal procedure but that they wholeheartedly supported the protesters’ cause.

Canning Town bucked the acquittals trend, but the jury’s reluctance may worry the CPS and the home secretary as much the Shell jury’s perverse verdict. How wide the gap is between the government’s dislike of climate protesters and the public’s support for them looks set to become clearer. A further thirteen Extinction Rebellion jury trials are already scheduled with more expected for the spin-off campaign Insulate Britain.

BLACKWATER, AN EXCHANGE

Blackwater to enforce California's marine protected areas

David Gurney: California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Director Chuck Bonham on April 1, 2019 announced the beginning of a historic partnership between Blackwater (now Academi Corporation) and the CDFW to enforce the statewide network of marine protected areas created under the landmark Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative...

* * *

Marco here. I hope Blackwater/Xe/Academi is doing it for free. They owe the world for the murder and destruction they've caused and profited hugely from as military contractors, including murdering people all over the globe out of a kind of thuggish boyish enthusiasm. And of course there'll be the agenda mission-creep. 

The multi-zillionaire head of that octopus got his God-botherer sister (I think; might be cousin; I can't check right now; I'm on dialup) Cruella de Vos in position of U.S. Secretary of Education for four Trump years and fucked that up religiously too. 

In Other News: I forgot to say before, but a man came unsolicited with a big truck full of excellent firewood to where I was working yesterday, wanting to unload it somewhere, probably anxious to pay end-of-month bills, as are we all. He has lots of dry madrone firewood, his name is Thomas, and his number is 707 357-4555. 

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

CHRIS SKYHAWK:

Transition town meeting Saturday in Fort Bragg

A reminder - there will be a transition town meeting on Saturday April 2, 1pm at Bainbridge Park in Fort Bragg. There is nothing I could add that is not known, about the terrible cost to our coast community being caused by the housing crisis. Some on the Mendocino Coast are attempting to think outside the box to save what is left of our community. If this sounds like you please come and network with others who share your sense of urgency. Learn more about Transition Town movement go here: transitionnetwork.org

If you would like to learn more about Community Land Trusts you can hear my KZYX interview with Geri Moriskey of the Housing Action Team at KZYX.org go to Jukebox and scroll to Jan 13, 7 pm. Geri lends much information about how we might escape the oppressive system that steals our dreams, reduces communities, and diminishes our hope. But please, please consider coming to Fort Bragg on Saturday, and putting together our minds and hearts. For more information you can contact Sandy Turner at peace@pacific.net, thank you so much. For more on CLT’s go here: community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/clts/index.html

ON MARCH 31, 1939, IN PORT ARKANSAS, Texas, John A. Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill Lomax began a three-month, 6,502-mile recording trip through the southern United States. The resulting collection includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts. The duo recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers. These recordings represent a broad spectrum of traditional musical styles, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs.

JETTISON THE ANIMALS

by James Kunstler

Probably the only crime not documented on Hunter Biden’s laptop is murder, though given his dad’s position in government, and given the desperation building over unfriendly forces currently deciphering said laptop like a Rosetta Stone of the “Big Guy’s” corruption, and given Pop’s access to the Intel Community and its various rogue workshops, who knows who might have got whacked along the Bidens’ road to perdition.

The “president” famously loves and admires his son — “the smartest man I know,” he’s said — but every once in a while, in those infrequent lucid moments between breakfast and the morning “lid” on his imperial duties, “Joe Biden” must smack himself in his Blarney Stone of a head wondering how the hell did that meshugganah kid of mine manage to lose that goddam treasure-map of a laptop! And just as quickly, the fugitive thought floats away like a soap bubble…. It’s easy to play dumb when you’re already senile.

Perhaps “Joe B” dimly senses the dark presence of the Deep State pussyfooting closer and closer to his zone of special protection. It’s said, for instance, that the CIA enjoys the use of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post for molding public opinion to suit its agenda… and that lately the newspaper has joined the FBI-chummy New York Times in disclosing that Hunter’s laptop may, after all, not be the hobgoblin of “Russian disinformation” that fifty former Intel nabobs said it was… but rather… a thing… an unbelievably toxic hairball stuck in the Deep State’s craw — considering that however much the Deep State is disparaged, it at least is supposed to protect its government myrmidons from taint sufficient to keep them in their useful offices — and Gawd knows what else in the way of vile secrets will get upchucked behind that hairball.

Rumors have it that Merrick Garland’s DOJ is conducting an investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax quandaries. They must be wicked complex. In the case, for example, of monies exceeding a billion dollars transferred from CCP-connected companies to Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca Investment firm, was Biden-the-Younger a mere fiduciary? Or did those funds make a trip to some Baltic State laundry, where they got washed, rinsed, and delivered to the personal bank accounts of Hunter, Uncle Jim, Uncle Frank, and Dr. Jill? If memory serves, the much-maligned Rudy Giuliani probably has those laundry tickets.

The fabled Hard-drive-from Hell apparently contains evidence of felonious misdeeds other than tax evasion ranging from treason, bribery, and wire fraud, to child sex-trafficking and the use of Air Force Two in the commission of crimes. That leaves AG Mr. Garland on a hot spot of dreadful discomfiture. Does he call off the dogs on that vast bone-pile of perfidy and just “laser focus” on some rinky-dink tax charge — and then face the wrath in ten months of a sure-to-be Republican majority House and Senate capable not just of impeaching his ass, but making criminal referrals on it? Or is compelling evidence of high crimes going to be spewed all over the land by those aforesaid private-sector sleuths poring over Hunter’s hard-drive, in a way that the AG can only ignore at the risk of his own reputation… or maybe even a year in some federal slammer for obstruction of justice?

Kinda depends a little bit on what sort of commotion special counsel Mr. John Durham stirs up if-and-when he gets around to indicting any of the superstars of RussiaGate — many of them former and current DOJ and FBI personnel — because when that happens, the odor around Mr. Garland’s department will be so pungent that prosecutors will have to work the Hunter case wearing industrial-strength, full-face, carbon-filtered respirators.

In short, is the dear Deep State fixing to throw “Joe Biden” overboard in a play for its own legitimacy, as if it is actually looking after the nation’s interests? At some point, even ghouls and spooks have a certain survival instinct. Anyway, in case you’ve forgotten, the Biden family melodrama is actually a sideshow to the main event in the center ring right now: the collapse of Western Civ, starring the USA as a once-promising beacon of liberty and decency, now reduced to the equivalent of a homeless fentanyl freak gibbering about gender Marxism in history’s gutter. The scaffold of the economy is collapsing, helped along by “Joe Biden’s” foolish bid to disrupt global banking arrangements, boomeranging right back in Western Civ’s chops, as the supply lines to every conceivable precious commodity from fertilizer to rare earths — with oil in the middle of all that — get recklessly severed. Isn’t it bad enough that we no longer make anything in our country; now we don’t even have access to the stuff we might need if we ever actually considered making stuff again? On top of that, no food for you, O nation of whimpering simps, lost in your Tik-Tok raptures of virtual orgasm. March of 2022 sure was a humdinger. And, of course, April always begins with a joke, before the serious fun starts.

COAST DEMOCRATIC CLUB In-Person Meeting Revised

Wednesday, April 6, 5:30 - 7:30

Come To The Party!

Outdoors at Jughandle Farm !!

behind the Green Meeting building

15501 Highway 1, CASPAR

(dress warmly)

Agenda

5:30 to 6:00

Social Time

(refreshments provided)

6:00 - 6:30

Discuss options to Hold the House California

6:30 - 7:00

June 7 Election

Consideration of Candidates Requesting Club Endorsement

For County Superintendent of Schools:

Michelle Hutchins, or

Nicole Glentzer

For County Supervisor Ted Williams, District 5

-Leadership Team will announce endorsement recommendations

-Club Membership will vote to endorse or not

7 - 7:30 pm

Campaign Tools

Social Media (Ted Williams)

Postcards (Leadership Team)

MITCHELL CLOGG: 

Drop Everything! Listen Up!

One of the world’s hugest companies today entered the world of organized labor—of UNIONS! 

It was just one part, one pinky finger of the giant, Amazon Corporation’s Staten Island warehouse (“Fulfillment Center”), but another facility is on the brink, in Alabama, and this is one fulfillment we will see spread!

You know the implications of this, in terms of pay, healthcare, vacation time, childcare and slews of other things, but there are other things less visible and, in the long run, more important.

Organizing into unions give workers ginormous power in discussing matters with the owners. It also makes workers better citizens. All unions publish poop sheets—newsletters and the like—on a regular basis. Come election time, the union leaders tell their members what candidates – city, county, state and federal – have the best or worst voting records for working people. Union member do not have to spend hours talking and reading up on elections that directly affect them. They can walk into a polling booth with the union’s recommendations on candidates, public issues and initiatives—the whole thing—and make the recommended choices they hold in their hands in union bulletins. Election turnouts increase.

I watched the labor movement grow big when I was young. I worked in a bunch of unions. As I grew old, I watched with fear and heartbreak as they, under the fierce, constant battering by the Republicans, the rich and their lackey politicians, shrank to insignificance, barely breathing in and out.. 

This is the biggest recovery—POTENTIAL recovery—in my entire lifetime. In a world gone mad, assassinating itself, this is the best news I’ve seen in years. Congratulations everybody! Even you rich people: organized labor makes you chew nails. It reduces your short-term profits, but in the long run, companies benefit from healthier, happier, more-productive workers. In the long run (which the corporate mentality does not consider), everybody wins! 

This is in your face everywhere, TODAY. Rich publishers will not allow it to stay long on the front page, but the consequences of today’s blast will go on and on and on. Read all about it! Rejoice!

MOTA: GOOD NIGHT RADIO live from Franklin St. all night tonight!

Marco here. Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is about 5:30pm. Or send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Plus you can call during the show and read your work in your own voice. I'll be in the clean, well-lighted back room of KNYO's storefront studio at 325 N. Franklin, where the number is 1-(707) 962-3022. If you swear like Sweary McSwearerson, wait until after 10pm, so not to agitate the weasels.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via http://airtime.knyo.org:8040/128 (That's the regular link to listen to KNYO in real time.)

Any day or night you can go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night the recording of tonight's show will also be there.

Besides all that, there you'll find a mess of pottage, such as:

5,000+ exoplanets found, so far. And we're finding them faster all the time, as you can see and hear in this plinky rainstorm of generated music.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/03/5000-exoplanets.html

Some visually beguiling industrial processes.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-satisfying-look-at-machines-doing.html

And how we get baklava.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/03/baklava.html

— Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

JANIS JOPLIN was described by Record Mirror in 1969 as “a kind of mixture of Lead Belly, a steam engine, Calamity Jane, Bessie Smith, an oil derrick and rot-gut bourbon, funnelled into the 20th century between El Paso and San Francisco”.

As she told an interviewer: “Man, I’d rather have 10 years of superhypermost than live to be 70 sitting in some goddamn chair watching television.”

And she continued: “People aren’t supposed to be like me, make out like me, drink like me, live like me, but now they’re paying me $50,000 a year for me to be like me.”

“She was portrayed as this loud, Southern Comfort-drinking girl – and she definitely loved to have fun – but like so many women she was trying to find herself,” says Berg, who says that she fell in love with the singer as she learned more about her.

“She enjoyed the high of it, and she enjoyed what happened to her on stage when she was giving the audience everything she had inside, but she had a really hard time with trying to balance the high with the mundane aspects of life and finding the right people to balance it out with.”

- Edward Helmore

MEANWHILE: THE FED'S GOLF GAFFE

by Matt Taibbi

Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker gave an in-person speech at the Center for Financial Stability in New York the other day. Because of the pandemic, it was his first in a while, so he stuck to public-speaking basics, kicking things off with an ice-breaking joke. “I know I’m a little out of practice, because just as I was about to begin speaking, I made sure my mute button wasn’t on,” he cracked. “In all seriousness…”

Shifting to a graver theme, he mentioned the old saw about being cursed to live in “interesting times.” The novel coronavirus, he said, “has tragically killed at least 6 million people globally and around 1 million here in the United States,” adding, “That’s the equivalent of a city larger than San Francisco or Seattle.” Russia has also invaded Ukraine, he said, “fomenting death and destruction and spurring a humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe.”

Next in this parade of calamities: the scourge of inflation, a problem so serious that it touched him and his colleagues personally.

“One of our contacts, for instance, mentioned whopping membership fee increases at his golf club,” Harker said, “suggesting this summer may be a good time to play at your local muni instead.” Inflation is so bad, you might have to play a public course this summer.

To quote Conrad’s Kurtz: The horror! The horror!

Adding to the irony is the fact that the Fed in recent years tried to reach out to the masses, holding what it called “Fed Listens” events in 2019. Local business figures and other players offered insight into what was going on with folk, as part of what the bank called a “broad-based and inclusive” approach. If “some of our contacts are preparing to golf at public courses this summer” is the kind of on-the-ground intel they’re getting, they may want to recalibrate.

Harker was the second Fed official in a week to offer a personal window on price hikes. On March 24th, Board of Governors member Christopher Waller gave a speech warning of the “red-hot housing market,” which he called a “singular feature” of the post-Covid economy. But what would he, Christopher Waller, know about it?

“Trust me,” Waller said. “I know it is red hot, because I am trying to buy a house here in Washington and the market is crazy.” It would have been funnier if he’d said, “and the market is crazy, yo,” but as is, his talk was interesting. Waller — who as a Fed governor makes roughly $203,700 a year — went on to address the seemingly contradictory phenomenon of a boom in home-buying even though the nation is seeing a historic rise in home prices, soaring as much as 35 percent since the start of the pandemic. How could that happen? Waller speculated...

taibbi.substack.com/p/meanwhile-the-feds-golf-gaffe

CHARLES NG, mugshots 1982 & 2007

CESAR CHAVEZ'S BIRTHDAY was Thursday the 31st. As we remember the crucial movement Chavez launched, we remind persons interested in Chavez and the UFW that the best book on Chavez is Frank Bardacle's ‘Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers.’ A former farmworker himself (and fluently bilingual), Bardacke's fine history is the best-written and the most comprehensive picture of the man and the movement. 

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THE LOCAL ANGLE: STEALING FROM ROEDERER WORKERS

Anderson Valley migrant workers were unpaid by Glenn County contractor

A Glenn County man will pay more than $163,000 to 59 migrant workers that he initially failed to pay wages to for three weeks during last fall’s grape harvest in Mendocino County, the US Department of Labor has found.

The payment will include $99,953 in back wages owed under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, and $63,274 in back wages and damages due under the Fair Labor Standards Act, labor investigators said in a news release.

Manuel Quezada, of Orland, was cited by the department’s Wage and Hour Division for several related violations in August and September of 2014, including not paying employees at least biweekly or semimonthly, not providing wage statements to workers and not disclosing employment conditions to workers. Quezada was also found to be in violation of minimum wage provisions.

The Department of Labor said the violations allegedly took place at the Roederer Estate in Philo, where Quezada had provided work crew services for the past 10 years.

Roederer owns 660 acres primarily throughout Anderson Valley. The vineyard produces and ships products under the Roederer Estate, Anderson Valley, Scharffenberger Cellars and Domaine Anderson labels. Retail customers include Total Wine and Costco.

As a result of Quezada’s violations, Roederer has agreed to sign an enhanced compliance agreement requiring stringent reviews of its farm labor contractors’ practices, the Department of Labor said.

“This case strikes a fair balance between rectifying Mr. Quezada’s violations and his and the winery’s willingness to step up to the plate to correct violations now and in the future,” said Susana Blanco, director of the department’s Wage and Hour Division in San Francisco. “The workers will now get the money they rightfully earned for some very physical, tough work. The agreement we reached will also help workers be better informed of their basic labor rights.”

Most agricultural employers, agricultural associations and farm labor contractors are subject to the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Protection Act, which establishes employment standards related to wages, housing, transportation, disclosures and record keeping, according to the Department of Labor. Under the MSPA, each person or organization owning or controlling a facility or property used for housing migrant workers must comply with federal and state safety and health standards, the Department of Labor said. The MSPA also requires farm labor contractors to register with the department.

Further, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, as well as one and one-half times their regular rates for every hour worked beyond 40 per week. The law also requires employers to maintain accurate records of employees’ wages, hours and other conditions of employment.

The FLSA provides that employers who violate the law are generally liable to employees for their back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages, which are paid directly to the affected employees, the Department of Labor said.

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THE BACK STORY: In the fall of 1998, Roederer's harvest crew of mostly Anderson Valley men, conducted a strike. The grapes were ready, the crew was in the fields and prepared to begin a few weeks of backbreaking work when Roederer, apparently on the orders of the mother company in France, suddenly informed their harvest crew of some one hundred hands that their pay would be calculated in a way that meant less money for all of them. The workers refused to harvest Roederer's grapes and summoned the United Farm Workers to represent them. The company tried to bus in strikebreakers from Colusa and Glenn counties but those workers refused to cross the Anderson Valley workers’ picket line.

A hurry-up vote was called by the workers on whether or not to be represented by the UFW. The dramatic showdown tally was held in the vineyard, the grapes ripening on the vine. The workers, with a delegation of sleek Roederer lawyers looking on, went with the UFW. Emergency meetings of alarmed County vineyard and winery owners were hastily convened to devise methods to keep the union out of their fields.

Roederer soon hired the slimy San Francisco union-busting firm of Littler-Mendelsohn whose sole instruction was to get the UFW out of Anderson Valley and keep them out of all Mendocino County. Roederer, working through in-house snitches hired by Littler-Mendelsohn, soon expelled union supporters from its single-worker housing and, although they denied it, placed a number of men on a Do Not Hire list. The union lasted about a year. Its supporters lost their seasonal work and, as we now see confirmed, the company has used dubious labor contractors in the years since who bus in workers from the Central Valley. And steal their pay and the pay of local people who work for Roederer.

Roederer, for those of you unfamiliar with the company, is the oldest family-owned wine concern in the world. It has been spectacularly successful for generations. Roederer's latest scandal in its imperial outpost here in the Anderson Valley inevitably conjures the memorable observation of France's greatest writer, H. Balzac: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

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HUELGA! ANDERSON VALLEY’S FIRST STRIKE (late summer, 1998)

Roederer’s big miscalculation a big break for vineyard workers

by Bruce Anderson

France, the country that brought the world the inspirational ideas of liberty and equality for all people has just presented Mendocino County farm workers with the long overdue gift of the United Farm Workers Union.

Unintentionally, that is, and out of what appears to be a serious miscalculation at harvest time by Roederer International, the famous champagne makers.

Roederer’s field crews refused last week to pick the company’s grapes from its several hundred acres of Anderson Valley vineyards when Roederer told workers they’d be paid less than in previous years.

The strike began a week ago Monday morning but didn’t become public until Wednesday morning when Roederer’s 80-man harvest crew refused to allow replacement workers into the company’s Boonville vineyards. The company called for the police to get their workers out of the fields, the scabs in. But by the time the Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies arrived the two groups of pickers had become one. The Roederer crew had convinced their would-be substitutes to join them on an impromptu picket line.

The Monday morning Roederer’s annual harvest was to begin, picking crews were told they would not only be paid less per ton but would be expected to share their earnings with two additional persons, the tractor drivers and the sugar testers. They said no, and kept saying no until Friday night when Roederer agreed to return to expected harvest practices and pay.

Harvest crews work in self-selected teams and split their per-ton earnings equally. They sprint up and down the hilly rows of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes in a sun-up to sunset (or longer if lights are brought in) piece-work race to fill ton-sized bins with the raw ingredients of Roederer’s world famous champagne. Workers can earn as much as $3,000 a month for the two months of the annual harvest, and they jealously guard their traditional ways of bringing in the grapes.

After negotiations in the fields all day Monday and Tuesday failed to shake Roederer’s demand that their vineyard workers accept the retro new arrangements of the same work volume for less money, and the workers had quickly convinced the would-be scabs of the benefits of solidarity, not to say national origin, they called the UFW’s office in Santa Rosa to help with their fight against the French-owned enterprise.

Three union reps were in Boonville by 9am Wednesday morning, signing up workers by the side of Highway 128 as passing motorists waved and honked in solidarity, or stared uncomprehending from their vehicles at the unprecedented local scene.

Roederer found its international self with its American grapes ripening on the vine with no Mexicans to pick them, and an unyielding union on the edge of its vineyard signing up its work force.

“We didn’t have a leader,” a quietly determined Boonville worker said Thursday, “but we were united.”

And are still united a week later for a UFW local, the first union representation for farm workers in Mendocino County’s history.

Representatives of Anderson Valley’s and Mendocino County’s burgeoning wine industry, none of whom would agree to speak for attribution, are lamenting the arrival of the formidable union as they marvel at what one Philo winery owner described as “Roederer’s stupidity.”

One of Anderson Valley’s many mom and pop vineyard owners shook his head, seemingly stunned at Roederer’s obtuse labor stand. “Lots of us pay an hourly rate during the pick and during pruning because we can’t afford to pay workers year round. Roederer could easily afford to pay a little more to get their own grapes in because they don’t have to buy grapes to make their wine. When the harvest is off, like it is this year, most wineries try to pay a little more because a smaller crop is harder to pick. I don’t understand what Roederer thought they were doing by hardnosing their crews like that.”

There is much local speculation that Roederer’s vineyard managers, Bob Gibson of Ukiah and Pat Rogers of Hopland, caused the strike by telling the workers this year it would be the same work for less money. Others say nothing happens at Roederer without it first being cleared by Michel Salgues, a French national and company vice-president, and the man in charge of Roederer’s huge Mendocino County operation.

One local skeptic summed it up this way: “The French wouldn’t even consider letting an American make a key decision. The French have thought Americans were a bunch of dummies clear back to Thomas Jefferson. You think they’re about to let a couple of non-French vineyard guys call basic shots on labor relations? They’ve got a classic imperial deal going here using Mexican labor on our land to make a lot of money for people in France. They don’t need people looking at them like this. But they somehow screwed up big time. They thought they could screw the Mexicans and get away with it, but it all blew up in their face.”

Sonia Mendoza, a UFW rep with an office in Ukiah, said Friday, “I was very much in shock that it (the strike) happened at that particular winery; I thought it was one of the better employers in the county.” She also said that the UFW was “here to stay,” adding that that although some workers fear they might be fired and expelled from Roederer’s worker housing — the only company housing for single workers in Anderson Valley — she warned that “the UFW has never lost a retaliatory firing case.”

Mendocino County wine people are not only surprised that Roederer would risk alienating crews who have been with the winery since it began operations in Anderson Valley a decade ago over what amounts to a proportionately few dollars, but fear that the UFW’s Anderson Valley foothold could mean the union will soon be in their vineyards.

Roederer’s high end champagne and sparkling wines sell for $17 a bottle and up. The business is considered among the most prosperous wineries in the world, much of its annual production pre-sold as much as five years in advance.

Roederer, workers complain, hasn’t raised worker pay for five years. A few year-round employees enjoy the company’s health plan but pay mightily for it if they sign their families up for benefits. Workers also express apprehension about the company’s heavy use of ag chemicals.

But Roederer was the first, and is still the only, winery in Anderson Valley to erect housing for single workers. The French also include all their employees in annual parties and have promoted a significant number of Spanish-speaking workers to important jobs with the thriving, Philo-based concern. Roederer invested some $14 million in its Philo winery and several more millions in new vineyards, one of which is being planted this summer near Navarro. They are the largest winery in Anderson Valley, and among the largest in Mendocino County.

The strike is unprecedented in Mendocino County agriculture.

John Parducci, the reigning patriarch of Mendocino County wine, bluntly summed up the county’s traditional approach to worker demands for fair pay and decent job conditions. “Agitators were fired.”

The days when the padrone could simply banish workers who asked for decent pay and work conditions ended in Boonville a week ago.

A committee consisting of four local farm workers, all of whom are year-round residents of Anderson Valley, as are almost all the workers who struck, and three UFW representatives, Molly Lopez, Greg Kestel and Luis Mendoza, negotiated all day Friday with Roederer and its suave Mendocino County boss, Michel Salgues, his vineyard managers and the company’s “union consultants.” Salgues, pleasant but always warily circumspect in his public relations, holds a PhD in chemistry. It has always been assumed in the local wine industry that Salgues survived an excruciating selection process before being appointed to head up Roederer’s large American investment. “That guy didn’t just fall off a Philo turnip truck,” is how another Philo vineyard owner assesses the Frenchman.

But at the end of the day Friday, Roederer International’s American branch had definitely tumbled from the turnip truck. The company backed down. Jubilant workers declared, “We got everything we asked for.”

It seems likely workers are also going to get union representation. Saturday morning, Roederer’s crews were back in the vineyards.

Salgues, a jaunty Gallic shrug in his voice, said simply, “As a company we have taken the decision not to make any statement, but everything is back to normal.”

Not exactly.

All was back to normal in that Roederer’s disaffected workers, UFW cards signed, sealed and delivered, were bringing in the 1998 grapes.

The UFW’s Sonia Mendoza said Monday that the union has requested approval from the Agricultural Relations Board for a vote up or down on union representation for Roederer workers. Within days, the first Mendocino County farm workers to successfully fight for a say in the work they do will cast affirming votes for the United Farm Workers, and the long-delayed task to bring Mendocino County farm workers the respect and protections French workers have assumed for two hundred years will be underway.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

If you haven’t done it yet, it would be wise to plan some kind of vegetable garden this Spring. And joining a CSA, that is, a Community Supported Agriculture association, if they exist in your area. You can buy shares of locally grown food. Also reaching out to small, local meat producers if they exist in your area. For example, I can buy a half of a hog from a fella. Or chicken, or he’d sell me beef, etc.

Learn how to can food. It’s not that difficult. 

Not everybody has the means to buy into their own farm or ranch. However, you can start to plug into locally grown sources of food, meat, etc.

DEAR PUBLISHER,

Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.

Please note, we have already been enforcing on claims related to the war in Ukraine when they violated existing policies (for instance, the Dangerous or Derogatory content policy prohibits monetizing content that incites violence or denies tragic events). This update is meant to clarify, and in some cases expand, our publisher guidance as it relates to this conflict.

This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.

Until next time,

The Google Ad Manager Team