Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024

Cloudy | Attendance = Success | Panther Wins | BOLO Jones | Park Upgrades | Ed Notes | Squirrel Proof | Integrity? | Box Van | Vet Parking | Taco Truck | More Questions | Air Quality | Trestle Beach | Not Prepared | Fiji & Soup | Catamount | MUSD Violations | Complex Reality | Book Recommendation | MCHCD Board | Watering | Ask Jared | Route 254 | Candidate Forums | Yesterday's Catch | Oakdale's Finest | 2am Club | Dog Attack | Smoky QB | Starvation Warfare | Fund War | Senate Vote | Carpet Bombing | Destroy Gaza | Catcher Cover | Candidate Cornel | Saying Grace | Prude's Alphabet | April 1968

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Leggett 1.44" - Laytonville 1.29" - Willits 1.06" - Covelo 0.90" - Yorkville 0.68" - Ukiah 0.68" - Hopland 0.64" - Boonville 0.51"

UNSETTLED WEATHER condition continue today across the northern portion of the region. Steadier precipitation will continue across areas farther north of Trinidad into this afternoon, before become more showery. A brief lull on Thursday will lead into a more active pattern for Friday and this weekend with moderate rain, mountain snow (over the Trinity Alps) and strong gusty winds. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 50F on the coast this Humpday morning. A 40% chance of a shower today then dry skies tomorrow. A LOT of rain starts on Friday & going thru the weekend to Tuesday then tapering off later next week.

BIG WINS FOR THE PANTHERS!

Amazing day of basketball for Anderson Valley! Our varsity girls (42-32) and boys (53-39) both clinched victories over Laytonville. The gym was buzzing with energy and Panther pride!

Join us at the next game and be part of this excitement. Your support makes a difference. Go Panthers!

FORT BRAGG SHOOTING SUSPECT SOUGHT, investigators say

Two shootings occurred hours apart at homes on Highway 20, investigators said. Both involved one victim, who was injured during the second incident.

by Colin Atagi

A search is ongoing for a 33-year-old man identified as a suspect in a pair of weekend shootings involving one victim near Fort Bragg, investigators said Monday.

Michael Anthony Jones, a Fort Bragg resident, is suspected in the shootings involving a 62-year-old victim, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The first shooting was reported 9:20 p.m. Saturday at a home in the 31000 block of Highway 20.

According to investigators, sheriff’s deputies found the victim Saturday night and learned he and the suspect got into an argument over stolen property.

Jones is accused of pointing a handgun at the victim and firing one round before fleeing. The victim was not injured.

Just before 7:30 a.m. Sunday, deputies were called to a home in the 29000 block of Highway 20 outside Fort Bragg regarding the second shooting.

They found the same victim suffering from a gunshot to his leg and Jones was again identified as a suspect, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

He was last seen running into a wooded area south of the property.

The victim was treated at a local hospital for an injury that was not life-threatening.

Investigators, including members of the Mendocino and Lake counties SWAT Team, searched the shooting scene, as well as a Fort Bragg home on Turner Road Jones was known to visit.

He is wanted on suspicion of attempted murder, being a felon in possession of a gun and parole violation, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Jones is 5 feet 11 inches tall and 175 pounds. He has brown hair and hazel eyes. He has a tattoo on the right side of his neck.

Anyone with information on Jones' whereabouts may contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086.

(pressdemocrat.com)

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING AT THE BOONVILLE COMMUNITY PARK.

A great big “Thank You” to a private local donor for making a few sweet upgrades to our park possible. Stay tuned for the full update available later this week. AV kids will be “dizzy” with excitement!

ED NOTES

TUESDAY’S MENDOCINO COUNTY TODAY, was delayed due to a limited power outage in the area of our webmaster’s house which PG&E said affected some 300-plus customers. We first posted a comment about the delayed post, which was finally posted when our webmaster made the trek from Navarro to Boonville in the bad weather to get the job done. We have not heard what caused the outage in the Deepend, but assume it had something to do with trees. 

SO, due to the late post, we are reposting Tuesday’s ED NOTES for those who like to wake up to read it.

LIVING IN THE LAND with no generally transmitted history, where every day the world begins anew — “Say, wasn’t that the year the Love Boat re-runs began?” — we often see references to historical events that make no sense in the context in which they appear. 

IN AN obituary for a Hopland woman named Mary Rita (Slavin) Brennan, this paragraph appeared: “Mrs. Brennan taught first grade at St. Anthony’s in Washington, D.C., and was involved in social work for Catholic charities. Along with General John J. ‘Blackjack’ Pershing, she was involved in getting children out of Lafayette Park for smallpox vaccinations and to attend school. She also was the only woman allowed into Preston Prison for a child adoption case.”

MRS. BRENNAN graduated from Trinity College in D.C. in 1932, right about the time General MacArthur, Patton and Ike led a cavalry charge on the World War One vets camped out near the White House where they’d come in the teeth of the Great Depression to cash in the bonds they’d been issued to get them to sign up to fight The Great War. The Bonus Marchers and their families, some 20,000 people in all, needed the money NOW. The government told them to go home and wait for the bonds to mature. When the Bonus Marchers refused to leave, MacArthur rooted them out as if they were an occupying army. But I don’t think ol’ Blackjack, slayer of Apaches, Moros and Huns, was involved in that one, and I doubt Mrs. Brennan was on horseback swinging a sword at defenseless women and children, but good things to her in the next life for seeing to it that the children of the Bonus Marchers got to school while MacArthur rode down their parents in the streets.

SO WHY bring it up? Because local obits frequently include cryptic allusions to important historical events significant in the life of the deceased who was either a witness or a participant without getting the facts straight. One should be able to expect an accurate and well-written final notice, but on the Northcoast not only do the corporate papers charge grieving families exorbitant fees for obituaries, those same papers carelessly assemble the obits.

ERRONEOUS and badly written obits insult the memory of the departed, and the mercenary stupidity of the papers they appear in add to the grief of those left behind. I'm writing my own obit, not only because my many journalo-enemies will certainly take their revenge when I'm safely dead, but because I want to make sure the basic facts are accurately reported, and because I have zero faith they will be. 

MARSHALL FRADY’S MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.: A Life, Penguin edition. (By far the best bio of King.)

ANOTHER REASON for restoring the institution of dueling in America: People might not be so casually insulting if they risked mortal combat.

ON AN AVERAGE of once a month, versions of the following encounter happen to me. So, I’m minding my own business in the Mendocino Book Company the other day when a smiley-face walks up to me. Local libs always smile when they serve up the insults. They seem to think if they smile while they’re being nasty they’re still nice people. They also may think it keeps them from getting smacked in the mouth which, given that the warm, wonderful human beings always do their thing where there are witnesses, it probably really does safeguard them.

“Still putting out your rag?” he asks, wanting me to know that a high-minded person like him of course doesn’t read it but he's also unable to keep himself from commenting on my weekly work product because, as a person wholly convinced of his own righteousness, when he does read the paper it annoys him no end because it’s often critical of him, and his smarm-dipped friends. I’d rather spend a month in an iso-cell than five minutes with any of them. But here he is, in my face, as the young people say,

“Yes,” I say, “I continue to publish the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I hope that fact doesn’t distress you too severely.” 

“You know,” Mr. Lib says, his smile getting wider, “when I’m reading your paper I never know if I’m reading journalism or satire.”

“There’s night school for adults with reading disabilities,” I reply. 

He doesn’t stop smiling.

“But how do your readers tell the difference?” he asks me, getting in what he undoubtedly thinks is a drop-fall zinger.

“Maybe they don’t, maybe they buy the paper for the pictures.”

“But you don’t have many pictures in your paper!” he exclaims.

I knew the guy was stupid, but I didn’t think he was this stupid.

“Your readers,” he says. “Do they know the difference between truth and fiction?”

“Beats me. I’ve never done a poll, and mandatory reading comprehension tests would be misunderstood, wouldn't they? I try not to condescend to the paper’s readers, though. I assume, perhaps erroneously, I’m publishing a weekly paper for adults.”

And then, just as I’m trying to decide whether or not to hook him one in his uncomprehending, passive-aggressive puss and take my chances with the DA, he startles me by saying like he means it, “Well, nice seeing you again, Bruce,” and he walks on out the door.

"SQUIRREL-PROOF" BIRD FEEDER mounted on sliding glass door (Lindy Peters)

CARRIE SHATTUCK:

To Jim Shields:

I was surprised when Mulheren made that statement about sending it [the Cubbison suspension question] to the Grand Jury as she has related to me that the GJ is a joke/laughable and that their responses to the most recent GJ reports were ”boilerplate” responses (I have our text exchanges). This exchange took place since the Board of Supervisors were going to put their name on the insulting response, to the recent GJ report about Human Resources, done by the Ad Hoc committee, which was Gjerde and Williams, that stated:

“GJ finding 25 The County as an employer has suffered due to the workplace culture, which makes the County less attractive to potential applicants.”

Response: “Partially disagree. The County’s workplace culture may look less attractive to potential applicants if the culture is known by the applicants and is as bad or worse than the current workplace culture the applicant is enduring.”

Seriously? I reached out to Mulheren and Haschak about them having their name on this ridiculous response and that it makes the Board look REALLY BAD. Mulheren’s response was, ”Agree, but it doesn’t do me any good to pull it because they likely won’t change it.”

Subsequently, at the next meeting, that was on the coast, Haschak pulled the item (consent calendar) and it was reworded and brought back at the end of the meeting. Mulheren didn’t/doesn’t even try to go above and beyond let alone, speak up.

Haschak had just had surgery and hadn’t read through it all but was surprised at the wording of the response when I called him and pointed it out. He had enough ethics to pull the item and have it reworded.

What happened to integrity?

MAZIE MALONE:

Vets office….

Seriously do you not consider effect before acting? This letter does nothing but point out the “bad behavior” on behalf of our leadership. How do you not take into account the needs of the people? A very bad explanation. ugghh

Besides the parking remark is utterly ridiculous and stupid. I walk my dog over there all the time, you can park 8 regular sized cars doubled up in front of the garage, 4 in a single line so people can get out and at least 4 in front of the VSO office. Besides it is very unlikely that there are more than 4 Vets at a time in that office, also there are many public health parking spots right next to VSO!

If the county is looking to cut costs one way would be to stop running lights and electricity on unoccupied buildings at night, weekends, summer and holidays! There are multiple locations of a waste of energy and money. One being the DSS building …and the building at Observatory Park for Transitional Education who runs the air conditioner all summer long 24 hours a day.

People are stressed enough in this war torn economy don’t add to it, cut costs starting at the top!!

ugghhh!!

FYI. I used to be the Volunteer Outreach Coordinator for Vet Connect. I was working to get Vet Connect a reality in Mendo unfortunately was not much interest.

MARK SCARAMELLA:

We have now found out that the Vets were unceremoniously ousted because the cost of the lease went up. (aka “lost their lease”). This is new information. But we don’t know how much it was or would be. Did the County give up on keeping it for just a few bucks a month to save a few bucks a month? Or was it a larger number? How much notice did they have? Was Ms. Rau acting within her authority? What other options were considered? Why didn’t any Board members ask those questions instead of how the old Public Health building might be altered? Etc.? The more the Supervisors attempt to explain, after the fact and still without consultation with the Vets and their reps, the more questions arise.

ED NOTE: 

Worse, Air Quality is your basic do nothing agency. I recall a choking hot summer afternoon in Ukiah when AQ couldn’t be bothered to issue a danger warning. They haven’t been heard from for years upon years.

LAZARUS (Willits):

I heard Supervisor Mulheren on the radio this morning, KZYX. The host asked her why, when Ms. Cubbison was removed from her position, the Board of Supervisors also removed her salary and benefits.

Supervisor Mulheren’s response was, I did not prepare an answer for that question.

I nearly ran off the road, WTF!

Clearly, Supervisor Mulheren is not capable of walking and chewing gum…

It was like listening to Kamala Harris discuss “The Passing of Time.”

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE EVENTS this Sunday

Explore Fiji with the Bonner's, Sunday, January 21st, 2:30-3pm, Anderson Valley Senior Center

Join the Bonner's as they share photos and stories from their latest adventures in Fiji - and then stay for our regular Sunday Gathering at 3!

AV Village Monthly Gathering: Soup Making with Lauren, Sunday, January 21st, 3-4:30pm, Anderson Valley Senior Center. Refreshments served. Join us for a cooking demo with Lauren Keating, who will share her favorite soup making techniques.

Consider carpooling. Village members, let us know as soon as possible if you would like a volunteer driver and we will try to find one or bring a friend that can give you a lift.

More info & to RSVP: Anderson Valley Village: (707) 684-9829, andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com, www.andersonvalleyvillage.org

MENDO SCHOOLS BROWN ACT VIOLATION

Editor. 

Mendo School District's Brown Act Violations Continue -

The Mendocino Unified School District (MUSD) continues to play fast, loose and illegal with the Ralph M. Brown Act. 

As of right now, at 3:05 pm on Jan. 16, 2024 - 50 hours before the scheduled meeting instead of the required 72 hrs - MUSD still has not posted to their website an Agenda for their Thursday Jan. 18 regular meeting, as required by law (Government Code § 54954.2.).

Another Brown Act violation occurred at MUSD's November 16, 2023 meeting, when School Board President Michael Schaeffer took a motion, and a second, on a course of action to abandon the MCN listservs WITHOUT taking public comment. In addition to this, Superintendent Jason Morse has refused to publicly divulge subsequent findings of MUSD's legal counsel regarding State and Federal laws on moderating a public forum like the MCN listservs. If this information was presumably shared with a majority of School Board members, this is another blatant and outrageous violation of the Brown Act.

The Brown Act requires that:

"An agenda must be posted at least 72 hours before a regular meeting in a location freely accessible to members of the public. It shall state the meeting time and place and must contain a brief general description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed at the meeting, including items to be discussed in closed session. 

While it has always been required to physically post agendas a minimum of 72 hours before upcoming regular meetings, the Brown Act now requires that those agendas also be posted on the agency’s website, if they have one."

AB 2257 – new posting requirements effective Jan. 2019

"A bill passed in 2016 (AB 2257, Maienschein) adds additional requirements that go into effect January 1, 2019: there must be a link to the most recent agenda of the main governing body directly on the home page; and the agenda must be in a format that is “retrievable, downloadable, indexable, and electronically searchable by commonly used Internet search applications, platform independent and machine readable.”

So far, as of 3:05 pm on Tuesday Jan. 16, less fifty hours before their Jan. 18 meeting, the scofflaw MUSD has not fulfilled Brown Act requirements by posting the Agenda to their website at least 72 hours prior to the meeting.

* * *

MENDO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT JASON MORSE REPLIES:

Just to clarify – There was a typo on the website header that said January 10 instead of January 18 that has since been corrected. The agenda and all backup materials for the January 18 board meeting were on the website last Friday. The link that was posted takes readers to the January 18 agenda.

Thanks,

Jason Morse

MUSD Superintendent

* * *

DAVID GURNEY ASKS: That's a pretty big, rather obvious error.

And what about releasing the legal counsel's findings on moderating a listserv?

Why are you keeping this information secret? Why are you keeping the legal opinion on Listserv moderation secret?

RANDY BURKE: ‘Ghost Forest,’ by King. Recommended reading weeks ago in the AVA, I purchased the book, and since opening the cover, I cannot put down this page turner. Halfway through, and I get the feeling that I have had some serious history lessons handed to me on a railroaded redwood platter. Highly recommend this historical detailed guide to the malevolent, greedy behavior that has shaped California to what the state has become.

COAST HOSPITAL DISTRICT NEWS

January 5, 2024. At a special meeting Thursday evening, Paul Garza, Jr. was elected as the new Chair of the Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board of Directors. Garza is the first Latino/Latinx to serve as Chair of the Board and one of few Latino elected officials in the County. He is also a County appointee to the Sonoma Mendocino Economic Development District, Past Chair of West Business Development Center and a member of the Redwood Region RISE’s Equity Council.

Continuing in his role as Vice-Chair of the MCHCD Board is well-known community advocate and local business owner Paul Katzeff. Susan Savage, political organizer & consultant to teacher organizations, was re-elected as Secretary. Sara Spring, long term coast resident, community activist and bookkeeper for local businesses/non-profits, was likewise re-elected as Treasurer. Past Chair Lee Finney has served as Chair for the past year and has overseen a significant transformation in the direction and mission of the District, but has decided to step down.

MCHCD has also retained the services of Kathy Wylie via an agreement with Regional Government Services. Wylie is the former Chair of the Grand Jury, past Treasurer of the Mendocino Healthcare Foundation and a local real estate Broker.

Established in 1967, the mission of MCHCD is to ensure the continuity of essential health care in the remote communities on the Mendocino Coast. The District’s primary challenge is determining how to finance the State’s mandate to bring the Mendocino Coast Hospital to seismic compliance and to upgrade its aging facilities. 

Those interested can learn more about the District at: https://www.mchcd.org

MILLIONS FOR LESS

Why Would North Coast Residents Pay $500 Million to Have Less Water?

Dear Editor-

Somebody should ask San Rafael’s Congressional Representative, Jared Huffman. 

A group led by Huffman is promoting the destruction of our regional water infrastructure. Their aim is to substantially reduce our regional water storage by removing Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury. Estimated cost: $500 million. 

Huffman’s plan goes against the interests of the North Coast’s nearly 1 million residents, and runs counter to the Biden-Harris administration’s White House Global Action Plan on Water Security. The report makes clear that the US continues to suffer from inadequate water infrastructure. From the report: 

“Here at home, water crises are becoming more frequent and intense. Historic droughts threaten our supply of water, and failing infrastructure and chronic underinvestment deprive our most vulnerable communities of safe drinking the source of both life and livelihoods, water security is central to human and national security.” 

We in the North Coast can relate. 

The White House report adds that its 2021 $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill “will invest in water infrastructure…that includes billions of dollars in funding for projects across the country to build new water reuse, efficiency, storage, and conveyance facilities that secure and grow our water supplies.” 

The law directs $550 billion towards projects that will specifically increase water security, storage capacity, and modernization of water infrastructure. We can surmise from Huffman’s stated position that he is not advocating for the North Coast to receive the benefits of these already approved historic federal funds.

When the federal government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to provide Americans with more water, why would we pay $500 million to have less?

Over the last decade, the North Coast has faced a prolonged regional water crisis. In addition to the nearly $1 billion California has received to date from the Biden infrastructure bill to improve water infrastructure, the state sat on $2.7 billion specifically allocated for water storage development for almost a decade. 

Yet, Representative Huffman intends for us to spend upwards of $500 million to reduce the North Coast’s freshwater storage by 26.2 billion gallons (80,650 Acre Feet) — equal to 9 months and 12 days of water for all 714,420 humans in the district. 

Three key consequences that Huffman’s dam destruction plan does not address: 1) The increased fire risk our residents and firefighters will face due to reduced water availability. 2) The impact on agricultural producers from starving our land of water and aquifer recharge. 3) The economic and environmental costs and health impacts on residents from increasing water and food costs and worsening water scarcity. 

Also missing from Huffman’s project: who will pay the $500 million to fund his destruction of Scott Dam? Taxpayers or ratepayers, it is still us. How does he plan to replace the year-round water supplied by Lake Pillsbury to residents and the new diversion facility – particularly in drought years? Why is he completely disregarding the stated wishes of Lake County, where the lake resides? 

Further, as a result of Sacramento’s housing mandates to all California cities and counties, our region’s demand for water is only going up. How does Jared Huffman square this reality with his plan? How does he square it with the potential $90 million project Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) wants for an emergency water pipeline to the East Bay after Marin “almost ran out of water in 2021”?

Huffman’s group does not have a plan to address our region’s water insecurity. So far, he is only offering his constituents another government entity to manage the reduction of our water resources and, in all likelihood, more taxes. This sounds an awful lot like the failed SMART train, of which Huffman was the campaign co-chair. 

When it becomes evident that this was a grave mistake for Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, who will be held accountable for such a decision? How will the economic, physical, and mental suffering of Mendocino and Sonoma County’s citizens be compensated for? How will we bring back the lost businesses and how many decades will it take for new storage to be approved, funded, and built? 

Prudence dictates that we build a new water source before we remove our current water source. 

Most can agree that California needs more water storage, even China. So why is Huffman pushing a $500 million plan to reduce our water storage without a solution for our water needs? 

He owes all of us an explanation and a plan. We have the land and historic funding for more water storage. All we are missing is leadership. 

— Chris Coulombe, a Veteran running for Congress in California’s 2nd Congressional District. christocongress.com or @christocongress on social media platforms.

(mendofever.com)

COAST CANDIDATE FORUMS

The League of Women Voters of Mendocino County is pleased to present two candidate forums for races appearing on the March 5 ballot. Both forums will be held at Town Hall in Fort Bragg, from 6-8pm.

Thursday, February 1: Candidates for CA Assembly District 2 will present their views and answer questions from the audience.

Friday, February 2: Candidates for Board of Supervisors, District 4 will present their views and answer questions from the audience.

Both events will follow the standard League format. Candidates will give opening statements, written questions will be taken from the audience and closing statements will be given by each candidate. Each forum will be moderated by a League member.

For more information, call 707-937-4952, or visit the League website at https://my.lwv.org/california/mendocino-county.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, January 16, 2024

CARMEN ARENS, Ukiah. Failure to appear, false ID.

KENNEDY CASE, Covelo. Disobeying court order.

MICHAEL GILBERT, Ukiah. Domestic abuse. 

CHRISTOPHER HEANEY, Ukiah. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

JORDAN JOHNSTON, Martinez/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, pot for sale.

JORDYN JUNKER, Fort Bragg. Petty theft, probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER KEYES, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

WAYNE METHO, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

RYAN PLATT, San Francisco/Ukiah. Protective order violation.

RYAN ROYDOWNEY, Covelo. Controlled substance, failure to appear.

BRIAN WETHERN, Fort Bragg. Negligent discharge of firearm, vandalism, resisting.

OAKDALE’S FINEST

by Bob Dempel

I was fortunate some 50 years ago to be a member of the California Agricultural Leadership Program. I joined 29 other upcoming agriculture leaders for a two years pro bono program that included seminars at four agriculture colleges in California, a 14-day national trip, and a 21 day international trip. In total all 30 of us spent around 60 days together during the two years. 

We all became close friends. The 30 of us were from all over California. Twenty-four of us were directly involved in agriculture production and the remaining six were in agriculture support management. 

I was involved in Class 4 of this program that now has been operating for 50 plus years. Anytime you throw 30 people together, some friendships develop stronger than others. Such is the case with Lloyd Stueve and myself, and two or three other participants. Not that I was not friends with all the others, it just happened that a few of us developed a closer bond. 

Lloyd’s background was the dairy business. His family operated Alta Dina Dairy in the Chino Valley of the Los Angeles area. The dairy milked 5,000 cows three times a day. The milk was all non-pasteurized, which is a special way of handling milk as it comes from the cows. Lloyd’s position was to raise younger cows until they were ready to produce milk. Lloyd and his family moved from Chino to Oakdale where he started his own organic dairy. His two boys were involved in the day-to-day operation of the dairy. They milked around 1200 cows three times a day.

Lloyd’s true love was horses and wagons. He would hitch up his horses and participate in parades, festivals, or any other type of gathering that included horses and wagons. Lloyd was known for his constant participation and support of all community activities. He would think nothing of taking a month-long trip that ended in Pahrump, Nevada. One time he told me he was planning a yearlong wagon trip across the US-Canada border from west to east. I asked him just what his wife, Nancy, thought about this idea. His reply was typical, “Oh Bob, she is warming up to the idea.”

Last year Lloyd invited me to his newly acquired ranch in Ravendale. Lloyd thought nothing of sending out post cards with a new picture of him on one side and a short note next to my address. The card in question invited me up for a weekend along with the other Class 4 members of the Ag Leadership program. Now I had never heard of Ravendale, but Lloyd’s post cards directions deemed doable. Just drive up to Susanville. Take 395 up to Ravendale. You will see a sign that says Dodge Ranch. Follow that road out to the east 13 miles and you will see the house on the right-hand side. 

The entire drive seemed a little long for me to drive in one day. I elected to drive from my Santa Rosa home to Reno and stay overnight. The next morning, I followed Lloyd’s directions. Came to Ravendale, saw nothing but a post office, but there was a sign pointing to the Dodge Ranch, which was my destination. I zeroed in the odometer and headed east 13 miles. By now I am driving on a dirt road. I went 13,14,15 miles, and no house on the right. In fact, NO house anywhere. So, I turned around and drove back, calculating where the house should have been. Then I drove back to Ravendale. By this time, it was 3:30 pm. I said, “To hell with this. I’m going back to Susanville.” 

I had a fraternity brother from Susanville. His nephew is currently a county supervisor and I happened to have his phone number. As soon as I could get cell service, I called the nephew and got the name of a motel in Susanville. The next morning, I got up and drove back home to Santa Rosa logging 835 round trip miles. 

I would never have tried this trip if Lloyd had not become such a close friend in the past 50 years. The friendship extends both ways. When our house burned down in the terrible fire of 2017, Lloyd and Nancy immediately drove over to see us and take us out to breakfast.

Around January of this last year Lloyd was involved in a horse-wagon accident. He wound up in the hospital. After weeks he was able to come home. Shirley and I drove to Oakdale to see Lloyd last week. A fellow from Stockton, who was also in our Class 4, and his wife joined us. 

Lloyd is now house bound, spending about 95% of his time in bed. He uses a ventilator and is on oxygen. His right arm is paralyzed and he cannot speak. He knew we were coming to visit him. Nancy told us he had been excited all week, knowing that the four of us were coming to see him on Saturday. 

Words cannot express the shell of a man we saw who we have known and loved for 50 years. My Stockton friend and I did all the talking. We sat outside in the sun. He has a caregiver and two daughters who provide around the clock assistance. We only stayed for a short time. The prognosis is that Lloyd has developed ALS. Having served in Nam, there also seems to be some connection to being sprayed with Ancient Orange herbicide. 

It was a short visit, but a good one. I am not good at visiting sick, old friends. Even writing this article brings tears to my eyes. Enjoy and visit your old friends while they are still healthy.

I visited my friend one more time. This time he was bedridden. The only communication was when he squeezed my finger when I asked him a question. 

The funeral was large and held at the Oakdale Country Club. I am so thankful for the two visits I made to see him. The visits were well worth the drive. 

So I ask all of you to visit an old friend today. There may be no tomorrow.

WOMAN VICIOUSLY ATTACKED BY A DOG AT AN S.F. BEACH. 

The city couldn’t do anything about it.

by Emily Hoeven

A lifelong dog lover and owner, Allison Hooker never thought that one day, the mere sight of a certain type of dog would cause fear to course through her body. 

But now, whenever the 39-year-old real estate agent and standup comedian glimpses a large black pit bull, she’s transported back to the traumatic events of Nov. 9, 2023. 

That morning, Hooker was chatting on the phone after going for a run on Baker Beach, one of her favorite areas in San Francisco with a stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking up, she suddenly saw a big dog “beelining straight for me” from about 100 feet away. 

It then launched “straight into biting me,” Hooker told me recently. 

Stunned and screaming, Hooker pulled her arms into her chest and started spinning in circles, trying to prevent the dog from latching onto her limbs. 

“It tore my sweater all the way up my shoulder because it was jumping that high on me, trying, I think, to go for my neck,” Hooker told me. She later counted 13 bites across her hands, arms, shoulders, thighs, back and buttocks, including particularly nasty bites on her right forearm, left thumb and buttocks that resulted in deep purple scars. 

Eventually, the dog’s owner walked over and pulled the dog off Hooker. But, she said, the owner — whom officials identified as a homeless man named George Jeppson living in a car with Utah license plates — didn’t appear disturbed by the attack and didn’t reprimand his dog, Sky Bear. 

“The owner admitted that his dog is trained to attack and may be amused by his dog attacking people,” Hooker said in a complaint filed with the U.S. Park Police, which, according to a spokesperson, cited Jeppson for failing to leash and restrain his dog. “The owner told me his dog was provoked by my internal struggle or by pulse lasers in me from the CIA.” 

“I love dogs,” she added in the complaint. “However, this is not a dog that can be released back into society.”

About 10 days later, however, San Francisco Animal Care and Control authorities released Sky Bear — whom they’d temporarily quarantined to ensure he didn’t have rabies — back to Jeppson, advising him to keep the dog leashed and muzzled around large crowds. 

Judging by internal memos I reviewed, this probably wasn’t the agency’s preferred course of action: Jeppson lectured animal control officers about “government mind control,” asserted that he worked for the CIA, and argued that pit bulls “have been used for mind control research.” Sky Bear also did poorly in the shelter, exhibiting aggressive behavior that negatively affected other animals and made it difficult for technicians to administer medication, the notes show. 

But the decision wasn’t in local officials’ hands. 

“Right or wrong is not in play — it’s what the law says that we’re able to do,” Animal Care and Control spokesperson Deb Campbell told me. 

Had Hooker been attacked on city property, her case would have gone through San Francisco’s process for determining whether a dog is vicious and dangerous. This culminates in an independent hearing officer deciding what actions, if any, should be taken to protect public safety — such as owner education, obedience training, requiring the dog to wear a muzzle, and in extremely rare situations, euthanasia. 

But when Hooker called city authorities for an update on her case, they told her their hands were tied because the attack had happened on federal land. Lacking jurisdiction, they had no choice but to release Sky Bear. 

“I was so livid,” Hooker told me. 

City and federal officials could resolve this jurisdictional issue quickly, but thus far they’ve chosen not to. 

For years, they operated under an informal agreement that allowed San Francisco officials to handle dangerous dog cases that happened on federal land within the city. That fell apart in 2019 when a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled that city officials have no jurisdiction over federal property — siding with a woman who appealed San Francisco Animal Care and Control’s classification of her dog as vicious and dangerous after an incident at Crissy Field, which is on federal land. 

More than four years later, local and federal officials still haven’t closed this loophole — and few players involved seem willing to step up to the plate. 

A U.S. Park Police spokesperson referred my questions about jurisdiction to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which said, “Park law enforcement continues to respond to reports of dog bites … using the same enforcement actions that have always been available to us.”

City Attorney spokesperson Jen Kwart told me in a statement, “San Francisco remains open to allowing our federal partners to participate in our program for addressing dangerous dogs. While talks to reach an agreement in 2019 stalled, we have recently restarted these conversations with the Presidio Trust with regard to federal land under the Trust’s jurisdiction.” 

Stuck in this legal limbo, Hooker is taking steps to protect herself. 

She still goes on runs, but now she carries mace. She’s extra careful when unknown dogs are around her partner’s kids. And she’s especially alert when taking her new puppy, Ramon, out on walks. 

Hooker still firmly supports allowing dogs to go off-leash in certain areas of San Francisco “because that’s not the problem.” The real issue, she said, is the lack of political will to develop a process for handling cases like hers, rare as they may be. 

“Why that gap can’t get closed is kind of beyond everyone,” she said. 

STARVATION AS WARFARE

by Alex de Waal

At the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday, South Africa has accused Israel of genocide. At the heart of its argument is the claim that Israel is destroying the people of Gaza through starvation. Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention prohibits “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Israel says the charges are “baseless.”

The food system in Gaza has collapsed completely. The health system has collapsed. Basic infrastructure for clean water and sanitation has collapsed. According to the Famine Review Committee, the people of Gaza are facing a real prospect of famine: without immediate action, mass mortality from hunger or disease outbreaks is looming. The FRC delivers its assessments to a group of international relief agencies operating an early warning system known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

As I’ve written before in relation to the crisis in Tigray, the IPC identifies five phases of food (in)security: normal, stressed, crisis, emergency and catastrophe/famine. A famine is said to occur in a given area when “at least 20% of the population is affected, with about one out of three children being acutely malnourished and two people dying per day for every 10,000 inhabitants due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.” Households can be in phase 5 catastrophe even if a famine has not been declared for the wider area. According to the most recent FRC analysis of Gaza, dated December 21, 2023, “at least one in four households (more than half a million people) in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic acute food insecurity conditions.”

Another way of diagnosing and defining famine is by the number of excess deaths attributable to hunger and related causes. A “great” famine is one in which 100,000 or more people die and a “major” famine has a threshold of 10,000 excess deaths. This is useful for historical famines but not for food crises as they unfold.

Save the Children has warned that deaths in Gaza due to starvation and related causes may soon exceed the approximately 22,000 fatalities directly caused by the military onslaught. Families are often going one, two or three days without any food. Infectious diseases, which are often the proximate cause of death among malnourished people, are spreading. Nearly 70% of housing is estimated to have been destroyed or damaged. Few people have access to clean drinking water and fewer still to toilets. The risk of outbreaks of waterborne and other infectious diseases is extremely high.

If the catastrophe in Gaza continues on its current trajectory, the prediction of mass death from disease, hunger and exposure will come to pass. If humanitarian assistance is provided promptly and at scale, deaths from hunger and disease will stabilize and decline, but they will still take time to return to pre-crisis levels. 

Even with an immediate cessation of hostilities and delivery of emergency aid, along with efforts to restore water, sanitation and health services, mortality would remain elevated for weeks or months. Even this would constitute a “major” famine, according to the definition of 10,000 or more deaths. A “great” famine, with 100,000 or more excess deaths, may be in prospect if the current level of hostilities and destruction continues.

The war crime of starvation is defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions.”

“Objects indispensable to survival” (OIS) include not only food but also water, medicine and shelter. There is no requirement that individuals perish of starvation for the crime to have been committed; it is sufficient for them to have been deprived of OIS. Human Rights Watch and others have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute the war crime of starvation.

General Giora Eiland, a former head of the Israeli National Security Council, has written: “People might ask whether we want the people of Gaza to starve. We do not … The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave.” 

This is still a starvation crime.

Siege warfare is not in itself unlawful, but can become so if it disproportionately and systematically deprives civilians of OIS. 

The siege of Gaza from 2006 onwards is a controversial case: Israel controlled food, water, medical and electricity supplies almost completely; it was rigorous in deciding what commodities would be permitted into the Strip, while seeking not to fall afoul of international humanitarian law. In the words of Dov Weisglass, an adviser to the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, “the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Over the years, the siege caused severe deprivation. “Prior to the current conflict,” according to UN findings published last month,

“64% of households in Gaza Strip were food insecure or vulnerable to food insecurity, with 124,500 young children living in food poverty … Additionally, before the hostilities began on October 7, UNRWA reported that over 90% of the water in Gaza had been deemed unfit for human consumption.

This is the situation from which Gaza was rapidly reduced to catastrophe. The Israeli government has acted in full knowledge of existing humanitarian conditions and the effects of any actions it chose to take. So, too, has Hamas. 

But that is not relevant to determining Israel’s responsibility. On October 9, the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, said: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” The tiny amounts of humanitarian assistance subsequently permitted to enter Gaza mitigate neither the force of this statement nor its impact.

In terms of the framework elaborated by David Marcus, a law professor at UCLA, this is a prima facie indication of a first-degree “famine crime.” Even if Gallant’s statement does not reflect state policy or military strategy, the fact that Israel’s military campaign has continued without any significant alteration of its methods after the humanitarian consequences have become clear means the operation in Gaza is also a second-degree famine crime. Either way, reducing Gaza to a situation in which famine is in prospect is not only a war crime under the Rome Statute, but a crime against humanity.

The IPC was developed in 2004. With reference to its procedures and criteria, famines were declared in Somalia in 2011 and South Sudan in 2017. In other cases, including Ethiopia, Nigeria and Yemen, the FRC has identified widespread IPC phase 4 (“emergency”) conditions and warned of impending famine if immediate humanitarian action was not taken. Famine was not declared in Syria, where the IPC did not collect data. 

In the historical catalogue of famines and incidents of mass starvation, it is hard to find a close parallel with the situation in Gaza. Few cases combine such a comprehensive siege with such comprehensive destruction of OIS. The absolute numbers of people who die in Gaza will not match those of the calamitous 20th-century famines, because the afflicted population is smaller, yet the proportionate death toll may be comparable.

The rigor, scale and speed of the destruction of OIS and enforcement of the siege surpasses any other case of man-made famine in the last 75 years. The FRC warns that outright famine conditions may be widespread as early as next month. Comparisons can be made with the forced starvation of Biafra (1967-70), the siege of Sarajevo (1992-95), the “kneel or starve” tactics used by the Assad government in Syria and the starvation crimes perpetrated by the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea in Tigray (2020-22).

In a comparative historical typology, Bridget Conley and I have identified nine purposes of starvation for the political and military actors that perpetrate it at scale, of which the first five are: extermination or genocide; control through weakening a population; gaining territorial control; flushing out a population; punishment. 

For the government of Israel, the starvation of Gaza undoubtedly conforms to the last four of these. If some of the statements from senior Israeli politicians are to be taken at face value, and if Israel continues its campaign without respite, after an unequivocal warning of famine, then the case for invoking extermination and genocide may become compelling. Calling responsible actors to account is a key to ending the crime of starvation and Israel is no exception.

(London Review of Books)

BERNIE SANDERS is set to force a full Senate vote on a resolution that would force the U.S. to investigate alleged Israel war crimes and withhold aid if they are found to have merit. Just after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, U.S. lawmakers were in lockstep with support for the Jewish state's aggressive response in Gaza. But as the months wear on and the Palestinian civilian death toll launches upward, liberal Democrats have begun to sour on President Benjamin Netanyahu's military campaign, and the push for more U.S. money to fund the bloody offensive. The resolution is expected to fail during a Tuesday evening vote given that Republicans still widely support Israel without condition. But it will put the break among Democrats over the Middle Eastern conflict on full display. (Daily Mail)

US DEFEATISM HELPS DESTROY GAZA

Dear Editor,

In the tension-filled Middle East, advice by outsiders is cheap. On Oct. 7, 2023 Israeli kabbutzes on the Gaza border were overcome by brutal Hamas terrorists. Over two hundred hostages were captured; over one hundred, if still living, were taken back to Gaza. This wound continues justifiably infuriating Isreal.

The IDF, under orders of the Israeli Cabinet (President Nitanaho) retaliates by bombing, invading Gaza with its troops to hunt down and kill or capture Hamas militants, cutting off food, medicines, and water to all Gazan residents. Charges of “genocide” made by the South Aftican Government to the World Court. Daily mass protests are held in cities like Cotati and San Francisco, California and across Europe. Ugly and unfair antisemitism and antimuslimism have become common.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls for peace. The Biden Administration stops short of calling for a cease fire. 24,000 Gazans have been killed, about 60,000 wounded. Two thirds of the total killed or wounded were women or children. Secretary Blinken has traveled throughout the entire region. He was quoted today saying, “When the fighting ends, with help of other Middle East nations, like Saudi Arabia, Quatar, and Jordan may rebuild Gaza.

Frank H. Baumgardner, III 

Santa Rosa,

AN AMERICAN ICONOCLAST: Cornel West on the Campaign Trail

President Joe Biden's approval rating is in a tailspin. Dr. Cornel West is a logical choice for defecting Democrats, but a distaste for "kissing ass" may doom his independent run

by Matt Taibbi

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Getting late in the day on Saturday in Freedom Plaza, where attendees of a massive Free Palestine rally are stomping feet from Protest Cold. That’s when the thermostat number doesn’t look bad when you leave home, but starts numbing bones many hours and thirty or forty speeches later. The condition is more pronounced on the progressive side.

Author, philosopher and presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West is the big speaking draw and therefore has been held until the end. By the time he takes the stage in trademark shades and black suit, you can almost hear teeth rattling. “Let the word go forth… It’s in the name of truth,” he says. “And the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak.”

He looks out over the crowd. Freedom Plaza is named after Martin Luther King, Jr., who’s said to have written the “I Have a Dream” speech in the nearby Willard Hotel. West, whose love of “Brother Martin” is such that he seldom gets through an appearance without invoking his name, opens by reminding the audience of time and place.

“Yes, it’s indeed true that brother Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve been 95 years old on Mon-dayyy…”

The crowd roars. They’d have cheered anything, but looks of relief were washing over many faces even before West took the stage. The Gaza issue is of course deathly serious, but the preceding hours of hyper-earnest speechifying featured addresses that were too long, too oddly religious given the Mundo Obrero politics, or so leaden that words landed like tent spikes driven through the ear. There was also spoken-word poetry of almost supernatural cringe levels, as if someone mated Kimberlé Crenshaw with Dr. Seuss: You announce: Gaza terrorist attack/But when it comes to the murder of Palestinians, your facts are all wack…

Bush-era antiwar protests sometimes featured too much levity, with a clear overpopulation especially of dudes on stilts, but this generation’s left/ANSWER Coalition-style protests tend in tone to be ascetic and self-mortifying to the extreme, as if one off-message microsecond is thoughtcrime. West’s jazzlike verbal improv represents the far edge of allowable looseness in this brand of activism, which is likely why he mostly has the crowd won a few sentences into his address. He went on:

“Don’t let anyone lie on you and say that we here in the name of hatred,” he says. “They could be on the chocolate side of Washington, DC. They could be Dalits in India, they could be landless peasants in Brazil, they can be indigenous peoples, they can be Iranians, they can be Iraqis. Anybody. This is a human thing we’re here for.”

He goes on, frequently returning to comparisons of Gaza to Jim Crow, noting for instance musician and football star Paul Robeson’s famous “We charge genocide” petition to the United Nations in 1951. He adds: “It is consistent to be in solidarity with South Africa,” the nation that just charged Israel with the same thing in the International Court of Justice.

Setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not there’s a real parallel between the black American experience and the current situation in Gaza — it seems a complicated case to this Gen-X white reporter, but what do I know? — West’s stump technique stands out. Had he gone into politics early instead of academia, he could easily be in high office already, as he has a skill set that ham-and-egger speakers like John Kerry or Mitt Romney will only ever experience in dreams.

As an orator West has things in common with his late friend and musical partner, Prince, who to the uninitiated also sometimes came across as derivative at first blush. There was so much Hendrix, James Brown, and Curtis Mayfield in Prince that at times he felt like a tribute act, but listen just a little and you heard the synthesis into something very original. West has the hair of Frederick Douglass, the lyricism of King, and at times, the surgical anger of Malcolm X. But the sum is uniquely him, which might be his problem, politically.

From a literary standpoint West is arguably superior to all his heroes — his ability to rattle off mellifluous sentences extemporaneously is unique in American popular culture — but his default temperament is sunny, ingratiating, and forgiving, maybe to a fault. All great politicians have a streak of P.T. Barnum in them, an instinct for calculation and (if needed) ruthlessness that never leaves them. Surely this is an exhausting type of person to be, but they’re all wired that way. Dr. West is a nice man.

Back to the stage. West is still talking about Gaza.

“What kind of world are we living in, America? What kind of country? What kind of empire? All of that barbarity, all of that bestiality?” (He pronounces barbarity with the last syllables stretched out, like King’s “long night of captivity.”) “When I think of Biden and Harris and Austin and Blinken, and Sullivan and Kirby” — booo! comes the rising sentiment from the crowd — “I say personally to Biden and company… You oughtta be shamed!”

The crowd roars again. Standing to the side of the stage, I can’t see its end. It was hard also to avoid seeing the awesome quantity of anti-Biden signage in the crowd. A Code Pink group was toting a BIDEN BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS canvas, while GENOCIDE JOE was heavily represented in chants and in at least one fat red sign periodically seen in the crowd’s dead center. A campaign reportedly begun by the National Conference of Swing State Muslim Leaders last month created an impressively ubiquitous call to ABANDON BIDEN, with holders of such signs scattered all over, departing from the modern American-left strategy of toothless protest, i.e. making noise without electoral punishment. This crowd isn’t trying to send a message. It wants Biden ridden from office.

All this creates an opportunity for West, or would, absent other factors. Again, whatever your feelings about the crisis that exploded to new dimensions on October 7th last year, Israel and Gaza have already dramatically altered the 2024 presidential race. Nearly 50% of Democrats disapprove of Biden’s policies, and support of Israel is particularly unpopular with the youngest voting Democrats. Polls now show either a dead heat or Biden slightly behind Donald Trump in a theoretical national contest.

With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. forcefully taking Israel’s side and other Democratic primary challengers effectively boxed out by internal machinations, the natural destination for this potentially sizable, even election-shifting bloc of votes would be West, who’s shown as much as 6% support in the few national polls that included him heading into this year. West drawing even four or five percent in a general election would make winning outright a tough proposition for Biden. But there’s a catch.

“It will be very hard for Cornel to get on the ballot,” says Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, who also spoke at the event. “He’s on one state.”

As of now, West is on the ballot in Alaska only. He announced his run in June and soon was the presumptive Green Party candidate, with virtually guaranteed wide ballot access. The Greens already had access to 18 states sewn up by July and historically have nearly always given candidates a solid theoretical chance to win, reaching a ballot high of 45 states (and a possible 480 electoral votes) in 2016.

The Greens should have been delighted to have a candidate whose very name inspired Beltway sack-shrinkage — West’s announcement led to a spate of transparent hit pieces, with Democrats horrified by visions of progressive and black voter defections — but the reality of party politics, even Green Party politics, is almost unimaginably complicated for rookies. West in October bailed on the Greens, apparently exhausted by bureaucratic requirements and the need to, as Politico put it, “kiss ass.”

“There are so many different factions within the party, and each faction has its own hoops that you’ve got to jump through, that it makes it tough,” says Tyrel Ventura, whose father Jesse flirted with a Green run in 2020.

West recently raised $100,000 in California, but he’ll need a lot more than that to be a factor in November. Worse, failure to hustle signatures or make enough deals (“There’s a chance that we might be able to connect with some other parties too,” West says) to be a candidate at all is a powerful argument against one’s executive fitness. West seems aware of this.

“We on the move. We on the move,” he said, after the event. “We should be on about fifteen states by the Ides of March. We’re on Alaska already, and nearly in Utah and Oregon.” He smiles a little, then concedes: “It’s going to be an uphill battle.”

If not to West, to whom do these votes go? Please remember this is a campaign story, not one making judgments about Israel or Palestine, and the extraordinary electoral angle on these Palestine protests is the sheer quantity of disaffected voters the crowds represent. If one assumes Joe Biden won’t be a choice for this demographic, that likely leaves Stein, West, RFK, Jr, and Trump, and Trump is shockingly no longer the absolute non-option he once was in crowds like this.

“I voted for Biden in the last election. There’s no chance I’m voting for this guy in the upcoming election, because of this,” says Faisal Siddiqi. “There’s still a chance I could vote for Trump, because to me he’s not an ideologue. There’s still a chance we can work with him.” His strategic calculation: “It’s a democracy, right? You have to earn my vote. I'm not going to give you my vote for no reason.”

“There are many people with real integrity who are turning to Trump as the only option,” says Stein. “We’ve seen that in the Palestine support community as well, there’s the Abandon Biden movement coming from this, and initially, many of them are turning to Trump as a way to punch back.”

It’s not that big of a surprise. Close your eyes and the rhetoric overlaps with those at MAGA rallies. It’s “endless wars” instead of “forever wars,” “Genocide Joe” instead of “Crooked Joe,” “lying corporate media” instead of “failing fake news media,” and so on. One speaker even talked about how “people are doing their own research” and “waking up” to the “convoluted narrative” on TV by communicating with one another on social media.

This is what’s so irritating about all the panic stories about a “horseshoe theory” in which the “radical left” and “radical right” are supposedly plotting to unite and undermine the virtuous center. What actually happens is that ordinary people across the spectrum find themselves screwed over in similar ways, and people of differing political orientations end up saying and feeling the same types of things, organically.

There are so many demographics recoiling from traditional politics now that in a fair electoral fight, Washington consensus would surely lose. This is why, after decades in which third parties were mostly irrelevant at the presidential level (with the exception of Ross Perot’s brief surge in the 1992 cycle), ballot access is suddenly a commodity more prized than gold. Anyone with a pulse who can order a cheeseburger without help will be a serious option for millions, once voters disappear into booths in November. The problem is getting names on ballots.

Republican frontrunner Trump faces myriad legal challenges to remain an every-state option. RFK, Jr., Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson either were or still are being stonewalled in a Democratic primary season dominated by ballot shenanigans, with the blue party refusing to count New Hampshire results or canceling the Florida primary. This is all happening as a free-falling Biden keeps hitting new record approval lows, the latest a gruesome 33%, three points below Lyndon Johnson’s fatal 36% number from 1968. Maybe not since the Jefferson-Adams election of 1800, when a House runoff decided the presidency on the 36th try, has American politics been so rife with uncertainties. Have we seen anything like this chaos?

“History is such a minefield of chaos, brother,” West replies. “You can go back to so many early elections, and you’ve got shootouts, you got people hiding in basements. And so American history, not just American history but human history in general —each moment has its own distinctive form of specific chaos.” He pauses. “But this particular moment of chaos is quite gargantuan now. No doubt about that.”

If the reader can’t tell already, I like Cornel West. He’s something that’s hard for a celebrity to be in modern America, original and true to himself. We imagine intellectuals to be ethereal creatures, with no skills beyond moving words around. A good thinker however is a person of action, converting the idea on the page into a living thing by standing behind it in the physical world. West to me recalls the sadly long tradition of prolific thinkers cast out by friends when they refused to compromise. He’s written about this, pointing to line 24A in Plato’s Apology, which he framed as, “The cause of my unpopularity was my parrhesia, my fearless speech, my frank speech.” West’s heroes like Malcolm X, King, and W.E.B. Du Bois were all castigated by would-be allies for such a habit of parrhesia, and seemingly all were more beset by critics and haters in their lifetimes than history remembers.

Maybe the political issues aren’t quite as severe as the ones King or Du Bois faced, but West’s refusal over decades to bend to the new Clintonian paradigm of “transactional politics” — better known as “selling out” — has made him a pariah in a left-liberal world that once adored him. Trace back far enough and his presidential run seems like the inevitable end result of a long career of refusing to go along to get along. Before the Israel-Palestine conflict made him a threat to “peel off Arab American voters” in a run The Economist says “holds dangers for Joe Biden,” West’s most constant complaints centered around the Democrats’ embrace of the neoliberal economics of Wall Street donors and their failure to halt the expansion of the carceral state. He blames Republicans equally or more, but never having been a Republican, the feelings aren’t as hard.

The grandson of a Baptist minister who grew up in a segregated section of Sacramento, West graduated from Harvard in 1973, gained a doctorate in Philosophy from Princeton in 1980, and started an academic career that would see repeated clashes with administrators. While a Harvard professor in the early 2000s, president Larry Summers called him in for a talk after he made headlines for working on political campaigns (for Bill Bradley, for instance) and for putting out a rap album. Summers reportedly asked West to report to him about his activities every two to three months. When a New York Times writer asked if it were true that he reported directly to Summers, West seethed, “Professors do not have supervisors, brother… Professors are free agents.”

By 2008 West returned to Princeton and was probably the left’s leading “public intellectual.” He was more telegenic and accessible to the Internet generation than Noam Chomsky, a regular on shows like Real Time With Bill Maher. However, he quickly irritated some in the now blue-controlled capital with his insufficiently ebullient response to Barack Obama’s election. “We’re coming to the end of the epoch of the Southern Strategy. For the first time now, we’ve got some democratic possibilities,” he said in cautious tones, after Obama’s win. “Barack Obama is a symbol, but we’ve got to move from symbol to substance.”

Saying he wanted to be Frederick Douglass pressuring the “progressive Lincoln” he hoped Obama would become, West soon argued with Obama, too. Though some of the arguments sound petty (there was a dispute about inauguration tickets, for instance), the through-line was West’s disappointment with Obama’s courting of donors, Wall Street confidantes, and mainstream (read: white) media celebrities. “Your economic team has little or no concern about poor and working people,” West wrote to Obama, on the first anniversary of his inauguration. “Job creation is an afterthought.”

Soon after the heat dialed up in an NPR interview, when West noted that Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd got White House invites when they were critical of Obama, but “I say the same thing, he talks to me like I’m a Cub Scout.” From there West blasted Obama as a “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats,” and the press in particular began to turn on the man who had been a go-to quote for ages.

West returned to politics in the 2016 cycle as a confidante and advisor to Bernie Sanders. I frequently saw the two together at campaign events in both 2016 and 2020, and Sanders asked West to be one of five people sent to help write the 2016 Democratic Platform. However, they too eventually had a falling out, from the outside seemingly over the same issue. After West announced his run this summer, he said there were some progressive politicians who “don’t really want to tell the full truth,” being fearful of hurting Biden’s electoral cause. West for instance derided the idea that Biden’s is “the best economy” that we can get.

“Is this the best that we can get? You don’t tell that lie to the people just for Biden to win,” West quipped. Sanders responded by saying there “has to be a unification of progressive people,” given the threat of Donald Trump, “an authoritarian, and a very, very dangerous person.”

Sanders from the start of his presidential run was so fearful of offending the Democratic barons that he never even spoke out loud the clear subtext of his 2016 run, a referendum on Obama’s Wall Street-stroking policies. By 2020, some in the Sanders circle were clearly frustrated by Bernie’s refusal to throw his hard-earned weight around, seething when Bernie rolled over for his old Senate pal, Joe Biden. After effectively sealing the nomination following Super Tuesday in 2020, Biden’s team assumed Sanders would go out and bust his fanny to deliver his constituents for the cause, even as they planned all along to ball-kick him after election with moves like the nomination of noted Sanders-basher Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

West over the years has traveled from Barack Obama’s inner circle to Bernie’s camp to his current status of being pushed outside the club entirely, with running the only means left to express disagreement. I asked West if he was motivated by the party’s treatment of Sanders, with the idea of showing more backbone.

“No, no, the main reason for running is the way they treat poor people and working people,” West replied. “I love Bernie, but that’s not the main one. It would be about number 47.” He laughed. “But I love the man.”

Another quality about West that irks Democratic loyalists is his willingness to engage with conservatives. He rarely agrees with them — his tussles with Sean Hannity in particular make good television, with West dragging Hannity over Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five a typical exchange — but doesn’t blanch at talking to red-state audiences and seems to work at being even-handed in his statements. While describing Trump as a “bonafide gangster and neofascist,” he still objected strongly to the Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Trump from the ballot, saying Democrats should “not rely on the courts as a mechanism to circumvent Brother Biden’s anemic poll numbers.”

Some of West’s positions would be a very hard sell to middle America. “Nationalize the fossil fuel industry” is one that stands out, along with reparations, although “end the war on drugs” and free pre-K care might go down easier. Still, my guess is West’s wit and no-bullshit attitude would, with time, go over well enough with most every demographic but the one currently running the country, i.e. upscale white liberals. The latter group simply has no patience for people who’ll talk about their flaws to their faces, and West is the dictionary definition of that. When I told West I’d heard a few Trump supporters in Iowa mention his name along with RFK, Jr. as evidence an electoral fix was in, he talked about trying not to be self-conscious when talking to “Trump country.”

“I don’t approach them in terms of them being stereotyped,” he says. “They’re human beings wrestling with a lot of economic frustration and deprivation. Now, they’ve got some xenophobic sensibilities you got to work with. But one out eight of them voted for my very dear brother Bernie Sanders, and one out of twelve voted for Obama. People are subject to shifts given the fluctuating moments that we live in.” He paused. “You just don’t know. So I will continue to go and talk to them.”

West isn’t for everyone. He will say things that will make the average Trump voter’s head explode, in one minute speaking in campus-intersectionality catch-phrases about “male supremacy” or transphobia, in another talking about the “neofascist moment” that produced Trump. However, as his current presidential run shows, he’s not toeing any party line when he talks. He doesn’t seem capable of it. Even when he tries to align with an institution, it seems in his nature to eventually say the impolitic thing and break with doctrine.

For instance, he’s a founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but ask him about capitalism, and he’s as likely to speak in reply about Christian beliefs or T.S. Eliot’s hollow men as he is to cite Marx. This is a person who doesn’t know how to be boring, and it may be that his fate is to be more America’s Cassandra than its next Lincoln — a terrific talker, warner, and explainer of things, but lacking the iron digestion of an organizational man.

“You can’t do this on the fly, especially if you don't have a team of experienced people,” says Stein, who helped recruit West to the Green Party. “That’s what a political party is. They are flawed animals… It’s people who are aligning around an agreed-upon political agenda. And you work on it.”

That West couldn’t work on it with the Greens is fine. The world needs interesting people, too. It just happens that at this moment, it also desperately needs real political choices. Can West find a new gear to become one?

WEST VIRGINIA, 1946...

James Robert Howard asks the blessing before eating supper. Gilliam Coal and Coke Company, Gilliam Mine, Gilliam, McDowell County, West Virginia...

Source: National Archives Russell Lee photographer

THE PRUDE'S ALPHABET

by Don Marquis

A is for Tarsus. The current short skirts

Do not conceal it, which pleases the flirts.

.

B is the letter for Gentleman Cow --

Some persons throw them. I cannot see how.

.

C for a Cow's little child that drinks milk;

There's another kind, too, that is covered with silk.

.

D is for -- Dash! It is so like a curse

That nothing could make me employ it in verse!

.

E is for Embonpoint; -- much nicer word

Than some of the synonyms which I have heard.

.

F is for Falstaff, a naughty old man;

Avoid his example as much as you can.

.

G for a substance that's made into strings

For fiddles; 'tis taken from kitties and things.

.

H for a word that means...well, embrace.

The rhyme for it, "rug." It may lead to disgrace!

.

I is a painful dermal disease

That keeps people scratching. Don't mention it please!

.

J is for Jackal, a terrible beast

Whose dinner demeanor's not nice in the least.

.

K is the joint midway of the limb;

It moves when we walk, it moves when we swim.

.

L for the members producing the gait --

The iniquitous Octobus really has eight!

.

M is for Modest. Sincerely I trust

That you'll always be modest. Be Modest or . . . bust.

.

N for a kind of an orange; the kind

That is simple and sweet and has a thin rind.

.

O for obnoxious! It grieves me to find

So much that is so in my delicate mind.

.

P for a word that sounds very like dimple;

Cosmetics produce them on gentle or simple.

.

Q is for Questionable persons and things --

If people are married they ought to have rings.

.

R is for Roue'; for decency's sake

Avoid such grosser locutions as rake.

.

S is for Polecat, so pretty and cute;

Don't make him a pet, he's a treacherous brute.

.

T is for Tongue. O, pray, keep it clean,

And never say bluntly the things that you mean!

.

U for the garments worn next to the skin;

In winter they're thick and in summer they's thin.

.

V is for Vampire -- I don't mean the ladies

That movie films show sending persons to Hades.

.

W is for Weather, the safest of topics --

But even so, children, don't dwell in the tropics!

.

X, Y and Z are Equations Unknown,

So a prudent young person will let them alone.

.

LIFE Magazine, August 11, 1921

(via Betsy Cawn)