Mendocino County Today: Thursday 6/12/2025

Cooling | Rambling Roses | Museum Bees | Jazz Scholarship | Pomo Presentation | County Dysfunction | Garden Winners | City Business | Local Events | GJ Report | Coast Clowns | Mendo Artists | Willard Family | Wine Woes | Firefighter Pilots | Demonstrations Map | Tea Class | Concert Series | Last Letter | Louisa Knox | Yesterday's Catch | Fed Up | Klamath Classic | Dining Out | PG&E Monopoly | Giants Win | Ladies Night | Delta Bill | Low Wages | Cannabis License | Welk Compensation | Keno Dam | Couch Party | LA ICE | Protest Guide | To Marines | Solnit Suspended | Message Massaging | Our Mission? | Send Marines | Speedy Gonzales | Coordinated Protests | Joyful Dance | Lead Stories | Brian Wilson | Barney Ford | Olmert Opinion | Solve Angles

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INTERIOR daytime high temperatures forecast to diminish each day through Friday. Coastal stratus coverage becoming less through the week with clear skies possible Friday afternoon. Breezy winds are to be expected through the rest of the week into the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 51F with fog this Thursday morning on the coast. You can see on the satellite shot the fog is breaking up some along the coast. Hence our forecast has a lot more "clear" in it than fog going into the weekend. HOWEVER, we all know the games the fog plays, so...

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WHAT’S THE BUZZ AT THE KELLEY HOUSE MUSEUM?

Last week, the Kelley House was buzzing and not just with excitement for our new exhibit on the history of brewing on the Mendocino Coast! Our curator Averee noticed a swarm of bees were nesting inside a hole they (or some other critter) had chewed into the siding on the Kelley House Vault.

Luckily, we knew just who to call: beekeeper and Director of the Noyo Center for Marine Science Sheila Semans (yes, Kelley House Director Anne Semans’ sister!) and her “Bee Team,” Dave and Anne Turner, who came to the rescue!

After donning their protective bee suits, they carefully removed the siding and discovered a hive complete with honeycomb. Sheila snapped a close-up photo and explained "We smoked the bees so they moved back. The capped comb is brood; the next generation of bees!” They removed most of the bees with a shop vac and are relocating them to Fort Bragg temporarily.

Fun fact from Anne Turner: if you don’t move the bees more than two miles away, they’ll find their way back.

A huge Thank You to Sheila, Dave, and Anne for spending their afternoon saving this buzzing little colony!

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MENDO HIGH JAZZ SCHOLARSHIP WINNER

Mendocino High School graduate Markus Oliveira, 2025 Mendocino Coast Jazz Society Scholarship, winner receives his check for $2000.00, and congratulations from Jazz Society board member Karl Schoen. The Mendocino Coast Jazz Society has been awarding scholarships to deserving students for 40 years.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K0ZEyoLvrVJcqrM77c_bnaxZ6OXKFk7g?usp=drive_link

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AV POMO PRESENTATION ON VIDEO

For those of you that missed David Severn, Elizabeth Knight, Jeff Burroughs and others talking about the AV Pomo, past, present and future, you can enjoy it from the comfort of your easy chair. Just click on this link from the Anderson valley museum youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1E0m5wf7M0

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A READER WRITES: On County functioning:

100% they will hire “managers” with a proper degree to hold the space and bill for services. The managers are not trained, nor mentored because there are No Mentors Left. The underling staff doing work while micro managed and controlled to not outshine the “managers”. Lots of narcissistic bullies with a certain tone deaf joy d vie, tasked with upholding and defending to the BOS the lack of functioning due to poor staffing!

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IS THE FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL SHUNNING PUBLIC ON MILL SITE UNTIL AFTER DECISIONS ARE MADE?

Editor,

Last Monday, Fort Bragg’s City Manager asked the City Council to approve negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mendocino Railway to build hundreds of housing units and commercial/industrial buildings on the contaminated former Georgia Pacific Mill Site. The City Manager also asked the Council to approve a “Mill Site Strategy Report” to guide negotiations with the railway.

The Strategy Report is a long poorly written, jargon saturated document filled with disputed & contradicting assertions. It embraces controversial proposals such as heavy industry locomotive & rail car maintenance/repair activities and significantly expanded train operations being exempted from State and local coastal zone land use and environmental regulation.

It is the product of 8 months of closed door City and Mendocino Railway negotiations that excluded public observation or participation.

Yet this very controversial report was only released to the public 5 days before the Council’s action.

That is an entirely insufficient time for public review and is completely inconsistent with the public involvement promises the City made to the community.

Several community members asked the Council to postpone action until after the City holds a public headlands workshop later this month. But in their haste to act, a three Council member majority (Hockett, Rafanan, Godeke) out voted the minority to proceed immediately before the public workshop.

The actions of the three Council members demonstrates a callous lack of respect for public involvement. Voters should keep this in mind in the upcoming 2026 Council election.

Peter McNamee

Fort Bragg

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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GRAND JURY REPORT: MENDOCINO COUNTY PLANNING AND BUILDING DEPARTMENT

Structural Issues: Exposing the Cracks

Report Summary:

If you’ve ever had to deal with Mendocino County’s Planning and Building Department, this report is for you.

The 2024-25 Mendocino County Grand Jury report entitled: “Planning and Building Department Structural Issues: Exposing the Cracks” digs into complaints from residents, and what Grand Jurors found is troubling.

The full report lays it out in detail. If you’ve ever wondered why your neighbor got a permit in a week while you waited months, you might just find some answers.

Read it at: https://mendocinocounty.org/government/grand-jury

Prior to publication, each Civil Grand Jury report is reviewed and approved by the full panel of seated jurors, by the Mendocino County Counsel office, and by Judge Moorman of the Superior Court.

Mary Leittem-Thomas, Foreperson

ED NOTE: Has the Grand Jury ever evaluated the County Counsel’s office?

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MENDOCINO COUNTY GRAND JURY WARNS OF A WILDFIRE WAITING TO HAPPEN

by Matt LaFever

A new report from the 2024-25 Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury has slammed the county’s Planning and Building Services (PBS) for major shortcomings that could endanger lives. The report, titled “PLANNING AND BUILDING DEPARTMENT: STRUCTURAL ISSUES: EXPOSING THE CRACKS,” reveals widespread problems with how the department handles building permits and enforces safety rules, especially concerning wildfire prevention.

The Grand Jury’s investigation, prompted by multiple public complaints and confirmed by site visits, uncovered a troubling pattern: the misuse of “Class K” building permits. These permits were originally meant for simple, owner-built homes in rural areas with basic safety standards. But now, the report says, PBS is improperly issuing them for all sorts of structures, including commercial buildings and large homes that don’t meet standard safety codes. In fact, nearly half of all building permits issued in 2024 were for these “substandard” Class K structures, creating a county full of buildings that don’t meet proper safety requirements.

A major concern highlighted in the report is PBS’s failure to enforce California Public Resources Code § 4290, which sets crucial fire safety rules for construction in high-risk areas. This isn’t just a minor oversight; it’s a serious threat to public safety. With the memory of the devastating 2017 Redwood Complex wildfire—which destroyed hundreds of homes and killed nine people—still fresh, the Grand Jury warns that PBS’s negligence is “setting the stage for another catastrophic life safety event.” By allowing unpermitted or improperly built structures to stand without proper fire breaks, emergency access, or water supplies, the county is leaving residents and first responders highly vulnerable to future wildfires.

The Grand Jury also found a severe lack of clear policies and procedures within PBS. This means rules are applied inconsistently, leading to favoritism and little accountability for those who break building codes. The report notes that departments often rely on the outdated excuse of “this is how we have always done it.” The Code Enforcement Division (CED) also came under fire for its reactive approach, often ignoring obvious safety violations unless they are specifically mentioned in a complaint. This leads to ongoing disputes, wasted resources, and a perception that the county isn’t serious about enforcing its own rules.

The Grand Jury’s findings are a clear call for immediate action. They stress that public safety must be the top priority for the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. The report urges the Board to give clear instructions to PBS to strictly follow State and County laws. The “cracks” exposed in Mendocino County’s building department are more than just administrative issues; they represent a fundamental risk to the safety and well-being of everyone living there, demanding an urgent and complete overhaul.

(mendofever.com)

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LETTING THE LIGHT GO THROUGH: 15 MENDOCINO ARTISTS DEPICT WORLDS OF WONDER

by Roberta Werdinger

"The Art of Wonder," an exhibit of 15 Mendocino County artists who push the boundaries of various mediums to create stirring and surprising perceptions in the viewer, opened May 23 at the Grace Hudson Museum. The exhibition was organized by Grace Hudson Museum Curator Alyssa Boge and Director David Burton, with additional help from established veteran artists Linda MacDonald and Bob Comings.

"Many artists in this exhibition are trying to answer questions—'Who am I? What is this life?'" Boge comments. Given that the show is about wonder, there are no firm answers, only a splendid range of responses. The artwork in the exhibition ranges from the overtly religious, as with icon paintings by Father Damian, Abbot of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Redwood Valley, to Antoinette von Grone's playful and loving depictions of animals who are dressed in pre-20th century European aristocratic attire, thus imbuing them with a sense of humanness.

In addition to painting, mediums employed include photography, metal, collage, mosaic, and sculpture. A 40-inch-wide, seven-foot-tall ceramic sculpture of a blade of grass, created by the late Sonya Popow, is prominently featured. Denver Tuttle creates illusionary sculptures made of pliable reflective material, which he then photographs from inside. Four of these photographs appear in the show along with one of his wall-mounted sculptures. Red Wolf uses layers of epoxy, acrylic paint, and special effects films on treated metal substrate that create illusions of depth and in some cases a hologram effect. What unites all the artworks is, in Boge's words, "deep investigation of the everyday, along with a connection with something beyond the everyday," whether it is a Ukrainian Catholic saint, a polar bear that seems to be posing for its portrait, or a landscape bombarded by cosmic rays.

Micah Sanger, proprietor of the Visionary Arts Gallery in Mendocino, portrays the hidden forces that pervade our universe. He paints not only what the naked human eye can see, but what the telescope and electron microscope reveal. "By the Bay," for example, portrays a group of people socializing and relaxing, their figures flooded with brilliant washes of light and representations of energy and matter, showing us our place in an exquisite, multibillion-year dance. And yet Sanger insists that his work isn't some twee fantasy or idle hallucination. "I'm just painting what my eyes are seeing," he states. "First things I paint are the trees, the sunlight, the earth.” After that he paints “the whole field," which he feels emanating from the trees and the ground.

Sanger grew up around the dairy farms of rural Wisconsin, where his father was a country preacher, and who later was invited to France to serve as a military chaplain. The family's time in Europe exposed Sanger to Renaissance art, with the work of Leonardo da Vinci being especially influential. Da Vinci’s study for "The Adoration of the Magi" layered a sketch of the Biblical story over an architectural drawing of a Greek temple, creating a sense of the divine pervading the drawing's mathematically exact perspective lines. Sanger saw that da Vinci had realized “a cosmic reality pervading time and space," which includes our day-to-day existence. He adds, "I was like a rocket that was taking off right when I realized this."

Painter and collagist Jazzminh Moore crafts images that mediate between dream and reality, layering fields of color and geometric shapes over self-portraits, natural landscapes, and abandoned buildings. Her canvases vibrate with the quest for connection and meaning that animates her life. Raised on a back-to-lander community in Oregon, Moore, like many artists, made her way to New York as a young woman. "Everything from then on was a hierarchical projection toward my goal," she reflects. She secured representation with the Claire Oliver Gallery and began staging shows in galleries around the city. She was poised to start showing in museums when she decided to step off the fast track: "I needed less cement and more trees." Moore now lives in Willits, and is a part-time faculty member and gallery director at Mendocino College.

Now comfortably ensconced in a rural area that's brimming with art and artists, Moore continues to document her journey. Having painted portraits for most of her life, she wanted to break out into something different. It was then she realized that through the medium of collage, "I could communicate what I didn't know I had to communicate…a way of unraveling my own emotions and thoughts and ideas." The result was "Strange Coast," in which a woman's head, framed by varicolored squares, sprouts vertical streams of color, ribbons of water, and even a field of flowers. Moore created the vertical stream by layering mixed-media collage over the painted portrait of the woman’s head. "Occasionally a little genie visits you," she allows.

Moore's initiative in melding collage with painting proves Curator Boge's point, which is that the artists in this show "push the boundaries of their mediums," fostering a sense of wonder both in content and in form. The curation of the exhibit was a collaborative and creative event for Boge and Museum Director Burton as well. They singled out several artists, whom they had met over time, to include in the exhibit, visiting and conversing with them in their studios. They then decided to put out a call for open submissions in order to meet and include other artists. Willits-based Linda MacDonald and Bob Comings were then recruited to help jury the submissions. The result is an exhibit which invites us to stop and smell the roses—or marvel at a giant blade of grass.

"The Art of Wonder" will be on display through October 19. Several events are planned along with the exhibit, including an Assemblage Play Day taught by Spencer Brewer and Esther Siegel on June 28; a pop-up exhibit of Linda MacDonald's nature paintings running from August 1 through 17; a talk on painting icons by Father Damian on August 23; a virtual panel discussion with several artists featured in the exhibit on September 11; and a collage workshop led by Rose Easterbrook on September 27.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $7; $15 per family; $5 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members, Native Americans, and active-duty military personnel. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

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WINE INDUSTRY COUNTS ITS WOES: A GENERATIONAL SHIFT, TARIFFS, OZEMPIC, EVEN ELECTRIC CARS

by Alise Cox

The California wine industry is facing a growing crisis as older consumers drink less and younger generations remain elusive, industry leaders warn.

The shift comes as local vintners also contend with new challenges — from the rising use of weight loss drugs to electric vehicle range anxiety that keeps visitors away, even as rural tasting rooms in Mendocino County rack up accolades.

“The wine industry, yes, you could say it's a crisis,” said Douglas Stewart, head of the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association and owner of Breggo Cellars and Lichen Estate. “I'll give two examples. Yesterday, the largest— or maybe the second largest— wine distributor in California went out of business. It was called Young’s Market, bought by a Texas company, RNDC. Their trucks were everywhere. There were a thousand employees in California, and they're all out of a job today.”

Another sign of trouble emerged closer to home as vintners shared data at the recent Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival.

“There was steady growth from 2010 through 2023. And all of that growth has been wiped out in the last two years,” Stewart said. “We’ve lost 15 to 20 percent of the market. For growers, it’s painful — this is a permanent crop. What do you do with 15 percent of the grapes? There’s a lot of discounting, a lot of hand-wringing. It’s tough times.”

The irony of the downturn is that it comes as the quality of local wine is increasingly recognized by arbiters like Wine Enthusiast magazine which named Mendocino County America's Wine Region of the Year for 2024.

Rob McMillan, lead author of Silicon Valley Bank’s influential State of the Wine Industry report, said the industry’s mood is grim.

“It’s the lowest mood of all time,” McMillan said.

That was even before former President Donald Trump announced new tariffs, affecting key consumers of California wines as well as suppliers of wine, not to mention cork, and glass. But McMillan said the industry’s challenges run deeper than politics.

“In prior years, if you had a problem, you could wait a year or two and demand would fix it,” he said. “But now with flat or declining growth, it’s not going to fix itself. I believe this industry can evolve to something better, but it’s going to take active steps. Everyone needs their own strategy.”

Stewart said the industry is also grappling with cultural headwinds.

“Wine has been demonized along with all other alcohol lately — called cancerous, with messaging that there’s no safe level of consumption,” he said.

Adding to the headwinds is the surging popularity of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic.

“Another challenge is Ozempic, which reduces people’s appetite — including the desire to drink alcohol,” Stewart said. “About 10 percent of adults are now taking it. We’ve seen a real reduction in consumption.”

Even electric cars have posed unexpected hurdles, Stewart said.

“I have a 100-mile commute from Healdsburg to my farm. I can manage it,” he said. “But visitors from the Bay Area face a 200- to 220-mile round trip — and range anxiety is real. Anderson Valley has very few fast chargers. It reminds me of 2008 — when gas prices spiked and traffic to tasting rooms plummeted.”

The current downturn has parallels to past industry cycles, McMillan said.

“In the last demand correction, my parents' generation drank jug wine, beer, and spirits,” he said. “My generation gravitated toward premium wine. But today, the anti-alcohol movement is better organized and funded than ever.”

To win back younger drinkers, Stewart said the industry must evolve.

“I was at a party of 25- to 35-year-olds,” he said. “They told me: ‘Nobody’s marketing to us. That’s why we drink beer, cannabis drinks, cocktails. Wine isn’t trying hard enough to reach us.’”

Some wineries are taking steps. Andrew Adams of WineBusiness Analytics told Norcal Public Radio tasting rooms are shifting to appeal to a new generation of consumers.

“We’ve seen wineries adjust to offer more casual, affordable experiences,” Adams said. “Walk-in tastings instead of reservations weeks in advance. It’s connecting with younger consumers.”

There are glimmers of hope. Last month, Roederer Estate opened a new tasting room, and trends show potential stabilization.

“We’ve seen an uptick in Gen Z visitors to tasting rooms compared to last year,” Adams said. “Shipments by California wineries appear to have stabilized — and we may see an upturn later this year.”

For now, many Anderson Valley wineries are offering members deep discounts on library wines and other perks — making it an appealing time to join a club, even as the industry waits for better days.

(KZYX.org)

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DJ KEN STEELY: Plaque commemorating Mendocino County California Firefighter Pilot Units.

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MAP OF NO KINGS DAY DEMONSTRATIONS

https://www.nokings.org/?SQF_SOURCE=indivi

And those are only the ones registered with Indivisible.

(Dobie Dolphin)

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A FREE CLASS ABOUT HERBAL TEA AND HOW TO MAKE SUNTEA

June 28, 1 PM at the Little Lake Grange Garden

291 School St, Willits CA 95490

Drink a cuppa tea with us, taste some good things in the garden, try some different versions of herbal summer iced tea and hot tea. Having a cup of herbal tea is one of the most relaxing moments of a day!

There are many wonderful tastes awaiting you in the herbal kingdom of teas, both hot and cold.

Mint, lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, sage, each one of them has a special offering for your health and well-being.

Handouts about herbs and wellness.

Learn more about tea making at this workshop, June 28, 1 PM at the Little Lake Grange Garden.

Submitted by Ann Waters

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PROGRESS

Today a woman passes in the supermarket saying, .

“Hello, Dan Shandley,

appreciated that last letter."

& there I am

halfway to nutmeg

from thirty-weight Quaker State Green

speaking aloud to rolls of tissue, paper towels:

Who was SHE?

WHAT letter?

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{Note: Louisa Teresa Knox was born in 1859, in Mendocino County, California, the daughter of the Euro-American man from North Carolina known as Joseph Alexander Knox & the Coast Miwok woman known as Maria Antonia Ynitia. In 1891, Louisa Teresa Knox married the Euro-American man known as George Marion Young, and they had two children. Later, Mrs. Louisa Teresa (Knox) Young married a Euro-American man known as John Albino Duarte, and they had one child. Mrs. Louisa Teresa (Knox) (Young) Duarte died in 1933.}

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, June 11, 2025

HEIDI AYERS, 54, Rohnert Park/Ukiah. Drinking in public.

ALANNA HARRIS, 36, Willits. Under influence, paraphernalia.

CHINGIZ MAMBETSULTANOV, 36, Schaumburg, Illinois/Ukiah. DUI while driving a commercial vehicle.

MEMO PARKER, 54, Ukiah. Contempt of court.

ADRIAN PETERSON, 33, Willits. DUI.

TYLER WOOD, 28, Ukiah. Shoplifting, controlled substance.

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I’m a Millennial, born in 1981. I live by myself in a rundown apartment I pay $700 a month for. I make about $55k a year and work 2 jobs. Home ownership is not a reality for me even though I have a college degree. In the real world it means little, basically nothing. I did not vote for Trump, But because of the way I’m living I refused to vote for Harris as well. Did you ever think maybe we are exhausted? Fed up?

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PRICED OUT

Editor:

My wife enjoys going out for dinner. To have someone else do the cooking and no dishes to clean is a treat. When we first got married, an evening out at a full-service restaurant with wine or cocktails was around $80. A tip was 10% to 15%. This was not that long ago.

Fast forward to today. That same evening out has gotten expensive. The waiter shows up and takes your order for cocktails, and the bartender brings them out. Waiter shows up and takes your dinner order. Kitchen help brings out your dinner. Waiter shows and checks to make sure everything is OK. When you are done, table help clears the table and the waiter shows up with the bill.

Now the evening out is around $150, and the waiter wants 20% or more for a tip. What did they do to earn $30-plus dollars. We do not go out as often, and restaurants complain about fewer customers. When my Social Security catches up with today’s economy, we will go out to dinner again.

Paul Benkover

Sebastopol

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PG&E’S MONOPOLY

Editor:

I used to think we needed to focus on opposing the rate hikes proposed by PG&E, yet I now believe that we need to oppose PG&E’s corporate structure. It is, pure and simple, a monopoly. A failing monopoly with strong challenges for some services from Sonoma Clean Power and Marin Clean Energy. Yet it still dominates the market and causes tremendous damage with its focus on profits ($2.4 billion in 2024) and shareholder returns above a focus on safe communities and reliable clean energy. Sonoma Clean Power and Marin Clean Energy are nonprofits.

Even people with solar panels and backup batteries are tied to PG&E’s distribution network and pay fees for various services. PG&E “buys” excess solar production and then “sells” it back to users when needed at a higher price than what they were paid in the first place.

We don’t have a say on the CEO’s compensation, which was $15.8 million in 2024. Nor do we have any say on the way money is spent on senior executive salaries, ads or lobbying.

Oppose PG&E. We need a systemwide public service company, not a monopoly.

Amy Lyman

Cotati

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GIANTS’ OFFENSE ERUPTS to rally past Rockies for 7th straight win

by Susan Slusser

DENVER — Making it even more difficult on themselves than usual Wednesday at Coors Field, the San Francisco Giants casually concocted comeback magic yet again.

San Francisco entered the eighth inning down by three runs, thanks in part to an inexplicable error by Jerar Encarnacion that helped to shorten Robbie Ray’s evening, and they put together a string of bloops, a gritty walk from Casey Schmitt, a liner off the wall by Mike Yastrzemski and a safety squeeze bunt by Tyler Fitzgerald to hatch their 20th come-from-behind win of the season by an uncharacteristically hearty 10-7 score.

The Giants have won seven in a row, but their string of one-run wins came to an end at six. Until they tacked on three in the ninth, they’d been in line to tie the major-league record for consecutive one-run wins set by the Cubs from June 6-12, 1927. They remain a half-game behind the Dodgers in the NL West.

“We’re having a lot of fun,” Schmitt said. “We’re all just sticking together, and it’s just been great baseball.”

There was the requisite weirdness involved: Schmitt initially was called out at the plate on Fitzgerald’s bunt, with Ryan McMahon zipping a throw home, but manager Bob Melvin — who’d failed to get a replay-review request in early enough the previous inning — leaped from the dugout signalling for a review and the call was quickly reversed.

“He’d looked safe right away to me, and then Casey’s reaction to it — the baserunner usually knows,” Melvin said, “I almost challenged it before I even heard from the video room.”

“I knew instantly,” Schmitt said. “I felt like my hand was in before I got tagged. I had to make sure I got in there any way possible.”

San Francisco hadn’t had a man in scoring position since the third when Tyler Kinley gave up soft singles to Willy Adames, Heliot Ramos and, with one out, pinch hitter Dominic Smith. Schmitt walked on eight pitches, fouling off three sliders in the process, and that sent in one run. “I was trying not to think too much and just battle,” Schmitt said.

“Huge,” Melvin said. “You’re getting breaking ball after breaking ball, then to be able to take a fastball for a ball on the last pitch, that’s a great at-bat.”

Then Yastrzemski, on an RBI tear and at the ballpark where he loves to hit, banged a double off the high wall in right center to tie it up.

Fitzgerald’s safety squeeze provided just his second RBI in the past 20 games.

Adames turned in another good evening, thumping his second homer in as many nights and another sacrifice fly, too, showing that he is, perhaps, shaking the doldrums that soured his first two-plus months. It took a great play by third baseman Orlando Arcia to retire him in the fifth, he had that single to kickstart the game-deciding eighth inning and he doubled in the ninth and scored on Schmitt’s single.

Yastrzemski added an RBI single that inning; he’s driven in seven runs in the past three games and lifetime, he’s got 37 RBIs in 42 games at Coors Field.

The Giants’ 20 comeback wins are third most in baseball behind the Dodgers’ 23 and Blue Jays’ 21. Their seven wins have come in the immediate wake of bringing in Smith and Daniel Johnson and parting with slumping first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr., and the past two have come without Gold Glovers Matt Chapman and Patrick Bailey.

Ray, who’s made a strong case for All-Star Game consideration, worked just four innings Wednesday. Things unraveled in the third, when Tyler Freeman, the No. 9 hitter, led off with a single and Jordan Beck followed suit. With one out, Hunter Goodman doubled in Freeman, then former Giants infielder Thairo Estrada hit a grounder to second that Fitzgerald scooped up and tossed to first, where Encarnacion flat missed it, failing to stretch toward the ball, which glanced off the end of his glove as two runs scored; Melvin noted Encarnacion had to get over fast after playing in the hole, “but he’d tell you that’s a play he should make.” After a walk and a flyout, Keston Hiura lined a single to left to send in another run. Only two of the four were earned.

Ray threw 34 pitches in the inning, 16 after the error, and Melvin decided that 92 pitches total was enough for him after four. “That long third inning there it just drains you more than at a normal altitude,” Ray said. “When you’re here, it just takes more out of you for sure.”

The Rockies added single runs in the fifth and sixth off Tristan Beck, and working in a non-save situation in the ninth, Camilo Doval gave up Goodman’s 11th homer of the season, then gave up two singles before getting out of it. “It still came down to the last pitch,” Melvin said when asked about the end of the one-run win streak. “I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a laugher.”

There was a bizarre moment in the seventh when, with Johnson at first after a pinch-hit walk, Jung Hoo Lee lined out softly to Juan Mejia. Mejia dropped the ball, picked it up and fired to first, and Johnson was declared out — but replays showed he was safe. The Giants, however, did not signal for a replay review in time. “I looked up, and we were just out of time,” Melvin said.

Schmitt, playing third while Chapman is on the IL, turned in a sensational play in the fifth, ranging into foul ground for a sharp bouncer by Hiura and making a long throw off-balance to first to end the inning.

Colorado is 12-55, tied for the worst-ever start in major-league history with the 1932 Red Sox and the Giants typically handle the Rockies with ease, with a 53-17 record against them over the past five seasons.

Hayden Birdsong (3-1) will start Thursday’s finale against Colorado’s Antonio Senzatela, who has a 1-10 record and 6.68 ERA.

(sfchronicle.com)

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CALIFORNIA SENATE REJECTS GOVERNOR NEWSOM'S PLAN TO FAST-TRACK DELTA TUNNEL IN BUDGET

by Dan Bacher

In a significant victory for Tribes, fishing communities, family farmers, the environment and the people of California, the State Senate Budget Subcommittee on Tuesday rejected Governor Gavin Newsom’s Delta Conveyance Project trailer bill package.

The Subcommittee also reversed $351.7 million in proposed funding for the controversial Voluntary Agreements, backed by corporate agribusiness, as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is going through its worst-ever ecological crisis.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/10/2327184/-California-Senate-Rejects-Governor-Newsom-s-Delta-Tunnel-Budget-Power-Grab

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ONE OF CALIFORNIA'S MOST EXPENSIVE LICENSES IS NOW BASICALLY WORTHLESS

by Lester Black

A license to legally sell cannabis in California was once a coveted item, with some selling for millions of dollars. But now, as the California market’s struggles have left some pot licenses effectively worthless, that exuberance has turned into gloom.

Case in point: One cannabis company is offering its retail license in the Southern California city of Oxnard for “free” to anyone who will assume responsibility for paying the lease on the retail location, which has not yet opened for business. The listing still prices the license at $35,000, but broker Meilad Rafiei confirmed to SFGATE the seller is willing to walk away without getting any cash.

“From day one I was telling [the license holders], I don’t know if there’s any value here,” Rafiei said.

Rafiei, the CEO of cannabis industry consulting firm WeCann, said the Oxnard license could have once been sold for as much as $3 million, making the current deal a stunning drop in value.

Ryan George, the CEO of 420Property.com, which is a marketplace for cannabis licenses and real estate, said during the early years of legalization, licenses could trade from $500,000 to $3 million, with one Santa Ana license selling for $8 million. Now he’s increasingly seeing licenses trade for free as they become “effectively worthless” in certain areas.

“Fast forward to today, and the picture has changed dramatically. Market saturation, regulatory challenges, and competition from the illicit market have driven values down,” George said in an email.

The downfall is driven by multiple factors that have all come together in a perfect storm. Entrepreneurs likely overvalued the licenses when the market first opened in 2018, expecting that cannabis retailers would be printing cash. Licensed pot stores across the state are heavily concentrated in the few cities where selling cannabis is allowed, creating extreme local competition.

California’s legal market also continues to underperform, with illegal cannabis stores supplying the majority of cannabis consumed in the state, according to government estimates. That has resulted in California’s low per-capita sales and starved cannabis stores from attracting the customers they expected.

Palm Springs and the surrounding towns, where pot stores initially proliferated but are now rapidly closing, has been one of the hardest-hit areas. Rafiei, who said his company has brokered over $300 million in cannabis deals, said entrepreneurs are taking over cannabis stores in the region without handing over any cash.

“If anyone is interested in going into Palm Springs, they’re looking to steal a business and just get it for nothing,” Rafiei said. “Palm Springs is one of the worst horror stories in terms of what we’re talking about.”

Rafiei said the biggest hindrance to selling the Oxnard license is the fact that the city charges a $250,000 fee to open a pot store, a cost that any presumptive buyer would have to absorb before opening. He said his clients initially listed the license at $300,000, then dropped the price to $150,000.

“We got a few hits, but no one was serious, especially once they learned about the crazy fee,” Rafiei said.

The seller eventually dropped it to $35,000, before finally telling Rafiei that they could “just walk away” from the Oxnard license. He said dropping the sticker price on the license to zero has finally attracted some viable offers.

“We haven’t gotten a deal done, but we do have some serious people looking now, and it looks like we might make it happen,” Rafiei said.

(SFGate.com)

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CALIFORNIA’S MASSIVE DAM REMOVAL HIT A KEY MILESTONE. NOW, THERE’S A PROBLEM

by Kurtis Alexander

Last year, after the historic removal of four dams on the Klamath River, thousands of salmon rushed upstream into the long-blocked waters along the California-Oregon border, seeking out the cold, plentiful flows considered crucial to the fish’s future.

The return of salmon to their ancestral home was a fundamental goal of dam removal and a measure of the project’s success.

However, a problem emerged. The returning salmon only got so far. Eight miles upriver from the former dam sites lies a still-existing dam, the 41-foot-tall Keno Dam in southern Oregon. The dam has a fish ladder that’s supposed to help with fish passage, but it didn’t prove to work.

While many proponents of dam removal say they’re thrilled with just how far the salmon got, most of the 420 miles of waterways that salmon couldn’t reach before the dam demolition still appear largely unreachable. This stands to keep the fish from spreading and reproducing in the high numbers anticipated with the project. Other migratory fish, including steelhead trout and Pacific lamprey, may face similar straits.

The shortcoming has opened a new chapter in the decades-long effort to liberate the Klamath River, this one focused on Keno Dam. It has also left some people frustrated that the dam wasn’t addressed sooner, when the other dams were dealt with.

“It’s too bad that there wasn’t enough forethought,” said William Ray Jr., chairman for the Klamath Tribes, who represents the native communities in the upper section of the Klamath Basin where salmon haven’t been able to get to. “The fish could have gone a lot farther, and that was the whole point. … The job just wasn’t done, far from it.”

The $500 million dam-removal project, considered the largest in U.S. history, was overseen by the states of California and Oregon in partnership with tribes and environmental groups, which initiated the effort to restore the 250-mile Klamath River to its natural conditions.

The former owner of the power-generating dams, PacifiCorp, agreed to dam removal to rid itself of the river’s aging and increasingly costly hydroelectric operations. The Portland-based utility and state of California paid for the work.

PacifiCorp also owned Keno Dam, but because the dam provides flood control, unlike the others, it was transferred to the federal government’s Bureau of Reclamation for continued operation, as part of the dam-removal agreement.

In recent months, federal, state and tribal officials have been evaluating Keno Dam to see what might be done to make sure it’s passable for salmon. The possibilities range from rebuilding the old fish ladder to removing the dam. Making changes, though, will be complicated by the facility’s role in regulating river flows, and it could be years, if not decades, before there’s a permanent fix.

“Restoration is not a flip-of-the-switch and everything-is-fine endeavor,” said Philip Milburn, district manager at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which has been contracted by the federal government to evaluate options for Keno Dam. “It took hundreds of years for the basin to get to the way it is now, and it’s going to take time to modify it to suit fish.”

Above Keno Dam, where migratory fish haven’t been for more than a century because of the dams, 350 miles of rivers, lakes and creeks are believed to be key for the struggling salmon population.

Salmon spend most of their short lives at sea but they need freshwater to spawn. With the warming climate, the cold-water springs, higher elevations and nutrient-rich waters of the upper Klamath Basin are particularly important for reproduction, scientists say.

The revival of the basin’s salmon would be a boon for the commercial fishing industry and culinary world as well as for the many tribes that see the fish as a spiritual force in their communities.

“We haven’t had the fish for a long time,” said Ray Jr. “It harms the culture and the health of our people. We’re becoming impatient.”

New Fish, But An Old Dam

The apparent problem at Keno Dam became clear late last year, following what many federal, state and tribal officials considered an immediate success with the dam-removal project.

The number of salmon swimming in the newly opened-up waters of the Klamath River, downstream of Keno Dam, was generally more than what was anticipated so soon. Roughly 2,000 chinook salmon were counted after the last of the dams was razed in August in surveys recently released by a multi-jurisdictional team of scientists. Sonar reports suggest the number could have been thousands more.

The fish were part of the river’s fall run, its most populous run. The salmon journeyed from the mouth of the Klamath River in California’s redwood-filled north to the sunny rolling hills of Siskiyou County – a total of 190 miles to the first of the former dam sites.

Beyond going the distance, the ability of the salmon to enter a new stretch of river hinged on navigating cloudy waters whipped up temporarily with the dam demolition as well as resisting the urge to stay in familiar territory. Salmon are built to return to their place of birth, though they sometimes “stray” when it’s in their interest.

“A lot of people expected it would take years for the fish to show up in these numbers,” said Mike Belchik, senior fisheries biologist for Northern California’s Yurok Tribe, one of the primary tribes supporting the dam removal. “That was wrong.”

Coho salmon, steelhead trout and Pacific lamprey also have been documented in the footprint of the old dams.

The fall-run chinook, once they got above the former dam sites, spawned either in the Klamath’s main stem or in a tributary, such as Jenny or Shovel creeks, according to the surveys. This spring, newly born salmon began migrating to sea. (The adults die after spawning.)

“I don’t know if the fish ran out of room or not,” Belchik said. “Some of the habitats seemed fully occupied. But we’re pretty stoked that so many went up there.”

More than 500 adults were estimated to have gone as far as Oregon, with an unknown number making it to Keno Dam. At least a few were observed in the dam’s fish ladder, which is a series of more than 20 step pools designed to help fish bypass the dam, but none were documented to have reached the top. While a lack of monitoring could explain the complete absence of fish above the dam, the challenges at the dam are unmistakable.

One issue is believed to be a component called the trash racks. The vertical bars at the intakes of the fish ladder, which keep logs from clogging the passageway, were too narrow for salmon, an obstruction that federal officials at the Bureau of Reclamation have since worked on.

But the larger problem, according to Oregon wildlife officials, is that the fish ladder at Keno Dam dates to when the dam was built in 1967 and simply doesn’t work well. The openings between the pools where fish pass are too small. The gates controlling the flow of water are faulty. The ladder is located too far from where fish approach.

“To provide fish passage that meets current state of Oregon and federal fish passage criteria, a new passage facility would be required,” wildlife officials wrote in an evaluation of the dam in 2023.

The Bureau of Reclamation confirmed in a statement to the Chronicle that it was working on “fish passage solutions” at the dam. The agency, however, declined a request for an interview about the details of the work and the timing.

Fixing The Dam For Fish

While the Bureau of Reclamation’s acquisition of Keno Dam last summer meant that the agency wasn’t able to address fish passage until recently, at least directly, state and tribal officials say there were other reasons the issue wasn’t taken up sooner.

One was uncertainty about whether the dam-removal project downriver would ever get done after years of delays. Another was skepticism that salmon would make it to Keno Dam even if the dams below came down. Furthermore, the focus on the removal of the four dams left little time and resources to figure out what to do with potential hurdles upstream.

“There just wasn’t the capacity to do everything at once,” said Milburn, with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “Now we’re tackling the things that were sidelined during the initial project.”

With two new grants from the federal government, Oregon wildlife officials have been tasked with identifying both short-term and long-term fixes for Keno Dam.

The state recently received the first $100,000 of a $4.5 million grant for immediate repairs, such as making sure the trash racks on the fish ladder don’t block salmon. State officials have also convened a group of experts to study and recommend a permanent solution over the next three years, with the second $1.9 million grant. The recommendation will be forwarded to the Bureau of Reclamation for consideration.

According to the terms of the grant, the state-convened experts will evaluate such possibilities as constructing a more effective fish ladder at Keno Dam as well as dismantling the dam entirely, which could prove even more effective for fish passage.

Oregon officials say any proposal that involves dam removal must include dam replacement, presumably with one that’s more fish friendly, or building a similarly purposed structure, possibly an artificial reef to replicate what was on the river historically, as has been informally discussed.

Maintaining the flood-control features of the 723-foot-wide Keno Dam is necessary to protect the area’s farms, communities and infrastructure. The dam is located 12 miles southwest of the city of Klamath Falls, Ore.

“There are so many benefits from having that dam in place right now that I can’t see removing it unless there is a very, very deliberate effort to make sure we’re not causing harm to the economy and local folks,” said Gene Souza, executive director of the Klamath Irrigation District, a water agency that delivers supplies to growers in the basin on both sides of the state line.

Souza and others have also pointed to the potentially huge expense of demolishing the dam and building another. A new fish ladder could be pricey, too, requiring a specialized, durable and high-maintenance facility, though no cost estimates have been worked up yet for any of the options.

While Keno Dam appears to be the biggest hang-up on the river, the challenges for salmon are not likely to end there.

Upstream is one more dam, Link River Dam in Klamath Falls. This facility, long owned by the Bureau of Reclamation, regulates giant Upper Klamath Lake, where the Klamath River begins, and provides water supplies for the agriculturally vital Klamath Project. The dam has a fish ladder that has been upgraded, unlike the one at Keno Dam, but salmon passage is not assured.

Beyond Link River Dam, Upper Klamath Lake has been experiencing bouts of algae and poor water quality in recent years that could make fish navigation difficult. Above the lake, the Williamson, Sprague, and Wood rivers offer ideal habitat, but in the century that salmon have been absent, unknown obstacles may have emerged with human development.

Restoration work in many of the basin’s waterways, including reviving wetlands and reconnecting creeks, has been ongoing to help existing fish and improve water conditions as well as to prepare for the anticipated salmon.

“The last thing we want is a bottleneck in the upper watershed,” said Rob Lusardi, assistant professor of wildlife, fish and conservation biology at UC Davis, who has studied salmon reintroduction strategies in the Klamath Basin. “I’m not saying that’s the case… (but) anywhere we can improve fish passage is a goal worth pursuing.”

(SF Chronicle)

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ICE’S WAR ON HOME

by Anahid Nersessian

“A border,” the poet Wendy Trevino wrote in 2018, “is a cruel fiction.” California has five borders, and of them only the Pacific Ocean has not been wholly fabricated by war and conquest. First encountered by Europeans in 1542, when the Portuguese sea captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo led a Spanish expedition along its southern shoreline, California is the ancestral homeland of 70 different ethnic groups, including the Ohlone of the west-central region and the Tongva of the southern coastal area now known as Los Angeles.

Until 1848, it was part of Mexico. Ceded to the United States of America following the Mexican-American War, it became the 31st state in the Union.

In the late 1960s, Chicano liberation movements began claiming it as part of Aztlán, the legendary kingdom of the Aztecs, as a symbol of an ancient right to the land. Nearly half the population of Los Angeles is Hispanic or Latino, and the city also has the largest Filipino population in the US and the largest Armenian population outside Armenia. About a third of the people living in LA were born outside the US.

These demographics have made LA a favorite target of right-wing attacks on immigration both legal and informal. If President Donald Trump has long relished painting San Francisco as a drug-addled hellscape because of its many unhoused residents, he has attacked LA with equal if not greater intensity. On Monday he took to X to describe it as a “once great American City” that “has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” before announcing that he would be taking “all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”

Such fascist theatrics are nothing new from Trump, and it is imperative to recognise that the United States’ recent crackdown on immigration began not with a Republican but a Democratic president. Under Bill Clinton, border patrol tripled in size to become the nation’s second-largest law enforcement agency; under Barack Obama, the budget for the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, began to outpace the budgets of the FBI, the CIA, and all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. During his two terms in the White House, Obama oversaw the removal of more than three million non-citizens, more than any other president in history.

ICE – popularly known as ‘la migra’ – is an artefact of the so-called war on terror. Founded in 2003, it swiftly went about detaining and deporting thousands of Muslim, Arab and South Asian men, all labeled as national security threats after 9/11. Earlier this year, ICE was involved in the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who was taken into custody as a result of his involvement in the Gaza solidarity protests and remains in an immigration detention centre in Louisiana. A green-card holder, Khalil is in the US legally, as are many of ICE’s recent targets. They include Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was arrested without having been accused of a crime and deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. (The US Supreme Court ruled Abrego Garcia’s deportation illegal; he was returned to the US on June 6 and is currently being held in a Tennessee prison.)

These high-profile cases are the tip of the iceberg, but they give some sense of ICE’s primary targets under Trump: non-citizens involved in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and non-citizens who are Hispanic or Latino. ICE is also targeting immigrants of other ethnic backgrounds: the X account of the Department of Homeland Security shows photo after blurry photo of Filipino and Haitian as well as Mexican and Central American men being handcuffed by ICE agents, with captions accusing them of crimes such as rape and vehicular manslaughter.

But because of the relative porousness of the border between the US and Mexico, it is Mexicans and people from its neighboring countries who inflame the racist American imagination. These are the “bad hombres” to whom Trump infamously referred in his 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, the drug lords and gang members who must be eliminated from the law-abiding and presumptively white population.

In a remark that has since gone viral, Conor Simon, a resident of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, observed:

“It’s really hard to fathom that the guy making my pizza for 25 years is a gangster and a terrorist, and the person who shows up in an unmarked car wearing a mask and body armour to take him away is somehow the good guy.”

Trump may spin spine-tingling tales of “bad hombres,” but videos of recent ICE raids tell a different story. The mother of a newborn is handcuffed and shoved, head down, into an unmarked vehicle, her family screaming, the neighbours filming, her baby cradled against a weeping woman’s shoulder. A young boy wails as his father is thrown into the back of a van. Children whose parents have been taken into custody sob on the floor of a school gym, not knowing if they will ever see their families again. The raids have not been on drug dens or sex-trafficking rings. They have been on restaurants and schools, hospitals and court houses, department stores and parking lots. ICE’s war is not simply at home, but on home.

The protests that broke out last weekend in Los Angeles are at once an autonomous phenomenon and a continuation of the George Floyd rebellion of 2020 and the student-led campaign against the war on Gaza. They have been met with no-longer-shocking displays of state violence, including the arrival of the National Guard and 700 hundred marines. Protesters have been gassed, shot in the head with “less than lethal” munitions, beaten, trampled with horses, hit by cars and taken into custody. The LAPD, like many police departments in the US, trains with soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces, and you can see, in their response to the protesters, the same libidinal thrust of disproportionate force that’s turned against children throwing rocks at tanks in the West Bank.

In LA, protesters have dug up stones from the landscaped medians that run down the middle of the larger boulevards and hurled them at ICE’s unmarked cars, or else dropped them from highway overpasses onto LAPD vans.

On social media there are photographs of protesters with signs that say things like “National Guard LOL” and “I drink my horchata warm ’cause fuck ICE.” The novelist Rachel Kushner, a longtime LA resident, posted a photograph of a lowrider three-wheeling past a trio of National Guardsman standing in front of a tank: “from 2020 but says better than I could how I feel about the arrival of the National Guard,” she wrote. (Lowriders, customized cars often with hydraulic systems, have been an important part of Chicano culture since the 1940s.) “This is for my dad!” says graffiti under a bridge. There are videos of people riding their bikes in circles around the police, waving enormous Mexican flags. A teenager, holding a skateboard as he walks through a hail of rubber bullets, turns around and flips off the dozens of police shooting at him. In another video, an older Black man scolds a Black officer in the LA County Sheriff’s Department for doing the bidding of ICE, which he suggests is run by white supremacists. There is evidence to support this claim: the Boston Globe reported last week that an agent conducting a raid in Martha’s Vineyard was sporting a tattoo popular among neo-Nazis, and in February an ICE prosecutor in Texas was linked to a white-supremacist account on X.

There have been some complaints about protesters’ tactics, but they’ve been muted. Some demonstrators have sat on the freeway, blocking ICE vans from passing; others have stood barefaced, in T-shirts and jeans, in front of masked and heavily armed rows of cops, staring them down coolly. Others have thrown Molotov cocktails and set police cars – and the occasional Waymo – on fire. We have all spent the last year watching unarmed 20-year-olds get beaten and shot for protesting a genocide, and we have all spent the last 600 days watching a genocide. It is absurd to suggest that the state – any state – needs a pretext to maim or kill, to arrest or deport. ICE arrives, guns blazing, to pull children out of the arms of their parents, the LAPD shoots people in their homes, and the president and his cronies loudly announce their plans to suspend habeas corpus and throw dissenters in prison, whether they are citizens or not. Playing nice protects no one.

Last Thursday, just before the protests began, I walked across the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, where I teach, to administer a final exam to my students. To prepare for the inauguration of the university’s new chancellor, Julio Frenk, a former health secretary of Mexico, heavily armed members of the LAPD lined every path. Their guns were held across their bodies, ready to aim, and as I passed them I imagined a rookie officer, startled by the sound of a car backfiring or a branch snapping, shooting me in the head.

When I arrived at my classroom, I asked my students if the police presence made them more anxious than the exam. They said they had a different fear. They’re afraid ICE is going to raid their graduation.

(London Review of Books)

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TO THE MARINES IN L.A.

by Doug Anderson

I wonder what lance corporal
Ricardo Sanchez thinks
about Jaime Dominguez
staring at him from across the line,
what staff sergeant
Renee Rousseau
thinks about Jean Duvalier
leaning up against that building,
what private Winston Chang,
right out of boot,
thinks about Tim Lieu
watching him intently
wondering what they’re thinking
wondering what river,
what tributary of what ancestry
they all come from,
why they are there
and what all this means,
and how do they imagine
they are some kind of enemy.
In 1967 I, a composite
of Swedes and Irish,
was with you in Vietnam,
and we were all
staring at Nguyen Quang Sang
who was looking back at us
wondering who we were
and what we thought
we were doing.
May you go home without
fixing a bayonet,
firing a tear gas canister,
dodging a molotov cocktail.
May all this bullshit cease.
May we all dine together
and the politicians
making their careers out of
all of this go fuck themselves.

(Doug Anderson was a Navy Corpsman in a Marine rifle company in 1967.)

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S.F. AUTHOR TEMPORARILY BANNED ON FACEBOOK after writing about L.A. riots

by Lily Janiak

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the author’s account was reactivated shortly after the Chronicle first reported about the incident.

Apparently, acknowledging the existence of violence can get you kicked off Facebook — at least temporarily. 

San Francisco author and activist Rebecca Solnit reported her account on Meta’s social media network was suspended, in a post to Bluesky on Tuesday, June 10, adding that she was soon told the decision was permanent. 

But less than 24 hours later, the account was reinstated after a Meta spokesperson said the suspension had been made in error.

On Tuesday, Solnit wrote, “Facebook decided to suspend my account because of a piece (below) I wrote Monday about violence which in no way advocates for it (but does point out who is violent in the current ruckus).”

She included a screenshot of Facebook’s explanation of its decision, which reads, “Your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our Community Standards on account integrity.”

Solnit did not explain how, beyond timing, she believed that the essay in question, “Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence,” written on her independent site Meditations in an Emergency, was the reason for her ouster. 

Solnit said she appealed the suspension. But on Wednesday, June 11, she shared a screenshot of Facebook’s response saying it decided to disable her account: “It still doesn’t follow our Community Standards on account integrity. You cannot request another review of this decision.”

It wasn’t until nearly 30 minutes after the Chronicle first published a story about the incident that a Meta representative referred to a post on X by Communications Director Andy Stone saying the company had made a mistake with Solnit’s account. 

“This was an error and the account has been restored,” he wrote. 

Solnit’s Facebook page was live again as of Wednesday afternoon.

Still, the incident underscores the difficulty of moderating content on social media. “Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is central to our content review process,” Meta’s help page reads, noting that only some of its decisions get reviewed by humans. 

The about-face recalls an exchange last month between Jamie Lee Curtis and Meta in which the Academy Award-winning actor demanded on Instagram that the site pull a deepfake ad that used her image. She was successful, but few other users can marshal 6.1 million followers to their cause.

In the case of Solnit, who has 316,000 Facebook followers, it’s not obvious what policy her post violated. 

“I think maybe it’s begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration,” her piece begins, referring to the clashes in Los Angeles between protesters of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and the California National Guard deployed by Trump against city and state officials’ wishes.

“All they can do is punish and incite, and I hope that some of the protesters are telling them they’re violating their mission and maybe the law,” the essay continues. “We are escalating because they are escalating.”

The “Men Explain Things to Me” author goes on to question longtime right-wing and media narratives that stereotype protesters as violent while giving law enforcement a pass for much more harm to people and property. 

“One thing to remember is that they’ll claim we’re violent no matter what; the justification for this ongoing attack on immigrants and people who resemble immigrants in being brown is the idea that America is suffering an invasion and in essence only a certain kind of white person belongs here,” she writes. 

The piece never advocates responding to force in kind, instead arguing for nonviolent defiance. 

“I believe ardently that nonviolent resistance is in the big picture and the long term the most effective strategy, but that doesn’t mean it must be polite, placid, or please our opponents,” she writes.

Solnit concludes by enumerating the kinds of violence the Trump administration has perpetrated — against the environment, against the First Amendment, against women, against his personal enemies, against the very notion of truth. 

“It is up to us to defeat that agenda,” she writes.

Solnit noted that she doesn’t think a Meta higher-up has it in for her, despite the popularity of her account. She cited “inane algorithms that often delete posts” as the likeliest explanation. (In April, the Chronicle reported on Meta’s rejection of an ad promoting a Northern California Pride festival.) 

Even so, it’s clear Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cultivated an alliance with the Trump administration, dining with the president at Mar-a-Lago and appointing Trump ally Dana White to his company’s board. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Meta’s Community Standards on its account integrity page state that the company reserves the right to restrict or disable accounts that risk “imminent harm to individual or public safety.” 

Solnit is the author of more than 30 books, including “Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas” and the children’s book “Cinderella Liberator,” which Marin Shakespeare Company is adapting into a musical. She first moved to the Bay Area from her native Connecticut as a child, in 1966. 

(sfchronicle.com)

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THE LA RIOTS: HOW BAD ARE THEY?

by Greg Collard

Since violence erupted in Los Angeles last Friday, efforts to downplay the scale and significance of the riots have been widely apparent. Matt wrote on Tuesday about the legacy media’s regurgitation of the 2020 narrative, when “mostly peaceful” was included in story after story about the Black Lives Matter protests that summer. Five years later, “mostly peaceful” — or at least a form of it — is in vogue again.

But there is also another message in play this time around: most of LA is all good because the protests are only in a “part of” downtown. Here’s CNN telling us “what’s been happening.”

In other words, instead of “mostly peaceful,” it’s mostly business as usual.

It’s also a talking point for LA Mayor Karen Bass, who says the “unrest that has [sic] happened are a few blocks within the downtown area. It is not all of downtown, and it is not all of the city.”

You can decide for yourself how much that distinction matters in this Activism, Uncensored video shot by News 2: https://youtu.be/gk1AXI-Pok0?si=7CfTcHCM8Jdx9CdJ

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SEND IN THE MARINES

by Tom Lehrer

When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S., They have their place, I guess,
But first - send the Marines!

We'll send them all we've got,
John Wayne and Randolph Scott;
Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
To the shores of Tripoli,
But not to Mississippoli,
What do we do? We send the Marines!

For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
Till somebody we like can be elected.

Members of the corps
All hate the thought of war;
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
Stop calling it aggression,
Ooh, we hate that expression!
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo.
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt,
Send the Marines!

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L.A. IS BURNING

by Jonah Raskin

Isn’t this what many of us have been waiting for? It is indeed. Coordinated protests against Trump, ICE, and the war that has targeted immigrants who have kept the economy going and kept themselves alive in the belly of the beast.

L.A. was on fire and burning earlier this year. Neighborhoods were destroyed. It’s on fire and burning again. And so are cities around the country, from San Francisco to New York and from Chicago to Atlanta. America is burning. The United States is on fire. Wherever there are undocumented workers and wherever there are citizens opposed to tyranny and the assault on civil rights and civil liberties, there has been civil unrest.

The only real violence has been the violence of law enforcement officers who have confronted the crowds of largely peaceful protestors. It isn’t the civil war that has been predicted for years, but it sure feels like it’s another step toward civil war. It’s what Trump has wanted and still wants.

No matter what happens in the streets of America in the days and weeks ahead, he will pursue his goal of imposing absolute authority over the citizens of this nation. And no matter how many police officers and soldiers are in the streets and no matter how many people are arrested, it seems likely that protests will go on.

No one from outside our borders will come to our aid, though citizens from Paris to Hong Kong, and from Mexico City to Gaza and Ukraine, will add their voices to ours. Yes, L.A. is burning. Fires have been lit. They may smolder, but they will not be extinguished. Repression leads to intimidation and incarceration, but it also leads to resistance and insurrection. That’s a lesson of history we might remember now.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Passenger Plane Crashes in Western India With 242 Aboard

Inside a Courthouse, Chaos and Tears as Trump Accelerates Deportations

Kennedy Announces Eight New Members of C.D.C. Vaccine Advisory Panel

Israel Appears Ready to Attack Iran, Officials in U.S. and Europe Say

After a Wild Day in Court, Weinstein Jurors Will Resume Deliberations

Brian Wilson, Pop Auteur and Leader of the Beach Boys, Dies at 82

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BRIAN WILSON, SINGER-SONGWRITER WHO CREATED THE BEACH BOYS, DIES AT 82

by Tim Page

Brian Wilson, the founder and principal creative force of the Beach Boys, whose catalogue of early hits embodied the fantasy of California as a paradise of beautiful youth, fast cars and endless surf and made them the most popular American rock group of the 1960s, has died at 82.

The family announced the death on his official webpage but did not provide further information.

The Beach Boys were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California, near Los Angeles, by brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, and the regional success that year of their first single, “Surfin,’” thrust them to national attention when Capitol Records signed them almost immediately as the label’s first rock act.

They would make the Billboard Top 40 list at least 35 times, a tally unequaled by an American band. While each member contributed to the Beach Boys’ signature angelic vocal harmonics, Mr. Wilson was the widely acknowledged mastermind behind their music.…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/06/11/beach-boys-founder-brian-wilson-dead/

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BARNEY FORD

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EHUD OLMERT ON ISRAEL’S CATASTROPHIC WAR IN GAZA

The former prime minister of Israel discusses why he believes Israel’s war in Gaza can no longer be justified.

by Ezra Klein

I don’t think it’s possible at this point to overstate how hellish life in Gaza has been over the past 20 months. The death count is above 50,000 people, more than 15,000 of whom are children. At least 1.9 million of the 2.1 million Gazans have been displaced — and displaced and displaced. Some have been forced to flee their homes, shelters and camps 10 times or more.

Starvation is everywhere. Some 500,000 people are in a catastrophic condition of hunger. For 11 weeks, Israel allowed no aid into Gaza, and 171,000 metric tons of food for Gazans just sat there. Almost half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been destroyed or are not operational. Many of the rest are barely holding on. There are only 2,000 hospital beds available for more than two million people. About 60 percent of physical structures have been damaged or destroyed.

It has been 20 months since Oct. 7, when this war began, and Israel has no plan for the day after it ends — no theory of who should govern Gaza — and is instead weighing escalation. The plan being considered would herd more than two million Gazans into a small fraction of the strip. The argument is that this would isolate Hamas, further break its command and control structures. To the extent such structures still exist, it’s really quite hard to see how more devastation would degrade them.

In May a poll found that 55 percent of Israelis said they believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main goal is to stay in power. Not to have the hostages returned. Not even to win the war.

At the end of May, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, published a searing opinion essay in Haaretz. The headline read, “Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes.” He joins me now.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ehud-olmert.html

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