Mendocino County Today: Friday 10/17/2025

Little Mushrooms | Warming | Hospitality Weiners | Student v Supervisor | GNAR Bar | Noyo Radio | Naked Man | Local Events | Early Rains | Rain Wine | Don Hahn | Navarro | Gano Apple | Drake's Landing | Noyo Harbor | Yesterday's Catch | Chinook Salmon | Oyster Gills | Here We Are | Boston Massacre | Think Chicken | Shouting Slurs | McEwen/Moody | Dinero Piñeiro | Coin Flip | Mixing Drinks | Mother Gray | Job Disclosure | Dem Fault | Gov Hypocrisy | $34 Shot | Watching Baseball | Taibbi Concussed | Woke | Dystopian Madhouse | Primary Enemies | Best Suggestion | Lead Stories | Dying Empires | Robert Johnson | Natalia Sedova

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SLIGHT WARMING and drying will continue through Saturday with mostly clear skies. Cooler weather and very light coastal rain is expected Sunday with warmer weather again early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 43F under clear skies this Friday morning on the coast. Our forecast calls for sunny skies until it doesn't later. We have sneaker waves forecast for the next couple days, be careful along the shore, because they are sneaky.

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CRY ME A RIVER

On 10-14-2025 at approximately 04:00pm, Ukiah Police Department (UPD) School Resource Officer (SRO) received reports from Ukiah Unified School District (UUSD) that a student reported being physically assaulted by a UUSD Campus Supervisor.

UPD immediately launched an investigation and determined that Ukiah High School Campus Supervisor 39-year-old, Julian Willams had engaged in a physical altercation with a student by opening a locked classroom and escorting the student inside before physically assaulting the student. The student sustained no injuries as a result of the assault. UPD SRO provided the student with a list of available victim resources. As a result of the investigation, totality of circumstances and collected evidence, Williams was arrested for child endangerment and battery and transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was booked and lodged.

ON-LINE COMMENT: No doubt the adult was out of line — but there’s likely more to this story — it’s very unlikely the guy decided out of the blue to grab a student and assault them — and it’s very believable one of the little darlings could be rude, disrespectful, and insulting to the max.

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FRANK HARTZELL: IN DEFENSE OF GNAR BAR — AND GOOD TASTE

by Frank Hartzell, Mendocino Coast News

GNAR Bar has now become a local favorite for fun, flavorful take-out. Ramens are a standout, and the chicken katsu I grabbed with the dogs the other day was no exception—crispy, comforting, and uniquely theirs. On another visit, Linda went for the dim sum dumplings—an array of flavors, each paired with a tremendous dipping sauce. Easily some of the best we’ve tasted anywhere on the Mendocino Coast. It’s one of those spots that’s always been part of the Lansing Street rhythm, a place that’s worn many restaurant hats over the years but kept its soul intact.

Now there’s a bit of a stir on the Listserve: someone’s suggested protesting GNAR Bar’s application for an eating place beer and wine license. Why? They have tables. They serve food. No one’s walking out with open containers. It’s hard to see the harm—and easy to see the value in supporting a small business trying to grow. We found out just before publishing the person objecting owned a nearby business for kids, so it makes more sense. But we still favor this, its a business in the right place and everybody there is good for all of us.

Christopher Blake Fennewald, the owner, has poured heart and hustle into this place. If you’re looking to show some love, grab a bite from GNAR Bar, raise a toast to the Mendocino Cafe across the street, or sip something warm at 10450 Lansing Street. Civic engagement is great—but so is community support. Let’s keep both on the menu.

Community Voices on GNAR Bar’s Beer & Wine License

The Listserve lit up this week over GNAR Bar’s application for an eating place beer and wine license. While one commenter suggested opposition, others quickly chimed in with support.

Kate Sarfaty asked plainly: “Why do you want to oppose this application? It seems a restaurant serving alcohol in a business district, away from schools, is a reasonable enterprise.”

Michael H didn’t mince words: “Why must people try and destroy local businesses? This is how you get Walmart.”

It’s a reminder that local flavor—whether ramen, katsu, or civic debate—is worth defending. GNAR Bar isn’t just serving food; it’s serving community. Let’s keep the conversation constructive and the take-out spicy.

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TODAY IS THE NOYO RADIO PROJECT'S 25TH BIRTHDAY!

25 years ago from today, that is Oct. 16, 2000, The Noyo Radio Project became a public benefit nonprofit educational corporation. It has been a long strange trip.

I want to thank and congratulate the entire community who has supported us and KNYO-LP from Day One! It has been a fulfilling and sometime challenging project that has shown me how a Community of like-minded folks can make things happen. With a little help from our Friends. We are all in this boat together and we can move it if we all pull in the same direction. That is what I have learned from The Noyo Radio Project.

You can support The Noyo Radio Project and KNYO by attending our music events, by attending our First Friday Free Concert Series at 325 N. Franklin (Frankie and the Lost Souls single release party Nov. 7), by attending our free Movie Nights the last Sunday of the month at 6 PM, OR by sending a tax deductible check to KNYO, PO Box 1651, Fort Bragg, CA, OR go to knyo.org, hit the red Donate heart and fill in the blanks.

Thanks again. With our Community's support we will be here in our little pocket of Heaven for a long time.

Bob Young

Mendocino

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NAKED MAN IN A CAVE: SHOULD I BE CONCERNED? WOOLY WORMS SAY WINTER’S COMING, & MORE.

by Frank Hartzell

There was a naked, middle-aged man in a cave below Pine Beach Inn—on a beach so hard to reach, most folks wouldn’t even know it’s there.…

https://mendocinocoast.news/naked-man-in-a-cave-should-i-be-concerned-woolly-worms-say-winters-coming-more/

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LOCAL EVENTS

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‘WE LUCKED OUT’: EARLY RAINS TAME CALIFORNIA’S PEAK WILDFIRE SEASON

Recent rain significantly reduced the risk of a large fire breaking out before year’s end, experts said.

by Amy Graff

October in California is typically known as a dangerous moment in peak fire season, the month when the state has seen some of its most destructive wildfires, but an early-season storm that swept from the Bay Area to Los Angeles this week has lessened the risk that wildfires will spark, according to state fire meteorologists and other experts.

The storm, which the National Weather Service described as rare for this time of year, dropped as much as four inches of rain in some parts of the state. That has likely curbed the threat of large wildfires in the north through the end of the year and into winter, particularly if more rain falls soon, according to Brent Wachter, a fire meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Redding, Calif.

In Southern California, the fire threat has been reduced significantly for the coming weeks, but experts warned that because the region is in a drought, if the weather turns warm and dry again, and the Santa Ana winds return as they often do in late fall, the risk of fires there may return.

“I wasn’t expecting a big storm to hit this early,” said Matt Shameson, a fire meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Riverside, Calif. “Usually we don’t see anything like this until end of November, even until end of December. Last year, we didn’t have significant rainfall until the middle of February.”

California started the year with wildfires whipping through Los Angeles neighborhoods in one of the most expensive and deadly disasters in the state’s history. By the time peak fire season bore down in late June, with vegetation drying out and temperatures expected to rise, experts were warning the state could have an especially brutal summer for wildfires.

Instead, the summer — typically California’s most intense period for wildfires — was relatively subdued, especially when compared with summers in the last decade when hundreds of thousands, even millions, of acres burned. While thousands of fires ignited and dozens of structures burned over the summer, only a scant number of fires grew into large, destructive conflagrations.

“California was quiet,” said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University. “We lucked out.”

A similar story unfolded across much of the Western United States, with low to average wildfire activity, though several states had at least one explosive fire that spurred evacuations and destroyed homes. In Colorado, the 137,000-acre Lee fire was among the largest ever in the state, while the Dragon Bravo Fire in Arizona, the largest wildfire in the country so far this year, charred 145,000 acres and a historic lodge in Grand Canyon National Park.

Conditions were more extreme in Canada, which endured its second-worst summer wildfire season on record, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. The season there started early in May and persisted through the summer with hot weather and dry air masses, leaving the vegetation parched and flammable. The province of Saskatchewan was the hardest hit, with seven million acres burned.

The destruction in Saskatchewan alone “is close to what we would have considered our annual national average a few years ago,” said Richard Carr, a fire research analyst with the Canadian Forest Service.

Amid a changing climate, wildfires have gone from a seasonal threat to a year-round hazard across the West, and particularly in California. Still, the state’s largest forest fires usually occur during the peak season, July through October.

This year, only one fire, the Gifford fire in the coastal mountains of Central California, grew into a megafire, generally defined as a fire of at least 100,000 acres. A cluster of fires ignited by lightning in the Sierra Nevada foothills became the season’s most destructive blaze, tearing through the historic gold rush town of Chinese Camp and destroying 95 structures.

Thousands of wildfires ignited this summer in California, but the total acreage burned this year is trending below normal. Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, reports that since 1987, fires have burned on average about 800,000 acres a year, including some significant outliers such as 2020, when 4.3 million acres burned. This year, about 522,000 acres have burned since Jan. 1, including the 37,000 acres from the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County, two of the state’s deadliest and most destructive wildfires in history.

This year, forecasters had predicted that prolonged heat waves would dry out the landscape and increase the risk of fire in the fall and summer. While there were a few spells of hot weather and temperatures trended above normal across many inland areas, the record-breaking heat never materialized.

“You look at the number of 100-degree days we had this year and it’s significantly lower than some past years,” said Jesse Torres, a spokesman for Cal Fire.

“We did not have those heat waves,” said John Abatzoglou, a climatologist at the University of California, Merced. “We just did not.”

Coastal areas recorded below-average temperatures throughout much of the summer, and July was cooler than normal across the state.

The heat did not come, but another weather pattern that increases wildfire risk did: lightning. In California, summer thunderstorms are often dry, and lightning strikes can easily spark big fires in the absence of rain. This summer there were an unusually high number of lightning events, but many of these were accompanied by rains — which ultimately reduced the fire risk.

“Lightning can really change the course of a fire season,” Mr. Abatzoglou said. But it “didn’t strike a landscape that was as dry as previous years,” he added.

(NY Times)

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FROM EBAY, A WINE LABEL OF LOCAL INTEREST: 1978 Edmeades Vineyards Rain Wine. (via Marshall Newman)

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A COAST DOCTOR’S HOUSE CALLS

On April 26, 2009, the Kelley House Museum hosted Dr. Don Hahn and Dr. Jim Swallow to discuss practicing medicine in Mendocino over the years. The following is Dr. Hahn retelling a few stories about house calls he made in the 1960s and 1970s.

I can confess that I was particularly fond of making house calls because I got to see and learn more about a person. Two houses that I particularly enjoyed. The first was the farmhouse at the very end of Middle Ridge Road in Albion. It seemed to me at the point of being engulfed by rose vines. There lived Dean and his wife, Jesse, who was born there and lived all her long life in the same house. Dean was from Oakland. He had traveled to Albion as a member of the Oakland baseball team to play against the Albion. There was some socializing after the game, a dance, perhaps, and Dean met Jesse, and so it went. Dean was a collector. He had tons of stuff stored in various outbuildings. Their attic was an adventure. The most poignant item stored there was an old-time large wheel, elegant baby carriage that Jesse's parents had, who came from Canada, must have used to wheel her along the dirt road and paths of Albion over 100 years ago. Dean was very generous and gave me many little presents, including an old-fashioned pocketknife, a magnifying glass, a boot jack, and a wonderful apothecary balance, complete with apothecary weights I keep to this day in a place of honor in my consultation room. He was a little vague on the origin of the scale.

The second house I enjoyed visiting belonged to Edith, who grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was a nurse at the old Stanford Hospital in San Francisco, where she met and married a doctor operating a small clinic hospital in Albion. He had returned to Stanford for some refresher courses. She came to Albion for the first time as a bride in 1919. She found the place somewhat austere. She survived that first winter by anticipating the splash of color that would erupt in the spring as the tulips she had planted would bloom. Alas, she waited and waited and waited in vain. That was Edith's introduction to gophers. Widowed, remarried and widowed again. She had moved to a lovely, eastern style home in Fort Bragg when I first met her. She eventually came to expect a visit from me regularly, as she became increasingly infirm.

Before then, when she was still quite able to come to Mendocino. She was sitting in my consultation room one morning when she spied the apothecary balance. She said it reminded her of one that they used to have at the Albion Hospital. I explained that this one had been a gift from Dean. Turned out she knew Dean well, and she asserted that Dean didn't always have a clear perception of what was his and what wasn't. I had the scale given to me a second time, this time by Edith. You might say they're all balanced out in the air.

(To hear more from Dr. Hahn and Dr. Swallow about practicing medicine in Mendocino, visit the Kelley House youtube channel.)

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NAVARRO

by Bob Lorentzen

The word Navarro was probably a Spanish rendering of the Central Pomo name for this place. The northern limit of Central Pomo territory was marked by Navarro Ridge, which towers over the last mile of the river.

The town of Navarro was built around the sawmill there in the early 1860s. Another part of the town grew up on Navarro Ridge, where two hotels put up visitors as early as 1860. Navarro suffered through the boom-and-bust cycle of most north coast settlements. Smeaton Chase found the setting "beautiful — a deep valley with a wide, winding river; the eucalyptus trees and dracaena palms in the gardens showed the owners' expectations of remaining."

But the only visible residents Chase found were a few pigs and chickens. "Most of the buildings were out of plumb; the church leaned at an alarming angle; a loon swimming leisurely in the middle of the stream seemed to certify the solitude of the place."

The resort Navarro-by-the-Sea prospered there during the 1950s, but faded to oblivion again when the lodge closed. (It has since been restored and re-opened.) The beach became a place of controversy in the 1970s, then again in the 1990s.

Until 1994 Navarro Beach was known as the last free beach in California, a place where one could camp or live without paying a fee. But county officials, who had long managed the beach, grew short of maintenance funds and patience as the free beach attracted more and more impoverished people living in broken down campers and trailers. The county gave the beach to the State Parks Department, who agreed to evict the homeless. The eviction process dragged on, with emotions raging on all sides. Finally the community found places for some of the squatters to live and encouraged others to move on.

While you can still camp there, each of the 36 sites now costs $5 a night. You'll have to move on after the two-week limit. Day use is still free. Another controversy centered around Navarro Beach about 25 years ago. A new owner acquired Navarro-by-the-Sea resort in 1970, then tried to block public access through his property.

The Sierra Club filed suit to keep the beach open, resulting in a landmark decision by the California Supreme Court. The court ordered the beach opened, ruling that, since the road had been open to the public for more than five years, "implied dedication" had established the route as public access. The owner was still trying to regulate who used the beach in 1973. The sign at the parking lot read: “Casual attire is acceptable provided it is clean. Bare feet, patches, torn undershirts, faded clothing and untidy appearance NOT ACCEPTABLE.” No bare feet allowed on the beach?

This story offers more than meets the eye, as is often the case with local politics. When the utopian dreams of the hippie community in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury came crashing down in a haze of drug abuse and crime after 1967's "Summer of Love," many counterculture city residents began an exodus to the quiet, unpopulated and affordable life along the north coast. New left politicos and war resisters were attracted to the coast too. Some of the immigrants came with enough money to buy the cheap land then available. Others came only with bedroll and backpack.

In those days many a new arrival to the Mendocino Coast spent their first winter camping in a "stump house" — plastic sheets or boards thrown across the top of a goose pen redwood stump along the Navarro River and elsewhere.

Some old-timers saw these long-haired immigrants in tie-dyed and tattered clothing as undesirable aliens, taking any step possible to keep them out, including calling the building department on their ramshackle shacks. While many urban dropouts moved on or returned to the city, many more found a way to stay.

The test of time proved that many of these counterculture people fit very well into the independent, self-sufficient lifestyle for which Mendocino County residents were known. The new arrivals became fishermen, shop keepers, teachers, lawyers, therapists, journalists, even loggers; they established theater companies and inns, fought for political power, built houses (some to code and some not), bore and raised children, fought for better schools.

In short they lived their dreams and made their compromises, but they found in Mendocino County a land where they could survive, a land that made their hearts sing. While far from everyone who settled here in the late '60s and early '70s considered themselves hippies (the term has little meaning today anyway), most new arrivals came seeking refuge from the rat race, bringing high ideals and expectations about what country life offered.

(‘The Glove Box Guide to the Mendocino Coast,’ 1995)

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ERICA KETZENJAMMER: If you were wondering why apples were called Ganos in Boontling, this is why.

Also, tangentially, “apple head” is pronounced Apel-eed. Don’t redbook too hard pilgrims, and jape your moshe Prather in the skullsy regions.

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MIKE KOEPF:

DRAKE’S BAY? Secret knowledge, concerning Drake’s landing in Northern California? Albion?

No. “38 degrees, 30 minutes” approximates Bodega Bay, not Fort Ross. As a former commercial fisherman, I’ve anchored in every bay, cove, and open roadstead from Point ‘Sur to the Oregon border and beyond. Bodega Bay does qualify as a good anchorage since it offers some protection from the prevailing northwest wind. However, there are no white cliffs resembling the white cliffs of Dover, but there are famously in Drake’s Bay protected by the projection of Point Reyes. 38.30 degrees is but 10 nautical miles off from Point Reyes…an excellent sun shot in the sailing age of Drake when no sextants existed. However, what is crucial to Drake’s landing in 1579 is the fact that the Golden Hind was careened during Drake’s stay, which necessitated hauling out on a sandy beach of reasonably level land to clean and repair the hull of the ship. Mendocino County? Albion? No possible way. The coves and dog holes of Mendocino County are bordered by rocks and projecting reefs, and Albion is perhaps the worst anchorage of all, in that the tide moving in and out of the Albion river causes an anchored vessel to circle continuously, which easily loosens any set anchor. I tried it once. Thus, Point Reyes and Drake’s Bay is still the best bet for Drake’s stay in California in 1579.

PS. In London, there’s a replica of the Golden Hind. It looks so small.

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ADELA MICALLEF: My grandma was a photographer for the Press Democrat newspaper in Fort Bragg in the 50's and early 60's. When she passed away, my aunt gave me one of her cameras, starting my journey into photography. My mom and I recently came across a stack of 4x5 large format negatives of some of my grandmother's images that had been tucked away in a safe place years ago. I did a quick study on scanning and editing negatives with a DSLR and brought this one back to life yesterday. This is Noyo harbor in Fort Bragg/Mendocino, looking downstream towards the Noyo bridge and the ocean, sometime in the late 50's/early 60's I think. They dug a larger mooring basin and moved all the boats upstream out of the river channel at some point, which is still in use today. My dad would grow up and become a fisherman, working on a few boats that are probably in this photo.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, October 16, 2025

STACI BUSK, 58, Willits. Stolen property, taking vehicle without owner’s permission.

NATHANIEL CHITWOOD, 51, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

WILLIAM KIDD IV, 54, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, vehicle registration tampering, county parole violation.

COURTNEY LUSCKO-HAMILTON, 41, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

LOUANN MCKEE, 48, Redwood Valley. DUI-any drug, toluene or similar substance.

NATHAN MORALES-SALDANA, 35, Covelo. Trespassing, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

FRANK ONETO JR., 51, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MARK WITTMAN, 35, Potter Valley. DUI.

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AMERICAN RIVER SALMON AND STEELHEAD PRODUCTION IN JEOPARDY DUE TO FEDERAL CUTBACKS

by Dan Bacher

For the first time in three years, anglers are again catching big, bright fall-run Chinook salmon on the American River, the crown jewel of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/10/15/2348766/-American-River-Salmon-and-Steelhead-Production-In-Jeopardy-Due-to-Federal-Cutbacks

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HERE WE ARE IN THE YEARS

Now that the holidays have come
They can relax and watch the sun
Rise above all of the beautiful things they've done

Go to the country, take the dog
Look at the sky without the smog
See the world, laugh at the farmers feeding hogs
Eat hot dogs

What a pity that the people from the city
Can't relate to the slower things
That the country brings

Time itself is bought and sold
The spreading fear of growing old
Contains a thousand foolish games that we play
While people planning trips to stars
Allow another boulevard to claim a quiet country lane
It's insane

So the subtle face is a loser this time around
Here we are in the years
Where the showman shifts the gears
Lives become careers
Children cry in fear
"Let us out of here!"

— Neil Young (1969)

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CONTEMPORARY ECHOES OF THE ‘BOSTON MASSACRE’

Editor:

First, the government announced decrees (OK, enacted laws) leveling punishment on the civilian population. Second, the government sent troops to enforce those laws. Next, numbers of civilians stood up against those punitive laws. Some resisters threw objects (stones, snowballs) at the military. Then, the soldiers shot and killed some of the citizen “mob.” A revolution was on its way. No, not yet in 2025, but in 1770. It was labeled the “Boston Massacre.” Today, patriotic Americans take pride in the resistance of 250 years ago. Will the next military-on-civilian violence bring out yesterday’s patriots, or will they become the new Tories?

Phil Weil

Santa Rosa

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CLOVERDALE MAN ACCUSED OF HATE CRIME, BATTERY AFTER SHOUTING SLURS AT SONOMA COUNTY PRIDE BOWLING LEAGUE

by Colin Atagi

A registered sex offender was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of battery and committing a hate crime after shouting homophobic slurs at members of the Sonoma County Pride Bowling League during their weekly league night in Rohnert Park.

Vincent Charles Belfiore, 64, was taken into custody outside Double Decker Lanes on Golf Course Drive, according to Lt. Andrew Smith of the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety.

Police said Belfiore confronted league members just before 9:30 p.m. Among them was league president Christopher Mahurin, a lieutenant with the Santa Rosa Police Department, who said Belfiore directed numerous slurs at him before being asked to leave.

“I immediately told him it’s time to leave,” Mahurin told The Press Democrat. “A lot of our bowlers are pretty frightened someone would come in and say slurs.”

The bowling league, founded in 2014, has about 130 members. Roughly half were present when the confrontation unfolded. Several stepped in to guide Belfiore toward the exit, where he allegedly punched one member in the chest, causing a minor injury, Mahurin said.

The incident lasted about five minutes before Belfiore drove away. Belfiore told officers he had been at the bowling alley to visit someone who was bowling, Smith said.

Belfiore was arrested shortly afterward. He was not listed in jail records as of Wednesday afternoon, and the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office had not yet filed charges.

According to California’s Megan’s Law database of registered sex offenders, Belfiore is a Cloverdale resident convicted of sexual battery in 1983. Sonoma County court records show multiple felony and misdemeanor cases dating back to 1992, including a 2014 drug-related conviction.

Under California law, a hate crime is a criminal act motivated, at least in part, by bias against a protected characteristic, including sexual orientation. If prosecutors allege and prove a hate-crime enhancement, a state provision allows an added one to three years in prison for a felony.

On Wednesday, Mahurin posted a statement on the league’s Facebook page reaffirming its commitment to community and inclusion.

“The Sonoma County Pride Bowling League stands as a visible, unapologetic reminder that we belong,” he wrote. “That love, inclusion, and solidarity are stronger than any act of hate.”

He said the league would continue meeting weekly and supporting one another, calling members’ response to the incident a reflection of their strength and unity.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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ADD LOOK ALIKES, Bruce McEwen and Jake Moody.

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KICKER EDDY PIÑEIRO BRINGS CALM TO LIVES OF 49ERS, AND HIS PARENTS: ‘THEY DESERVE THE WORLD’

by Scott Ostler

Because of the nature of what they do, sending footballs into the skies, it’s poetically apt that NFL kickers get blown around like autumn leaves.

Eddy Piñeiro knows the drill. Flying high one day, diving like a broken kite the next.

On the first Sunday of this NFL season, Piñeiro, one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history, was home in Miami, 30 and unemployed.

Three days later, Piñeiro was being driven to the Miami airport by his father, to catch a flight to Atlanta to sign with the Falcons.

Then Piñeiro got a call from the San Francisco 49ers. The day before, they had released their kicker, Jake Moody, after he blew two field goals in a narrow win at Seattle.

“They called me and said, ‘Don’t sign, don’t go over there, we want you here,’” Piñeiro said Wednesday at his locker. “I made a decision with my agent, didn’t get on that flight, came here (to Santa Clara) the next morning.”

What if the 49ers had called two hours later?

“I wasn’t going to just get on a flight and come back home,” Piñeiro said.

Whew. Kickers might seem like they’re a dime a dozen, but the 49ers were desperate for a proven, accurate kicker. Moody’s approval rating among fans, and no doubt among players and coaches, had plummeted to near zero.

Piñeiro was the antidote to all that anxiety. Though he missed his first 49ers’ kick, a PAT attempt, he has been perfect since, 15-for-15 on field goals and 7-for-7 on PATs.

It’s the leg, sure. Piñeiro is No. 2 on the NFL’s all-time field-goal accuracy list at 89.4% (behind the Chargers’ Cameron Dicker at 94.6). Social media is warming to the nickname “Dinero” Piñeiro, dinero being Spanish for money.

But Piñeiro has also brought a sense of calm to the 49ers. He settled into the locker room like a soothing cloud of aromatherapy. Players like to believe that when they bash their brains out for three hours, their blood/sweat/tears won’t wind up in a trash can because of an errant kick.

Moody, who kicked a game-winner for the Bears on Monday night, and who might become a star, always looked worried. His statements added to the concern that he lacked rocklike emotional stability. It’s silly to judge a player by outward appearances, but football is a silly game.

Piñeiro projects an easygoing confidence and calm. After five games as a 49er, it’s as if he’s been here for years.

He said he’s mentally resilient because of his experience. You build up that resilience, he said, “by missing kicks. That’s how you build it up, by missing game-winners, by missing important kicks, creating a foundation. At the end of the day, we’re not going to be perfect.”

Piñeiro beat the Rams in overtime with a 41-yarder that caromed off the left upright. Had that been Moody, it would have been further proof that the guy is as wild as a one-eyed jack in a poker game. But this was steady Eddy, so fans just figured he called bank before that kick.

That calm seems to extend to Piñeiro’s life. Though he makes only kicker money — $1.17 million this season — Piñeiro apparently feels he’s set for life. Years back, he bought a home for his mother and father, two doors down from his place in Miami. Two years ago, he told his parents that they were officially retired. Dad, a pro soccer player in his younger day, was working in construction and cabinetmaking.

Piñeiro was born in Florida. His father emigrated from Cuba, his mother from Nicaragua.

“My dad will never work another day in his life again,” Piñeiro said. “He’s done everything for me, he’s been there for me, he’s worked his whole life to give us the best life, so now it’s time that I give him the best life. … He played pro soccer and he didn’t have the best money management. Now he’s got me. We’re good.”

In high school, Piñeiro’s first love was soccer, he wanted to follow in his old man’s boots, but he quit soccer and devoted himself to kicking footballs because of the potential for an NFL payoff. In college, he chose Florida over Alabama because he wanted his parents at every game.

When Piñeiro told Mom and Dad he was picking up the tab from here on out, “They were super happy. They deserve the world, this is why I do it, I do it for them. If it was up to me, I’ll live under a bridge, I’m OK. As long as they’re living good, that’s all that matters.”

Piñeiro hasn’t forgotten all the mornings when he and Dad would drive to a field at 5 o’clock to kick balls for an hour in the darkness. Dad would drop Eddy off at school and go to work, then every evening they’d go back to the field to kick for another hour.

Even now, Eddy Sr. and Eddy Jr. talk every day, the old man providing encouragement and counsel. One favorite: “You’re not as good as they say you are, and you’re not as bad as they say you are.”

Eddy Sr. had a heart attack two weeks ago, but was well enough to attend last Sunday’s 49ers’ game in Tampa, where Dinero Piñeiro was 4-for-4 on field goals.

“I wanted to do really good in front of my mom and dad,” Piñeiro said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m still a little kid. … I want ’em to be proud of me. Having them there, I felt a little extra pressure, because they haven’t seen me in over a month.

“Seeing my mom was super special to me, being able to hug her, it’s just the little things that sometimes we take for granted. I can’t see them, they’re in Miami, (so) just being able to hug her and my dad, just feel them there, felt really good.”

On Sunday Piñeiro will kick against the Falcons, who missed signing him by two hours. Thus blow the autumn winds.

(SF Chronicle)

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ESTHER MOBLEY:

How a Bay Area Chef Is Helping Wineries Lure A Different Kind Of Drinker

On Friday evenings, after putting my toddler to bed, I make cocktails. It’s how I transition into the weekend.

Over the last couple of months, I have significantly improved this weekly ritual introducing intriguing mixers from a Sonoma County chef, Kim LaVere.

She doesn’t only make cocktail mixers. With the herb and produce-packed shrubs and syrups she makes for her business, Land & Local, she is also helping a number of Sonoma County wineries expand their nonalcoholic drink offerings, which may become an increasingly essential lifeline for them as alcohol consumption declines.

I first encountered LaVere’s wares at the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol in August, and I immediately loved what I tasted: her brambly blackberry shrub made with basil and milky oats; her fragrant, not-too-sweet elderflower syrup with spearmint and Meyer lemon. I bought a mixed six-pack and have been experimenting ever since.

Her rose-cardamom-Meyer lemon mixer combined with Prosecco makes an excellent spritz, and my favorite may be the “forest floor” shrub — minty, earthy and delicate, made from nettle leaf, Doug fir tips and lemon balm — fashioned as an ersatz mojito, with white rum, sparkling water and lots of muddled mint leaves. Poured over seltzer, the shrubs make satisfying mocktails.

LaVere started Land & Local eight years ago. She fled a corporate-retail career in New York and found what is likely its polar opposite: working at permaculture centers in Sonoma County, where she developed an interest in herbal medicine. After trying a few other forms of food businesses — catering, a line of salad dressings and seed mixes — she decided to commit to making drinks.

Many of her products are born from conversations with other purveyors at the farmers market. “I’m looking for what might be an overabundance that farmers might be willing to sell me big quantities of,” LaVere said. “I like having these symbiotic relationships with the farmers.” She aims to bottle the taste of hyper-seasonal produce; her strawberry-snap pea shrub tastes startlingly like spring.

As the wine industry has contended with lower drinking rates and consumers’ rising interest in wine alternatives, local wineries including Lambert Bridge and Kendall-Jackson have tapped LaVere to create spritz kits. Lambert Bridge suggests blending its Sauvignon Blanc with her rose-cardamom mixer, and its rosé with her blood orange-fennel.

I admitted to LaVere that this attitude surprised me: Many wineries would shudder at the thought of anyone doctoring their precious wine. “I think that mentality is still out there,” she said, but in this increasingly challenging climate, wineries are getting wise to the fact that they need to welcome non-drinkers in order to attract new business.

“Nowadays, if there’s a group of four to six people going wine tasting, chances are at least one of those people doesn’t drink,” she said. “Or it could just be a break between tastings if you’re feeling like you need something refreshing.”

Other local vintners have gone one step further: commissioning nonalcoholic wine alternatives from LaVere using their own grape juice. Kistler Vineyards, a vaunted producer of Sonoma County Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, gave LaVere some frozen, unfermented Pinot Noir juice and asked her to infuse it with flavors — white flowers, citrus, woodsy herbs — that mimic the notes of the finished wine. Merriam Vineyards, which LaVere said “had a ton of people who joined the wine club and then got pregnant,” is working with LaVere on an entire nonalcoholic flight. They’ll even incorporate her cocktail salts, which come in flavors like yuzu and chile-hibiscus.

The only preservative LaVere uses in her shrubs and syrups is lemon juice, but she claims they’ll keep about a year from production. I’ve found that they still taste fresh within about two weeks of breaking the seal on a bottle. Land & Local products are available at a variety of Bay Area stores and restaurants and at the Healdsburg, Larkspur, Marin County Civic Center and Sebastopol farmers markets.

She’s growing the business slowly, she said, and doesn’t envision taking Land & Local to national retail anytime soon. But there could be a brick and mortar in the Bay Area at some point.

“Aspirationally, I see opening some sort of retail component like a tasting room where we can do spritz bar popups,” she said. I’ll be there.

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What I'm Reading

The Michelin Guide indicated at a press event last week that it would begin reviewing wines. Few details are available about what this will actually look like, but the pundits are already weighing in with questions, particularly about what this means for the Wine Advocate, the publication that Michelin bought in 2019. In his Vinography blog, Alder Yarrow asks all the big questions. “Will this be the expansion of an empire, or an ill-considered overreach?”

The New York Times is full of prescriptions for the alcohol industry this week. Chief wine critic Eric Asimov “has thoughts” about what the wine industry must do in order to attract new drinkers — “double-down on conscientious farming and making good, unpretentious wines,” among other things. And in the Opinion section, Mark Robichaux suggests that the craft beer industry must “abandon the I.P.A. arms race,” let go of the zany labels and punny beer names and embrace smaller can sizes.

The rise of participation in Dry January and Sober October may have played an especially large role in driving the current decline in alcohol consumption yearround, according to a researcher. Alvin Powell explores some of the other factors at play in the Harvard Gazette.

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AFTER CALMATTERS REPORT, NEWSOM SIGNS LAW FORCING LAWMAKERS TO DISCLOSE THEIR NEW JOBS

by Ryan Sabalow

California’s elected and appointed officials will now have to tell the public when they’ve accepted a job offer from a new employer that might seek favors from them while they’re still in a position of power.

Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month signed Assembly Bill 1286 by Democratic Assemblymember Tasha Boerner of Solana Beach. The measure requires California’s elected officials and state appointees to note on mandatory conflict of interest forms whether they’ve gotten a new job before their term in office ends.

Boerner introduced the measure in response to a CalMatters story last year that highlighted how lawmakers were not required to tell the public if they were negotiating or had accepted a job with an organization trying to get something from the Legislature.

“People’s distrust of the government is growing,” Boerner said in a statement after the bill was presented to Newsom. “As public servants, one of the most important parts of our job is transparency. It is the one-way ticket to building confidence between government officials and their communities.”

Shery Yang, a spokesperson for the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which enforces California’s ethics laws, said Chairperson Adam Silver proposed the bill idea to Boerner’s office after reading CalMatters’ story.

Under the new law, officials must now provide the commission with the date they accept a job offer, the position they’re going to take and a description of what their employer does, as well as their employer’s name and address. Boerner’s bill passed the Legislature without any lawmaker voting against it.

The CalMatters report came as around a quarter of the Legislature was leaving office. Some lawmakers were searching for their next job while still casting votes, potentially on matters that could benefit their future employers.

Of the 180 lawmakers who left office since 2012, the story noted, around 40 registered as lobbyists, worked as political consultants or took executive-level jobs with companies or organizations actively lobbying at the Capitol.

It’s illegal and considered bribery for a government official to cast votes or do other official favors in exchange for a promise of future employment. It’s also illegal for officials to use state resources to search for or secure a new job.

Lawmakers also are supposed to recuse themselves from any official actions that have “direct and significant” financial impact on an entity with whom they are negotiating employment or who has made them an employment offer,” according to a legislative ethics committee handout.

But state ethics guidelines still allow lawmakers to vote on bills that could benefit a prospective employer, allowing them to discuss and vote on bills that would benefit a “significant segment” of an industry rather than their specific would-be employer.

In practice, that means a lawmaker with a job pending at a major tech company can continue to vote on legislation that impacts all tech companies.

Government ethics experts told CalMatters last year that adding disclosure requirements for job-hunting lawmakers would add needed transparency and help keep lawmakers and lobbyists honest.

FPPC Chairperson Silver called the measure “an important step forward for transparency and accountability in the political process.”

“This reform is about something bigger than disclosure forms — it is about trust,” he said in a statement. “It guarantees that Californians know their government is working for them, not for private interests. And more practically, it ensures that the FPPC has the information necessary to timely and effectively identify and prosecute violations of the state’s ban on influencing prospective employment.”

(CalMatters.org)

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NEWSOM’S VETOES AND HYPOCRISY REVEAL CLUES TO HIS MORAL CHARACTER

Editor,

The Chronicle has overlooked that Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed pro-consumer energy bills this month that could have saved Californians $550 million per year. His moral compass seems to point toward PG&E, one of his biggest campaign donors and a big donor to his wife’s nonprofit media company.

Newsom even threatened to withhold state funding from California universities willing to consider policies proposed by President Donald Trump.

The hypocrisy is striking. Newsom built his brand by condemning Trump for using federal funds as a political weapon. Now he’s doing the same thing, undermining the consistency and credibility he once claimed to embody.

As a former CEO who teaches corporate leadership, I know that a moral compass aimed at voters, not donors, is the cornerstone of effective governance. Newsom’s two-faced approach erodes confidence in his judgment and his capacity to lead.

My next vote will go to a Democratic eagle, not a peacock strutting across the political landscape.

Curtis Panasuk

San Francisco

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EYEWITNESS NEWS Washington, D.C. October 16, 2025 @ 12:36 p.m. EST

Warmest spiritual greetings from Washington, D.C.,

In addition to now having the Washington D.C. driver’s license, and the SSI restored (with the benefits denied since May disbursed retroactively into the Chase checking account), just yesterday found out that the California EBT account is closed, and immediately walked a copy of that information into the local EBT office, which informed me that they could now issue me an EBT card here. Realizing that this would soon increase my wealth by around $200, I went to the Yard House to celebrate, spending half of that amount on two Paulaner Oktoberfest pub size glasses of beer, a well-deserved $34 shot of Johnny Walker Blue Label Scotch, all a prelude to the Korean style rib eye steak with onion rings. The manager congratulated me on my managerial acumen! Nota bene: Nobody in the District of Columbia could care less about the federal government shut down. It has no effect on social services. Cheers!

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

ED NOTE. A $34 shot? Could you tell the diff between that and a five dollar shot?

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NOTE TO READERS

A strange and debilitating experience, hopefully ending

by Matt Taibbi

I apologize for Racket readers for my recent absence. I had an accident at the end of the last week, taking a fall after losing keys and trying to break into my own house. I was unconscious for a few minutes. Apparently upon waking I knew my date of birth and name, but not the current President (!). EMTs and a nearby hospital took good care of me, ruled out uglier possibilities, and sent me home with a concussion. 

I thought I’d be right back, certainly in time for this week’s chats with Walter, but an attempt to come back last weekend queered things, and it took four days lying in a dark room to get the pain down from a surprising 7-8 level to a 2. I can type now and be the slower half of a conversation with my ten-year-old, but Walter and I have agreed to re-start America This Week Monday, not tomorrow. Apologies to Racket subscribers, but the worst is past and there’s more to come perhaps sooner than later, as I still owe a book review among other things. 

My lesson from this week: if you’re older and have kids, act like it. Beware of thoughts like, “When I was 22 I could make this jump without a problem.” You’re not 22, you’re one of earth’s most dangerous animals, middle-aged and delusional. Apologies for being that person, and thanks to friends and family for their indulgence and care through this less-than-fun ordeal. See you all soon.

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THE ONUS IS ON ISRAEL AND ITS ALLIES To End The Genocide, Not Their Victims

by Caitlin Johnstone

It’s actually never legitimate to withhold aid from starving civilians. It was never legitimate at any time.

That’s one of the annoying things about having to discuss Israel’s ridiculous claim that Hamas is hoarding hostage corpses in order to achieve some kind of goal, and therefore justifies reducing aid into Gaza as punishment: the conversation skates right over the fact that it has never been legitimate for Israel to withhold humanitarian aid into Gaza. Debating whether Israel is right or wrong to withhold aid under these specific circumstances tacitly assumes that it could ever be right to withhold aid under any circumstances.

Listening to Israel’s justifications for why it needs to inflict monstrous abuses upon the Palestinians has the effect of assuming that there are circumstances under which those monstrous abuses could be acceptable. And there just aren’t.

It has never been legitimate to intentionally deprive civilians of humanitarian aid that they need to survive. You have to give them aid.

It has never been legitimate to shoot noncombatants because you decided they crossed some sort of line into a forbidden zone. It has never been legitimate to shoot noncombatants at all.

It has never been legitimate to commit genocide. Israel just needs to stop the genocide.

The onus for stopping a genocide is on the party committing the genocide. The onus is not on the victims of the genocide to end it by meeting certain conditions. This should not even need to be said.

It’s so obnoxious how everyone’s getting sucked into these debates about whether or not Israel might need to resume the genocide because Hamas refused to disarm or they didn’t get their hostage corpses back or this or that ceasefire demand wasn’t met or blah blah whatever. Israel has never needed to commit genocide. It needs to stop committing genocide.

The world shouldn’t be bending over backwards to ensure that the state which is committing genocide is happy with the terms by which the genocide is ended. The world should be aggressively punishing the state that is committing genocide until it stops. That would be true peace. What we are seeing now is just a bad joke.

And of course this true peace is not emerging because the powerful western states who’ve been backing the genocide this whole time are perfectly fine with it. Their weapons industries get to profit from the genocide. Their empire managers get to enjoy the domination of a critical geostrategic region. They sleep like babies at night, because they do not view the victims of the genocide as human beings.

So we find ourselves doing this ridiculous dance where we go “Okay well maybe the genocide could stop if the victims of the genocide agree to terms X, Y and Z and don’t make too much of a fuss about being killed in smaller numbers every day.”

This is madness. It’s the craziest thing you could possibly imagine. We live in a dystopian madhouse.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Harry Patch, the last surviving veteran from World War I at the age of 111, had the best suggestion for war.

”I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.”

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LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

After ‘Productive’ Call, Trump Plans Another Meeting With Putin

Summit With Zelensky Opens Trump’s New Push for Ukraine Cease-Fire

John Bolton Indicted Over Handling of Classified Information

Head of the U.S. Military’s Southern Command Is Stepping Down, Officials Say

Hailing an Era of ‘Trump Babies,’ White House Unveils I.V.F. Proposals

Iran Lures Transgender Foreigners for Surgery but Forces Operations on Locals

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THE FATE OF DYING EMPIRES: An interview with historian & activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

by Jonah Raskin

Recently, I’ve been in the habit of getting together for coffee and conversations with author and activist, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, though I have known about her and have read her impassioned scholarship for years. In person, and at the age of 87, she tends to be soft-spoken, albeit keenly aware of her surroundings, whether on the street, a neighborhood or a cafe. In some ways, Roxanne was an outlier in the Sixties – she wasn’t born to a military clan, or an Old Left family, but she was in the thick of the protests and the anti-war and feminist movements that erupted in the Vietnam era. On her birth certificate, she is ‘Roxy,” though her father insisted he named her “Roxey. She disliked the name, whatever spelling. When she moved to San Francisco, and got to know some of the Beat poets and writers, they called her “Roxanne,” after the Roxanne of Cyrano de Bergerac, and it stuck. The name Dunbar comes from her paternal grandfather; the name Ortiz from her former husband, Simon, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Acoma. She has a grown daughter with whom she is close.

For much of her life, Roxanne has been a historian and the author of several widely read and influential books about Indians, guns, violence, genocide, resistance and more. They are: Indigenous Peoples’ History of the US; Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment; Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, A History of Erasure and Exclusion. Indigenous Peoples’ History of the US has just been published in a “graphic interpretation,” by Paul Peart-Smith edited by Paul Buhle with Dylan Davis and put in print by Beacon Press, her “go-to publishers.”

Dunbar-Ortiz has written three memoirs that deftly weave together the personal and the political, public and private worlds: Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Verso and the University of Oklahoma Press); Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–75 (City Lights Books); and Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, (University of Oklahoma Press.) After I read Outlaw Woman, I told Roxanne that she didn’t seem to be a real American outlaw in the mold of Bonnie and Clyde or Pretty Boy Floyd and Annie Oakley. “The title reflects more of what I wanted to be than who I actually was,” she said. Still, one might call her a maverick when it comes to scholarship. She rejects accepted wisdom. Roxanne and I gather for coffee at Caffe Trieste in North Beach or at an unpretentious place on Polk Street near her home on Russian Hill; we’ve eaten together and I’ve learned that she’s a vegetarian. The shelves in her apartment are lined with books. With readers of CounterPunch in mind – Dunbar-Ortiz reads it daily— I emailed her twelve questions. She wrote back her answers; here they are, edited for brevity.

Q: Is this a unique period in American history? Does it have precedents? Does the more things change the more they remain the same?

A: I think it is a unique period in US history, a sort of end time, the US, the wealthiest and most powerful nation state experiencing the fate of dying empires turning inward fomenting civil divisions and disturbances, while the wealth gap has produced a trillionaire cabal. Capitalism unrestrained can and seems to be nurturing a form of nationalism that tends toward fascism that is always a component of capitalism.

The United States was founded on genocide of the Indigenous to take the continent and great wealth achieved by land sales and enslaved labor, creating an order of white supremacy. As freedom struggles have gained some restitution and equality, fortified by post 1950s immigrations of people from all over the world, liberals hailing the idea of “a nation of immigrants,” the white backlash brought us Trump and Trumpism, the systematic unraveling of laws and practices that favor equality, a chilling future.

Q: How does now compare with the Red Scares of the past we’ve had?

A: Well, it’s not come to the point of executions as with the Rosenbergs in the 1950s, but it does feel like a coming civil war. Although adhering to socialism or communism is more tolerated today—they’re sort of used as cuss words—the big scare now on the right is immigration, transphobia, women’s rights, all particularly attacked by right wing Christian Nationalists who have the support of the US President.

Red Scares of the past involved a supposed foreign enemy that was said to have infiltrated the population, as imagined in the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with McCarthyism raising the horror of subversives among us, and paranoia brilliantly exposed by Richard Hofstadter in his 1964 book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

I recall a large map in our rural school in Oklahoma that featured a flood of red, indicating communism, pouring over the North Pole, reaching the northern border of the US. Now, Trumpism is sort of like a cartoon version to scare the population into paranoia, even calling Democrats “communists.” It resonates with some older white people who remember the era as I do, but I don’t think it’s working that well. Still, Christian evangelicals are opportunistically predicting end times, Trump as the savior, and Charlie Kirk as a martyr. White nationalism and White Christian nationalism have replaced the Red Scare.

Q: How does the history of your own family of origin provide you with insights into American culture and society?

A: I grew up in a small rural county in central Oklahoma, fourth child of a landless farming family who were sharecroppers. My paternal grandfather, Emmett Dunbar, had moved the family from rural Missouri in 1907, the year of Oklahoma statehood, and the year my father was born. My grandfather was a large-animal veterinarian and also owned land that he farmed. He joined the Socialist Party and was elected, on the Socialist Party ticket as County Commissioner of the county.

In that period, Socialists were surging, not only in Chicago and other cities, but also in a number of rural towns and counties in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. My grandfather named my father Moyer Haywood Scarberry Pettibone Dunbar after the leaders of the Socialist Party who were on trial for sedition. President Woodrow Wilson launched a war against the Socialist Party—William D. Haywood, George A. Pettibone, Charles H. Moyer—including re-organizing the KKK to attack Catholics and Socialists.

My grandfather died before I was born, but my father told me stories about my brave grandfather, although my father became a racist and a conservative in the 1950s, convinced by McCarthyism. Knowing those stories of my valiant socialist grandfather drove me to be a left wing activist who called myself a revolutionary in the 1960s, pretty much estranged from most of my family and community, moving to San Francisco.

At San Francisco State (then college, now university), I felt like an outsider on the white left, that seemed to hate poor white and working class people. When the Black Power movement kicked out the white organizers, telling them to organize white people, they balked. One of my mentors, the late Anne Braden, was concerned about the problem facing white organizers who had worked in the South for the freedom rides and voter registration drives in Black communities. Braden said, “they just don’t like white people. You can’t organize people if you don’t like them.”

Q: Why are you writing now about white nationalism, other than the fact that your editor asked you to do it? What do you hope to accomplish or reveal or show us?

A: I’m writing a book of essays on white nationalism, but also white Christian nationalism, which we saw on display with the funeral service for the white Christian youth evangelist, Charlie Kirk. I grew up religious with a devoted and active Southern Baptist mother, filled with the fiery words of traveling evangelicals and stadium sermons by Billy Graham, and radio evangelists. I’m bringing my own stories into the essays. Most of the people who have backgrounds like mine don’t go to college or become professors as I did. I did go to college and lost my religion there when I took a required course in physical anthropology, where I learned that the Christian Bible was poetry, not history. In my rural school, like others in the US, some even now, especially homeschoolers, are told the Bible is the gospel.

Q: Is the American Civil War, when white men slaughtered other white men, an aberration given that white men have historically slaughtered people of color?

A: It was an aberration. Why Reconstruction failed, with the former Confederacy implementing Jim Crow totalitarian segregation for nearly another century, is rarely convincingly explained. The elephant in the room of the query is an absence of historical narrative, including that of the great Black writer, W. E. B. Du Bois.

The Army in the decades leading up to the Civil War was divided into seven departments, all engaged in counterinsurgency against indigenous nations and a two-year war against Mexico, seizing the northern half. After the end of the Civil War, the Union Army was repositioned in the Southeast to help implement the political empowerment of the formerly enslaved Black people, now US citizens.

By 1870, six of the seven war departments, comprising 183 companies, had been transferred west of the Mississippi; a colonial army fighting the native nations and seizing their land. That left only one department to occupy the defeated Confederate states and to enforce freedom and equality. In the Spring of 1877, federal troops were withdrawn and sent west, marking the end of Reconstruction and the implementation of forced segregation.

Q: You have actual experience with guns. How has that helped you frame/understand our gun crazy society?

A: I tried to understand US gun craziness while researching and writing my 2018 book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. I grew up with guns that my father and brothers owned; shotguns and .22 rifles for hunting, but never for protection as most gun hoarders claim they need. I doubt they were even aware of the Second Amendment. It’s a tricky and much debated amendment: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The National Rifle Association and its constituency argue that the Second Amendment guarantees the right for every individual to bear arms, while gun-control advocates maintain that the Second Amendment is about states continuing to have their own militias. They emphasize the language of “well regulated.” State militias, later called the National Guard, were already provided for in the Constitution.

Capitalism and white racial panic have much to do with the proliferations of guns in the US. Guns, like gold and silver, are shiny objects that give the sense of power especially to men. I had that experience with guns during the late Sixties and early Seventies as we formed liberation groups and thought we needed guns for self-defense. But, guns are not really for self-defense, because you have to shoot first. US people feel vulnerable and powerless and think a firearm can protect them.

Q: What did you mean when you called your book, “Not a Nation of Immigrants?” Was that in response to something, or some idea? After all, people have come to our shores from China, Russia, Peru, Scotland, England, India, Japan, Ghana, Brazil and….

A: Declaring the US a “Nation of Immigrants,” is a liberal dodge to not acknowledge genocidal settler-colonialism and the brutal land theft of indigenous nations that created the richest country in the world. Immigration laws did not exist until the continent was fully conquered. Only, with the full development of industrial capitalism were workers recruited from Scandinavia and Eastern and Southern Europe and Mexico to work in the factories and fields. Anglos and Scots were early settlers. German immigrants came next and brought socialism.

Q: The term “settler colonialism” seems to be getting traction right now more than ever before. Why is that?

A: Yes, it’s been an important concept to academics and students to understand power relations in the world, along with whiteness as power. As the late Patrick Wolfe emphasized in his groundbreaking research, settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.

Wolfe was an Australian anthropologist and historian, one of the initial theorists and historians of settler colonialism. He researched, wrote, taught, and lectured internationally on race, colonialism, Indigenous peoples’ and Palestinian histories, imperialism, genocide, and critical history of anthropology. He was also a human rights activist who used his scholarship and voice to support the rights of oppressed peoples.

In the United States, settler colonialism was more than a colonial structure that developed and replicated itself over time in the 170 years of British colonization in North America and preceding the founding of the United States. The founders were not an oppressed, colonized people. They were British citizens being restrained by the monarch from expanding the thirteen colonies to enrich themselves. They were imperialists who visualized the conquest of the continent and gain access to the Pacific and China. Achieving that goal required land, wealth, and settler participation.

Q; You live in and write in San Francisco. How does this place inform and shape the ways you see the world and the USA?

A: I don’t think that living in San Francisco informs me or shapes how I see the world and the USA, but I love San Francisco. It’s a safe haven. I first moved here from Oklahoma when I was 21, but have lived in many different places—Los Angeles, Mexico, Boston, New Orleans, Houston, New Mexico, New York—finally settling in San Francisco in 1977.

I conceive of San Francisco as a city-state, sort of separated from the rest of the country. There are people from all over the world who live here, and I love living near the Chinese community, a people so ostracized and abused, and now thriving.

San Francisco is a kind of world in itself. I would rather live in New York, but I tried that for a year, and it was too fast-paced for me. I like to visit and have many friends there. I feel safe living alone in San Francisco, walking, and riding public transportation. I like the sense of being on the edge of the continent, love the ocean, a kind of freedom that is precious and that I never tire of. It was the first twenty-one years of my life growing up poor in rural Oklahoma that formed the way I see the world and the USA, my identification and support of the poor and working class.

Q: Are you an ist of some kind, anarchist, internationalist, communist, feminist? Why so? If not, then why not?

A: I was first a child of rural poor white Christian people. I wanted nothing more than to grow up and move to a city, which I did at age 16. It was Red Scare time, but I seemed to attract left-wing mentors when I graduated and enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, which the majority of right-wing Oklahomans called a hotbed of communism.

I met left-wing and foreign students, including a Palestinian who taught me about colonialism, then married into a liberal trade union family. It was the beginning of the era of decolonization, which thrilled me. At eighteen, I began reading James Baldwin and other critics of racism, capitalism and imperialism. Moving to San Francisco, I finished college at San Francisco State during the time of the Du Bois Club, the youth group of the Communist Party, that was active on campuses, many members traveling to the South to support the desegregation movement.

I admired them, but did not get invited to join them. The highlight for me at that time was Malcolm X speaking at San Francisco State, and again at the University of California at Berkeley during my first year of graduate school. I transferred to UCLA and majored in history in the mid-1960s, and became active in the antiwar movement.

I was one of the founders of the surge of the women’s liberation movement, becoming a full-time organizer in the late 1960s and early 70s. Our feminist movement changed the world and I am proud to have contributed to that. I’ve done international human rights work since 1977, mostly meeting at UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. I lived there for a year, and until the pandemic traveled there at least twice a year for meetings and conferences. I guess I would call myself an anti-colonial, anti-racist socialist-feminist.

Q. Are there members of the Sixties generation you regard as heroes and heroic?

A: Of course, we were all flawed, but I greatly admire so many comrades from the Sixties generation, including yourself, some that I knew and worked with, but mostly from afar. Above all, I idolized Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. There was the heroic Palestinian, Leila Khaled, who I actually got to meet when I attended the UN Conference on Women in Copenhagen in 1980. I admired Amilcar Cabral, who founded and led the The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) that ousted the Portuguese colonizers. Angela Davis was hired to teach at UCLA when I was a graduate student there, the beginning of her persecution and prosecution, activating multi-racial and feminist organizing and protests. She was and is a great hero to me and many around the world.

Q: What about other generations? Do they offer icons of revolt and revolution?

A: Individuals and communities that are oppressed or exploited find ways to resist and often gain power, however harsh the conditions. As a historian, I have focused on oppression and resistance, particularly against European and US colonization and imperialism. Enslaved African resistance in the US is mind-boggling. In such a closed capitalist system, like no other, they resisted, from small gestures, such as wrecking tools and slow downs, to escaping and forming resistant communities: the 1739 Stone rebellion, Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800, the German Coast Uprising (1811), Denmark Vesey’s Conspiracy (1822), Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831), and above all John Brown’s rebellion. Imagine ”weird” John Brown leading a rebellion! Novelist Herman Melville called him “The meteor of the war.”

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

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IN ADDITION TO THE HAPPINESS of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.

For 43 years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for 42 of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.

Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

― Leon Trotsky, Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova