[Comment by BenIndy contributor Roger Straw – This is GREAT news for all the People!! In 2006, I walked many miles with Sogorea Te’ co-founder Corrina Gould. I was surprised and sad that she was not in the photo, but then heartened to see her quoted at the very moving end of the KQED/AP article:
Corrina Gould, co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and tribal chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Ohlone, attended Tuesday’s City Council meeting via video conference and wiped away tears after the council voted to return the land. The mound that once stood there was ‘a place where we first said goodbye to someone,’ she said. ‘To have this place saved forever, I am beyond words.’
Others from the former Vallejo Inter-Tribal Council, including my old friend, Wounded Knee Ocampo and his extended family, and VIC Chairperson Midge Wagner had a lot to do with the struggle to save sacred indigenous sites over the years. – RS]
Berkeley buys Ohlone shellmound, returns it to Indigenous people
Melissa Nelson, chair of the board of directors of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, middle, gestures while speaking at a news conference in Berkeley, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Berkeley’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday, March 12, 2024, to adopt an ordinance giving the title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led, San Francisco Bay Area collective that works to return land to Indigenous people and that raised the funds needed to reach the agreement. (Jeff Chiu/AP Photo)
Ohlone people and others rejoiced Wednesday over the return of sacred native land dating back thousands of years, saying the move righted a historic wrong and restored the people who were first on the land now called Berkeley to their rightful place in history.
The 2.2-acre parking lot is the only undeveloped portion of the shell mound in West Berkeley, where ancestors of today’s Ohlone people established the first human settlement on the shores of the San Francisco Bay 5,700 years ago.
Berkeley’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an ordinance giving the title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a San Francisco Bay Area collective led by women that works to return land to Indigenous people. The collective raised most of the money needed to reach an agreement with developers who own the land.
“The site will be home to education, prayer and preservation, and will outlast every one of us today to continue telling the story of the Ohlone people,” said Mayor Jesse Arreguín at a celebratory press conference on Fourth Street in Berkeley Wednesday. He said their history is “marked not by adversity, but more importantly, by their unwavering resilience as a community.”
Arreguín added that he thought it was “pretty absurd” that they had to buy the site to give it back to indigenous people “when this was theirs all along, and we stole it from them.”
“[I]t’s been a long effort … long, long legal battles, many meetings. People prayed, people protested. But all along, it’s been an incredible community effort. And I’m very grateful that we were able to do this today,” Arreguín said.
Cheyenne Zepeda from the Confederated Villages of Ocean Nation said that they’ve been praying and fighting for this recognition for over 25 years.
“We see a huge parking lot that’s been paved over, we’re looking towards the train tracks, there’s also the freeway that’s here off of university, and we don’t see the beautiful ground that it was before, but we will … we will again,” Zepeda said.
‘[W]e don’t see the beautiful ground that it was before, but we will … we will again.’Cheyenne Zepeda, Confederated Villages of Ocean Nation
The crowd cheered as speakers talked of a movement to restore other lands to Indigenous people. The site — a three-block area Berkeley designated as a landmark in 2000 — will be home to native medicines and foods, an oasis for pollinators and wildlife, and a place for youth to learn about their heritage, including ancient dances and ceremonies, said Melissa Nelson, chair of the board of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.
“Thousands of years ago, this site was a thriving … urban center for Native Americans, for California Indians with their beautiful shell mounds dotted all around the bay,” Nelson said. “We want to be a place for global Indigenous leadership to come and gather in solidarity. We want to educate, we want to restore, and we want to heal.”
Before Spanish colonizers arrived in the region, the area held a village and a massive shell mound with a height of 20 feet and the length and width of a football field that was a ceremonial and burial site. Built over years with mussel, clam and oyster shells, human remains, and artifacts, the mound also served as a lookout.
The Spanish removed the Ohlone from their villages and forced them into labor at local missions. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Anglo settlers took over the land and razed the shell mound to line roadbeds in Berkeley with shells.
The agreement with Berkeley-based Ruegg & Ellsworth LLC, which owns the parking lot, comes after a six-year legal fight that started in 2018 when the developer sued the city after officials denied its application to build a 260-unit apartment building with 50% affordable housing and 27,500 feet of retail and parking space.
The settlement was reached after Ruegg & Ellsworth agreed to accept $27 million to settle all outstanding claims and to turn the property over to Berkeley. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust contributed $25.5 million and Berkeley paid $1.5 million, officials said.
The trust plans to build a commemorative park with a new shell mound and a cultural center to house some of the pottery, jewelry, baskets and other artifacts found over the years and that are in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.
Corrina Gould, co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and tribal chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Ohlone, attended Tuesday’s City Council meeting via video conference and wiped away tears after the council voted to return the land.
The mound that once stood there was “a place where we first said goodbye to someone,” she said. “To have this place saved forever, I am beyond words.”
Opinion by BenIndy’s Editorial Board, March 13, 2024
It’s now safe to say that the road to California Forever’s new city has become, like Benicia’s own beleaguered roads, an absolute mess. However, the struggling company’s path is marred not by potholes, but its executive staff’s poor ego management, condescending and at times outright offensive talking points, and incredibly cringey public confrontations. This is probably what prompted Chris Rico of Solano Economic Development Corporation to implore those tuning in to a forum hosted by the Progressive Democrats of Benicia last night to focus on the initiative’s content rather than the personalities of those driving it.
Rico’s certainly right on one front – we as a voting public should engage with the proposal’s content in good faith, with open minds and clear eyes – but he’s missing a key ingredient to how good-faith conversations actually happen: intentionally, and with reciprocity. How can we engage with any California Forever and its proposal in good faith when the personalities pushing it consistently resort to bad-faith behaviors – defensiveness, aggression, and gaslighting – when under even the slightest pressure?
Asking tough questions doesn’t make us NIMBYs
We don’t want to underemphasize the financial and emotional cost of California Forever’s ongoing litigation currently impacting multiple families, but that is a topic for another day. For today’s purposes, we are talking about how California Forever interacts with the Solano residents through various means of public participation – town halls, commission or board meetings, and forums.
Topping the list of California Forever’s bad-faith public behaviors would be the strategies it uses to stifle reasonable questions. Before the full text of its initiative was fully released, its representatives insisted that the public just “didn’t get it yet” and all questions and complaints would be addressed in the ballot initiative text. But now that the text has been released and the tough questions remain, its representatives have shifted to insisting that reasonable criticisms of its plan for the new city are a symptom of NIMBYism, and not much more.
Listen. As one panelist pointed out last night, yes, “NIMBYism is alive and well in Solano County.” This is absolutely true, and something worth correcting, aggressively. We do need more affordable homes in California. And we want more affordable homes in Solano County. The state’s Byzantine rules and regs for development are part of the problem.
However, labeling questions and opposition as mere NIMBYism is unfair and intellectually dishonest. Worse still, this line of defense is increasingly registering as a blatant attempt to frame and ultimately chill wider public participation in this conversation – by defining and literally trying to nullify the eligibility of certain participants to speak on the topic. In effect, California Forever’s exec team’s most frequent rebuttal to challenging questions has been something to the effect of, “You don’t get to have an opinion because you have a house and/or privilege.”
Asking tough questions is not a symptom of our privilege
This gaslighting continued at last night’s forum. California’s Director of Planning Gabe Metcalf did neither himself nor his company’s public image any favors when he commented that he knew the Democratic club hosting the forum and the roughly 80 audience members he was speaking to had effectively already made up their minds, but he was there, coming to the club in good faith, on behalf of a project he believed in.
Then he implored the viewers to think of the housing crisis. He asked them to consider the plight of the unhoused. And he said he thought this new town was the solution to these problems.
Then he immediately ceded his moral high ground by dismissing informed opposition as simple NIMBYism, stating, “I know most of you probably own your own homes, so the dis-benefits of this – like there could be more traffic or more people – weigh really large on your minds. But there are a lot of people who don’t have time to go to Democratic clubs, for whom the current system is not working.” [Emph. added.]
Let’s unpack this, because it illuminates California Forever’s PR problems in three easy swipes. First, Metcalf resorted to California Forever’s standard and increasingly indefensible playground taunt, “You’re all just a buncha NIMBYs!”, as discussed above. Then he dismissed reasonable concerns about infrastructure impacts as superficial, insinuating opponents are more annoyed about getting stuck in traffic jams than interested in housing the unhoused in a structured and sustainable way. Finally, he insulted his Democratic club host, its members, and its guests from the public (it was a public meeting, open and free to all) by suggesting that mere attendance at the very meeting he was also speaking at basically nullified every attendee’s eligibility to participate in the discussion in good faith. Simply because we had made the time to go to watch him speak, we were too privileged to consider those for whom “the current system isn’t working.”
Pause on that, wind it back, repeat it: Metcalf implied that those who attended the forum last night, those taking the time to listen to him speak, were biased by the privilege of having or making time to attend.
Oof. Just, oof.
Gif by BenIndy, with thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4.
Solano shows up. Get used to it
The efforts and sacrifices made by community members to participate in one or several events hosted by either California Forever and its primary opposition, the Solano Together coalition, is representative of Solano County’s tremendous passion for active, inclusive public participation in decisions both big and small. And a new city is a BIG decision.
Add to that the fact that we at BenIndy happen to know that many of those watching Metcalf hold court on the topic of their own privilege are retired and living off their pensions, or still working past retirement age. Some have homes, yes, but not all. Some have means, yes, but not all. Overwhelmingly, those in attendance last night are people who don’t have time for meetings like that – instead, they make time. They recognize that their participation in this discussion is important, so they hustle, they sacrifice, and they show up.
But even if that wasn’t true, Metcalf’s characterizations not only failed to acknowledge (let alone address) the complexity of the concerns raised about the new city, they also create an entirely false dichotomy of two dogmas: the altruistic visionaries who want to build a bridge to a future where we don’t have these awful problems of chronic houselessness and worse, and those fusty-dusty NIMBY-types who are simply too steeped in their own privilege to do what is right.
In short, California Forever is trying to turn the conversation away from practical questions to a deeper, moral question: how can we possibly challenge the finer points of California Forever’s proposal when so many are suffering?
In terms of leading and manipulative questions this one is a doozy, but thankfully, there is a great answer.
You can’t trick us
When confronted with this, the panelists representing Solano Together, Bob Berman of the Solano Orderly Growth Committee and Sadie Wilson of the Greenbelt Alliance, responded calmly that Metcalf’s dichotomy was deeply flawed and the same people we’re being scolded for supposedly ignoring in this conversation will, fundamentally, never benefit from California Forever’s proposal. They pointed out that the proposed price point for homes—cited recently by CEO Jan Sramek at around $1 million—places them well beyond the reach of middle and lower-income families, let alone those who are chronically underhoused. Even if that wasn’t true, even if California Forever intended to offer homes at middle- or lower-income price points, the city wouldn’t be habitable for a projected 30 years, yielding effectively zero positive outcomes for one of our state’s most vulnerable populations, present in high quantity today.
Berman and Wilson’s stated issues with the proposal were clear and specific. They referenced the unenforceability of California Forever’s many “voter guarantees” (a story for another day), the failure of California Forever to fully comprehend let alone prepare for infrastructure impacts around, yes, traffic, but also water and other services, and more. Berman and Wilson also stated, repeatedly, that they agreed fully and completely that addressing California’s housing crisis will require land development and systemic change. Their responses were measured and persuasive.
Metcalf’s comments, meanwhile, once more raised the same fundamental doubts about whom California Forever’s project is really serving, and whether the needs of California’s most vulnerable populations are truly being considered or are merely being used as rhetorical devices in service to shareholder profits.
If you’re gonna come for Solano, you best come correct
From the initial land purchases in Eastern Solano to the New York Times exposé and through to the recent Zoom forum, California Forever has not engaged honestly with critics or the broader Solano County community.
For Solano County’s democratic process, it is paramount that opportunities for public participation are conducted in a manner that is inclusive and respectful, appropriately acknowledges the sacrifices of its participants, and prioritizes the substantive over the sensational. Solano County residents are ready to engage with California Forever in good faith, to scrutinize the merits and demerits of its initiative, and weigh its potential impacts on our community and environment with the true and urgent need for solutions to California’s housing crisis.
However, for our engagement to become truly productive, California Forever MUST meet Solano County with sincerity and respect, and desist from over-generalization, hyperbole, and insults. Only then can we hope to navigate the complexities of such a significant proposal, free from the distractions. While it’s true California Forever has had more than its fair share of hecklers, there are many who are waiting to see what the commotion is about.
The burden of proving the proposal’s merits rests wholly on California Forever. Solano is waiting. But it may be too late to course correct.
The opinions above represent those of BenIndy’s editors and no other groups or individuals.
[Note from BenIndy Contributor Roger Straw – The world is crying out for innocents in Gaza who are starving. Malnutrition and certain death is everywhere. The United States MUST stand up to the Israeli Prime Minister, and I would encourage all of us to join in the widespread call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. Christiane Amanpour’s interview with the articulate Queen of Jordan, Rania al Abdullah is a call for heart and historical perspective, as well as food for the Palestinian people. – Roger]
Queen Rania al Abdullah of Jordan on the Food Crisis in Gaza
On Sunday, the United States and Jordan conducted another joint airdrop into northern Gaza. Jordan’s Queen Rania has been outspoken in defense of Gaza civilians. She is urging the United States and other allies of Israel to use all their leverage to end what she calls Israel’s “deliberate effort” to deprive those in need. Christiane speaks with Queen Rania exclusively from King Abdullah II Air Base in Jordan, just ahead of another airdrop.
See earlier posts about the Israeli/Hamas war on BenIndy:
[Note from BenIndy: Free and open to the public TONIGHT at 7pm is a Progressive Democrats of Benicia (PDB) forum featuring speakers from California Forever, Solano Together, and the Solano County Economic Development Corporation. All are welcome, regardless of party preference or city of residence. There is no need to register. Check out the message announcing the forum from PDB Chair Kathy Kerridge for the Zoom link and more information. This is a rare chance to see representatives from both sides of this issue in the same (virtual) room and figure out where you land on the issue that is making headlines across the nation – the development of a brand new city in Eastern Solano. Bring your questions – this is going to be a very interesting forum.]
Benicia, CA – On Tuesday, March 12, Progressive Democrats of Benicia (PDB) will host an in–depth discussion of one of the hottest topics in Solano County and throughout California – California Forever, the new city planned by the land’s new owners for Solano County’s Rio Vista area and Solano Together, a coalition of organizations and individuals who oppose the project.
“We are going to take a deep dive into this local issue that is making national news – California Forever,” said Kathy Kerridge, chair of PDB. “There has been a lot of commentary about California Forever’s plans and its ballot initiative. Here is your chance to see and hear for yourself what all the commotion is about, directly from some of those most involved.”
The meeting will be at 7 p.m. and is available on zoom. PDB’s meetings are open to the public. “This is a rare opportunity to learn about this controversial proposal and the initiative supporting the project that will be on the November ballot. We welcome everyone to tune in and participate,” Kerridge said.
Left to right: Bob Berman, Chair of Solano County Orderly Growth Committee; Sadie Wilson, Director of Planning and Research at Greenbelt Alliance; Gabe Metcalf, California Forever Head of Planning; and Chris Rico, CEO/President of Solano County Economic Development Corporation.
“Please save the evening of March 12 for this important discussion,” Kerridge said. “It has so far been rare to see both sides of this discussion in same room, even if it will be a virtual room.”
To join the discussion, click the link and sign-in information below or find the link at the PDB website, progressivedemocratsofbenicia.org.
Zoom Details
Topic: PDB General Meeting Time: Mar 12, 2024 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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