Tag Archives: Federal legislation

350 Bay Area, Air Quality, Climate Reality Project, EPA

Police oversight, clean energy & clean air in 3 clicks

Signing the petition, making the call or writing the email has never been and will never be pointless

By Nathalie Christian, May 8, 2023

Sometimes signing petitions and writing emails or calls like those suggested below can feel . . . pointless at best, and performative at worst.  But these actions – even as insignificant as they may feel – are neither.

Research, experience and most importantly results prove time and again that policymakers absolutely consider petitions, phone calls, emails and yet more petitions when making decisions. While your pebble may feel small, adding it to a pile and encouraging others in your networks to add their pebbles as well are the first steps in triggering a landslide.

In full disclosure, you may need a few more than three clicks to complete the three proposed actions laid out here today, but you can still make a big difference in the time it takes for your tea or coffee to brew. And the minutes you take today can influence years of decision-making and legislation, and ultimately the lifetimes of many.

[Note: I am ordering these by urgency, not importance. For example, while the EPA is accepting public comment on proposed regulations through July 5, there are important hearings May 9, 10 and 11 that you may want to know about.]

1. Call or Email: Tell your Assembly Members to OPPOSE Assembly Bill 538, which threatens California’s clean energy goals and autonomy

A picture of a power pole.
Major environmental organizations including 350 Bay Area Action, the Sierra Club and Indivisible advise that AB 538 could prevent California from meeting essential clean energy goals. | Uncredited image from 350 Bay Area Action.

Anyone can participate in this important action, but if you’re living Bay Area Assembly Districts 11 (Lori Wilson), 21 (Diane Papan) and 28 (Gail Pellerin), your voice is especially needed. (Find out which district you live in here. If you live in Solano County, Lori Wilson is your assembly representative.)

These three members of the Assembly Appropriations Committee are voting on a grid-related bill that 350 Bay Area Action, the Sierra Club and Indivisible will lump California in with a multistate regional transmission organization, potentially throwing a pretty big wrench in CA’s efforts to meet its clean energy goals. The phone numbers, email addresses and script below provide a quick way you can help oppose this bill.

If you’re a constituent of AD 11, 21 or 28:  Please use the following message for calling or emailing . . .

Suggested message: 

I am your constituent and a member of 350 Bay Area Action, a 20,000-member strong climate justice organization.  After long consideration, we have taken an OPPOSE position on AB 538.

AB 538 creates a new multi-Western state electricity market that would threaten California’s clean energy goals and autonomy without significantly improving access to regional energy markets.  Proposed amendments cannot fix this bill.

    • If the bill is on the Consent Calendar, please request that it be it taken off.
    • Once it’s off Consent, please don’t vote for it. Either vote against it, or don’t vote.

Thank you for your consideration!

Sincerely yours,

[Name / City]

Non-constituents:  Use the above message and simply start by saying you’re a member of 350 Bay Area Action.

2. Petition or public comment: Support the most ambitious vehicle emissions regulations ever proposed.

EPA logo

The EPA has just proposed what the Climate Reality Project is calling “the strongest regulations on vehicle emissions ever.” Despite improved regulations for heavy-duty vehicles, light- and medium-duty vehicles (like passenger cars and delivery trucks) still produce a tremendous amount of toxic tailpipe pollutants. According to Climate Reality, the regulations the EPA proposed could prevent nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions through 2055.

Naturally, the proposed regulations are under attack by the usual suspects. While the EPA is still taking public comments, they need to hear from us. It’s up to average citizens like you and me to balance the histrionics from the conservatives and corporations who desperately want to keep fossil fuels-guzzling cars on the road.

Here are three ways you can support this ambitious new set of regulations:

3. Petition: Boost Vallejo residents demanding independent police oversight

Police officers stand in a loose formation, holding firearms. In the center of the formation is a man in a red shirt with a badge but no firearm.
The Vallejo Police Department continues to resist reform despite historic levels of community distrust. This behavior is ultimately abetted by scant acknowledgment and nearly no action made by Vallejo leaders on behalf of their constituents, who are demanding change, transparency and accountability in this petition. | Uncredited image from petition.
Members of the Solano County ACLU Chapter started this petition to demand independent, external oversight over the very troubled Vallejo Police Department. The case the petition makes is clear, compelling and actionable. Anyone can sign (even if you don’t live in Vallejo), so please take a quick minute to do so and then to share it with your networks. 

From the petition: “Vallejo Police Department (VPD) is the most troubled police department in northern California. This is clear to residents of Vallejo, potential VPD applicants, local and national media, and police professionals in the Bay Area. But this has never been directly acknowledged by our leaders, nor has there been a substantive attempt to make amends to the families who have lost loved ones, to those who have been subjected to police abuse, or to the community. Past attempts at reform have been completely ineffective.”

Read more and sign the petition at change.org . . . 

 

[P. S. I am sorry for shoving three important actions in a single post, possibly reducing the chances that you will complete any of them. The Benicia Independent has a backlog of articles and posts I want to publish and, in the interest of time and space, I am compromising. I encourage you to share these actions with your networks and really highlight the need and the urgency to ensure we have the best chance of being heard on these important topics. –N.C.]

Read more! While we’re talking about Air Quality,  check out these resources:
Gun control, Gun violence, March For Our Lives

300 gather in Benicia to protest gun violence and call on congress to DO SOMETHING!

March For Our Lives crowd is inspired by Benicia High School Youth and Community Leaders

Benicia March for Our Lives 2, June 11, 2022. Photos by Constance Beutel (video  below)

By Roger Straw, June 11, 2022

Benicia moms and high school youth organized a local rally and march on Saturday, June 11, to call attention to the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S., and to call for sensible legislation to make our schools – and our communities – safer.

A crowd of around 300 rallied at Benicia’s First Street Green overlooking the Carquinez Strait.  Attendees received free blue t-shirts with white lettering, “MARCH FOR OUR LIVES” and the colorful crowd heard inspiring speeches before taking to the sidewalks and marching up First Street and back to the Green.

Organizer Alicia Brewster served as MC, welcoming the crowd and thanking everyone, including co-organizers Becca Cannon, Jacquie McCue and others.

Leadoff speaker was Terry Scott, chair of Benicia’s Arts and Culture Commission.  Scott shared his experience at Kent State University in 1970 when he witnessed the killing of 4 students and injuring of 9 others. Then he turned to our current epidemic of gun violence, asking, “How high are we willing to set the price to defend an amendment that has been outpaced by technology? How is being shot at schools, malls, churches, grocery stores an expression of freedom? Is it time to agree that the original intent of an antiquated amendment has been co-opted?”

Benicia School Board President Sheri Zada recalled the horrific 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland Florida. That AK-47 massacre triggered the March For Our Lives movement, and Zada was one of the organizers of Benicia’s 2018 March. Zada recalled, “I was with my husband Alan, at lunch one day, crying… and I said, ‘You know what, I can’t just sit by and do nothing.'”  She offered sobering statistics, “More than 170 school shootings have happened since Parkland, Florida.  170!  Over 950 school shootings have happened since Sandy Hook in 2012…. You’ve got to realize that it’s an epidemic in our country. Guns are the leading cause of death in American children and teens.”  Zada got enthusiastic applause as she wondered what can be done, “Well, the first thing I did when I got into office is that I made sure there is a resolution passed in our School Board that would not allow our teachers to be armed, ever.”

Three students representing Benicia High School followed.

“I am here speaking to you today because I am fifteen, and I am tired,” said Bella Cannon, Sophomore Class President of Benicia High School.  Bella’s litany of “I am tired” statements illustrated the sorry state of so many of our kids in schools these days.  “I am tired of being scared to go to school every day. I am tired of being worried about my 10-year-old sister and 13-year-old brother when we all leave the house every morning….I am tired of worrying if we are all going to make it home.”

Benicia High’s 2022 senior class valedictorian Juhi Yadav followed, and made a profound point, “If you want a gun, the government says that you get to have it, virtually unconditionally. You have a right. But is it right that you have it?”  It  took a minute, but the crowd’s understanding slowly bloomed, as did the applause.  Yadav continued, “In response to tragic and despicable instances of violence, like that in Texas just weeks ago, lobbyists and lawmakers love to enter a fantasy world, where guns are used to protect innocent families from armed gunmen. At every step of the way, they ask, but what if just one of these teachers had been armed – how would the story have changed? The answer is painfully clear. It wouldn’t.”

Benicia High Junior Michael Delgado added a rather stark and shocking perspective. “Three weeks ago, when we heard the news that nineteen children had been murdered in a public school, none of us were surprised,” he began. “These children are the pure among us, the innocent among us, and the most vulnerable among us. They are our future. Time and time again, we watch, and stand idly by, while they are taken from us. A society which allows its future to be slaughtered is a sick society….”

Benicia Poet Laureate Mary Susan Gast concluded the pre-march ceremonies, sharing three poems. Tragically and movingly, the first poem, by former Benicia poet laureate Johanna Ely, was written four years ago, on the occasion of Benicia’s 2018 March For Our Lives, a poem titled, I am tired of waking up to the faces of dead children…. Dr. Gast then read two of her own poems, beginning with One Who Survived Uvalde, describing the heartbreaking story of Miah Cerrillo, who survived the Uvalde massacre by smearing herself with blood of a dead classmate and playing dead.  Gast’s final poem, A Plea to Legislators began, “Deliver us from slaughter,” and ended with the crowd joining in a crescendo of cries, “Do something.  Do SOMETHING.  DO SOMETHING!”

The sidewalks of First Street, Benicia – June 11, 2022

After the March

Marchers returned to the First Street Green for closing remarks and a commemoration of 21 flowers for the 21 who were murdered in Uvalde Texas.

Benicia Mayor Steve Young, file photo

Benicia Mayor Steve Young reported that “There has been a mass shooting every day since Uvalde, and 1500 since Sandy Hook.”  He added, “In 1994, Congress passed an assault weapons ban, and in the next ten years, mass shootings declined by 43%.  Republicans undid the ban in 2004, and mass shootings have increased 239%. Coincidence?” The Mayor’s best line came at the end, and got a big cheer from the crowd: “The only way to stop a bad politician with a vote is with a good citizen with a vote!”

Solano County Supervisor Monica Brown, file photo

Solano County Supervisor Monica Brown added, “Together, we need to elect US senators who believe in our cause. Background checks, a 30 day wait to get a gun…. An example is the recent Tulsa shooting at the hospital. He bought a gun at 2 and by 5pm, 4 were dead plus the shooter. We might say enough is enough, but the effort must be daily until November 7. 2022.”

Mel Orpilla, staff, and US Representative Mike Thompson, file photos

Mel Orpilla, Senior staff for Benicia’s U.S.  representative Mike Thompson, read a message from Thompson, who chairs the House Gun Violence Prevention Taskforce. Thompson has long led an effort to pass universal background checks. “This week,” wrote Thompson, “the House passed two vital bills that join my Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Enhanced Background Checks Act as gun violence prevention legislation that the House has sent to the Senate.” He continued, “The bills we passed will save lives by raising the age to purchase an assault rifle, restricting large capacity magazines, going after gun traffickers, stopping ghost guns and bump stocks and requiring the safe storage of firearms. The pressure is now on Senate Republicans to do their job and vote for these policies that are overwhelmingly supported by the American people.”

Closing ceremony
ProBonoPhoto.org, photo by Mary Martin DeShaw

The rally concluded with a touching memorial reading of the names of the nineteen children and two teachers murdered in Uvalde, Texas.  As the names were read, March speakers, organizers and supporters were thanked one by one, and presented with one of nineteen individual flowers representing those we lost in Uvalde. 

Video of Highlights by Dr. Constance Beutel (28 minutes)
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