Ten-Minute Tyranny Liberalized to Fifteen Minutes

SECOND SPECIAL MEETING
Downtown Commission met Thursday Morning--its 2nd special meeting within a week, in order to speed the parking lot/garages-trespass law freighttrain on to City Council.

The process was pressured by Councilmember Coonerty and Mayor Mathews, with no serious discussion of alternative solutions and no recognition of the drastic change in traditional Santa Cruz policy regarding 8 blocks of public space.

CRIME STATS STILL MISSING
There were still no statistics available indicating the amount of crime going on in parking garages as compared with elsewhere in the downtown area.

Nor were there any stats whatsoever on parking lots (as distinguished from garages). The Commission jovially voted to criminalize any entrance onto a lot or garage without a car or bicycle.

ACLU/MERCHANT CYBORG COONERTY BEAMS ON
Untroubled and smiling, ACLU co-chair, Commission member, and merchant apologist Sheila Coonerty decided that the fears of the women she'd spoken to outweighed their right to use public parking lots and garages on their own schedule--not that of the SCPD, the Public Works Department, and/or that of Parking Lot attendants.

Coonerty's resolution, which passed 5-1 (Kathy Bisbee, to her credit, dissenting) forwarded the Barisone law to City Council, contracting use time in the parking lots from the current "as long as you like or need" to 15 minutes, suggested the police give a warning, and asked for a report back in a year.

PHONEY FERRARA FORWARDS THE TRESPASS LAW
Atlantis Fantasyworld owner Joe Ferrara, who also chairs the Downtown Association--the merchant association that gave us the Downtown Ordinances in 1994, denounced selective enforcement and the city's failure to give them enough info, then heartily supported the measure and forwarded it to City Council. His point: the police would have a "necessary tool" to force people to leave who were not engaging in visibly criminal activity.

I was so upset with Ferrara, that once the meeting had ended, I loudly and publicly denounced him as a hypocrite. Jovial Joe shrugged it off with a grin and slipped back into conference with his cohorts.

Ferrara's Atlantis Fantasyworld was one of the businesses in 1994 selected for boycott after their support for the "no sitting" law and the host of other anti-homeless edicts cooked up by then- Councilmember Neal Coonerty, backed up by Rotkin and Mathews.

No one called on local ACLU activist Don Zimmermann, who sat patiently in the 2nd row, preferring to rely on City Attorney Barisone, Parking Lot Manager Matt Farrell, and Deputy Police Chief Kevin Vogel.

HOMELESS SERVICE CENTER SUPPORTS HOMELESS EXCLUSION?
Matt Farrell did make the surprising though vague report that Homeless Service Center [HSC] workers had posed no objection to the law “as long as it was fairly enforced.” Would homeless tramps seeking shelter from freezing rain and soccer moms waiting for their kids in their cars be given the same treatment? The question dissolves in absurdity even as you ask it--particularly when the newer stats show that the biggest “category” of “Public Service calls” was for “camping”.

It's interesting that this HSC complicity (if it's been accurately reported) comes at the same time that homeless are driven away from the HSC during the day.

REPLAY AT YOUR LEISURE
I'll be playing the whole shameful charade on Free Radio Sunday March 26th shortly after 7:30 a.m. It will be archived at http://www.huffsantacruz.org under "Bathrobespierre's Broadsides".

PROTESTERS PRESENTE!
SAFE street performers Valerie Christy, Greg Montoya, Michael Pentacost and Coral Brune provided musical support. Christy made oatmeal. I provided some signage such as "Ten-Minute Tyranny", "Locking Up the Parking Lots Makes Us Less Seure More Stupid". Others abandoned nicities and held up signs like "Fuck Your Fascist Laws." In the audience were a variety of merchants as well as Grant Wilson of Art and Revolution. No indymedia or FRSC reports (other than me) put in an appearance.

No public comment was allowed. To give the Commission their due, they did not give any special recognition/attention to the merchants who came to watch, who had not spoken at the last meeting. They didn’t need to. There was no serious interest in challenging the law, just in finding reasons to buttress it for the upcoming Council meeting.

The Downtown Commission discussion took about an hour and three quarters. It was not broadcast but was taped by the secretary.

I suppose this is a step up from City Council’s Public Safety Meetings (Rotkin, Coonerty, and Porter) which don’t even record their meetings. This little coterie of SCPD sycophants blindly “oversaw” the police for the last three years, allowing infiltration and snoop operations against peaceful protests. They’ve given Chief Howard Skerry free rein and muzzled public discussion.

SECURITY THROUGH SUBTERFUGE?
The Downtown Commission showed little interest in determining how the community felt about surrendering so much public space in exchange for an imagined increase in security (with no increased security patroling).

In effect, the whole thing seemed a kind of insulting bluff on the public. The new game plan: create a law to drive away undesireables by making it criminal for all people to be there. Don’t appropriate any additional money for enforcement. Rely on the power of an intimidating fine to persuade people go give up their traditional right to a laissez-faire use of the lots and garages. Find another law to criminalize where the undesirables go next in order to harry them further.

Meanwhile more and more power is being given to petty tyrants like Pam Bachtel, the Community Service Officer with the ravenous ticket book. And people are being persuaded to rationalize and police their own exclusion from public spaces built with their own tax dollars.

HOMELESS CLEANSING MADE EASY
Matt Farrell explicitly admitted that they put in a change-making machine at Elm and Pacific (the third within a 200’ radius) to drive away the grungies from Punk Corner next to the Union Grove Parking lot. Now that they’ve moved to the Catalyst parking lot, no doubt Farrell has new schemes afoot to harass them further.

MERCHANTS HOLD CLOSED MEETING
Joe Ferrara and a small coterie of downtown merchants had previously had an open meeting of their Downtown Association (the merchant group that gave us the Downtown Ordinances). On my arrival with two other homeless people, Ferrara suddenly announced they were meeting in closed session. Though they weren't discussing litigation or personnel matters (the usual reasons for closing meetings), they refused to allow us to remain.

Human Rights Organzation activist Bob Patton parked his vehicle in the parking lot garage near the window where the Downtown Association cabal was meeting with a large sign denouncing business bigotry, and ostentatiously began putting fliers on cars in the lot ---an action that would be illegal under the new law, unless you were parking your own bicycle or vehicle in the lot.

FUTURE ACTIONS?
Activists discussed a Critical Mass bike ride through the parking lots flyering cars (another activity that would become illegal under the new law).

Another suggestion was a poll asking specifically if women in particular supported (a) a law that would limit their right to be in the cars to 15 minutes; and (b) a law that would ban them from walking through a pf determine how people actually feel about a law that would make so drastic a change

Another suggestion was a poll asking specifically if women in particular supported (a) a law that would limit their right to be in the cars to 15 minutes; and (b) a law that would ban them from walking through any of the city's 24 parking lots or garages unless they had a vehicle there.

ACTION POSTPONED
The one bright note--Councilmember Ryan Coonerty confided that the Parking Lot Trespass Law would not be on the Council agenda for Tuesday. That travesty will be coming up probably the first meeting in April. Instead we’ll probably see another experiment in anti-homeless social engineering--the “no smoking in San Lorenzo and Grant St. Parks” regulation--which was rushed through the March 1st Parks and Recreation Commission meeting with zero public comment.

ACTIONS WE CAN TAKE
There’s nothing wrong with calling City Council at 420-5020 to denounce these planned “homeless relocation” plans. Denounce the Sleeping Ban while you’re at it (a more important institutional human rights violation).

But if we want to change things, we’ll have to organize in numbers with a variety of different groups--perhaps plan a massive ticketing of tourists, CD occupation of parking lots and garages, solidarity sitting and singing with street performers, or renewed boycott the most bigoted downtown businesses.

HOMELESS GROUPS TO CONTACT
Those interested in coming to meetings of Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom can wander over to the courthouse just outside the metal detectors near the coffee cart 9:30 AM-11:30 AM on Wednesdays (call 423-HUFF for more info or go to http://www.huffsantacruz.org).

Equally militant is the Human Rights Organization which meets Saturdays at 1:45 p.m. at the dining bay of the Human Resources Center at 115 Coral St.