Three Concerns for the Santa Cruz Community--Speech to City Council

NO ACCOUNTABILITY OR PUBLIC PROCESS FOR THE HIGHEST PAID AND MOST POWERFUL OFFICIALS--THE CITY MANAGER & THE POLICE CHIEF

Since the City Manager is the highest paid official in the city and the real power behind the throne who never faces election (Dick Wilson plagued us for 28 years), it would be nice if there were really a public process instead of th Closed Session Performance Valuation where the public could meaningful way in and raise concerns.

Then perhaps we could question Martin Bernal why he and Acting Police Chief Kevin Vogel have focused huge amounts of city staff time, police force, and taxypayer money on eliminating peaceful homeless protesters at City Hall throughout August and September. Bernal and Vogel used a variety of unconstitutional devices such as declaring the City Hall a “forbidden for peaceful protest” zone at night, ruling the library benches “illegal to sit on” at night, ticketing protesters forced to the sidewalk with “blocking the sidewalk” citations reminiscent ot deep South sheriff behavior against civil rights protesters there in the 50s and 60s. Not to mention the ever-popular Sleeping Ban law, replete with seizure and destruction of homeless property. [More on Vogel below]


HOMELESS SERVICE CENTER STONEWALLING CONTINUES
A week of rain starts Saturday. Why is there still no directive instructing the police to leave sleeping homeless people not breaking any law other than sleeping at night alone? Or at least directing cops to contact the Homeless Services Center at night to see if beds are available before they harass, ID check, search, interrogate, and cite those wet, cold, and vulnerable trying to sleep under protective shelter. If not, save everyone time and grief by not ticketing.

Councilmembers Lane and Beiers still apparently can't persuade Monica Martinez, Executive Director of the HSC to answer some simple questions. What are the requirements for a waiting list? Will you provide a person given a sleeping ticket on the night when shelter was full a letter to the court, as had been traditional? Remember there are less than 180 bed for over 1000 homeless people.

Where's the real public process in the coronation of Kevin Vogel as Police Chief. Kevin's a nice guy, though he's gotten increasingly less accessible. He recently helped me get back (with a little prodding from attorney Kate Wells) political signs and tables taken from homeless people that which survived after having been left out in the rain in the locked yard behind the main police station on Center St. “Storage” for homeless property.

What about Vogel's assigning undercover agents to infiltrate and spy on the citizen-initiated cost-free Last Night DIY parade in 2005? And then having the chutzpah to assign himself to investigate his own unconstitutional behavior? More recently, Votel was silent as the Bernal and Rotkin relentlessly harassed activist Wes Modes for walking in the parade last year. Or the absurd police rampage through Pacfic Avenue bar, handcuffing patrons, closing off streets, and expending thousands of dollars ? What major crimes were uncovered? “public intoxication”, “drug use”, and “warrants”.

DANGEROUS LESSONS FROM THE AUTOCRATS IN WASHINGTON & NO SANTA CRUZ CITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION SUPPORTING WIKILEAKS
They can lock away Bradley Manning—the whistleblower on war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Julian Assange—the Wikiileaks journalist. But if Obama can declare any American citizen to be on an assassination list—and the courts back him up—as in the recent Anwar al-Awlaki “kill at will decision. I guess that emboldens local authorities to spend thousands to prosecute people for singing songs downtown, sleeping at night if they're homeless---without any inconvenient talk of civil liberties. Mike Rotkin may be leaving office, but he's still kingpin at the ACLU Board—perhaps one reason it has done nothing about these violations.

Rotkin's failure to replicate and expand Berkeley's resolution supporting Bradley Manning (which Berkeley's Peace and Justice Coalition presented today at their City) Council) seems to me to be a typical example of Rotkin's nervousness at taking positions too far to the left of the Obamatoids. I think it's quite possible he could have pulled the support together to do so--at a key moment when Assange and Manley are under hysterical attack.

For more info on the upcoming Saturday protest (and the one after that), see "Protests: Free Julian Assange and Bradley Manning" at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/14/18666529.php.