Council Member Cynthia Chase Refuses Dialogue on Homeless Voting Record
Supposing the City paired such restrictions on sleeping with the creation of alternates like designated camping and parking areas, these policies would seem reasonable to me both on practical and moral grounds. However in their absence, these decisions seem cruel and ineffective, so I wrote Chase asking for an explanation of her votes. Despite the fact we were acquaintances and on friendly terms prior to her election, Chase refused to answer my questions, calling it a personal attack. I continued to try and engage and have a dialogue, to no avail.
I encourage other progressives to let Chase know that we want an explanation of her voting record, and that if she won't even engage with us she cannot expect our support. You can contact her at: cchase [at] cityofsantacruz.com, or through City Hall's phone 420-5020.
Below is the email exchange, reformatted to read in chronological order:
From: steve [at] santacruzhub.org [mailto:steve [at] santacruzhub.org]
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 10:41 AM
To: Cynthia Chase
Subject: the war on the homeless
Dear Cynthia,
I remember before you were elected a City Council member, you had
seemed very sympathetic to the plight of homeless people, based in
part on your relationships with women who upon leaving prison
sometimes ended up on the street. You also seemed motivated in part
by wanting to counter the hysteria and fear-mongering that were
dominating our local discourse, as opposed to compassion and
evidence-based decision-making.
Even since your election, I have heard you repeat that you feel
concern for the plight of homeless, and you continue to reference
your experience with homeless women struggling on the streets.
Therefore I find it hard to understand how you have voted for so
many cruel and repressive policies against the homeless.
In particular I have in mind the so-called "stay away ordinances",
which further criminalized behavior like sleeping in a park, for
people who clearly have nowhere else to go. Sleeping, as well as
relieving one's wastes, are unavoidable biological functions. Why
do you and your colleagues see fit to make a crime out of
something one cannot avoid doing, on account of them being very
poor and having no private space to be in?
More recently, you voted on the same night to make it illegal for
people to sleep in RVs in the City, while also opposing a City
collaboration with the warming program that offers indoor spaces on
the coldest nights. These votes literally leave people out in the
cold, restricting their options for seeking shelter on their own,
while negating efforts to offer even very modest alternatives.
[Note: on the last point, I had the details wrong: while Chase did not
vote for the warming center, neither did she vote against it. She voted
to have the staff look at it and come back later.]
I appreciate that you profess to have compassion, but actions speak
louder than words. Whatever it might feel like inside of your
heart, for the people struggling to survive without a home, your
actions are as bad as those of the Council members who clearly
despise homeless people.
I hope that going forward you make use of your privilege and
responsibility as Council member for some greater good, instead of
playing to the worst elements of our community, at the expense of
the most vulnerable.
Best regards,
Steve Schnaar
HI Steve,
It's unlikely that I'll continue to reply to your emails since they
continue to be riddled with conclusions and insults rather than
indicating any semblance of openness to a dialogue which could
include my decision making process, the actual actions I am taking
to find reasonable and sustainable solutions to really complicated
issues in our community, as well as my intentions and what is in
my heart.
I am presently working with a whole variety of people including
Brent to establish safe and warm places for vulnerable community
members to sleep. This issue is far from over.
It's unfortunate that you choose to alienate people like myself who
actually could be allies in moving policy forward to address
issues that you profess to care deeply about.
I'll continue to work toward those ends regardless.
Cynthia Chase
City of Santa Cruz Councilmember
(831) 420-5026 (Direct) | (831) 420-5020 (Main) | cchase [at] cityofsantacruz.com
Dear Cynthia,
It was not my intention in writing you to insult you personally, and in
fact I find it quite odd that you should claim so. My note is focused
on issues that you voted on. Considering that you are an elected
official, it seems bizarre to have your response not be to answer my
questions, but to declare that I am not worth responding to.
If I was wrong about your position on warming center, I appreciate you
clarifying your position (indeed that is the whole point of a
conversation like this). I am still wondering though about your votes
criminalizing sleeping in parks and RV's, without offering people
anywhere else to go? If these are not cruel and repressive policies,
please help me understand them better. But on the surface they seem
repressive to myself and everyone I know, so please understand that is
how a large part of the public perceives the facts of the matter, and
don't blow off the question by labeling it a personal attack.
Also I appreciate that you think there is a possibility of us working
together as allies. I would certainly appreciate that. Although if you
only work with people who don't challenge you on the issues, well in
that case I think it will be you who are alienating me, leading to
further mistrust and criticism.
Best regards,
Steve
[No response after several days]
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 10:51 AM
To: Cynthia Chase
Subject: RE: the war on the homeless
Dear Cynthia,
I am sorry you feel offended by my questioning you. Again I don't
really see this as a personal issue. I like you just fine as a person.
I also have questions and concerns about some of your votes as a
Council Member.
I would appreciate if you would address my questions. Also FYI I have
written in frustrated and angry letters to the City Council several
times over the years, and no one before has ever said it was so out of
line they would refuse to engage with me.
Best regards,
Steve
Quoting Cynthia Chase :
Steve,
I am actually happy to have a respectful dialogue with anyone who requests one. I am
not personally offended by what you are saying. You misunderstand why I have elected
not to respond to your emails. I will repeat again why I am choosing not to respond to
you. In it's most simplest form, it is because your emails do not include even a hint
of invitation to a dialogue. The content of your emails have consistently contained
accusations, conclusions and assertions, not questions, not inquiries, no curiosity,
interest or openness to an exchange - a dialogue. It was merely a courtesy of mine to
inform you as someone whom I know and who I have attempted to work with over the years
that you should not expect a reply from me since there is nothing to reply to. You are
welcome to continue to make accusations.
Cynthia Chase
Vice Mayor, City of Santa Cruz
809 Center Street, Room 10
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
General: 831.420.5020 Direct: 831.420.5026
Dear Cynthia,
I honestly don't understand what is going on here. Please read again from my most recent
email to you:
"If I was wrong about your position on warming center, I appreciate you
clarifying your position (indeed that is the whole point of a
conversation like this). I am still wondering though about your votes
criminalizing sleeping in parks and RV's, without offering people
anywhere else to go? If these are not cruel and repressive policies,
please help me understand them better. But on the surface they seem
repressive to myself and everyone I know, so please understand that is
how a large part of the public perceives the facts of the matter, and
don't blow off the question by labeling it a personal attack."
I realize email is an imperfect form of communication, but when I read my words I see an
expression of appreciation for you having clarified a position, and an invitation for you
to "please help me understand" if I am mistaken on another issue. How is that interpreted
as "not even a hint" of interest in dialogue??
I am trying to engage you as an elected official about your policy choices, and if the
response keeps being not to get answers to my questions but instead to be told I'm not
worth responding to, we are caught in a cycle of escalating mistrust and animosity. I
would rather that not be the outcome, but at this point the ball is in your court.
Respectfully,
Steve
[That last note I sent was on Thursday, December 17th and I still have received no response.]
People say that Cynthia Matthews has taken the other Cynthia under her claw, er wing. If this is the case we know what to expect the next 2 years from both Cynthias.
How about next election trying to find a couple progressives who are willing to stand up to TBSC SCPD and downtown business interests and getting them elected instead of being conned by politicians?
![non-compliant_politician.jpg](/uploads/2016/01/04/non-compliant_politician.jpg)
The only "friendly terms" politicians have are ones favorable to their business and commercial property interest friends.
Ps. It doesn't matter if progressive individuals make up the majority of funders that get them elected. What they consider 'friendly terms' remain unchanged.
But they ARE "liberal" in their spending on police state solutions to what can be seen as self-created social problems...
This is progressivism:
Meet the lefty club behind a blitz of new laws in cities around the country
A new group for liberal city council members is pushing the limits of what municipalities can do for their residents.
Like many new organizations, LocalProgress sprung from the ashes of a crisis.
In 2012, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, who represents Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, and Nick Licata, then Seattle council chair, had a phone call about how to deal with the tidal wave of foreclosed homes that had swept the country. A few loosely organized collectives had emerged around the challenge of blight, with some cities trying innovative and legally risky strategies like using the power of eminent domain to seize the foreclosed mortgages. But there wasn’t a place to convene like-minded local officials around that issue — or any other. “It really grew into 'hey, there should be something like this,'” Lander says.
Rather than creating a new organization, Lander reached out to the Center for Popular Democracy, another young outfit that secured grants to support a few staff members for the project. They first gathered in 2012, at the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington. The group has grown — with annual convenings and ones that are more ad hoc, like a forum in support of Seattle’s first-in-the-nation vote to raise its minimum wage to $15 in 2014. The show of solidarity helped. “One thing they said was, 'make it look like we’re not crazy,’” Lander says, of Seattle’s council.
Many cities have a klatch of liberal legislators who push for higher minimum wages, paid leave mandates, taxes on plastic bags and the like. By putting them in contact with one another and other community groups, LocalProgress has in recent years created a policy feedback loop that’s accelerated the spread of new laws in municipalities across the country. In the absence of federal action on many issues, it’s trying to make local government into something that doesn’t just pick up the trash — but solves some of society’s biggest problems as well.
City-level cooperation, of course, isn’t a new idea.
Its first iteration came about a century ago, during the Progressive era, when urban leaders fought for home rule for cities in order to establish construction codes, health and safety standards, and the architecture of good government through state-based alliances called Municipal Leagues. Later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created programs that bypassed the more conservative governors and state legislatures, filtering aid for infrastructure projects through local Democratic machines.
That relationship started to weaken through the 1970s and ‘80s, when some Democrats migrated to the suburbs, urban politics became more racialized, and the flow of money slowed to a trickle.
The claim that there was no hint at dialogue is laughable. Pointing out how her votes have potentially impacted the very people who Chase claimed to be an advocate for is hardly hostile. It's just a fact.
A wealthy (possibly due to 'secret history' intelligence connections) tech VC wrote on inequality.
http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html
A viral response (and resulting partisan bickering) has highlighted the failure to communicate.
https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/paul-graham-is-still-asking-to-be-eaten-5f021c0c0650#.oaaboc16c
Given the long, long legacy of insistent promotion of hate laws & ordinances aimed at 'the poors', why bother with the Executive Branch at all? Or the Legislative? Or Judicial? Haven't those avenues been exhausted?
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