Black History

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Cynical Bypass of Barbara Lee to Fill Dianne Feinstein’s Senate Seat

A friend of mine who writes for the New York Times recently called me “cynical, but insightful.” I took it as a compliment, though I’d rather be known as trusting, loving, caring, and giving, of course. But cynicism is probably the best lens in which to view the announcement of the new U.S. Senator representing California. And maybe even all of national politics these days.

Published

2 years ago

October 12, 2023

Oakland Post

Senator Laphonza Butler

By Emil Guillermo

But cynicism is probably the best lens in which to view the announcement of the new U.S. Senator representing California. And maybe even all of national politics these days.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s appointment of Laphonza Butler to replace the great California Sen. Dianne Feinstein who passed away last week, was the best choice for him.

Just not for Californians and certainly not for the nation.

No knock against Butler, the president of Emily’s List, and an experienced political operative. But Newsom used her to bail him out of a bind of his own making.

After he filled the vacated Senate seat of Kamala Harris in 2021 with a Latinx male, Alex Padilla, he vowed his next appointee would be a Black female.

All good. But earlier this year, when Feinstein announced she would not run again, no less than three Democrats jumped in the ring.

Rep. Adam Schiff, of impeachment fame, was the implied favorite of Feinstein. Then there was Rep. Katie Porter, a darling of the left. The only Black female to announce her candidacy was the revered former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Barbara Lee, also known for being the only member of Congress to refuse to authorize military action in Afghanistan in 2001. She’s a progressive to be reckoned with.

And, of course, of the three announced candidates, Lee was the only one who could fulfill Newsom’s promise. She’s a formidable Black legislator who knows how Congress works from the inside out. Lee would have been a senator who would hit the ground running.

Oakland’s Barbara Lee was the best choice for California and the nation.

She just wasn’t, as I said, the best choice for Gavin Newsom.

The best choice for Gavin Newsom was…. Laphonza Butler.

Butler is like an H.R. choice that avoids any possible pushback. Who’s going to argue about an African American lesbian who is also a former union leader for nurses and caretakers?

Butler is a political godsend for Newsom.

Instead of being forced to choose between the three announced Democratic candidates for the Feinstein seat, Newsom simply had to find the best Black woman to fulfill his promise.

He didn’t even need the best person for the job.

Butler hasn’t been an elected official. She hasn’t passed legislation. She is political, yes. She’s also served as a member of the University of California Board of Regents, despite having no experience in higher education. But she learned on the job, and that’s what she’ll do in the Senate.

Reports say Butler’s appointment was not a “caretaker” position. She’s not just filling out Feinstein’s time and then stepping back down. Butler will be senator and can run again in 2024– as an incumbent.

And that was Newsom’s formidable gift to Butler. She would be a sitting senator, appointed by the governor.

Picking Butler also garners loyalty and fealty to Newsom for as long as necessary. It is Newsom’s enduring benefit to have birthed a lifelong ally personally placed in the Senate.

Genius move by Newsom? Certainly, the Butler pick served Newsom much more than the people of California.

Instead of making a choice that would show leadership as well as integrity by choosing Barbara Lee, Newsom did what was best for him.

It’s disappointing. I’ve known Newsom since his days as a San Francisco supervisor. As he terms out as governor, his star is rising the last few months as a Biden surrogate. But Newsom always seems to try too hard to get it right. Like his hair. Like choosing Butler.

A little too calculated, political, … and cynical.

Of course, Newsom’s filling of the Feinstein vacancy isn’t even the most newsworthy one this week.

In an historic vote, the Republican Party, led by just eight MAGA extremists ousted its own House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

Now the Republicans are leaderless in the House, while the head of the party, the former president Donald Trump, is on trial in New York for fraud. The Republicans are in chaos.

And the Democrats? At least, they look orderly with Newsom’s cynical pick of Laphonza Butler.

FEINSTEIN’S PASSING

Regular readers know I have been a vocal proponent against what I perceived as an ageist reaction to Feinstein remaining her Senate seat. I simply thought she earned the right to leave politics on her own terms.

I was aware of all the stories about her mental fitness the last few years. But to the very end, she managed to fulfill her duties and serve the people of California well. Remember, the Senate is all about seniority. That is the open secret about the Senate. And now, with her passing, how many people can even name the state’s two senators without resorting to Google?

Because of seniority, Feinstein had more power in her pinky finger. And now all of that that is lost.

As a reporter covering Feinstein over the years, I will never forget the times she stepped out of our journalist/politician roles to simply acknowledge me as a person and human being. It was a kindness you don’t expect. But she knew I wasn’t just some badgering guy with a microphone.

And then there was the time we shared a stage at San Francisco’s Lowell High School commencement in the 1980s. I spoke before her as the graduate who became the local TV journalist who made good.

My speech was memorable and funny as I used a toilet plunger as a prop. At least, I thought it was funny. If I lost a segment of the audience, Feinstein knew how to win them all back.

She was like a cheerleader for democracy, full of life, and in minutes had the whole auditorium at her beck and call. To see a moment of Feinstein’s charismatic power, years before her ascent to the Senate was an honor to witness.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See his micro-talk show on YouTube@emilamok1, Facebook, and X, formerly twitter@emilamok

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Activism

Four Bills Focus on Financial Compensation for Descendants of Enslaved People

This week, CBM examines four more bills in the package — each offering ways for Black Californians to receive restitution for past injustices — from housing assistance and reclamation of loss property to fairer pay and the establishment of a state agency charged with determining eligibility for reparations.

Published

6 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

Edward Henderson
California Black Media

Last week, California Black Media (CBM) provided an update on four bills in the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) 2025 Road to Repair package.

The 16 bills in the Black Caucus’s 2025 “Road to Repair” package focus on “repairing the generational harms caused by the cruel treatment of African American slaves in the United States and decades of systemic deprivation and injustice inflicted upon Black Californians,” said the CLBC in a release.

This week, CBM examines four more bills in the package — each offering ways for Black Californians to receive restitution for past injustices — from housing assistance and reclamation of lost property to fairer pay and the establishment of a state agency charged with determining eligibility for reparations.

Here are summaries of these bills, information about their authors, and updates on how far each one has advanced in the legislative process.

Assembly Bill (AB) 57

AB 57, introduced by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), would require that at least 10% of the monies in the state’s home purchase assistance fund be made available to applicants who meet the requirements for a loan under the home purchase assistance program and are descendants of formerly enslaved people.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee is currently reviewing the legislation.

Assembly Bill (AB) 62

AB 62, also introduced by McKinnor, would require the Office of Legal Affairs to review, investigate, and make specific determinations regarding applications from people who claim they are the dispossessed owners of property seized from them because of racially motivated eminent domain. The bill would define “racially motivated eminent domain” to mean when the state acquires private property for public use and does not provide just compensation to the owner, due in whole or in part, to the owner’s race.

AB 62 is currently under review in the Judiciary Committee.

Senate Bill (SB) 464

SB 464, introduced by Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), aims to strengthen the existing civil rights laws in California concerning employer pay data reporting. The bill mandates that private employers with 100 or more employees submit annual pay data reports to the Civil Rights Department. These reports must include detailed demographic information — including race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation — pertaining to their workforce distribution and compensation across different job categories. Furthermore, beginning in 2027, public employers will also be required to comply with these reporting requirements.

The Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment, and Rules is currently reviewing SB 464. A hearing is expected to be held on April 23.

Senate Bill (SB) 518

SB 518, introduced by Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D-San Diego), establishes the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery to address and remedy the lasting harms of slavery and the Jim Crow laws suffered by Black Californians.

SB 518 is under review in the Senate Judiciary Committee. A hearing is expected to be held on April 22.

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Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

6 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

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Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

6 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.