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The Lookout: Three Bills Test Sacramento’s Political Climate for Green Change

Newsom suggested that climate change has increased the severity of drought conditions in California, a sentiment shared by the Public Policy Institute of California.

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Following Earth Week, celebrities and lawmakers alike have come together to discuss the climate crisis ravaging our planet. However, with the political climate as charged as it is, not everyone agrees on the best approach. 

On April 21, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency.

Newsom suggested that climate change has increased the severity of drought conditions in California, a sentiment shared by the Public Policy Institute of California.

“What is different now is the extremes. What’s different now is the climate-induced impacts of these droughts,” Newsom said. “We’ve barely been out of those drought conditions and here we are, entering back into these drought conditions.”

Senate Bill (SB) 45, also known as the California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, and Outdoor Access For All Act of 2018, would authorize $4.1 billion in bonds to finance a drought, water, parks, climate, coastal protection, and outdoor access for all program.

SB 45 was originally voted in as Proposition 68 in 2018 and would also enact the Wildfire Prevention, Safe Drinking Water, Drought Preparation, and Flood Protection Bond Act of 2022, which, if approved by the voters, would authorize $5.5 billion in bonds to fund projects for a wildfire prevention, safe drinking water, drought preparation, and flood protection program.

A hearing on the bill is set for May 3 in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Senate Bill (SB) 582 focuses on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

SB 582 would require the State Air Resources Board to make sure that statewide emissions are reduced to at least 80% below their 1990 levels. 

Also, it would focus on communities that are more vulnerable to climate change, according to Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) who held a webinar to discuss the bill.

“The third piece [of SB 582] is what we call a just resilience framework to really put vulnerability to climate change at the centerpiece of the state spending strategy,” Stern said, breaking down the bill into three parts. “So, for the folks living in Sen. Cortese’s backyard who might be going through an extreme heat event who are elderly and maybe don’t have access to the proper air conditioning, or live right next to a floodplain, or, in my area, right next to the edge of a wildfire risk… those most vulnerable people, we believe, should be met first by a massive investment in climate infrastructure.”

Stern acknowledged some of the pushback he expects to get from the California labor organizations. 

“In organized labor and basically the employment sector, especially in the fossil fuel industry, there’s been a lot of discomfort that if California shuts down all these industries that we’ll put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage and we’ll put people out of work,” Stern said. 

There has been some hesitation, according to Stern. However, he asserts that it isn’t full-blown opposition.

 “There is no opposition at this point from organized labor,” Stern said. “And the environmental justice community is also not yet fully invested because there is some nervousness. Things like carbon capture, storage and oil fumes. Those kinds of questions are still looming, but we’re committed to this broader diplomatic effort and I think if we can solve that, anything is possible.”

The Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee has scheduled a hearing for April 27 on the SB 582.

Planning to Get Rid of Gasoline-Powered Cars

According to the California Air Resources Board, statewide greenhouse gas emissions increased by about 800,000 metric tons from 2017 to 2018.

Introduced as a way to combat this, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty’s (D-Sacramento) Assembly Bill (AB) 1218 aims to ensure that “100% of new passenger and light-duty vehicle sales are zero-emission vehicles by 2035.”

Jeremy Smith, deputy legislative director of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, wrote a letter to strongly oppose AB 1218.

“AB 1218 will prove devastating for the gasoline tax revenue stream dedicated to improving and maintaining California’s infrastructure and replenishing the general fund,” Smith wrote. “The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted social and economic activity in the state; reduced business activity and stay-at-home orders have decreased the amount Californians drive their automobiles.”

AB 1218 also proposes that the state provides incentives for Californians to adopt to zero emission vehicles. 

“This bill also sets up interim GHG emissions targets for manufacturers to achieve towards the 2035 100% zero-emission sales goal,” the bill text reads. “By reaching these targets, manufacturers would avoid having to pay a penalty. Manufacturers have stated support for the Governor’s executive order and understand the need for rebates to incentivize consumer adoption of zero-emission vehicles. The Assembly Appropriations Committee is currently reviewing AB 1218. 

In Washington, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23) hosted a three-day event introducing House Republican sponsored environmental initiatives in response to the Green New Deal.

While legislators may not agree on the how, they do agree on the why: The planet is in danger and we have the power to save it. What we’re willing to give up in that pursuit, however, makes all the difference.

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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“Two things can be true at once.” An Afro-Latina Voter Weighs in on Identity and Politics

“As a Puerto Rican I do not feel spoken to in discussions about Latino voters… which is ironic because we are one of the few Latino communities who are also simultaneously American,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, have American citizenship by birth but they do not have the right to vote for president if they live on the island. “I think that we miss out on a really interesting opportunity to have a nuanced conversation by ignoring this huge Latino population that is indigenously American.”

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Keyanna Ortiz-Cedeño at her graduation from UC Berkeley after receiving her master’s degree in City Regional Planning. Alongside her, are her parents holding a Puerto Rican flag. Courtesy photo.
Keyanna Ortiz-Cedeño at her graduation from UC Berkeley after receiving her master’s degree in City Regional Planning. Alongside her, are her parents holding a Puerto Rican flag. Courtesy photo.

By Magaly Muñoz

On a sunny afternoon at Los Cilantros Restaurant in Berkeley, California, Keyanna Ortiz-Cedeño, a 27-year-old Afro-Latina with tight curly hair and deep brown skin, stares down at her carne asada tacos, “I’ve definitely eaten more tortillas than plantains over the course of my life,” says Cedeño, who spent her childhood in South Texas, among predominantly Mexican-American Latinos. As she eats, she reflects on the views that American politicians have of Latino voters.

“As a Puerto Rican I do not feel spoken to in discussions about Latino voters… which is ironic because we are one of the few Latino communities who are also simultaneously American,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, have American citizenship by birth but they do not have the right to vote for president if they live on the island. “I think that we miss out on a really interesting opportunity to have a nuanced conversation by ignoring this huge Latino population that is indigenously American.”

Ortiz-Cedeño, an urban planner who is focused on disaster resilience, homelessness and economic prosperity for people of color, says that political conversations around Latinos tend to shift towards immigration, “I think this ties back into the ways that our perception of ‘Latino’ tends to be Mexican and Central American because so much of our conversation about Latinos is deeply rooted in what’s happening on the border,” she says. “I don’t think that the Afro-Latino vote is frequently considered when we’re talking about the Latino vote in the United States.”

Primarily surrounded by Mexican-Americans while growing up in South Texas, Keyanna participated in many Chicano cultured events, such as being a dama in several quinceñeras. Courtesy photo.

Primarily surrounded by Mexican-Americans while growing up in South Texas, Keyanna participated in many Chicano cultured events, such as being a dama in several quinceñeras. Courtesy photo.

As Ortiz-Cedeño sifts through childhood photos of her as a happy teen dancing with the Mexican ballet folklorico group in high school and as a dama in quinceñeras, she reflects on growing up in South Texas, an area with a large population of white and Mexican-Americans. The Black population was small, and within it, the Afro-Latino population was practically nonexistent.

“It was interesting to try to have conversations with other Latinos in the community because I think that there was a combination of both willful ignorance and a sort of ill intent and effort to try and deny my experience as a Latino,” she says. “There are a lot of folks in Latin America who experience a lot of cognitive dissonance when they think about the existence of Black Latinos in Latin America.

Ortiz-Cedeño comments on the long history of anti-Blackness in Latin America. “Throughout Latin America, we have a really insidious history with erasing Blackness and I think that that has been carried into the Latino American culture and experience,” she says. “People will tell you, race doesn’t exist in Latin America, like we’re all Dominicans, we’re all Puerto Ricans, we’re all Cubans, we’re all Mexicans. If you were to go to the spaces with where people are from and look at who is experiencing the most acute violence, the most acute poverty, the most acute political oppression and marginalization, those people are usually darker. And that’s not by accident, it’s by design.”

Because of the lack of diversity in her Gulf Coast town, as a teenager, despite being the only Spanish-speaker at her job in Walmart, Latinos refused to ask for her help in Spanish.

“Even if monolingual [Spanish-speaking] people would have to speak with me, then they were trying to speak English, even though they could not speak English, versus engaging with me as a Latina,” she says.

“I think that the perception of Latinos in the United States is of a light brown person with long, wavy or straight hair. The perfect amount of curves and the perfect combination of Indigenous and white genes. And very rarely will people also consider that maybe they also have a sprinkle of Blackness in them as well,” she says. “Over 90% of the slave trade went to the Caribbean and Latin America.”

Keyanna as a toddler, holding a whiteboard up with her last name, Ortiz-Cedeño, on it. Courtesy photo.

Keyanna as a toddler, holding a whiteboard up with her last name, Ortiz-Cedeño, on it. Courtesy photo.

Ortiz-Cedeño remembers when a Cuban family moved in next door to her in Texas. The teen daughter had blue-eyes, blonde hair and only spoke Spanish, which caused neighboring Latinos to take pause because she didn’t fit the Latino “look” they were used to.

“People didn’t have an option to try and negate her [Latino] identity because they had to acknowledge her for everything that she was,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.

Later on, the girl’s cousins, a Black, Spanish-speaking Cuban family, came into town and again locals were forced to reckon with the fact that not all Latinos fit a certain criteria.

“I think it forced everybody to have to confront a reality that they knew in the back of their mind but didn’t want to acknowledge at the forefront,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.

Having gone through these experiences as an Afro-Latina, Ortiz-Cedeño says it’s easy for her to understand Kamala Harris’ mixed Indian and Jamaican heritage, “It comes really naturally to accept that she is both Indian and Black. Two things can exist at the same time,” she says. “I had a long term partner for about seven years who was South Indian, from the same state as Kamala Harris, so if we had had a kid, they would look like [Harris],” Ortiz-Cedeño jokingly shares.

She says she can relate to having to walk the road of people only wanting to see Harris as a Black American. The talking point about [Harris] not being Indian or not being Black, just deciding to be Black, is really disingenuous and cheap,” she says.

Ortiz-Cedeño believes that the Harris campaign has not capitalized on the vice president’s mixed identity, which could be vital in bringing together different communities to understand each other on a new level and allow for improvements on America’s racial dynamics.

Keyanna co-managed a recovery center with her mother after Hurricane Harvey. They packed essentials, such as diapers, food, and water for families in need. Courtesy photo.

Keyanna co-managed a recovery center with her mother after Hurricane Harvey. They packed essentials, such as diapers, food, and water for families in need. Courtesy photo.

As she rushes into a Berkeley Urban Planning Commission meeting straight out of Ashby BART station, Ortiz-Cedeño explains her love for talking about all things infrastructure, homelessness, and healthcare access. The topics can be dry for many, she admits, but in the end, she gets to address long-standing systemic issues that often hinder opportunities for growth for people of color.

Having lived through the effects of Hurricane Katrina as a child, with the flooding and mass migration of Louisiana residents into Texas, Ortiz-Cedeño was radicalized into issues of displacement, emergency mitigation, and housing at nine years old.

“I remember my principal had to carry her students on her shoulders and swim us home because so many parents were trying to drive in and get their kids from school [due to] the flooding that was pushing their cars away,” she recalls.

Her family relocated to Houston soon after Katrina, only to be met with a deadly Hurricane Rita. They wound up in a mega-shelter, where Ortiz-Cedeño says she heard survivors stories of the unstable conditions in New Orleans and beyond, which got her wondering about urban planning, a term she wasn’t familiar with at the time.

“I think that when you put people in the context of the things that were happening in this country around [these hurricanes], a lot of us started to really think seriously about who gets to make decisions about the urban environment,” she adds.

Watching the heavy displacement of disaster survivors, hearing stories of her Navy veteran father’s chronic homelessness, and her own mother’s work and activism with homeless communities in the non–profit sector put her on the path to progressive politics and solutions, she says. After attending college on the East Coast- where she says she was finally recognized as a Puerto Rican- and working in housing, economic development, and public policy, she returned to California to earn a Master’s in City Regional Planning from UC Berkeley.

Young Keyanna volunteering at a beach clean up. Activism and giving back to her community has always been a key part of her upbringing. Courtesy photo.

Young Keyanna volunteering at a beach clean up. Activism and giving back to her community has always been a key part of her upbringing. Courtesy photo.

Her vast interest in the urban success of underserved communities even took her abroad to Israel and Palestine when she was an undergraduate college student. “I’ve seen the border with Gaza, I’ve had homestays with farmers in the West Bank,” she says. “For me personally, Palestine is an issue that is really close to the heart.”

“I have a very intimate understanding of the conflict and I’m very disturbed by the way in which the [Democratic] party has not been willing to engage in what I would perceive to be a thoughtful enough conversation about the conflict,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. “The issue of Palestine is going to be one of those that is a make or break issue for her. It has not been one that has been taken seriously enough by the party.”

Ortiz-Cedeño is not under the illusion that one candidate will address every policy issue she wants to see tackled by the president. But she believes it’s better than what former President Donald Trump has to offer.

“Trump has made it very clear what his intentions are with Palestine, and what his relationship is with [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. “I understand the political strategy that many people are trying to engage in by withholding their vote, but I would also encourage them to re-engage in the political process.”

Casting her vote for Harris is a decision grounded in calculation rather than outright support. “I think I can vote in this election in order to have harm reduction… because I have deep care and concern for other communities that are going to be impacted by a Trump presidency,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.

She also hopes that American politicians will consider the nuance and perspective that Afro-Latinos bring to the table when it comes to politics, policy, and race in America, “When we don’t think expansively about who is Latino in the United States, the breadth of Latino experiences in the United States, we miss an opportunity to capture how diverse Latinos interests are politically.”

This story was reported in collaboration with PBS VOCES: Latino Vote 2024.

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Activism

On Your November Ballot: Prop 6 Could End “Involuntary Servitude” in California Prisons

Proposition (Prop) 6 would repeal language in the California Constitution that prohibits “involuntary servitude except to punish crime.” Instead, it will replace it with language that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude absolutely.

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By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition (Prop) 6 would repeal language in the California Constitution that prohibits “involuntary servitude except to punish crime.”

Instead, it will replace it with language that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude absolutely.

The amendment would also prohibit the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from disciplining any incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment and authorize the department to award time credits to incarcerated persons who voluntarily participate in work assignments.

To gain a greater understanding of the proposition and the experience of incarcerated individuals impacted by the current language, California Black Media spoke with Dr. Tanisha Cannon, Managing Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC).

“There are really two main messages for this to be a yes vote,” said Cannon. “The way that the Constitution names what’s going on in these prisons is called involuntary servitude. Involuntary servitude is just another name for slavery. That means that there’s a force and there’s coercion. So, the main message here is that involuntary servitude is slavery.”

So far, eight states, including California, have made provisions in their constitutions permitting involuntary servitude, but not slavery, as a criminal punishment. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states have “earned time” credits that are awarded for participating in or completing education, vocational training, treatment, and work programs. Time credits can later be applied towards early release from secure custody.

The Anti-Recidivism Coalition has also been on record supporting Prop 6, stating that, “More than 94,000 Californians are currently enslaved in state prison. African Americans account for 28% of the prison population despite making up less than 6% of California’s overall population.”

Of those roughly 90,000 inmates, the state’s prison system employs nearly 40,000 who complete a variety of tasks including cleaning, cooking, firefighting, construction and yard work. Most of these workers earn less than 74 cents an hour, excluding the firefighters who can make up to $10 a day. State law permits the corrections department to pay up to half of the current minimum wage in California ($16).

Eighty percent of the employees at LSPC have been directly impacted by the prison-industrial complex. Cannon’s brother works there as well and was in prison at the age of 16 experiencing first-hand how forced labor can negatively impact an individual’s psyche.

“My grandmother passed away and he received that news in the evening. On the outside, you’d get some grieving time. That wasn’t the case for him,” said Cannon.

“He had to wake up at five o’clock the next morning. So, imagine learning that the woman who raised you just passed away. You’re due for work at 5 a.m. in the morning to operate heavy machinery and you cannot say that you don’t want to work because there’s no excused absence in prison.”

So far, there hasn’t been any organized opposition to Prop 6 in California.

A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime and authorize the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to award credits to incarcerated persons who voluntarily participate in work assignments.

A “no” vote opposes amending the state constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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