Large groups of shouting, sign-carrying protesters have recently disrupted several workshops around the Bay Area, held to gather public input on regional planning to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"It's social engineering!" repeatedly yelled one demonstrator at Tuesday night's One Bay Area , as heard in our video by San Rafael Patch editor Nicole Ely.
In Santa Rosa last week, KSRO reported that police had to remove a group of protesters who wouldn't stop shouting and thrusting signs in front of city officials at another workshop in the series.
"It was about as anti-democratic as anything I’ve ever seen in this county,” Santa Rosa City Council member Gary Wysocki told KSRO interviewer Curtiss Kim afterward.
“These folks don’t believe in the democratic process: That’s the message I got,” Wysocki continued.
“They didn’t come to listen, they came to shout people down.”
Groups of as many as 20 protesters have also interrupted recent workshops in Dublin and Concord held by One Bay Area, which is a campaign name for the joint effort by regional authorities such as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments to create a nine-county Sustainable Communities Strategy that complies with a 4-year-old state law on air pollution.
State mandate or secret U.N. link?
The next workshop in the series is scheduled for Napa tonight, and regional planners appear to be expecting another round of heckling.
Protesters say they believe the regional planning initiative is linked to , a 1992 United Nations report that makes non-binding recommendations for sustainability and environmental responsibility in fighting poverty.
In fact, regional authorities say, the public workshops are a way for local communities to have a voice in how their regions comply with a state mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As Ely reports on San Rafael Patch: In 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 375, which requires the state's metropolitan areas to develop long-term plans for land use, housing and transportation that will reduce the per-capita carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
Silencing local voices?
By shouting down speakers at the regional workshops, the protesters are depriving local communities of their right to be represented in the final plan for emissions reduction under S.B. 375, said Napa County Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht.
Eve Kahn, a Napa Realtor and longtime anti-sprawl activist, also sees the protests as counterproductive—not only to the goal of regional planning to reduce emissions, but also to the activists' own objectives.
"I can't believe that being disruptive to this point is helping their message," Kahn said.
Tonight's meeting, scheduled for 5:45 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the , is currently "overbooked," according to the onebayarea.org website; a waiting list is available.
“These folks don’t believe in the democratic process: That’s the message I got,” Wysocki continued. “They didn’t come to listen, they came to shout people down.”
Sounds familiar. It could be about health care town halls from a couple of years ago.
And what wrong is there if our community passionately followed the 1992 United Nations report "that makes non-binding recommendations for sustainability and environmental responsibility in fighting poverty"? We should have proactively implemented this recommendation 20 years ago. I'm on the waiting list for this forum. I hope to get in!
You can still send comments to info@OneBayArea.org, and I hope you will.
But even without this diversion, I wouldn't have had high expectations for the meeting. The official presentations and responses were directed toward people with little experience with local government and planning, whereas the non-paranoid participants, most of whom I know personally from more than two decades of my own community involvement, represented a wealth of experience and developed ideas. The movie shown in the transportation workshop was not only dumbed-down, but also carried an annoying "musical" sound-track and used visuals that were comically simplistic. Despite all that, I don't regret attending this meeting since a strong statement of community support for orderly democratic discussion was needed in the face of organized paranoia.
Speaking of paranoia: My Dad just emailed me a quote from the New York Times about a recent political event on a decomissioned naval ship. He writes, "It was from Gail Collins's piece yesterday describing Santorum's "event" with a very small audience aboard the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C.: 'Although the meeting area [the hangar deck] was cold and smelled vaguely fishy, everyone in the audience seemed upbeat, even the woman who expressed concern that the federal government was planning to round up local Tea Party members and put them in FEMA concentration camp "that has a razor-wire fence around it." '"I'm not familiar with that at all,' said Santorum …'"
I have seen these 'sustainable developments' and they really do not look like 'our city'. They promote clustered housing and stacked type units. My ex's winery property in Green Valley is currently being developed under this 'sustainable' plan. It struck me strange that the county chose the civil engineer/design group that was more than twice the cost of the others?........But, after seeing the plans they presented and reading more about them, I started to 'get it'. They chose the 'green company', there is a group of 'chosen' trade people that get the green light (so to speak). Their plans, at first glance, were charming! They really were reminded me of traveling in Italy, the cute old two story buildings along the narrow lanes...until I realized: 'there are no garages'...........no, that is part of 'the plan'. To encourage us to not use gas powered vehicles; their living 'clusters' will be within walking distance of the proposed 'commercial/retail' areas. Too controlled and creepy to me. Napa is fine the way it is. From what I have seen from anything 'green' the only 'green' is in the pockets of those promoting it.
I loved it when Bill Dodd said to that extra loud drama-queen guy "I've never heard of Agenda 21 until I heard it from you!" Amen!
Just FYI: Pam's a credentialed Napan: http://patch.com/A-qyQs