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PROPOSITIONS LINED UP FOR NOVEMBER ELECTION
August 1, 2024
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
Date, Date, 20202020
2024 CALIFORNIA BALLOT INCLUDES 7 SIGNATURE MEASURES Staff Report
➝ Propositions, 7
Photos by Rick Tang
Much is expected of the California voter. In any election year, we may be asked to dust off our labor-lawyer hats, brush up on oil and gas regulations, reacquaint ourselves with decades of tax policy or analyze infrastructure funding. We may have to weigh the moral pros and cons of capital punishment, marriage equality or pig protection and—over and over again—oversee all things dialysis clinic. This November, voters will decide the fate of 10 thorny policy proposals, including crime, health care, rent control and taxes. This year there were far more last-minute changes than usual. Five measures were withdrawn by their proponents in deals with lawmakers, and another was kicked off the ballot by the state’s highest court. And Gov. Gavin Newsom scrapped a crime measure at the last minute. But on the final day possible, legislators added two bond issues, one for climate action and another for school construction. The 2024 ballot will be more crowded than the 2022 ballot, which had seven measures, the fewest in more than a century. After months of signature gathering, litigating and legislative wrangling, the final list of measures on the Nov. 5 ballot is set. The Legislature directed the Secretary of State’s office to assign numbers to several, and the office set the others. (Reminder: Prop. 1 was Newsom’s mental health measure that narrowly passed in March.)
SUNDAYS IN THE PLAZA West County resident Davida Sotelo Escobedo, head of communications for North Bay Jobs With Justice,
speaks to a crowd of supporters and onlookers in the Healdsburg Plaza on Sunday afternoon, July 28.
Hundreds March for ‘Disaster Pay’ FARM, VINEYARD WORKERS MAKE DEMANDS AMID EXTREME SUMMER CONDITIONS By Simone Wilson
Santa Rosa-based farmworker advocacy group North Bay Jobs With Justice just held the largest demonstration in its near-decade of existence, right here in downtown Healdsburg. The fast-growing nonprofit—known locally for staging protests during the annual Healdsburg Wine & Food Experience each spring—this time brought together more than 600 farm and vineyard workers, and their supporters, to march through the streets of Healdsburg for two hours Sunday afternoon, halting traffic on the Memorial Bridge and other major thoroughfares. “Esa es comunidad! (This is community!),” organizer Aura Aguilar shouted into a mic while hundreds gathered on the
bridge that afternoon. With signs, flyers and chants, workers demanded better pay from the local farms and wineries that employ them: $25 per hour, or $250 per ton of grapes picked. They also called for “disaster pay” benefits, which would ensure that they earn extra for enduring extreme weather like triple-digit summer heat and natural disasters like wildfires—or, if it’s too dangerous to work, that they earn wages for lost hours.
A handful of wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties offer disaster pay to their workers, but overall it’s a rarity in the industry, according to North Bay Jobs With Justice leaders. And they say many wineries still pay a standard wage of under $20 per hour. “Healdsburg is kind of the center of wealth and opulence in Sonoma County,” said Davin Cardenas, director of organizing for the nonprofit. “It’s where many workers live and it’s where many workers work. So we thought it was a strategic moment and space to use.” Sunday’s demonstration proved as loud and colorful as it was large: Marching from the Healdsburg Plaza to the roundabout to Memorial Bridge and back, driven forward by Latin music from three different bands in the crowd, protesters waved bright red, blue and yellow signs with messages like “Dignified Wages” and “Love Our Land Tenders.” Some signs were shaped like pineapples—a
Hot Work
Another of the march’s organizers, farmworker Anabel Garcia, said: “When it’s 100 degrees, you can’t work in those conditions. But when you can’t work, you don’t have enough money to make rent—to pay the bills, to get food on the table. And it’s not fair, because we know how much money the growers are making during the harvest—and they don’t pass that along to the workers.”
COMMUNITY GARDEN HITS A SNAG HERITAGE OAK REMOVAL TAINTS FARM TO PANTRY PROJECT By Christian Kallen
Photo by Christian Kallen
MIXED MESSAGES Even as a 130-year-old oak is removed
on a county-owned parcel in Healdsburg, a sign announces a nonprofit’s program to grow produce for the community.
A joint community-county plan to allocate a third of an acre for a produce garden in Healdsburg got underway this spring, but not before it hit a snag: A tree that started growing in the 19th century had to be removed, disappointing residents who had hoped to save the heritage oak. A four-man crew from Skyview Tree Experts showed up at 8am on
nod to the Flor de Piña dance from Oaxaca, homeland of many local workers. Multiple overhead puppets and hats took the shape of an acorn woodpecker, official symbol of North Bay Jobs With Justice. Some participants wore neon vests and directed traffic; others handed flyers into car windows. Parents walked with children and carried babies in slings. Overall, they were a joyous bunch—smiling and laughing between impassioned calls for fair pay.
Boss Man
Another star of the show, a tall man dressed as an archetypal wine boss, or El Dueño, completed his costume with a jumbo dollarsign tie and oversized wine glass. L.M. Bogad, a Bay Area performance artist and professor at the University of California, Davis, played the character. “Satire is part of the political process,” Cardenas said. “It’s a different way for more people to
Monday, July 29, to begin work on taking down the old valley oak. A worker in a basket boom armed with a chainsaw lopped off increasingly thick branches from the top and sides. Finally the main trunk was cut into sections, and the root ball ground into chips and sawdust. The project took all day. When the trunk was exposed at ground level, a thriving hive of ants was revealed, the source of the damage that compelled Sonoma County, the property’s owner, to order the tree’s removal—after no fewer than four arborists weighed in on the viability of the enormous tree, on the county-owned lot at 310 Mason St., at the corner of Fitch. The tree itself, more than 50 feet tall and with a diameter of about 10 feet at breast height, easily qualified as a heritage oak,
participate, and for us to feel different emotions while we’re in the midst of a political moment.” By all accounts, Sunday’s march was a peaceful affair, with no reports of pushback from passerby or visible police presence. A few observers also noted a rigorous sense of order. Cardenas, head of organizing for North Bay Jobs With Justice, said he and fellow org leaders have worked for months to build out an internal hierarchy of dozens of sub-leaders to help recruit protesters and run the show. “This was our goal since March, to reach this level of attendance and worker participation,” Cardenas said. “So this was the result of at least four or five months of organizing work.” Now, as summer wears on, Cardenas said North Bay Jobs With Justice will focus on “supporting workers as they go into harvest, as they go into fire season—in an industry where wages are stagnant and the climate crisis is rampant.”
and fell under Sonoma County’s new Tree Ordinance. And since the 17,000-square-foot lot is a parcel of county property inside the city limits, the county bears responsibility for the tree’s fate. With the planned increase in human use of the lot, the county reluctantly decided it had to go. Despite its heritage tree status, “There isn’t a prohibition on cutting down trees when they pose a significant safety risk,” Williams said.
Garden Spot
The lot is being developed as a community garden, in conjunction with an alliance of several local organizations including Farm to Pantry, Farm to Fight Hunger and Jardin del Pueblo. “At the beginning of the year, we discussed a collaboration between the County of Sonoma and District 4’s ➝ Community Garden, 2