cannabisnews.com: You Say You Want a Revolution!





You Say You Want a Revolution!
Posted by FoM on April 18, 1999 at 13:46:16 PT
Source: SF Gate
2-1/4 years after Green Party won in Arcata, changes are less than radical.ARCATA, Humboldt County - When the Green Party "revolution" came to this town of gourmet coffee houses and decaying saw mills in November 1996, the speculation began.
Would the new City Council - with three of its five members as Greens - order the downtown plaza closed to cars? And would the new council members from a party many here still consider socialist go on a spending binge with the town's tax dollars? More than two years after the North Coast town of Arcata, 300 miles north of San Francisco, made history by becoming the first city run by the pro-environment Greens, the fears of radical change have dissipated. Even some of the town's conservatives, who strongly oppose the Green Party's agenda, say Arcata hasn't changed much. There are more bike lanes in town, and some small tracts of marshy city land have been designated as open space. But those are the few visible clues that hard-core environmentalists held power. "I really thought it was going to be a lot different than it is," said Margaret Stafford, a Republican housewife and a onetime council candidate whose husband works for a local timber company. "I guess we've had a liberal element here for so long that this doesn't seem that different." "It would not be fair to say that because of the Green part of the council there has been exorbitant spending," said City Manager Keith Breskin. "They have been fiscally responsible." The surprise election last month of Green Party candidate Audie Bock of Piedmont to the Assembly has raised the party's profile and led some to wonder how a Green elected official would act in office. Bock is just the latest example in California. Thirty-two of the 64 Greens elected in 15 states are in California. Arcata, a town of 17,000 people just north of Eureka, was a natural place for the Greens to gain a stronghold. Humboldt State University, with its woodsy campus and strong environmental studies emphasis, has attracted young dreadlocked progressives as well as aging hippies. The recent timber wars at nearby Headwaters Forest made Arcata a staging point for environmental activists. The town's residents have long separated their trash into compost, shopped for organic vegetables in the town co-op and donned the garish costumes of the threatened coho salmon and spotted owl for the town's annual All-Species Day parade. The Greens, now with 14 percent of the town's enrolled voters, had been active in local politics since Ronald Reagan was president, but the November 1996 election of a Green-majority City Council was a watershed moment. For the first time in its brief history in America, the party had a chance not just to have a voice in politics, but to govern. Since then, the Greens' power has slipped. Jason Kirkpatrick, the first Green elected in the city, left his council seat this fall, largely because the 31-year-old Humboldt State graduate student couldn't live on his $300-a-month council salary. The Greens fielded a candidate, an unemployed landscaper, but he refused to take donations and ran a lackluster campaign. He was beaten by a Libertarian, leaving the council with two Greens and two liberal Democrats. The loss was frustrating to Mayor "Bad" Bob Ornelas, one of two remaining Greens on the council, who said the party had had trouble persuading activists to change city hall from within. "A lot of people don't want to give up their personal lives or their incomes," said Ornelas, a part-owner of a local brewery who says the job has cut deeply into his earnings as an electrical contractor. Sitting at the Wildflower Cafe, one of the town's many vegetarian restaurants, Ornelas and Jennifer Hanan, the other Green council member, discussed the party's influence the past two years. "For one thing, I think we've forced the Democratic Party to quit embracing the national Democratic movement toward middle-of-the-roadness," Ornelas said. "I think we've reminded them locally of where their roots are, and that they are supposed to be environmental." "What we've done is to provide a living education for the community showing people that the Greens are not everything people were saying we were," Hanan said. "We're not socialist, and we're not going to spend all the taxpayers' money." The two council members are an unlikely pair: Ornelas, 45, with a handlebar mustache and long brown ponytail, is dressed in a ratty sweat shirt, jeans and basketball shoes, laces untied. Jennifer Hanan, 31, a manager at Solutions, a local store that sells environmentally friendly products, looks like a typical graduate student. After two years in office, the Greens have found that governing is harder than activism. They have faced criticism from the right - conservatives who dislike their social programs and want more development - and the left, including the many anarchists who dislike any restrictions on public behavior. As one of their first actions, the Greens moved to abolish the two-minute limit on public comment at council meetings. The result was more democracy than they had expected. Council meetings dragged until 1 a.m. or later, as speakers gave diatribes against everything from the repressive Burmese military regime to the city's unevenly paved streets. The council soon had to enact another ordinance banning any new business after 10:30 p.m. The Greens also faced a very public, intra-party squabble over the community recycling center, which has been hemorrhaging money. While Ornelas and Kirkpatrick voted for a subsidy to keep the plant going, Hanan blasted the program as inefficient and voted against providing any more money. "We were so aligned, we were so close," Hanan said of her relations with fellow Greens. "When we disagreed, it hurt." The Greens also started the Green Bikes program, modeled after similar programs in Boulder and Portland, to provide free bikes for pedaling around town. Hailed as a way to provide pollution-free transportation, especially for those who can't afford a car, the program has run into snags. Bikes have been stolen and damaged, and the city has yet to find money to pay for repairs. Hanan said in all similar programs, about 50 percent of the bikes were stolen immediately; then, the thefts level off. Ornelas has a more conspiratorial view: "There's a small group of people who hate the Green Bike program and have made every effort possible to destroy as many of them as possible. One guy was overheard at a bar saying, "I'm going to take every one I can and put them in my barn.' " The Greens have also contributed to some widely heralded successes in Arcata, including a domestic partners registration program and a system of licenses for medical marijuana patients, backed by the police chief. The marijuana program is being used as a model for other communities trying to comply with Proposition 215, which legalized pot for medical purposes. And they helped fund a skateboard park for skaters banned from much of downtown. Green council members also helped resolve a long-running dispute with the Arcata branch of Food Not Bombs over serving food to the homeless in the plaza. After a lengthy and expensive lawsuit against the group, a judge ruled that Food Not Bombs needed a health permit to operate, something the anarchist group considers anathema. But Hanan knew one of the leaders of Food Not Bombs from a women's group and brokered a deal in which the group could use a community center kitchen in exchange for agreeing to get a health permit. Some Food Not Bombs officials said they were still uncomfortable with the compromise, especially the $1,400 they have to pay for insurance to conduct what they see as humanitarian work. And some progressives fume that the Greens have not lived up to their potential. "For example, a paving moratorium could have been declared, a car-free plaza could have been implemented," said Jan Lundberg, executive director of the Arcata-based Alliance for a Paving Moratorium and publisher of the Auto-Free Times. Carl Pellatz, the former Republican mayor of Arcata, criticizes the Greens for failing to hand the city's faltering recycling center to a private contractor. And he said some of the council's so-called accomplishments - such as the skateboard park and open space areas - had been started when the council had three Democrats and two Republicans. "It's all foam and no beer," Pellatz said. "I don't know what successes there have been. Bicycle lanes downtown? I'm not sure that it was a stunning Green Party movement that did anything." But some residents say the Greens have opened the way for new initiatives. In November voters passed Measure F, which compels the city to host two town hall meetings on this topic: "Can we have democracy when large corporations wield so much power and wealth under law?" "I see them paying attention to new ideas," said Barbara Turner, co-owner of Northtown Books. "They have big dreams for the future." Daimon Bahr, a 28-year-old bike shop employee, said he disliked the council's decision to ban smoking in the downtown plaza, which he considered government intrusion into private behavior. But he'd rather have Greens in power than "Republicrats." "I'd rather let the Greens have a chance," Bahr said. "They can't do any worse.
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Comment #1 posted by Alex on April 21, 1999 at 12:15:38 PT
Green Love
Visit:www.greenpanthers.orgBe a responsible Bud Smoker.
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