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MCT: Friday, July 19, 2019

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MARYJANE BEST

MaryJane Best passed away into her husband’s and family’s arms on April 20th at 4:30 P.M.

She was born in Little River, Mendocino County, CA on July 5, 1930. She lived most of her life in Anderson Valley. She went to the Laurel School House, Little Red School House, Anderson Valley High School until 1948, when she married on August 4, 1948.

Mary lived in Middletown, Bridgeville, Willits, Ukiah, and back to Philo, due to her husband working for Cal Trans. In later years, she lived with her daughter in Cloverdale and Red Bluff.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Kenton Kahle Best, her brothers, Clifton, Leith, Henry Johnson, and her sister, Verna Bishop, her nephews, Henry and Joe Johnson, Pat Boyles, and Glenn Bennett, her nieces, Virginia and Sunday Smalley, Marlene Boyles, Cindy Humphries, and her dog, Tacie. Tacie was given to her on her birthday at the family reunion.

Her accomplishments were maintaining her property after her husband dies, earning money at the Apple Fair to pay her taxes, Lifetime Award in Weight Watchers. In 1969, Mary and her friend, Eleanor Nash, took and received a Certificate in Cake Decorating. Throughout the years, they made and decorated Wedding Cakes for family members as wedding presents.

He friend, Charmain Blattener, said “Still waters run deep” as MaryJane was quiet. She was a loving Wife and Mother. She was a good seamstress and made wonderful clothes for Louise.

She is survived by her daughter, Louise (Eldon) Gleason and Pam (Craig) Johnson and family of Fort Bragg, Richard (Robin) Johnson and family, friends Eleanor Nash and families, Carmen Gleason, Dennis (Robyn) Castlemen and family, Doris Sanders of Red Bluff, Harold Mire, Cherna Alliston of Cloverdale, her grandchildren, Sam and Tracy, great-grandchildren, Erika, Tori, and Bella, and nieces, Julie, Lori, Lisa, and Cheri.

Mary belonged to Boonville and Cloverdale Senior Centers, Red Bluff Community Center Auxiliary, and Red Bluff Red Hats.

Burial will be at Evergreen Cemetery (Anderson Valley Way, Boonville) on August 10 at 12:30 P.M.. Afterwards, there will be snacks at Pete and Mary’s house (2300, Hwy 128) Bring a finger food to share and a chair to sit on.

If desired, please send contributions in Mary’s name to the local Animal Shelter.

The family would like to thank Red Bluff Hospice and the Brentwood staff in Red Bluff.

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TOM KELLEY

Elwayne Thomas ‘Tom’ Kelley, Jr., known everywhere for his huge personality, died peacefully on the 4th of July, 2019, surrounded by loved ones.

Tom was born in Fremont, California, October 28, 1964. He graduated Willits High in 1982, and joined the US Air Force shortly after, where he served until 1986. He was best known as the friendly PG&E guy.

Tom was passionate, loyal, protective, charismatic, and curious. He loved to chat, and never met a person he didn’t want to have a conversation with, which usually made him late. He was late to everything. “Tommy Time”, we called it. He was big-hearted and full of warmth, with an infectious laugh. He gave the best hugs, and listened attentively to everything you said. Tom always noticed the little things, and made mental notes of your likes and dislikes. He kept your favorite drink in the fridge; he would sneak back into the store and buy the bauble you were looking at; and he delighted in surprising you.

He was strong-willed and easily fired up, and he defended his principles and his loved ones with ardor. His bluntness often got him in trouble. He never held anything back, and never did anything halfway. He loved to spoil his loved ones. He was a die-hard romantic, and a gentleman to his core. He always opened the door for his ladies. He was the best cheerleader—always encouraging, eager, and interested. He made you believe in yourself because he believed in you.

In no particular order, he loved: camping, fishing, abalone diving, swimming, chocolate cake, sushi, Chinese food, the Cowboys, military history, nature, people, movies, and his TV.

He is survived by his wife: Chrissy; his parents: Tom Sr. and Charlene; his sister: Stephanie; his children: Marcus (Brittany) and Clarissa; his step-children: Erica (Kevin) and Christopher; his grandchildren: Taylor, Jordan, Liam, Seth, Ethan, Jaxson, and Aria; his niece and nephew: Chloe and Jack; his cats, dog, goats, birds, and a garden; and a list of loved ones too long to continue.

He loved, unconditionally, and he was loved. We know that he would want everyone to live their life as fully as possible; to laugh and go on adventures; to love; and to eat two pieces of cake because one is never enough.

Services will be held Saturday, July 27th, 11AM at Ukiah Bible Church.

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A GATHERING to celebrate Kelci Parks' life and give her son RJ a community hug will be held this Saturday, July 20, at 2:00 pm at the Russian Gulch State Park recreation hall.

The Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon have had a piece taken out of us with the loss of our reporter Kelci Parks.

Kelci died suddenly last Friday morning, July 12. The pain still spreads among her wide circle of family and friends. Nothing definitive is known yet about the death of a vibrant 34-year-old mom (RJ is her beloved 12-year-old son), with a heart and mind full of plans. That makes it hurt all the more. Kelci’s life will be celebrated this Saturday at Russian Gulch Hall at 2 p.m., and no doubt on occasions in the future as well, as she surely would have wanted it.

Kelci was a mom, a daughter, a friend first of all. She was also a reporter and she loved it. Kelci literally worked her way across the West, from Oklahoma to Tonopah and then Pahrump, Nevada, earning her chops as a reporter. From Pahrump, it was straight on to Comptche — strange route, or perhaps not, for a pint-sized barrel-racing scribe from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, who could not pass up a stray, or a good story, of any kind.

When Kelci got a job with the papers here, she moved to Fort Bragg. In five years, Kelci did some things for this town that small, community newspapers at their best can do well; she did do them well.

Kelci covered City Hall during some contentious times, with hard feelings over the Old Coast Hotel putting a point on a general sense of discontent about the drift of the city. One thing Kelci never aspired to was a political soapbox (except when she was arguing with her dad). Spending an evening with a City Council meeting, though she certainly thought they were nice folks, was about as appealing to Kelci as it would be to most…normal people.

But Kelci cared about the end result: how that web of policies, proclamations, and compromises affects actual people. Some reporters pride themselves on slinging bureaucratese with the best of them; Kelci never had to be reminded to write in plain English, because that’s the language of the people she was thinking about when she wrote: you.

Kelci was our crime reporter. There, too, she had the heart and instinct to write about people’s mistakes and tragedies while always remembering there was a human being on the other end. As this week has shown, tragedy strikes without reason and far too often. Until it strikes close, it’s easy to forget that it’s a daily occurrence, that lives get blown apart all the time. But when that chaos descends, one matter-of-fact report in the local newspaper can put down all manner of talk and speculation that, at that kind of moment, is excruciating for friends and family to hear.

In fact, Kelci herself came in for some of that in the days after her death, as scanner-listeners jumped to conclusions. And there were few things about her job she liked better than to stomp a cruel rumor.

Kelci understood people and the way they like to be seen. She could write feature articles that were not only interesting to readers, but made the people she wrote about feel like a million bucks. That’s not as easy as it seems, but it’s another thing that a community newspaper can do, that the New York Times is usually too busy for. Recognizing people in their daily lives, the extraordinariness of non-Hollywood existence, a community in all its uniqueness and strength. Kelci saw that about Fort Bragg. She was lucky enough to live and work in a town that had a spirit and a never-quit attitude that matched her own.

The shock of life ended too soon feels like it will never go away. But life is the whole package; it never comes without an ending. It’s in the loss that you see the value of every moment — every moment shared — because it is here and then gone, all of it, from one breathe to the next. It’s something we’re trying to come to grips with here at the Advocate-News and Mendocino Beacon. Kelci Parks, mom, friend, reporter, gave us a lot of joy. Last week, quick as a wink, she was gone — how, why, we still badly need to know.

Her absence throws the shock of clarity onto the immeasurable preciousness and fragility of life, the need to see it, hold it close while we can. Reporter Kelci Parks has left us, but she left us all with that: one last bit of truth.

(Chris Calder, Editor, Fort Bragg Advocate-News. Courtesy, the Fort Bragg Advocate-News)

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WHAT DO YOU GET when you cross a piano, an old ford pick-up and Gabriela Lena Frank? An amazing experience at the Boonville Farmers' Market! Don't miss it! Join us Friday from 4-7 in the Disco Ranch parking lot. Of course we'll also have fresh veggies and mushrooms, meat, eggs, body care and more. Kid's activity starts at 4:30.

(BTW has anyone tried the cucumber agua fresca? wow…so refreshing!)

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THAT TREE WAS DEAD

To the Editor:

The diseased cedar at Perkins and Dora was taken down to prevent damage to homes and the History Center.

This information is for all of the individuals who arrogantly decided that they did not need to know the reasons the beautiful cedar on Perkins had to be taken down last week. Their arrogant ignorance justified not asking questions or learning any facts. Instead they filed complaints. They knew their cowardly arrogance was right so they pounded on the property owner’s door late at night shouting obscenities. They never learned any fact to support their actions.

If they had bothered to talk with the property owner as she cried watching the cedar she loved being taken down they might have learned something.

The facts are that the cedar tree was diseased and could not be saved. The property owner tried for several years to save the cedar spending hundreds of dollars on arborist fees. The disease is at the base of the tree. The cedar was going to fall. This was not a possibility it was a certainty. One day without warning all 80 plus feet of the tree would fall on one of the four properties near it.

The fact is that if you look at the stump of the tree you can see the diseased wood. The infection is so bad that the stump and burl at the base will have to be removed completely because nothing can be planted there and live.

Since facts are not important to these people they most likely do not read newspapers, but there are friends, family or acquaintances who they loudly shared there ignorant outrage with who can hand them this to read the facts.

Michelle Bartos

Ukiah

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A TRUE SON OR DAUGHTER OF MENDOCINO COUNTY MUST HAVE:

  1. Driven or biked over Fish Rock Road to Gualala. And back.
  2. Drank from the Indian spring on Manchester Road, kept on west and visited the round house on the Manchester rez.
  3. Hiked the Lost Coast from the Usal end.
  4. Seen the shell mounds at Black Sands Beach.
  5. Driven the Mina Road to Alderpoint, then northeast to Weaverville, thinking about George White, "The King of Round Valley."
  6. Read "Genocide and Vendetta."
  7. Hiked in to the hot springs at Point Arena and the hot springs at the headwaters of the Garcia.
  8. Visited the Held-Poage Library at least once.
  9. Hiked Navarro Ridge Road from the Flynn Creek end or driven it from the ocean end.
  10. Know where the old ballpark was in Fort Bragg. And Ukiah.
  11. Walked from MacKerricher to Ten Mile on what's left of the old Haul Road.
  12. Ridden the Skunk.
  13. Eaten an authentic old time donut from the Redwood Drive-In and eaten a Jenny Burger in Fort Bragg.
  14. Driven through the Drive-thru redwood in Leggett and on out west to Rockport.
  15. Harvested chestnuts at the Zeni Ranch.
  16. Hiked and camped from Willits to Fort Bragg on Sherwood Road.
  17. Enjoyed a drink at Bobby Beacon's world famous Beacon Light (which I haven't done yet myself but fully intend to).
  18. Hopped the fence for close look at the old Air Force base at Point Arena.
  19. Hunted wild pig. Trespassed to a great abalone spot.
  20. Driven from Laytonville to Westport on the Branscomb Road, and from Covelo to Willows over the Mendocino Pass.
  21. Know where Eden Valley is.

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[click to enlarge]

MUCHO THANKSO to the anon reader who sent along a nifty old booklet (1954) called "San Francisco Street Names, Sketches of the Lives of Pioneers for whom San Francisco Streets are Named," complete with litho reproductions of early landmarks.

The internet has pretty much wiped out the whole range of uniquely produced and written 'zines, chapbooks, single-topic booklets like, for instance, Jonah Raskin's interviews with the legendary Oaky Joe. The only place I know of where you can find an array of uniquely produced items like "San Francisco Streets" is at the San Francisco Library's used book store at Fort Mason in The City, the excellent Byron Spooner, manager.

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DAVE SEVERN played a recording of four consecutive fake IRS calls he logged the other day. An officious woman's voice announces your name and says you better call an 800 number she recites because you, pal, are in big trouble with the US government! The scam is pretty well done, and it's easy to understand why lots of people are tricked into believing it and are duly fleeced. But Severn's point is, "Why can't the FBI or some other police agency track these people down and put them out of business?" Good question. It wouldn't seem to take masterly sleuthing to find them, especially given modern tech. But Dave may have more faith in the FBI than I do. These are the master cops who couldn't find Judi Bari's bomber, and waved off reports from one of their own agents that Arab maniacs in Florida were learning how to fly airliners without taking the classes on how to land them.

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OLD CAR A LA BUTTE

(Photo by Harvey Reading)

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ON THE SUBJECT of obscure publications, I just unearthed a page from "Rural California Report of Fall 1998," which seems to have been produced by the United Farm Workers: "At summer's end the UFW established its first foothold in Mendocino County, when workers at the 580-acre Anderson Vineyards Inc. voted 27-18 in favor of UFW representation. Boonville-based Anderson Vineyards Inc., which grows grapes for Roederer Estate Winery, employs about 80 hired farm workers at peak season. Just 45 of these workers were eligible to vote in the election since the other 35, all pickers, had been hired after the end of the pay period prior to the elections. The UFW says it has negotiated with Anderson Vineyards to raise wages from $6.25 an hour to about $11.00 an hour…"

WHICH was only the tip of a breathtakingly crumb bum effort by Roederer to beat back field worker unionization. The rest of the story follows:

(Before we begin to replay the 1998 event, and I must say my reporting holds up pretty well as an accurate account of what happened, but after that heady initial victory of the UFW, the forces of darkness took less than a year to unravel the union, bringing in union-busting attorneys from the city, blacklisting local farmworkers who voted union, throwing single union workers out of Roederer's worker housing and so on. This specific thuggery by the French imperialists not being sufficient demonstration of who rules the labor roost in "progressive" Mendocino County, the county's wine grape growers soon convened seminars on how to screw their seasonal crews from even thinking union.) Be this as it definitely was, take it away, Bruce!


HUELGA! ANDERSON VALLEY’S FIRST STRIKE

Roederer’s big miscalculation a big break for vineyard workers (late summer '98)

by Bruce Anderson

France, the country that brought the world the inspirational ideas of liberty and equality for all people has just presented Mendocino County farm workers with the long overdue gift of the United Farm Workers Union.

Unintentionally, that is, and out of what appears to be a serious miscalculation at harvest time by Roederer International, the famous champagne makers.

Roederer’s field crews refused last week to pick the company’s grapes from its several hundred acres of Anderson Valley vineyards when Roederer told workers they’d be paid less than in previous years.

The strike began a week ago Monday morning but didn’t become public until Wednesday morning when Roederer’s 80-man harvest crew refused to allow replacement workers into the company’s Boonville vineyards. The company called for the police to get their workers out of the fields, the scabs in. But by the time the Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies arrived the two groups of pickers had become one. The Roederer crew had convinced their would-be substitutes to join them on an impromptu picket line.

The Monday morning Roederer’s annual harvest was to begin, picking crews were told they would not only be paid less per ton but would be expected to share their earnings with two additional persons, the tractor drivers and the sugar testers. They said no, and kept saying no until Friday night when Roederer agreed to return to expected harvest practices and pay.

Harvest crews work in self-selected teams and split their per-ton earnings equally. They sprint up and down the hilly rows of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes in a sun-up to sunset (or longer if lights are brought in) piece-work race to fill ton-sized bins with the raw ingredients of Roederer’s world famous champagne. Workers can earn as much as $3,000 a month for the two months of the annual harvest, and they jealously guard their traditional ways of bringing in the grapes.

After negotiations in the fields all day Monday and Tuesday failed to shake Roederer’s demand that their vineyard workers accept the retro new arrangements of the same work volume for less money, and the workers had quickly convinced the would-be scabs of the benefits of solidarity, not to say national origin, they called the UFW’s office in Santa Rosa to help with their fight against the French-owned enterprise.

Three union reps were in Boonville by 9am Wednesday morning, signing up workers by the side of Highway 128 as passing motorists waved and honked in solidarity, or stared uncomprehending from their vehicles at the unprecedented local scene.

Roederer found its international self with its American grapes ripening on the vine with no Mexicans to pick them, and an unyielding union on the edge of its vineyard signing up its work force.

“We didn’t have a leader,” a quietly determined Boonville worker said Thursday, “but we were united.”

And are still united a week later for a UFW local, the first union representation for farm workers in Mendocino County’s history.

Representatives of Anderson Valley’s and Mendocino County’s burgeoning wine industry, none of whom would agree to speak for attribution, are lamenting the arrival of the formidable union as they marvel at what one Philo winery owner described as “Roederer’s stupidity.”

One of Anderson Valley’s many mom and pop vineyard owners shook his head, seemingly stunned at Roederer’s obtuse labor stand. “Lots of us pay an hourly rate during the pick and during pruning because we can’t afford to pay workers year round. Roederer could easily afford to pay a little more to get their own grapes in because they don’t have to buy grapes to make their wine. When the harvest is off, like it is this year, most wineries try to pay a little more because a smaller crop is harder to pick. I don’t understand what Roederer thought they were doing by hardnosing their crews like that.”

There is much local speculation that Roederer’s vineyard managers, Bob Gibson of Ukiah and Pat Rogers of Hopland, caused the strike by telling the workers this year it would be the same work for less money. Others say nothing happens at Roederer without it first being cleared by Michel Salgues, a French national and company vice-president, and the man in charge of Roederer’s huge Mendocino County operation.

One local skeptic summed it up this way: “The French wouldn’t even consider letting an American make a key decision. The French have thought Americans were a bunch of dummies clear back to Thomas Jefferson. You think they’re about to let a couple of non-French vineyard guys call basic shots on labor relations? They’ve got a classic imperial deal going here using Mexican labor on our land to make a lot of money for people in France. They don’t need people looking at them like this. But they somehow screwed up big time. They thought they could screw the Mexicans and get away with it, but it all blew up in their face.”

Sonia Mendoza, a UFW rep with an office in Ukiah, said Friday, “I was very much in shock that it (the strike) happened at that particular winery; I thought it was one of the better employers in the county.” She also said that the UFW was “here to stay,” adding that that although some workers fear they might be fired and expelled from Roederer’s worker housing — the only company housing for single workers in Anderson Valley — she warned that “the UFW has never lost a retaliatory firing case.”

Mendocino County wine people are not only surprised that Roederer would risk alienating crews who have been with the winery since it began operations in Anderson Valley a decade ago over what amounts to a proportionately few dollars, but fear that the UFW’s Anderson Valley foothold could mean the union will soon be in their vineyards.

Roederer’s high end champagne and sparkling wines sell for $17 a bottle and up. The business is considered among the most prosperous wineries in the world, much of its annual production pre-sold as much as five years in advance.

Roederer, workers complain, hasn’t raised worker pay for five years. A few year-round employees enjoy the company’s health plan but pay mightily for it if they sign their families up for benefits. Workers also express apprehension about the company’s heavy use of ag chemicals.

But Roederer was the first, and is still the only, winery in Anderson Valley to erect housing for single workers. The French also include all their employees in annual parties and have promoted a significant number of Spanish-speaking workers to important jobs with the thriving, Philo-based concern. Roederer invested some $14 million in its Philo winery and several more millions in new vineyards, one of which is being planted this summer near Navarro. They are the largest winery in Anderson Valley, and among the largest in Mendocino County.

The strike is unprecedented in Mendocino County agriculture.

John Parducci, the reigning patriarch of Mendocino County wine, bluntly summed up the county’s traditional approach to worker demands for fair pay and decent job conditions. “Agitators were fired.”

The days when the padrone could simply banish workers who asked for decent pay and work conditions ended in Boonville a week ago.

A committee consisting of four local farm workers, all of whom are year-round residents of Anderson Valley, as are almost all the workers who struck, and three UFW representatives, Molly Lopez, Greg Kestel and Luis Mendoza, negotiated all day Friday with Roederer and its suave Mendocino County boss, Michel Salgues, his vineyard managers and the company’s “union consultants.” Salgues, pleasant but always warily circumspect in his public relations, holds a PhD in chemistry. It has always been assumed in the local wine industry that Salgues survived an excruciating selection process before being appointed to head up Roederer’s large American investment. “That guy didn’t just fall off a Philo turnip truck,” is how another Philo vineyard owner assesses the Frenchman.

But at the end of the day Friday, Roederer International’s American branch had definitely tumbled from the turnip truck. The company backed down. Jubilant workers declared, “We got everything we asked for.”

It seems likely workers are also going to get union representation. Saturday morning, Roederer’s crews were back in the vineyards.

Salgues, a jaunty Gallic shrug in his voice, said simply, “As a company we have taken the decision not to make any statement, but everything is back to normal.”

Not exactly.

All was back to normal in that Roederer’s disaffected workers, UFW cards signed, sealed and delivered, were bringing in the 1998 grapes.

The UFW’s Sonia Mendoza said Monday that the union has requested approval from the Agricultural Relations Board for a vote up or down on union representation for Roederer workers. Within days, the first Mendocino County farm workers to successfully fight for a say in the work they do will cast affirming votes for the United Farm Workers, and the long-delayed task to bring Mendocino County farm workers the respect and protections French workers have assumed for two hundred years will be underway.

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TEACHING CITY CHILDREN TO BE SNOWFLAKES

Letter to the editor in yesterday's NY Times (Why a San Francisco Mural Must Come Down):

Re “San Francisco Spends $600,000 to Erase History,” by Bari Weiss (Sunday Review, June 30):

The San Francisco Board of Education is charged with ensuring the well-being of all our students, academically, socially and emotionally, particularly those who have been historically marginalized.

When one ignores the heart of the issue that has driven a decades-long battle to repair harm, as Ms. Weiss does, it becomes easy to trot out the tired trope of a feckless bureaucratic board reflexively spending a lot of money to censor an artist who, as it turns out, becomes the real victim in Ms. Weiss’s view.

She dismisses the board’s decision, saying members (who, save one, are all people of color) feared losing reputation and being equated to white supremacists if they didn’t vote to remove the mural, which depicts a dead Native American.

Given that upside-down logic, it’s no wonder that the focus of Ms. Weiss’s commentary is censorship, leaving little space for what the board was actually grappling with: Should an immovable, public-school-located piece of art that for 80 years has traumatized students be allowed to remain?

Ms. Weiss says yes. At the end of her essay she asks, “What happens when a student suggests that looking at photographs of the My Lai massacre in history class is too traumatic?” Her false-equivalency argument is malarkey.

Stevon Cook, Mark Sanchez

San Francisco

The writers are president and vice president, respectively, of the San Francisco Board of Education.


ROB'S COMMENT:

Remember the names of these misguided people to vote against if/when they appear again on the city's ballot.

Not providing high school students with a realistic account of American history does them a great disservice. The notion that this work of art has actually traumatized students is not credible.

Those students are the real "victims" of this stupidity, not the artist who is beyond caring.

Will future students be taught about President Trump's racism or will they be protected from that information lest they be "traumatized" by pictures of children in cages on our border?

I was shocked and angry when I only began to learn about our country's appalling racial history after graduating from high school in 1960. My classmates and I were on our own to educate ourselves about the real history of our own country---that is, if we cared enough to do so.

The notion that we would have been traumatized by that information is fatuous.

Learning about the My Lai massacre is not false equivalence. It's exactly the sort of thing that every generation must learn about and struggle to prevent in the future.


ED NOTE: Absolutely correct about the insane removal of the mural at Washington High School, probably the only piece of real art on that dreary campus. But an item or so later, Anderson cites traditional lib punching bag, Nathan Bedford Forest, founder of the Klan, as synonymous with the worst racism. It's certainly true that Forest was a bad man most of his life, but he died a liberal, lamenting his murderous past. I bring him up as an example of the human fact that people, some of them anyway, can grow and change and regret and maybe even atone for the wrong beliefs of their earlier lives. Trump leading his yobbos in chants of "Send her back" succeeds as a political strategy because, to millions of Americans, especially white Americans, the overweening piety and unfounded righteousness of many libs infuriate the average person who's regularly denounced as various kinds of deplorable. It's that judgmental sanctimony from "liberals" that got Trump elected and is probably going to get him re-elected. The tragedy is, if you like irony with your tragedy, the libs and the "activists" are intellectually correct. But they're such annoying assholes on a personal basis that every time they say anything or demonstrate for or against anything, the average person mutters to himself, "Oh no, not these people. Trump is a bad person but he's more like me than they are." Trump's going to parlay the Gang of Four into another four years without saying one true thing about them or the rest of the Democrats. You think it's ugly now, another four years of this guy putting us all at each other's throats and we'll look back on 2019 as the halcyon days.

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SLAM DUNKED

UKIAH, Thurs., July 11. -- A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned to court after deliberating for one hour Wednesday with a guilty verdict against the trial defendant.

Defendant Christopher Todd Mangrum, age 39, generally of the Willits area, was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, a felony.

This defendant now has a second jury trial scheduled for next Monday. In that case -- allegedly committed earlier in time than the ADW case -- the defendant is charged with being under the influence of controlled substances while armed with a firearm, a felony.

The prosecutor who presented the People's evidence to the jury in this week's trial was Deputy District Attorney Houston Porter.

The law enforcement agency that gathered the evidence to support this week's conviction was the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke presided over the three-day trial.

(DA Presser)


YEAH, I DID IT

UKIAH, Wed., July 17. -- A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from all day deliberations late Wednesday afternoon to declare that it was hopelessly deadlocked.

The jury's unsuccessful deliberations were longer in time than it took the prosecutor to present his three witnesses, enter into evidence his twelve photographs, and argue to the jury the case against defendant Richard Allan Cauckwell, Jr., age 56, generally of the Ukiah area.

Defendant Cauckwell had been charged by the District Attorney with recklessly causing a fire in a boarded up business on North State Street in January of this year, a felony.

After today's mistrial had been declared, the foreperson advised the Court that the jury was split 11 for guilt to 1.

Normally the retrial before a new jury must be set within sixty days following a mistrial. However, once this week's jury was excused and all jurors had left the courtroom, the defendant decided to accept responsibility for his reckless conduct and immediately entered a guilty plea to the charged felony.

The defendant's case thereafter was referred to the Adult Probation Department for a background study and sentencing recommendation. The defendant's sentencing exposure is up to 36 months in state prison.

The defendant is ineligible for a grant of probation unless the Court expressly finds in August that one or more unusual circumstances, as listed in Rule 4.413 of the California Rules of Court, are applicable to this case or this defendant. This limitation on probation flows from the defendant's prior felony record -- the defendant has at least seven prior felony convictions, two of which are Strike convictions, and has previously been to state prison at least four times.

Any one interested in the outcome of this matter is welcome to attend the formal sentencing hearing now calendared for August 28th at 1:30 in the afternoon in Department H of the Ukiah Courthouse.

The prosecutor who is handling this case and the lawyer who presented the People's evidence at trial is District Attorney David Eyster.

The law enforcement and fire agencies that gathered the evidence supporting today's conviction were the California Highway Patrol, the Ukiah Police Department, the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, and the District Attorney's own investigators.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke presided over the three-day trial and accepted the defendant's change of plea sometime after 5 o'clock Wednesday. Judge Behnke will be the sentencing judge in August.

(DA Presser)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, JULY 18, 2019

Bernal, Chase, Daniels, Defrates

OSCAR BERNAL, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

WILLIAM CHASE, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

VINT DANIELS, Laytonville. Felon in possession of firearm.

JENNIFER DEFRATES, Ukiah. Grand theft, domestic battery, probation revocation.

Hammers, Heath, Mila

SHAVONNE HAMMERS, Covelo. Domestic abuse.

JACOB HEATH, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

HARRY MILA, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

Payne, Roberts, Rodriguez

WILLIAM PAYNE, Citrus Heights/Willits. Domestic abuse.

CHERRI ROBERTS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JAIME RODRIGUEZ JR., Ukiah. Parole violation, resisting, conspiracy.

Sperling, Thomas, White

CHARLES SPERLING, Willits. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER THOMAS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

TIFFANY WHITE, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

* * *

MCOE EXTENDS ENROLLMENT DEADLINE for Vocational Programs: Medical Assisting and Dental Assisting

The Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE) is currently enrolling students in two of its vocational programs: the Medical Assisting Program and the Dental Assisting Program. Applications are available at 2240 Old River Road in Ukiah, and are due Friday, July 26.

Medical assistants work alongside physicians, mainly in outpatient or ambulatory care facilities, such as health clinics and assisted living centers. Their duties generally include administrative and clinical responsibilities, including updating medical charts and scheduling appointments, as well as preparing patients for a doctor’s examination and collecting laboratory samples, among many other duties. Medical assisting is a fast-growing occupation, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it can be an entry point for those interested in becoming nurses.

Like medical assistants, dental assistants are also in high demand and they also perform both administrative and clinical duties. Dental assistants often work in dental clinics or dental offices. They prepare patients for treatments and teeth cleanings, process x-rays, and work with patients on billing issues, among other duties. Becoming a dental assistant is the first step in becoming a registered dental assistant, and additional specialty certificates are available after that.

In Ukiah, the Medical Assisting Program runs from August through May. Classes are held Thursday and Friday from 8:30 - 3:30 PM. The program requires 460 classroom hours and a 180-hour externship, which includes 80 administrative hours and 100 clinical hours. The program is limited to 20 students and it costs $4000, which can be paid in two installments.

The Dental Assisting program runs from August through December. Classes are Mondays and Thursdays from 9:00 AM - 1:30 PM. The 18-week course prepares students for front and back office dental assisting, including chairside and Dentrix software training. At the conclusion of the classroom training, students must complete a 120-hour externship with a dental practice. The program is limited to 8 students and it costs $3800, which can be paid in two installments.

Successful applicants in this competitive process will have high school diplomas or the equivalent, pass a basic skill exam and be able to type a minimum of 25 words per minute. MCOE offers the basic skill exam and typing test free of charge. Medical assisting students must undergo a medical screening, a background check and a drug test. Dental assisting students must also undergo a medical screening.

Once they have completed the program, medical assisting students will be prepared for state certification testing with the California Certifying Board for Medical Assistants.

For more information about MCOE’s workforce development programs, call 707-467-5123.

* * *

“CAT IN GARDEN” by Greg Gawlowski

* * *

KIDS WORKING IN THE BANANA TREES, PARENTS ON STRIKE

by David Bacon

In 1997 I went to the Philippines to document child labor on the banana plantations producing for the Dole Corporation. In the Campostela Valley on Mindanao I found many children doing this work. Later, in Carmen, outside of Davao I took photographs and interviewed workers defending their cooperative, formed as a result of the land reform after the end of the Marcos dictatorship. They told me they were on strike against the low prices paid by the Dole Corporation, which forced many families to take their children to work with them.

At the Soyapa Farms plantation, a huge operation set up in 1992 by Stanfilco, a division of the Dole Corporation, it wasn't hard to find the children - they were everywhere. In one corner I found five children from 11 to 17 years old chattering as they flattened out and recycled sheets of plastic, coated with chemicals, that are inserted between banana bunches as they grow.

From the shed I walked into the banana groves. The roof of broad leaves overhead created a hot green shade underneath, and the earth was slick with the dead and rotting material cut from the trunks of the trees. Here I found the youngest children, including Alan Algoso, nine, wielding a large sharp sickle he used to cut away the dead layers.

Other children I found in the groves had stopped going to school, however. Benedicto Hijara, at 15, had been working for three years.

After I returned from San Jose Campostela I went to see Koronado Apuzen, a lawyer who was helping agricultural workers set up cooperatives. Apuzen had worked with the National Federation of Labor, and many of the coops had grown out of the unions in that federation who'd formerly negotiated with Dole.

Workers in four big coops had been on strike against Dole for weeks. Before forming coops they'd worked for Dole as employees for decades. Using the Philippines' land reform law passed after the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, they'd gained ownership of the land.

But Dole controlled the export market, without which the coops couldn't survive, and force a low price on the new coops. Under Dole's new price to the coops, daily income dropped from 146 to 92 pesos, and workers lost all the medical and other benefits they had as direct employees. Faced with virtual starvation, the banana workers refused to keep on picking bananas.

Instead of finding workers inside the plantations themselves - after all, they now owned them - I found them in Occupy-style encampments under the trees just outside. Dole had hired guards and expelled the workers from their own land, shooting one striker.

One of the hardest things to hear was the frustrated dream of the freedom they expected to gain from land ownership. According to Jesus Relabo, a rank-and-file leader, "Owning the land is forever. It's something you can give to your children." Instead, workers had been forced to pull their children out of school. In some cases they'd gone to live with other relatives. And in other families they'd gone to work, as had the children in San Jose Campostela.

With the photographs and interviews, I first stopped in Honolulu and talked with Guy Fujimura, secretary-treasurer of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 142, which still, at that time, had thousands of members working on Hawaii plantations. For many years the big sugar and pineapple companies shifted work from Hawaii to the Philippines and Central America. A lost strike in Mindanao would mean that agricultural labor there would become even cheaper. Guy ran the photographs and stories in the union newspaper so that his members, many of whom are Filipino, would understand the connection.

Back to California the San Francisco Chronicle put the story and photos on its front page on Christmas day that year. The Institute for Food and Development Policy and its arm for political campaigns, Food First, turned the photographs and interviews into a background paper. The next year activists carried it to Seattle to use in the debates that led to the confrontation in Seattle in which protestors shut down the global meeting of the World Trade Organization.

http://dbacon.igc.org/Phils/banana00.htm

* * *

* * *

MARCO: THE SUMMER OF APOLLO

The moon landing was in my Fresno years. My mother married Roland in Escondido and he moved us all to Fresno in ’67, I think. On the big moon day, either my mother or Roland had taken me and Craig and Mark to a golf course and left us there to play golf. Fresno in July at midday even then was like 110 degrees in the shade. Mark had a golf bag with four clubs in it that we all used, and he and Craig were good at it; I don’t think that’s just because they were older and bigger than me. I mostly just walked around with them. I had little interest in golf, even less after plenty of practice at a driving range that you could ride your bike to and give them all your money for a bucket of balls to drive them into a giant net. I’d just flail at it; I never learned how to hit the ball right, possibly because the clubs were right-handed, but I just was never even normal-level good at any sport but downhill skiing and pingpong. Years later I developed, from working in kitchens, an ability to toss anything, of any lightness or density or heft or degree of aerodynamic balance, into a trash can all the way across the room, but when I was eight to ten, no: Basketball, no good. Baseball, no good. My childhood baseball mitt smelled like old cooking oil because I used that to try to make it flexible enough to get it to really close on a ball instead of just flapping stiffly half-shut and the ball rolls out. In a magazine it said use /neatsfoot oil/, but, you know, what even is that, where do you get that? And there was Wesson oil right there in the cupboard. Now, of course, with three clicks I get: “Neatsfoot oil is a yellow oil rendered and purified from the shin bones and feet (but not the hooves) of cattle. /Neat/ comes from an Old English word for cattle.” I was in a hurry and lawnmower oil seemed wrong, so Wesson oil, Q.E.D.

Tae Kwon Do training didn’t make me more responsible or poised or stoic or anything, nor any more or less likely to get in a ridiculous fight, to jump in for no reason at all or cower away in shame equally for no reason. I do not understand my past self but I’m doomed to remember it. For example, one time boxing for fun with my best friend Randy, in real boxing gloves, at a party at Mark Dennis’ house, I tricked Randy with a slick move and punched him too hard, way too hard, and I’m still ashamed, almost as ashamed as I am about /not/ bashing Sean Donovan when he grabbed my arm at a programmers’ meeting at KZYX in early 1990. Why answer the one not called for and not the other that patently required it?

The old things, the baseball mitt and my Sears banjo and my skis and a very cool sci-fi alien ritual clawed knife/brass-knuckle weapon I’d made in art shop class, were all lost when my mother’s house burned down in the early 1980s, when I’d already been away to Iowa, and then back, and more school, and then ended up in Fort Bragg. My mother rescued all her pets and boxes of pictures and walked around taking pictures of the firemen and the fire. She saved the important things. She sent me a picture of the fire, then. A month ago she showed me a book she just made by arranging those old pictures on her all-in-one-printer/copier to make pages. I barely glanced at it; I was busy getting my radio show together. She said, “I want you to have this because I’m afraid you’ll forget me.” Oh, no. She’s ninety years old. I’m a bad son. But did I look at it later? No. Tch. So the shame machine is still working, see?

All my life I have hated going to sports games, just like church. It was just hours of waiting, waiting, waiting for it to be over so you could go home and get back to the interesting stuff. Even today, when people are talking about some important sportsball game coming up, or there’s a game on teevee or the radio, and the announcers sound /thrilled and excited enough to vomit/ because somebody’s toe popped a hole in his endorsed shoe and so cost the shoe company a billion dollars in stock value, or a man ran back to the base just in time before the other guy could clock him with the racket, or they rolled the bowling ball /just so/ and knocked over three wickets and the referee or whatever and what a big deal that is, and how it never would have been possible before aluminum bats or the infield fly rule, and the billionaire owner of the team was arrested for buying a hand-job in a massage whorehouse so they confiscate the video to avoid embarrassing him and smooth it over and let him go on as before but every masseuse in that entire block is busted, broken and/or in jail for their terrible crime, and another star viciously beat the shit out of his pregnant wife in an elevator between games but the annoucers are not shrieking excitedly about that, for some reason, and then you find out it’s just the CTE so it’s okay, sorry… Sports. Do you remember The Three Stooges? It’s all exactly like that to me, funny for a minute or two, in a one-eyebrow-up and one down way, but it doesn’t stop after a minute; it goes on all year with a different number and shape and size of Stooges on the different sportsball teams for each season, different kind of padding on the elbows and shins, and so on, but otherwise all the same, and then next year and the next. They could stick the recording of any game in from a couple of years ago, or a whole year’s worth, and what would be the difference?

I hear myself saying that, and then I think: You could say that about my radio show, couldn’t you. Hmm. Or anything. Elections. Dinner.

Downhill skiing is all right because on the best of days when you have a lot of space to yourself it feels like dreaming of flying. The last time I went skiing was 1976; I don’t know if there are days like that anymore. Back then high school kids could afford to go skiing with money they earned at their after school jobs. I don’t think that’s true anymore; I think you have to be rich now. Waterskiing is horrible; I remember going waterskiing with friends whose father had a boat, and it was always a nightmare: an entire lake valley of earsplitting noise, and the two-stroke engine exhaust, the choking sensation of floating at nose-and-eye level with the grease on the dirty water. But I’ve seen people hang gliding all afternoon off Mount Hull and above Lake Pillsbury, spiraling up and down using the natural flow of air for power, and that’s silent and graceful and beautiful and uses only the fossil fuel for the bus up the mountain in the first place. I’d be afraid to try it –they can crash and get killed, even the experts– but that’s arguably the best sport right there. Enough, ahem. The moon.

So it’s July, 1969, my stepbrothers and I had finished golfing, such as it was, and we were in the golf course bar watching the moon thing on the teevee there. I don’t remember which adult came to pick us up, but they said, “You can look at that at home, come on.”

One of the many nice things about Fresno in those days was Norm’s, a sprawling low shack-like restaurant where a hamburger was a dime and everything else was either a nickel or a dime. A whole big family could fill up on burgers and fries and soda pop for a dollar-fifty. And there was an Army-Navy surplus store that Craig and I would ride our bikes to, that I could spend all day in and often did. Every town in America had an Army Surplus store with fascinating junk left over from World War 2 and the pointless Korean War and then pointless Vietnam: parts of machines, radio sets and parts, field phones, guns, bearings, coaster wheels, gas masks, fishing rods, archery stuff and slingshots and camping things, car parts, everything; the best toy store ever, all just leftover war crap and modified campfire technology, as Travis T. Hipp once described the Saturn V rocket to be, which I still feel is a bit unfair, if apt.

* * *

* * *

HOW TO LOWER DRUG PRICES

Editor,

I have an idea that would drive prescription drug prices down.

I have been in the wine business for almost 50 years. In order for a California winery to sell in some states, the winery must sell its wines to wholesalers in that state at the lowest price offered to any state. Why not extend this concept to the drug industry?

It would work like this: A drug company couldn’t charge more for its products in the U.S. than what it charges in other industrialized countries.

This would force prices down to the much lower level — similar to what they cost in Canada.

David Stare

Healdsburg

* * *

* * *

SON OF CHARLES MANSON WRESTLES WITH HIS FATHER’S LEGACY, SAYS HE ‘DIDN’T NECESSARILY KILL’

He says his dad has been misunderstood for half a century. Unfairly blamed. Wrongly vilified.

His father was Charles Manson.

“I would say 95% of the public looks at Charlie as this mass-murdering dog, and it’s really, obviously, just not true. He didn’t necessarily kill.”

ktla.com/2019/07/18/son-of-charles-manson-wrestles-with-his-fathers-legacy-says-he-didnt-necessarily-kill/

* * *

NO ONE KNEW that when Juho Niskanen arrived in California in 1915, he’d three years earlier grabbed a spot on lifeboat No. 9 as the world’s largest ship took on frigid seawater.

pressdemocrat.com/news/9808018-181/chris-smith-titanic-survivor-buried

* * *

YOGA PANTS

Editor:

I'm writing about this current fad of women, usually younger women but not always, wearing what are called yoga pants or leggings, skintight workout pants accentuating their butts and thighs.

Certainly this clothing is provocative, and obviously more provocative to straight men as opposed to gay men or straight women. At times though I feel that maybe provocative is too tame a word, that these yoga pants come off as slutty.

I was a boy in the 70s and a young man in the 80s during the rise of feminism and I heard some female voices imploring men do not "treat us as objects." I can sympathize with that request just like as a man I do not want to be valued by women solely for my economic status (typically what men are most valued for in my opinion).

So I'm a bit puzzled now that after over 50 years of feminism we have women who go around wearing yoga pants that basically objectify themselves and this is out in general public, not just women going to the gym.

I don't have children, but are most fathers, let's say fathers of college girls, OK with their daughters going out in public with these provocative clothes? I wouldn't be if I were a father.

I'm not married either, but aren't men whose wives wear yoga pants bothered by their wives advertising their "goods" to other men?

I know if I had a girlfriend or wife wearing yoga pants regularly I would be kind of terrified at the type of men (i.e., potential competitors) that she might be attracting — the more primitive, aggressive types of men.

I suppose some people would accuse me of being a prude, but I have never enjoyed being unnecessarily titillated. I believe I am actually less likely to engage with these women who wear yoga pants even if I found them attractive.

Keith Bramstedt

San Anselmo

* * *

* * *

COURAGE

Editor:

I haven't seen much of a display of courage around here lately. We used to witness an act of courage once in awhile. When no one under the Capitol dome wanted to take one take on Big Ag Governor Brown joined Cesar Chavez on his march down Highway 99. The nomination of Rose Bird to Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court. Morse and Gruening voting no on Tonkin Gulf. After 25 years Justice William O. Douglas stating that he had been a damn fool for supporting Japanese relocation.

In a two-page spread in the Chronicle on the AVA a while back, A Boonville businessman (perhaps recalling AJ Liebling's comment in the New Yorker) was quoted as saying, "It's Anderson's newspaper and he can write anything he wants." It's apparent that during the last couple of years Bruce Anderson has had very little to write nicely about the Democratic Party, individual Democrats and many lefties. It seems like he has decided to get even with them due to the constant criticism during the past 50 years. They put cornflakes in his car’s gas tank which caused constipation in the engine.

I want to help him in his quest for revenge.

We are going to test the courage of all Democratic elected officials in the state. We will place an initiative on the November 2020 ballot prohibiting the possession of semi automatic assault weapons which are primarily used to kill people. This will terrify all elected officials by forcing them to take a stand pro or con. Also included are the 58 County Sheriffs, boards of supervisors, city councils, etc. It is the last thing any of them want. They are all scared shiftless. There is no place to hide and Bruce Anderson will have his revenge and every person in the state will know how these dudes and stand on gun control.

(Written while 90% blind.)

Ralph Bostrom

Northbrook Nursing Home, Willits

PS. Humboldt County Tales: Alexander von Humboldt was going south having a lovely time visiting Redway and Garberville. He'd heard that wild marijuana was growing near Laytonville and wanted to see it. The Laytonville Indians who were a homophobic tribe would not permit Humboldt to visit as he was fruity as cat shit.

* * *

"THERE ARE A LOT OF WAYS to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people."

— Hunter S. Thompson

* * *

BERNIE SANDERS, ANTI-IMPERIALISM & VENEZUELA

by Timothy M. Gill

Throughout the last century, socialists have faced an uphill battle within the United States. Unlike other similarly high-income countries, the U.S. has largely remained a bastion of deeply individualist attitudes and unregulated capitalist policies.

Yet, over the span of the past decade, socialism has transformed from a demonized ideology to a publicly discussed economic model that many Americans are now seriously considering. Indeed, the Pew Research Center just last month published data showing that 42 percent of the country has a positive view of socialism, including 65 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters.

There is no doubt that Senator Bernie Sanders has boosted socialism’s favorability. In 2016, he became one of few Democrats to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic candidacy. While he lost the nomination, his candidacy both rehabilitated the idea of socialism and vividly altered public discussions, putting propositions like “Medicare for All” and free higher education on the Democratic agenda.

Similar to decades past, though, Bernie’s opponents have resurrected Cold War phobias. And although the Soviet Union dissolved nearly 30 years ago, critics have found a new country to scream in response to Sanders’ popularity: Venezuela.

A quick perusal of conservative outlets, from the Heritage Foundation to the National Review to Fox News, will find you a litany of articles likening a potential Sanders presidency to an economic implosion à la Venezuela. All other serious Democratic candidates have avoided and even explicitly denounced socialist policies. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, provided Trump with a standing ovation when he denounced socialism during his recent State of the Union Address, and she has described herself as a “capitalist to the bone.”

While Sanders himself has continually pointed to Scandinavia as providing inspiration for his policies, critics have sought to seize upon his disposition toward the Venezuelan government as evidence that he would allegedly destroy the U.S. economy “because socialism.”

Sanders, however, has never embraced the Venezuelan government — either under former President Hugo Chavez or now under President Nicolas Maduro. He never met with these leaders. He never claimed that Venezuela serves as a model of a socialist society. In fact, in 2016, he even specifically stated: “When I talk about democratic socialism, I’m not looking at Venezuela. I’m not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden.”

And, while it’s true that Sanders has not referred to Maduro as an outright dictator, he has continually noted that recent presidential elections were flawed, and he has called for new elections in the country.

Anyone who suggests that Sanders wishes to “turn the U.S. into Venezuela” is a bad-faith actor. They’re distorting reality and deceiving citizens.

Where Sanders meaningfully differs from other Democratic frontrunners like Joe Biden and Warren, though, is in his commitment to an anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist foreign policy.

While others have supported economic sanctions, Sanders has recognized that sanctions harm poor citizens much more than they harm governments. While others have called for the Venezuelan military to rise up against Maduro, Sanders has drawn attention to the nefarious role played by the United States throughout Latin America, including its support for coups that have resulted in military regimes like the one formerly ruled by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile. While others have called for isolating Venezuela, Sanders has positioned himself as someone who would prefer engagement on mutually respectful grounds.

Given the recent popularity of socialism, Americans seem far less susceptible to Cold War-style smear campaigns that simplistically attempt to demonize socialism. Though the causes are more complex than “because socialism,” it’s true that countries like Venezuela and North Korea are failing. It’s also true that many countries guided by capitalist ideas are failing. Argentina, for one, recently elected businessman Mauricio Macri. Yet, since coming to power, the Argentine economy has faced currency depreciation, high inflation and rising unemployment.

People are traveling more than ever to countries with socialist-oriented policies, they have access to more information than ever demonstrating the benefits of socialist policies, and, within the United States they experience an array of inequalities in their own life surrounding, for example, health and education.

All of these dynamics diminish the effectiveness of fear-mongering around socialism. People know that they could have better access to opportunities and resources. People know that rationing insulin, getting priced out of college opportunities, and getting priced out of owning houses and raising families after college due to exorbitant student debt, do not constitute the good life. And if capitalism won’t provide such opportunities, it’s no surprise socialism will garner ever more support among the population.

This article first appeared on Inside Sources.

(Timothy M. Gill (@timgill924) is an Assistant Professor in the Department Sociology and Criminology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

* * *

"We met on a hike 25 years ago. He made the first move. He asked if he could help me up a hill."

* * *

FUNNEST EVER

July 20th event at the Fort Bragg – Inglenook Community Center

The funnest fundraiser ever occurs at the Fort Bragg - Inglenook Community Center on Saturday, which is July 20th. From 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM there will be an old vinyl record sale. Following the record sale, will be the DeeJay Explosion music and dance event from 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM. "Rosa's Cantina" will be selling food, and beer, wine, non-alcohol beverages will be for sale at various prices. This is a good event for kids as well as for adults. Entrance tickets will be sold at the door.

Here is more information:

DeeJay Explosion!

Please attend “DeeJay Explosion” on Saturday, July 20th, from 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM at the at the Fort Bragg - Inglenook Community Center located at 26500 N. HWY 1, six miles north of Fort Bragg near Inglenook. This musical event is the second in a series to raise much needed funds for re-roofing the building. It will feature the finest electronic cacophony of the professional DJs, ”Soundcheck Kids”; Mike Stevens of “Sonic Attack”; Joe Kid of KNYO; "Poppatop of Kingston Jukebox"; “Roots E from “Guerrilla Hi-Fi": Larry Hacken of “Heavyweight Sound”; and “Aline of Alma Latina”. Entrance is $10.00 at the door for ages 14 to 114, $5.00 for kids 6 to 13, and kids 6 years and younger are free. Food, coffee, tea, milk, soda, bottled water, beer, wine, and some vinyl records will all be sold separately at various prices. This is a great event for kids and teenagers. However, children 13 and under should be accompanied by an adult.

And For You Turntable Enthusiasts . . .

But, wait! There is more! Before doors open at Fort Bragg - Inglenook Community Center located at 26500 N. HWY 1 six miles north of Fort Bragg near Inglenook on July 20th at 4:00 PM for DJ music and dancing, an old vinyl record sale will occur in the dining room. The DJs are bringing their collections of old records and will sell them at “rummage sale” prices from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The vinyl record sale is open to the public for which there is no entrance fee. Also, a few records will be left on sale during the DeeJay Explosion event. All proceeds will go towards re-roofing the Fort Bragg - Inglenook Community Center.

* * *

“You will not use Presidential language in this house.”

* * *

GROCERY OUTLETS INDEPENDENCE FROM HUNGER JULY FOOD DRIVE

Give $5, Get $5! Fighting Hunger in our Community!

Grocery Outlet start their July Independence from Hunger Food Drive, with the mission to fight hunger in our community. For the month of July when you donate $5 you will automatically receive a $5 off coupon printed on your receipt as a thank you for your generosity. All proceeds will be going towards Plowshares and the local Boys and Girls Club! Every Saturday this month Grocery Outlet is partnering with other businesses/organizations to bring awareness to these two great places that make a difference in our community! This Saturday July 20th they will have Slam Dunk Pizza, Sugar mama Hawaiian shave ice from 12 to 4 pm and KUKI-FM 12 to 2. Along with face painting for the kiddos! Plowshares and the local Boys and Girls Club will also be in the house! Stop by, get informed, do some shopping, grab a slice of pizza and a shaved ice and help reach the goal of $10,000!! Thank you for supporting this community! We hope to see you there!

For more information, Contact Grocery Outlet at 707-463-2129

* * *

“Sure, he’s Satan, Prince of darkness, King of Hell, ruler of the underworld, father of lies, the deceiver, the accuser, the slanderer, the tempter, and the source of evil, but he’s not afraid to say what people are thinking.”

* * *

ART IN THE GARDENS - SAT, AUGUST 3

Join us for the 27th anniversary of Art in the Gardens… a celebration of creative expression, gorgeous gardens, music, beer, wine, and food.

Set amidst the spectacular background of summer floral displays at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, the 27th anniversary of Art in the Gardens (AIG)

General admission tickets $20 in advance or $30 at the door

$5 children ages 6 to 16; Free for children ages 5 and under

$25 additional for wine tasting

Includes complimentary wine glass and tastings from wineries spread throughout the Gardens

www.gardensbythesea.org

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

18220 N. Highway 1

Ft Bragg, Ca 95437

* * *

ATTENTION SHUT-INS

The list of vacancies, due to term expirations and/or resignations, for County Boards and Commissions has been updated. A list of all new and existing vacancies is available on the County Website at:

mendocinocounty.org/government/board-of-supervisors/boards-and-commissions

* * *

KNOW YOUR OLIGARCHS (#29)

$32,300,000,000 (Tadashi Yanai)

7 Comments

  1. George Hollister July 19, 2019

    I am not acquainted with anyone who is a A TRUE SON OR DAUGHTER OF MENDOCINO COUNTY(TSODOMC). BTW, if you have never come to Comptche from Ukiah via Low Gap Road you are not a TSODOMC.

    • George Hollister July 19, 2019

      Also, it you have never visited the main grove at Montgomery Woods, you are not a TSODOMC. If you have never visited Bowling Ball Beach, at low tide, you are not a TSODOMC.

  2. James Marmon July 19, 2019

    RE: WHERE’S THE HOMELESS SHELTER AND MONEY CAMILLE?

    Sacramento mayor proposes ‘right to shelter’ plan for California’s homeless

    “The proposal requires unsheltered people to move indoors when offered a place to go. Steinberg said they will work with lawmakers to figure out how to enforce that.”

    https://www.kcra.com/article/sacramento-mayor-proposes-right-to-shelter-plan-for-californias-homeless/28426624?fbclid=IwAR1r4yad_XJt4W7iK2nAQsLmskWy6f8L9WEW2Idjg1toZt_wjxSZNOnHrOI

    How A Traveling Consultant Helps America Hide The Homeless

    “Marbut offers the same basic advice to most cities: Cut the goodies and build a shelter. It’s a simplistic solution that avoids the larger complexities surrounding homelessness.”

    https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/Marbut2-900×600-textphoto3.jpg

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/robert-marbut_n_6738948

    James Marmon MSW

  3. Jenny Lutes July 19, 2019

    Was so happy to read Keith Bramstedt’s missive on the wearing of slutty yoga pants by modern day women. I’m glad someone finally said something! After 50 years of feminism, these foolish women seem to be squandering their hard-won freedoms by actually choosing what to wear! These uppity women are getting dressed every morning without giving a thought to the unnecessary titillation it is causing poor Mr Bramstedt. So unfair! These shameless hussies seem be making wardrobe choices based on their daily activities and personal comfort instead. What IS this world coming to?

  4. Randy Burke July 19, 2019

    ON YOGA PANTS: Down here in Gualala, Yoga pants are the cheapest fix for clothing those over 180 pounds and really not a distraction or an invitation to let the mind wonder. Get over it.

  5. Stephen Rosenthal July 19, 2019

    Based on his description of himself, I don’t think any of Mr. Bramstedt’s “if” scenarios will ever materialize.

  6. Shitbird July 19, 2019

    Deceased American Indian victims being shown is the reason for the mural being taken down?!?!

    Oh oh. I do believe that the current panel being worked on now for the Ukiah mural shows two spirits who were massacre victims and below them a deceased mom and daughter victim of our local massacre ops, laying on the ground.

    No one has complained. Here.

    That block of Church Street will be a valuable field trip destination for all levels of schools, k thru 12. And, for as long as there is an educational system in existance.

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