The Future of Eldridge

Eldridge Village, A Complete Community

A powerful, coherent vision can help elevate the goals of the project above niche interests. Funders, progressive developers, and community volunteers are often attracted to sites that have a compelling vision. This compelling vision can help bring significant resources to the project and help it avoid potentially divisive local politics.

Sites of significant acreage without a central, coherent vision are often parceled off to various, unrelated users. At best, this new development misses an opportunity to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. At worst, a divided strategy can result in lengthy negotiations over boundaries and resources, slowing or sometimes halting a project entirely.

— “SDC Transformation Study,” Potrero Group

In this critical time of intense global pressure of rapidly growing population, shrinking land and resources, and dramatic earth changes due to climate change, the sudden availability of the beautiful Eldridge property can be seen as an opportunity to do something wonderful, a gift to the community and a fulfillment of some of our most cherished dreams. But due to its rarity and beauty, it can also become an object of our personal ambition and subject to exploitation for personal and/or corporate profit.

Purchased with taxpayer money in 1890 for $53,000, the property…

Continue reading The Future of Eldridge

Climate Chaos Roundtable

“Sonoma is the place I love most in the world, and I honestly didn’t think this kind of thing was ever going to happen [here]. I think about climate disasters a lot. I’m very happy that my family is safe, but they and a lot of other people in Sonoma, Santa Rosa and Napa have joined the growing community of people around the world who are living through the worst impacts of climate change. We knew this would happen. We saw this coming. But our political system has been far too slow to respond… The good news is we know how to stop this problem. ”

– May Boeve 350.org

After a summer of extreme weather around the world, Amy Goodman hosts a roundtable discussion at the Community Media Center of Marin with environmental leaders on next steps

  • Lindsey Allen, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network.

  • Dallas Goldtooth, organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network.

  • May Boeve, executive director of 350 Action, the political arm of the climate organization 350.org.

Watch this roundtable of environmental leaders discussing how to respond to the climate chaos that has reached our own valley.  (13 minutes) Continue reading Climate Chaos Roundtable

Climate Chaos Hits Sonoma Valley

California wildfires in Northern California have killed at least 42 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, scorching more than 200,000 acres—roughly the size of New York City. The blazes are the deadliest since local record keeping began. As global temperatures continue to rise, journalist Amy Goodman looks at the link between fires and climate change with Max Moritz, fire research scientist based at UC Santa Barbara.

Continue reading Climate Chaos Hits Sonoma Valley

Was Your Vote Counted Last Election?

Voter suppression undermines faith in government wherever it occurs. Thank goodness it isn’t happening here in Sonoma County.

Or is it?

In a Sonoma County case, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit to find out why as many as 45,000 California ballots weren’t counted in last November’s election. The issue raised in the lawsuit is the way our signatures are verified when we vote by mail.

“People should not be denied their right to vote because a government official doesn’t like their penmanship, but that’s exactly what is happening in California,” said Michael Risher, an ACLU staff attorney, in a written statement. Continue reading Was Your Vote Counted Last Election?

E Tu, Jerry?

California climate activists are bleeding from several stabs in the back this summer from our erstwhile friends in the neoliberal environmentalist establishment and the Democratic Party. Governor Jerry Brown, desperate to preserve California’s failing Cap & Trade program,  brokered a deal (AB 398) so shamefully full of pork for polluters that it has made even some veteran sausage-makers blush.

How could Governor Moonbeam do this to us?

Continue reading E Tu, Jerry?

Climate Activists Keep Sonoma County on Point

By Shoshana Hebshi, Communications Coordinator – Sierra Club Redwood Chapter

When President Trump announced he would pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement May 31, it felt like a national day of mourning to many concerned about the future of the planet. But the conversation quickly shifted to efforts by state, county and city governments, businesses, individuals and organizations to uphold and even go beyond Paris’ carbon-limiting recommendations.

“For every terrible decision Trump makes, grassroots activists, frontline communities, local governments, and concerned people across the country are fighting to make sure clean energy continues to grow by leaps and bounds,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement following Trump’s announcement.

Sonoma County is no exception. Seven years ago, environmentalists in Sonoma Valley began an initiative to shift their focus from the national to the local level in addressing the growing challenges of climate change, resource depletion and economic instability.

Sonoma resident Tom Conlon joined a handful of other concerned citizens to form Transition Sonoma Valley, a certified local “initiative” of the international, grassroots Transition Movement to organize and prepare local communities for climate change and economic threats ahead. Continue reading Climate Activists Keep Sonoma County on Point

What’s Your Carbon Footprint Sonoma?

Stanford University scientist Mark Jacobson recommends that we collectively cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% each year. Effectively that is what 144 countries have agreed to do by signing the Paris Agreement which went into effect last year.

Find out if you are above or below the 44.9 tons of CO2 that the average household in Sonoma generates each year. Regardless where you are right now, it’s not too late to set your own -6% plus goal for 2017.

Continue reading What’s Your Carbon Footprint Sonoma?

Our Revolution Will Not Be Twitterized

It’s official.  Democrats are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

The votes are in from the California Democratic Party Assembly District 4 delegates election and it was a clean sweep for all 10 of the candidates who ran on the “Progressive Labor Alliance” slate. This fresh crop is made up of Bernie Sanders convention delegates, Mariko Yamada endorsees, students, a farmworker, a grocery store worker, and a nurse. Continue reading Our Revolution Will Not Be Twitterized

Sonoma’s First Public Bank of Ganja

“Strange days indeed, most peculiar Mama” – John Lennon Nobody Told Me – 1977

Surely Lennon would be adding new verses this month.

“Republicans on heroin. Lakota hold the line. Nazis in the bathroom, or in a White House slot. They overbuilt in China, so finish what you’ve got.”

And with recreational cannabis now legal in California, leading cities are  putting on their green banker’s visors and getting ready to pass the proverbial peace pipe.

“… a Public Bank for Ganja, and I ain’t too surprised.”

The time has come to “Stash Your Cannabis Cash in Public Bank of Santa Rosa”.  So writes Marc Armstrong, a founding  member of the Transition Sonoma Valley Steering Team, in the North Bay Business Journal. Continue reading Sonoma’s First Public Bank of Ganja

Sonoma Supports Standing Rock Sioux

Approximately 300 people turned out in force at Sonoma Plaza on Tuesday night November 15 in a show of solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their ongoing blockade of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). For well over an hour, hundreds of passing drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians signaled their support with horns, waves, and enthusiastic cheers. Local politicians, civic leaders, and media were prominent in the crowd, as were people young and old chanting, “What Do We Want, NO Pipeline” and “Protect the Water, You Can’t Drink Oil”.Sonoma Protest in Support of the Standing Rock Sioux

The peaceful protest was just one among hundreds of other events held all over the world as part of an international “day of action”. The Sonoma protest was locally organized by Continue reading Sonoma Supports Standing Rock Sioux

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