Working in a classroom with thirty or more teenagers it sometimes feels like you need lots of arms, which is the reason my teacher totem has long been the octopus. This August, which of course represents the beginning of school in California, I’ll do a teacher move, pick up five items related to urban prosperity that I’ve mentioned in previous posts (perhaps eight is too many even for an octopus teacher), and move them a short distance across the proverbial ocean floor.
Sex Trafficking in Sacramento Country
In my April post I mentioned the fact that one of the men involved in April’s mass shooting downtown had a history of pimping out the mother of his child. I also mentioned that research through Johns Hopkins shows that seven out of ten mass shooters had a prior history of domestic violence.
This new awareness has made me more alert to issues around domestic/sexual violence, which in turn led me to notice what was for me the most striking news story of the month. The story centers on a single ugly fact: there were 13,079 people sold for sex in Sacramento County between 2015 and 2020. This is according to a three year study conducted through RTI Int., Sacramento State’s Institute for Social Research, and the Community Against Sexual Harm (CASH). A link to the report is here, a link to a synopsis on the CASH website is here, and a link to a Capital Public Radio interview on the report is here.
In reading the report and listening to the interview, I was struck by two things. First was the scale of the problem. Even if the estimate of almost 13,079 people trafficked is inexact, and as a math teacher I wonder about the decision to publish such a precise estimate as opposed to a likely range, sex trafficking is clearly a vast problem, a tragedy on a much larger scale and much closer to home than I had understood. I’m impressed by the heroic efforts of the researchers here, and proud that we have such a research team locally in Sacramento. Second, I was struck by the report’s methodology, and in particular struck by the way researchers used survivors of sex trafficking to help with the interview process through what is described as a “Participatory Action Research Approach.” Building trust with people who have been abused must have required great commitment and emotional intelligence from the professional researchers and staff at CASH. Doing the interviews must also have have required great courage for the sex trafficking survivors out performing the work.
Sometimes ideas speak louder through their omission, and if I have a critique of the report it might be around the clear reticence of the authors to focus on criminal justice. Why not more specifically call out the men (overwhelmingly men, anyway) profiting from sex trafficking? I’m perfectly aware that there are deep concerns about criminalizing sex work lurking in the background, and sensitivities around the role of the police in society run high for good reasons. See this post for some of my take on police issues. But even still, it seems obvious that our elected government might want to focus on jailing pimps. The relative silence of the report on criminal justice issues feels to me indicative of an unhealthy sort of intellectual allergy that weakens an otherwise brilliant effort.
There are, of course, many other loud silences right now in debates around gender issues. In this regard I was pleased this month to see a healthy, sharp-elbowed debate on Bari Weiss’ “Honesty” podcast. Especially worth a listen is the portion of the debate that circles around the subject of violence in porn and its ugly effects on the culture, an oddly taboo subject on the left here the US but, as I learned from listening to the podcast, less so in the UK. Here’s a link to the engagingly titled episode (Sex, Porn, Feminism, A Debate!). Also check out debater Louise Perry’s new book, which seems interesting and certain to raise hackles in a useful sort of way.
Forestry Management
This summer I had the truly fabulous opportunity to hike in the Eastern High Sierra with two old Pomona College friends. On the way home, I also had the opportunity to travel across the Mormon Emigrant Trail for the first time since the 221,835 acre Caldor Fire. Mormon Emigrant Trail, for readers who aren’t Northern California locals in the know, is a kind of secret back road from Highway 50 across to Highway 88 and the gorgeous subalpine meadows, lakes, and aspen around Kirkwood and Carson Pass. From this road one can truly see the devastation wrought by the fire, and sense the scale of 220,000 acres. Caldor was the fire, again for those of you who are not locals, that forced the evacuation of South Lake Tahoe in 2021 and overwhelmed my beloved Sierra at Tahoe Ski Resort. It breaks my heart to think of how the huge, ancient red firs on the Preacher’s Passion run are likely now scorched and gone.
Is fire management an urban issue? As I’ve already stated in another post, the answer is “absolutely.” Fire smoke can make urban life seem hellish throughout the Central Valley here in California and in most other parts of the West. Plus I care deeply about the mountains, which is why I found this article about the Western fire management wars in the Washington Post so compelling. There are sharply competing takes on the science related to this issue. But as someone who once worked for the Forest Service (even for a few short months a long time ago) I find myself frustrated with the litigious approach taken by Chad Hansen and the John Muir Project. The Forest Service and the Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management deserve our love and true support. Not blind allegiance of course, but true, dedicated financial support unrelated to things like timber sales and grazing fees. Constant lawsuits only hurt progress on fire management, and demoralize the hard working agency staffers who I’m convinced are trying to do the right thing every day.
Homelessness in Sacramento
I’ve discovered in recent months that the formerly staid Capital Public Radio “Insight” program has now become truly interesting under host Vicki Gonzales. I’m proud to be a Cap Radio supporter, and if you live locally you should be too if you’re not already.
This episode of Insight with Cap Radio reporter Kristin Lam provides an excellent update on homelessness politics in Sacramento. See also this Sacramento Bee article for a quick take on a preemptive lawsuit by homeless activists to block introduction of a ballot measure by local business groups that would allow the City to clear homeless encampments if enough housing is constructed. Mayor Steinberg, who I respect, appears to support this measure. Councilwomen Mai Vang and Katie Valenzuela, who I also respect, appear to oppose it.
My instinct, as I’ve stated in a previous post, is that people shouldn’t have the right to camp in public spaces if as a society we create reasonable places for them to go. I’m broadly supportive of “housing first” policies, and suspicious of a lawsuit that would prevent people from even having the opportunity to vote on this issue. And I’m sympathetic to Amanda Blackwood, President of the Sacramento Metro Chamber, not to mention impressed with her skills with anaphora and other forms of spoken rhetoric on display at about 6:30 on the news segment.
“A sixty seven percent increase in your most vulnerable population is unacceptable. To continue to fight for the status quo way of addressing it, is illogical. We must now move forward in a new way, an aggressive way. And I very much share the Mayor’s belief that If folks aren’t mandated to do the right thing, you often find that they don’t, because priorities shift. So, it is essential that we codify the language through this measure now, so that as that Council changes and as those priorities change, that commitment to housing the unhoused does not change. And the commitment to providing what needs to be done so that they can move forward in their lives does not change. And the commitment to public safety does not change.”
Amanda Blackwood From Interview on Capital Public Radio Insight Program. August 2022.
Then again, I truly don’t know. Homelessness is such an intractable issue, and I want to take seriously the opinions of Vang and Valenzuela, even if right now I don’t think I agree with them.
Leaving the State for College
In February I expressed my true disgust with a CEQA lawsuit and judge’s ruling (frustration with a litigious society seems to be a theme for this month’s post) that will freeze UC Berkeley enrollment at 2020-2021 levels.
As I mentioned in that earlier post, my younger son applies to college this year. It would be awfully nice for him, all of the wonderful students in my high school classes, and the many other qualified high school seniors across the state if slots at the University of California system were growing, not shrinking.
This Sacramento Bee article by journalist and CSUS professor Phillip Reese touches on the issue of artificially limited college opportunity by referencing a very large increase in California students moving out of state to go to school. According to the article, the percentage of California students moving to another state to go to college was up 27 percent in 2020 over 2010. This represents some 40,000 freshmen. It also represents, I can point out as a parent, some 40,000 California families paying expensive out-of-state tuition.
Higher education is critical to creating sustainable prosperity in California. We need to adequately fund higher education, eliminate land use rules that constrain campus growth, and demand greater efficiency from the system itself. Former Governor Jerry Brown was excellent on this issue. I miss him, and his iconoclastic willingness to take swipes at the preciousness that makes higher education unnecessarily expensive (for instance see this delightful suggestion about making universities more like Chipotle).
Cycling
Finally, as you can see in my March post, I’m a big cycling advocate, which drew me to read this Washington Post article by journalist Dino Grandoni. The article sounds a discordant note in the otherwise positive recent news scene related to climate change legislation. For instance, check out this clanger: “Provisions designed to supercharge the use of traditional bikes and the battery powered variety were dropped from the climate deal reached by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.), the Senate’s most conservative Democrat.”
It’s sad to me that bikes have become a culture war issue, which is seemingly the only good explanation for why funding to promote biking would be dropped or opposed. Somehow us cyclists need to do a better job of self-branding and advocacy. Cycling truly should be supported by everyone, fiscal conservatives like Joe Manchin most of all. Making cities, towns, and suburbs safe for bikes is an urban prosperity issue that’s truly silly to allow to be branded as culturally liberal or even primarily urban.