Standing Tall

To be published Dec. 7, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “The Corps of Engineers just denied the permit half an hour ago” said my step-mother triumphantly in Sunday’s phone call.  She knew I’d welcome that news even though our conversations haven’t traversed the Standing Rock Sioux’s territory or the corporate pipeline that threatens it. 

           

     The bravery of those people camping out at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers in defense of their rights to their lands has had me standing taller lately.  However, to think that our government could respond appropriately at this moment of great need – in fact, the Corps of Engineers, which is not known for its interest in public input – has re-instated my belief in this system.  Suddenly I feel glad to be Uncle Sam’s daughter.

           

     It’s all about land, when it comes right down to it, how land matters ‘way more than we think.  The Standing Rock Sioux know how much land matters, as do most Native American tribes.  Despite treaties and lands reserved for their exclusive use, their history is peppered with losses of control over resources and their quality of life to the kind of thinking behind the Dakota Access Pipeline.  

           

    It’s watching others stand up for land that’s straightened my backbone, like Dave Archambault, the Standing Rock tribal chairman, who was interviewed Friday on the PBS News Hour.  Responding to the pipeline CEO’s statement that the tribe was worried about nothing, he said “If the safeguards are all there, why not put it (back to the original route) north of Bismark?”

           

     “He (the CEO) will say that it can’t go there because of the population of the community, the environmental impacts, the sacred sites that are there, the wetlands that it has to cross. These are all the same concerns that we have. It’s just that we’re a lot fewer (in population.)  And so, if there is no worry, if the safeguards are there, then relocate it to that location. That’s OK.”

               

     As he said this, his face showed nothing: no anger, no glee at beating that kind of logic at its own game, no snide-bordering-on-vindictive disgust like my face would have shown had I pulled that off.  He was remarkable, sitting there in the News Hour studio in his light blue, button-down collar shirt, no jacket, no tie, no eagle feathers in his hair or silver jewelry draped around his neck.  He was just a man speaking truth to power who had come to Washington to discuss his peoples’ concerns with the federal government, which Sunday’s news confirmed was worth the effort.

           

     The news earlier in the week that several thousand veterans would be joining the tribes at their encampment, intending to make a human wall between the land protectors and the proto-military police forces who had drenched the protestors with water cannons the week before, had confirmed the national importance of this seemingly tiny decision.  Have we not had enough of our culture’s and our government’s ignorant, arrogant demeaning treatment of native people?  The veterans’ actions say that we have.

           

     I feel that the efforts of the Standing Rock tribe and other Americans, Native and natural-born citizens both, have been a great gift to those of us who feel compelled to question the erosive aspects of “development.”  “We have every right to protest this pipeline,” Archambault said.  “We have indigenous lands, we have ancestral lands, we have treaty lands. The pipeline is 500 feet from our reservation border.… (I)t’s unfortunate that this nation continues to treat our tribe and tribal nations around this country in this manner.”

           

     Monday morning I logged on to the PBS News Hour website to follow up the Corps’ announcement.  There, in an article by Jenni Monet, was a photo of a 97-year-old woman standing in a gymnasium on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation Saturday, waiting to greet the veterans arriving in support.  First Lt. Marcela LeBeau of the Lakota tribe had served in the U.S. Army as a nurse between 1944 and 1947.  Dressed in a plum-colored, dress-length Ultrasuede raincoat, her powder-blue snow parka lying on a folding table behind her, her silver hair piled high on her head, Lt. LeBeau stood tall as she waited for the volunteer troops with a placid, peaceful smile on her face, a smile only slightly wider than the Mona Lisa’s.  Did she know then that this effort was going to work?  Or did she only know that it was the right thing to do, regardless?

    When governments and corporations do not respect the laws of the land or the people who live there, we all have every right to protest.  In fact, I believe we have an obligation.  Standing tall at Standing Rock, the veterans of wars both foreign and domestic have shown us how to reclaim our democracy. May we stand tall with them in support and spirit.

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Trudy Wischemann researches issues of land ethics, land use and land tenure from her home in Lindsay.  For more information on the Standing Rock efforts, go to www.pbsnewshour.org.  To contribute funds to these efforts, visit http://www.rop.org/rural-oregon-stands-standing-rock/. Thanks to rural minister/songwriter John Pitney for this recommendation.  See also Waddie Mitchell's lyrics to Juni Fisher's song "Still Here," described in this blog Feb. 11, 2015.

 

 

 

 

Seeing No One

Published Nov. 30, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


    “Seeing no one,” said our new mayor, Pam Kimball, last Tuesday night, “we’ll skip the rebuttal and move to the vote,” which came out 5:0, predictably approving the item. 

     It was a public hearing on a tax-exempt bond issue that was barely discussed and which I did not understand.  No one spoke in favor of, or against the idea, which caused Pam to lower her gavel.  In fact, no one came to the meeting even to ask a question about it.  It was just like old times.

           

     There are other familiarities. It was the last meeting of Rosaena Sanchez, who chose not to serve another term.  Despite being the elected Councilmember to receive the highest number of popular votes in at least two decades (745 to Pam’s 549, which made her third-place in 2012,) Ms. Sanchez had to acknowledge herself, thanking the citizens for what she’d learned serving on the dais.  Her sentiments were barely acknowledged by the other council members, who appeared not sad to see her go.           

     With Rosaena’s departure, starting Dec. 13^th  the Lindsay City Council will be majority appointees:  people chosen by the Council itself to fill vacancies made by those who left.  In fact, the only two elected Council members, Pam Kimball and Danny Salinas (who received only 385 votes in 2014), served multiple terms as appointees before actually facing an election.  We are back to having a hand-picked Council, insiders all.

           

     Another similarity with the past:  changing rules for public participation.  When Ed Murray was mayor, you never knew whether you’d be able to speak, even during the public comment period, or whether he’d decide that what you had to say was not pertinent to the Council’s business and cut you off with the pound of his gavel.  Asking a question during the meeting was almost impossible.  But when Ramona Padilla became mayor, I began the long process of establishing rules for public participation so that people could know what they could say when, and begin to take their rightful place in these public meetings.             

     With Ramona’s departure and Pam’s elevation to mayor, I knew we would have trouble keeping those rules in place.  Having served as mayor-pro-tem under Ed’s mayorship several times, Pam has no problem filling his shoes.  In both November meetings she quickly dispatched what little public participation could have occurred by me and my attorney regarding the third attempt to build a Dollar General store on Art and Leonor Serna’s lots near the Roundabout.           

    

     At the November 8^th meeting, Mayor Kimball tabled the agenda item rather than discuss it, without even exploring what our concerns might have been.  In the two weeks between that meeting and last Tuesday’s, we received more of the supporting documents from the Dollar General project, which only increased our concerns. We submitted these greater concerns in writing before the Nov. 22^nd meeting and prepared to discuss them with Council and Staff.

           

     Pam chose, however, to limit our participation in person to either the public comment period or during the agenda item.  She then asked Assistant City Planner Brian Spaunhurst to make the staff’s presentation of the project, and she and the other council members smilingly followed along as he painstakingly read each document from the Nov. 8^th meeting, which took at least half an hour.  Staff presentations normally take 5 minutes at most.  When it came our turn to speak, she limited each presentation to five minutes and asked that we present only new information.  These changes in the rules were clearly devised to inhibit discussion of the issues, not to flush them out.

           

     We were there to discuss the apparent problems with traffic safety and congestion thanks to the Roundabout, which appear not to have been adequately considered in the project evaluation.  Yet not one council member took the opportunity to investigate our concerns either during the meeting or afterward.  They instantly and easily rubberstamped the Dollar General project, which elated the Sernas and their realtor.  No one was embarrassed.

           

      “Nobody comes to the Lindsay City Council meetings,” editor Reggie Ellis once shouted at me when I complained about our town.  Those of us who can comprehend the business of city councils should be embarrassed about that fact, especially after the economic antics of the Townsend administration were discovered by a handful of concerned citizens who stuck their necks out and started going to those meetings.  

           

     But the real culprits are the so-called elected officials of this town, who have the responsibility of seeing that the administration operates for the benefit of its residents, not for the benefit of special interests, including individual property owners.  Seeing no one, they think they know what this community needs.  But if they do not operate the public meetings in such a way that public participation is respected and encouraged, no one is exactly who they’re going to see.  It’s on their heads.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte public participant who writes.  You can send her your traffic concerns c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.  Thanks to one of my favorite RN Market customers for reading this column and asking what I think about our new mayor.