Savory Sonoma by Stephanie Hiller - June 2017

In the midst of a national and global crisis that worsens by the hour and will be intensified by the time you read this column two or three weeks from today, it’s hard to focus on what’s local or even what’s personal; and yet, if the American uproar begins to upset global markets, as it already shows signs of doing, we will be made suddenly and perhaps shockingly aware that all things are indeed connected, in human society as much as in nature.

This week, our divided city council will be having a daylong retreat orchestrated by new City Manager Cathy Capriola to plan its activity for the rest of the year and perhaps to resolve its differences. Mayor Rachel Hundley’s failed attempt to install Lynda Corrado on the Planning Commission in place of the more conservative Ron Wellender dramatized this split, with three members committed to the Council’s entrenched program of supporting business-friendly policies and two, Hundley and Amy Harrington, inclined toward a more progressive, environmental agenda. In the mix are the shaping and approval of the two proposed hotels right in the middle of the congested downtown area and whatever else the Council may choose to favor to keep the hungry maw of the tourist-and-wine industries nourished and fed. We love our prosperity here and certainly wish for it to continue, but at what price remains the question and will the needs of the poor and concerns for the earth be washed away in favor of the engine of progress, as usual? Pleas for declaration of a “housing emergency” in the Valley, made nearly every month by the Spiritual Action Committee, have thus far gone unheeded, and now we have the threatened deportation of our undocumented farm workers looming before us, with enormous consequences for families and the enterprises that rely on them. The Council did pass a heart-felt resolution in support of all targeted minorities here, but one lacking in specifics; for which the Council substituted a donation of $10,000 to La Luz, the local nonprofit that has been trying to respond to the needs of an inflamed and anxious Latino community some 2500 members strong. But what will the money go for?

Meanwhile citizen groups have formed to assist the effort, principally the Sonoma Valley Action Coalition (SVAC) with five committees working on various aspects of the crisis. Two, the Legal Defense committee and the Family Preparedness committee, have come smack into an obstacle with no immediate solution, and that is the lack, and high cost, of sufficient immigration attorneys to assist deportees whisked off in the middle of the night to unsavory and cruel detention centers. We have learned (I am a member of the Family Prep committee) that immigrants who are able to post bond are able to return to family and community until their case is heard, which may take up to five years. How much better to be home and employed than rotting in one of these detention centers! But a lawyer is needed to file those papers, and again a lawyer is needed in court, more than doubling the chances that the immigrant will be allowed to remain in the land of the free, and all of this is complicated, time consuming, and expensive. A state bill making its way through committee, SB 6, would provide some funding for legal defense.

Also hopeful would be the passage of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s bill proposing a “blue card” for farm workers, a process possibly spurred “behind closed doors” by our state’s agricultural industries stricken with apprehension over losing their work force.

Local efforts to resist the administration on other fronts have quieted down for now, with outrage tempered by a hope that a deus ex machina like impeachment will end the nightmare. But in an era of Big Medicine, the effect of the new healthcare bill on our jewel of a hospital regional clinic is another intangible. Please vote to support our hospital this June 8!

I don’t know what life in the Valley looks like to you if you are not following the daily news feed and helping where you can to defray its probable impacts on our community. I was reaching for one of those flimsy plastic bags above the produce section at Whole Foods when the woman standing next to me said she had stopped following the news in favor of “happier things” and I certainly do understand the need to do so. It’s the uncertainty that is starting to weigh on everyone’s nerves. Who knew that our government might be run by such tactics as contradictory Executive Orders and infernal alliances with dictators to say nothing of playing patsy with John McCain’s and the Neocon’s favorite enemy, the Russians? Thus we are all kept flying from pillar to post to keep up with the latest volley and if we need to drift off to happier thoughts over the vegetables, God bless us all.