Savory Sonoma by Stephanie Hiller - April 2018

Community wealth building begins with loyalty to geographic place. If globalization is the hallmark of today’s mainstream economy, re-localization is the hallmark of the alternative…the real economy of jobs and families and the land always lives someplace real. – Kelly and McKinley, Yes! Magazine

Can Sonoma ever overcome its issues of class and race?

The divide is long and deep, and interferes with every social and political program attempted here.

A report, Hidden in Plain Sight, published last April by the Sonoma Valley Fund, identified primary indicators that quality of life here is declining despite low unemployment. The number of children eligible for school lunches, for example, has doubled since 2000 and 35% of Latinos have no health insurance.

As for housing, figures from 2014 indicate that home ownership is down, and “more households are renting and spend a significant amount of income on rent.” We knew that, but what I, for one, did not know, is that 46 percent of all vacant housing was considered “seasonal,” used for occasional occupancy or as second homes. All that before the fires, of course.

Since the report, and since the fires, our little community, which was relatively untouched by the fire, has been scrambling for answers. One organized effort to emerge is Sustainable Sonoma. Initiated by the Sonoma Ecology Center, this group aims to become a coalition bound by agreement on issues facing the whole community.

But how is that going to happen?

Sonoma is becoming more and more a showpiece for wine country tourists from whom white people profit and workers are primarily Latinos, many of whom commute from long distances to get here, while those who reap the profits are securely ensconced on the East side.

To further define the divide, the Springs is not officially part of the city and therefore not represented by city government. But without the Springs, the city could not survive.

Bigger and more intractable is the cultural and mental divide between rich and poor, aggravated by the policies of the federal administration which can hardly be ignored.

Side by side I have been reading two books on this divide. Chuck Collins’ Born on Third Base, is about ways to bridge the growing inequality between rich and poor. It is by far the more hopeful treatise. The second is truly alarming to anyone not fully aware of the economic schemes that led to the rise of that administration. It is called, Democracy in Chains, by historianNancy MacLean, is subtitled,The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Re-reading just the Introduction last night kept me awake for hours. It dramatizes the great divide that is driving our community into decline. The rich see the poor as lesser beings responsible for their situation whose social needs for government assistance are a burden on the hard working upper classes. Meanwhile the poor see the rich as callous people who avoid paying taxes and who save themselves millions of dollars from tax write-offs for their philanthropic gestures.

Sustainable Sonoma is attempting something very ambitious and basically well-intentioned, to bring together people of clashing views and get them talking to one another.

But so long as both sides of the divide are driven by prejudice toward one another, with most of the power on the side of the wealthy, productive conversation will be challenging.

What can possibly bring them into agreement?

This is the deep problem of our chaotic times, vastly oversimplified here, due to lack of space. I can only recommend that others explore these two books and study their arresting contrast.

Climate change in particular is such a powerful separator that the very words are omitted from the Sustainable Sonoma website and elsewhere, the perpetual elephant in the room.

Many excellent groups are attempting to deal with the very real problems climate change threatens to bring to our beloved valley, from rising seas to endless droughts and, yes, fearsome repeated fires.

We are a society dependent on the fossil fuels that exacerbate this global problem. Without the tourists, we have little income; without the Safeway trucks traveling long distances, we have little food; without water, we won’t even have wine.

Yet climate change is also the force that could bring our community together. Like death, it affects everyone.

Can we move swiftly toward eschewing our separateness and recognize our common humanity in the face of this overwhelming danger?

With such diametrically opposing views of one another, can we yet reach a deeper understanding of our better natures, and meet on common ground?

I ask you.