Savory Sonoma by Stephanie Hiller - March 2019

Will historians in the future be able to shed some light on the chaos and confusion of our times?

Crises pelting toward us in such rapid succession we can barely get a grip on one before another comes along. Everywhere we turn, there’s a disaster, a war, a school shoot-out, a murder of a black youth by police, a revelation of sexual abuse.

Even in the slow, easy-going town of Sonoma, life has speeded up, rushing by faster than the traffic, which continues to increase with every passing weekend, slowed only by the arrival of an “atmospheric river.” And isn’t that a novel term for “big storm”? Media ingenuity certainly contributes to the spin we are in.

Here in the Valley we live in a bucolic environment we desperately want to protect with land trusts and urban growth boundaries while rising population rushes toward us in waves, needing housing that working people can afford, and equity. Some say the poor should live somewhere else, which is roughly equivalent to Marie Antoinette’s famous words, “Let them eat cake.”

But there are signs of progress. Our City Council voted February 20 to fund a housing study by Jim Reid of Urban Green, the consultant for Healdsburg’s Housing Action Plan. The Sonoma Valley Housing Group has been calling for housing for four years.

Sustainable Sonoma is also working on housing. Its mission is to bring together people in the Valley from diverse sectors to address problems of common concern.

Perhaps the answers will have to come from us.

Housing is not the only system straining to be fixed.

“The system is broken,” says Martina Schneider, referring to the criminal justice system. “We think that if we make people feel bad, they will do better.”

“A trial is not about justice. It’s about winning.”

Martina works in California State prisons in a program for restorative justice, a process of bringing together victims with offenders who harmed them. The program is underwritten by the state’s Department of Corrections. She organized an event at the First Congregational Church last month in which four victims of violent crime shared their stories. For me, the most moving story was told by a husband and wife. The husband was a police officer who was shot by a young man he had apprehended in a robbery. The man recovered, but his wife was totally traumatized by the event. Her feelings of safety were shattered. Finally, on the husband’s request, some 20 years after the incident, a meeting was held with the offender. Seeing the man, who had been in prison all this time, the trance of terror was broken. “She had been living with a monster in her head,” says Martina.

Most people who commit violent crimes were abused in childhood. Most are between the ages of 16 and 26 when the crime is committed. “What happens to them after that? They grow up.

“People are not just bad,” said Martina. “It’s not black and white. People can change.”

In agreeing to meet the victim of their crime, offenders have to cope with the reality of what they have done. Martina tells about a young man who broke into a house to rob them. He had been in and out of prison and was addicted to drugs. The husband was home, and the thief, Peter, was arrested.

During the victim-offender dialogue, Peter said, “When I met you – “

The husband, Will, jumped up. “We didn’t just meet,” he said angrily. “You took away the thing that is most important to me, my ability to protect my family from people like you!”

Peter’s jaw dropped. He got it. He finally understood what he had done.

In the end, Will and his wife helped Peter get his life together. He wrote a book about his experience, The Damage Done.

“We think that if we make people feel bad, they will do better, but what they really need is for someone to believe in them.”

Martina was at the protest on President’s Day in the Plaza put together by Lana Brewer and Indivisible to oppose the president’s declaration of a state of emergency to build a wall at the Mexican border.

“It’s all the same, isn’t it?” she said with a smile.

Protests were held all over the country, followed by calls to representatives to support legislation to reverse the declaration.

Meanwhile, Lora Zaguilan of Petaluma called into being a Sonoma Hub for the Sunrise Movement, the youth movement that brought the Green New Deal forward.

The GND is the first serious national call to address climate change. Let’s support it!