HUNTINGTON BEACH — The winds of change blew swiftly and relentlessly into this oceanside city in northern Orange County.

Not long after winning election last November, the new conservative majority of the Huntington Beach city council adopted an ordinance that prevents the rainbow LGBTQ+ flag from flying at city hall during Pride Month.

Then this summer, the council dissolved a human relations committee formed after two notorious hate crimes by white supremacists in the mid-1990s; rewrote a declaration on human dignity to eliminate any reference to hate crimes but recognize “from birth the genetic differences between male and female”; and took away the ability to select who gives the invocation before its meetings from an interfaith council also founded in the wake of those 1990s hate incidents.

Last month, council members passed a ban on government mask and vaccine mandates in a city that has none, then placed measures on the March ballot that would add the flag policy to the city charter and require voter identification at the polls.

Hardly a few weeks pass anymore without another contentious vote pushing the community to the right — and right into some of the country’s fiercest cultural battles. Claiming a mandate from voters, Huntington Beach’s conservative council majority has set out to erase any vestige of progressive governance or “wokeism.”

They’ve been cheered on by constituents including Cari Swan, a local activist who helped organize an unsuccessful recall attempt against five members of the previous city council for passing liberal policies that she considered out of step with Huntington Beach’s values.

“The left kind of brought it on themselves,” Swan said. “They were poking the bear and the bear fought back.”

But now an opposition, growing fearful of just how far and how fast the conservative council may go to reshape their community, has galvanized around their latest move to create a citizen review panel to monitor library books for sexual content.

At a tense meeting last month, public comment dragged on for five hours as hundreds of residents filled the council chambers, frequently shouting at the conservative majority for promoting a book ban. Opponents have since launched a campaign against the March ballot measures, effectively turning the election into a referendum on the council members and their vision for Huntington Beach.

“They have just come in and taken a wrecking ball to the city with all of these things they have passed,” said Carol Daus, a library volunteer who has lived in Huntington Beach for more than three decades. “Now the community is divided. There is no place for the middle.”

How did the political center fall out, even in this swing region of California where the close partisan divide might have once invited moderation instead of conflict?

Welcome to the era of backlash politics.

Lacking power at the state level — where Democrats are so dominant that they can dismiss these cultural concerns without so much as a debate — conservatives are leaning into local governance as a form of protest against liberal California.

Their efforts can also be seen in Shasta County, where far-right activists took control of the government for not doing enough to fight coronavirus pandemic mandates and then got rid of voting machines at the center of election fraud conspiracies, and in school boards across the state, which have been roiled by fights over the rights of LGBTQ+ students.

It tracks with a growing repolarization among California voters. After decades of steady gains in independent registration, the trend has undergone a sharp reversal over the past five years as more voters embrace the Democratic and Republican parties again. Surveys find an increasing number have a favorable view of their own party and an unfavorable view of the opposition.

“It almost feels like you have to overcompensate for some of the damage being done,” said Gracey Van Der Mark, the Huntington Beach council member who proposed the library book review committee. “The more radical they got to the left, the more I felt myself pulling to the right.”

Gracey Van Der Mark, one of the conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council, in her City Hall office on Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for Cal Matters

Many residents and former officials in Huntington Beach have watched with shock and horror as the city of nearly 200,000 emerged as a leader in this movement. They emphasize that the community historically leaned conservative, but not overly partisan, and had long been on the same page about maintaining its suburban beach town vibe.

The 2020 presidential election split fairly evenly, with Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by fewer than 4,000 votes. Several Democrats were elected to the nonpartisan city council, which began taking steps that might have once seemed unthinkable, such as flying the rainbow flag for Pride Month for the first time.

The Trump era and the pandemic deeply unsettled the community, however. Huntington Beach was the site of regular protests — in support of Trump and against pandemic restrictions, occasionally violent and sometimes led by white supremacist groups, recalling its history as a magnet for skinheads in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The unsuccessful recall effort two years ago tapped into a sense among many conservative residents that they were losing their community. Local activist Russell Neal said the then-council’s decision to fly the Pride flag exemplified how progressives encourage moral weakness to bring people under control of the government.

“The whole transformation of culture goes together as a cohesive package,” Neal said. “The fundamental form of slavery is slavery to sin and when they’re slaves to sin, presto, they’ll find themselves slaves externally.”

It’s a message that can be heard at meetings of Republican groups around town and at Calvary Chapel of the Harbour, an influential evangelical church overlooking a marina on the northern edge of Huntington Beach. The conservative council candidates campaigned from the stage there last year, with Pastor Joe Pedick telling congregants he was voting for the foursome. One of the intern pastors is running for city council next year.

“We look for those types of leaders” who will “stand up for righteousness,” Pedick said after this past Sunday’s service, where a guest speaker preached to hundreds that Planned Parenthood is the source of all wickedness in modern American culture and that Democrats are demons.

“The left kind of brought it on themselves. They were poking the bear and the bear fought back.”
— Cari Swan, a local conservative activist

Running as a slate last year, however, the conservatives focused their platform not on cultural issues but on fighting high-density development in the city, including a state requirement to plan for more than 13,000 new units in the next eight years, as well as on reducing homelessness and crime. They swept the four open seats last November, receiving at least 12,000 votes more than their closest competition, and celebrated the results as a mandate, though with lower turnout, each won the support of less than a fifth of Huntington Beach residents.

“Our voters have no more appetite for progressive governance or the wokeism,” said City Attorney Michael Gates, a staunch conservative elected to a third term last November after campaigning with the council candidates.

So opponents are flummoxed by how much the city council focused this year on issues that never came up in the campaign. They have come to see the housing and homelessness message as a bait-and-switch — though to what end, they’re not sure. To simply undo the work of the previous council? To boost future runs for higher office? To create a laboratory of conservative policymaking that could become a playbook for other communities?

“It’s a banana republic down here,” said Dan Kalmick, one of three Democrats on the city council who regularly oppose the conservative majority. “This isn’t Republicanism. This is nihilism.”

The political divisions have consumed city government — sometimes quite literally. The conservative majority chose adjoining offices on the same hallway in city hall, booting the Democrats to the other side of the building.

Council meetings are filled with open hostility and executive staff have fled for neighboring communities. While a potential budget deficit looms, the council majority recently approved a secret $7 million settlement with a political ally who sued the city after the final day of his popular air show was canceled in 2021 due to a massive oil spill.

“That whole philosophy, you would think it would be small government and fiscal prudence because they are Republicans. But they are ones who are Republicans in name only,” said Democratic Councilmember Rhonda Bolton, who slammed the conservative majority for advancing policies such as voter ID and the library book review committee without considering how much they might cost to administer or defend in court. “What I’m seeing is Trump ideology, MAGA ideology, and in that respect, no original ideas.”

The conservative council members say they are responding to concerns raised by constituents during more than 100 town halls they held on the campaign trail.

One of their first major steps, about two months after taking office, was adopting a policy that allows only flags for the United States, California, Orange County, Huntington Beach and the military to fly on city property. Councilmember Pat Burns, who introduced the ordinance, said it was a move to unify the community behind symbols that represent everyone equally. He said he has nothing against LGBTQ+ people, but believes the rainbow flag — the only flag previously approved for display in front of city hall that was not included in the new policy — promotes divisive identity politics that are actually counterproductive to LGBTQ+ acceptance.

“They’re such a small population and why would we recognize anybody special?” Burns said, adding that it would be like him asking for an NRA, white or Christian flag in front of city hall. “We’re all marginalized in some way or victimized in some way, but we don’t get months or parades or whatever.”

Known as the Fab Four to their fans, the council majority, along with Gates, have become rock stars to local Republicans, who hooted and hollered for them at a Veterans Day ceremony on the beach.

Supporters spun off groups like HB Lady Patriots, which aims to bring a patriotic education back into Huntington Beach schools and was active in promoting the library book review proposal. Gates said he hears from officials in other communities who want to replicate their policies, including Fresno County, which recently voted to create a panel to screen children’s books in the libraries.

“We’re willing to be the tip of the spear on this,” Van Der Mark said, attributing everything the council is doing to a philosophy of fighting government overreach. “We want to make Huntington Beach the city that protects your individual liberties and freedoms.”

Gracey Van Der Mark, a Huntington Beach City Councilmember, with a book she says should be banned from children’s sections of the library in Huntington Beach Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for CalMatters

Van Der Mark’s sunny fourth-floor office at city hall is stacked with books that she finds obscene. Many of them are sex education manuals, borrowed from the Huntington Beach public library and filled with sticky notes to mark offending passages — discussions of masturbation, explanations of fetishes, images of erect penises and gay sex.

She’s particularly perturbed by a picture book called “Grandad’s Pride,” currently on order for the library, which features a drawing of a Pride parade where two men in leather are kissing in the crowd; she equates it with promoting bondage to kids. Van Der Mark also returns again and again to a page in a sex education book that describes how to use lubricant to insert a tampon if it does not fit.

“The lines are so blurred that we don’t even know where to stop and where to start,” she said. “I don’t need to learn how to stick a finger up my vagina with K-Y jelly. We survived without that kind of graphic information. And if you want it, then you go talk to your mom.”

It’s the type of sexual content that her library book review committee, which the city is in the process of establishing, could move to the adult section or prevent the library from acquiring in the first place. Though a challenge process for library books already existed — there were five in the previous five years, including one by Van Der Mark herself — she said more robust steps are necessary to protect young readers from damaging material, even if it appears within the context of an educational or creative work.

“This one page is going to stick in their brain,” she said. “We should have one area that is completely safe for all children.”

Her crusade has mobilized library supporters — the central branch, a concrete marvel with a spiraling atrium, is beloved far beyond Huntington Beach — and First Amendment groups, who sent a letter to the council in October warning that the plan would infringe on free speech. Daus, the library volunteer, worries that the vague language of the ordinance could allow the committee to impose its own morality on the entire community, especially with LGBTQ+ books.

“It’s feeling like a China or a Russia or a Hungary,” Daus said as she toured the children’s room, which has a reading area designed as a pirate ship. The sex education section had only three books on the shelf.

“They have just come in and taken a wrecking ball to the city… Now the community is divided. There is no place for the middle.”
— Carol Daus, a library volunteer

Among the conservative council majority, Van Der Mark seems to especially rankle the opposition. She was a divisive activist even before her election, which she winkingly acknowledges in her office with a framed wall hanging of her entry in the OC Weekly’s Scariest People of 2018 list.

That was the year Van Der Mark got kicked off two school district committees after troubling comments she had made online resurfaced. In 2017, Van Der Mark joined alt-right protestors, including some with ties to white nationalist groups, to crash a racial justice workshop in Santa Monica. Beneath a video of the incident posted by Van Der Mark, she referred to Black attendees at the meeting as “colored people” who were doing the bidding of “elderly Jewish people” there. Her YouTube account also had a playlist of Holocaust denial videos titled “Holocaust hoax?”

The comments have continued to follow Van Der Mark through her rise in local politics. This summer, as the council majority voted to eliminate the human rights committee, Democratic Councilmember Natalie Moser publicly questioned whether Van Der Mark was a Holocaust denier, leading the conservatives to censure Moser.

“She was masking a face of radical extremism and she did it to infiltrate a government institution so she could become legitimized,” said Gina Clayton-Tarvin, a liberal school board trustee who initially appointed Van Der Mark and who finished fifth in last year’s city council election. “It’s a total threat to democracy, because they are acting in ways that are quasi-fascist.”

Van Der Mark said she has never doubted the Holocaust happened; she was unfamiliar with the conspiracy theory, she said, until she spoke with one of the Jewish organizers at the racial justice workshop she crashed, whom she said sent her the hoax videos as an example.

A 49-year-old grandmother and daughter of immigrants from Ecuador and Mexico, Van Der Mark said she was largely apolitical until around 2016, when she was pulled into advocacy against the local sex education curriculum. She acknowledged that, in the early stages of her political awakening, she attended all types of rallies “to find the truth,” not necessarily aware of who she was affiliating with, but she denied harboring any racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic sentiments.

“If I would have known they were there, I might not have gone,” she said. “But I can’t regret going, because had I not gone out in search of the truth, I would not be where I am today.”

As Van Der Mark prepares to take over as mayor next month, critics worry that she will unleash even more extreme policies. Van Der Mark said she has tried to explain herself to opponents but they remain hostile, perhaps because she betrays their idea of what a Latina politician should be.

“I want to be able to offer this little safe haven that I found for my family, for other people,” she said. “The other side is trying to push conservative values out. We’re saying, ‘no, no, no, this is our city.’ We want to keep it. Why do you want to change it? If this is not a good fit for you, there are other cities that may be a good fit.”

Carol Daus outside of the library in Huntington Beach on Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for CalMatters

Feeling like strangers in a strange land, some liberals in Huntington Beach are considering leaving.

Daus and her husband have started to explore a move to nearby Long Beach or Pasadena, where a daughter lives. An incident in June when a neighbor had their rainbow flag ripped down and torn to shreds unsettled Daus.

“These are the things that just make you go, you know, do you want to live around this? Or would you rather be in a more welcoming, inclusive neighborhood?” she said. “If I wanted to live in Florida, I’d live in Florida.”

The library fight diverted her attention, though, and the housing market is tough, so now she may wait to see what happens with the March election. The campaign to defeat the proposed charter amendments has provided some comfort and motivation. While she’s not ready yet to put a sign in her yard, she is getting bolder. At a kickoff event last Saturday afternoon, where hundreds gathered at the park outside the central library, Daus ran a table soliciting people to write op-eds in the local media.

Attendees picked up lawn signs and postcards from other booths. The three Democrats on the city council spoke, as did former elected officials. Under a canopy, Shirley Dettloff, who helped write the city’s human dignity statement when she served on the council in the 1990s, signed up volunteers.

“We wanted the city to be known as a city that protected people,” Detloff said. “I was just surprised that anyone would take that on as an issue.”

At the end of the event, dozens gathered around a 33-foot-by-24-foot rainbow flag lying in the grass and chanted, “Vote no! Vote no! Vote no!” The homemade flag is a project of Pride at the Pier, an LGBTQ+ community group that formed this spring after Huntington Beach passed its flag ban. In May, demonstrators unfurled the enormous flag over the side of the city’s famed pier in protest.

Attendees pose for a portrait with a giant Pride flag after a Protect Huntington Beach event in Central Park on Nov. 11, 2023. The group formed in opposition to the new conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council. Photo by Lauren Justice for CalMatters

Kane Durham, one of the group’s founders, said this year has raised difficult questions for LGBTQ+ residents about whether they will continue to be welcome in Huntington Beach. He fears the council might next use the updated human dignity declaration, which states that “sex carries advantages and disadvantages that warrant separation during certain activities (i.e. sports),” to prevent trans athletes from participating in the city’s youth sports programs.

Though he does not live in Huntington Beach, Durham has become a vocal activist on behalf of other transgender and nonbinary people whom he said do not feel safe putting themselves out there publicly. For his efforts, he said he’s been doxxed and subject to online rumors calling him a pedophile.

“Too many Californians are in this blue fantasy bubble. We think that it won’t happen here, even while it is happening here,” Durham said. “There are so many people there who are frogs in a boiling pot of water.”

Months of angry council meetings have hardly swayed the Fab Four off their path. They dismiss their opponents as a vocal minority searching for relevance and reject the notion that their actions have divided the community like they accuse their predecessors of doing.

“If just who shows up to city hall’s a reflection of the city, none of us four would have been elected,” said Tony Strickland, who is finishing up his year in the rotating mayorship. “The voters have the final say.”

That will again be the case in March, the first real test for the council majority of how sustainable backlash politics can be in transforming a community.

Even some allies already seem to have grown weary of what’s happening in Huntington Beach.

Pano Frousiakis, a young Republican activist, ended his own campaign for city council last year and worked to elect his conservative rivals so they could regain control of a community that he had always considered “our little oasis in California.”

Though he’s happy with the overall direction of the council, Frousiakis concedes that “the past few months have been getting a little bit off-track.” He established a political organization this year, the HB Patriots, and is running again for city council in 2024 with a message about getting back to local quality-of-life issues.

“Unfortunately, I feel that our residents get sidelined as a result of that. I feel sidelined as a resident,” he said. “The other issues that are being talked about, that’s why I vote for president.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

California’s state police for the second year in a row will enjoy a salary bump that far exceeds the raises Gov. Gavin Newsom has offered to other public employees thanks to a state law that grants them automatic pay increases.

California Highway Patrol officers are getting a 7.9% wage increase, marking their biggest raise in 20 years. Last year, they received a 6.2% general salary increase. Both are historically high raises for the officers.

Raises for CHP officers by state law are based on the average compensation at five other law enforcement agencies: The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office and the police departments in Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco.

The formula includes base salary, retirement benefits and add-ons like longevity pay and educational incentive pay. It does not include overtime.

An annual compensation survey released late Monday by the state department of Human Resources found the average take-home pay for those agencies is $118,164 while the average net pay for CHP officers is $109,476.

The new salary increase for CHP officers is expected to bring their base wages up to what the other agencies are paying.

According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the 7.9% increase is the biggest pay bump for the California Highway Patrol since at least 2003, when they were given a 7.7% increase.

Police salaries are increasingly competitive and a source of friction among agencies seeking to fill growing vacancies with a shrinking pool of eligible applicants — sheriffs and police chiefs have said that a significant percentage of applicants fail background tests.

The state, meanwhile, isn’t making it any easier to hire police officers — particularly those who leave larger departments with shoddy disciplinary or criminal records and find employment at smaller organizations. New laws have raised the minimum hiring age of law enforcement officers to 21.

That has led to bidding wars among law enforcement agencies, who use anything from signing bonuses to gym memberships to lure in recruits

The Los Angeles City Council and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the past year each approved lucrative new law enforcement contracts in the interest of retaining officers.

CHP’s new recruiting plan

The CHP has had its own challenges hiring. Last year, the agency embarked on a hiring campaign called the CHP 1000 in which it committed to hiring hundreds of new officers. Its early ads highlighted pay, namely that entry-level officers could expect to earn $100,000 in their first year on the job.

Newsom in October vetoed a bill that aimed to help the CHP find more recruits. It would have raised the agency’s top enlistment age from 35 to 40.

The CHP union advocated for the bill, telling lawmakers that “raising the maximum age from 35 to 40 will widen the pool of applicants, increase the number of cadets, and ultimately the number of officers committed to serve and protect the public.”

Newsom in his veto message wrote that CHP’s recent recruitment efforts had paid off, with the agency “on track to double” the number of cadets at its academy.

The California Association of Highway Patrolmen, which represents about 7,000 officers, is the only state worker union that does not have to bargain over wage increases because of the law that sets officer compensation based on what other agencies pay.

A bill this year would have given a similar perk to firefighters at the California Department of Forestry and Protection — or Cal Fire. It died in September without reaching Newsom.

The bill would have compelled the state Human Resources Department to calculate wage increases for the 8,000 or so state firefighters every year based on what other 20 local fire departments pay.

The union representing Cal Fire firefighters has said that the state is losing firefighters to other departments because the state has not kept up with competing organizations’ salaries.

Salary increases for California state workers

The biggest general salary increase Newsom has offered to a public employee union during contract negotiations is 4%. That salary hike for the 100,000 employees represented by SEIU Local 1000, is scheduled for July 1, 2025, and the contract allows the governor to knock it down to 3% if the Finance Department finds the state can’t afford the full raise.

Although Newsom has held the line under 4% for general salary increases, his administration has offered a mix of bonuses and special pay raises for workers in hard-to-fill positions to retain employees in a period of high inflation.

For instance, psychiatrists who work in-person at prisons and state hospitals will receive a 15% annual bonus as well as a 135% hourly base rate increase for taking on additional patients. Certain state prison guards also stand to gain $10,000 bonuses under their new contract.

Meanwhile, the union representing scientists who work for the state says it is planning a strike from Wednesday to Friday after three years of failing to reach a deal with Newsom,

The California Association of Professional Scientists has asked for double-digit raises for its members, and has been so far rebuffed by the state.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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Proponents and opponents of Measure A, the countywide ballot initiative that would dramatically reshape local cannabis regulations, squared off this afternoon during a 90-minute presentation/debate hosted by the Humboldt Emeritus and Retired Faculty and Staff Association (ERFSA) at Arcata’s Baywood Golf and Country Club.

By now the positions between the pro and con camps are well-established, though this was the first time key players have had the chance to exchange arguments in person before a crowd of onlookers. The format provided a few sparks, including an expletive-laden interjection from one angry audience member, along with some thoughtful Q-and-A.

The creators and backers of Measure A, also known as the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative, say that the amendments it would add to the county’s General Plan are necessary to prevent an increasingly industrialized cannabis industry from running amok at the expense of the environment and rural residents. They were represented today by the initiative’s cosponsors, Mark Thurmond and Elizabeth “Betsy” Watson.

Opponents, including numerous cannabis business owners, some chambers of commerce and Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, say organizers misled people into signing the initiative and that the stringent and rigid regulations it would enshrine would actually harm, not protect, small growers. This camp was represented today by Humboldt County Growers Alliance Executive Director Natalynne DeLapp and, somewhat surprisingly, Humboldt County Planning Commissioner Noah Levy.

The four primary participants took turns speaking before a crowd of roughly 50 people, including members of ERFSA as well as folks from the cannabis industry, who dined at round tables as rain sprinkled on the golf course outside the large picture windows.

Speaking first, DeLapp said she wasn’t there to defend the cannabis industry but rather to explain why Measure A would harm Humboldt County through bad governance.

DeLapp

“There is a right way to accomplish your goals in a civil society: with public process, expert input, compromise among stakeholders and sincere participation,” DeLapp said. In contrast, she said, the backers of Measure A avoided public process, wrote their initiative quickly and then submitted it to the county Elections Office without any public review.

DeLapp also argued that California’s initiative process is “a terrible way to handle complex land use and environmental issues” because, by law, the rules it would create could not be amended, replaced or altered in any way except through another voter-approved initiative.

“For Measure A, the technical details are poorly written, the legal ramifications of its language are unclear and its impact on the environment, public safety and our local government are all serious concerns held by policymakers, farmers and regulators alike,” DeLapp said.

Last month, the Humboldt County Growers Alliance joined with seven local cannabis farmers to file a lawsuit against Measure A proponents, arguing that they “intentionally misled” and “deceived” members of the public while gathering signatures to place the initiative on the March 2024 ballot. 

Today, DeLapp reiterated those arguments and said that Measure A would have unintended negative repercussions.

“The backers appear resistant to understanding that their initiative is not only impractical but also carries consequences that run counter to their interests,” she said. If passed, she continued, the measure would “upset a carefully designed, tested system of checks and balances that continues to evolve in a public, democratic process.”

DeLapp went on to say that the initiative would harm the very growers is claims to want to protect. 

“You will not hear from the proponents about the small legal farmers who support this initiative, because there aren’t any,” DeLapp said, adding, “and if I’m wrong, I will eat my notes.”

Using some prepared PowerPoint slides as she dove into the details, DeLapp said Measure A would override more than 160 pages of existing cannabis rules, and that its novel definition of “expansion” would prevent legal farmers from making environmentally responsible additions such as employee housing, drying barns or ground-mounted water and solar systems.

Wrapping up, DeLapp said many of the premises upon which Measure A are founded are false — not least of which being the specter of a Green Rush of industrial-scale cannabis growers when, in fact, there is a “green exodus, as evidenced by the state of southern Humboldt County’s economy and boarded-up shops.”

Levy

Levy spoke to his experiences as a member of the Planning Commission, saying that the allegation from Measure A proponents that there has been a lack of coordination between the county and state resource agencies is “simply not true.”

“We had an extraordinary degree of interaction and consultation with all of the state agencies that were relevant in drafting these ordinances and revising the ordinance a couple of years later,” Levy said.

He also noted that every permit that comes through the Planning and Building Department requires permits from state agencies, such as the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the State Water Resources Control Board, the Regional Water Quality Board and CalFire.

“Basically without exception, every request made by any of those agencies gets written into the permit as a condition of approval,” Levy said.

Regarding water usage, Levy said cannabis is subjected to “the most stringent water protection of any agricultural crop in the state,” and in Humboldt County, the Planning Commission went above and beyond those rules “to require hydrogeological analysis of anyone relying on a well to confirm that they’re not going to be depleting the aquifers that may serve other wells for nearby surface waters, and incentivizing or requiring extra storage and the transition to rainwater catchment.”

Levy handed the cordless microphone back to DeLapp, who urged people to vote “no” on Measure A.

“If we have to take this all the way to March, we will,” she said, “and we are confident that the public will see this initiative for what it is: a broken policy that is bad for Humboldt.”

Watson

While DeLapp often referred to printed-out pages of prepared remarks, Watson and Thurmond — both retired college professors — elected to address the audience extemporaneously.

Watson said that she and other organizers of the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative did attempt to get their grievances addressed through direct appeals to local officials.

“The response that we got from local government led us to believe that an initiative would be the way to go,” Watson said.

She argued that Measure A is not anti-cannabis but rather anti-industrialization of the region’s agricultural and timber production zones. Cannabis farms were approved in areas that are “inappropriate for this kind of crop,” she said, and she acknowledged that the group’s political efforts began with a neighborhood dispute in Kneeland.

Watson said that the language of Measure A is built upon the county’s own Commercial Cannabis Land Use Ordinance, aka ordinance 2.0. In fact, she said, Measure A “is essentially 2.0 with teeth.”  

Thurmond

Thurmond said the initiative was borne out of Kneeland neighbors’ frustrations with getting problems properly addressed by county officials, whether the issue was a farmer dumping wastewater into Freshwater Creek or complaints about traffic and dangerous driving. He also voiced frustration with the fact that he and other neighbors weren’t notified about any pending grow operations that were smaller than 10,000 square feet.

From there, he said, organizers talked with people in the county Planning and Building Department as well as county supervisors.

“For the most part, we got sort of a blank response,” Thurmond said.

He argued that the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act have not been followed because the public hasn’t been informed about how specific mitigation measures will be enforced, nor is water independently monitored and reported for each cultivation operation.

Thurmond went on to say that county officials have failed to follow through on a promise to hold annual public hearings regarding water usage and its impacts to each watershed in the region, and he defended the voter initiative process as an expression of backers’ First Amendment right to redress grievances.

“And the more I looked into this, the more I realized that we have an awful lot of failure to communicate with the rural environment,” Thurmond said.

He was in the midst of making an allegation that cattle farmers who complain about cannabis grows “might have some problems with their livestock disappearing” when a voice from the back of the room interrupted him.

“What are you fucking talking about? … That’s bullshit,” said the man, who was later identified as Matt Kurth, founder and owner of Humboldt Cannabis Tours. 

“You’re full of shit. You’re a fucking liar, dude,” Kurth continued. As attendees instructed him to stop, Kurth walked out of the room toward the exit, but not before adding, “You guys are being lied to.”

After the outburst, Thurmond insisted that he was being truthful.

“I got a lot of people who did not want to sign the initiative because they were afraid somebody would find out and their livestock would be hurt or their tires would be slashed — that’s an honest statement,” Thurmond said.

The proceedings remained calm after that, with Thurmond describing proponents’ signature-gathering efforts and petition-drafting process as “a perfectly valid public process.”

He explained that the initiative would limit the number and types of cannabis operations allowed in the future while giving neighbors the chance to “learn about these applications before they move in.” New grows would be limited to no more than 10,000 square feet while expansions would be limited to outdoor-only growing. Also, anyone with an existing cannabis cultivation permit would not be allowed to acquire another.

Thurmond also said that Measure A would improve enforcement by requiring annual in-person inspections on all grows, with less than 24 hours notice. And public hearings would be required before the county could approve any grow operation larger than 3,000 square feet. Thurmond said that, contrary to claims by opponents, Measure A would actually encourage people to add water storage and solar panels, and he said the county’s interpretation of the specific provisions would be guided by the measure’s express statements of purpose.

During the Q-and-A period, Gordon Clatworthy, a candidate challenging incumbent Rex Bohn for the First District seat on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, asked if it would be fair to say that Measure A came about because organizers “didn’t get anywhere” going through the board.

When the mic was finally passed back to Watson she replied, “Yes.”

The Outpost asked about proponents’ efforts to engage with the Board of Supervisors and other county officials in the months and weeks after they submitted the necessary signatures required to get the measure qualified for the March ballot. 

Watson said that county officials were slow to engage with them, and when they finally did so it was not productive. Supervisor Bushnell and Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo, who comprise an ad hoc committee to work with Measure A’s backers, participated in four meetings.

“Basically, what they asked us in the first meeting [was], would we remove it?” Watson said. “Well, the obvious answer is, ‘No, we’re not going to remove it.’” Subsequent meetings weren’t any more productive, she said, though she and Thurmond insisted that they and others on their side were willing to negotiate.

Craig Johnson, owner of Alpenglow Farms in Southern Humboldt, said his operation, which is less than 10,000 square feet and employs rain catchment and solar power, would be “greatly affected” by Measure A, in part due to its requirement for grow operations to have access roads that meet Category 4 designs standards.

Johnson asked DeLapp and Levy if he’d be able to move forward with solar panels and water tank infrastructure under Measure A. 

Levy replied that those improvements might be allowed since his grow is less than 10,000 square feet, though he said the Planning Commission has sought flexibility with existing regulations by allowing roads that may not strictly meet the design standards of Category 4 but are “functionally equivalent,” a work-around that would not be possible under Measure A.

Levy reiterated that he’s more concerned about the restrictions that will be placed on grows of 10,000 square feet or more — namely, the prospect that they’ll be prohibited from making beneficial improvements. 

“Again, that very well may be not what was intended, but that is what the planning department, county counsel and other experts … that’s how they say it would have to be implemented,” Levy said.

Later in the question-and-answer period, a man named Steven Luu stood up and identified himself as the “purported mega-grower” in Kneeland whose application — initially for one acre of cultivation area, since downsized to 10,000 square feet — may have kicked off the entire Measure A effort.

Luu said he’s concerned about the provision in Measure A requiring public hearings for any grows larger than 3,000 square feet.

“That’s a big concern of mine because in going through public forums and public comments, I’ve been accused of being a member of the Chinese mafia,” Luu said. “It was suggested that I moved to Trinity Pines or Dinsmore or somewhere more conducive to maybe my people or my industry.”

Luu said he hopes to settle down and raise his family here, but he’s worried that increased public scrutiny on cannabis growers may have the unintended consequence of reducing diversity in this area by making members of minority groups feel unwelcome. He noted that a neighbor of his, of Japanese descent, recently had to sell his property.

“We are losing people that want to invest in this community, and … a lot of this initiative is rehashing things that are already in statute, as part of state law,” Luu added, referring to the state’s restrictions on the use of generators, among other elements of regulation.

Addressing his concerns, Watson brought up water levels in Freshwater Creek.

“People have — white people have lived up there since 1869,” Watson said, “and never, through all the droughts, has Freshwater Creek gone dry” until three wells were dug for a contiguous stretch of cannabis operations.

She said that while cannabis isn’t responsible for all of the water usage in the region, and that water is “over-prescribed,” cannabis is still “the Johnny Come Lately” among water users and thus needs to be regulated. 

In their closing remarks, Levy and DeLapp said that while Measure A proponents may have worked hard to speak with officials and gather enough signatures to qualify their initiative for the ballot, that effort is not equivalent to the public process employed in the development of the county’s existing ordinances over a period of about four years.

“We had dozens of meetings where we heard hundreds of speakers, sometimes, per meeting,” Levy said. “And on top of that, hundreds more letters came in that we would read in between those meetings … and everybody who was responding had access to the document, a draft that was constantly being iterated as we refined it. … Thousands more watched these meetings.”

One last question from the audience was this: Have any agencies or organizations come out in favor of Measure A?

Watson said she doesn’t think most agencies are allowed to do that but that the Audubon Society has endorsed the measure, and proponents have been engaged in conversation with the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Eel River, though that group has not yet made any endorsement.

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[CLARIFICATION: Alicia Hamann, executive director of Friends of the Eel, sent along the following statement regarding Measure A: 

“Friends of the Eel River neither supports nor opposes the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative, also known as Measure A. The initiative offers several ways to improve existing cannabis regulations by implementing legally enforceable requirements for site inspections or expert review of road standards and wells. While we appreciate the intent of the Initiative, to bolster existing regulations on cannabis operations to further reduce environmental impacts, we believe that passing land use regulations by initiative is a tool that should be reserved for only the most urgent matters.”]

Governor Gavin Newsom has just announced that he has appointed Ryan Sundberg — two-term county supervisor, current general manager of Cher-Ae Heights Casino — to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which oversees the region’s freshwater resources.

Press release from the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom:

Ryan Sundberg, of McKinleyville, has been appointed to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Sundberg has been General Manager of Cher-Ae Heights Casino since 2019. He was a Humboldt County District Supervisor from 2010 to 2018. Sundberg was Owner of Sundberg Insurance Agency from 2002 to 2009. He was a member of the Trinidad Rancheria Tribal Council from 1996 to 2010. Sundberg earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Humboldt State University.

This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $250 per diem. Sundberg is registered without party preference.

Eureka Police Department release:

On November 11, 2023, officers were dispatched to the 2900 block California Street in Eureka for a report of a male suspect spray painting a building with graffiti. The male was later located by Officer Myers and Sergeant Eckert and found to be in possession of the spray paint used on the building. The male was arrested on related felony vandalism charges.

Thank you to the observant citizen who called in the vandalism and great work by Officer Myers and Sergeant Eckert!

UPDATE, 2:25 p.m.:

Aileen Yoo, director of news and information at Cal Poly Humboldt, forwarded the following statement, which was shared with the campus on Nov. 9:

Cal Poly Humboldt has been informed that Teamsters Local 2010, which represents approximately 1,000 employees systemwide in the CSU including plumbers, electricians, and other skilled trades workers, intends to conduct a one-day strike on Tuesday, Nov. 14.

Contracts with the various unions are negotiated at the CSU system level in Long Beach. At this time, the California State University and the Teamsters have reached an impasse in their contract negotiations but are still engaged in the bargaining process under state law.

If the strike on Nov. 14 occurs, Cal Poly Humboldt and other CSU universities will remain open. Each has contingency plans in place to maintain full operations with as minimal disruption as possible for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Any changes to scheduled activities will be communicated.

Employees engaging in a strike are not entitled to be paid while they’re on strike. Employees who are scheduled to work on Nov. 14 but do not report to work are not permitted to use time off accruals to cover their absences while they are on strike. This applies to all absences unless they were pre-approved by the supervisor, or medical certification is provided documenting the employee was unable to work, or the employee already has a medical certification on file. If an employee’s absence on Nov. 14 is not approved or cleared by medical documentation, that time will be designated as unapproved leave without pay.

Retaliation by any member of the campus community for one’s personal position regarding the labor dispute is inappropriate and unlawful and should be reported to the campus Title IX coordinator. If you have any questions, please contact your supervisor or Human Resources.

During any strike or other activity related to contract negotiations, please remain respectful and patient. As a university community, we share a commitment to providing a positive educational experience for our students, and Cal Poly Humboldt values the important work our employees do every day to make this possible.

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Original post:

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Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters holding plastic-wrapped protest signs marched in the rain outside Cal Poly Humboldt this morning as part of the labor union’s one-day strike across 22 of the 23 campuses in the California State University system.

The strike comprises 1,100 CSU skilled trade maintenance and operations workers, including plumbers, electricians, painters, carpenters and mechanics. The labor organization alleges that CSU has committed numerous unfair labor practices, including interfering with workers’ rights to engage in union activities and offering “insulting” wage proposals.

“CSU has denied workers regular step increases for 28 years, leaving many workers stuck near the bottom of their pay range after decades of service, and CSU pay lags behind comparable University of California Skilled Traded worker pay by 23.6% on average,” the Teamsters say in an informational flier being distributed at the protest.

The group warns that today’s strike could result in delayed deliveries and trash pickup, and it’s expected to halt any construction projects on campuses.

The Outpost reached out to Cal Poly Humboldt for comment and we’ll update this post if and when we hear back. The campus remains open during the strike. 

During back-to-back days at one of California’s largest universities, hundreds of students took to marches, impassioned speeches and megaphones to condemn the mass death that has afflicted Israelis and Palestinians: The attack by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, and the Israeli military response since then. The UCLA demonstrations last week — one Tuesday by supporters of Israel, the other Wednesday by pro-Palestinian students — were common in grief but riven by deep wounds over history and words.

This wasn’t a dialogue, but a thunderous expression of each side’s anguish.

Ever since campus protests in California erupted over the latest explosion of violence, students affected by the crisis have endured profound agony as they watch an escalation of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not seen in decades. Adding to their hurt is a lack of public consensus over what language constitutes prejudice. At the same time, California university leaders are also struggling to strike a balance between First Amendment guarantees and civility.

And as the regents of the University of California meet Wednesday, undoubtedly students will bring their sorrow to a leadership searching to instill comity. While the regents don’t have the matter on their agenda, the morning public comment period is often an electric display of students and employees voicing concern. Late last week, the UC leadership released a statement denouncing bigotry while noting free speech protects vile rhetoric.

The discord is playing out as campus Arabs, Jews and Muslims are witnessing generational traumas that gash their identities like spears, intensifying feelings already on edge.

For Jewish students, the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, in which the Palestinian militant group Hamas murdered 1,200 people, was a grotesque reminder of past perils that have menaced Jewish communities. The massacre was the single largest loss of Jewish life in one day since the Holocaust nearly 80 years ago, which some Jewish students on campus stress is still recent history.

“We have watched as students, professors, and even friends (equate) terrorism with liberation, perpetuate antisemitism, and even celebrate the deaths of our loved ones,” said Bella Brannon, a UCLA student who spoke last Tuesday at a campus demonstration calling on Palestinians to return the more than 200 Israeli hostages who were kidnapped in the Oct. 7 assault. Brannan is president of the campus Hillel.

The event, held a month to the day of the attacks, featured a long dinner table with chairs and place-settings for all of the kidnapped hostages that stretched dozens of feet. Baby bottles taped to the tablecloth signified seats for the children taken by Hamas.

And while supporters of Palestinian freedom don’t necessarily agree with Hamas’ methods, many Jewish groups across the country were outraged that a leading campus voice for Palestinian rights didn’t condemn the Hamas attacks, instead calling them “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” in a written statement.

Mourning thousands of lives while having to answer for Hamas is part of the frustration for Arab, Muslim and pro-Palestinian students, including Jews, as the Israeli military continues its bombardment of Gaza to topple Hamas’ rule of the area. The campaign has so far resulted in more than 11,000 deaths since Oct. 7, including at least 4,500 children, according to Gaza health authorities. For many Arab and pro-Palestine students, Israel’s latest response is viewed as a continuation of its violent control of Palestinians — prompting their fervent calls for Palestinian statehood free of Israeli intervention. (While the United Nations envisioned two countries in the region in 1947, only Israel emerged, in 1948.)

“There is no way to work with an occupation that will continue to encroach upon those borders, without addressing that their intentions are to remain annexing, remain displacing, remain ethnic cleansing,” said Mohammed Noroozi in an interview. He’s a fourth-year student at UCLA who helped coordinate the pro-Palestinian rally and march on the campus last Wednesday, a day after the Israeli hostages demonstration.

“How am I supposed to go to class without crying,” Noroozi asked.

Hundreds of students attended the pro-Palestine rally, which also called on the UC system to divest from weapons makers, and appeared slightly larger than Tuesday’s event.

Criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 runs deep among international groups and many American Jewish scholars as well, several hundred of whom have called Israel an apartheid state. Critics of that allegation say it’s misleading and that Israel has a right to defend itself against militant activity.

Israel’s creation led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe and anti-Jewish revolts in Arab and Muslim countries made up a large portion of Israel’s early population. Numerous peace deals to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fell through in the last three decades.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus

Fearing online harassment or worse, few students who attended last week’s UCLA rallies wished to speak with reporters. Others would only give their first names. One student agreed to have her photo taken but pleaded with CalMatters hours later to avoid publishing her name. “I’m receiving a lot of hate on social media right now,” she wrote.

Alqasim, a fourth-year UCLA student, wore a head scarf synonymous with Arab and Palestinian identity, called a keffiyeh, that concealed most of his face during the rally. He and other students supportive of Palestine fear appearing on a website called Canary Mission, which collects student statements that are antisemitic or critical of Israel and posts their names and images in a searchable format.

Some Jews fear being punished for Israel’s actions, a case of conflating a people and a government that doesn’t represent them, wrote Dov Waxman, a UCLA professor who leads a center on Israel studies. News reports and major Jewish advocacy groups indicate that Israel’s military response has animated a massive intensification of antisemitism domestically and abroad, further alarming Jewish students and their communities.

Muslim and Arab students and their families — and those who appear to be but aren’t — likewise are confronting hateful animus against them, rekindling the memories of Islamophobia that pervaded U.S. civil society after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Last week the Biden administration said bigotry against Jews and Muslims is on the rise at colleges and demanded that campuses stop it.

Members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus wrote a letter last week to the state’s public university leaders to “express our outrage and concern regarding the explosion of antisemitism at University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) campuses in recent weeks.” The letter noted a “barrage” of acts of violence and intimidation against Jewish students and employees. Those include a private social media post attributed to a UC Davis professor in which they threatened “zionist” journalists and UC professors who denounced system leaders for calling the Oct. 7 attack an act of terror.

Hillel, a campus religious group, hosts a rally calling for the release of kidnapped Israelis at UCLA’s Wilson Plaza in Los Angeles on Nov. 7, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for CalMatters

Last Friday, the Veterans Day holiday and days after the legislative caucus’ public rebuke, the UC system released a statement from its 10 campus chancellors and the system president condemning Islamophobia and antisemitism.

“Antisemitism is antithetical to our values and our campus codes of conduct and is unacceptable under our principles of community. It will not be tolerated,” the letter said. “Similarly, Islamophobia is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. We will work to ensure that those who advocate on behalf of Palestinians can also be confident of their physical safety on our campuses.”

At a recent protest off-campus, Noroozi said a counter-protester spat in his face. He and Middle Eastern and pro-Palestine students CalMatters spoke with said they’ve been called “terrorists” on campus.

UCLA groups have alleged other incidents in which seemingly non-student adults intimidated pro-Palestinian students in the past week. Media and advocacy reports have chronicled other instances of campus Islamophobia, including a driver striking a Stanford Muslim Arab student in a hit-and-run that’s being investigated as a hate crime.

Hateful speech is protected

For colleges, the free exchange of ideas is a central tenet of their existence. Balancing that mission and protecting the emotional and physical safety of students is an ongoing tension.

“The bottom line is that hateful speech is protected by the First Amendment,” said Michelle Deutchman, executive director of the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement at the University of California. Some slogans and posters at campus protests “may feel to some students extremely menacing, extremely threatening, extremely hateful, extremely demeaning, but that does not negate the fact that it is protected and allowed on campus now.”

The center points to effective campus tutorials on free speech, including those issued by UC Davis and Long Beach State.

UC’s letter reiterated Deutchman’s points, citing existing system policy. However, “persistent harassment of individuals or groups, or credible threats of physical violence,” are also examples of “behavior that crosses the line into unprotected speech,” the UC letter said.

Importantly, while speech is protected by the First Amendment, vandalism and violence aren’t.

“Antisemitism is antithetical to our values and our campus codes of conduct and is unacceptable under our principles of community. It will not be tolerated. Similarly, Islamophobia is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
— Statement by the University of California president and 10 campus chancellors

Deutchman, who spoke with CalMatters before UC published its letter, said laws on speech cannot parse the nuance and messiness of campus debate. College administrators must find a way to do more, even if speech is protected.

The UC letter said that the system will soon “announce a series of initiatives to help us address the current climate on our campuses … and improve the public discourse on this issue.”

A separate UCLA faculty letter denounced the campus protest climate, which it said celebrates Hamas and incites violence.

Disputes over rhetoric

At the pro-Palestine UCLA rally, event organizers passed out flyers with words to chants that participants shouted during a march through campus, including “there is only one solution, intifada, revolution!” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That last phrase is a reference to the geographic space that includes Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Students there told CalMatters they regard it as a democratic statement to support Palestinian rights, a common view held by scholars on Palestine.

The rally ended with some students beating piñatas with the likenesses of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden. The Tuesday event had aggressive displays, too. One older participant carried a sign that read: “Hamas, Islam, Death.”

Major Jewish groups say phrases such as “from the river to the sea” are associated with extremist violence against Israel, and by extension, Jews. But Jewish views are diverse on this: The group Jewish Voice for Peace opposes Zionism and has campus chapters, including at UCLA. Waxman, the Israel studies director at UCLA, said the charge of antisemitism can be overused.

“I think it’s important to recognize that even criticism that’s unfair, or excessive or harsh, isn’t necessarily antisemitic,” Waxman said. “That also applies not just to criticism of Israel’s policies, but criticism of Israel as a country, and that includes criticism of Zionism as well. It’s not automatically or inherently antisemitic.”

He signed a 2020 declaration endorsed by hundreds of scholars on antisemitism and related fields that said criticism of Zionism — and references to the area between the river and the sea — are not antisemitic on the face of it.

“The bottom line is that hateful speech is protected by the First Amendment.”
— Michelle Deutchman, executive director of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

Waxman cautioned that context matters when dissecting slogans. If Hamas supporters chant “from the river to the sea,” the intent of Jewish murder is clear. Others who speak the phrase in the context of a democratic movement that supports equal rights for Jews and Arabs in the region “may not be motivated by antisemitism,” he said. Denying the attachment and history of Jews and Palestinians to the region is also bigoted, Waxman added.

But at least one state lawmaker who’s a member of the Jewish legislative caucus views the existing protest language as antisemitic.

“We know what these slogans mean and it’s disgraceful,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Democrat from Santa Monica, said at the Tuesday UCLA rally. “I’m not here to tell you what you already know, that Jews have a right to self determination, that anti-zionism is anti-semitism, that the one Jewish state has the right to exist and defend itself.” His district includes a large Jewish population, as well as UCLA.

In a brief interview with CalMatters at the rally, Zbur said calling for intifada and the slogan from the river to the sea are antisemitic. “That’s a direct call for violence against Jewish people,” he said.

To others, the discourse over language misses the point.

“You just need to be able to watch and see what’s going on in Gaza to realize that that is the true horror of where we should be focused, rather than condemning students for actually advocating for justice and equality,” said Ussama Makdisi, a history professor at UC Berkeley who teaches courses on the Middle East and Palestine.

One-state or two-state solution?

A key debate in the Israel-Palestine crisis is whether the region should have two independent countries or a single united state.

Paige Martin, who’s Jewish and attended last week’s pro-Israel demonstration, said she supports peace for everyone and a two-state solution. The fourth-year UCLA student noted that “I don’t agree with everything that the state of Israel does, but I believe it’s important to have a homeland for the Jewish people.”

Alqasim, the student from last week’s pro-Palestinian rally, said that he supports two countries, as long as that means equal rights for Palestinians in Israel as well.

A Palestinian student named Amy who also attended the rally, said, “when we advocate for a two-state solution it equalizes both sides.” To her, the issue is that of “an occupied people and an occupier.”

During the event for Israeli hostages, a student shouted “free Palestine!” before walking away. The crowd jeered at him. CalMatters approached the student, who granted a brief interview but would only identify himself as Joseph.

“I feel for everyone whose family has been taken hostage,” he said. “But you cannot justify 10,000 civilians dead in exchange for 240 hostages. That’s a non-comparison.”

As he pulled away, he added, “I support a two-state solution where the Palestinians and Israelis both have viable states to live together peacefully.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.