Climate change, reparations … and taco equity?

​Properly Subversive/Sherman R. Frederick

(Spoiler alert: For the humor impaired the following is offered at year’s end for your reading pleasure to poke a little fun – just a teenie-weenie bit! – at our insatiable drive toward ultimate enlightenment and wokeness.) 

It’s as plain as the world record amount of CO2 in the air. The climate’s as bad as it’s ever been under our watch and all the experts say there’s nothing we can do to make a difference. 

Even when human activity largely shut down during COVID, the atmosphere got worse. 

So here’s a modest proposal to end the year – stop spending money on climate change and put it toward something that can make a real difference in human lives in 2023: Reparations. 

Now, I know that there’s a state committee already wrestling with the reparations issue. But Marin can do it better and faster. 

Let’s compile a list of all Marin residents who were oppressed by slavery. We should be able to do that by, say, Jan. 15, I would think. Then at the last County Board of Supervisors meeting in February, we authorize cutting checks to all on the list for the first day in April.

We’ll call it Reparations Day. 

Imagine the kudos we’ll get. Way better than redacting racist language from old, inoperative property deeds. This is reparations, baby!

How much should Marin give, you ask? 

The state committee is talking about cash payments of $200,000 to $300,000. 

Chicken feed, I say! When you weigh it against generational oppression inflicted since the 1850s we need to make good at a much higher level than that. 

I’m thinking in the $10 million range. Not only is that equitable, we’ll have more than enough cash saved by eliminating our clearly failed climate programs. We could also go up, maybe to  $25 million,  if we use the free federal money given to us for COVID relief. Heck, we planned to spend that money on roads and water system upgrades, which will take decades. The planet won’t sustain life in three years.

This modest proposal may come late for those getting reparations. I am so sorry about that. But that’s the curse of only now waking up to the many injustices of this world, past and present and future. So, we gotta prioritize.

I say we ring out 2022 by doing something immediate and good in 2023.

Who’s with me?

NO GOOD TACOS?

Cesar Hernandez, a San Francisco Chronicle food writer, wrote a piece on the best tacos in the Bay Area. There are so many good places, he wrote, “we’re living in the Bay Area’s golden age of regional tacos.”

The sub-head on the piece says the newspaper did “an exhaustive search for the best tacos “in every corner of the region.”

A bold claim for which I shall not dispute. What caught my eye, however, is the newspaper found no – zero, nada – good taco joints in Marin. The closest to us on his list would be Richmond’s El Garage or Petaluma’s El Roy’s Xpress Mex.

Did Cesar explore Marin and find us taco deprived? Or, did he skip over Marin and not try Saylor’s in Sausalito or Las Guitarras in Novato? How about Joe’s taco lounge in Mill Valley or Copita’s in Sausalito? How about La Q Marin next to Trader Joe’s in Greenbrae or El Torogoz in Larksur?

We need a recount. Marin matters too, you know.

TWITTER NIGHTMARE

If you have not been following the so-called “Twitter Files” story, you should. Whether you come at the world from the left or the right, the release of Twitter documents shows clearly that the FBI ran a covert operation to manipulate news coverage and put its thumb on the political process. This time it was to disadvantage Donald Trump in favor of Joe Biden.

But next time it could go the other way. Who’s to say the FBI won’t see Bernie Sanders as a threat and suppress him. Hell, how do we know they haven’t done that already. 

Remember: Between 1960 and 1974, the FBI kept files on one million Americans, and investigated 500,000 so-called “subversives” – all without a single court conviction.

They are at it again and it is a clear and present danger to democracy.

ONE MORE THING

– I don’t have a train of thought. I have seven trains on four tracks that narrowly avoid each other at all crossings. The conductors are screaming.

– This is the time of year when people in commercials buy cars without telling their significant others, like complete psychopaths.

– Amazonesia: When you forget what you ordered.

Happy New Year! It’s been a total pleasure writing for you this past year. As always, avoid soreheads, laugh a little, and question authority. 

(“Properly Subversive” is a commentary written by Sherman R. Frederick for Marinscope Community Newspapers, the “mother ship” of the Novato Advance, San Rafael News-Pointer, Mill Valley Herald, Ross Valley Reporter, Twin City Times and the Sausalito Marin Scope. Mr. Frederick is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)