Michelle in Merced

 
Here in Merced CA, where some of us have been doing environmental work for 30 years, we supported Obama for historical reasons, held out vague hopes for national and international improvement, and stayed focused on our local issues.
 
Our most powerful opponent is the University of California, which established a new campus in Merced that became an anchor tenant for the most destructive building bubble in regional history. The boom caused Merced and adjoining cities Modesto and Stockton to rise to the top of foreclosure-rate communities in the nation. In 2005, in "high bubble," we were among the least affordable (in fact Merced was considered the least affordable) housing market in the nation. Now our housing is nationally ranked among the most affordable, due to the volume of foreclosures. Meanwhile, Merced's official unemployment rate is over 20 percent this month, which means that local demand for these foreclosed bargains is dropping, not rising. Who cares of that $250,000 house of yesteryear is now on the market for $50,000 when nobody can qualify for a loan anymore and the speculators have already lost their money?
 
UC, employing its enormous prestige, credibility and flak apparatus, invented whole new forms of developer propaganda to establish that campus adjacent to seasonal pasture land, redubbed "waste" land, which in fact supports our free-range cattle industry, the only relatively sustainable form of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. The pastures are also home to about 20 wildlife species federally listed as either threatened or endangered and at least two state-listed species. This land is also the watershed for the east side of Merced County. But, slap a few solar panels on campus buildings and, Voila -- a "green" campus emerges. Meanwhile, every developer and his sister-in-law with a fistful of easy money were downtown arguing before the council or the supervisors for a subdivision "because UC is here." Many of those subdivisions ring the city of Merced today, half-built, with foreclosed houses and empty lots, exposed wiring, curbs, unpaved streets and wind-torn realty banners.
 
UC Merced has been sued six times (won three, lost three) and there were those in the community who, very privately, funded all those lawsuits. Those suits, however, are by no means the sum total of local attempts to defend the California Environmental Quality Act and, on occasion, the state Public Record Act, the state Brown Act of Open Meetings, the Williamson Act, and the federal Endangered Species and Clean Water acts against the depredations of finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) special interests cashing in on the establishment of UC Merced.
 
A strange thing happened here last weekend, described as "magic" in a letter written to UC Merced's first graduating class that began as freshmen. The letter was written by the first UC Merced chancellor, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, who now lives far away. The letter was read by Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood, who resigned from the provost's position at UC Davis while under investigation for conflicts of interest, one of which involving Tomlinson-Keasey hiring Greenwood’s son at UC Merced. Oh well, California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi also attended the commencement and John Jr. is a vice-chancellor of UC Merced.
 
The "magic" was the appearance of Michelle Obama as keynote commencement speaker. So much for having vague hopes for the nation and the world while keeping focused on local issues. The explanation for how Mrs. Obama happened to be here is equally "magical": it is alleged the graduating class achieved their goal of having the first lady address them on a 106-degree day in May by means of a massive letter-writing campaign (including 900 valentines on which the word, spirit, was spelled "sprit"), appeals to politicians, contributors and friends of the Obamas like Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, who grew up in Merced. With a decade of experience of the political deals behind this boondoggle of a campus, we’re doubtful.  We’ve watched how the UC political mafia operates, particularly in tandem with the San Joaquin Valley politicos -- people like former congressmen Gary Condit, Tony Coelho and present Rep. Dennis Cardoza. To further the cause of UC Merced and developers, Cardoza launched three unsuccessful campaigns in Congress against the Endangered Species. We also note that that class of graduates may have been the most “nurtured” group of students in the history of universities, so we find it difficult to imagine they could do anything by themselves.
 
One example of UC Merced political meddling at work was the expropriation of a perfectly healthy bobcat kitten by a university that cannot open its institutional trap without praising itself for environmentally correct thinking and behavior. The bobcat kitten was left in a paper bag at the City of Merced’s zoo. According to law and protocols established between the state Department of Fish & Game and wildlife rehabilitators for over 30 years, that healthy bobcat kitten was supposed to be sent to a nearby rehab facility that specialized in that species, after which it was to be released into the wild.
 
It remains in the zoo, which the city may soon close for budgetary reasons, as the official, live mascot of UC Merced.
 
Among the many other events that occurred that famous day, May 16, 2009, former UC Regent and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, appeared on campus and led an "alternative commencement" for Hispanic students. Gray Davis appointed Huerta to an unexpired regent's chair; she was a staunch supporter of UC Merced; the present governor replaced her at the end of her short term, with Fred Ruiz, a San Joaquin Valley businessman whose attitude toward working people could not be more antithetical to Huerta’s.
 
There was a lot of history on the speakers' stand at the commencement, including state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whom Davis served as chief of staff when Brown was governor and created the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the first such board in the country. Chairman of the UC Board of Regents, Richard Blum, husband of senior California US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, evoked the phrase that originated in the Valley more than 40 years ago, "Si, se puede," usually translated as "Yes, we can," to compliment the graduating class on its "magic," and perhaps to stir others in the audience to pay for the event, which will probably run close to $1 million, but was budgeted for $100,000. For the event, UC Merced unrolled acres of fresh turf and created an orchard of 20-foot redwood trees, not  indigenous to the San Joaquin Valley and requiring much water to survive here, at least until their roots find the deep aquifer, an obstacle at UC Merced, built on hardpan. But nothing says "California" like a redwood, so we got landscaping by propaganda. We hope those graduates didn’t get an education from the same well known substance.
 
Mrs. Obama praised the students for touching and moving her and her staff to accept the invitation to give her first commencement address as first lady. 
 

But I understand that this type of community-based letter writing campaign isn't unique to me. This community, this Merced community, employed the same strategy to help get the University of California to build the new campus here in Merced. (Applause.) Every school kid in the entire county, I understand, sent a postcard to the UC Board of Regents in order to convince them to select Merced, and I just love the fact that some of the graduates sitting this audience today participating were involved in that campaign, as well, and then they used the same strategy to get me here. That is amazing. And what it demonstrates is the power of many voices coming together to make something wonderful happen. And I'm telling you, next year's graduation speaker better watch out, because Merced students know how to get what they want. (Laughter and applause.)

 
Right. And every school kid in the entire county wrote every one of those postcards. We remember the day at the state Capitol when hacks working for Condit and Cardoza, acting as hall monitors, had herded up most of the third graders in the county, all clad in "UC Merced" tee shirts, outside the governor's office on the day of an important hearing in which UC was accused of lying once again about the environmental impacts of that campus. As for many voices coming together, special interests have been able to create lobbying groups containing all the local usual suspects to go to Washington and Sacramento each year to lobby for  $200 million in public funds to repair and improve infrastructure necessary because of UC Merced.  So far, UC Merced has contributed one blinking stoplight at a 3-way intersection of country roads, undergraduates who complain about the poor quality of the local mall and a small fleet of buses that roam about town but do not pick up anyone not connected to UC Merced.
 
Mrs. Obama equated Merced and the San Joaquin Valley with the South Side of Chicago. She dwelt on how the University of Chicago, in Hyde Park, had not related with the South Side when she was in high school, so she had not considered going there (Princeton instead), but how she'd returned to start an outreach program at the U of C for the South Side. UC Merced is, in fact, planning to build its own Hyde Park, a "university community" between itself and the city of Merced, where the number of unoccupied, foreclosed homes grows by the week. That project is redundant but redundancy doesn’t stop UC Merced, the largest developer in the San Joaquin Valley from committing public funds to it.
 
Her speech ran on in this mythical vein and she praised a video the students sent to her called “We Believe," in which student voices off-camera confessed their belief in hope and in change, leadership, life, etc. but most of all, in Michelle Obama. An example of critical thinking the video was not. But Mrs. Obama loved it and Regent Chairman Blum commanded it be played on the big screen before she spoke and everybody was real moved by all the passion and such.
 
One of Mrs. Obama’s themes was the future of mainly first-generation college graduates from hard-working, working-class backgrounds right here in the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, that class probably didn't contain more than dozen or two students from the Valley; most came from LA or the Bay Area. But we were in the land of myth that day, where everybody works hard, achieves and is successful if they have the character and hope, of course.
 
Both Mrs. Obama and others made comments on student loans. We suspect that most UC Merced students qualify, due to low-income status, for grants rather than loans. It seems that UC keeps raising its fees and increasing grants. We don't know how this works and we doubt anyone in the state Legislature or at UC (outside of the student-aid division) does either. In fact, the valedictorian, accepted to med school next fall, punctured this myth later on by calling UC Merced a place where you could get a private education for a public-education price. Small classes and access to professors is at a premium in the mega-universities UC has built. The valedictorian was a well-spoken young man who probably got pretty good training in biology.
 
Mrs. Obama told them that they were blessed to have received an elite college education and that they must remember all the people that had helped them get through college, including friends of theirs who had kept them out of trouble in high school. She told them to remember kids "that just can't get a break," who have lost their dream or never had one. She told the students to go back home and work in their communities to help others. We have the highest respect for this kind of idealism and have lived it ourselves for decades. We hope that the communities those students are returning to are not as hypocritical as Merced. Here, the top regional politician, Rep. Cardoza, has moved his family, including his wife, a badly needed physician, to Annapolis MD. She works for the University of Maryland while Cardoza leads the local whine to establish a new UC medical school in Merced.
 
It was an inspiring speech. She mentioned a hero of hers, who had gone from the Bronx to an Ivy League college and then on to establish a large program for kids in Harlem. She mentioned the founder of Teach America. Mrs. Obama conjured up before our sweat-stung eyes the vision of a new Helping Elite, college-educated into belief in their own leadership. If the Obamas had not expropriated religion as surely as Bush did, we would have fallen to our knees and asked God for deliverance from a plague of unemployable college kids hustling grants to establish their upward mobility in our communities.
 
Become leaders within the system and you, too could become a city council member right here in Merced and vote for projects like the new WalMart distribution center, built on a freeway interchange created for the Campus Parkway out to UC Merced, and express your leadership skills by figuring out language to persuade yourself and others that the project would not worsen air quality and would not increase asthma and respiratory illness rates for children and elders. There are hundreds of non-union jobs people might be able to live on at stake. In fact, WalMart may depress wages for warehouse work throughout our region – a boon to your contributors in the business community. Or you could express your leadership and political correctness, as was done recently on the county Planning Commission, by arguing for the legitimacy of raising fighting cocks, because it is a form of small farming. You could even get a law degree or a science PhD, stand side-by-side UC Merced planners “to make the project better,” and attempt to coerce colleagues into silence.
 
Mrs. Obama's rhetoric ends by demonizing anyone who doesn't play ball to "be successful," anyone insufficiently impressed by the nearest elite. There are some in the Valley who, after performing independent, elementary reasoning processes, oppose our local elite and do not join their voices in the The Great Valley Whine: "Give us more public funds! Give us more water! Abolish all laws that stand in the way of agribusiness, its lenders and landowners! Send us a UC campus to confuse our low-income youth -- otherwise they might get angry again like they used to! Send us Michelle Obama to dazzle them with visions from elsewhere! Let our youth focus their vision upward instead of outward! Let them be blinded by the Blue and the Gold!"
 
Or maybe you could hitch up to an Emersonian star, work your way up in the system, hit the jackpot and become president just in time to bail out the same banks that have plundered the entire economy of your hometown. Mrs. Obama advised the graduates that success involves compromises.
 
As one disgruntled organic gardener in the region, a Nader voter of decidedly Stalinist tendencies, called President Obama: "the greatest president since Herbert Hoover." Lou Hoover was also an intelligent woman -- first woman college graduate in geology in the nation -- who helped the less fortunate and was a role model for modern women of her era.
 
We were inspired although Mrs. Obama wasn't speaking to us. Her speech said: College degree = leadership = social responsibility = local activism. We are very grateful to UC Merced for the superb education it provided us in environmental law, graft, political corruption, and how it indelibly illuminated the power structure of our region. We were especially encouraged by Regent Chairman Blum's mention of "Si, se puede," a term coined by Cesar Chavez, who stopped going to school after the 8th grade. Chavez, Huerta, Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, Al Green, Dave McKay and others who lacked the UC advantage changed our communities for the better. Several of them also made great contributions to the education of workers. There have been interesting courses offered at UFW labor halls and farmworker retirement homes through the years.
 
The first thing those real leaders taught us was to avoid cooption by private or government poverty programs and to form our own organizations. Today, in the Valley, the younger generation faces the profoundly corruptive force of a public/private, win/win partnership called the UC/Great Valley Center and its "leadership" programs. UC/GVC conducts a constant surveillance operation looking for any signs of independent mental energy in Valley youth. Once discovered, the victim is swept into the coils of “network,” introduced to some real rich people who get their names in the papers, and that little bulb goes out, having realized its little dream. At the federal level, Mrs. Obama mentioned a new Office of Social Innovation the president is setting up to buy off another generation of grassroots leadership. Everybody will no doubt be real smart and educated good.
 
Finally, we note the people who weren't on the stage with Mrs. Obama. The least excusable absence was Cardoza, in whose district the campus lies and who did all a politician could do to bring it to Merced. He boycotted the event, along with another Democrat and two Republican congressmen from the Valley. It was undoubtedly about the current water hysteria. The latest move by the west side growers and water districts is to launch a federal suit claiming the ESA doesn’t cover species without commercial value. Cardoza's snub had racial edge to it, something that reminded us of the Valley of our youths, when African-Americans (called something else then) did not cross the tracks from South Merced after dark. That's not to say that Cardoza is a racist; but he has no respect for the extreme emotional importance to the Valley of the Obama presidency and why many of us, having lived that history, could not resist voting for Obama, even though in Merced his lawn signs cost $10 and his headquarters was in the most obscure location in history. Cardoza sent former state Assembly Speaker Bob Herzberg to collect his chancellor's medal for him. Cardoza had swung some Blue Dogs to Herzberg, an LA Democrat, during that race for the speakership and, no doubt, funding for UC Merced was part of the deal.
 
However, an alternative explanation could be offered in terms of partisan politics in Washington. The Republican delegation from the Valley, Radanovich and Nunes, could be seen as simply following the present Republican Party line, an elegantly simple, “No," while Blue Dog Democrats Cardoza and Costa project a more nuanced,“Duh?”
 
Not even mentioned was UC Regent Odessa Johnson, the first African-American teacher in Modesto (hired by my former high school principal). Where was Odessa that day? Where was Bob Carpenter, the public Mr. UC Merced, a local insurance salesman who organized tirelessly for years to create the boosters to put the project over? Did he and those behind him make so much money in real estate they no longer care about the campus? He is a Republican. Johnson, a Democrat who did nothing discernible to get the campus here, got the chair on the regents instead of Carpenter. Where was Merced County dairy/developer mogul, Mike Gallo, who dedicated a wellness center to the campus in honor of his father, Joseph? Where was Merced County developer Greg Hostetler, who contributed to funding a gymnasium? Where was a representative of the Kolligian family? Fresno developer and former UC Regent Leo Kolligian and his wife contributed heavily for the library. Where was Dr. Hanimireddy Lakireddy who donated $1 million to improve an auditorium that bears his name? Where was state Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, who represents the UC Merced district? She's a Democrat, unlike state Sen. Jeff Denham, a Republican, who didn't show up either. Where were the county supervisors, who enthusiastically supported every bogus environmental document concocted by UC's consultants? Where was the mayor of Merced? The city council approved, against its own ordinance, supplying water and sewer to the campus and has not seemed to mind much that UC never paid them for it. Perhaps, if local government comment letters on the environmental impact report for the new town “university community” development project are any indication, they finally woke up and realized they have a real expensive, high-maintenance, 900-pound ugly baby on their hands – a baby that will never grow up.  
 
Where are the various superior and state appellate court judges that ruled so graciously on behalf of the UC Merced in environmental cases? Where was the executive director of the county Farm Bureau, who for years peddled the line that the state Agricultural Preservation Act (Williamson Act) was mitigation for UC Merced? Where was former Gov. Gray Davis, whose administration railroaded the campus over the supine wills of state and federal resource agency officials? Where was a representative from Merced-based County Bank? Oops, bankrupt. Where was that bright young fellow, chair of the Merced Chamber of Commerce and local representative of Citigroup a couple of years ago? Gone.
 
Where were US senators Feinstein and Boxer? Where were the governor and his Kennedy wife, Maria? In some far, far cooler place, no doubt.
 
Bob Gallo (Gallo Wine Co.) and his wife, Marie, were on stage. The Gallos are funding a school of management for the campus and donated a reconditioned Steinway grand piano.
 
Michelle Obama's commencement speech was the greatest day UC Merced and the citizens of Merced may ever see outside of the day the Queen of England came through on her way to Yosemite and one of her entourage collided with a car, killing the passengers. The governor showed up at the In and Out Burger once during a campaign, but disappointed the girls behind the counter by being so “chaparito” (short).
 
I watched the commencement downtown on a monstrous TV monitor at the corner of Main and Canal streets. A Florida firm won the bid to supply the monitor for an event given by a university that claimed that it would link satellite campuses throughout the Valley by the latest multimedia technology. I was surrounded by the usual crowd of Mercedians, poor to middling, ethnically various, polite, interested, in fact totally rapt. When the event was over the overheated crowd abruptly dispersed while two homeless guys on bicycles gleaned all the plastic and aluminum out of the overflowing trash barrels, I went down the street to the corner of Main and Martin Luther King, Jr. and listened to Cynthia Huddleston and the Juke Joint Jokers belt out the fine old R&B for which this town has been famous since WWII.