Voices: River City

If you follow Sacramento politics, you likely saw the backlash to Councilmember Caity Maple's vote to give the Sacramento Police Department a tank just two years after she launched a run for office on a platform of demilitarizing the police.

In response, V:RC host Dr Flo wrote a brilliant, personal op-ed in the Sacramento Bee on the collective trauma that tanks in our police force can have on the community.

And, of course, progressives and leftists were not happy with Councilmember Maple's vote.

This week a group of people managed to shut the city council meeting down, sparking outrage from Sacramento's Very Serious People in the political consulting class.

Rather than take accountability for her awful vote, Councilmember Maple this week published her own op-ed in the Bee, arguing that the tank she voted for was, in fact, a "tractor," and claiming that she was the true victim in the situation.

Does that take hold any water? Put this episode in your ear-/eye-holes and find out.

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Today we're turning to Dr Flo to give us the lowdown on the FDA's change in blood donation rules, and how they've loosened restrictions on gay and bisexual men. It's a good step forward on an archaic screening system. But they still haven't gone far enough.

We then take a moment to discuss former Sacramento resident Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man who was beaten and killed by police for no reason in Memphis, TN.

How many times do we need to grieve these deaths before real systemic change takes place? How many more lives will be lost to murderous cops?

Here in Sacramento, it appears that things have not changed at all, despite elections yielding a majority-women city council.

Just one day after council members attended a vigil for Nichols, they proceeded to vote for the police to receive a $400,000 tank. Only council members Katie Valenzuela and Mai Vang voted against it.

We recorded this episode a day early, so we did not know the result of the vote quite yet. You'll notice that we were far too optimistic in our guesses of how it would pan out.

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Today we discuss a couple of homelessness bills state Republicans are pushing forward, such as Roseville's Josh Hoover's push to make it illegal for just about anyone to sleep just about anywhere in a city or town in California. 

 

We also take a moment for Robin Swanson, a conservative Democratic operative from East Sacramento who is quoted in the above story, and who appears to be pushing for some truly fascist policies against our unhoused neighbors.

 

We highly recommend a scroll through her tweets the last couple days: https://twitter.com/robin_swanson/with_replies

 

Is Robin really a concerned mother, or is she running a public campaign to rally folks for a challenger against Sacramento's current District 4 incumbent? One cannot trust these operatives.

 

Finally, we host a reading series on a baffling Fresno Bee editorial that tell us nothing and everything all at once.

 

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

We're back, baby!

 

And today we're discussing how California's unhoused community was forced to deal with nearly three weeks of storms, while both local and statewide elected officials made calls for more violent sweeps.

 

To begin, Shannon discusses what went down here in Sacramento during the deluge, and how guests at Maryhouse were affected. Thousands of our neighbors are fighting for their lives, and yet elected officials such as Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna are focused on carrying out more unconstitutional homeless sweeps.

 

On the state level, Governor Gavin Newsom has given fiery speeches trying to place blame on municipalities for the state's rise in homelessness. However, if you look at the budget he proposed this month, you'll see that he's actually trying to *decrease* the state's commitment to affordable housing. 

A recent study by the Corporation for Supportive Housing found that California could house all its unhoused constituents if we spent about $8 billion per year--about 3% of the state's total budget--over the next 12 years. But the governor doesn't want to do that, and Josh Gohlke at the Sacramento Bee rightly raked him over the coals for his refusal to take responsibility.

 

Even if Newsom did support that budget, is the political will there for legislative Dems? The party owns a combined 94 of 120 seats in the Assembly and Senate combined (62 and 32, respectively), but just 29 of those legislators are in the Progressive Caucus (and let's not forget that last year their Legislative Caucus chair, Asm Ash Kalra, let the CalCare bill die without a vote).

 

Of those 29 members, 11 counted the California Real Estate PAC as a top-ten donor in the last election cycle.

 

So, again, is the political will there in Sacramento to actually fund a solution to homelessness?

 

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

It's the final V:RC episode before our winter break!

To celebrate, we sat down at Bottle & Barlow to enjoy a few Tecates with lime and reflect on a very topsy-turvy year for progressives and leftists alike in the Sacramento region.

The good: A massive showing of solidarity throughout leftist spaces in the region, a markedly more progressive city council, and Flo's hilarious tattoo story.

The bad: Sacramento County's carceral system won out and will be funding a new downtown jail.

The ridiculous: (You'll just have to tune in to find out.)

See you Jan. 19, 2023, when we start up our fourth year of recording!

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Today we're discussing the new city-county agreement on homelessness that all the Very Serious People of Sacramento appear to be crowing over.

But we've got a few questions.

First of all, did we truly need an unconstitutional local measure to get the city and county to agree that they needed to work together on homelessness?

Second, how much can we expect in the realm of 600 new shelter beds while over 9,000 of our neighbors are experiencing homelessness?

Third, will our business "leaders" in Amanda Blackwood of the Sacramento Metro Chamber and Joshua Wood of Region Business be held accountable when their vile measure fails to do any good in the community?

And what can we expect in a new Sacramento city council that appears to lean much further left than the one that pushed this measure onto the ballot just a few months ago?

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Today we're joined by the founders of Decarcerate Sacramento, Tifanei Moyer and Liz Blum, to discuss Sacramento County's proposed $250 million annex to the internationally despised downtown jail.

Our cohost Flo actually co-wrote an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee with Sacramento City Councilmember Katie Valenzuela on why this annex was shortsighted and wrong for the community.

Before that, we talk with Tifanei about another fight she's been waging with the city of San Francisco. Turns out they want to have killer robots on staff in the police department. Because of course they do.

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

A Sacramento man was arrested over the weekend for leveling serious threats against three young politicians--all women of color. Thankfully, councilmembers Katie Valenzuela and Mai Vang, as well as District 3 City Council Candidate Karina Talamantes, are all safe today.

But this incident raises serious questions. This man was already on probation. So what took so long for our legal apparatus to respond? He was also clearly--and publicly--suffering from severe mental health issues. So where were the services he needed before he became a threat to these officials?

Before we discuss that, however, we go over the win for the 50+ unhoused folks living in Sacramento's Camp Resolution. They'd been facing a Nov. 16 eviction, but thanks to community showing up at this week's city council meeting, they appear to be safe from sweeps for the time being. Special shout to the progressive council members who helped open the platform for commenters on Tuesday.

Speaking of council members, Sean "Baby" Loloee visited Camp Resolution on Wednesday, vowing to come back around 10:30 am Thursday morning to have a chill little chat with the residents.

But before doing that, he accused local journalists of being "guilty of crime," and claimed that they had "blood on [their] hands."

So much for the tolerant grocer.

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Happy election hangover.

 

If the NYT's Needle of Death is any indicator, the Republicans' much anticipated "red wave" did not materialize this year.

 

In fact, other than a GOP rout in Florida (which we should all come to expect at this point), Democrats appear to have kept their hold on the US Senate. They can thank progressives for that, with John Fetterman winning the Pennsylvania seat. Beyond that, the Squad added four new members in Congress, and four state governments are now in complete Democratic control.

 

Some folks like to get their election results in a timely manner. But not Californians.

 

Nevertheless, we take a moment to discuss the wins, losses and remaining questions for both California and Sacramento as the results continue to roll in.

 

What does it portend for us if Republican Patrick Hume defeats Jaclyn Moreno in the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors race? What does a potential majority-women city council mean for the city? 

 

And--now that the elections are over--what's next for Sacramento?

 

We're joined by our friends Mack and Joyce to discuss the wonderful work being done at Camp Resolution, and why we need to defend it at all costs. Our unhoused neighbors are fighting back against violent sweeps, and they could use your help.

 

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Today we're discussing a very important election in California's District 8 state Senate race.

In particular, we're looking at how awful of a candidate Angelique Ashby is proving herself to be:

Just this week Ashby found herself facing a corruption scandal for gifting city-owned Roger Waters tickets to union leadersin what appears to be a bid for their favor in her race.

Ashby fashions herself a feminist, but has a peculiar history of not supporting Black women running for office.

When a woman came forward saying that former Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson had sexually abused her as a child, Angelique kept quiet. And when more allegations rolled in? Crickets.

We also discuss Ashby's opponent, Dave Jones, and why he is the one fit for the Senate job.

Unlike Ashby, Jones doesn't have Big Oil spending millions in the race. He's also endorsed by Planned Parenthood, and has a proven record of working to find housing for unsheltered Sacramentans.

The choice is clear for us.

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

Twitter: @youknowkempa, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune, @guillotine4you

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity  

Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Thursdays at 6 pm and again Fridays at 8 am.

If you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.

And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes