i made a funny blooper tweet last night, thankfully have friends like @IDoTheThinking & @daguilarcanabal to make fun of me when that happens but to reiterate:
No candidate for local office runs on NIMBYism, especially if they're a NIMBY. They run like YIMBYs.
There's a reason.
Poll after poll shows a supermajority of Californians are either natural YIMBYs, or YIMBY-adjacent. Californians of all backgrounds/income levels want more housing that lets them drive less.
The sad part: Like most Americans, most Californians are checked out of local politics.
So, every four years we go through this stupid exercise where SuperNIMBY city councilors like @SophieHahnBerk make these outrageously false claims about how much housing they supported, when anyone who's ever attended a city council meeting knows she's exactly the opposite.
We're getting closer to being able to just chuck them out of office, but these things take time. If there's one thing I dream of this year, it's that we focus on helping our friends and neighbors understand this dynamic.
They'll believe you.
If everyone gets 5 of their friends/neighbors to understand how their city leader who claims to be pro-housing is actually a died-in-the-wool NIMBY, we can start taking seats.
It's work. But there are rewards.
And to fix the blooper: Sophie's opponent is Todd Andrew and he's so grassroots he doesn't have a website, but he's a renter, is very pro-housing, and would transform housing and transit politics on the council.
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I’m presently on holiday and the first thing I notice when I leave US is, we really don’t have any idea what a civilized society looks or feels like, physically.
Most countries have infinitely more humanity in their streets.
And it’s not like bans on humans in our cities benefits anyone — aside from the car industry, which, compared to rest of world, utterly owns our government.
Shortest life spans, highest rate of violent driver injury and death, highest cost of living/transport in the OECD …
… highest rates of childhood depression and isolation, most isolated and mobility-restricted seniors, highest carbon per capita — all of it is due to how we’ve mandated driving for every activity, and banned walking, transit, biking.
So we now have the phenomenon of well-intentioned environmentalists who drive everywhere they go, depositing plastic in ocean as they do, killing salmon and poisoning the food chain — and some of that driving is to attend protests to ban plastic bags.
You know. For the oceans.
the performative environmentalism will continue until, is our oceans learning
OK, with that out the way: An electric car is only good for the climate to the extent it is driven. That is, an old gasoline car that is only driven 50 miles per week will be lower-carbon than a new EV driven 50 miles per week.
Reason is, carbon accounting on electric cars uses old CAFE standard -- how much pollution per mile?
And obviously, on per mile basis,* EVs have lower carbon pollution than gas cars.
Thing non-violent drivers have to understand is how many drivers are openly violent and even talk openly about how they would kill a pedestrian or bikling if they felt the human walking or biking caused them delay or inconvenience or even just annoyance.
As an uncarred human
I can not, from the crosswalk or bike lane, tell if the driver headed for me is violent or non-violent. All I see are people on their phones while sitting behind the wheel of a car — so, mostly violent drivers.
And because so many drivers are violent I don’t have the luxury …
… of giving any driver benefit of the doubt. Any one of you could kill me.
I hope all the non-violent drivers consider this when they see an uncarred human get upset at a driver failing to yield at a crosswalk, or opening their door into a bike lane, or honking at a bikling
Most of us are “white,” but whiteness is provisional/geographic — in more Republican/white supremacist areas, we’re less white & subject to racist terror attacks.
Most of us are liberal/progressives who despise Bibi & Likudniks but also …
… have family (including ourselves!) who are literally only alive because of Israel’s existence.
Most of us support democracy & a two-state solution and are horrified by right-wing end-times evangelicals in the GOP who use Zionism as thin cover for Taliban-style objectives …
… but also, think Hamas is not helping Palestinian cause *at all.*
And so we’re still, after all these millennia, a people without a home.
DSA celebrates our deaths the same as Hamas.
Republicans only “love” us because their book says they can meet Jesus when we all die.