25-minute free-write

So, I guess I'm starting this thing. #100Days. Let's go. I'm going to start with a little free-write, trying to keep my fingers typing and not edit what I am saying. Just keep typing and see what empties out. It's late in the evening, and it's been a long week, with a long day to end the week, and my creative juices are completely spent. I'm still going to try, in earnest, to write for a solid 25 minutes and then publish this thing, just to get the ball rolling.

As you may see on my bio, I'm a community organizer, a writer, a social justice advocate--most people probably find me obnoxious, to be honest. And they're right--I am obnoxious. You think it's bad to be around me, though, and you should imagine how I feel, what with having to be around myself all day long.

I've been doing advocacy work around Santa Clara County's non-law enforcement mental health crisis response--the Trusted Response Urgent Support Team (TRUST). One thing that I've learned over the last few years of pushing for this service to be expanded and centered is that a program can be incredibly successful, incredibly popular, cost-effective, and basically have everything going for it--but because our society is so beholden to the narrative that police should be used for everything imaginable, it's hard to push for something that eats into that narrative a bit. If we use mental health workers and peer advocates to address mental health and substance abuse crises, instead of cops, then what else could be taken away from cops? Like, maybe we wouldn't have to spend so much money on police... and nobody in charge of a police budget wants to hear that. So there's a surprising amount of opposition from a very select few, who unfortunately wield a lot of power. But isn't that the case with everything?

I was in a county meeting this week where a lot of people got up and spoke out against Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs), and somehow we still ended up with a policy that approved the use of ALPRs. What's even sadder is that there were a couple of provisions in the acceptance of the proposal that dared curb some of the usage (for instance, Flock will not be allowed as a vendor), and the Sheriff practically had a public temper tantrum. Like, if we don't bend to every whim of law enforcement, they throw a fit. And these are the people that we allow to be armed to the gills. Kind of scary when you realize the people who are adamant that they need AR-15s in the streets and be equipped with tasers in the jails, have the emotional maturity of a very-tired toddler who has hit the threshold of needing a nap but resisting it at all costs.

I'm going to get myself into trouble with this post. I just know it. Then again, the chances that anyone will bother reading this are slim to none, and even slimmer that anyone who does read this will have much interest in South Bay politics. Then again, I'm just cruising for a bruising and throwing caution to the wind.

I do wish that our elected officials weren't so terrified of the law enforcement lobby, though. Even more terrifying are the ones who are intentionally leaning into the law enforcement narrative. The mayor of San Jose is one of those people. He's someone who will, in one sentence, brag about how San Jose is the safest large city in America, and in the next breath say that crime is out of control and we need stiffer penalties for youth who commit crimes. And somehow, people eat this garbage up. "Oh, we're both very safe and under siege. Take my money, Mayor Lego Hair!"

Even scarier is this guy is running for governor of California. He's never completed a four-year term in any office he has held, and he has been a political official for a grand total of 6 years. But he's somehow equipped to run the 4th largest economy in the world after doing some real damage in San Jose. We're going to be stuck holding the tab for a long time for his "disrupt and disenfranchise" agenda that he has enacted. He forced the city to gut a voter-approved fund for permanent affordable housing to build tiny homes--aka tuff shed shelters--that have ongoing yearly costs, and after about 5 years become just as much money as the city would have spent 1 time on permanent affordable housing. So, we have these temporary solutions that are not cost-effective, and in the end, everyone is still going to be homeless with nowhere permanent to move to.

Okay, 25 minutes is up. I'll hopefully have something more structured and interesting tomorrow.

Goodnight, world.