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Brought to you by the letter "C": Coronavirus, Chaos, Commitment to A Housing Moratorium
Remember how Sesame Street would feature a letter of the alphabet to sponsor the show? Elmo would say, “Today’s show is brought to you by the letter “A. ”A is for apples, ants, and airplanes. Or Burt and Ernie would say, “Today’s letter is “C. ”C is for children, chocolate and crosswalks.
This Blog is brought to you by the letter C.
“C” is for Coronavirus, Covid-19, and Crisis. These words create anxiety, fear, and deep uncertainty about what’s next.
“C” is also for Cure and words that instill Courage and Confidence, words that help us find our way through this pandemic.
Consider how “C” Connects Californians to Concepts that give Comfort in these Challenging times.
- Californians Create Cities and Communities with a Culture of Caring.
- Californians: Conscious and Conscientious Communicators who Connect and Collaborate.
- Californians Celebrate Critical Thinking and Competence to promote sustainable Choice and Change.
The “C” words aren’t just a bed of roses without thorns.The letter “C” also ushers in words that Clash and Confront us.
- Capitalism Calculates for profits without Compassion.
- Corporate housing and development interests Criticize Cities and Contest CEQA.
- Cities get Clobbered when Compliant Council members tolerate Crafty, Callous legislation.
Today’s letter “C” foreshadows tomorrow’s letter “D,” which will introduce Discipline, Determination, and Dedication. But let’s return to the lessons of the letter “C.”
For a fuller picture of the times we’re moving into we have to add Collapse and Caution. No one has ever witnessed a global pandemic with a virus that ruthlessly strikes all human beings and kills indiscriminately.
Political, religious, or sexual persuasion doesn’t matter. Party affiliation or economic status doesn’t matter. Elected or unelected, living in a mansion or a homeless shelter—none of it matters. We face personal and global vulnerability like we’ve never faced before. The economic collapse will be some version of from bad to worse.
We’ve identified daunting challenges before but turned our calloused capitalistic heads the other way. We’ve named, but not solved, problems of inequity, poverty, homelessness, health care, climate change, extinction, depression, and suicide. But now the coronavirus unites us and suddenly, thankfully, the government is able to find trillions of dollars to distribute with barely more than a few weeks to plan, print and disperse money.
The Covid-19 pandemic is a life and death crisis that demands essential legislative action.The housing dilemma, however, does not rise to the level of essential legislation, especially with prohibitions against public gatherings to lobby and give input.
If our California legislators are considering housing legislation for 2020, during this colossal pandemic, I have three suggestions, brought to you by the letter “C” for Commit.
- Commit to a 2020 Moratorium on introducing any new housing legislation. The moratorium would pause the relentless push to open doors to meet developers’ goals while neglecting the values of the community. Like meditation, the break might stop the mental chatter long enough to connect to the heart. With a pause, we might find opportunities to transform legislation that clobbers constituents and communities who see unresolved risk, not value, in proposals to build high-density housing near transit.
- Commit to an all California, 58-county collaboration that is bottom-up, not top-down. It would use virtual technology to create a Values & Policy Framework for legislation in 2021. The shake-up, insights, and wisdom from the coronavirus could help us envision and move towards a consciousness that breaks out from the broken Capitalist system.
- Commit to new ways of embracing human values that unite and protect people, prioritized over economic factors that divide people and create suffering for the majority of the global community. Raise consciousness that prioritizes people over profits.
Picture Sesame Street, representing all of our streets, in February 2021. The panic of the coronavirus is replaced with a Valentine’s Day Celebration. We come together around a Values & Policy Framework that is our collective contribution to creating a whole new world of equity, compassion, hope and peace.