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Armando Vazquez. Courtesy photo.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
National Politics: We are in our last days out from the 2020 Presidential elections and the very future of this Democracy is in peril. We have Trumps’ criminal Republican Party that will stop at nothing to retain tyrannical power and a mealy mouth and pathetically weak Democratic Party that feints outrage cries foul, but is either strategically out maneuverer at every political turn or rolls over like a broken lap dog and refuses to fight Republican political fire with fire. Our national politics are a mess! On November 3, 2020 the people have the critical and solemn hands-on opportunity through our votes to weigh in on the future of this nation, and in the process quite possibly preserve our democracy against the tyrannical forces that threaten to destroy it!
“The current iteration of the GOP is indifferent to the substance of governing. It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile to evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized and implemented. The modern Republican Party has become a post policy party” The Republican party of Lincoln has become the party of “acquiring and keeping power and exploiting the electoral process to keep it, often in (total and complete) defiance of the American electorate’s will” So writes Steven Benen, in his must read and brilliant bestseller entitled, The Imposters: Howe the Republican Party Quit Governing and Seized American Politic.
We, those who study American history and politics, have always known that our American capitalist and political system is criminally rigged, before 1776 and counting. Today the Republican Party is about nothing more than absolute power; you have power (money, political clout and guns) or nothing in this country, the current Republican Party and psychopathic politicians of every stripe know this truth.
We the people of color of this nation have nothing that resembles systemic power, not at the White House or in city hall. Those in national and local economic and political power deftly control us with crumbs of appeasement, fear, or deadly force. With each succeeding generation we have become more and more disembowelled and neutered by their “neoliberal Chicago School” policies of tax cut for the wealthy, free unfettered global markets, privatizing “traditional government” services, total and complete deregulation, and massive cuts to social spending, in other words our government for the past 70 years has, been busy creating a virtual unfettered playground for the multi-national corporations and billionaires of the world, to plunder this nation and the world, and render humans to mere disposable commodity. Our politicians today, led by the Republican, are becoming more and more about psychopathic power grabbing tyrants, who have little to no regard for the common welfare of their constituents.
“Politicians are more likely than people in the general society to be sociopaths. I think that you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/anti-social personality disorder who would dispute this… that a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow-but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one-“Dr Martha Stout, Clinical psychologist and former professor at Harvard Medical School. Ain’t that the truth! Our collective vote can change all of this come election day.
The local political and economic scene: Oxnard, like every city in the nation, is reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic. According to City Manager Alex Nguyen, “the coronavirus knocked the city from some progress back into a hole we were trying to dig out. For the fiscal year that ends today (June 30, 2020), we have a budget revenue loss of $8.4 million. It was staggering in the fact that it only happened in four months. For the upcoming budget (starting July 1), we are forecasting an $8.1 million decrease in expected revenues. We have a long way to go, and we are on thin ice” So yeah, Oxnard is in very tough economical shape, with more cost cutting in public services and city job losses to come. Where will the next budgetary cuts occur, and who are the current city workers that will get the axe next?
The city has just landed a deal with Amazon that purports to be bring approximately 1,500 jobs and a substantial business tax base. This is a great future business opportunity for Oxnard. What about today? How do we help our disproportionately high number of agricultural and factory works to stay safe and continue to be work ready and earn a liveable wage? How do we help small business return from the abyss? How do we meaningful training and develop jobs for youth and getting them involved in the re-imagination and redesign of our Oxnard business and employment world after the Covid-19 pandemic?
Will the city leaders look to trim the “untouchable” line item budgets of the police, fire and the administration departments that yearly threaten to break the city?
There are many unknown economic variables that face Oxnard, what is not in doubt is that “business” as usual must be jettisoned and replace with a progressive and innovate governance that relies on more inclusive and vibrant civic involvement and engagement all of the residents so we can all do our share in addressing important local issues such as community safety and resilience and have less not more reliance on cops and punitive law enforcement. We must explore and embrace green and environment friendly programs and service that encourage and develop partnership with the many local colleges, universities and green business. None of these progressive steps will happen with the current weak city council structure that given absolute power to the city manager. That is why new blood is need in the city council.
Youth development and empowerment: The youth have been shut out of most civic participation and involvement in Oxnard for far too long, it is time to embrace them all! The youth development and empowerment programs that have been developed and provided to the youth have historically been programs run almost exclusively by the cops and/or city functionaries, it has been ineffective for a variety of reason, primarily because cops and functionaries have no business running recreation, social service and educational programs. 120 years of mismanaged youth recreation and social service programming in the city of Oxnard that are mostly administered by cops can be eliminated immediately and turned over to competent community based organization that have the professionally training, expertise and love necessary to do this vital youth work. Get the cops out of the business of recreation and social work, and have them concentrate exclusively in preventing and solving crimes, nothing more. We should concentrate our efforts in the development of much anticipated but never realized educational and vocational training partnerships and programs with our high school, college, and university community. This Covid-19 crisis can and should create the necessary urgency and impetus to think outside of the box so that we can integrate and empower our youth to be active community leaders, working hand in hand with the rest of the community. But our new city leaders must first have the vision, courage and resolve to create a radical paradigm shifts that has youth as important stakeholders in the future of Oxnard..
Recreation: In 1998, The KEYS Leadership Academy at the Café on A, began canvassing youth regarding their aspiration, dreaming, prayers and hopes for a better and brighter future in Oxnard. We interviewed and spoke to thousands of low income, mostly Latino youth over the ensuing three decades. The vast majority of our KEYS participants wanted to continue their education after high school, so we developed a directed pipeline for our youth to Oxnard College with the invaluable assistance of Dr Jaime Casillas, at the time the Dean of Student Services at Oxnard College. Jaime almost single headedly cut through all the red tape to get our thousands of at-promise youth enrolled at Oxnard College. With the retirement of Dr Casillas the program collapse, there is no existing direct pipeline to higher educational today in Oxnard for our at-promise and low income youth, it must be revived and implemented.
We found in our canvassing of our low income youth, that approximately 98% of the KEYS kids could not swim. In a coastal city like Oxnard, how can low income mostly Latino youth recreate in the nearby beaches, water ways and local pools if they could not swim? The KEYS Leadership Academy created the ACESS Water program that provide certified swim lessons to hundreds of youth for over two decades, when the Café on A closed its doors, the ACCESS Water program ended, we must revive this important program!
For over three decades the Acuna Art Gallery & Cultural Center at the Café on A provide a non-traditional community friendly arts and culture venue to Oxnard and the greater Ventura County area. The Café on A hosted hundreds of fine art exhibitions, musical concerts of every conceivable genre, teatro, book fairs, educational and social justice forums and seminars, and welcomed and hosted national and local artists, activist and leaders that addressed progressive and important issue of the day. When we lost the lease to building that housed the Café on A and we had to close the doors to all out art and cultural activities, all our history and personal connections were lost. We must have a Latino Art and Cultural Center in Oxnard to continue the vital work that the Acuna Art Gallery and Cultural Center at Café on A pioneered!
Local Environmental Ecosystem: A truism of environmental activism that I whole heartedly support is the ideas that in order to develop a true sense of ownership and stewardship in the community in their environmental awareness on local issues, concerns and actions is that environmental leadership must provide the necessary education, mobilization and organizing to create a critical mass. Once that critical mass is obtained then true environmental activism and stewardship can take place, in Oxnard we have yet to reach that stage!
Efforts to organize Oxnard around environmental issues has been haphazard and disjointed and in the past has often been led by outsiders, it does not have to be that way. All around us we have familiar major environmental “hot spots” to work on like Ormond Beach, the entire Oxnard coastline, the agricultural fields of Oxnard effecting land, water and air, the infrastructure (buildings, houses and other structures). So how do get our environmental act together in Oxnard? Here is one of our time tested recommendation in developing local environmental activists. Recruitment: The KEYS Leadership Academy recruited thousands of low income youth, ages 8-24 years old, from Oxnard. Education: The KEYS program is an after school arts, recreation, educational and empowerment program. The 10 week KEYS program provided specific environmental education, classroom training, and actual onsite training at our local beaches, around the home, and business location that partnered with us. Most importantly we provided a key/unique nexus between local recreation and environmental stewardship and activism by combining the ACESS Water Swim program with our environmental coastline activism and work. The logical common sense nexus of combining certified swim lessons to low income non-swimmers and provide local environment education and training helps develop a franchised, empowered, educated, organized, and well trained youth that now has real ownership responsibility in her/his local environment. To implement this simple and common sense local environmental plan we need strong leadership in the City Council!
A New Day: We vote on November 3, 2020! The day after we continue our work to help transform our nation and Oxnard, the city that we all love, into a more democratic, transparent, inclusive and compassionate modern American city. The “shock doctrine” of the modern day global psychopathic tyrants is to create a catastrophic events such as wars, embargos and political assignations and other horrific and extra ordinary act of violence, or simply wait for a natural catastrophic event like a hurricane, an earthquake, or a famine to impose their economic and political agenda on a “shell shock” people. In Oxnard (in the United States and throughout the world) we have the Covid-19 pandemic, a natural catastrophic event. We can turn the “shock doctrine” on its head and rather than abuse and manipulate the people, the local city council can instead enlist all the people of Oxnard to help the city dig out of it massive economic hole and at the same time create a new day of mutual trust and transparent and inclusive local governance that can be the democratic beacon for the entire country. Oxnard we can do it. But first come Tuesday, November 3, 2020, we vote as if our very lives depended in it!
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.