Suffragette City
Text by Malcolm Maclachlan
Photos by Lilly Fuentes-Joy
Sure, women hold three of four major party nominations in the top races this fall, for Governor and US Senate in California. The most powerful non-elected person, hands down, in California politics, is a woman. And Hillary Clinton’s near miss at being nominated for President two years ago was overshadowed by the rise of Sarah Palin as the country’s top conservative power broker.
So it can be easy to forget that it’s only been 90 years since women gained the right to vote. California was the 18th state to ratify the 19th Amendment –on Nov. 1, 1919—but it did not take effect until Tennessee became the 36th state to do so, on Aug. 26, 1920. Many other states in the South didn’t ratify it until the 1950s or even the 1970s—or 1984 in the case of Mississippi (better late than never?).
It has also been largely forgotten by most that the 18th Amendment—prohibition—was ratified the year before, largely on the strength of the growing political power of women, who favored it much more heavily than men. This disparity can be seen in this year’s Proposition 19 in California, which would repeal marijuana prohibition in the state. Polls show support among men runs nearly 20 percent higher than it does among women. Though the economy is as bad as it has been any time since 1933, when the country repealed prohibition in the hopes of gaining new tax revenues. Will the parallels never cease?
In any case, Aug. 26 was a cause for celebration all around the country. Here’s are some shots from Aug. 26 at the Capitol.
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Text by Malcolm Maclachlan
Twenty-two people, some of them severely disabled, were arrested at a protest outside the Capitol on Aug. 18.
According to organizers, somewhere between 250 and 300 people were participating in a planned 1 p.m. protest against budget cuts affecting disabled people. The event was planned by the Health and Human Services Network of CA, a coalition of several groups pushing for healthcare reform and disability rights.
The group left the Capitol and was marching in the vicinity when around three dozen people stopped in the middle of the intersection of L Street and 11th Street, blocking traffic for over an hour.
“It was a spontaneous action,” said Stella Kim, a policy and communications specialist with the California Partnership, one of the groups participating in the event. “These are people who wanted to make their voices heard. For these people, it’s a life and death issue.”
A spokesman from the Sacramento Police Department said three orders were given to disperse. Some people did more out of the way, but 22 stayed and were arrested. Twenty of them were cited and released, but two had more serious charges, including one who alleged resisted arrest. About 100 police officers with various agencies were called to the scene.
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Text by Malcolm Maclachlan
Instead of our usual B section photo essay this week, we're celebrating our five year anniversary with a look back at some more striking photos we've gathered in our brief history. Online, we've included a few photos that didn't quite make the cut for our print edition. View 24 photos »
Text by Malcolm Maclachlan
Superior Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in San Francisco last week that Prop. 8, the 2008 voter initiative that stopped same-sex marriages in California, was unconstitutional. The ruling was hardly surprising, given the legal team defending Prop. 8 chose to pull most of their witnesses and instead bank on an appeal that will likely make its way to the US Supreme Court. But it was cause for jubilation in some quarters and disappointment in others. Here are some images from the latest chapter.
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The Ronald Reagan Memorial Week in Photos
Text by Malcolm Maclachlan
Top text: Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 944. This bill recognizes Feb. 6 as Ronald Reagan Day. The first one will happen next year, on what would have been Reagan’s 100th birthday (he passed away in 2004). This is but one of many efforts to recognize the former California governor and 40th president of the United States. On page A11 of this week’s paper, we have an interview with Grover Norquist. The anti-tax crusader is now the chairman of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, a group hopes to have some sort of monument erected to the late president and California governor in every one of the country’s 3,067 counties.
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Text by Malcolm Maclachlan
Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, passed away after a long battle with prostate cancer on Jul7 13. He was 72. Cox was known as both an honest, straight-shooter and a nice guy—a hard act to pull off around the Capitol. He had served continuously since being elected to the Assembly in 1998, and wasn’t scheduled to term out until 2012.
Cox is survived by his wife Maggie, daughters Cathleen, Margo and Sarah, six grandchildren, and his dog Rudy. There will be a memorial service at 10 a.m. Thursday, August 5, at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, 1017 11th St. His family is asking that donations be made to the Dave & Maggie Cox Scholarship fund at 740 University Ave., Suite 110, Sacramento, 95825. For more information, contact his longtime press secretary, Nghia Nguyen Demovic at 651 4001.
Here are some scenes from Cox’s life and career.
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Text by Malcolm Maclachlan,
Photos by Tia Gemmell and Lilly Fuentes-Joy
No redistricting or massacres in Northern Ireland on the page this week. Instead, here are some shots from the annual California State Fair. It runs at the Cal Expo every day through August 1.
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By Malcolm Maclachlan
Redistricting is hard.
That was the conclusion I quickly came to during my April visit to the Statewide Database & Election Administration Research Center at UC Berkeley. This center maintains all the maps, computers, software and data needed to redistrict every legislative office in the state.
As I tried to work with the software, I decided I probably don’t have the expertise to be on the Citizens Redistricting Panel, authorized by last year’s Proposition 11 and currently being selected by the State Auditor’s office. Districts need to be of such an exact size—no different than about 130 people as determined by the latest Census data—that it seems nearly impossible to keep cities and neighborhoods together while creating competitive seats and balancing all the demands of various interest groups and ethnic communities.
I chose to work with just a few Assembly Districts around Sacramento, essentially looking at the borders of AD 5 (currently represented by Roger Niello, R-Sacramento), AD 9 (Dave Jones, D-Sacramento) and AD 10 (Alyson Huber, D-Lodi). With so many variables at play, youfinds yourself focusing more and more on one particular goal. In this case, I started looking at how I could make AD 9 center around Sacramento, and how I could tip the closely divided AD 5 and AD 10 to one side or the other.
In an upcoming feature on this page, I’ll go through some work the folks at the Statewide Database did drawing practice districts with various goals in mind. The odd thing was, when the factors noted above that people think are important are taken into account, it’s pretty easy to come up with a map that looks like our current districts.
Thanks to Karin McDonald, director of the statewide database, for setting up my visit, and to geographic information analyst Nicole Boyle who took an entire afternoon off to patiently walk me through the process.
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Bloody Sunday, 1972
Photos and text by William L. Rukeyser
While we Californians had our eyes set last month on BP, McChrystal, and the budget, overseas many people were watching a remarkable apology and 180-degree turn by the British government.
After almost four decades and a marathon investigation by an international team of judges, London admitted that its Bloody Sunday massacre of Irish protesters was, in the words of new Prime Minister, David Cameron, “both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.”
The killing of 14 unarmed protesters, while shocking, pales in comparison to other violence we’ve seen in the intervening years. So why does it still matter? For one thing, it was a case of soldiers’ violence against citizens of their own country. For another, January 30, 1972 defined the end of a civil rights campaign and the beginning of a military one that persisted for decades in Ireland.
The “troubles” in the North of Ireland began in the late ‘60s as an imitation of America’s civil right struggle. The Catholics (discriminated against and disenfranchised) played the role of the NAACP and the local government and police were surrogates for George Wallace and Bull Connor. It is little remembered that when the Army arrived, it was initially welcomed with tea by the besieged Catholics.
That gradually changed as the military redefined its mission to support the local government. The march that preceded the shooting on Bloody Sunday was organized to protest a policy of imprisonment without trial aimed, almost exclusively, at Catholics.
The government had banned the march, as it did almost all protests. When the army opened fire and shot 27 protesters, it inflamed passions, persuaded many that peaceful protest was useless and acted as the most effective recruiting tool the I.R.A. was ever given. Fourteen men and boys died because of the shooting. There was also a fifteenth fatality: the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. In the months after Bloody Sunday, it became irrelevant as an entire generation was redefined into militancy by the massacre. The conflict was now viewed as nationalist.
I covered the Troubles as a freelancer in 1971 and ’72, years before I came to Sacramento to cover Jerry Brown’s first term for California Public TV. By happenstance, I got to watch Bloody Sunday develop from both perspectives, first behind English lines and later under fire from the troops. "These are a few of the pictures I took for UPI Color Photos, at a time when color news stills were so rare that the wire service maintained a separate operation to handle them." My picture and audio (some of which is available at <a href="http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/wlrphotos.htm" rel="nofollow">cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/wlrphotos.htm</a> ) still bring back powerful memories. I have now added to them my surprise that the English government finally admitted it was in the wrong.
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Photos by Steve Martarano
Text by Steve Martarano and Malcolm Maclachlan
Top text: Steve Martarano was a longtime public affairs specialist with the state Department of Fish & Game. He now does the same job for the federal Dept. Fish & Wildlife Service. Between June 7 and June 22, he helped out with handling the hundreds of media people who are covering the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He was one of 37,000 people involved in the relief effort, including BP employees, contractors, Coast Guard and many different government agencies.
Martarano was stationed at the Grand Isle Rehabilitation Center. His agency had about 500 people in the area and had 55 boats in the water each day, rescuing and rehabilitating oiled birds. Among the journalists he took out during his two weeks in the Gulf were Jeff Corwin of Animal Planet, three-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Carol Guzy, and former KQED California Report reporter Tamara Keith (now with NPR in Washington, and featured with Martarano on our cover two weeks ago—she also covered the earthquake in Haiti).
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Photos by Lilly-Fuentes-Joy
Text by Malcolm Maclachlan and Lilly-Fuentes-Joy
Top text: Our photo intern, Lilly Fuentes-Joy, traveled to Arizona a few weeks ago to attend a massive protest against that state’s anti-illegal immigrant law, SB 1070. Many claim the law is written in a way that will subject legal residents and citizens of Hispanic descent to ongoing police harassment. Supporters of the law say that it was only necessary because of inaction by the federal government and is less harsh than anti-illegal-immigrant laws in many other countries, including Mexico. Here are some photos from that protest. Lilly wrote the captions.
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