Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to the Bay local news to keep you rooted. And welcome to our monthly news roundup. Today, me and the whole Bay team are going to take some time to talk about the other stories that we have been following in the month of April. I’m joined by our producer, Maria Esquinca.
Maria Esquinca: Hello.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And our senior editor, Alan Montecillo.
Alan Montecillo: Hello.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So let’s just dive right in here with Maria and the story out of Berkeley.
Maria Esquinca: Yeah. So the story I’m bringing to you all today is about a very young person, Cecilia Lunaparra, who just won the district seven seat for Berkeley City Council. She is currently an undergraduate student. She’s a senior at UC Berkeley, and she will be the youngest person serving on the council at 22 years old.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Tell us a little bit more about who Cecilia is and also who ran against her.
Maria Esquinca: So she’s a pretty vocal progressive socialist. She is the current president of the Cal Berkeley Democrats. She is a Latina queer woman of color, and she ran against James Chiang, who is also a student. But he’s a graduate student from the Haas Business School.
Maria Esquinca: So some of the things she talked about was she is a supporter of affordable housing, tenant protections, investing in mental health care as a way to address public safety. She ran on a really strong opposition to building housing on People’s Park. She formed a really close relation to the community around People’s Park.
Cecilia Lunaparra: I moved here for the first time in January and I was so lonely. I didn’t know anybody. I had no community here and it was a cool calm.
Maria Esquinca: And she talked a little bit about this.
Cecilia Lunaparra: And I started seeing that People’s Park had community events, they had cookouts. I was able to find a space that I loved, and I could I could hear all of myself into.
Maria Esquinca: And she also ran advocating for Berkeley to pass a strong cease fire resolution for Gaza.
Alan Montecillo: Tell me a little more about this district. It’s district seven, right. And I understand it has a lot of students in it.
Maria Esquinca: Yeah. So district seven is also known as a student district. This is also the district where People’s Park is. And this district seat was formerly held by Rachel Robinson, who was also elected at the age of 22. But he stepped down from his seat in January.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah. And I remember that being sort of, quite a story in, in Berkeley because of why he left. Right. Can you remind us why Rachel Robinson left his seat and basically left this door open for a special election in April?
Maria Esquinca: He resigned from his seat because he said he was facing harassment, stalking and threats, and part of it was related to his support for building housing at People’s Park. And so, yeah, he just ended up leaving his seat and it led to a special election.
Alan Montecillo: I know one other reason this race made headlines is that turnout was super low, right?
Maria Esquinca: Yeah. So as of last Wednesday, Cecilia was leading with 291 votes to 197, making it a total of about 500. There’s about 3000 registered voters in district seven. So yeah, the numbers are not great.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah. Pretty low. She has since declared victory. What do we know about what she hopes to do in office and how she talks about that?
Maria Esquinca: When she won, she released a statement on her Instagram. She talks about how she ran an openly socialist and abolitionist campaign. And I think a big thing for her is representing student voices. She talks a lot about how student voices have been really missing from city Council and have not really represented them. And so I think she really hopes to represent the things that progressive students want.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: All right. Well, Maria, thank you so much for that.
Maria Esquinca: Thank you.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: After the break, we will talk about why Alameda County is reviewing death penalty convictions and pandas potentially coming to San Francisco. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And welcome back to The Bay’s monthly news roundup. The next story we’ve got is out of Alameda County, where a federal judge has directed District Attorney Pamela Price to review all death penalty convictions for signs of prosecutorial misconduct. Our colleague and reporter Annalise Finney reported this story for KQED.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: A judge, Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court of Northern California basically came to the district attorney with this request, after evidence showing and indicating that Alameda County prosecutors may have systematically excluded Black and Jewish jurors in cases where people were later sentenced to death row.
Maria Esquinca: That seems like a pretty big deal. How did they figure out that this was happening?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So there were notes discovered in a case of a man named Ernest Dikes, who was convicted in 1995 for murder and attempted murder. Dikes is currently on death row, and his case is one that has kind of risen to the forefront because of notes in his case file, which showed prosecutors essentially taking note of potential jurors for his trial notes.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That kind of appeared to document whether the prosecutor believed that the potential juror was Jewish or not. And price said that some of these notes also appeared to indicate a disdain for black women. And this has led to these allegations that there was this essentially systemic attempt by prosecutors in the county to single out certain jurors from others.
Alan Montecillo: The idea being these prosecutors thought black and Jewish jurors might make it harder for me to secure a death sentence.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Right. That’s exactly right. Yeah.
Alan Montecillo: So California hasn’t had an execution since 2006. So I have to imagine some of these folks are on death row, but still alive. So how many cases are we talking about and what could happen?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah, I mean, we’re talking about people who have just been languishing in death row. Currently, 37 people on death row were convicted in Alameda County, including dikes. Price’s office told KQED that it is now reviewing 35 of those 37 cases. And this could actually lead to resentencing or retrials in these cases. And that’s a huge deal.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: The review began about a month ago, so I think it will take a while before we actually see that happening. But these allegations seem to be an open secret. And Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Prices has vowed to really review them. Well, that was my story. And last but not least, Alan’s got a fun story for us today.
Alan Montecillo: Yeah, we’re going to have a major tonal shift to something a little more fun, like, exciting news for the Bay area, especially San Francisco. Earlier this month, Mayor London Breed announced that the San Francisco Zoo will get two giant pandas.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: It’s very, very exciting. Oh my gosh, for some reason, maybe it’s this reason I’ve been seeing so many pandas on my Twitter feed and they’re so clumsy and so cute.
Alan Montecillo: Have either of you seen pandas?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Not in real life.
Maria Esquinca: I’ve always wanted to.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I definitely did like a little report on pandas and like the second or third grade. And I was definitely obsessed for a little while. But besides the fact that Maureen and I are excited, why is this such a big deal, Alan?
Alan Montecillo: I mean, giant pandas are a big deal. They’re, first of all, an extremely rare species. At this point. There’s somewhere around 2000 wild pandas left in the whole world. Giant pandas are really only native to these sort of very specific mountainous regions in China. They’re also very rare in this country. There’s only four pandas in the United States. They’re all in Atlanta. San Diego is scheduled to get two more later this year. So San Francisco getting two giant pandas is pretty significant, I would say.
Maria Esquinca: So how exactly did this negotiation happen for these pandas to eventually get here to San Francisco?
Alan Montecillo: So there’s been some speculation for a while that getting pandas was a major priority for Mayor London Breed, even going all the way back to apex, which was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit hosted in San Francisco. members of 21 countries, including many in the Asia Pacific, came here. And there was some speculation among reporters, political watchers, that one of the goals of London Breed in meeting with Chinese officials was to see if it’d be possible to get pandas in San Francisco.
Mayor London Breed: Here in Beijing, China. And guess what, San Franciscans, I have some really exciting.
Alan Montecillo: This announcement came on the heels of Mayor Breed’s recent trip to China. So she was in China for a few weeks. She very, among many other important things like tourism, economic development also made this very exciting announcement that, hey, we’ve reached an agreement.
Mayor London Breed: We have some cute, cuddly, black and white beauties come to our city. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome pandas to San Francisco.
Alan Montecillo: There’s no exact date yet. Probably around 2025. If everything goes smoothly.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Cool. And if everything goes smoothly, how could it maybe not go so smoothly?
Alan Montecillo: There’s a lot that needs to happen before giant pandas arrive at the San Francisco Zoo and become available for all to see and visit. It’s all cute and exciting, and it brings tourism to the west side and to the city. It’s all great. A lot of stuff has to happen first. First of all, it is very expensive to host pandas. It’s going to cost an estimated $25 million to build a facility for these pandas.
Alan Montecillo: US zoos have to pay $1 million per year to China as well as an annual fee. So it’s going to take a minute. And currently, London Breed is trying to raise money to pay for this, including from private donors. But the other wrinkle here is San Francisco Zoo, where these pandas would be housed, might not be in great shape right now.
Alan Montecillo: The day before this news about pandas came out, actually, the Chronicle published a story about problems with maintaining staff concerns over the safety of animals and guests. They even reported on an example from last May, where a door was left open and a grizzly bear chased around a worker.
Maria Esquinca: Oh my God.
Alan Montecillo: You know, this is actually all in surveillance footage. And, you know, the worker was was unharmed. But there’s some real concerns about the state of the San Francisco Zoo. So obviously, if and when these pandas arrive in 2025, there’s a huge incentive for everyone to make sure that the zoo is in good shape. Because not to put too fine a point on it, but these are basically like VIP guests. It’s really important to, the zoo and also to San Francisco’s image as well, that these pandas are safe and nothing bad happens to them.
Maria Esquinca: Talking about, San Francisco’s image, something that has been a priority for London breed, especially since she will be running for reelection, is, people speculate that this is part of her reelection campaign. What do you what do you have to say about that?
Alan Montecillo: I mean, there’s different ways to think about that question. I mean, we know that London breeds polling numbers are not great as she faces a tough reelection fight. And any candidate. Mayor breed really wants to do well among Chinese voters in the city. I do think that when a mayor comes back from a foreign visit, you know, they’re really trying to talk up the city. They’re trying to attract tourism. They’re trying to attract business. And in that way, you know, that does affect, you know, how a city is doing.
Alan Montecillo: I don’t think getting pandas means that London breed is going to win the Chinese vote in San Francisco. And certainly even if, you know, if and when the pandas arrive, it would be after the election anyway. But, you know, if if all goes well with getting the pandas here and the zoo is great and people want to come and visit, you know, that could attract dollars and visitors to the city. And I think, you know, any mayor would see that as a good thing.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Alan, thank you so much for that news. And, Maria, of course, as always, thank you for joining me as well.
Maria Esquinca: Thank you.
Alan Montecillo: Thank you.
