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"content": "\u003cp>Here is a throwback to an earlier era some of you may remember. For decades there was a phone service in Northern California that would read you the time and date if you dialed POP-CORN, the letters that represented 767-2676. That service went dark back in 2007, and Bay Curious listener George wants to know why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer begins at the very origins of the telephone in 1876, when just two years after Alexander Graham Bell famously invented the technology, \u003ca href=\"https://connecticuthistory.org/the-first-commercial-telephone-exchange-today-in-history/#:~:text=On%20January%2028%2C%201878%2C%20the,Herrick%20Frost%20and%20Walter%20Lewis.\">phone service went commercial\u003c/a>. The telephone began to spread across the country; those earliest phones were connected by live operators who would manually connect your call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Operators had access to something the average person didn’t in those days: the correct time. “Starting in 1870, Western Union, the telegraph company, offered a nationwide, highly accurate time service, where they would install a clock in your business that was controlled centrally by their master clock in New York City and represented super accurate time for the day,” explains Peter Amstein of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.telcomhistory.org/\">Telecommunications History Group\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You could find these accurate clocks in railroad stations and at the phone company. Watches and clocks weren’t set automatically like they are today. You needed to start with the accurate time when setting and winding your watch, or clock, which would then maintain the correct time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s impossible for us to know exactly when someone first called the operator to ask her what time it was,” says Amstein, “but surely that happened in the very earliest days of the (phone) system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though never an official service, Amstein says, “The phone company wanted to be friendly and helpful. And certainly if the operators weren’t too busy and had time, they would answer all sorts of questions for people,” like the weather and the current, correct time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1918, \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence\">the Spanish flu\u003c/a> spread across the country, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The phone company,” says Amstein, “started putting notices in the newspapers telling people the operators would no longer answer questions like what time it was, because they needed them to concentrate fully on connecting people’s phone calls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11853905\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11853905\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/01/time-diagram.png\" alt=\"A diagram showing when an operator when read the time each minute.\" width=\"720\" height=\"756\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/01/time-diagram.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/01/time-diagram-160x168.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The kind of schedule a live time and date operator would have followed to accurately deliver the time multiple times a minute. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Telecommunications History Group)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But watches still didn’t set themselves, so in the 1920s Amstein says some phone companies “began experimenting with a live time-of-day service,” where a live operator would read the time to a revolving queue of callers at a set pace, multiple times a minute. You thought your job was monotonous? This needed to be automated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In 1934,” says Amstein, “a gentleman named John Franklin from Atlanta, Georgia, had the brilliant idea to set up a phone number that people could call to hear the time that would be sponsored by Tick Tock Ginger Ale.” To create his ad-supported call-in line, Franklin repurposed an existing piece of phone company technology called a drum recorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqkGUyFB7xA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A drum recorder uses a cylindrical drum coated in magnetic tape to record messages like, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.” Franklin reprogrammed that machine to always play the current time, as read by an announcer. The company he created to sell that technology, Audichron, expanded into cities across the United States. The business model revolved around selling an ad, or the service and equipment themselves, to a sponsor. That advertiser could plug their company, and callers got the time and date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in the 1960s, the voice of the time lady here in the Bay Area was that of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Daniels\">Joanne Daniels\u003c/a>. A resident of Atlanta, Georgia, to this day, Daniels recorded the familiar announcements in a single paid session in the 1950s. And though she was paid no royalties throughout the almost 60 years her recording was used, she was the Bay Area’s POP-CORN lady until the very end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the service’s heyday here in the Bay area, you could actually call POP + any four digits, something Amstein says was “a technical shortcut” for the phone company, then called the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1984, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/5-major-moments-in-cellphone-history-1.1407352\">first cellphones became commercially available\u003c/a> in the United States, and the road to shutdown began for Northern California’s POP-CORN and similar services across the country. In 2007, Apple unveiled the first iPhone and Americans spent more money on cellphone service than landline service \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/expenditures-on-celluar-phone-services-have-increased-significantly-since-2007.htm#_edn1\">for the first time\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More cellphone users created demand for more unassigned phone numbers. Pacific Bell’s POP + four digits “shortcut” hogged a lot of potential new phone numbers that AT&T would need to meet that demand. So AT&T shut the service down in September 2007, securing 30,000 new numbers in Northern California alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://cdn.sfgate.com/blogs/sounds/sfgate/chroncast/2007/08/31/ChronRadio-Daniels-20070901-2.mp3\">San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Joanne Daniels\u003c/a> ahead of the line’s shutdown: “I feel like I’m fading away. I think it’s a sad thing because I think it’s filled a need for a lot of people that aren’t quite as modern as the trend is going.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a few, lesser-known time services \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/remember-when-you-could-call-the-time/488273/\">still in operation\u003c/a> all over the country. In fact, (415) POP-CORN will still get you the time and date in San Francisco, but it’s not the time lady — Joanne Daniels is retired and living in Atlanta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Here is a throwback to an earlier era some of you may remember. For decades there was a phone service in Northern California that would read you the time and date if you dialed POP-CORN, the letters that represented 767-2676. That service went dark back in 2007, and Bay Curious listener George wants to know why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer begins at the very origins of the telephone in 1876, when just two years after Alexander Graham Bell famously invented the technology, \u003ca href=\"https://connecticuthistory.org/the-first-commercial-telephone-exchange-today-in-history/#:~:text=On%20January%2028%2C%201878%2C%20the,Herrick%20Frost%20and%20Walter%20Lewis.\">phone service went commercial\u003c/a>. The telephone began to spread across the country; those earliest phones were connected by live operators who would manually connect your call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Operators had access to something the average person didn’t in those days: the correct time. “Starting in 1870, Western Union, the telegraph company, offered a nationwide, highly accurate time service, where they would install a clock in your business that was controlled centrally by their master clock in New York City and represented super accurate time for the day,” explains Peter Amstein of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.telcomhistory.org/\">Telecommunications History Group\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You could find these accurate clocks in railroad stations and at the phone company. Watches and clocks weren’t set automatically like they are today. You needed to start with the accurate time when setting and winding your watch, or clock, which would then maintain the correct time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s impossible for us to know exactly when someone first called the operator to ask her what time it was,” says Amstein, “but surely that happened in the very earliest days of the (phone) system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though never an official service, Amstein says, “The phone company wanted to be friendly and helpful. And certainly if the operators weren’t too busy and had time, they would answer all sorts of questions for people,” like the weather and the current, correct time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1918, \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence\">the Spanish flu\u003c/a> spread across the country, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The phone company,” says Amstein, “started putting notices in the newspapers telling people the operators would no longer answer questions like what time it was, because they needed them to concentrate fully on connecting people’s phone calls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11853905\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11853905\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/01/time-diagram.png\" alt=\"A diagram showing when an operator when read the time each minute.\" width=\"720\" height=\"756\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/01/time-diagram.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/01/time-diagram-160x168.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The kind of schedule a live time and date operator would have followed to accurately deliver the time multiple times a minute. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Telecommunications History Group)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But watches still didn’t set themselves, so in the 1920s Amstein says some phone companies “began experimenting with a live time-of-day service,” where a live operator would read the time to a revolving queue of callers at a set pace, multiple times a minute. You thought your job was monotonous? This needed to be automated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In 1934,” says Amstein, “a gentleman named John Franklin from Atlanta, Georgia, had the brilliant idea to set up a phone number that people could call to hear the time that would be sponsored by Tick Tock Ginger Ale.” To create his ad-supported call-in line, Franklin repurposed an existing piece of phone company technology called a drum recorder.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/fqkGUyFB7xA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/fqkGUyFB7xA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>A drum recorder uses a cylindrical drum coated in magnetic tape to record messages like, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.” Franklin reprogrammed that machine to always play the current time, as read by an announcer. The company he created to sell that technology, Audichron, expanded into cities across the United States. The business model revolved around selling an ad, or the service and equipment themselves, to a sponsor. That advertiser could plug their company, and callers got the time and date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in the 1960s, the voice of the time lady here in the Bay Area was that of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Daniels\">Joanne Daniels\u003c/a>. A resident of Atlanta, Georgia, to this day, Daniels recorded the familiar announcements in a single paid session in the 1950s. And though she was paid no royalties throughout the almost 60 years her recording was used, she was the Bay Area’s POP-CORN lady until the very end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the service’s heyday here in the Bay area, you could actually call POP + any four digits, something Amstein says was “a technical shortcut” for the phone company, then called the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1984, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/5-major-moments-in-cellphone-history-1.1407352\">first cellphones became commercially available\u003c/a> in the United States, and the road to shutdown began for Northern California’s POP-CORN and similar services across the country. In 2007, Apple unveiled the first iPhone and Americans spent more money on cellphone service than landline service \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/expenditures-on-celluar-phone-services-have-increased-significantly-since-2007.htm#_edn1\">for the first time\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More cellphone users created demand for more unassigned phone numbers. Pacific Bell’s POP + four digits “shortcut” hogged a lot of potential new phone numbers that AT&T would need to meet that demand. So AT&T shut the service down in September 2007, securing 30,000 new numbers in Northern California alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://cdn.sfgate.com/blogs/sounds/sfgate/chroncast/2007/08/31/ChronRadio-Daniels-20070901-2.mp3\">San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Joanne Daniels\u003c/a> ahead of the line’s shutdown: “I feel like I’m fading away. I think it’s a sad thing because I think it’s filled a need for a lot of people that aren’t quite as modern as the trend is going.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a few, lesser-known time services \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/remember-when-you-could-call-the-time/488273/\">still in operation\u003c/a> all over the country. In fact, (415) POP-CORN will still get you the time and date in San Francisco, but it’s not the time lady — Joanne Daniels is retired and living in Atlanta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Why Doesn't PG&E Bury the Power Lines to Prevent Wildfires?",
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"content": "\u003cp>California has always had wildfires. Like earthquakes or drought, they’re part of living in this state. Lightning starts some of our wildfires, and careless people start others. But over the last several years, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11833283/deflect-delay-defer-decade-of-pge-wildfire-safety-pushback-preceded-disasters\">a lot of fires have been started by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)\u003c/a>, the power company serving 5.1 million households all over Central and Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In just two-and-a-half years the utility’s equipment started more than fifteen-hundred fires, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-sparked-at-least-1-500-california-fires-now-the-utility-faces-collapse-11547410768\">Wall Street Journal investigation found\u003c/a>. Some of those were small, but others were deadly, like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11705243/california-wildfires-what-you-need-to-know\">2018 Camp Fire\u003c/a>, which burned the town of Paradise to the ground and killed\u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2018/11/8/camp-fire/\"> 85 people\u003c/a>. The Camp Fire caused about $16.5 billion in damages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E didn’t pay for all of that, but facing billions in claims from fire victims the company declared bankruptcy in 2019, an expensive process that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11791486/wall-street-could-make-1-billion-off-pges-bankruptcy-and-ratepayers-are-on-the-hook\">funneled huge amounts of cash to lawyers and Wall Street investors\u003c/a> without fundamentally changing the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Sally Swope has been watching all this news unfold. It sparked a question: “I wanted to know why PG&E doesn’t just bury their lines. There are so many [law]suits against them, and it seems like it would be more economical if they just buried their lines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re going to answer Sally’s question and explore a few other common questions people have about how PG&E got so big and what can be done to make their system safer.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Why Not Put All Power Lines Underground?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11851440\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11851440\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-1020x680.jpg\" alt=\"A PG&E contractor works on utility poles along Highway 128 near Geyserville, California on October 31, 2019. \" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A PG&E contractor works on utility poles along Highway 128 near Geyserville, California on October 31, 2019. \u003ccite>(PHILIP PACHECO/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Put-PG-E-s-power-lines-underground-It-can-be-14565060.php\">Undergrounding power lines is a popular idea\u003c/a>. It would look nicer, and at first glance it seems like a sensible way to prevent fires that start when tree branches fall on power lines. But it’s not as simple as it seems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have kind of a tradeoff to look at,” says UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Sascha von Meier. “When power lines are underground, if and when something does go wrong, it’s a lot harder to find where the problem is and go fix it. So that then takes longer, and costs more to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Underground lines can be affected by earthquakes or malfunction for other reasons. PG&E would have to dig up the street to find and fix the problem. Getting them underground in the first place is also expensive. PG&E estimates it costs $3 million dollars per circuit mile, and the company has over \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-pge/company-information/profile/profile.page\">100,000 miles of distribution and transmission lines.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It quickly becomes prohibitively expensive,” says Nathaniel Skinner, safety program expert at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.gov/\">CPUC Public Advocates Office\u003c/a>. “People are paying a lot for their electricity service right now. There’s a lot of people who can’t afford the utility bills. At what point does electricity service become unaffordable? And that starts to introduce all sorts of health and safety impacts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skinner estimates that if PG&E were to bury only its overhead lines in high fire threat areas it would cost ratepayers anywhere between $55 billion to $144 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, Skinner says, all of PG&E’s current assets are worth about $50 billion. So putting just the most fire prone lines underground would cost as much or more than PG&E is worth. And, even if we assume the low end of the range, the average ratepayer could pay eight-times as much per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost is a big reason why utilities are much more likely to put power lines underground in a new development, especially if the city or homeowners help shoulder the cost. PG&E has also put power lines underground in pilot projects, or after catastrophes. When the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11139448/lessons-from-the-east-bay-hills-fire-25-years-later\">Oakland Hills fire\u003c/a> devastated the East Bay in 1991, homeowners pushed PG&E to rebuild the distribution network underground. Similar pressure from residents in Paradise prompted PG&E to commit to undergrounding 200 miles of power lines in and around the town as it rebuilds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using PG&E’s $3 million per mile estimate, a rough back-of-the napkin calculation says the 200 miles around Paradise will cost about $460 million. A hefty price tag. But it’s still a bargain when you realize the Camp Fire caused about \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfire-was-world-s-costliest-natural-disaster-2018-insurer-n956376\">$16.5 billion dollars in damages\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Are There Cheaper Ways To Make the Power Grid Safer?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11851447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11851447\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-1020x746.jpg\" alt=\"A PG&E worker cuts damaged power lines on November 13, 2018.\" width=\"640\" height=\"468\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-1020x746.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-800x585.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-160x117.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-1536x1124.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A PG&E worker cuts damaged power lines on November 13, 2018. \u003ccite>(Anne Wernikoff/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Beyond burying power lines, there are other ways to prevent wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1) Keep better records.\u003c/strong> The power grid is old and needs constant maintenance. \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-wildfires-and-didnt-fix-them-11562768885\">PG&E hasn’t replaced some of its infrastructure\u003c/a> in over a hundred years, part of the reason it has had so many \u003ca href=\"https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/30/CFReport/PGE-THE-CAMP-FIRE-PUBLIC-REPORT.pdf?ver=2020-06-15-190515-977\">equipment failures\u003c/a>. Better record keeping and a more robust inspection and quality control program would go a long way, some say. Without good records, PG&E won’t know where there are safety risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2) Upgrade key equipment.\u003c/strong> Power is brought into populated areas on long, high voltage transmission lines, which are usually not insulated. That means a fallen tree or branch that touches the line can easily ignite a fire. Replacing those exposed wires with what’s called covered conductor wire would make the system safer. More cameras and weather monitoring technology would also help PG&E predict fire danger better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3) Cut back vegetation.\u003c/strong> PG&E is also responsible for trimming vegetation around its lines to reduce the likelihood of it brushing up against live wires. Skinner points out often people push back against this work for aesthetic reasons, but it’s very important. That’s why he’s concerned that despite submitting plans for increased inspections and tree trimming, PG&E \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-monitor-suggests-tree-trimming-program-15662342.php\">may be rushing to fill quotas instead of doing work in the most fire-prone areas\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/WfZ7QyrlEjQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CPUC has hired more people to inspect the work the utilities say they’ve done. A federal monitor is also watching PG&E. But there are still signs that PG&E’s safety program has problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2019 Kincade fire \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/11163/kincadefire_2019_cause.pdf\">was started by a PG&E line\u003c/a> that the company told regulators was \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20190619_pge_provides_update_on_enhanced_safety_inspections_and_repairs_made_to_electric_infrastructure_in_high-fire_threat_areas\">recently inspected\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so it raises the question of how are things getting missed when these are some of the areas where PG&E, coming out of the [20]17 and [20]18 fires, is saying that they’re doing the best work,” Skinner says. “So there’s clearly still a long road ahead for PG&E.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Could New Technologies Change the Paradigm?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Sascha von Meier is excited about the promise of a “smarter grid,” one where utilities could control the component parts better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sascha von Meier has experimented with what are known as “synchrophasors,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1949483/one-way-california-can-avoid-more-blackouts-make-power-lines-smarter\">sensors on the lines that detect small and large power disturbances\u003c/a>. So, for example, a tree branch might bump up against an exposed line a dozen times before finally igniting a fire. The synchrophasors would sense and record that data, giving the utility precise information about problematic areas and equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This kind of technology is already in use or being tested. San Diego Gas and Electric has deployed sensors on its distribution lines that can detect if a line breaks and shut off power instantly, before the severed wire touches the ground. PG&E tested similar technology in Napa Valley and found it useful for detecting equipment that needed replacing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>von Meier says a smarter grid would allow utilities to operate the system in fundamentally different ways. It would make it easier, for example, to integrate rooftop solar generation into the mix, to deal with electric vehicle charging and to potentially create microgrids that could generate and store power independently during a power shutoff.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How Did PG&E Get So Big?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/HISTORY-Utility-Giant-Grew-from-Gold-Rush-Roots-2934359.php\">PG&E’s history\u003c/a> goes back to just after the Gold Rush, when California’s population first boomed. At the time, electricity generation was extremely local, just a small generator hooked up to a few poles and wires running into a building. Over time, companies realized it was more efficient to team up, generate power further away, and bring it to cities on long transmission lines. As power companies consolidated throughout the 20th century, PG&E kept getting bigger and bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s something that grew kind of organically over the course of decades,” says Steve Weissman, a UC Berkeley public policy professor and former administrative law judge at the CPUC. “As a result of that, this is a company that really never got to a point where it stepped back and asked itself, ‘Have we become too big for our current form of management?’ [They haven’t had to] ask a lot of self-reflective questions about the most useful way to make sure the service is safe, that it’s environmentally sensitive, that it’s reliable and that it’s cheap.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That lack of foresight may help explain why PG&E has such a bad track record when it comes to safety. When one of PG&E’s gas pipelines exploded in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10667274/five-years-after-deadly-san-bruno-explosion-are-we-safer\">San Bruno in 2010\u003c/a> it killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. There was a visible crack in a line, something PG&E quality control failed to find. Similar story with the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise and killed 85 people — old and poorly maintained PG&E equipment was at fault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a company that has not had an instinct to put safeguards in place … to make sure people are looking for problems and trying to identify them and overcome them early,” Weissman says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Weissman doesn’t put all the blame on the company. He says regulators are also at fault. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a national backlash against government regulation. Voters signaled they felt companies should be left alone to run their businesses without government meddling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The notion was that these big companies care a lot about safety,” Weissman says. “And so what the commission wanted to do was to step back and let the company take care of its system. And with the understanding that if problems came up, the company would come and report those problems to the regulators.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That “light touch” approach meant the CPUC made rules and trusted the utilities to implement them. They didn’t always check to make sure safety improvements and inspections were actually getting done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now the regulators, I think, have a very different approach and a very different attitude about overseeing what these companies are doing,” Weissman says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California has always had wildfires. Like earthquakes or drought, they’re part of living in this state. Lightning starts some of our wildfires, and careless people start others. But over the last several years, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11833283/deflect-delay-defer-decade-of-pge-wildfire-safety-pushback-preceded-disasters\">a lot of fires have been started by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)\u003c/a>, the power company serving 5.1 million households all over Central and Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In just two-and-a-half years the utility’s equipment started more than fifteen-hundred fires, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-sparked-at-least-1-500-california-fires-now-the-utility-faces-collapse-11547410768\">Wall Street Journal investigation found\u003c/a>. Some of those were small, but others were deadly, like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11705243/california-wildfires-what-you-need-to-know\">2018 Camp Fire\u003c/a>, which burned the town of Paradise to the ground and killed\u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2018/11/8/camp-fire/\"> 85 people\u003c/a>. The Camp Fire caused about $16.5 billion in damages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E didn’t pay for all of that, but facing billions in claims from fire victims the company declared bankruptcy in 2019, an expensive process that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11791486/wall-street-could-make-1-billion-off-pges-bankruptcy-and-ratepayers-are-on-the-hook\">funneled huge amounts of cash to lawyers and Wall Street investors\u003c/a> without fundamentally changing the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Sally Swope has been watching all this news unfold. It sparked a question: “I wanted to know why PG&E doesn’t just bury their lines. There are so many [law]suits against them, and it seems like it would be more economical if they just buried their lines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re going to answer Sally’s question and explore a few other common questions people have about how PG&E got so big and what can be done to make their system safer.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Why Not Put All Power Lines Underground?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11851440\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11851440\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-1020x680.jpg\" alt=\"A PG&E contractor works on utility poles along Highway 128 near Geyserville, California on October 31, 2019. \" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines2.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A PG&E contractor works on utility poles along Highway 128 near Geyserville, California on October 31, 2019. \u003ccite>(PHILIP PACHECO/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Put-PG-E-s-power-lines-underground-It-can-be-14565060.php\">Undergrounding power lines is a popular idea\u003c/a>. It would look nicer, and at first glance it seems like a sensible way to prevent fires that start when tree branches fall on power lines. But it’s not as simple as it seems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have kind of a tradeoff to look at,” says UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Sascha von Meier. “When power lines are underground, if and when something does go wrong, it’s a lot harder to find where the problem is and go fix it. So that then takes longer, and costs more to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Underground lines can be affected by earthquakes or malfunction for other reasons. PG&E would have to dig up the street to find and fix the problem. Getting them underground in the first place is also expensive. PG&E estimates it costs $3 million dollars per circuit mile, and the company has over \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-pge/company-information/profile/profile.page\">100,000 miles of distribution and transmission lines.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It quickly becomes prohibitively expensive,” says Nathaniel Skinner, safety program expert at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.gov/\">CPUC Public Advocates Office\u003c/a>. “People are paying a lot for their electricity service right now. There’s a lot of people who can’t afford the utility bills. At what point does electricity service become unaffordable? And that starts to introduce all sorts of health and safety impacts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skinner estimates that if PG&E were to bury only its overhead lines in high fire threat areas it would cost ratepayers anywhere between $55 billion to $144 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, Skinner says, all of PG&E’s current assets are worth about $50 billion. So putting just the most fire prone lines underground would cost as much or more than PG&E is worth. And, even if we assume the low end of the range, the average ratepayer could pay eight-times as much per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost is a big reason why utilities are much more likely to put power lines underground in a new development, especially if the city or homeowners help shoulder the cost. PG&E has also put power lines underground in pilot projects, or after catastrophes. When the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11139448/lessons-from-the-east-bay-hills-fire-25-years-later\">Oakland Hills fire\u003c/a> devastated the East Bay in 1991, homeowners pushed PG&E to rebuild the distribution network underground. Similar pressure from residents in Paradise prompted PG&E to commit to undergrounding 200 miles of power lines in and around the town as it rebuilds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using PG&E’s $3 million per mile estimate, a rough back-of-the napkin calculation says the 200 miles around Paradise will cost about $460 million. A hefty price tag. But it’s still a bargain when you realize the Camp Fire caused about \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfire-was-world-s-costliest-natural-disaster-2018-insurer-n956376\">$16.5 billion dollars in damages\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Are There Cheaper Ways To Make the Power Grid Safer?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11851447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11851447\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-1020x746.jpg\" alt=\"A PG&E worker cuts damaged power lines on November 13, 2018.\" width=\"640\" height=\"468\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-1020x746.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-800x585.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-160x117.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3-1536x1124.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/underground-PGE-lines3.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A PG&E worker cuts damaged power lines on November 13, 2018. \u003ccite>(Anne Wernikoff/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Beyond burying power lines, there are other ways to prevent wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1) Keep better records.\u003c/strong> The power grid is old and needs constant maintenance. \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-wildfires-and-didnt-fix-them-11562768885\">PG&E hasn’t replaced some of its infrastructure\u003c/a> in over a hundred years, part of the reason it has had so many \u003ca href=\"https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/30/CFReport/PGE-THE-CAMP-FIRE-PUBLIC-REPORT.pdf?ver=2020-06-15-190515-977\">equipment failures\u003c/a>. Better record keeping and a more robust inspection and quality control program would go a long way, some say. Without good records, PG&E won’t know where there are safety risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2) Upgrade key equipment.\u003c/strong> Power is brought into populated areas on long, high voltage transmission lines, which are usually not insulated. That means a fallen tree or branch that touches the line can easily ignite a fire. Replacing those exposed wires with what’s called covered conductor wire would make the system safer. More cameras and weather monitoring technology would also help PG&E predict fire danger better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3) Cut back vegetation.\u003c/strong> PG&E is also responsible for trimming vegetation around its lines to reduce the likelihood of it brushing up against live wires. Skinner points out often people push back against this work for aesthetic reasons, but it’s very important. That’s why he’s concerned that despite submitting plans for increased inspections and tree trimming, PG&E \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-monitor-suggests-tree-trimming-program-15662342.php\">may be rushing to fill quotas instead of doing work in the most fire-prone areas\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/WfZ7QyrlEjQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/WfZ7QyrlEjQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The CPUC has hired more people to inspect the work the utilities say they’ve done. A federal monitor is also watching PG&E. But there are still signs that PG&E’s safety program has problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2019 Kincade fire \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/11163/kincadefire_2019_cause.pdf\">was started by a PG&E line\u003c/a> that the company told regulators was \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20190619_pge_provides_update_on_enhanced_safety_inspections_and_repairs_made_to_electric_infrastructure_in_high-fire_threat_areas\">recently inspected\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so it raises the question of how are things getting missed when these are some of the areas where PG&E, coming out of the [20]17 and [20]18 fires, is saying that they’re doing the best work,” Skinner says. “So there’s clearly still a long road ahead for PG&E.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Could New Technologies Change the Paradigm?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Sascha von Meier is excited about the promise of a “smarter grid,” one where utilities could control the component parts better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sascha von Meier has experimented with what are known as “synchrophasors,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1949483/one-way-california-can-avoid-more-blackouts-make-power-lines-smarter\">sensors on the lines that detect small and large power disturbances\u003c/a>. So, for example, a tree branch might bump up against an exposed line a dozen times before finally igniting a fire. The synchrophasors would sense and record that data, giving the utility precise information about problematic areas and equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This kind of technology is already in use or being tested. San Diego Gas and Electric has deployed sensors on its distribution lines that can detect if a line breaks and shut off power instantly, before the severed wire touches the ground. PG&E tested similar technology in Napa Valley and found it useful for detecting equipment that needed replacing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>von Meier says a smarter grid would allow utilities to operate the system in fundamentally different ways. It would make it easier, for example, to integrate rooftop solar generation into the mix, to deal with electric vehicle charging and to potentially create microgrids that could generate and store power independently during a power shutoff.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How Did PG&E Get So Big?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/HISTORY-Utility-Giant-Grew-from-Gold-Rush-Roots-2934359.php\">PG&E’s history\u003c/a> goes back to just after the Gold Rush, when California’s population first boomed. At the time, electricity generation was extremely local, just a small generator hooked up to a few poles and wires running into a building. Over time, companies realized it was more efficient to team up, generate power further away, and bring it to cities on long transmission lines. As power companies consolidated throughout the 20th century, PG&E kept getting bigger and bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s something that grew kind of organically over the course of decades,” says Steve Weissman, a UC Berkeley public policy professor and former administrative law judge at the CPUC. “As a result of that, this is a company that really never got to a point where it stepped back and asked itself, ‘Have we become too big for our current form of management?’ [They haven’t had to] ask a lot of self-reflective questions about the most useful way to make sure the service is safe, that it’s environmentally sensitive, that it’s reliable and that it’s cheap.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That lack of foresight may help explain why PG&E has such a bad track record when it comes to safety. When one of PG&E’s gas pipelines exploded in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10667274/five-years-after-deadly-san-bruno-explosion-are-we-safer\">San Bruno in 2010\u003c/a> it killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. There was a visible crack in a line, something PG&E quality control failed to find. Similar story with the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise and killed 85 people — old and poorly maintained PG&E equipment was at fault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a company that has not had an instinct to put safeguards in place … to make sure people are looking for problems and trying to identify them and overcome them early,” Weissman says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Weissman doesn’t put all the blame on the company. He says regulators are also at fault. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a national backlash against government regulation. Voters signaled they felt companies should be left alone to run their businesses without government meddling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The notion was that these big companies care a lot about safety,” Weissman says. “And so what the commission wanted to do was to step back and let the company take care of its system. And with the understanding that if problems came up, the company would come and report those problems to the regulators.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That “light touch” approach meant the CPUC made rules and trusted the utilities to implement them. They didn’t always check to make sure safety improvements and inspections were actually getting done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now the regulators, I think, have a very different approach and a very different attitude about overseeing what these companies are doing,” Weissman says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> listener Erin Al Gwaiz wrote us asking to learn more about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s time spent in San Francisco and their lasting impact on the arts scene here. This story originally ran on Dec. 3, 2020.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese days, Frida Kahlo’s image is all around us. Her iconic eyebrows and piercing gaze have been immortalized on T-shirts, tote bags and tequila bottles. There’s even a \u003ca href=\"https://barbie.mattel.com/shop/en-us/ba/inspiring-women-series/barbie-inspiring-women-series-frida-kahlo-doll-fjh65\">Frida Barbie doll\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before her image became so commercialized and ubiquitous, Kahlo was just a budding artist waiting for her big break. Married to the older and already famous artist Diego Rivera, Kahlo was determined to make a name for herself, and her time in San Francisco would help her do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Frida and Diego Come to San Francisco\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>It was a place she called “the city of the world,” and she often dreamed of it as a teenager, says University of San Francisco professor and author of \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://fridakahlojourney.com/index.html\">Frida in America\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, Celia Stahr. As she and Rivera make their way to San Francisco in 1930, she doodles a portrait of herself set against a backdrop of how she imagined the city to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they get to San Francisco, she shows it to Diego and he just marvels at how much it looks like what they’re seeing before them, kind of like she already knew what it was going to look like even though she’d never been [here],” says Stahr. “So there’s a sense of destiny that she was supposed to come here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact that it was the Great Depression and paid work opportunities for American artists were scarce, Rivera landed two prestigious mural commissions: one at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfai.edu/about-sfai/diego-rivera-mural\">San Francisco Art Institute\u003c/a> and another at the Pacific Stock Exchange building, now called the City Club of San Francisco. His patrons hoped that Rivera’s fame would bring prestige to the local art scene and help jump-start a mural movement in the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Rivera was a controversial pick for the Stock Exchange. As a member of the Mexican Communist Party, Rivera imbued his politics in his large-scale public murals. Many San Francisco artists were outraged that an outspoken communist would paint in the city’s “citadel of capitalism” and took to the newspaper to express their opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848996\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 383px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848996 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAK-0313.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAK-0313.jpg 383w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAK-0313-160x167.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 383px) 100vw, 383px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivera at work on the ‘Allegory of California’ mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange. \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I believe he is the greatest living artist in the world and we would do well to have an example of his work in a public building in San Francisco. But he is not the man for the Stock Exchange building,” argued painter Maynard Dixon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Where his critics saw offense, his supporters saw beauty. Rivera’s masterful use of the fresco technique, applying pigment to wet plaster, fascinated local artists who eagerly wanted to learn the craft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one of the many letters Kahlo wrote to her family about the Bay Area, she notes the nonstop attention Rivera attracted. “The poor guy can’t even go to the bathroom in peace because they’re bugging him all day,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 23-year-old Kahlo had only been painting for five years, and the local press merely regarded her as the wife of the famous Mexican muralist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She hasn’t had that much experience. She hasn’t really found her artistic voice quite yet,” explains Celia Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Soirees, Sketching and Sightseeing\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In their new home at 716 Montgomery St., not far from North Beach and Chinatown, Kahlo was surrounded by artists who energized her creative process, says Stahr. For six months, the couple stayed at the studio of Rivera’s old classmate and friend, sculptor Ralph Stackpole, who introduced them to an eclectic group of writers, painters and photographers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848997\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848997 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut-800x820.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"820\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut-800x820.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut-160x164.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut.jpg 858w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivera and Kahlo stay at the studio of sculptor Ralph Stackpole while living in San Francisco between 1930-1931. \u003ccite>(Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among the many Bay Area-based artists they befriended included Dorothea Lange and her husband Maynard Dixon (who had warmed to Rivera by this point).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The foursome talked art, politics, and the bleak times,” writes Stahr. “Dorothea’s need to respond to these desperate times appealed to Frida and Diego’s working-class sympathies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of Kahlo’s routine was getting together with \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele_de_Lappe\">Pele deLappe\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucile_Blanch\">Lucile Blanch\u003c/a> to make art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would draw these composite drawings where each one would start on a particular sheet of paper and then trade them off and pass them around,” recalled deLappe in an interview \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/pele-frieda\">recorded in 2001\u003c/a>. “[The sketches] were usually very obscene or horrendous and bloody or sensuous in some way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Art historian Celia Stahr says these hangouts were helpful for Kahlo’s artistic development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she and Rivera weren’t busy painting, they made plenty of time for sightseeing around San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the Russia colony they dress as they do in Russia, and the girls dance on the hills. The Greek colony is also very interesting and the Japanese, but most of all the Chinese,” Frida wrote in a letter to her mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She just gushes about Chinatown and she writes about it quite a bit. It reminded her very much, she said, of home. She writes about how she’s convinced that the Mexican people and the Chinese people are connected to one another,” says Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Letters detail how the firecrackers during Chinese New Year festivities reminded Kahlo of street fairs back in Mexico. Silks and other handmade fabrics sold in the shops of Chinatown also caught her eye. She purchased a few to embellish her red leather boots and make into Mexican-style skirts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kahlo’s style definitely caught the attention of San Franciscans. Her indigenous dress, influenced by the Zapotec women of Tehuantepec, stirred so much excitement on the streets of San Francisco that she reportedly stopped traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848998\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 345px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848998 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAF-0633.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"345\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAF-0633.jpg 345w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAF-0633-160x186.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 345px) 100vw, 345px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kahlo painting a portrait of Mrs. Jean Wight in San Francisco \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The gringas seem to like me a lot and they are really impressed by all the dresses and rebozos I brought with me, they gape at the jade necklaces and all the painters want me to model for the portraits,” Kahlo wrote to her mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her bold look catches the attention of well-known photographers Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston, who ask her to pose for them in San Francisco. Since Kahlo was the daughter of a photographer, she was a natural in front of the camera. A local writer also pens a play about her and Rivera called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.si.edu/object/AAADCD_item_766\">The Queen of Montgomery Street\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This recognition adds to Frida’s growing artist persona and helped plant the seeds for her eventual rise to icon status.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But underneath her colorful garments, Kahlo’s body ached. At 18 she had suffered a horrific street car accident that severely damaged most of her body and exacerbated the chronic pain of her polio leg. Her long walks around San Francisco began to take a toll on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>New Friends, New Places and New Ideas\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>That changed when she met \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/portrait-of-dr-leo-eloesser-1931\">Dr. Leo Eloesser\u003c/a>, who would ultimately have a big impact on her life. Eloesser was the chief of thoracic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital and he went above and beyond to treat Kahlo’s foot and leg pain, even showing up at her doorstep when she’d miss her appointments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond his thorough care, he connected with Kahlo and Rivera on a creative level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Leo was a musician. He played viola and he would have weekly soirees at his flat. And so he was a doctor, but you could say he had the soul of an artist,” said Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The three of them even traveled around Northern California together. One time, Eloesser took Kahlo on her first plane ride. They flew from Oakland to Sacramento to meet up with Rivera who was busy sketching mines and dredgers for his \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/diego-rivera/allegory-of-california-1931\">“Allegory of California” \u003c/a>mural. One of these excursions proved to be a major turning point for Kahlo’s art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a trip to Santa Rosa, Rivera and Kahlo visited the garden of the famous horticulturist Luther Burbank, known as “the wizard of horticulture.” He developed more than 800 varieties of fruits, vegetables and plants by cross breeding two kinds together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11849000\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11849000 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1020x1424.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"893\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1020x1424.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-800x1117.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-160x223.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1100x1536.jpg 1100w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1467x2048.jpg 1467w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-scaled.jpg 1833w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at the garden of Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa \u003ccite>(Luther Burbank Home & Gardens Collection--Sonoma County Library Digital Collections)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Seeing how Burbank literally fused together two organisms to create something brand new mesmerized Kahlo. She applies Burbank’s hybrid technique to her art, and what comes out is a \u003ca href=\"https://artsandculture.google.com/story/portrait-of-luther-burbank/fwJiOmp7mtPdLA\">portrait of the horticulturist\u003c/a> as part human and part tree trunk with roots connecting to his buried corpse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[emailsignup newslettername=\"baycurious\" align=\"right\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is really her first major breakthrough creatively, in terms of creating a new style that was very different from what she’d been working on,” explains Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From this point on, Kahlo continued to play with imagery of \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/roots-1943\">roots\u003c/a>, plants and \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/the-wounded-deer-1946\">hybrid bodies\u003c/a> to portray themes of life and death. It’s a duality that was already part of her Mexican upbringing, says Stahr, but a visual style that was honed here in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Rivera completed his two murals in 1931, the couple briefly went back to Mexico before returning to the U.S. to paint in New York City and Detroit. But it wouldn’t be the last time they visited San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Frida and Diego Take on San Francisco a Second Time\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>When they return a decade later, Kahlo and Rivera are divorced, and they arrive following dramatic circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First came Rivera, who fled Mexican authorities who wanted to question him about the attempted assassination of his former friend and exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kahlo wasn’t so lucky. Months later, when Trotsky was actually assassinated, the police detained her for questioning, believing she was an accomplice. (Years prior, she and Rivera offered their Casa Azul to Trotsky and his wife for political asylum). The brief experience in jail left her traumatized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was in a terrible emotional state. Physically, she wasn’t doing well. She complained of back and leg pain,” says Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11849008\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 599px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11849008 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAA-AAA_packemmy_24693-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"599\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAA-AAA_packemmy_24693-1.jpg 599w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAA-AAA_packemmy_24693-1-160x342.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A letter Kahlo wrote to Rivera while hospitalized at St. Luke’s \u003ccite>(Archives of American Art)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In response, her doctors in Mexico advised her to undergo more surgeries. But her friend and trusted doctor, Leo Eloesser, didn’t agree. He felt her emotional health needed tending to, so he prescribed her a better diet, less drinking and advised her to reconcile with Rivera in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Eloesser] played this important role in their marriage. He was really the go between with their relationship,” explains Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kahlo took his advice and when she arrived, she resided with Rivera at 42 Calhoun Terrace in Telegraph Hill before letting Eloesser admit her to St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Rivera was busy working on his \u003ca href=\"https://www.ccsf.edu/campus-life/arts-ccsf/pan-american-unity-mural\">largest single standing mural\u003c/a>, known as the “Pan American Unity” mural. For months he and his assistants painted in front of a public audience at Treasure Island during the Golden Gate International Exposition. (\u003ca href=\"https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/187038\">Watch this video clip\u003c/a> of Rivera and his team painting at Treasure Island.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once again, Rivera’s art sparked controversy. Not because he painted his communist politics but because he portrayed the cruelty of Nazi Germany. It was his way of urging the U.S. to intervene in World War II and protect all of the Americas, including Mexico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Kahlo was discharged from the hospital and felt physically and emotionally stronger, she and Rivera remarried at San Francisco City Hall on Rivera’s 54th birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Oakland Tribune snaps a photograph of the couple and this time acknowledges Kahlo as “an artist in her own right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848999\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 477px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11848999\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAD-2975.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"477\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAD-2975.jpg 477w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAD-2975-160x134.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 477px) 100vw, 477px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kahlo and Rivera remarry at San Francisco City Hall in 1940 \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“By 1940 she has achieved quite a bit. You might say she’s at the height of her career at that time,” says Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her art was exhibited at the World’s Fair on Treasure Island, the Legion of Honor and landed in the hands of an important collector, Albert Bender, who was affiliated with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — all things that helped give Kahlo wider exposure around the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have no idea how marvelous the city is, it helped me a lot to come because it opened my eyes and I’ve seen lots of swell new things,” wrote Kahlo to a friend.*\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Legacy That Keeps Evolving\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As much as the Bay Area provided Kahlo and Rivera a platform to create and thrive, the couple also gave San Francisco a lasting blueprint for creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In fact, Coit Tower and the murals there emerge because of Diego’s influence,” says Stahr. Some of the Coit Tower muralists actually trained under Rivera, following in his footsteps by painting large-scale fresco murals that focus on workers and class issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His work also emboldened muralists at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/beach-chalet-wpa-murals\">Beach Chalet\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=UCSF%27s_Depression-Era_Medical_History_Murals\">UCSF\u003c/a>. Ultimately, his patron’s desire for a mural movement to take off in San Francisco came to fruition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848992\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848992 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut-800x1167.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1167\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut-800x1167.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut-160x233.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut.jpg 941w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Starting in the 1970s, exhibits and events at La Galería de la Raza in the Mission District helped generate interest and appreciation for Kahlo’s life. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Rio Yañez)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kahlo’s body of work also had a monumental impact on Bay Area artists, starting in the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As many Chicanos and Latinos continued the fight for civil rights and representation, local artists like \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalia_Mesa-Bains\">Amalia Mesa-Bains\u003c/a> turned to Kahlo and Rivera’s art as a source of empowerment and cultural pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had experienced racism and discrimination and so we needed to reclaim our sense of belonging. Frida and Diego became in many ways models for us, that an artist could be at the same time political and cultural,” says Mesa-Bains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848993\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 328px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848993\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46088_1RZDDcSJ-qut-160x209.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"429\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46088_1RZDDcSJ-qut-160x209.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46088_1RZDDcSJ-qut.jpg 791w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 328px) 100vw, 328px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poster designed by Rupert Garcia for the seminal 1978 exhibition. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Rio Yañez)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mesa-Bains and other Chicana/o artists were so moved by Kahlo’s complicated and bold art that they curated an exhibition called “Homenaje a Frida Kahlo” at the\u003ca href=\"http://www.galeriadelaraza.org/\"> Galería de la Raza\u003c/a> in 1978.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Artists created works inspired by Kahlo and those who personally knew the couple in San Francisco, such as \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Lou_Packard\">Emmy Lou Packard\u003c/a>, were invited to share memories of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This exhibit came at a time when there was very little published about Kahlo’s life and work, so it was seminal to introducing Kahlo to a wider audience before Frida-mania ensued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, local artists continue to pay tribute to the two Mexican artists. Rio Yañez’s series, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/elrio/sets/72157594566662293/\">Ghetto Frida\u003c/a>,” imagines Kahlo as a sort of comic book character hanging out at various spots in the pre-gentrified Mission District. And the political ethos of street art in the Bay hearkens back to Rivera’s masterpieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, San Francisco city officials renamed a street after Frida Kahlo in front of City College of San Francisco’s main campus, also the permanent home of Diego Rivera’s “\u003ca href=\"https://riveramural.org/\">Pan American Unity” mural\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In what Kahlo called the “city of the world” the lasting brush strokes of Mexico’s most known artists are as vibrant as ever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848991\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848991 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In 2009, Rio Yañez created Ghetto Frida’s ‘Mission Memories’ to pay tribute to the iconic artist and favorite spots growing up in the Mission district. \u003ccite>(Rio Yañez)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The translated quotes from Kahlo’s letters to her family that appear in this article have been sourced from Celia Stahr’s book, “\u003ca href=\"https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250113399\">Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist\u003c/a>.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>* Letter to Kahlos’s friend appears in Frida by Frida collected by Raquel Tibol\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> listener Erin Al Gwaiz wrote us asking to learn more about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s time spent in San Francisco and their lasting impact on the arts scene here. This story originally ran on Dec. 3, 2020.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hese days, Frida Kahlo’s image is all around us. Her iconic eyebrows and piercing gaze have been immortalized on T-shirts, tote bags and tequila bottles. There’s even a \u003ca href=\"https://barbie.mattel.com/shop/en-us/ba/inspiring-women-series/barbie-inspiring-women-series-frida-kahlo-doll-fjh65\">Frida Barbie doll\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before her image became so commercialized and ubiquitous, Kahlo was just a budding artist waiting for her big break. Married to the older and already famous artist Diego Rivera, Kahlo was determined to make a name for herself, and her time in San Francisco would help her do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Frida and Diego Come to San Francisco\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>It was a place she called “the city of the world,” and she often dreamed of it as a teenager, says University of San Francisco professor and author of \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://fridakahlojourney.com/index.html\">Frida in America\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, Celia Stahr. As she and Rivera make their way to San Francisco in 1930, she doodles a portrait of herself set against a backdrop of how she imagined the city to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they get to San Francisco, she shows it to Diego and he just marvels at how much it looks like what they’re seeing before them, kind of like she already knew what it was going to look like even though she’d never been [here],” says Stahr. “So there’s a sense of destiny that she was supposed to come here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact that it was the Great Depression and paid work opportunities for American artists were scarce, Rivera landed two prestigious mural commissions: one at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfai.edu/about-sfai/diego-rivera-mural\">San Francisco Art Institute\u003c/a> and another at the Pacific Stock Exchange building, now called the City Club of San Francisco. His patrons hoped that Rivera’s fame would bring prestige to the local art scene and help jump-start a mural movement in the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Rivera was a controversial pick for the Stock Exchange. As a member of the Mexican Communist Party, Rivera imbued his politics in his large-scale public murals. Many San Francisco artists were outraged that an outspoken communist would paint in the city’s “citadel of capitalism” and took to the newspaper to express their opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848996\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 383px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848996 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAK-0313.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAK-0313.jpg 383w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAK-0313-160x167.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 383px) 100vw, 383px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivera at work on the ‘Allegory of California’ mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange. \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I believe he is the greatest living artist in the world and we would do well to have an example of his work in a public building in San Francisco. But he is not the man for the Stock Exchange building,” argued painter Maynard Dixon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Where his critics saw offense, his supporters saw beauty. Rivera’s masterful use of the fresco technique, applying pigment to wet plaster, fascinated local artists who eagerly wanted to learn the craft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one of the many letters Kahlo wrote to her family about the Bay Area, she notes the nonstop attention Rivera attracted. “The poor guy can’t even go to the bathroom in peace because they’re bugging him all day,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 23-year-old Kahlo had only been painting for five years, and the local press merely regarded her as the wife of the famous Mexican muralist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She hasn’t had that much experience. She hasn’t really found her artistic voice quite yet,” explains Celia Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Soirees, Sketching and Sightseeing\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In their new home at 716 Montgomery St., not far from North Beach and Chinatown, Kahlo was surrounded by artists who energized her creative process, says Stahr. For six months, the couple stayed at the studio of Rivera’s old classmate and friend, sculptor Ralph Stackpole, who introduced them to an eclectic group of writers, painters and photographers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848997\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848997 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut-800x820.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"820\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut-800x820.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut-160x164.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46092_AAA-AAA_packemmy_65269-qut.jpg 858w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivera and Kahlo stay at the studio of sculptor Ralph Stackpole while living in San Francisco between 1930-1931. \u003ccite>(Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among the many Bay Area-based artists they befriended included Dorothea Lange and her husband Maynard Dixon (who had warmed to Rivera by this point).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The foursome talked art, politics, and the bleak times,” writes Stahr. “Dorothea’s need to respond to these desperate times appealed to Frida and Diego’s working-class sympathies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of Kahlo’s routine was getting together with \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele_de_Lappe\">Pele deLappe\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucile_Blanch\">Lucile Blanch\u003c/a> to make art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would draw these composite drawings where each one would start on a particular sheet of paper and then trade them off and pass them around,” recalled deLappe in an interview \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/pele-frieda\">recorded in 2001\u003c/a>. “[The sketches] were usually very obscene or horrendous and bloody or sensuous in some way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Art historian Celia Stahr says these hangouts were helpful for Kahlo’s artistic development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she and Rivera weren’t busy painting, they made plenty of time for sightseeing around San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the Russia colony they dress as they do in Russia, and the girls dance on the hills. The Greek colony is also very interesting and the Japanese, but most of all the Chinese,” Frida wrote in a letter to her mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She just gushes about Chinatown and she writes about it quite a bit. It reminded her very much, she said, of home. She writes about how she’s convinced that the Mexican people and the Chinese people are connected to one another,” says Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Letters detail how the firecrackers during Chinese New Year festivities reminded Kahlo of street fairs back in Mexico. Silks and other handmade fabrics sold in the shops of Chinatown also caught her eye. She purchased a few to embellish her red leather boots and make into Mexican-style skirts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kahlo’s style definitely caught the attention of San Franciscans. Her indigenous dress, influenced by the Zapotec women of Tehuantepec, stirred so much excitement on the streets of San Francisco that she reportedly stopped traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848998\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 345px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848998 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAF-0633.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"345\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAF-0633.jpg 345w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAF-0633-160x186.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 345px) 100vw, 345px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kahlo painting a portrait of Mrs. Jean Wight in San Francisco \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The gringas seem to like me a lot and they are really impressed by all the dresses and rebozos I brought with me, they gape at the jade necklaces and all the painters want me to model for the portraits,” Kahlo wrote to her mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her bold look catches the attention of well-known photographers Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston, who ask her to pose for them in San Francisco. Since Kahlo was the daughter of a photographer, she was a natural in front of the camera. A local writer also pens a play about her and Rivera called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.si.edu/object/AAADCD_item_766\">The Queen of Montgomery Street\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This recognition adds to Frida’s growing artist persona and helped plant the seeds for her eventual rise to icon status.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But underneath her colorful garments, Kahlo’s body ached. At 18 she had suffered a horrific street car accident that severely damaged most of her body and exacerbated the chronic pain of her polio leg. Her long walks around San Francisco began to take a toll on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>New Friends, New Places and New Ideas\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>That changed when she met \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/portrait-of-dr-leo-eloesser-1931\">Dr. Leo Eloesser\u003c/a>, who would ultimately have a big impact on her life. Eloesser was the chief of thoracic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital and he went above and beyond to treat Kahlo’s foot and leg pain, even showing up at her doorstep when she’d miss her appointments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond his thorough care, he connected with Kahlo and Rivera on a creative level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Leo was a musician. He played viola and he would have weekly soirees at his flat. And so he was a doctor, but you could say he had the soul of an artist,” said Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The three of them even traveled around Northern California together. One time, Eloesser took Kahlo on her first plane ride. They flew from Oakland to Sacramento to meet up with Rivera who was busy sketching mines and dredgers for his \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/diego-rivera/allegory-of-california-1931\">“Allegory of California” \u003c/a>mural. One of these excursions proved to be a major turning point for Kahlo’s art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a trip to Santa Rosa, Rivera and Kahlo visited the garden of the famous horticulturist Luther Burbank, known as “the wizard of horticulture.” He developed more than 800 varieties of fruits, vegetables and plants by cross breeding two kinds together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11849000\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11849000 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1020x1424.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"893\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1020x1424.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-800x1117.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-160x223.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1100x1536.jpg 1100w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-1467x2048.jpg 1467w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46089_castrbhg_pho_1178_01-qut-scaled.jpg 1833w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at the garden of Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa \u003ccite>(Luther Burbank Home & Gardens Collection--Sonoma County Library Digital Collections)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Seeing how Burbank literally fused together two organisms to create something brand new mesmerized Kahlo. She applies Burbank’s hybrid technique to her art, and what comes out is a \u003ca href=\"https://artsandculture.google.com/story/portrait-of-luther-burbank/fwJiOmp7mtPdLA\">portrait of the horticulturist\u003c/a> as part human and part tree trunk with roots connecting to his buried corpse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is really her first major breakthrough creatively, in terms of creating a new style that was very different from what she’d been working on,” explains Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From this point on, Kahlo continued to play with imagery of \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/roots-1943\">roots\u003c/a>, plants and \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/the-wounded-deer-1946\">hybrid bodies\u003c/a> to portray themes of life and death. It’s a duality that was already part of her Mexican upbringing, says Stahr, but a visual style that was honed here in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Rivera completed his two murals in 1931, the couple briefly went back to Mexico before returning to the U.S. to paint in New York City and Detroit. But it wouldn’t be the last time they visited San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Frida and Diego Take on San Francisco a Second Time\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>When they return a decade later, Kahlo and Rivera are divorced, and they arrive following dramatic circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First came Rivera, who fled Mexican authorities who wanted to question him about the attempted assassination of his former friend and exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kahlo wasn’t so lucky. Months later, when Trotsky was actually assassinated, the police detained her for questioning, believing she was an accomplice. (Years prior, she and Rivera offered their Casa Azul to Trotsky and his wife for political asylum). The brief experience in jail left her traumatized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was in a terrible emotional state. Physically, she wasn’t doing well. She complained of back and leg pain,” says Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11849008\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 599px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11849008 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAA-AAA_packemmy_24693-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"599\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAA-AAA_packemmy_24693-1.jpg 599w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAA-AAA_packemmy_24693-1-160x342.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A letter Kahlo wrote to Rivera while hospitalized at St. Luke’s \u003ccite>(Archives of American Art)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In response, her doctors in Mexico advised her to undergo more surgeries. But her friend and trusted doctor, Leo Eloesser, didn’t agree. He felt her emotional health needed tending to, so he prescribed her a better diet, less drinking and advised her to reconcile with Rivera in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Eloesser] played this important role in their marriage. He was really the go between with their relationship,” explains Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kahlo took his advice and when she arrived, she resided with Rivera at 42 Calhoun Terrace in Telegraph Hill before letting Eloesser admit her to St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Rivera was busy working on his \u003ca href=\"https://www.ccsf.edu/campus-life/arts-ccsf/pan-american-unity-mural\">largest single standing mural\u003c/a>, known as the “Pan American Unity” mural. For months he and his assistants painted in front of a public audience at Treasure Island during the Golden Gate International Exposition. (\u003ca href=\"https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/187038\">Watch this video clip\u003c/a> of Rivera and his team painting at Treasure Island.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once again, Rivera’s art sparked controversy. Not because he painted his communist politics but because he portrayed the cruelty of Nazi Germany. It was his way of urging the U.S. to intervene in World War II and protect all of the Americas, including Mexico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Kahlo was discharged from the hospital and felt physically and emotionally stronger, she and Rivera remarried at San Francisco City Hall on Rivera’s 54th birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Oakland Tribune snaps a photograph of the couple and this time acknowledges Kahlo as “an artist in her own right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848999\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 477px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11848999\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAD-2975.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"477\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAD-2975.jpg 477w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/AAD-2975-160x134.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 477px) 100vw, 477px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kahlo and Rivera remarry at San Francisco City Hall in 1940 \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“By 1940 she has achieved quite a bit. You might say she’s at the height of her career at that time,” says Stahr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her art was exhibited at the World’s Fair on Treasure Island, the Legion of Honor and landed in the hands of an important collector, Albert Bender, who was affiliated with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — all things that helped give Kahlo wider exposure around the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have no idea how marvelous the city is, it helped me a lot to come because it opened my eyes and I’ve seen lots of swell new things,” wrote Kahlo to a friend.*\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Legacy That Keeps Evolving\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As much as the Bay Area provided Kahlo and Rivera a platform to create and thrive, the couple also gave San Francisco a lasting blueprint for creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In fact, Coit Tower and the murals there emerge because of Diego’s influence,” says Stahr. Some of the Coit Tower muralists actually trained under Rivera, following in his footsteps by painting large-scale fresco murals that focus on workers and class issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His work also emboldened muralists at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/beach-chalet-wpa-murals\">Beach Chalet\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=UCSF%27s_Depression-Era_Medical_History_Murals\">UCSF\u003c/a>. Ultimately, his patron’s desire for a mural movement to take off in San Francisco came to fruition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848992\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848992 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut-800x1167.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1167\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut-800x1167.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut-160x233.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46091_s7uB6jO5-qut.jpg 941w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Starting in the 1970s, exhibits and events at La Galería de la Raza in the Mission District helped generate interest and appreciation for Kahlo’s life. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Rio Yañez)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kahlo’s body of work also had a monumental impact on Bay Area artists, starting in the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As many Chicanos and Latinos continued the fight for civil rights and representation, local artists like \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalia_Mesa-Bains\">Amalia Mesa-Bains\u003c/a> turned to Kahlo and Rivera’s art as a source of empowerment and cultural pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had experienced racism and discrimination and so we needed to reclaim our sense of belonging. Frida and Diego became in many ways models for us, that an artist could be at the same time political and cultural,” says Mesa-Bains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848993\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 328px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848993\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46088_1RZDDcSJ-qut-160x209.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"429\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46088_1RZDDcSJ-qut-160x209.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46088_1RZDDcSJ-qut.jpg 791w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 328px) 100vw, 328px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poster designed by Rupert Garcia for the seminal 1978 exhibition. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Rio Yañez)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mesa-Bains and other Chicana/o artists were so moved by Kahlo’s complicated and bold art that they curated an exhibition called “Homenaje a Frida Kahlo” at the\u003ca href=\"http://www.galeriadelaraza.org/\"> Galería de la Raza\u003c/a> in 1978.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Artists created works inspired by Kahlo and those who personally knew the couple in San Francisco, such as \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Lou_Packard\">Emmy Lou Packard\u003c/a>, were invited to share memories of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This exhibit came at a time when there was very little published about Kahlo’s life and work, so it was seminal to introducing Kahlo to a wider audience before Frida-mania ensued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, local artists continue to pay tribute to the two Mexican artists. Rio Yañez’s series, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/elrio/sets/72157594566662293/\">Ghetto Frida\u003c/a>,” imagines Kahlo as a sort of comic book character hanging out at various spots in the pre-gentrified Mission District. And the political ethos of street art in the Bay hearkens back to Rivera’s masterpieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, San Francisco city officials renamed a street after Frida Kahlo in front of City College of San Francisco’s main campus, also the permanent home of Diego Rivera’s “\u003ca href=\"https://riveramural.org/\">Pan American Unity” mural\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In what Kahlo called the “city of the world” the lasting brush strokes of Mexico’s most known artists are as vibrant as ever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848991\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11848991 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/RS46090_2009MissionMemories-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In 2009, Rio Yañez created Ghetto Frida’s ‘Mission Memories’ to pay tribute to the iconic artist and favorite spots growing up in the Mission district. \u003ccite>(Rio Yañez)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The translated quotes from Kahlo’s letters to her family that appear in this article have been sourced from Celia Stahr’s book, “\u003ca href=\"https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250113399\">Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist\u003c/a>.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>* Letter to Kahlos’s friend appears in Frida by Frida collected by Raquel Tibol\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How a Berkeley Police Chief Gave Rise to the Modern Force",
"headTitle": "How a Berkeley Police Chief Gave Rise to the Modern Force | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Conversations about reforming American policing have been percolating for years, but they came rushing to the forefront in May 2020, after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Protesters around the world took to the streets calling for justice and police accountability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The majority of protests were peaceful, and many police responded professionally. But there were also violent clashes. Multiple videos began circulating showing startling violence by police against protesters. Police armed with tasers, guns and batons, decked out in riot gear, bulletproof vests and helmets performed flanking maneuvers around crowds of screaming people. They beat unarmed civilians, fired tear gas at close range and shot people with bean bag bullets. All this only served to sharpen critiques of the police.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Blake Schmidt watched the violence unfold in our public squares and decided he needed to become more educated about the history of policing. While reading “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police\">The End of Policing\u003c/a>” by Alex Vitale, Blake came across a man from Berkeley named August Vollmer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s credited with being the ‘Father of Modern Policing,’ ” Blake said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That information stopped Blake in his tracks. He’s always thought of Berkeley as a liberal bubble, a place where progressive reforms start. Could Berkeley really be responsible for the type of militarization he was seeing on the streets?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seems like we put this militarization in front and we say we’re just going to squash it with tear gas and force. Clearly, there’s a lot of issues with doing that. And is that what Vollmer had envisioned?” Blake said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Making of August Vollmer\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847617\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2054px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11847617\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Photos of the 10 men who made up the Berkeley Police Department in 1905 when August Vollmer was elected town marshal.\" width=\"2054\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-scaled.jpg 2054w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-800x997.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1020x1271.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-160x199.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1232x1536.jpg 1232w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1643x2048.jpg 1643w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1920x2393.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2054px) 100vw, 2054px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Berkeley Police Department only had 10 men in 1905 when August Vollmer was elected town marshal. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/Historical_Unit.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>August Vollmer was born in New Orleans in 1876, but moved with his mother first to San Francisco and then to Berkeley in the 1890s. Towards the end of that decade, Vollmer went off to fight in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. It was there that he learned many of the tactics he would later apply to policing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Vollmer first returned from fighting overseas he wasn’t thinking about becoming a cop. He was a mail carrier in Berkeley. One day while he was delivering the mail, he noticed a runaway railroad car careening down Shattuck Avenue towards a station where a crowd of people were waiting. Vollmer ran, jumped on the renegade train car and stopped it before it crashed into the crowd. This feat won him some local press, and soon Berkeley’s elite were asking him to run for town marshal, the top cop at the time. He won the election and took office in 1905.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11847626\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1020x1279.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of August Vollmer sitting at his desk wearing a dark uniform and his chief's hat.\" width=\"640\" height=\"803\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1020x1279.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-800x1003.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-160x201.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1225x1536.jpg 1225w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1634x2048.jpg 1634w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1920x2407.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-scaled.jpg 2042w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August Vollmer wearing his chief’s hat. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This was a moment in the history of American policing called the \u003ca href=\"http://www.communitypolicing.com/history-of-policing\">Political Era\u003c/a>. Police were entirely beholden to whoever held political power. They did what the mayor told them, whether it was garnering good will by reuniting lost children with their parents, breaking up strikes or dragging people to the polls and telling them \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boss-tweed-delivered-to-authorities\">how to vote\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whole entire police departments are beholden to certain mayors or certain political parties,” said \u003ca href=\"https://gspp.berkeley.edu/directories/phd-students/perfecta-oxholm\">Perfecta Oxholm\u003c/a>, a public policy doctoral student at UC Berkeley who studies policing. “There’s a lot of corruption because they’re also not paid very well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police often took bribes. They weren’t very well educated. And they regularly beat people they detained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>August Vollmer didn’t stand for any of that when he took over Berkeley’s police force. He set about reforming his little Police Department 20 years before it was common, setting a new tone in policing that began to spread across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He institutes training academies,” Oxholm said. “He very much values formal education for police officers, whereas before, that wasn’t a part of the job requirements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847618\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1310px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11847618\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b-.jpg\" alt=\"August Vollmer pioneered regular training for his officers. Here police officers listen to a lecture held at Berkeley City Hall in 1935.\" width=\"1310\" height=\"978\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b-.jpg 1310w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b--800x597.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b--1020x761.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b--160x119.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1310px) 100vw, 1310px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August Vollmer pioneered regular training for his officers. Here police officers listen to a lecture held at Berkeley City Hall in 1935. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/Historical_Unit.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Vollmer recruited officers from UC Berkeley. Several of his proteges entered the force through this route and went on to become police chiefs in cities all over the country. One of them, \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/cabeuroh_000191/cabeuroh_000191_t01_a_access.mp3\">John Holstrom\u003c/a>, was interviewed by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/oral-history-center\">Oral History Center at the Bancroft Library\u003c/a> as part of \u003ca href=\"https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/rohoia/ucb/text/augustvollmer01vollrich.pdf\">a project on Vollmer’s legacy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let me just give you some things that I choose to call Vollmerisms,” Holstrom said. “ ‘Kill them with kindness.’ ‘Never hit a person, except in self-defense; if you do, you have just resigned.’ ‘There could be more fair justice distributed at the curbstone than in some of the highest courts.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Holstrom, and many other former colleagues, say Vollmer was an upright, moral person \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">whose aim was to make policing more respectable and professional\u003c/a>. How he did that, however, is where his legacy becomes murkier.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Influence of War\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After the American military drove the Spanish out of the Philippines in 1899, the U.S. tried to take over the Philippines for itself. But the Filipino people did not want to be colonial subjects of the United States, so they continued to fight a war of independence against the U.S. military. It was a brutal war in which at least 200,000 Filipino people died, but some estimates put the death toll at almost 1 million people. Filipino independence fighters fought a guerrilla war for three years, forcing the U.S. army to develop new tactics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Filipino insurgents were out in the jungles and the plains of Central Luzon in the Philippines,” said \u003ca href=\"https://sociology.uchicago.edu/directory/julian-go\">Julian Go\u003c/a>, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, the U.S. military collected intelligence from spies about where fighters were hiding and sent mobile units on horseback to hunt them down in the jungle. They mapped the locations of insurgent attacks and tried to predict where the next attack would be. Vollmer learned these tactics and brought them back to the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Vollmer took that same idea and said, criminals are kind of like Filipino insurgents,” Go said. “They’re hidden throughout the city. There’s going to be outbreaks, and just as we did in the Philippines, we have to concentrate our force and quickly mobilize to these areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847621\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11847621\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"773\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-800x242.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-1020x308.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-160x48.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-1536x464.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-2048x619.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-1920x580.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August Vollmer put his officers on bicycles so they could patrol a larger area and respond to crimes more quickly. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of Vollmer’s most famous innovations — putting police first on bicycles and then in cars as mobile units that could respond quickly to crimes in a larger region — came from a similar strategy used in the war. And, Go argues, the imperialist and racist attitudes that led the Americans to invade the Philippines in the first place came home with Vollmer, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The justification for U.S. colonialism was racialized,” Go said. “It was that whites are superior to nonwhites. The Filipinos are rebellious children. They are violent or prone to criminality. Now, when Vollmer applies these tactics to the U.S., the group of people that he thinks about, when he’s thinking about criminals, are not white criminals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While doing research for his paper \u003ca href=\"https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/708464?af=R&mobileUi=0\">“The Imperial Origins of American Policing: Militarization and Imperial Feedback in the Early 20th Century,”\u003c/a> Go came across documents showing that Berkeley elites had racist views and hired August Vollmer specifically for his experience fighting Asians overseas. Go writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Prior to Vollmer’s rise as chief, the Berkeley community had been lamenting the influx of Chinese from other parts of the state. In their view, they created a culture where ‘crooks, gamblers, opium addicts’ reigned. Vollmer, upon returning from the Philippines, was thereby urged by his friends in city hall to take the job, who reportedly told him, ‘It will be a fighting job for whoever takes it. That’s why we want you, Gus. You were a pretty good fighting man when you went up against those gugus [a racial epithet for Filipinos] over in the islands.’\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Go goes on to write that one of Vollmer’s first actions as police chief was to lead a mobile squad to raid Chinese-owned opium dens and gambling parlors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vollmer also brought back intelligence gathering techniques and crime mapping, which led to over-policing certain neighborhoods. Beyond these concrete tactics, Vollmer believed the military was a good model for policing, that it would help professionalize the force. He pushed for policemen to wear uniforms, to be organized in ranks, and created police academies modeled on military training academies. He was also interested in modernizing the force by implementing new technologies like radios in squad cars, fingerprinting and lie detector tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Police Maintain Power Structures\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Vollmer is revered in policing circles for ushering in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.communitypolicing.com/history-of-policing\">Professional Era\u003c/a> of policing. He was systematic, methodical and wrote about his ideas copiously. But he also helped to mold the modern police force in the image of the military, both in tactics and mindsets. While fighting in the Philippines he learned an “us versus them” mentality, which he applied to U.S citizens back home. On top of that, the power structure Vollmer worked to enforce \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police\">was racist and always has been\u003c/a>, says Perfecta Oxholm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since police forces were created in the United States, there’s been a model for the white population, or the population that would come to know itself as white, and then the racialized other,” Oxholm explained. “And that group is different in every location.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the American South, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police\">first police forces were slave patrols\u003c/a>. In the Northeast, when Irish and German immigrants were moving to the U.S and bringing their cultural practices around alcohol with them, the police cracked down. In the west, the groups without power were Native American, Mexican and Asian people, often of Chinese ancestry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What Vollmer did is just continue that model with new means,” Oxholm said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So, Can Modern Policing Be Traced Back to Vollmer?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847628\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11847628\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1020x831.jpg\" alt=\"Berkeley Police Department motorcycle squad, 1912\" width=\"640\" height=\"521\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1020x831.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-800x652.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-160x130.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1536x1251.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-2048x1668.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1920x1564.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley Police Department motorcycle squad, 1912. \u003ccite>(Courtesy \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In some ways, yes. He helped militarize the police long before they had \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/police-militarization\">access to military-grade weaponry\u003c/a>, armor and tanks. The reforms Vollmer modeled in Berkeley soon spread across the country, where many other veterans of wars had become policemen. And, Vollmer saw merit in \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics\">eugenics\u003c/a> — a set of \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/\">beliefs and practices\u003c/a> that \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics\">aim to improve the genetic quality\u003c/a> of the human population with selective breeding — for fighting crime.* When he helped start a criminology department at UC Berkeley, eugenics was part of the curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while Vollmer may not have invented the tear gas that police use on protesters today, he did embrace new technologies for policing. He also laid a respectable, bureaucratic foundation for police departments that legitimized much of what came after.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a speech delivered to an audience of police, Vollmer said, “For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I’ve studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks. After all we’re conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Vollmer’s Death\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Vollmer retired from the Berkeley Police Department in 1932. Over his several decades of service he did a lot to transform policing. He also garnered a lot of press coverage, which helped his ideas spread. He served as the president of the International Association of Police Chiefs and is said to have advised the FBI on intelligence gathering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847623\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11847623\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-1020x1275.png\" alt=\"Vollmer's obituary\" width=\"640\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-1020x1275.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-800x1000.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-160x200.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM.png 1088w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vollmer’s obituary. \u003ccite>(The San Bernadino Sun)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Toward the end of his life, Vollmer was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and cancer. Friends report he was in a lot of pain. On Nov. 4, 1955, \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/clip/14229779/august-vollmer-suicide/\">he told his housekeeper\u003c/a>, “I’m going to shoot myself. Call the Berkeley police.” Then he stepped outside and did so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a peak in the East Bay hills named for Vollmer. It commemorates his role as one of the first directors of the East Bay Regional Parks District and his commitment to the outdoors. But recently the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-Vollmer-Peak-police-chief-eugenics-15597927.php\">Berkeley City Council wrote a letter \u003c/a>to the East Bay Regional Parks District requesting they change the name because of Vollmer’s history with eugenics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you are interested in reading more about August Vollmer, he was a prolific writer and saved his correspondence. There’s also a biography of his life and work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/August-Vollmer-Father-American-Policing/dp/1611635594\">August Vollmer: The Father of Modern Policing\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, by Willard M. Oliver\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>The Police and Modern Society: Plain Talk Based on Practical Experience\u003c/em>, by August Vollmer\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*This post has been updated to include a more expanded definition of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics\">eugenics\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "August Vollmer was Berkeley's first police chief and is credited with pioneering many common aspects of policing used today. Like many historical figures, however, some of his contributions have a darker side too.",
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"description": "August Vollmer was Berkeley's first police chief and is credited with pioneering many common aspects of policing used today. Like many historical figures, however, some of his contributions have a darker side too.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Conversations about reforming American policing have been percolating for years, but they came rushing to the forefront in May 2020, after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Protesters around the world took to the streets calling for justice and police accountability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The majority of protests were peaceful, and many police responded professionally. But there were also violent clashes. Multiple videos began circulating showing startling violence by police against protesters. Police armed with tasers, guns and batons, decked out in riot gear, bulletproof vests and helmets performed flanking maneuvers around crowds of screaming people. They beat unarmed civilians, fired tear gas at close range and shot people with bean bag bullets. All this only served to sharpen critiques of the police.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Blake Schmidt watched the violence unfold in our public squares and decided he needed to become more educated about the history of policing. While reading “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police\">The End of Policing\u003c/a>” by Alex Vitale, Blake came across a man from Berkeley named August Vollmer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s credited with being the ‘Father of Modern Policing,’ ” Blake said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That information stopped Blake in his tracks. He’s always thought of Berkeley as a liberal bubble, a place where progressive reforms start. Could Berkeley really be responsible for the type of militarization he was seeing on the streets?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seems like we put this militarization in front and we say we’re just going to squash it with tear gas and force. Clearly, there’s a lot of issues with doing that. And is that what Vollmer had envisioned?” Blake said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Making of August Vollmer\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847617\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2054px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11847617\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Photos of the 10 men who made up the Berkeley Police Department in 1905 when August Vollmer was elected town marshal.\" width=\"2054\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-scaled.jpg 2054w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-800x997.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1020x1271.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-160x199.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1232x1536.jpg 1232w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1643x2048.jpg 1643w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1905-Berkeley-Marshals-Cropped-032213-1920x2393.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2054px) 100vw, 2054px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Berkeley Police Department only had 10 men in 1905 when August Vollmer was elected town marshal. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/Historical_Unit.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>August Vollmer was born in New Orleans in 1876, but moved with his mother first to San Francisco and then to Berkeley in the 1890s. Towards the end of that decade, Vollmer went off to fight in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. It was there that he learned many of the tactics he would later apply to policing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Vollmer first returned from fighting overseas he wasn’t thinking about becoming a cop. He was a mail carrier in Berkeley. One day while he was delivering the mail, he noticed a runaway railroad car careening down Shattuck Avenue towards a station where a crowd of people were waiting. Vollmer ran, jumped on the renegade train car and stopped it before it crashed into the crowd. This feat won him some local press, and soon Berkeley’s elite were asking him to run for town marshal, the top cop at the time. He won the election and took office in 1905.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11847626\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1020x1279.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of August Vollmer sitting at his desk wearing a dark uniform and his chief's hat.\" width=\"640\" height=\"803\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1020x1279.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-800x1003.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-160x201.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1225x1536.jpg 1225w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1634x2048.jpg 1634w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-1920x2407.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Vollmer-008-In-Dark-Uniform-With-Military-Style-Chief-Cap-scaled.jpg 2042w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August Vollmer wearing his chief’s hat. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This was a moment in the history of American policing called the \u003ca href=\"http://www.communitypolicing.com/history-of-policing\">Political Era\u003c/a>. Police were entirely beholden to whoever held political power. They did what the mayor told them, whether it was garnering good will by reuniting lost children with their parents, breaking up strikes or dragging people to the polls and telling them \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boss-tweed-delivered-to-authorities\">how to vote\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whole entire police departments are beholden to certain mayors or certain political parties,” said \u003ca href=\"https://gspp.berkeley.edu/directories/phd-students/perfecta-oxholm\">Perfecta Oxholm\u003c/a>, a public policy doctoral student at UC Berkeley who studies policing. “There’s a lot of corruption because they’re also not paid very well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police often took bribes. They weren’t very well educated. And they regularly beat people they detained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>August Vollmer didn’t stand for any of that when he took over Berkeley’s police force. He set about reforming his little Police Department 20 years before it was common, setting a new tone in policing that began to spread across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He institutes training academies,” Oxholm said. “He very much values formal education for police officers, whereas before, that wasn’t a part of the job requirements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847618\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1310px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11847618\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b-.jpg\" alt=\"August Vollmer pioneered regular training for his officers. Here police officers listen to a lecture held at Berkeley City Hall in 1935.\" width=\"1310\" height=\"978\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b-.jpg 1310w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b--800x597.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b--1020x761.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/BPDTrng3b--160x119.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1310px) 100vw, 1310px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August Vollmer pioneered regular training for his officers. Here police officers listen to a lecture held at Berkeley City Hall in 1935. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/Historical_Unit.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Vollmer recruited officers from UC Berkeley. Several of his proteges entered the force through this route and went on to become police chiefs in cities all over the country. One of them, \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/cabeuroh_000191/cabeuroh_000191_t01_a_access.mp3\">John Holstrom\u003c/a>, was interviewed by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/oral-history-center\">Oral History Center at the Bancroft Library\u003c/a> as part of \u003ca href=\"https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/rohoia/ucb/text/augustvollmer01vollrich.pdf\">a project on Vollmer’s legacy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let me just give you some things that I choose to call Vollmerisms,” Holstrom said. “ ‘Kill them with kindness.’ ‘Never hit a person, except in self-defense; if you do, you have just resigned.’ ‘There could be more fair justice distributed at the curbstone than in some of the highest courts.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Holstrom, and many other former colleagues, say Vollmer was an upright, moral person \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">whose aim was to make policing more respectable and professional\u003c/a>. How he did that, however, is where his legacy becomes murkier.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Influence of War\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After the American military drove the Spanish out of the Philippines in 1899, the U.S. tried to take over the Philippines for itself. But the Filipino people did not want to be colonial subjects of the United States, so they continued to fight a war of independence against the U.S. military. It was a brutal war in which at least 200,000 Filipino people died, but some estimates put the death toll at almost 1 million people. Filipino independence fighters fought a guerrilla war for three years, forcing the U.S. army to develop new tactics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Filipino insurgents were out in the jungles and the plains of Central Luzon in the Philippines,” said \u003ca href=\"https://sociology.uchicago.edu/directory/julian-go\">Julian Go\u003c/a>, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, the U.S. military collected intelligence from spies about where fighters were hiding and sent mobile units on horseback to hunt them down in the jungle. They mapped the locations of insurgent attacks and tried to predict where the next attack would be. Vollmer learned these tactics and brought them back to the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Vollmer took that same idea and said, criminals are kind of like Filipino insurgents,” Go said. “They’re hidden throughout the city. There’s going to be outbreaks, and just as we did in the Philippines, we have to concentrate our force and quickly mobilize to these areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847621\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11847621\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"773\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-800x242.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-1020x308.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-160x48.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-1536x464.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-2048x619.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/1910-to-1912-Bike-Patrol-1920x580.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August Vollmer put his officers on bicycles so they could patrol a larger area and respond to crimes more quickly. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of Vollmer’s most famous innovations — putting police first on bicycles and then in cars as mobile units that could respond quickly to crimes in a larger region — came from a similar strategy used in the war. And, Go argues, the imperialist and racist attitudes that led the Americans to invade the Philippines in the first place came home with Vollmer, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The justification for U.S. colonialism was racialized,” Go said. “It was that whites are superior to nonwhites. The Filipinos are rebellious children. They are violent or prone to criminality. Now, when Vollmer applies these tactics to the U.S., the group of people that he thinks about, when he’s thinking about criminals, are not white criminals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While doing research for his paper \u003ca href=\"https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/708464?af=R&mobileUi=0\">“The Imperial Origins of American Policing: Militarization and Imperial Feedback in the Early 20th Century,”\u003c/a> Go came across documents showing that Berkeley elites had racist views and hired August Vollmer specifically for his experience fighting Asians overseas. Go writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Prior to Vollmer’s rise as chief, the Berkeley community had been lamenting the influx of Chinese from other parts of the state. In their view, they created a culture where ‘crooks, gamblers, opium addicts’ reigned. Vollmer, upon returning from the Philippines, was thereby urged by his friends in city hall to take the job, who reportedly told him, ‘It will be a fighting job for whoever takes it. That’s why we want you, Gus. You were a pretty good fighting man when you went up against those gugus [a racial epithet for Filipinos] over in the islands.’\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Go goes on to write that one of Vollmer’s first actions as police chief was to lead a mobile squad to raid Chinese-owned opium dens and gambling parlors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vollmer also brought back intelligence gathering techniques and crime mapping, which led to over-policing certain neighborhoods. Beyond these concrete tactics, Vollmer believed the military was a good model for policing, that it would help professionalize the force. He pushed for policemen to wear uniforms, to be organized in ranks, and created police academies modeled on military training academies. He was also interested in modernizing the force by implementing new technologies like radios in squad cars, fingerprinting and lie detector tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Police Maintain Power Structures\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Vollmer is revered in policing circles for ushering in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.communitypolicing.com/history-of-policing\">Professional Era\u003c/a> of policing. He was systematic, methodical and wrote about his ideas copiously. But he also helped to mold the modern police force in the image of the military, both in tactics and mindsets. While fighting in the Philippines he learned an “us versus them” mentality, which he applied to U.S citizens back home. On top of that, the power structure Vollmer worked to enforce \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police\">was racist and always has been\u003c/a>, says Perfecta Oxholm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since police forces were created in the United States, there’s been a model for the white population, or the population that would come to know itself as white, and then the racialized other,” Oxholm explained. “And that group is different in every location.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the American South, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police\">first police forces were slave patrols\u003c/a>. In the Northeast, when Irish and German immigrants were moving to the U.S and bringing their cultural practices around alcohol with them, the police cracked down. In the west, the groups without power were Native American, Mexican and Asian people, often of Chinese ancestry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What Vollmer did is just continue that model with new means,” Oxholm said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So, Can Modern Policing Be Traced Back to Vollmer?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847628\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11847628\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1020x831.jpg\" alt=\"Berkeley Police Department motorcycle squad, 1912\" width=\"640\" height=\"521\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1020x831.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-800x652.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-160x130.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1536x1251.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-2048x1668.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Motorcycle-Squad-Berkeley-Police-Department-1912-1920x1564.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley Police Department motorcycle squad, 1912. \u003ccite>(Courtesy \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Police/Home/History_The_Earliest_Years_1905-1925.aspx\">Berkeley Police Department Historical Unit\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In some ways, yes. He helped militarize the police long before they had \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/police-militarization\">access to military-grade weaponry\u003c/a>, armor and tanks. The reforms Vollmer modeled in Berkeley soon spread across the country, where many other veterans of wars had become policemen. And, Vollmer saw merit in \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics\">eugenics\u003c/a> — a set of \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/\">beliefs and practices\u003c/a> that \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics\">aim to improve the genetic quality\u003c/a> of the human population with selective breeding — for fighting crime.* When he helped start a criminology department at UC Berkeley, eugenics was part of the curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while Vollmer may not have invented the tear gas that police use on protesters today, he did embrace new technologies for policing. He also laid a respectable, bureaucratic foundation for police departments that legitimized much of what came after.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a speech delivered to an audience of police, Vollmer said, “For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I’ve studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks. After all we’re conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Vollmer’s Death\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Vollmer retired from the Berkeley Police Department in 1932. Over his several decades of service he did a lot to transform policing. He also garnered a lot of press coverage, which helped his ideas spread. He served as the president of the International Association of Police Chiefs and is said to have advised the FBI on intelligence gathering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11847623\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11847623\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-1020x1275.png\" alt=\"Vollmer's obituary\" width=\"640\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-1020x1275.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-800x1000.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM-160x200.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-16-at-7.58.43-AM.png 1088w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vollmer’s obituary. \u003ccite>(The San Bernadino Sun)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Toward the end of his life, Vollmer was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and cancer. Friends report he was in a lot of pain. On Nov. 4, 1955, \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/clip/14229779/august-vollmer-suicide/\">he told his housekeeper\u003c/a>, “I’m going to shoot myself. Call the Berkeley police.” Then he stepped outside and did so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a peak in the East Bay hills named for Vollmer. It commemorates his role as one of the first directors of the East Bay Regional Parks District and his commitment to the outdoors. But recently the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-Vollmer-Peak-police-chief-eugenics-15597927.php\">Berkeley City Council wrote a letter \u003c/a>to the East Bay Regional Parks District requesting they change the name because of Vollmer’s history with eugenics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you are interested in reading more about August Vollmer, he was a prolific writer and saved his correspondence. There’s also a biography of his life and work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/August-Vollmer-Father-American-Policing/dp/1611635594\">August Vollmer: The Father of Modern Policing\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, by Willard M. Oliver\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>The Police and Modern Society: Plain Talk Based on Practical Experience\u003c/em>, by August Vollmer\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*This post has been updated to include a more expanded definition of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics\">eugenics\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "What's Next For Incarcerated Firefighters in California?",
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"content": "\u003cp>Fire season in California has been particularly devastating this year. Some of the biggest wildfires the state has ever seen \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840987/glass-fire-continues-as-california-wildfires-burn-over-4-million-acres\">raged across the state\u003c/a> and almost 4.2 million acres burned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the firefighters battling to keep our communities safe are state prisoners, which prompted Bay Curious listener Brittany Powers to ask this question: \u003cstrong>“Why are prisoners fighting California wildfires [paid so little] and why are they unable to get jobs in this field after they’ve served their sentences?”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo] Brittany’s question won our September voting round, right around the time news was breaking that the state’s wildfire response was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1968728/shortage-of-inmate-firefighters-hampers-response-in-bay-area\">hampered this year by a lack of inmate firefighters\u003c/a>. As \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11843335/in-californias-prison-with-the-worst-covid-19-outbreak-men-say-their-mental-health-is-suffering\">COVID-19 swept through the prison system\u003c/a>, Gov. Gavin Newsom released many low-level offenders early, including some of the firefighters. Suddenly, it was more obvious than ever just how important this workforce is to California’s wildland firefighting capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While crucial, the prison firefighting program has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11784042/inmates-saved-homes-in-the-kincade-fire-theyll-face-an-uphill-battle-getting-firefighting-jobs-after-release\">long been criticized \u003c/a>for paying low wages and providing few job opportunities for people upon release.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The History of Fire Camps\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/conservation-camps/\">inmate firefighter program first started in 1915, \u003c/a>but it was during World War II — when civilian firefighters were fighting in the war — that the program really got going. Inmate firefighters took care of fire emergencies during the war. Since then, California has maintained inmate fire camps, mostly in the mountains near where fires are likely to break out. The incarcerated firefighters live at those camps year-round, ready to respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inmate firefighters are paid $2 to $5 per day, and they get an extra dollar per hour when they’re actively working at a fire. While this is much less than entry-level professional firefighters make, it’s still the highest paid job in the prison system, says a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It’s also a desirable and competitive job to get.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only people who the state deems a low safety risk are eligible, and everyone must pass a series of physical fitness tests and be trained. Once a person steps foot in fire camp, their remaining sentence is reduced, sometimes by as much as half. And life at a fire camp is more permissive than in a general population prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11846634\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11846634\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3.jpg\" alt=\"Inmate firefighters clear brush from a roadside in the Berkeley Hills near Tilden Regional Park on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017. Fire officials say fuel reduction projects like this are critical to preventing major wildfires.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1272\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-800x530.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-1020x676.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-1536x1018.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inmate firefighters clear brush from a roadside in the Berkeley Hills near Tilden Regional Park on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017. Fire officials say fuel reduction projects like this are critical to preventing major wildfires. \u003ccite>(Ryan Levi/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Oh man, night and day. It almost feels like you are free there,” said Gary Minnick, a firefighter working at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11782314/what-you-need-to-know-sonoma-countys-kincade-fire\">Kincade Fire in 2019\u003c/a>. “Enough to keep you on track and in line, but kinda helping you get back to be able to be reintroduced to the public and out of the politics and the bad stuff that goes along with a regular prison yard. I’d rather be here than where I was at, any day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire camps have dorms, a dining hall and a yard for working out. Prisoners get to work outside, doing an important job that many take pride in doing. In the off season, they cut fire breaks and do general forest management. When a fire breaks out, they’re often assigned to the most difficult and backbreaking work. They hike cross-country carrying heavy tools like chainsaws, shovels, rakes and other hand tools. Then, in teams of 12-16, they work to clear six-foot wide trenches called fire breaks, to help contain the fire. At times, when a fire is threatening a home, they fight it directly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Direct attack. Flames licking in your face. Situations where you have to get in and out quickly with no margin for error,” said Christopher Jones, another incarcerated firefighter who fought at the Kincade Fire last year. “It’s exhilarating. It’s exciting. It’s challenging. You feel like you are alive and you are doing something both positive and productive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Legislative Changes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11846630\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11846630\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully.jpg\" alt=\"Inmate firefighters seen from a distance, working on the Bully fire.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inmate firefighters seen from a distance, working on the Bully fire. \u003ccite>(Adam Grossberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11836399/how-two-men-went-from-prison-crew-to-professional-firefighting\">some former prisoners do get contract jobs\u003c/a> working for CalFire or the National Forest Service doing wildland firefighting after they are released, the path to stable employment in municipal fire departments has been very narrow to them for many years. That’s because of a law that says people with felonies can’t get EMT licenses, which are required to become a firefighter in many cities across the state. Advocates have long wanted to see this barrier removed so formerly incarcerated folks with firefighting experience have access to good, well-paid jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year they got their wish. In September, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11837644/newsom-signs-law-paving-way-for-former-inmates-to-become-professional-firefighters\">Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2147\u003c/a>, which would make it easier for formerly incarcerated people to have their records expunged, and open the door to an EMT license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">At the site of the North Complex Fire today, Governor \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@GavinNewsom\u003c/a> signed \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/AsmReyes47?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@AsmReyes47\u003c/a>‘s \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/AB2147?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#AB2147\u003c/a> eliminating barriers that prevent former inmate fire crews from pursuing a career as a firefighter once they served their time. \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/CaliforniaForAll?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#CaliforniaForAll\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/tT3D18UJWK\">pic.twitter.com/tT3D18UJWK\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1304514036306829313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 11, 2020\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Questions remain about how quickly the state will process requests from formerly incarcerated firefighters, but many are grateful there is now a path forward. Samantha Vetter was fighting fires outside Los Angeles this year, but she was released this summer as part of the state’s push to slow the spread of the coronavirus across the prison system. She says the new legislation gives her hope for a career as a firefighter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very grateful that the bill passed and I’m grateful for everyone who voted on it,” Vetter said. “There’s a lot of us that want to change and it is just really going to help. Totally one less obstacle, and I feel blessed that it went through at the perfect time. You know, I did just get out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the governor is shifting resources away from the fire camps. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article246400810.html\">state plans to shutter eight\u003c/a> at the end of fire season, which will mean fewer opportunities for incarcerated people to participate in the program. At the same time, Newsom is expanding the California Conservation Corps, which means the state will bolster the number of civilian hand crews fighting wildland fires while contracting its prison camp program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Fire season in California has been particularly devastating this year. Some of the biggest wildfires the state has ever seen \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840987/glass-fire-continues-as-california-wildfires-burn-over-4-million-acres\">raged across the state\u003c/a> and almost 4.2 million acres burned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the firefighters battling to keep our communities safe are state prisoners, which prompted Bay Curious listener Brittany Powers to ask this question: \u003cstrong>“Why are prisoners fighting California wildfires [paid so little] and why are they unable to get jobs in this field after they’ve served their sentences?”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp> Brittany’s question won our September voting round, right around the time news was breaking that the state’s wildfire response was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1968728/shortage-of-inmate-firefighters-hampers-response-in-bay-area\">hampered this year by a lack of inmate firefighters\u003c/a>. As \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11843335/in-californias-prison-with-the-worst-covid-19-outbreak-men-say-their-mental-health-is-suffering\">COVID-19 swept through the prison system\u003c/a>, Gov. Gavin Newsom released many low-level offenders early, including some of the firefighters. Suddenly, it was more obvious than ever just how important this workforce is to California’s wildland firefighting capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While crucial, the prison firefighting program has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11784042/inmates-saved-homes-in-the-kincade-fire-theyll-face-an-uphill-battle-getting-firefighting-jobs-after-release\">long been criticized \u003c/a>for paying low wages and providing few job opportunities for people upon release.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The History of Fire Camps\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/conservation-camps/\">inmate firefighter program first started in 1915, \u003c/a>but it was during World War II — when civilian firefighters were fighting in the war — that the program really got going. Inmate firefighters took care of fire emergencies during the war. Since then, California has maintained inmate fire camps, mostly in the mountains near where fires are likely to break out. The incarcerated firefighters live at those camps year-round, ready to respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inmate firefighters are paid $2 to $5 per day, and they get an extra dollar per hour when they’re actively working at a fire. While this is much less than entry-level professional firefighters make, it’s still the highest paid job in the prison system, says a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It’s also a desirable and competitive job to get.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only people who the state deems a low safety risk are eligible, and everyone must pass a series of physical fitness tests and be trained. Once a person steps foot in fire camp, their remaining sentence is reduced, sometimes by as much as half. And life at a fire camp is more permissive than in a general population prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11846634\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11846634\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3.jpg\" alt=\"Inmate firefighters clear brush from a roadside in the Berkeley Hills near Tilden Regional Park on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017. Fire officials say fuel reduction projects like this are critical to preventing major wildfires.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1272\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-800x530.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-1020x676.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/Inmate-Firefighters3-1536x1018.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inmate firefighters clear brush from a roadside in the Berkeley Hills near Tilden Regional Park on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017. Fire officials say fuel reduction projects like this are critical to preventing major wildfires. \u003ccite>(Ryan Levi/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Oh man, night and day. It almost feels like you are free there,” said Gary Minnick, a firefighter working at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11782314/what-you-need-to-know-sonoma-countys-kincade-fire\">Kincade Fire in 2019\u003c/a>. “Enough to keep you on track and in line, but kinda helping you get back to be able to be reintroduced to the public and out of the politics and the bad stuff that goes along with a regular prison yard. I’d rather be here than where I was at, any day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire camps have dorms, a dining hall and a yard for working out. Prisoners get to work outside, doing an important job that many take pride in doing. In the off season, they cut fire breaks and do general forest management. When a fire breaks out, they’re often assigned to the most difficult and backbreaking work. They hike cross-country carrying heavy tools like chainsaws, shovels, rakes and other hand tools. Then, in teams of 12-16, they work to clear six-foot wide trenches called fire breaks, to help contain the fire. At times, when a fire is threatening a home, they fight it directly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Direct attack. Flames licking in your face. Situations where you have to get in and out quickly with no margin for error,” said Christopher Jones, another incarcerated firefighter who fought at the Kincade Fire last year. “It’s exhilarating. It’s exciting. It’s challenging. You feel like you are alive and you are doing something both positive and productive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Legislative Changes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11846630\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11846630\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully.jpg\" alt=\"Inmate firefighters seen from a distance, working on the Bully fire.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/InmateFirefightersBully-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inmate firefighters seen from a distance, working on the Bully fire. \u003ccite>(Adam Grossberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11836399/how-two-men-went-from-prison-crew-to-professional-firefighting\">some former prisoners do get contract jobs\u003c/a> working for CalFire or the National Forest Service doing wildland firefighting after they are released, the path to stable employment in municipal fire departments has been very narrow to them for many years. That’s because of a law that says people with felonies can’t get EMT licenses, which are required to become a firefighter in many cities across the state. Advocates have long wanted to see this barrier removed so formerly incarcerated folks with firefighting experience have access to good, well-paid jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year they got their wish. In September, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11837644/newsom-signs-law-paving-way-for-former-inmates-to-become-professional-firefighters\">Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2147\u003c/a>, which would make it easier for formerly incarcerated people to have their records expunged, and open the door to an EMT license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">At the site of the North Complex Fire today, Governor \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@GavinNewsom\u003c/a> signed \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/AsmReyes47?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@AsmReyes47\u003c/a>‘s \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/AB2147?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#AB2147\u003c/a> eliminating barriers that prevent former inmate fire crews from pursuing a career as a firefighter once they served their time. \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/CaliforniaForAll?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#CaliforniaForAll\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/tT3D18UJWK\">pic.twitter.com/tT3D18UJWK\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1304514036306829313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 11, 2020\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Questions remain about how quickly the state will process requests from formerly incarcerated firefighters, but many are grateful there is now a path forward. Samantha Vetter was fighting fires outside Los Angeles this year, but she was released this summer as part of the state’s push to slow the spread of the coronavirus across the prison system. She says the new legislation gives her hope for a career as a firefighter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very grateful that the bill passed and I’m grateful for everyone who voted on it,” Vetter said. “There’s a lot of us that want to change and it is just really going to help. Totally one less obstacle, and I feel blessed that it went through at the perfect time. You know, I did just get out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the governor is shifting resources away from the fire camps. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article246400810.html\">state plans to shutter eight\u003c/a> at the end of fire season, which will mean fewer opportunities for incarcerated people to participate in the program. At the same time, Newsom is expanding the California Conservation Corps, which means the state will bolster the number of civilian hand crews fighting wildland fires while contracting its prison camp program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"headTitle": "When to Expect Election Results in the Bay Area | KQED",
"content": "\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/elections/results\">See KQED’s election results as they come in\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>With every registered voter in the state having received a mail-in ballot this year, Californians participated in early voting at record levels. Going into Election Day, the electorate reached a milestone by returning more than 11.8 million mail-in ballots — more than 50% of all ballots issued — \u003ca href=\"https://admin.cdn.sos.ca.gov/press-releases/2020/ballot-return-updates/11.2/VBMStatistics-November2020General-updated.pdf\">according to the most recent data\u003c/a> from the California Secretary of State.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, participation has been even higher, with seven of the region’s nine counties surpassing the 60% mark of mail-in ballots returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What Does Early Voting Mean for Getting Results on Election Night and Beyond?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Election officials are expecting to make a splash with the first tallies announced on Tuesday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We will release a very significant number of votes right after 8 p.m.” said Scott Konopasek, Contra Costa County’s assistant registrar of voters.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID=news_11844284,news_11841547,news_11841059]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most counties, the initial tallies released on Tuesday night encompass \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11841201/you-mailed-your-ballot-where-does-it-go-and-when-is-it-counted\">vote-by-mail ballots received before Election Day\u003c/a> — with some counties adding in-person votes. The increase in early mail voting could make those early counts more accurately reflect the \u003cem>whole\u003c/em> electorate and continue a shift away from early votes representing more conservative voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>How Long Will the Vote Counting Take?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The explosion of early voting may beef up the initial vote counts released in the Bay Area, but election officials say a few factors will dictate how long the entire vote count will take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california\">ballots mailed by Election Day can still be counted\u003c/a>, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by county elections officials by Nov. 20. (Pro tip: if you are returning your mail ballot close to Election Day, use a county drop box to avoid having your ballot \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california\">miss the last USPS collection\u003c/a> on Nov. 3.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And California’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/same-day-reg\">Same Day Voter Registration\u003c/a> (also known as conditional registration) rules allow voters to show up at a voting location and register on Election Day, while casting a provisional ballot that will be further checked by election workers.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID=news_11839465,news_11840343,news_11841201]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of provisional votes cast is usually a good indicator of how many ballots are left to count after Election Day, said John Gardner, Solano County’s assistant registrar of voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That usually tells us how long we’ll need to go,” Gardner said. “Prior to Election Day, it’s really hard to say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deadline to certify the results of the election is Dec. 3. Throughout November, election workers will process late-arriving ballots and work with voters to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california#signature\">address any mismatched signatures on ballot envelopes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It typically takes us close to the certification deadline,” said Lynda Roberts, Marin County registrar of voters. “I anticipate we’ll be counting the whole month of November.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>The Results Say 100% of Precincts Are Reporting. What Does That Mean? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In the past, “precincts reporting” was a good measurement of the vote counting process. But California’s shift to vote by mail and changes to many counties’ in-person voting systems have changed that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With voting spread out over a longer time period, an initial declaration of “100% precincts” reporting could simply mean that at least \u003cem>some \u003c/em>votes have been reported from every precinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just means we have results from all precincts,” said Konopasek, from Contra Costa County. “Our first report should show 100% of precincts reporting because we should have at least some votes from every precinct.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many counties don’t include vote-by-mail ballots in their precinct count, so vote counts could be unveiled on Tuesday night with no precincts shown reporting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Precincts reporting” can basically be ignored in counties that have abandoned the precinct polling place model entirely in favor of county-wide vote centers. That list already included Napa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. This election, Alameda and Sonoma counties are also allowing voters to cast a ballot at any voting location in the county, instead of an assigned precinct polling place. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11841059/how-to-find-your-early-voting-site-or-ballot-drop-off-location#find\">More details on each county’s in-person voting rules and changes this year.\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In these five counties, “precincts reporting” “doesn’t carry the same significance as it does in counties with precinct-based polling places,” said Eric Kurhi, communications officer with Santa Clara County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844549\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844549\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1278\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An election employee works in the mail cleaning section, which includes arranging the ballots with their barcodes facing in one direction, at the San Mateo County Elections Office on Oct. 21, 2020. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>If a Result Is Clear, Do Election Officials Declare a Winner? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Election officials are in the business of vote counting, not calling races.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The only time I call a race is when I certify an election,” said John Arntz, director of San Francisco’s Department of Elections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In our coverage of national and state races, KQED relies on the race calls of The Associated Press, which are based on data analyses that include vote counts as well as polling research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Election officials, on the other hand, are only concerned with processing and counting ballots.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>But What if a Candidate Concedes? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A candidate’s concession or declaration of victory also has no bearing on the steadfast vote-counting being done by election officials.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation=\"John Arntz, director of San Francisco's Department of Elections\"]‘The only time I call a race is when I certify an election.’[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arntz brought up the recent example of March’s presidential primary, in which Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race shortly before voters went to the polls — but after hundreds of thousands of Californians had already cast ballots for the two contenders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As far as the county was concerned, we were still counting their votes,” Arntz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>What Happens to the Ballots After They Are Counted? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Just because your ballot has been counted does not mean it’s on the fast track to the paper shredder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State law requires election officials to hold on to polling place ballots and paper copies, along with vote-by-mail ballots and envelopes, for 22 months after the election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those counted ballots are traditionally used in the state-mandated election audit — a manual tally in which election workers hand count all the votes in 1% of precincts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The paper ballot is the official record,” said Gardner, in Solano County. “If there’s ever a court case, we go back to that paper record.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>When Does a Recount of Votes Occur?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Unlike 21 other states, California does not have a law triggering automatic recounts in the result of a close race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, an individual citizen has to request a recount within five days of the election’s certification. And they have to pay for the entire recount process, up front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Tuteur, Napa County registrar of voters, said his county charges $500 a day for a recount. But he’s learned that a pre-emptive explanation typically lessens the chance that he’ll spend the holiday season (re)counting votes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Any close race, I call the candidates and explain our procedures of a manual tally,” said Tuteur. “After that, they have full confidence in the accuracy of what we’re reporting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "What kind of vote counts might be released on Election Day? Who calls races? And what does 'precincts reporting' really mean this year? We have answers.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/elections/results\">See KQED’s election results as they come in\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>With every registered voter in the state having received a mail-in ballot this year, Californians participated in early voting at record levels. Going into Election Day, the electorate reached a milestone by returning more than 11.8 million mail-in ballots — more than 50% of all ballots issued — \u003ca href=\"https://admin.cdn.sos.ca.gov/press-releases/2020/ballot-return-updates/11.2/VBMStatistics-November2020General-updated.pdf\">according to the most recent data\u003c/a> from the California Secretary of State.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, participation has been even higher, with seven of the region’s nine counties surpassing the 60% mark of mail-in ballots returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What Does Early Voting Mean for Getting Results on Election Night and Beyond?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Election officials are expecting to make a splash with the first tallies announced on Tuesday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We will release a very significant number of votes right after 8 p.m.” said Scott Konopasek, Contra Costa County’s assistant registrar of voters.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most counties, the initial tallies released on Tuesday night encompass \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11841201/you-mailed-your-ballot-where-does-it-go-and-when-is-it-counted\">vote-by-mail ballots received before Election Day\u003c/a> — with some counties adding in-person votes. The increase in early mail voting could make those early counts more accurately reflect the \u003cem>whole\u003c/em> electorate and continue a shift away from early votes representing more conservative voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>How Long Will the Vote Counting Take?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The explosion of early voting may beef up the initial vote counts released in the Bay Area, but election officials say a few factors will dictate how long the entire vote count will take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california\">ballots mailed by Election Day can still be counted\u003c/a>, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by county elections officials by Nov. 20. (Pro tip: if you are returning your mail ballot close to Election Day, use a county drop box to avoid having your ballot \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california\">miss the last USPS collection\u003c/a> on Nov. 3.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And California’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/same-day-reg\">Same Day Voter Registration\u003c/a> (also known as conditional registration) rules allow voters to show up at a voting location and register on Election Day, while casting a provisional ballot that will be further checked by election workers.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of provisional votes cast is usually a good indicator of how many ballots are left to count after Election Day, said John Gardner, Solano County’s assistant registrar of voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That usually tells us how long we’ll need to go,” Gardner said. “Prior to Election Day, it’s really hard to say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deadline to certify the results of the election is Dec. 3. Throughout November, election workers will process late-arriving ballots and work with voters to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california#signature\">address any mismatched signatures on ballot envelopes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It typically takes us close to the certification deadline,” said Lynda Roberts, Marin County registrar of voters. “I anticipate we’ll be counting the whole month of November.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>The Results Say 100% of Precincts Are Reporting. What Does That Mean? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In the past, “precincts reporting” was a good measurement of the vote counting process. But California’s shift to vote by mail and changes to many counties’ in-person voting systems have changed that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With voting spread out over a longer time period, an initial declaration of “100% precincts” reporting could simply mean that at least \u003cem>some \u003c/em>votes have been reported from every precinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just means we have results from all precincts,” said Konopasek, from Contra Costa County. “Our first report should show 100% of precincts reporting because we should have at least some votes from every precinct.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many counties don’t include vote-by-mail ballots in their precinct count, so vote counts could be unveiled on Tuesday night with no precincts shown reporting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Precincts reporting” can basically be ignored in counties that have abandoned the precinct polling place model entirely in favor of county-wide vote centers. That list already included Napa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. This election, Alameda and Sonoma counties are also allowing voters to cast a ballot at any voting location in the county, instead of an assigned precinct polling place. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11841059/how-to-find-your-early-voting-site-or-ballot-drop-off-location#find\">More details on each county’s in-person voting rules and changes this year.\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In these five counties, “precincts reporting” “doesn’t carry the same significance as it does in counties with precinct-based polling places,” said Eric Kurhi, communications officer with Santa Clara County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844549\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844549\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1278\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45375_017_KQED_SanMateo_ElectionsOffice_10212020-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An election employee works in the mail cleaning section, which includes arranging the ballots with their barcodes facing in one direction, at the San Mateo County Elections Office on Oct. 21, 2020. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>If a Result Is Clear, Do Election Officials Declare a Winner? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Election officials are in the business of vote counting, not calling races.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The only time I call a race is when I certify an election,” said John Arntz, director of San Francisco’s Department of Elections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In our coverage of national and state races, KQED relies on the race calls of The Associated Press, which are based on data analyses that include vote counts as well as polling research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Election officials, on the other hand, are only concerned with processing and counting ballots.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>But What if a Candidate Concedes? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A candidate’s concession or declaration of victory also has no bearing on the steadfast vote-counting being done by election officials.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arntz brought up the recent example of March’s presidential primary, in which Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race shortly before voters went to the polls — but after hundreds of thousands of Californians had already cast ballots for the two contenders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As far as the county was concerned, we were still counting their votes,” Arntz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>What Happens to the Ballots After They Are Counted? \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Just because your ballot has been counted does not mean it’s on the fast track to the paper shredder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State law requires election officials to hold on to polling place ballots and paper copies, along with vote-by-mail ballots and envelopes, for 22 months after the election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those counted ballots are traditionally used in the state-mandated election audit — a manual tally in which election workers hand count all the votes in 1% of precincts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The paper ballot is the official record,” said Gardner, in Solano County. “If there’s ever a court case, we go back to that paper record.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>When Does a Recount of Votes Occur?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Unlike 21 other states, California does not have a law triggering automatic recounts in the result of a close race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, an individual citizen has to request a recount within five days of the election’s certification. And they have to pay for the entire recount process, up front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Tuteur, Napa County registrar of voters, said his county charges $500 a day for a recount. But he’s learned that a pre-emptive explanation typically lessens the chance that he’ll spend the holiday season (re)counting votes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Any close race, I call the candidates and explain our procedures of a manual tally,” said Tuteur. “After that, they have full confidence in the accuracy of what we’re reporting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Surviving the Donner Party: California, Gold and Lifelong Secrets",
"headTitle": "Surviving the Donner Party: California, Gold and Lifelong Secrets | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is Part Two of the Bay Curious series on the Donner Party. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844011/donner-party-pt-1\">Read Part One of this story here.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen the snow finally melted in spring of 1847, the grisly evidence of the Donner Party’s ordeal — the things that had been buried under feet of snow at Donner Lake — were revealed in full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word of the Donner Party disaster had spread across the country and was already creating “lousy PR” for California, says Donner Party historian Greg Palmer. The story spooked would-be emigrants to the state, making officials wish “they could just wipe the slate clean.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution was a California military detachment, led by Gen. Stephen Kearny. On their way over the mountains to Kansas in summer 1847, these men were given new orders to go to Donner Lake and clean up the mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer Edwin Bryant was with them — himself a recent emigrant who’d been on the Oregon Trail just ahead of the Donner Party. What he later wrote about that day was stomach-churning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Near the principal lake cabin I saw two bodies entire, except the abdomens had been cut open and entrails extracted,” Bryant wrote. “Their flesh had been either wasted by famine or evaporated by exposure to dry atmosphere, and presented the appearance of mummies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844056\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844056\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donner Memorial State Park in summer \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bryant and the other soldiers were looking at what remained of the Donner Party: evidence of sheer desperation, and what it looks like when human bodies are stripped for food. “Human skeletons, in short, in every variety of mutilation,” Bryant wrote. “A more appalling spectacle I never witnessed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bryant reported how that military party scraped all the remains they could find up from the forest floor, dug a hole in the floor of one of the cabins, and set fire to the whole thing: “With everything surrounding them connected with the horrible and melancholy tragedy, consumed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These soldiers weren’t just performing a physical clean-up job. They were taking a truly shameful part of the state’s history and erasing it from human sight. This new California demanded it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Survivors in the Spotlight\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As soldiers were burning the Donner Party’s dead up at Donner Lake, their family members who’d made it out alive were safe and warm miles away in the west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of the survivors spent the immediate aftermath recovering in present-day Sacramento at Sutter’s Fort. Presided over by colonizer John Sutter, this was the same place that had acted as a kind of Donner Party rescue command center during those long winter months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the first survivors had escaped and brought the terrible news to California, public interest in the Donner Party saga soared. “The fact that it wasn’t just a bunch of mountain men … but these were women and children,” made it even more compelling, Palmer says. And of course, there was the cannibalism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many people who find themselves at the center of disaster, the Donner Party survivors quickly found that other people were already writing their story for them. The same month that the last survivor, Lewis Keseberg, was rescued from Donner Lake, the California Star newspaper published an account it claimed was based on eyewitness accounts from the rescuers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A more shocking scene cannot be imagined than was witnessed by the party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants in the California Mountains … A woman sat by the side of the body of her dead husband cutting out his tongue ; the heart she had already taken out, broiled, and eaten.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Star cast the Donner Party as terrifying ghouls, so hooked on the taste of humans that they’d been somehow transformed by it into cannibalistic monsters:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So changed had the emigrants become that when the rescuing party arrived with food, some of them cast it aside, and seemed to prefer the putrid human flesh that still remained.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844051\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844051\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A man poses by stumps of trees cut above the snow line by the Donner Party in Summit Valley, Placer County, photographed in1866 by Lawrence & Houseworth, \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This account drips with revulsion at what cannibalism might have done to the Donner Party’s very humanity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Calculations were coldly made, as they sat around their gloomy camp fires, for the next succeeding meals… Language can not describe the awful change that a few weeks of dire suffering had wrought in the minds of the wretched and pitiable beings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of what was published in the California Star is undoubtedly sensationalized, or just flat-out wrong. But this story, published hot on the heels of the disaster, set the tone for how California looked at the Donner Party, and it haunted the survivors for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner was just three years old when the Sierras orphaned her. It wasn’t until 1911 that she felt able to write her memoir, and to talk publicly about what she remembered of the disaster, but also about her life as a Donner Party survivor. In her book “The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate” she detailed how for years afterward, people came up to her and quoted that newspaper story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Evidently, it was written without malice, but in ignorance, and by some warmly clad, well nourished person, who did not know the humanizing effect of suffering and sorrow,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Two Survivors, Two Stories\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A lot of the public outcry was directed at the final man to leave Donner Lake: Lewis Keseberg. Much of this was owing to another bit of lurid reportage, this time courtesy of one of the men who’d rescued Keseberg, Capt. William Fallon. He wrote how he “discovered Keseberg lying down amid the human bones, and beside him a large pan full of fresh liver and lights [lungs]”, and heavily insinuated that Keseberg had murdered Eliza Donner’s mother, Tamsen Donner, to consume her flesh and keep himself alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From almost the moment he came down from the mountain, Keseberg was a marked man. “Some declared him crazy, others called him a monster,” wrote Eliza Donner, who knew all too well how fast — and how effectively — the written word could be used against someone. She described “blood-curdling editorials” that were written about Keseberg, “stamping him with the mark of Cain, and closing the door of every home against him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844052\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844052\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donner Lake, pictured in summer \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet all the while, another man — the only actual, confirmed murderer of the Donner Party — received quite different treatment. It was no secret that William Foster had murdered the two Miwok men Luis and Salvador so that the first “Folorn Hope” group to escape Donner Lake could eat their flesh. But because of who he’d killed — two Native Americans, rather than a white woman like Tamsen Donner — Foster never faced a reckoning for his crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Greg Palmer says, it wasn’t even seen as a crime. “‘They’re only Indian’: That was the mentality of the day,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, Foster had chosen to join the third rescue party, to voluntarily return to Donner Lake to bring more people to safety. To the white world in California, Foster was a hero, not a murderer —and condemning him would have meant condemning a mindset and a way of life that had greatly benefited many people who came to California to claim it for their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the many more were about to make the journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Gold Rush Takes Over\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As brutal as the Donner Party’s life and death story is, the immediate aftermath actually marks a calm before the storm in California’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the short-term, the Donner Party horror scared people in California, but also would-be emigrants contemplating the same trip. The overland traffic of settlers in 1847 and 1848 dropped sharply, says Greg Palmer “because of what happened.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In January, 1848, just nine months after final survivor Lewis Keseberg was dragged off the mountain, gold was discovered in California. As if to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the players in this period of time, that gold was found on land claimed by none other than John Sutter, on a site he was developing as an expansion of his Sutter’s Fort empire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844049\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844049\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold miners in El Dorado, California, between ca. 1848 and ca. 1853 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those small flakes of gold in a river on Sutter’s land changed California forever — and most of all, for those Indigenous communities that had lived here for centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dahlton Brown is Executive Director for the \u003ca href=\"http://wiltonrancheria-nsn.gov/\">Wilton Rancheria\u003c/a> tribe in Elk Grove, outside Sacramento. And says he still finds it “just incredible” how the Miwok and Nisenan people of this region “could go from being the ancestral stewards of a place since time immemorial to just being a resource to be used, for the kind of capitalistic growth and entrenchment of an American society that hadn’t even been on this continent, established as a nation for 100 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier colonizers had already hugely disrupted the lives of California’s Indigenous residents. Settlers like the Donner Party had then wanted their land — and now with gold, everybody else did, too. White migration into California had been a trickle, but now it became a flood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s estimated that in the first 20 years after gold was discovered, 80% of California’s Indigenous population was wiped out — not just by disease, but by destruction and murder. Those that survived found themselves displaced, and their customs, cultures and lives irrevocably altered — by design.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were “insane restrictions put on our tribal communities that were meant to suffocate our life ways,” Brown says. These limitations were meant to “rob our communities and land, to make way for these miners and for these folks looking to make their riches.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844048\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844048\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold prospectors amid log cabins in El Dorado, California, between ca. 1848 and ca. 1853 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California had a new image, a new way of being. And everything that came before that didn’t fit was treated like dirt in the gold pan: discarded in the name of “progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Hidden From Sight\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As California bloomed under the Gold Rush, virtually all of the survivors of the Donner Party quietly, deliberately retreated from view, and scattered throughout the Bay Area and Northern California. For almost all of them, what happened up by Donner Lake was something they never wanted to talk about publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re imagining the remaining members of the Donner Party might have wanted to stick together, think again, says Greg Palmer. After what happened, there seems to have been very little desire to even speak to any of the others ever again. “There were animosities that weren’t forgotten,” Palmer says. “Which is totally natural.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the families that entered the mountains, only two survived intact: The Reed and Breen families. Of all of the survivors, the Reed clan probably made the best of it — something you could attribute to the fact that patriarch James Reed hadn’t actually been trapped in the Sierras with his family. His earlier banishment from the trail ensured his safe arrival into California, where he’d been able to find time to do some land deals in San Jose while he was raising money to go rescue his wife and children. These included the purchase of the land where San Jose State University now lies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Reed family escaped the mountains, they relocated down to the new home waiting for them in South Bay, where they settled into civic life with relative ease. After striking it rich in the Gold Rush, James Reed even became the Chief of Police in the San Jose Police Department. The family also welcomed two of the Donner family orphans into their home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After recuperating at Sutter’s Fort, the Breens quietly moved south to San Juan Bautista, outside Gilroy. The other survivors, who had all watched at least one family member die in the Sierras, scattered more quietly around Northern California — from Petaluma and Sonoma to Sebastopol and Tomales Bay. Marysville, just outside Yuba City, is named after one of the Donner Party survivors, Mary Murphy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what about Lewis Keseberg, the man who had ‘cannibal’ yelled at him in the street? He sued a bunch of people for calling him a murderer — but the judge sneeringly awarded him damages of just one dollar in each case. He lived for almost fifty more miserable years after being dragged off the mountain, beset by misfortune and bereavement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844053\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844053\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The large rock in Donner Memorial State Park that formed the back wall of the Murphy cabin, which now holds a plaque bearing the Donner Party’s names \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lansford Hastings, the entrepreneur whose wrong-headed guidebook was the blueprint for the Donner Party’s demise, became a lawyer in San Francisco, and then abandoned it to go into the Gold Rush business with none other than John Sutter. Even Sutter — the enslaving colonizer — described Hastings as “a bad man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hastings then became a Civil War major, on the Confederate side. Having been at least the semi-architect of one disastrous journey, his last voyage was to Brazil, where he was attempting to start a colony for Confederates. He died on the ship on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844059\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844059\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A plaque at Donner Memorial State Park bears the names of the Donner Party. The large boulder that holds the plaque was used as the back wall of the Murphy family cabin \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many of the survivors never even spoke about that winter with their own families, says Greg Palmer. “I guess you could call it the code of silence, remembering that this is the Victorian era … speaking of anything that’s very personal, particularly something as taboo as eating the flesh of people was just not done. And so the shameful stigma of it pervaded most of the members.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you remember that first newspaper story in the California Star, who could blame them? The public seized on what they’d read and if anything, remembered it as even worse. Eliza Donner recalled being taunted by a stranger years after the disaster, who “insisted that the Donner Party was responsible for its own misfortune” and who proclaimed “that he himself felt that the miserable wretches brought from starvation were not worth the price it had cost to save them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps this new California — swollen with people, gold and self-regard — didn’t want any reminder of early failures. Desperation and degradation, after all, hardly makes for a satisfying origin myth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Legend Resurrected\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For three decades after the disaster, little more was heard from or about the Donner Party survivors. But in 1878, a historian and newspaper editor in Truckee named Charles McGlashan had a chance encounter with a Donner Party survivor. This was James Breen — who, like Eliza Donner, had only been a tiny child when his family lived through the disaster. But the meeting was enough to get Charles McGlashan instantly obsessed with this local, infamous history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McGlashan’s exhaustive research resulted in him writing the first comprehensive book on the Donner disaster: “The History of the Donner Party.” It reignited interest in this horrible part of California history, and those who had survived it. McGlashan even took a role in those survivors’ lives, urging Eliza Donner — then in her thirties —to meet with Lewis Keseberg and give him the chance to confess if he really had killed her mother up at Donner Lake. She agreed, and later wrote how Keseberg sank to the ground and cried out “On my knees before you, and in the sight of God, I want to assert my innocence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She chose to believe him — and if Keseberg was lying, then he held on to his secrets for another 16 years until his death, age 81, penniless in Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner lived many years more. She was born before the railroads, but lived to see the First World War, and died in 1922 just before her 80th birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And thirteen years after that, a woman named Isabel Breen died in the South Bay, in 1935. She’d been just one year old when her family fought for their lives up at Donner Lake. With her death, the very last of the Donner Party survivors quietly left the earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Secret Tomb\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>At Donner Memorial State Park, you can wander the site of the camps where the Breens, the Reeds and all those other families lived, and died. You can explore the museum, and pose for photos by the huge Pioneer Monument that stretches over 20 feet into the blue Truckee sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844044\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844044\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Pioneer Monument in Donner Memorial State Park \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This massive statue was erected in the warm sun of summer in 1918. The crowd that watched included 80-year-old Patty Reed, who’d been just eight when her family survived the Sierras, and who’d returned to this place that had brought her family such unimaginable pain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In summer, Donner Lake hums with the sound of campers and holidaymakers. In winter, when the snow shrouds everything, it’s much more silent. And that’s when your mind might turn to wondering: Where did all those bodies find their resting place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That military party that first swept this place when the snows thawed in 1847 had buried all the corpses they could find in a pit they’d dug in one the cabins, and then burned it all. But for a long time, nobody was able to work out which cabin that was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greg Palmer says they’ve excavated various parts of the park looking for the burial site: “They found rifle balls, jewelry, coins, buttons, various fragments of broken china and whatnot,” he says. “But they did not find evidence of a mass grave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they built Interstate 80 in the 1960s, they excavated another cabin site too. Nothing. That left one more place, hiding in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The only conclusion that we can reach is that the cabin that had the mass grave was the Breen family cabin, located where the monument is standing right now,” says Palmer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 474px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844045\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-1918.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-1918.jpg 474w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-1918-160x135.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A group of people including then-California Gov. William D. Stephens at the 1918 unveiling of the Pioneer Monument \u003ccite>(Shades of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Meaning that buried under this landmark — the one that every visitor to this place poses for photographs in front of — is very probably a mass grave. Palmer says that cadaver dogs trained to detect the presence of human bodies have reacted to it in a way that leaves almost no doubt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That makes the monument “more than just a testament,” Palmer says. “It’s a tomb, and should be respected as such.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Lasting Legacy\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>We humans like to make meaning from things. We’re compelled toward the idea that there are lessons to be found within history, even the bad parts, like quartz concealed in Sierra granite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking back at the Donner Party in 2020 — yes, it’s sometimes still treated like a pop culture punchline: the cannibalism, the grand plans gone spectacularly awry. Yet it’s also seen by many as kind of an American tragedy. A group of questing “pioneers” in search of the California dream, cruelly denied — but fate couldn’t stop some of them from prevailing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Dahlton Brown, of the Wilton Rancheria tribe, the Donner Party saga tells a very different story about California, and the United States as a whole. In this story, he sees “kind of this glorification of the American spirit, and having to do what needed to be done in order to survive — that has become pretty synonymous with the way that America treats itself. There’s this idea that ‘if I gotta step on a few necks to survive, then I’ll do it.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party wanted what many people have wanted throughout history: something better for them and their families. All the while, they knew that came at a cost for others — for the people whose land they were claiming for their own — and they did it anyway. For Brown, their drive to acquire and extract — that zeal to stretch out to grab more — doesn’t just prefigure the Gold Rush: it’s America in a nutshell. He says many Americans still often act like manifest destiny is their creed: “that there is this God-given and inherently given right that American citizens have to colonize a place because, in their view, it is making it better,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844064\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844064\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A snowy peak on the route from Reno to Donner \u003ccite>(Alisha Vargas/Flickr)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Donner disaster might even show us what happens when such an impulse isn’t accompanied by knowledge of the land you’re coming to claim. Knowledge that the Indigenous people who already lived here absolutely prized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As 81 people learned in the winter of 1846, if you misjudge this landscape it can consume you whole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Where did those who survived the Sierras and cannibalism end up? And how did this notorious disaster come to represent everything California wanted to forget?",
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"description": "Where did those who survived the Sierras and cannibalism end up? And how did this notorious disaster come to represent everything California wanted to forget?",
"title": "Surviving the Donner Party: California, Gold and Lifelong Secrets | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is Part Two of the Bay Curious series on the Donner Party. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844011/donner-party-pt-1\">Read Part One of this story here.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hen the snow finally melted in spring of 1847, the grisly evidence of the Donner Party’s ordeal — the things that had been buried under feet of snow at Donner Lake — were revealed in full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word of the Donner Party disaster had spread across the country and was already creating “lousy PR” for California, says Donner Party historian Greg Palmer. The story spooked would-be emigrants to the state, making officials wish “they could just wipe the slate clean.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution was a California military detachment, led by Gen. Stephen Kearny. On their way over the mountains to Kansas in summer 1847, these men were given new orders to go to Donner Lake and clean up the mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer Edwin Bryant was with them — himself a recent emigrant who’d been on the Oregon Trail just ahead of the Donner Party. What he later wrote about that day was stomach-churning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Near the principal lake cabin I saw two bodies entire, except the abdomens had been cut open and entrails extracted,” Bryant wrote. “Their flesh had been either wasted by famine or evaporated by exposure to dry atmosphere, and presented the appearance of mummies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844056\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844056\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Creek-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donner Memorial State Park in summer \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bryant and the other soldiers were looking at what remained of the Donner Party: evidence of sheer desperation, and what it looks like when human bodies are stripped for food. “Human skeletons, in short, in every variety of mutilation,” Bryant wrote. “A more appalling spectacle I never witnessed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bryant reported how that military party scraped all the remains they could find up from the forest floor, dug a hole in the floor of one of the cabins, and set fire to the whole thing: “With everything surrounding them connected with the horrible and melancholy tragedy, consumed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These soldiers weren’t just performing a physical clean-up job. They were taking a truly shameful part of the state’s history and erasing it from human sight. This new California demanded it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Survivors in the Spotlight\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As soldiers were burning the Donner Party’s dead up at Donner Lake, their family members who’d made it out alive were safe and warm miles away in the west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of the survivors spent the immediate aftermath recovering in present-day Sacramento at Sutter’s Fort. Presided over by colonizer John Sutter, this was the same place that had acted as a kind of Donner Party rescue command center during those long winter months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the first survivors had escaped and brought the terrible news to California, public interest in the Donner Party saga soared. “The fact that it wasn’t just a bunch of mountain men … but these were women and children,” made it even more compelling, Palmer says. And of course, there was the cannibalism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many people who find themselves at the center of disaster, the Donner Party survivors quickly found that other people were already writing their story for them. The same month that the last survivor, Lewis Keseberg, was rescued from Donner Lake, the California Star newspaper published an account it claimed was based on eyewitness accounts from the rescuers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A more shocking scene cannot be imagined than was witnessed by the party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants in the California Mountains … A woman sat by the side of the body of her dead husband cutting out his tongue ; the heart she had already taken out, broiled, and eaten.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Star cast the Donner Party as terrifying ghouls, so hooked on the taste of humans that they’d been somehow transformed by it into cannibalistic monsters:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So changed had the emigrants become that when the rescuing party arrived with food, some of them cast it aside, and seemed to prefer the putrid human flesh that still remained.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844051\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844051\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-6-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A man poses by stumps of trees cut above the snow line by the Donner Party in Summit Valley, Placer County, photographed in1866 by Lawrence & Houseworth, \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This account drips with revulsion at what cannibalism might have done to the Donner Party’s very humanity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Calculations were coldly made, as they sat around their gloomy camp fires, for the next succeeding meals… Language can not describe the awful change that a few weeks of dire suffering had wrought in the minds of the wretched and pitiable beings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of what was published in the California Star is undoubtedly sensationalized, or just flat-out wrong. But this story, published hot on the heels of the disaster, set the tone for how California looked at the Donner Party, and it haunted the survivors for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner was just three years old when the Sierras orphaned her. It wasn’t until 1911 that she felt able to write her memoir, and to talk publicly about what she remembered of the disaster, but also about her life as a Donner Party survivor. In her book “The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate” she detailed how for years afterward, people came up to her and quoted that newspaper story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Evidently, it was written without malice, but in ignorance, and by some warmly clad, well nourished person, who did not know the humanizing effect of suffering and sorrow,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Two Survivors, Two Stories\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A lot of the public outcry was directed at the final man to leave Donner Lake: Lewis Keseberg. Much of this was owing to another bit of lurid reportage, this time courtesy of one of the men who’d rescued Keseberg, Capt. William Fallon. He wrote how he “discovered Keseberg lying down amid the human bones, and beside him a large pan full of fresh liver and lights [lungs]”, and heavily insinuated that Keseberg had murdered Eliza Donner’s mother, Tamsen Donner, to consume her flesh and keep himself alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From almost the moment he came down from the mountain, Keseberg was a marked man. “Some declared him crazy, others called him a monster,” wrote Eliza Donner, who knew all too well how fast — and how effectively — the written word could be used against someone. She described “blood-curdling editorials” that were written about Keseberg, “stamping him with the mark of Cain, and closing the door of every home against him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844052\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844052\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Lakeside-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donner Lake, pictured in summer \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet all the while, another man — the only actual, confirmed murderer of the Donner Party — received quite different treatment. It was no secret that William Foster had murdered the two Miwok men Luis and Salvador so that the first “Folorn Hope” group to escape Donner Lake could eat their flesh. But because of who he’d killed — two Native Americans, rather than a white woman like Tamsen Donner — Foster never faced a reckoning for his crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Greg Palmer says, it wasn’t even seen as a crime. “‘They’re only Indian’: That was the mentality of the day,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, Foster had chosen to join the third rescue party, to voluntarily return to Donner Lake to bring more people to safety. To the white world in California, Foster was a hero, not a murderer —and condemning him would have meant condemning a mindset and a way of life that had greatly benefited many people who came to California to claim it for their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the many more were about to make the journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Gold Rush Takes Over\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As brutal as the Donner Party’s life and death story is, the immediate aftermath actually marks a calm before the storm in California’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the short-term, the Donner Party horror scared people in California, but also would-be emigrants contemplating the same trip. The overland traffic of settlers in 1847 and 1848 dropped sharply, says Greg Palmer “because of what happened.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In January, 1848, just nine months after final survivor Lewis Keseberg was dragged off the mountain, gold was discovered in California. As if to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the players in this period of time, that gold was found on land claimed by none other than John Sutter, on a site he was developing as an expansion of his Sutter’s Fort empire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844049\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844049\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-9-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold miners in El Dorado, California, between ca. 1848 and ca. 1853 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those small flakes of gold in a river on Sutter’s land changed California forever — and most of all, for those Indigenous communities that had lived here for centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dahlton Brown is Executive Director for the \u003ca href=\"http://wiltonrancheria-nsn.gov/\">Wilton Rancheria\u003c/a> tribe in Elk Grove, outside Sacramento. And says he still finds it “just incredible” how the Miwok and Nisenan people of this region “could go from being the ancestral stewards of a place since time immemorial to just being a resource to be used, for the kind of capitalistic growth and entrenchment of an American society that hadn’t even been on this continent, established as a nation for 100 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier colonizers had already hugely disrupted the lives of California’s Indigenous residents. Settlers like the Donner Party had then wanted their land — and now with gold, everybody else did, too. White migration into California had been a trickle, but now it became a flood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s estimated that in the first 20 years after gold was discovered, 80% of California’s Indigenous population was wiped out — not just by disease, but by destruction and murder. Those that survived found themselves displaced, and their customs, cultures and lives irrevocably altered — by design.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were “insane restrictions put on our tribal communities that were meant to suffocate our life ways,” Brown says. These limitations were meant to “rob our communities and land, to make way for these miners and for these folks looking to make their riches.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844048\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844048\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-8-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold prospectors amid log cabins in El Dorado, California, between ca. 1848 and ca. 1853 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California had a new image, a new way of being. And everything that came before that didn’t fit was treated like dirt in the gold pan: discarded in the name of “progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Hidden From Sight\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As California bloomed under the Gold Rush, virtually all of the survivors of the Donner Party quietly, deliberately retreated from view, and scattered throughout the Bay Area and Northern California. For almost all of them, what happened up by Donner Lake was something they never wanted to talk about publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re imagining the remaining members of the Donner Party might have wanted to stick together, think again, says Greg Palmer. After what happened, there seems to have been very little desire to even speak to any of the others ever again. “There were animosities that weren’t forgotten,” Palmer says. “Which is totally natural.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the families that entered the mountains, only two survived intact: The Reed and Breen families. Of all of the survivors, the Reed clan probably made the best of it — something you could attribute to the fact that patriarch James Reed hadn’t actually been trapped in the Sierras with his family. His earlier banishment from the trail ensured his safe arrival into California, where he’d been able to find time to do some land deals in San Jose while he was raising money to go rescue his wife and children. These included the purchase of the land where San Jose State University now lies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Reed family escaped the mountains, they relocated down to the new home waiting for them in South Bay, where they settled into civic life with relative ease. After striking it rich in the Gold Rush, James Reed even became the Chief of Police in the San Jose Police Department. The family also welcomed two of the Donner family orphans into their home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After recuperating at Sutter’s Fort, the Breens quietly moved south to San Juan Bautista, outside Gilroy. The other survivors, who had all watched at least one family member die in the Sierras, scattered more quietly around Northern California — from Petaluma and Sonoma to Sebastopol and Tomales Bay. Marysville, just outside Yuba City, is named after one of the Donner Party survivors, Mary Murphy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what about Lewis Keseberg, the man who had ‘cannibal’ yelled at him in the street? He sued a bunch of people for calling him a murderer — but the judge sneeringly awarded him damages of just one dollar in each case. He lived for almost fifty more miserable years after being dragged off the mountain, beset by misfortune and bereavement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844053\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844053\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Rock-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The large rock in Donner Memorial State Park that formed the back wall of the Murphy cabin, which now holds a plaque bearing the Donner Party’s names \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lansford Hastings, the entrepreneur whose wrong-headed guidebook was the blueprint for the Donner Party’s demise, became a lawyer in San Francisco, and then abandoned it to go into the Gold Rush business with none other than John Sutter. Even Sutter — the enslaving colonizer — described Hastings as “a bad man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hastings then became a Civil War major, on the Confederate side. Having been at least the semi-architect of one disastrous journey, his last voyage was to Brazil, where he was attempting to start a colony for Confederates. He died on the ship on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844059\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844059\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Plaque2-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A plaque at Donner Memorial State Park bears the names of the Donner Party. The large boulder that holds the plaque was used as the back wall of the Murphy family cabin \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many of the survivors never even spoke about that winter with their own families, says Greg Palmer. “I guess you could call it the code of silence, remembering that this is the Victorian era … speaking of anything that’s very personal, particularly something as taboo as eating the flesh of people was just not done. And so the shameful stigma of it pervaded most of the members.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you remember that first newspaper story in the California Star, who could blame them? The public seized on what they’d read and if anything, remembered it as even worse. Eliza Donner recalled being taunted by a stranger years after the disaster, who “insisted that the Donner Party was responsible for its own misfortune” and who proclaimed “that he himself felt that the miserable wretches brought from starvation were not worth the price it had cost to save them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps this new California — swollen with people, gold and self-regard — didn’t want any reminder of early failures. Desperation and degradation, after all, hardly makes for a satisfying origin myth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Legend Resurrected\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For three decades after the disaster, little more was heard from or about the Donner Party survivors. But in 1878, a historian and newspaper editor in Truckee named Charles McGlashan had a chance encounter with a Donner Party survivor. This was James Breen — who, like Eliza Donner, had only been a tiny child when his family lived through the disaster. But the meeting was enough to get Charles McGlashan instantly obsessed with this local, infamous history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McGlashan’s exhaustive research resulted in him writing the first comprehensive book on the Donner disaster: “The History of the Donner Party.” It reignited interest in this horrible part of California history, and those who had survived it. McGlashan even took a role in those survivors’ lives, urging Eliza Donner — then in her thirties —to meet with Lewis Keseberg and give him the chance to confess if he really had killed her mother up at Donner Lake. She agreed, and later wrote how Keseberg sank to the ground and cried out “On my knees before you, and in the sight of God, I want to assert my innocence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She chose to believe him — and if Keseberg was lying, then he held on to his secrets for another 16 years until his death, age 81, penniless in Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner lived many years more. She was born before the railroads, but lived to see the First World War, and died in 1922 just before her 80th birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And thirteen years after that, a woman named Isabel Breen died in the South Bay, in 1935. She’d been just one year old when her family fought for their lives up at Donner Lake. With her death, the very last of the Donner Party survivors quietly left the earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Secret Tomb\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>At Donner Memorial State Park, you can wander the site of the camps where the Breens, the Reeds and all those other families lived, and died. You can explore the museum, and pose for photos by the huge Pioneer Monument that stretches over 20 feet into the blue Truckee sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844044\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844044\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Monument-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Pioneer Monument in Donner Memorial State Park \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This massive statue was erected in the warm sun of summer in 1918. The crowd that watched included 80-year-old Patty Reed, who’d been just eight when her family survived the Sierras, and who’d returned to this place that had brought her family such unimaginable pain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In summer, Donner Lake hums with the sound of campers and holidaymakers. In winter, when the snow shrouds everything, it’s much more silent. And that’s when your mind might turn to wondering: Where did all those bodies find their resting place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That military party that first swept this place when the snows thawed in 1847 had buried all the corpses they could find in a pit they’d dug in one the cabins, and then burned it all. But for a long time, nobody was able to work out which cabin that was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greg Palmer says they’ve excavated various parts of the park looking for the burial site: “They found rifle balls, jewelry, coins, buttons, various fragments of broken china and whatnot,” he says. “But they did not find evidence of a mass grave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they built Interstate 80 in the 1960s, they excavated another cabin site too. Nothing. That left one more place, hiding in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The only conclusion that we can reach is that the cabin that had the mass grave was the Breen family cabin, located where the monument is standing right now,” says Palmer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 474px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844045\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-1918.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-1918.jpg 474w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-1918-160x135.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A group of people including then-California Gov. William D. Stephens at the 1918 unveiling of the Pioneer Monument \u003ccite>(Shades of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Meaning that buried under this landmark — the one that every visitor to this place poses for photographs in front of — is very probably a mass grave. Palmer says that cadaver dogs trained to detect the presence of human bodies have reacted to it in a way that leaves almost no doubt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That makes the monument “more than just a testament,” Palmer says. “It’s a tomb, and should be respected as such.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Lasting Legacy\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>We humans like to make meaning from things. We’re compelled toward the idea that there are lessons to be found within history, even the bad parts, like quartz concealed in Sierra granite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking back at the Donner Party in 2020 — yes, it’s sometimes still treated like a pop culture punchline: the cannibalism, the grand plans gone spectacularly awry. Yet it’s also seen by many as kind of an American tragedy. A group of questing “pioneers” in search of the California dream, cruelly denied — but fate couldn’t stop some of them from prevailing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Dahlton Brown, of the Wilton Rancheria tribe, the Donner Party saga tells a very different story about California, and the United States as a whole. In this story, he sees “kind of this glorification of the American spirit, and having to do what needed to be done in order to survive — that has become pretty synonymous with the way that America treats itself. There’s this idea that ‘if I gotta step on a few necks to survive, then I’ll do it.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party wanted what many people have wanted throughout history: something better for them and their families. All the while, they knew that came at a cost for others — for the people whose land they were claiming for their own — and they did it anyway. For Brown, their drive to acquire and extract — that zeal to stretch out to grab more — doesn’t just prefigure the Gold Rush: it’s America in a nutshell. He says many Americans still often act like manifest destiny is their creed: “that there is this God-given and inherently given right that American citizens have to colonize a place because, in their view, it is making it better,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844064\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844064\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A snowy peak on the route from Reno to Donner \u003ccite>(Alisha Vargas/Flickr)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Donner disaster might even show us what happens when such an impulse isn’t accompanied by knowledge of the land you’re coming to claim. Knowledge that the Indigenous people who already lived here absolutely prized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As 81 people learned in the winter of 1846, if you misjudge this landscape it can consume you whole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Endless Winter: A Fresh Look at the Donner Party Saga",
"headTitle": "Endless Winter: A Fresh Look at the Donner Party Saga | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is Part One of a two-part Bay Curious series. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844019/donner-party-pt2\">Read Part Two here.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]D[/dropcap]onner Memorial State Park is a serene place. You might even call it low key, considering its outsized place in history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve driven I-80 east towards Reno, and climbed the road high into the mountains around Truckee, you’ve passed it. Safe in your car, up on the ridge on the freeway above Donner Lake, you’ve sped by the site of one of the grisliest, most infamous events in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in Donner Memorial State Park, visitors are greeted by the towering Pioneer Monument: a giant column with a statue of a family at its top. It pays tribute to those people, like the Donner Party, who came from the midwest and walked over these mountains in the 1800s, on their way to make new lives in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844079\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844079\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Pioneer Monument in Donner Memorial State Park \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Long before the railroad, these emigrants made the journey with animals and wagons full of everything they owned. Gold hadn’t yet been found in California, that would come later in 1848. At this time, it was land and total freedom, not nuggets, they wanted to claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Age of ‘Manifest Destiny’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In 1846, the “California” to which the Donner Party was journeying wasn’t actually part of the United States. This was still Mexican territory — called Alta California — and it wouldn’t become officially part of the U.S. for another four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, this wasn’t empty land either. Before European colonization, California was home to an estimated 300,000 Indigenous people. From the Washoe tribe of the Lake Tahoe area to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11704679/there-were-once-more-than-425-shellmounds-in-the-bay-area-where-did-they-go\">the Ohlone\u003c/a> in what is now San Francisco, the wider Bay Area alone was — and still is — home to many longstanding tribes with incredibly diverse cultures and languages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pre-colonization, California was “a bountiful, bountiful place where communities were free to trade, free and interact,” says Dahlton Brown, Executive Director for the \u003ca href=\"http://wiltonrancheria-nsn.gov/\">Wilton Rancheria\u003c/a> tribe in Elk Grove, outside Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was, he says, a life with “no restrictions on existence” for the Miwok and Nisenan people of this region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s ancestors are a part of the Donner Party’s story that often gets left out. It was their land that settlers like the Donner Party were trying to reach. What made these white migrants think they could pack up, relocate their entire families and everything they owned to claim this land for their own?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844075\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844075\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A covered wagon camp of emigrants on the Humboldt River in western Nevada pictured in 1859 by Daniel A. Jenks \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s simple, says Greg Palmer, a Donner Party historian who’s worked with the Donner Memorial State Park museum for several decades: “This is the era of Manifest Destiny. President James Polk has propagated the idea that it’s our divine right and duty to build a country coast to coast after the Louisiana Purchase.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that this land was home for the Indigenous people who’d lived here for centuries, or that it was legally Mexican territory, didn’t stop self-styled pioneers from coming to California. In addition to almost limitless real estate opportunities, settlers like the Donner Party saw an escape from unfavorable situations in their own midwest homelands: places where diseases like cholera and malaria abounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many people prior to gold were moving west for a more healthful environment,” Palmer says. “Free land, ‘the land of milk and honey,’ opportunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party wasn’t just one family called Donner. It was a blended bunch of multiple families, plus some lone travelers and hired hands brought on board to assist: all bound together on a journey of over one thousand miles west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were joining many other migrants and traveling in one long snaking party of wheels and livestock along what was called the Oregon Trail; through the grasslands of Illinois, across the desert and, finally, over the mountains into California. And to fully understand just how shocking and unique what happened to the Donner Party was, it’s important to understand that their party was just one of many like them that season. “Hundreds of wagons and thousands of people,” as Palmer says, made it to the West safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party took a very different path — literally.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Who Were the Donner Party?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Emigrants making the journey west in the 1840s traveled in parties, and the Donner Party was led by 60-year-old George Donner from Illinois, accompanied by not just his own large family, but that of his brother, Jacob Donner. They set out with another local family, the Reeds. That’s the reason this group is sometimes also referred to as the Donner-Reed Party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Setting off from Independence, Missouri, the group was gradually joined by other would-be settlers: the Breen family from Ireland, the Graves clan, the Keseberg family and many more. At its largest, the Donner Party numbered almost 100 people, including children of all ages — from babies and toddlers to teens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The majority of the Donner Party weren’t the hardscrabble travelers you might be conjuring in your mind. As Palmer reminds us, “in the 1840s, to go overland to California or Oregon, poor people couldn’t do it. They couldn’t afford it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from the hired hands in the party — single men being paid to do the hard work on the journey — most of these families on the trail with the Donners had money and land already. They just wanted a little more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844076\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844076\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A recreation of one of the Donner Party’s covered wagons in the Donner Memorial State Park museum \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So if there were a lot of folks making this journey West that year, what made the Donner Party different? Put simply, they were the only travelers on the trail who collectively decided to follow not the trusted path into California with all those others, but to take a chance on a new route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1846, migration West had become an industry — and any industry attracts its grifters. One of those was a guy called Lansford Hastings. He’d written a guide to making the journey into California that told travelers of a “cutoff” — a shortcut he promised would save them weeks, and cut out up to 400 miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, this route was little short of a scam, based on guesswork. Hastings himself had never taken it, and his travel “guide” primarily recommended it because he wanted to divert travelers into places where he himself had money-making schemes set up to profit off them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Far from saving them time, Hasting’s cutoff actually added 30 days to the Donner Party’s journey — through heinously difficult terrain that was utterly unsuitable for wagons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, they were already too late setting off. Hastings’s terrible guide had gotten one thing right: in order not to cross the Sierra Nevada in the snow, travelers needed to leave the midwest at the right time. It warned would-be settlers “unless you pass over the mountains early in the fall, you are very liable to be detained, be impassable mountains of snow, until the next spring, or, perhaps, forever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time members of the Donner Party left the midwest, they were already three weeks behind schedule. As the last wagons on the trail, their fate was sealed.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Struggles in the Desert\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Understandably, a lot of the focus on the Donner Party story tends to fall on the unbelievable horror that befell them in the mountains. One aspect of their saga that this focus tends to obscure: this band of travelers was in dangerous disarray far before they reached any snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The extra weeks and miles on their journey from Hasting’s cutoff meant they were already running out of food. Their livestock, which pulled their wagons, were frequently taken by the Indigenous people through whose tribal land they were trekking. They often had to hitch themselves to their wagons when crossing rivers, exhausting themselves as they continued to trudge over inhospitable, jagged terrain they should never have been in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844070\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844070\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Weber Cañon in the Wasatch Mountains, photographed by Andrew J. Russell between 1868 and 1869 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After having to literally hack a path through the Wasatch Mountains, the 80-mile ordeal of crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert alone took them a week. Hastings had told them it was 40 miles — it was double that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The death began far before the Sierras. As they desperately pulled their wagons over steep rock, 19th century road rage kicked in — resulting in patriarch James Reed shooting another man dead. For this, Reed was banished and released into the wilderness to make his own way to California without his family. They stayed behind with the Donner Party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reed wasn’t the only one to leave the wagon trail. When it became clear that things were already going very wrong for this crew, two other men were sent ahead to California to bring back supplies. Their destination was a sprawling settlement located where Sacramento is now, a place called Sutter’s Fort, presided over by the Swiss colonizer John Sutter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sutter’s Fort was Sutter’s miniature empire, and it represented the kind of opportunity that the Donner Party — miserably struggling on the other side of the Sierras — hoped to find in the California sun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to the Indigenous people whose land Sutter had claimed, this place held only loss and pain. Sutter first sought to entice the local Miwok and Nisesan people to work for pay at his fort, but when he met those who wouldn’t, he forced them into what a visiting settler called “a complete state of slavery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844069\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844069\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sutter’s Fort in present-day Sacramento, pictured in 1847 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Dahlton Brown of Wilton Rancheria, tales of Sutter’s cruelty to his ancestors echo to this day. “The man burned down Miwok and Nisenan roundhouses as a way of motivating people to work harder,” Brown says. “And that’s the equivalent of burning down somebody’s church.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the men from the Donner Party finally arrived at Sutter’s Fort, Sutter agreed to provide the supplies they requested. But he also “gave” them two young Miwok men to accompany them back into the desert with those lifesaving supplies, and to then help them complete their journey into California. A great deal still remains unknown about these two men, including whether they labored by choice at Sutter’s Fort or were enslaved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These two men were called Luis and Salvador — names given to them when they were converted to Catholicism by the Spanish missionaries. Their story often gets lost or overlooked in the Donner Party saga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What was later done to Luis and Salvador by the very people they were sent to help makes that fact all the more painful.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Reaching the Sierras\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>After multiple weeks in the desert, the Donner Party — already dangerously exhausted, and with barely any provisions — reached the granite cliff-faces of the Sierra Nevada. Just as it was starting to snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They approached from where Reno is now, rested, then edged slowly toward where Truckee now lies. Their slowness was another pivotal delay: it could be said, Greg Palmer says, that had they left the Reno area even one day earlier, they might have made it through the mountains safely, and the name “Donner Party” would just be a historical footnote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On October 20, 1846, this group of 81 adults and children was attacked by a shockingly early snowstorm that kept piling snow multiple feet deep on the ground around them. It didn’t stop for days. The snowstorms most of us have seen in our lives are nothing compared to what the Donner Party saw that year. It was snow that literally buried them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844086\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844086\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deep snow photographed in the Donner area (Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road) in 1866, twenty years after the Donner Party’s ordeal (Lawrence & Houseworth) \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the travelers realized they could not go any further, they made camp by what’s now called Donner Lake, at the place where Donner Memorial State Park now lies. But several of them, including the Donner family themselves, were stuck miles behind at a place called Alder Creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party started desperately constructing shelter from the elements. Some had the strength to fashion rough cabins — but in the unbelievable conditions and nonstop snow, others managed nothing more than lean-to tents made from sticks and canvas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The families of the Donner Party built their cabins and shelters startlingly far apart. After six months of chaos and violence on the trail these people were sick of the sight of each other. There truly was, Palmer says, “no love lost between the families. It’s every family out for themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already running dangerously low on provisions, the travelers trapped in the snow killed the last of their oxen for food — eating first the meat, then the hides. A few attempted to travel through the snow to the other side of the mountain, but were repeatedly forced to turn back by impassable snowdrifts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the weeks turned into months, Patrick Breen, the father of the Breen family, began to keep a diary. It’s the only first-person account of the Donner Party horror written at the time that’s seen the light of day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Wednesday 13th Jan 1847 Snowing fast, snow higher than the shanty, must be 13 feet deep. Don’t know how to get wood this morning. It is dreadful to look at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thursday Jan 26 1847 Provisions getting very scant. People getting weak, liveing [sic] on short allowance of hides.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A true battle for survival had begun. And all around them, as the days turned into weeks, the freezing snow just kept coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844068\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844068\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2017 reproduction of the Patrick Breen diary \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>Snowbound Suffering\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Both the Donner Party camps were filled with children of all ages, enduring one of the most traumatic events imaginable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner was the youngest child in the Donner family, and was only three years old at the time. One of the few to survive in the family, she eventually wrote a memoir in much later life. In it, she emphasized the relentless isolation experienced by those trapped up in the Sierras: “Oh, it was painfully quiet some days in those great mountains, and lonesome upon the snow. The pines had a whispering homesick murmur, and we children had lost all inclination to play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside their makeshift cabins, where weak and hungry families huddled to escape the elements, it was dark, and increasingly fetid — especially when the deaths began.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Days at a time sequestered in the cabins: you can use your imagination and imagine just how gross that was,” Palmer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After several weeks, it became clear that if anyone was going to survive, someone needed to go for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifteen of the strongest people in the Donner Party strapped on makeshift snowshoes, said goodbye to their families and hiked away high onto the peaks above Donner Lake to cross the mountains. With them were Luis and Salvador, the two Miwok men that John Sutter had delivered into this grueling ordeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if things at the camps were bad, things out on the pass, fully exposed to the elements, got much worse quickly. This was where the members of the Donner Party first gave in to their desperate hunger and took the irreversible step towards cannibalism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844039\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Snow on the route from Reno to Donner \u003ccite>(Alisha Vargas/Flickr)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>Cannibalism and Murder\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The snowshoe party — known in Donner Party lore as “the Forlorn Hope” — desperately pressed on with bleeding feet, virtually blinded by the glare of the snow. First one died, then another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were too far to return to the camps, so for the first time, the famished, freezing people of the Forlorn Hope band started to talk about the possibility of sustaining themselves on human flesh. When a third man died, the remaining survivors finally took that step, stripped his bones for flesh, and began to eat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The notion persists to this day that the Donner Party’s cannibalism never extended to outright murder for food, and that they only ate the flesh of the already-deceased. But unfortunately, that’s not accurate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the snowshoe party started to eat their dead, Luis and Salvador were the only ones to refuse, even though they themselves were dying of hunger. For the two Miwok men, to have eaten human flesh would have been “culturally taboo, and an absolute no” says Dahlton Brown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seeing their strength waning, that’s when one of the Donner Party, William Foster, murdered Luis and Salvador with his gun — so that the rest of the snowshoe party could eat their bodies, and keep themselves alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that Luis and Salvador had brought the Donner Party lifesaving supplies from John Sutter many weeks earlier — effectively saving their lives — made no difference. For Dahlton Brown, Sutter was “sending them up there as a sacrifice whether or not he knew it.” Ultimately, in being killed and used as meat, Luis and Salvador “were treated as no different than any animal the party may have come across.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844072\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844072\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A plaque at Donner Memorial State Park bearing the name of the members of the Donner Party. Luis is here spelled ‘Lewis’ \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1995, historian Joseph King used records at Mission San Jose, where he believed Luis and Salvador had been converted, to try to divine more information about the two murdered men. From this, King believed that Salvador might have been a Miwok of the Cosumne tribelet, whose birth name was Queyuen — and that he’d have been around 28 when he was murdered. King believed Luis might have been an Ochehamne Miwok, with the birth name Eema, who was just 19 when he was killed for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Dahlton Brown, it all comes down to who “gets” to write history. “The way the story has been shaped and evolved over time. It really shows you where emphasis was placed when it came to human life,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These men’s story deserves to be told,” Brown says. “They’ve really almost been erased from history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After 33 days crossing the mountains, sustained by murdering and eating two men, the survivors of the Forlorn Hope party had the strength to stagger into the valley below. And the first people they saw — the ones who helped these half-dead survivors, giving them food and shelter — were people from the Miwok village they stumbled into. These villagers had no idea the party they were helping had murdered and eaten two of their own people just days before.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The First Rescue\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Once the survivors made it to Sutter’s Fort, news of the disaster spread like wildfire. As Eliza Donner later characterized the news they brought in her memoir: “Men, women, and little children are snow bound in the Sierras, and starving to death!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A rescue had to be mounted, but ensuring the safe return of that many people would cost money. An open letter asking for assistance was written from Sutter’s Fort to the people of San Francisco, and was read aloud in the dining room of one of the city’s hotels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844073\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844073\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of San Francisco looking towards the bay by Frank Marryat, ca. 1850 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pre-gold, San Francisco was not a large town — and some of those people listening to that letter had actually been on the emigrant trail with the Donner Party before they took that fateful cutoff. To these travelers safe and warm in that hotel dining room, this glimpse into what might have been their fate was horrifying, and as Eliza Donner later wrote, “the misfortunes which had since befallen the party seemed incredible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While San Francisco was digging into its pockets, James Reed — the Reed family patriarch who’d been banished from the Donner Party months before they reached the Sierras — had found that exile had saved his life. He made his way safely to California, and he too was now fundraising for a rescue party, knowing that his wife and children were running out of food fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a rag-tag rescue party of seven men was dispatched from Sutter’s Fort into the mountains. This first rescue party is known as the First Relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the First Relief reached the Donner Party camps, 13 people there had already died. And the people they found still living were essentially living under the snow, their cabins blanketed by drifts as high as 15 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What those rescuers first saw when they arrived at the site, says Greg Palmer, were rudimentary chimneys: just “plumes of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow,” and “a woman crawling up out of a hole in the snow, kind of like coming out of a gopher hole.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of those rescuers recollected how a woman, gaunt and delirious from hunger, asked him “Are you men from California or do you come from heaven?” But that first rescue party was only seven men, and all they could do was distribute a little food among the survivors, then lead the ones who were strong enough to walk out of the camps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was no modern Medevac to safety, but instead the start of a days-long march over the mountains, through snow drifts as high as buildings. In these desperate conditions, and still lacking enough food, several of them died on the rescue route.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Cannibalism Comes to the Camps\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Back at the camps, the members of the Donner Party who’d had to watch others being led away to hopeful safety while they themselves were left behind, returned to trying to survive in those rotting, dark cabins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner was one of them. She recalled the desperation for food — any food. “The little field mice that had crept into camp were caught then and used to ease the pangs of hunger,” she wrote, years later. “Even the bark and twigs of pine were chewed in the vain effort to soothe the gnawings which made one cry for bread and meat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844084\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844084\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A display in Donner Memorial State Park museum contains a replica of a doll owned by Patty Reed, a daughter of the Reed family in the Donner Party \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It was then that Patrick Breen’s diary made the first mention of cannibalism at the camp, after the death of a young man named Milt:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Friday Feb 26th 1847 Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would commence on Milt and eat him.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner’s memoir confirms the fact that the starving survivors at the camp used the dead to “sustain the living.” But not, she said, until mothers had watched their children eat the very last of the food the first relief party had left them days ago — and until wolves had found the snowed-over graves they’d dug for the dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Perhaps God sent the wolves to show Mrs. Murphy and also Mrs. Graves where to get sustenance for their dependent little ones… Was it culpable, or cannibalistic to seek and use the only life-saving means left them?” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was several weeks until a second rescue party arrived, led by none other than James Reed, who’d finally raised enough money and men to go rescue his family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, 17 people were evacuated — leaving only a few members of the Donner Party behind. This included most of the Donner family themselves at their creek camp, which had become a horrific site of death and bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two weeks later, a third rescue party arrived and evacuated the remaining Donner children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After surviving being stuck in an incredible blizzard near where Sugar Bowl ski resort now stands, Eliza Donner recalled reaching the safety of the Sacramento Valley, five months after they’d first been stranded in the Sierras:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There, we caught the first breath of springtide, touched the warm dry earth, and saw green fields far beyond the foot of that cold, cruel mountain range.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Final Rescue\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Only a handful of the Donner Party were now left behind at the camps, walking skeletons kept barely alive by human flesh. They were either too weak to travel or refused to leave. Eliza Donner’s own mother wouldn’t leave her sick husband and watched her children leave without her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The very last “rescuers” who made it to Donner Lake in April 1847 were really only making the journey for the salvage. And after so many months of survival, the landscape that greeted these people was one of total horror. Body parts — including heads — were reportedly strewn around the snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They found one last survivor: an injured man called Lewis Keseberg, whose family had been rescued by the first party. Suspiciously, Keseberg was now in possession of a great deal of the Donner family’s possessions, and coins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disgusted rescuers dragged Keseberg out of the camp along the same frozen path to freedom his own family had taken weeks before. Having been left for weeks back at the lake camp, watching others die around him until he entered complete isolation, Keseberg was utterly unaware that his young daughter had died on this path, and had been buried under the snow where she fell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844083\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844083\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donner Lake at night \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stopping to rest, the exhausted Keseburg saw a piece of cloth sticking up from the snow and pulled it to find out what it was. He exhumed his own daughter’s body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a ghastly ending to a horrific saga. But as the last of the Donner Party was brought down from the mountains, and a silence settled over Donner Lake once more, California’s true reckoning with this disaster — and its own mythology — was only just beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This was Part One of a two-part Bay Curious series. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844019/donner-party-pt2\">Read Part Two here.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Cannibalism, death, suffering: Most know the broad strokes of the infamous Donner Party. But there are crucial elements to this story that get left out.",
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"description": "Cannibalism, death, suffering: Most know the broad strokes of the infamous Donner Party. But there are crucial elements to this story that get left out.",
"title": "Endless Winter: A Fresh Look at the Donner Party Saga | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is Part One of a two-part Bay Curious series. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844019/donner-party-pt2\">Read Part Two here.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">D\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>onner Memorial State Park is a serene place. You might even call it low key, considering its outsized place in history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve driven I-80 east towards Reno, and climbed the road high into the mountains around Truckee, you’ve passed it. Safe in your car, up on the ridge on the freeway above Donner Lake, you’ve sped by the site of one of the grisliest, most infamous events in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in Donner Memorial State Park, visitors are greeted by the towering Pioneer Monument: a giant column with a statue of a family at its top. It pays tribute to those people, like the Donner Party, who came from the midwest and walked over these mountains in the 1800s, on their way to make new lives in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844079\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844079\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Monument-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Pioneer Monument in Donner Memorial State Park \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Long before the railroad, these emigrants made the journey with animals and wagons full of everything they owned. Gold hadn’t yet been found in California, that would come later in 1848. At this time, it was land and total freedom, not nuggets, they wanted to claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Age of ‘Manifest Destiny’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In 1846, the “California” to which the Donner Party was journeying wasn’t actually part of the United States. This was still Mexican territory — called Alta California — and it wouldn’t become officially part of the U.S. for another four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, this wasn’t empty land either. Before European colonization, California was home to an estimated 300,000 Indigenous people. From the Washoe tribe of the Lake Tahoe area to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11704679/there-were-once-more-than-425-shellmounds-in-the-bay-area-where-did-they-go\">the Ohlone\u003c/a> in what is now San Francisco, the wider Bay Area alone was — and still is — home to many longstanding tribes with incredibly diverse cultures and languages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pre-colonization, California was “a bountiful, bountiful place where communities were free to trade, free and interact,” says Dahlton Brown, Executive Director for the \u003ca href=\"http://wiltonrancheria-nsn.gov/\">Wilton Rancheria\u003c/a> tribe in Elk Grove, outside Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was, he says, a life with “no restrictions on existence” for the Miwok and Nisenan people of this region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s ancestors are a part of the Donner Party’s story that often gets left out. It was their land that settlers like the Donner Party were trying to reach. What made these white migrants think they could pack up, relocate their entire families and everything they owned to claim this land for their own?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844075\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844075\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-2-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A covered wagon camp of emigrants on the Humboldt River in western Nevada pictured in 1859 by Daniel A. Jenks \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s simple, says Greg Palmer, a Donner Party historian who’s worked with the Donner Memorial State Park museum for several decades: “This is the era of Manifest Destiny. President James Polk has propagated the idea that it’s our divine right and duty to build a country coast to coast after the Louisiana Purchase.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that this land was home for the Indigenous people who’d lived here for centuries, or that it was legally Mexican territory, didn’t stop self-styled pioneers from coming to California. In addition to almost limitless real estate opportunities, settlers like the Donner Party saw an escape from unfavorable situations in their own midwest homelands: places where diseases like cholera and malaria abounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many people prior to gold were moving west for a more healthful environment,” Palmer says. “Free land, ‘the land of milk and honey,’ opportunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party wasn’t just one family called Donner. It was a blended bunch of multiple families, plus some lone travelers and hired hands brought on board to assist: all bound together on a journey of over one thousand miles west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were joining many other migrants and traveling in one long snaking party of wheels and livestock along what was called the Oregon Trail; through the grasslands of Illinois, across the desert and, finally, over the mountains into California. And to fully understand just how shocking and unique what happened to the Donner Party was, it’s important to understand that their party was just one of many like them that season. “Hundreds of wagons and thousands of people,” as Palmer says, made it to the West safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party took a very different path — literally.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Who Were the Donner Party?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Emigrants making the journey west in the 1840s traveled in parties, and the Donner Party was led by 60-year-old George Donner from Illinois, accompanied by not just his own large family, but that of his brother, Jacob Donner. They set out with another local family, the Reeds. That’s the reason this group is sometimes also referred to as the Donner-Reed Party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Setting off from Independence, Missouri, the group was gradually joined by other would-be settlers: the Breen family from Ireland, the Graves clan, the Keseberg family and many more. At its largest, the Donner Party numbered almost 100 people, including children of all ages — from babies and toddlers to teens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The majority of the Donner Party weren’t the hardscrabble travelers you might be conjuring in your mind. As Palmer reminds us, “in the 1840s, to go overland to California or Oregon, poor people couldn’t do it. They couldn’t afford it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from the hired hands in the party — single men being paid to do the hard work on the journey — most of these families on the trail with the Donners had money and land already. They just wanted a little more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844076\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844076\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Museum-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A recreation of one of the Donner Party’s covered wagons in the Donner Memorial State Park museum \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So if there were a lot of folks making this journey West that year, what made the Donner Party different? Put simply, they were the only travelers on the trail who collectively decided to follow not the trusted path into California with all those others, but to take a chance on a new route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1846, migration West had become an industry — and any industry attracts its grifters. One of those was a guy called Lansford Hastings. He’d written a guide to making the journey into California that told travelers of a “cutoff” — a shortcut he promised would save them weeks, and cut out up to 400 miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, this route was little short of a scam, based on guesswork. Hastings himself had never taken it, and his travel “guide” primarily recommended it because he wanted to divert travelers into places where he himself had money-making schemes set up to profit off them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Far from saving them time, Hasting’s cutoff actually added 30 days to the Donner Party’s journey — through heinously difficult terrain that was utterly unsuitable for wagons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, they were already too late setting off. Hastings’s terrible guide had gotten one thing right: in order not to cross the Sierra Nevada in the snow, travelers needed to leave the midwest at the right time. It warned would-be settlers “unless you pass over the mountains early in the fall, you are very liable to be detained, be impassable mountains of snow, until the next spring, or, perhaps, forever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time members of the Donner Party left the midwest, they were already three weeks behind schedule. As the last wagons on the trail, their fate was sealed.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Struggles in the Desert\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Understandably, a lot of the focus on the Donner Party story tends to fall on the unbelievable horror that befell them in the mountains. One aspect of their saga that this focus tends to obscure: this band of travelers was in dangerous disarray far before they reached any snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The extra weeks and miles on their journey from Hasting’s cutoff meant they were already running out of food. Their livestock, which pulled their wagons, were frequently taken by the Indigenous people through whose tribal land they were trekking. They often had to hitch themselves to their wagons when crossing rivers, exhausting themselves as they continued to trudge over inhospitable, jagged terrain they should never have been in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844070\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844070\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-7-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Weber Cañon in the Wasatch Mountains, photographed by Andrew J. Russell between 1868 and 1869 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After having to literally hack a path through the Wasatch Mountains, the 80-mile ordeal of crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert alone took them a week. Hastings had told them it was 40 miles — it was double that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The death began far before the Sierras. As they desperately pulled their wagons over steep rock, 19th century road rage kicked in — resulting in patriarch James Reed shooting another man dead. For this, Reed was banished and released into the wilderness to make his own way to California without his family. They stayed behind with the Donner Party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reed wasn’t the only one to leave the wagon trail. When it became clear that things were already going very wrong for this crew, two other men were sent ahead to California to bring back supplies. Their destination was a sprawling settlement located where Sacramento is now, a place called Sutter’s Fort, presided over by the Swiss colonizer John Sutter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sutter’s Fort was Sutter’s miniature empire, and it represented the kind of opportunity that the Donner Party — miserably struggling on the other side of the Sierras — hoped to find in the California sun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to the Indigenous people whose land Sutter had claimed, this place held only loss and pain. Sutter first sought to entice the local Miwok and Nisesan people to work for pay at his fort, but when he met those who wouldn’t, he forced them into what a visiting settler called “a complete state of slavery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844069\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844069\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-3-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sutter’s Fort in present-day Sacramento, pictured in 1847 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Dahlton Brown of Wilton Rancheria, tales of Sutter’s cruelty to his ancestors echo to this day. “The man burned down Miwok and Nisenan roundhouses as a way of motivating people to work harder,” Brown says. “And that’s the equivalent of burning down somebody’s church.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the men from the Donner Party finally arrived at Sutter’s Fort, Sutter agreed to provide the supplies they requested. But he also “gave” them two young Miwok men to accompany them back into the desert with those lifesaving supplies, and to then help them complete their journey into California. A great deal still remains unknown about these two men, including whether they labored by choice at Sutter’s Fort or were enslaved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These two men were called Luis and Salvador — names given to them when they were converted to Catholicism by the Spanish missionaries. Their story often gets lost or overlooked in the Donner Party saga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What was later done to Luis and Salvador by the very people they were sent to help makes that fact all the more painful.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Reaching the Sierras\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>After multiple weeks in the desert, the Donner Party — already dangerously exhausted, and with barely any provisions — reached the granite cliff-faces of the Sierra Nevada. Just as it was starting to snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They approached from where Reno is now, rested, then edged slowly toward where Truckee now lies. Their slowness was another pivotal delay: it could be said, Greg Palmer says, that had they left the Reno area even one day earlier, they might have made it through the mountains safely, and the name “Donner Party” would just be a historical footnote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On October 20, 1846, this group of 81 adults and children was attacked by a shockingly early snowstorm that kept piling snow multiple feet deep on the ground around them. It didn’t stop for days. The snowstorms most of us have seen in our lives are nothing compared to what the Donner Party saw that year. It was snow that literally buried them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844086\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844086\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-5-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deep snow photographed in the Donner area (Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road) in 1866, twenty years after the Donner Party’s ordeal (Lawrence & Houseworth) \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the travelers realized they could not go any further, they made camp by what’s now called Donner Lake, at the place where Donner Memorial State Park now lies. But several of them, including the Donner family themselves, were stuck miles behind at a place called Alder Creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Donner Party started desperately constructing shelter from the elements. Some had the strength to fashion rough cabins — but in the unbelievable conditions and nonstop snow, others managed nothing more than lean-to tents made from sticks and canvas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The families of the Donner Party built their cabins and shelters startlingly far apart. After six months of chaos and violence on the trail these people were sick of the sight of each other. There truly was, Palmer says, “no love lost between the families. It’s every family out for themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already running dangerously low on provisions, the travelers trapped in the snow killed the last of their oxen for food — eating first the meat, then the hides. A few attempted to travel through the snow to the other side of the mountain, but were repeatedly forced to turn back by impassable snowdrifts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the weeks turned into months, Patrick Breen, the father of the Breen family, began to keep a diary. It’s the only first-person account of the Donner Party horror written at the time that’s seen the light of day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Wednesday 13th Jan 1847 Snowing fast, snow higher than the shanty, must be 13 feet deep. Don’t know how to get wood this morning. It is dreadful to look at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thursday Jan 26 1847 Provisions getting very scant. People getting weak, liveing [sic] on short allowance of hides.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A true battle for survival had begun. And all around them, as the days turned into weeks, the freezing snow just kept coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844068\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844068\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Diary-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2017 reproduction of the Patrick Breen diary \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>Snowbound Suffering\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Both the Donner Party camps were filled with children of all ages, enduring one of the most traumatic events imaginable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner was the youngest child in the Donner family, and was only three years old at the time. One of the few to survive in the family, she eventually wrote a memoir in much later life. In it, she emphasized the relentless isolation experienced by those trapped up in the Sierras: “Oh, it was painfully quiet some days in those great mountains, and lonesome upon the snow. The pines had a whispering homesick murmur, and we children had lost all inclination to play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside their makeshift cabins, where weak and hungry families huddled to escape the elements, it was dark, and increasingly fetid — especially when the deaths began.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Days at a time sequestered in the cabins: you can use your imagination and imagine just how gross that was,” Palmer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After several weeks, it became clear that if anyone was going to survive, someone needed to go for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifteen of the strongest people in the Donner Party strapped on makeshift snowshoes, said goodbye to their families and hiked away high onto the peaks above Donner Lake to cross the mountains. With them were Luis and Salvador, the two Miwok men that John Sutter had delivered into this grueling ordeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if things at the camps were bad, things out on the pass, fully exposed to the elements, got much worse quickly. This was where the members of the Donner Party first gave in to their desperate hunger and took the irreversible step towards cannibalism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844039\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Flickr-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Snow on the route from Reno to Donner \u003ccite>(Alisha Vargas/Flickr)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>Cannibalism and Murder\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The snowshoe party — known in Donner Party lore as “the Forlorn Hope” — desperately pressed on with bleeding feet, virtually blinded by the glare of the snow. First one died, then another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were too far to return to the camps, so for the first time, the famished, freezing people of the Forlorn Hope band started to talk about the possibility of sustaining themselves on human flesh. When a third man died, the remaining survivors finally took that step, stripped his bones for flesh, and began to eat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The notion persists to this day that the Donner Party’s cannibalism never extended to outright murder for food, and that they only ate the flesh of the already-deceased. But unfortunately, that’s not accurate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the snowshoe party started to eat their dead, Luis and Salvador were the only ones to refuse, even though they themselves were dying of hunger. For the two Miwok men, to have eaten human flesh would have been “culturally taboo, and an absolute no” says Dahlton Brown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seeing their strength waning, that’s when one of the Donner Party, William Foster, murdered Luis and Salvador with his gun — so that the rest of the snowshoe party could eat their bodies, and keep themselves alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that Luis and Salvador had brought the Donner Party lifesaving supplies from John Sutter many weeks earlier — effectively saving their lives — made no difference. For Dahlton Brown, Sutter was “sending them up there as a sacrifice whether or not he knew it.” Ultimately, in being killed and used as meat, Luis and Salvador “were treated as no different than any animal the party may have come across.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844072\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844072\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Plaque-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A plaque at Donner Memorial State Park bearing the name of the members of the Donner Party. Luis is here spelled ‘Lewis’ \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1995, historian Joseph King used records at Mission San Jose, where he believed Luis and Salvador had been converted, to try to divine more information about the two murdered men. From this, King believed that Salvador might have been a Miwok of the Cosumne tribelet, whose birth name was Queyuen — and that he’d have been around 28 when he was murdered. King believed Luis might have been an Ochehamne Miwok, with the birth name Eema, who was just 19 when he was killed for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Dahlton Brown, it all comes down to who “gets” to write history. “The way the story has been shaped and evolved over time. It really shows you where emphasis was placed when it came to human life,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These men’s story deserves to be told,” Brown says. “They’ve really almost been erased from history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After 33 days crossing the mountains, sustained by murdering and eating two men, the survivors of the Forlorn Hope party had the strength to stagger into the valley below. And the first people they saw — the ones who helped these half-dead survivors, giving them food and shelter — were people from the Miwok village they stumbled into. These villagers had no idea the party they were helping had murdered and eaten two of their own people just days before.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The First Rescue\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Once the survivors made it to Sutter’s Fort, news of the disaster spread like wildfire. As Eliza Donner later characterized the news they brought in her memoir: “Men, women, and little children are snow bound in the Sierras, and starving to death!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A rescue had to be mounted, but ensuring the safe return of that many people would cost money. An open letter asking for assistance was written from Sutter’s Fort to the people of San Francisco, and was read aloud in the dining room of one of the city’s hotels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844073\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844073\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-10-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of San Francisco looking towards the bay by Frank Marryat, ca. 1850 \u003ccite>(Library of Congress)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pre-gold, San Francisco was not a large town — and some of those people listening to that letter had actually been on the emigrant trail with the Donner Party before they took that fateful cutoff. To these travelers safe and warm in that hotel dining room, this glimpse into what might have been their fate was horrifying, and as Eliza Donner later wrote, “the misfortunes which had since befallen the party seemed incredible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While San Francisco was digging into its pockets, James Reed — the Reed family patriarch who’d been banished from the Donner Party months before they reached the Sierras — had found that exile had saved his life. He made his way safely to California, and he too was now fundraising for a rescue party, knowing that his wife and children were running out of food fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a rag-tag rescue party of seven men was dispatched from Sutter’s Fort into the mountains. This first rescue party is known as the First Relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the First Relief reached the Donner Party camps, 13 people there had already died. And the people they found still living were essentially living under the snow, their cabins blanketed by drifts as high as 15 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What those rescuers first saw when they arrived at the site, says Greg Palmer, were rudimentary chimneys: just “plumes of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow,” and “a woman crawling up out of a hole in the snow, kind of like coming out of a gopher hole.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of those rescuers recollected how a woman, gaunt and delirious from hunger, asked him “Are you men from California or do you come from heaven?” But that first rescue party was only seven men, and all they could do was distribute a little food among the survivors, then lead the ones who were strong enough to walk out of the camps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was no modern Medevac to safety, but instead the start of a days-long march over the mountains, through snow drifts as high as buildings. In these desperate conditions, and still lacking enough food, several of them died on the rescue route.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Cannibalism Comes to the Camps\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Back at the camps, the members of the Donner Party who’d had to watch others being led away to hopeful safety while they themselves were left behind, returned to trying to survive in those rotting, dark cabins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner was one of them. She recalled the desperation for food — any food. “The little field mice that had crept into camp were caught then and used to ease the pangs of hunger,” she wrote, years later. “Even the bark and twigs of pine were chewed in the vain effort to soothe the gnawings which made one cry for bread and meat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844084\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844084\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/1-Dol-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A display in Donner Memorial State Park museum contains a replica of a doll owned by Patty Reed, a daughter of the Reed family in the Donner Party \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It was then that Patrick Breen’s diary made the first mention of cannibalism at the camp, after the death of a young man named Milt:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Friday Feb 26th 1847 Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would commence on Milt and eat him.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Eliza Donner’s memoir confirms the fact that the starving survivors at the camp used the dead to “sustain the living.” But not, she said, until mothers had watched their children eat the very last of the food the first relief party had left them days ago — and until wolves had found the snowed-over graves they’d dug for the dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Perhaps God sent the wolves to show Mrs. Murphy and also Mrs. Graves where to get sustenance for their dependent little ones… Was it culpable, or cannibalistic to seek and use the only life-saving means left them?” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was several weeks until a second rescue party arrived, led by none other than James Reed, who’d finally raised enough money and men to go rescue his family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, 17 people were evacuated — leaving only a few members of the Donner Party behind. This included most of the Donner family themselves at their creek camp, which had become a horrific site of death and bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two weeks later, a third rescue party arrived and evacuated the remaining Donner children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After surviving being stuck in an incredible blizzard near where Sugar Bowl ski resort now stands, Eliza Donner recalled reaching the safety of the Sacramento Valley, five months after they’d first been stranded in the Sierras:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There, we caught the first breath of springtide, touched the warm dry earth, and saw green fields far beyond the foot of that cold, cruel mountain range.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Final Rescue\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Only a handful of the Donner Party were now left behind at the camps, walking skeletons kept barely alive by human flesh. They were either too weak to travel or refused to leave. Eliza Donner’s own mother wouldn’t leave her sick husband and watched her children leave without her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The very last “rescuers” who made it to Donner Lake in April 1847 were really only making the journey for the salvage. And after so many months of survival, the landscape that greeted these people was one of total horror. Body parts — including heads — were reportedly strewn around the snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They found one last survivor: an injured man called Lewis Keseberg, whose family had been rescued by the first party. Suspiciously, Keseberg was now in possession of a great deal of the Donner family’s possessions, and coins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disgusted rescuers dragged Keseberg out of the camp along the same frozen path to freedom his own family had taken weeks before. Having been left for weeks back at the lake camp, watching others die around him until he entered complete isolation, Keseberg was utterly unaware that his young daughter had died on this path, and had been buried under the snow where she fell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11844083\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11844083\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night.png 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-1020x680.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/2-Night-1536x1024.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donner Lake at night \u003ccite>(Carly Severn/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stopping to rest, the exhausted Keseburg saw a piece of cloth sticking up from the snow and pulled it to find out what it was. He exhumed his own daughter’s body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a ghastly ending to a horrific saga. But as the last of the Donner Party was brought down from the mountains, and a silence settled over Donner Lake once more, California’s true reckoning with this disaster — and its own mythology — was only just beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This was Part One of a two-part Bay Curious series. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844019/donner-party-pt2\">Read Part Two here.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "11 Million Households, 10 Languages — That's Right, It's The Official Calif. Voter Guide",
"headTitle": "11 Million Households, 10 Languages — That’s Right, It’s The Official Calif. Voter Guide | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s an election year, in case you hadn’t noticed. And that means we’re all being bombarded with messages about ballot measures up for consideration this November, from bringing back affirmative action to restricting parole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the California Secretary of State’s office publishes an \u003ca href=\"https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2020/general/pdf/complete-vig.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Official Voter Information Guide\u003c/a>. It’s meant to help us voters make informed decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED listener Colin Nichols wanted to know more about it. So he put the following question to the Bay Curious team:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Who gets to write the arguments for and against the ballot measures in the state’s official voter information guide?” Nichols asked. “How are they picked? And why does Gary Wesley write so many of them?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Basics \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Official Voter Information Guide summarizes each ballot measure, gives some context and offers the main arguments for and against them — all in one place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It comes in 10 languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese — as well as several formats, including large print and audio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Secretary of State’s office mails the paper version out to over 11 million households, and depending on the number of measures on the ballot, it costs anywhere between $6 million and $14 million to produce each time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843029\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11843029\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-1020x680.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco resident fills out their mail-in ballot at their home on Oct. 6, 2020. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California has been publishing an official voter guide in some form since the early 1900s (San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://repository.uchastings.edu/ca_ballot_pamphlets/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">UC Hastings College of Law\u003c/a> provides public access online to all of the state voter guides dating back to 1911!) It’s the largest mailing that the Secretary of State’s office puts out. And California is among only a dozen or so U.S. states to offer this resource.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We often have Californians who move away and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t have a voter information guide in my state. How do I make this happen?'” said Joanna Southard, who oversees the production of the guide each election cycle in her role as assistant chief of elections for the Secretary of State’s office. “‘I miss it!'”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Putting The Guide Together\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Southard said about four months before the election, her office collects information for the guide from four sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11842163\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11842163\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut.jpg 480w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut-414x552.jpg 414w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut-354x472.jpg 354w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joanna Southard oversees the planning and production of the voter information guide each election cycle as the assistant chief of elections in the California Secretary of State’s office. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Joanna Southard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first is internal: Southard and her team write up some election basics, like how and where to vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, there’s the Attorney General, who’s responsible for writing the ballot language — namely, the ballot titles and summaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Third, the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis\">Legislative Analyst contributes a detailed breakdown of each measure\u003c/a>. It includes things like historical context, financial impact and costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last, the Secretary of State’s office solicits arguments for each of the measures: one argument in favor, one argument against and rebuttals to each. So there are four in total for each measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are prescribed word limits for these texts. The for and against arguments get 500 words each, and the rebuttals get 250.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bottom line is that anyone can submit an argument for or against a ballot measure. The Secretary of State posts the propositions on their website, and people have a little less than three weeks to submit arguments.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How Arguments Are Selected\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not everybody who sends in an argument gets picked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is, you know, a preference and priority outlined in our state elections code,” Southard said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pecking order is laid out in \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=ELEC§ionNum=9067.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California Elections Code Section 9067\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hierarchy is complicated. But generally speaking, members of the state Legislature get first dibs on writing measures they put on the ballot. For initiatives and referendum measures that require voter signatures to qualify, the people pushing the proposition get first shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next in the hierarchy of authors, you have advocacy groups, like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.lwv.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">League of Women Voters\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cb>\u003c/b>Many times either our organization has served as a co-sponsor or supported a piece of legislation as it works its way through the Legislature, and are asked to help write a ballot argument,” said \u003ca href=\"https://lwvc.org/about/people/carol-moon-goldberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Carol Moon Goldberg, President of the League of Women Voters of California\u003c/a>. Goldberg’s name is the first one voters will see at the bottom of the “\u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/16/arguments-rebuttals.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Argument in Favor of Proposition 16\u003c/a>” in this year’s voter guide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843030\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11843030\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-1020x680.jpg\" alt='A voter receives an \"I Voted\" sticker at a new outdoor voting center near Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco on Oct. 5, 2020, the first day of early voting.' width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A voter receives an ‘I Voted’ sticker at a new outdoor voting center near Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco on Oct. 5, 2020, the first day of early voting. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Generally, that same pecking order also holds for arguments \u003cem>against\u003c/em> propositions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s one difference: Way down there at the bottom of the pile, individual citizens occasionally get a shot at writing a “No” argument. But that only happens when no one else above them in the hierarchy does it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We tend to get more submissions for the arguments against,” Southard said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is where Gary Wesley comes in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would say he’s unique, especially as an individual,” Southard said. “He always has something to say and submits an argument generally each and every time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wesley is a \u003ca href=\"http://members.calbar.ca.gov/fal/Licensee/Detail/84745\">lawyer in Silicon Valley\u003c/a>. Perhaps best described as the Official California Voter Information Guide’s ‘Chief Naysayer,’ he believes firmly that any official California voter guide should have arguments against propositions too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I made it my task to ensure that California voters received arguments against all statewide propositions – not just propositions that buck and draw opposition from special interest groups,” he wrote in an email to KQED.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why over the past 40 years, Wesley has submitted and gotten published dozens of “No” arguments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sometimes he’s the only one that has submitted an argument,” Southard said. “And we would hate for there not to be any argument.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite Wesley’s “notoriety” — there’s a \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9uuh4j/til_for_40_years_a_man_named_gary_b_wesley_in/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reddit thread\u003c/a> dedicated to his oppositional temperament and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-23-mn-7068-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Los Angeles Times profiled him back in the 1980s\u003c/a> — he declined KQED’s request for an interview for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Thanks but no,” Wesley wrote in an email. “No argument of mine is in the current voter guide. Maybe next time I have arguments in there.” (You can read his contributions to the 2018 voter guide, the ones Colin Nichols noticed, \u003ca href=\"https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2018/general/pdf/complete-vig.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact Wesley was outranked in the publication hierarchy for arguments this time around, Southard said she appreciates that Wesley takes democracy so seriously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want both sides represented,” said Southard. “It is a nonpartisan publication.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Neutral Is the Voter Guide?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11843035\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-1020x585.jpg\" alt=\"An official ballot drop box \" width=\"640\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-1020x585.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-800x459.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-160x92.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-1536x882.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jake Tremblay walks his dog Eugene to cast his ballot at an official ballot drop box for the 2020 US Elections on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, California on October 12, 2020. \u003ccite>(FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Voters should be aware that the arguments for and against ballot measures are opinions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the voter guide clearly states: “Please note that the arguments for and against each measure are the opinions of the authors and have not been checked for accuracy by any official agency.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the titles and summaries for each ballot measures \u003cem>are\u003c/em> supposed to be written in a completely neutral way. Accusations of partisanship on the part of the state’s Attorney General are common.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current California Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/california-election-2020/2020/08/california-proposition-descriptions-lawsuits-attorney-general/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sued six times\u003c/a> this summer for how he worded some of the ballot measure titles and summaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cb>\u003c/b>This year, the titling and the summary, which are prepared by a political appointee, the Attorney General, have been done in a leading and I would say somewhat deceptive and tendentious way,” said \u003ca href=\"https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/?id=236#:~:text=Professor%20of%20Business%2C%20Law%20and%20Political%20Science&text=He%20is%20the%20Executive%20Director,at%20Stanford%20University%3B%20John%20M.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Matsusaka\u003c/a>, \u003cb>\u003c/b>a professor of business and law at the University of Southern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuits against the Attorney General are nothing new, they happen almost every year. Though this year there was a particularly high number of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The courts nearly always side with the Attorney General on matters of wording. As Sacramento Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl wrote in several of her rulings this summer: “The Court is not a copy editor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cb>\u003c/b>What should really happen is the Attorney General should do his job in a nonpartisan way,” Matsusaka said. “Or maybe what we need to do is to take the job out of the hands of partisan officials and say we’re going to put this in the hands of a nonpartisan office. I could imagine putting in the hands of Legislative Analyst.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s an election year, in case you hadn’t noticed. And that means we’re all being bombarded with messages about ballot measures up for consideration this November, from bringing back affirmative action to restricting parole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the California Secretary of State’s office publishes an \u003ca href=\"https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2020/general/pdf/complete-vig.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Official Voter Information Guide\u003c/a>. It’s meant to help us voters make informed decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED listener Colin Nichols wanted to know more about it. So he put the following question to the Bay Curious team:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Who gets to write the arguments for and against the ballot measures in the state’s official voter information guide?” Nichols asked. “How are they picked? And why does Gary Wesley write so many of them?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Basics \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Official Voter Information Guide summarizes each ballot measure, gives some context and offers the main arguments for and against them — all in one place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It comes in 10 languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese — as well as several formats, including large print and audio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Secretary of State’s office mails the paper version out to over 11 million households, and depending on the number of measures on the ballot, it costs anywhere between $6 million and $14 million to produce each time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843029\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11843029\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-1020x680.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting2.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco resident fills out their mail-in ballot at their home on Oct. 6, 2020. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California has been publishing an official voter guide in some form since the early 1900s (San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://repository.uchastings.edu/ca_ballot_pamphlets/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">UC Hastings College of Law\u003c/a> provides public access online to all of the state voter guides dating back to 1911!) It’s the largest mailing that the Secretary of State’s office puts out. And California is among only a dozen or so U.S. states to offer this resource.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We often have Californians who move away and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t have a voter information guide in my state. How do I make this happen?'” said Joanna Southard, who oversees the production of the guide each election cycle in her role as assistant chief of elections for the Secretary of State’s office. “‘I miss it!'”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Putting The Guide Together\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Southard said about four months before the election, her office collects information for the guide from four sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11842163\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11842163\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut.jpg 480w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut-414x552.jpg 414w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45349_Joanna-Southard-qut-354x472.jpg 354w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joanna Southard oversees the planning and production of the voter information guide each election cycle as the assistant chief of elections in the California Secretary of State’s office. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Joanna Southard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first is internal: Southard and her team write up some election basics, like how and where to vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, there’s the Attorney General, who’s responsible for writing the ballot language — namely, the ballot titles and summaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Third, the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis\">Legislative Analyst contributes a detailed breakdown of each measure\u003c/a>. It includes things like historical context, financial impact and costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last, the Secretary of State’s office solicits arguments for each of the measures: one argument in favor, one argument against and rebuttals to each. So there are four in total for each measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are prescribed word limits for these texts. The for and against arguments get 500 words each, and the rebuttals get 250.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bottom line is that anyone can submit an argument for or against a ballot measure. The Secretary of State posts the propositions on their website, and people have a little less than three weeks to submit arguments.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How Arguments Are Selected\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not everybody who sends in an argument gets picked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is, you know, a preference and priority outlined in our state elections code,” Southard said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pecking order is laid out in \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=ELEC§ionNum=9067.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California Elections Code Section 9067\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hierarchy is complicated. But generally speaking, members of the state Legislature get first dibs on writing measures they put on the ballot. For initiatives and referendum measures that require voter signatures to qualify, the people pushing the proposition get first shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next in the hierarchy of authors, you have advocacy groups, like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.lwv.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">League of Women Voters\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cb>\u003c/b>Many times either our organization has served as a co-sponsor or supported a piece of legislation as it works its way through the Legislature, and are asked to help write a ballot argument,” said \u003ca href=\"https://lwvc.org/about/people/carol-moon-goldberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Carol Moon Goldberg, President of the League of Women Voters of California\u003c/a>. Goldberg’s name is the first one voters will see at the bottom of the “\u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/16/arguments-rebuttals.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Argument in Favor of Proposition 16\u003c/a>” in this year’s voter guide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843030\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11843030\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-1020x680.jpg\" alt='A voter receives an \"I Voted\" sticker at a new outdoor voting center near Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco on Oct. 5, 2020, the first day of early voting.' width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A voter receives an ‘I Voted’ sticker at a new outdoor voting center near Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco on Oct. 5, 2020, the first day of early voting. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Generally, that same pecking order also holds for arguments \u003cem>against\u003c/em> propositions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s one difference: Way down there at the bottom of the pile, individual citizens occasionally get a shot at writing a “No” argument. But that only happens when no one else above them in the hierarchy does it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We tend to get more submissions for the arguments against,” Southard said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is where Gary Wesley comes in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would say he’s unique, especially as an individual,” Southard said. “He always has something to say and submits an argument generally each and every time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wesley is a \u003ca href=\"http://members.calbar.ca.gov/fal/Licensee/Detail/84745\">lawyer in Silicon Valley\u003c/a>. Perhaps best described as the Official California Voter Information Guide’s ‘Chief Naysayer,’ he believes firmly that any official California voter guide should have arguments against propositions too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I made it my task to ensure that California voters received arguments against all statewide propositions – not just propositions that buck and draw opposition from special interest groups,” he wrote in an email to KQED.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why over the past 40 years, Wesley has submitted and gotten published dozens of “No” arguments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sometimes he’s the only one that has submitted an argument,” Southard said. “And we would hate for there not to be any argument.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite Wesley’s “notoriety” — there’s a \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9uuh4j/til_for_40_years_a_man_named_gary_b_wesley_in/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reddit thread\u003c/a> dedicated to his oppositional temperament and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-23-mn-7068-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Los Angeles Times profiled him back in the 1980s\u003c/a> — he declined KQED’s request for an interview for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Thanks but no,” Wesley wrote in an email. “No argument of mine is in the current voter guide. Maybe next time I have arguments in there.” (You can read his contributions to the 2018 voter guide, the ones Colin Nichols noticed, \u003ca href=\"https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2018/general/pdf/complete-vig.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact Wesley was outranked in the publication hierarchy for arguments this time around, Southard said she appreciates that Wesley takes democracy so seriously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want both sides represented,” said Southard. “It is a nonpartisan publication.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Neutral Is the Voter Guide?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11843035\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-1020x585.jpg\" alt=\"An official ballot drop box \" width=\"640\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-1020x585.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-800x459.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-160x92.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3-1536x882.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Voting3.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jake Tremblay walks his dog Eugene to cast his ballot at an official ballot drop box for the 2020 US Elections on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, California on October 12, 2020. \u003ccite>(FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Voters should be aware that the arguments for and against ballot measures are opinions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the voter guide clearly states: “Please note that the arguments for and against each measure are the opinions of the authors and have not been checked for accuracy by any official agency.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the titles and summaries for each ballot measures \u003cem>are\u003c/em> supposed to be written in a completely neutral way. Accusations of partisanship on the part of the state’s Attorney General are common.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current California Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/california-election-2020/2020/08/california-proposition-descriptions-lawsuits-attorney-general/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sued six times\u003c/a> this summer for how he worded some of the ballot measure titles and summaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cb>\u003c/b>This year, the titling and the summary, which are prepared by a political appointee, the Attorney General, have been done in a leading and I would say somewhat deceptive and tendentious way,” said \u003ca href=\"https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/?id=236#:~:text=Professor%20of%20Business%2C%20Law%20and%20Political%20Science&text=He%20is%20the%20Executive%20Director,at%20Stanford%20University%3B%20John%20M.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Matsusaka\u003c/a>, \u003cb>\u003c/b>a professor of business and law at the University of Southern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuits against the Attorney General are nothing new, they happen almost every year. Though this year there was a particularly high number of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The courts nearly always side with the Attorney General on matters of wording. As Sacramento Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl wrote in several of her rulings this summer: “The Court is not a copy editor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cb>\u003c/b>What should really happen is the Attorney General should do his job in a nonpartisan way,” Matsusaka said. “Or maybe what we need to do is to take the job out of the hands of partisan officials and say we’re going to put this in the hands of a nonpartisan office. I could imagine putting in the hands of Legislative Analyst.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>The Bay Curious team is breaking down all 12 of the statewide propositions on the ballot this November. If you missed our coverage of Propositions 14-24, check out the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Prop Fest\u003c/a> homepage or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">subscribe to the Bay Curious podcast\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6730738384\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:00] Hello. Hello. Y’all, we have made it. Today is the final episode in our Bay Curious Prop Fest series. I’m \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ohubertallen\">Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/a>. Here we go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:14] Cash bail has long been criticized for allowing rich suspects to walk free while keeping low income suspects behind bars. \u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/25/\">Proposition 25\u003c/a> could bring an end to money bail. Here’s how it will read on your ballot:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice 1 \u003c/strong>[00:00:28] Proposition 25 would replace the money bail system with a system based on determination of public safety and flight risk. It also limits detention of a person in jail before trial for most misdemeanors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:41] But is the alternative proposal more equitable? On this final day of Bay Curious Prop Fest, we take a look at Proposition 25, replacing cash bail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:56] Political correspondent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/mlagos\">Marisa Lagos\u003c/a> is covering Prop 25 for KQED and she’s also the co-host of the podcast Political Breakdown. Welcome, Marisa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:05] Hey, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:05] First, can you take us through how the cash bail bond system works in California now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:10] Yes. To do this, I am going to make you an accused felon, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:14] All right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:15] So, you’re walking down the street in San Mateo County. You get arrested on suspicion of possession for sale of a controlled substance. This wouldn’t be like you have a little weed in your bag, this would be like maybe you’ve got a bunch of heroin or they think you do. The bail for that is going to be set at $25,000 just by the schedule that exists in San Mateo County. So, the officers would arrest you and either you would have to hand over 25 grand to the county to secure a release or possibly depending on how big of a drug dealer they think you are, they might make you go before a judge who could either lower or increase that $25,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:57] So, you don’t have 25 grand lying around. I mean, really, who does? Right. You would then decide whether you’re going to stay in jail until you can get a trial set or you might call a bail bonds agency. And what they would do is essentially guarantee the county that they would pay that 25 grand if you skipped out on your case. So, if you didn’t come back for your trial dates. In exchange for that, you would have to pay them 10% of that amount. So, $2,500. If you have the 25 grand to post your own bail, you would get that money back regardless of whether you got convicted of the crime or the charges got dropped or you were found to be innocent. You would just get that money – the money is just there to make sure you show up at trial. However, if you didn’t have that kind of cash laying around and you had to go through a bail bond agent, that $2,500 that you gave them to secure your bond, you would forfeit. You would never get that money back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:02:55] The whole cash bail system has sort of been under fire for a long time for being inequitable. Give us an example of how that inequity plays out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:03:04] Look, people who have been accused of very violent crimes up to murder can sometimes post bail if they have the means. But a lot of people end up languishing behind bars for really minor crimes because they just don’t have the money. Their families don’t have the money. And disproportionately study after study shows these tend to be black and brown people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:03:24] If you can’t pay that bail amount, you can’t go to work. You might lose custody of your kid. By losing your work you might not be able to pay your rent. So what critics of the system say is that it kind of perpetuates the cycle of poverty and potentially leads more people into crime, or can lead people to plead guilty to things that they did not do, or that they might have a good chance of fighting, because they essentially just want to get out of jail and get back to their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:03:58] And we should add that this isn’t an insignificant number of people, right? 2/3 of people in California jails are people who haven’t gone to trial yet and have only been accused of a crime. So, Marisa. How would Prop 25 change things?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:04:13] If Prop 25 passes, it will make California the first state in the nation to completely eliminate bail and it creates a whole new system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:04:23] Walk us through how this made it onto our ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:04:25] So, let’s go back in time. Two years ago, the legislature passes \u003ca href=\"https://www.courts.ca.gov/pretrial.htm\">Senate Bill 10 [SB 10]\u003c/a> and it’s signed by Governor Jerry Brown. Virtually immediately, the bail bond industry went to the secretary of state and filed what’s called a referendum. A referendum is a special type of ballot measure, which sole purpose is to overturn a law that the legislature has enacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:04:45] And what did SB 10 say?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:04:47] SB 10 essentially said that commercial bail would be illegal in California. You could no longer pay a bail bondsman or woman for your freedom. Instead, most people accused of very low level misdemeanors would just automatically get released. No questions asked, here’s your court date. People accused of very violent felonies would almost never get out pretrial. People kind of in the middle would have an opportunity for the courts to do what’s called a risk assessment. So, essentially an algorithm where they put in a bunch of information where you live, who you are, what your criminal history is. Are you employed? And it spits out its best guess based on a lot of data as to whether you’re a risk to public safety and whether you’re likely to come back to court. And, perhaps most importantly, if there are maybe conditions we could put on your release that would ensure that you would come back and not pose a threat. So, that might be that you have to check in with a probation officer. It might be that you have to be drug tested. But essentially alternatives to this idea that money is the best way to ensure that somebody comes back. And within that system, judges would have a lot of discretion to decide both whether someone should be released at all and if they are, what conditions they need to abide by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:06:05] What do we know about the risk assessment system that would be put in place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:06:09] These are built by people and there’s a lot of existing inequities within our system. And so I think the concerns that have been raised about them is that if you’re relying on an algorithm that already assumes that maybe, I mean, this is a really like, like blunt example, but that assumes like if you’re a Black man, you’re more likely to be a criminal because historically we have over-arrested Black men, then that’s not fair either. And so there are some questions from a civil liberties perspective about the way these algorithms are being developed and if they are perpetuating the existing disparities within our system. And then on top of that, you know, judges are humans and they have their own subjective approaches and beliefs. They’re all there to try to be very fair. But we, again, know from our existing system that a white person and a Black person are not always treated the same, even if they’re accused of the exact same crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:12] I think that’s a perfect segue way to get us into talking a little bit more about the arguments for and against Prop 25. So, let’s start with who is supporting this prop and kind of what they’re arguing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:07:22] Probably what you see is really the Democratic establishment pushing this in California, and they’re supported by – certainly not everyone in law enforcement, there are a lot of law enforcement groups on the other side – but groups who have had experience with this, like the probation chiefs, are also in support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:38] And what are their arguments, broadly?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:07:40] So, they’re basically saying that public safety should guide these decisions – not money, not race, not sort of the neighborhood you came from. They’re saying that this is going to make the process fairer for all people and that it will actually end up saving taxpayers money, because after you get past the kind of initial cost of building up this pretrial system, you may end up with far less people awaiting trial in jail. And those are people that we’re all paying to feed and house and potentially to support in other ways. I think that they are really trying to drill down on the issue that the bail industry are the ones that spent the money to get this on the ballot and that are really funding this campaign, that this is a commercial entity that isn’t interested in public safety or anything else, but rather in protecting their own bottom line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:33] There are some interesting groups standing in opposition to this one. Who are they and what are their arguments?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:08:39] The biggest sort of coalition against this are the bail bonds, businesses that are going to lose their business if it passes. They’re the ones that paid to get it on the ballot. They are largely the ones that have funded no on Prop 25. They do have support, though, from the California Republican Party, from a handful of elected officials, most of them Republican, and certainly from some law enforcement groups who are worried about this. They’re trying to make this a sort of question, not about whether money bail is fair, but whether it denies a constitutional right if you take away the option of money bail. That it could actually create additional biases against minorities and the poor by giving these judges so much power. And they are also basically making the argument that it puts public safety at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:09:28] I will say, though, that there are some progressive groups, especially in L.A., who have raised concerns about this. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu.org/\">ACLU\u003c/a> is not advocating for a no vote, but did not support Senate Bill 10 when it passed, because they were concerned about this question of racial disparity and judicial discretion. Some folks on the left really feel like this could potentially lead to more people being locked up behind bars before their trials because it does give judges, you know, so much power. And I think that judges have their own biases and these risk assessment tools were built by data that included a lot of disparities, especially racially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:09] How well-funded are these campaigns for and against 25?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos \u003c/strong>[00:10:13] So, on the no side, and to reiterate, this is the side that wants to overturn Senate Bill 10 – so, that would keep cash bail. It is almost entirely being funded by insurance companies and individual bail bondsmen and women who are paying to try to overturn this law. On the other side, I would say it is kind of a who’s who of Democratic activists and groups, including some of the big public employee unions like SEIU [Service Employees International Union], some of the big criminal justice groups, and individual donations from activists who have been pushing these reforms. And we’ve also seen some money come in from the Democratic Party itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:54] Marisa Largos is KQED politics correspondent and the co-host of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/politicalbreakdown\">Political Breakdown podcast\u003c/a>. Thanks, Marisa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:11:01] Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:03] To recap, a yes vote on Prop 25 says you want to replace cash bail with risk assessments as outlined in Senate Bill 10. A vote no means you’d rather keep cash bail practices in place and repeal Senate Bill 10.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:20] That’s a wrap on Bay Curious Prop Fest. It has been a journey going through these 12 statewide propositions together over the past few weeks. Thank you all so much for riding along with us. If Prop Fest helped you out, please let us know by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen, or send us an email at Bay Curious at KQED dot org [\u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/a>]. We love to hear from you. We’ll get back to our regular programming with a new episode next Thursday. If you’re a new listener who is just tuning in for Prop Fest, be sure to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">subscribe to Bay Curious\u003c/a> so you don’t miss a thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:58] Prop Fest has been a labor of love from our small team here at KQED. None of it would’ve been possible without the hard work of producer \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/katrinaschwartz\">Katrina Schwartz\u003c/a>, who was in the trenches with me making the series every day. Katrina, I am so, so grateful for you. Let’s go take a day off. Our sound engineers, Rob Speight and Katie McMurran make our episodes sing, despite all the wonky-recorded-at-home tape that we throw their way. Thanks also to Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Erika Aguilar, Bianca Taylor and Paul Lancour for giving us feedback on every episode. And to the entire KQED staff that helped make what we do possible, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:40] Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member supported KQED. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Now please go vote with confidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion] \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Bay Curious team is breaking down all 12 of the statewide propositions on the ballot this November. If you missed our coverage of Propositions 14-24, check out the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Prop Fest\u003c/a> homepage or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">subscribe to the Bay Curious podcast\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6730738384\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:00] Hello. Hello. Y’all, we have made it. Today is the final episode in our Bay Curious Prop Fest series. I’m \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ohubertallen\">Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/a>. Here we go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:14] Cash bail has long been criticized for allowing rich suspects to walk free while keeping low income suspects behind bars. \u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/25/\">Proposition 25\u003c/a> could bring an end to money bail. Here’s how it will read on your ballot:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice 1 \u003c/strong>[00:00:28] Proposition 25 would replace the money bail system with a system based on determination of public safety and flight risk. It also limits detention of a person in jail before trial for most misdemeanors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:41] But is the alternative proposal more equitable? On this final day of Bay Curious Prop Fest, we take a look at Proposition 25, replacing cash bail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:56] Political correspondent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/mlagos\">Marisa Lagos\u003c/a> is covering Prop 25 for KQED and she’s also the co-host of the podcast Political Breakdown. Welcome, Marisa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:05] Hey, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:05] First, can you take us through how the cash bail bond system works in California now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:10] Yes. To do this, I am going to make you an accused felon, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:14] All right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:15] So, you’re walking down the street in San Mateo County. You get arrested on suspicion of possession for sale of a controlled substance. This wouldn’t be like you have a little weed in your bag, this would be like maybe you’ve got a bunch of heroin or they think you do. The bail for that is going to be set at $25,000 just by the schedule that exists in San Mateo County. So, the officers would arrest you and either you would have to hand over 25 grand to the county to secure a release or possibly depending on how big of a drug dealer they think you are, they might make you go before a judge who could either lower or increase that $25,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:01:57] So, you don’t have 25 grand lying around. I mean, really, who does? Right. You would then decide whether you’re going to stay in jail until you can get a trial set or you might call a bail bonds agency. And what they would do is essentially guarantee the county that they would pay that 25 grand if you skipped out on your case. So, if you didn’t come back for your trial dates. In exchange for that, you would have to pay them 10% of that amount. So, $2,500. If you have the 25 grand to post your own bail, you would get that money back regardless of whether you got convicted of the crime or the charges got dropped or you were found to be innocent. You would just get that money – the money is just there to make sure you show up at trial. However, if you didn’t have that kind of cash laying around and you had to go through a bail bond agent, that $2,500 that you gave them to secure your bond, you would forfeit. You would never get that money back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:02:55] The whole cash bail system has sort of been under fire for a long time for being inequitable. Give us an example of how that inequity plays out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:03:04] Look, people who have been accused of very violent crimes up to murder can sometimes post bail if they have the means. But a lot of people end up languishing behind bars for really minor crimes because they just don’t have the money. Their families don’t have the money. And disproportionately study after study shows these tend to be black and brown people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:03:24] If you can’t pay that bail amount, you can’t go to work. You might lose custody of your kid. By losing your work you might not be able to pay your rent. So what critics of the system say is that it kind of perpetuates the cycle of poverty and potentially leads more people into crime, or can lead people to plead guilty to things that they did not do, or that they might have a good chance of fighting, because they essentially just want to get out of jail and get back to their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:03:58] And we should add that this isn’t an insignificant number of people, right? 2/3 of people in California jails are people who haven’t gone to trial yet and have only been accused of a crime. So, Marisa. How would Prop 25 change things?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:04:13] If Prop 25 passes, it will make California the first state in the nation to completely eliminate bail and it creates a whole new system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:04:23] Walk us through how this made it onto our ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:04:25] So, let’s go back in time. Two years ago, the legislature passes \u003ca href=\"https://www.courts.ca.gov/pretrial.htm\">Senate Bill 10 [SB 10]\u003c/a> and it’s signed by Governor Jerry Brown. Virtually immediately, the bail bond industry went to the secretary of state and filed what’s called a referendum. A referendum is a special type of ballot measure, which sole purpose is to overturn a law that the legislature has enacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:04:45] And what did SB 10 say?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:04:47] SB 10 essentially said that commercial bail would be illegal in California. You could no longer pay a bail bondsman or woman for your freedom. Instead, most people accused of very low level misdemeanors would just automatically get released. No questions asked, here’s your court date. People accused of very violent felonies would almost never get out pretrial. People kind of in the middle would have an opportunity for the courts to do what’s called a risk assessment. So, essentially an algorithm where they put in a bunch of information where you live, who you are, what your criminal history is. Are you employed? And it spits out its best guess based on a lot of data as to whether you’re a risk to public safety and whether you’re likely to come back to court. And, perhaps most importantly, if there are maybe conditions we could put on your release that would ensure that you would come back and not pose a threat. So, that might be that you have to check in with a probation officer. It might be that you have to be drug tested. But essentially alternatives to this idea that money is the best way to ensure that somebody comes back. And within that system, judges would have a lot of discretion to decide both whether someone should be released at all and if they are, what conditions they need to abide by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:06:05] What do we know about the risk assessment system that would be put in place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:06:09] These are built by people and there’s a lot of existing inequities within our system. And so I think the concerns that have been raised about them is that if you’re relying on an algorithm that already assumes that maybe, I mean, this is a really like, like blunt example, but that assumes like if you’re a Black man, you’re more likely to be a criminal because historically we have over-arrested Black men, then that’s not fair either. And so there are some questions from a civil liberties perspective about the way these algorithms are being developed and if they are perpetuating the existing disparities within our system. And then on top of that, you know, judges are humans and they have their own subjective approaches and beliefs. They’re all there to try to be very fair. But we, again, know from our existing system that a white person and a Black person are not always treated the same, even if they’re accused of the exact same crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:12] I think that’s a perfect segue way to get us into talking a little bit more about the arguments for and against Prop 25. So, let’s start with who is supporting this prop and kind of what they’re arguing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:07:22] Probably what you see is really the Democratic establishment pushing this in California, and they’re supported by – certainly not everyone in law enforcement, there are a lot of law enforcement groups on the other side – but groups who have had experience with this, like the probation chiefs, are also in support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:38] And what are their arguments, broadly?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:07:40] So, they’re basically saying that public safety should guide these decisions – not money, not race, not sort of the neighborhood you came from. They’re saying that this is going to make the process fairer for all people and that it will actually end up saving taxpayers money, because after you get past the kind of initial cost of building up this pretrial system, you may end up with far less people awaiting trial in jail. And those are people that we’re all paying to feed and house and potentially to support in other ways. I think that they are really trying to drill down on the issue that the bail industry are the ones that spent the money to get this on the ballot and that are really funding this campaign, that this is a commercial entity that isn’t interested in public safety or anything else, but rather in protecting their own bottom line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:33] There are some interesting groups standing in opposition to this one. Who are they and what are their arguments?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:08:39] The biggest sort of coalition against this are the bail bonds, businesses that are going to lose their business if it passes. They’re the ones that paid to get it on the ballot. They are largely the ones that have funded no on Prop 25. They do have support, though, from the California Republican Party, from a handful of elected officials, most of them Republican, and certainly from some law enforcement groups who are worried about this. They’re trying to make this a sort of question, not about whether money bail is fair, but whether it denies a constitutional right if you take away the option of money bail. That it could actually create additional biases against minorities and the poor by giving these judges so much power. And they are also basically making the argument that it puts public safety at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:09:28] I will say, though, that there are some progressive groups, especially in L.A., who have raised concerns about this. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu.org/\">ACLU\u003c/a> is not advocating for a no vote, but did not support Senate Bill 10 when it passed, because they were concerned about this question of racial disparity and judicial discretion. Some folks on the left really feel like this could potentially lead to more people being locked up behind bars before their trials because it does give judges, you know, so much power. And I think that judges have their own biases and these risk assessment tools were built by data that included a lot of disparities, especially racially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:09] How well-funded are these campaigns for and against 25?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos \u003c/strong>[00:10:13] So, on the no side, and to reiterate, this is the side that wants to overturn Senate Bill 10 – so, that would keep cash bail. It is almost entirely being funded by insurance companies and individual bail bondsmen and women who are paying to try to overturn this law. On the other side, I would say it is kind of a who’s who of Democratic activists and groups, including some of the big public employee unions like SEIU [Service Employees International Union], some of the big criminal justice groups, and individual donations from activists who have been pushing these reforms. And we’ve also seen some money come in from the Democratic Party itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:54] Marisa Largos is KQED politics correspondent and the co-host of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/politicalbreakdown\">Political Breakdown podcast\u003c/a>. Thanks, Marisa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marisa Lagos\u003c/strong> [00:11:01] Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:03] To recap, a yes vote on Prop 25 says you want to replace cash bail with risk assessments as outlined in Senate Bill 10. A vote no means you’d rather keep cash bail practices in place and repeal Senate Bill 10.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:20] That’s a wrap on Bay Curious Prop Fest. It has been a journey going through these 12 statewide propositions together over the past few weeks. Thank you all so much for riding along with us. If Prop Fest helped you out, please let us know by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen, or send us an email at Bay Curious at KQED dot org [\u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/a>]. We love to hear from you. We’ll get back to our regular programming with a new episode next Thursday. If you’re a new listener who is just tuning in for Prop Fest, be sure to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">subscribe to Bay Curious\u003c/a> so you don’t miss a thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:58] Prop Fest has been a labor of love from our small team here at KQED. None of it would’ve been possible without the hard work of producer \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/katrinaschwartz\">Katrina Schwartz\u003c/a>, who was in the trenches with me making the series every day. Katrina, I am so, so grateful for you. Let’s go take a day off. Our sound engineers, Rob Speight and Katie McMurran make our episodes sing, despite all the wonky-recorded-at-home tape that we throw their way. Thanks also to Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Erika Aguilar, Bianca Taylor and Paul Lancour for giving us feedback on every episode. And to the entire KQED staff that helped make what we do possible, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:40] Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member supported KQED. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Now please go vote with confidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>The Bay Curious team is breaking down all 12 of the statewide propositions on the ballot this November. If you missed our coverage of Propositions 14-23, check out the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Prop Fest\u003c/a> homepage or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">subscribe to the Bay Curious podcast\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9691888386\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:00] Good morning, friends. Olivia Allen-Price here on our second to last day of Bay Curious Prop Fest, our twelve part series explaining the propositions on California’s statewide ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:12] Today, we take on \u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/24/\">Proposition 24\u003c/a>. It’s a measure about consumer data privacy. The full text of this prop is more than 50 pages and it has lots of provisions. And quite frankly, they’re not all easy to understand. We’ll go through some of them today on the show. It’s Proposition 24, the consumer privacy prop.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:00:36] Proposition 24 would change consumer privacy law in California in a lot of different ways. But before we can explain what it would do, it’s important to understand where we’ve been.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:00:48] Well, Olivia, it all starts at a dinner party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:51] This is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/rachael-myrow\">Rachael Myrow\u003c/a>, senior editor of KQED’s Silicon Valley Desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:00:55] This Bay Area real estate developer named \u003ca href=\"https://www.caprivacy.org/about-us/\">Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/a> gets to talking with a Google engineer at this party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:01:02] There was something in the press that day about privacy, and I asked him, hey, what’s – is there a big deal about this? And I expect him to say, nothing to see here. And he said, you’d be terrified if you knew how much we knew about everybody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:01:14] So he goes home and he starts learning about this global industry where people are buying and selling our data, essentially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart \u003c/strong>[00:01:20] We’re being tracked 24/7, 365. All of your searches, all of your location, who you’re standing next to, what apps you have installed, what you’re interested in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:32] Alastair Mactaggart decides to write a ballot proposition with a bunch of consumer privacy protections that he wants to see put in place. Lawmakers and the tech industry take notice, and they were worried that if a proposition like that went before voters and passed, it would be super difficult to amend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:01:49] They got him to wave it off with the promise that there would be a bill that would be passed in the state legislature and that during the legislative year that followed, there would be lots of little amendments that could be discussed, debated, passed or killed. And that’s exactly what happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:02:08] The \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa\">California Consumer Privacy Act\u003c/a> passes in 2018, then goes into effect in January of this year. You know, those dialog boxes that pop up when you visit websites all the time now? The ones with the big “accept” button. Yeah, that’s the California Consumer Privacy Act [CCPA] in action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:28] Basically, you can think about it in five easy pieces, right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:35] Number one, you have the right to go to any company that’s collecting information about you and ask, what are you collecting – specifically? Like, send me the details.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:46] Number two, you have the right to tell that company to delete your information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:52] Three, you have the right to demand that the company not sell the information on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:02:57] Number four, you, the consumer, can sue only if a company’s negligence leads to a hack that exposes your data. Otherwise, only the state attorney general’s office can sue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:03:10] Finally, number five, companies can’t create this two tier system where you get a lesser package of goods and services if you try to exercise your rights to privacy under the CCPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:03:27] So, that’s the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is in effect already. But Mactaggart and a lot of others aren’t quite satisfied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:03:35] You know, a lot of people would describe it as a hot mess. And, you know, quite possibly Mactaggart as well, because he’s back with this second proposition. It’s more of what he wants to see and less of what is kind of collectively hashed out by all of these different power players in Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:03:55] OK. So that gets us to today, we’re looking at Prop 24 on our ballot, a new collection of privacy measures. Rachel, what are we voting on here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] So many things, Olivia. Too many things, in fact, to explain without going into some depth. I’m going to talk about four of the biggies, although actually, why don’t we have Mactaggart talk about, number one:.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:04:13] Recreate a new category of sensitive personal information. That’s your race, your ethnicity, your health information, your sexual orientation. And you get to tell a business, look, that stuff is so sensitive, you shouldn’t even be able to use it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:04:29] Proposition 24 goes into further detail about what it defines as “sensitive data”. Number two, tougher fines for companies that violate children’s privacy rights. Number three, no holding onto data longer than necessary. Unclear exactly what that means, but that’s a concept in there. Number four, news state agency. This Olivia, I think, is the most intriguing aspect of Proposition 24, the creation of a new regulatory agency funded at a bare minimum of ten million dollars a year to work in tandem with the state attorney general’s office.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nAlastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:05:07] We should have more privacy professionals in this agency than right now exist in the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] for the entire country. The FTC only has about 40 lawyers for the entire country for privacy. And we’ll have about the same number here in California once it gets funded up and operating if the initiative passes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:05:21] Rachel, I thought Thomas was already the case under current consumer privacy law. Like that I could tell companies not to use my sensitive info.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:05:31] Right. That’s one of the confusing things about Proposition 24, that it promises to enshrine some things that are already law. Of course, there’s very little enforcement, and companies, big and small sidestep the laws a lot. So, it’s possible a new purpose built regulatory agency in Sacramento might enforce better behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:05:51] Mactaggart says consumer privacy protections would be more secure if this prop passes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:05:57] CCPA right now is “just a law”. It can get amended by the legislature tomorrow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:06:02] Voter passed initiatives are harder to amend. But Mactaggart says this one does give legislators a little more flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:06:09] We do give the legislature the power to invent it, even with just a simple majority vote. But here’s the sort of protection: It has to be amended in furtherance of the purpose and intent of the act. And we have a section which is kinda of like a bill of rights for privacy, it just says, hey look, you can amend it, just don’t hurt consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:06:29] But this one isn’t all about increasing privacy for consumers. There are some provisions that seem like they might have the opposite effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:06:37] Frankly, Olivia, here’s where things get confusing. I mean, on the one hand, Prop 24 directs companies to collect only what they need to provide you with their service. But it would be easier for companies to refuse to delete your information when you asked them to. And easier for companies to squirrel out of making sure that other companies get some of that data are also complying with your request not to use it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:02] Prop 24 would also reduce the number of companies that have to comply with these privacy laws. Companies that buy or sell data from less than 100,000 households a year would be exempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:18] Where do the companies who this prop could impact come down on this one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:07:22] That’s an excellent question. And I really want to take this moment to make the point that we’re not just talking about tech companies like Facebook and Google collecting and selling your data. We’ve reached the point now in the global economy where your insurance company is in this game, your broadband provider, your retail outlets, and a host of companies you’ve never even heard of, located all over the world. And while we saw a lot of lobbyists paid for by these companies, saying a lot of things very loudly when the rollout of the current consumer privacy law was in play, most of them seemed to be weirdly silent right now. There are different ideas about why that is, but the one I’ve heard most often is that the industry knows data collection is not popular, knows that consumer privacy is popular, so, they’re just staying in the shadows to avoid blowback at the ballot box.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:08:17] All right. Well, let’s get into what makes this prop sort of especially fascinating to me. Who is for and against it? I understand that it’s kind of all over the place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:08:26] Yes. People and groups who are usually on the same page are split on this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:32] OK, let’s start with who’s for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:08:33] \u003ca href=\"https://consumerwatchdog.org/\">Consumer WatchDog\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.commonsensemedia.org/\">Common Sense\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/people/the-times-editorial-board\">The L.A. Times Editorial Board\u003c/a>, and perhaps the biggest headliner of all, \u003ca href=\"https://www.yang2020.com/\">Andrew Yang\u003c/a>, former presidential candidate who was one of the foremost techies on the early campaign trail. I would say, to put it succinctly, these folks like the basic premise of expanding consumer rights, and they trust Alastair Mactaggart, that his heart is in the right place, even if the language of the proposition is convoluted and unclear. The political action committee supporting the group is reporting 5.4 million dollars in contributions – nearly all of that, Olivia, from Alastair Mactaggart.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:09:13] And who’s come out against it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:09:15] On the no side we’ve got the \u003ca href=\"https://consumercal.org/\">Consumer Federation of California\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://media-alliance.org/\">Media Alliance\u003c/a>, a couple chapters of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu.org/\">ACLU\u003c/a> [American Civil Liberties Union]. These groups are against 24 for a host of different reasons. Some say the state doesn’t really need another regulatory agency, which Prop 24 would create. Others think this prop is simply the wrong way to solve this type of problem because laws voted in as propositions are harder to amend than laws passed by the state legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:09:45] I should also mention the no side has spent nowhere near the amount of money Mactaggart has. To date, not even 50 grand, according to the secretary of state’s website.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:09:56] And we should also mention that there are some pretty notable groups like \u003ca href=\"https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm\">Consumer Reports\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/why-eff-doesnt-support-cal-prop-24\">Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF]\u003c/a> who are not taking a side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:10:05] Yes. And this is particularly interesting to me. I reached out to Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative analyst at EFF, which is a well-respected consumer data privacy advocate.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nHayley Tsukayama\u003c/strong> [00:10:16] So, I’m not saying it’s the worst thing in the world, I’m just, it’s not something that we felt able to support.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nRachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:10:23] The EFF has dug into the details in a tech savvy way, but also they haven’t locked into a political position that makes you worry they’re shoving other concerns behind the curtain, trying to show a united front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hayley Tsukayama\u003c/strong> [00:10:36] I just think there are enough things in here that I don’t know what they would do, functionally, and I don’t know how hard they will be to fix if they do end up being wrong. It’s a funny time in privacy law, right? We’re trying a lot of things. We’re seeing what there’s political appetite for. We’re seeing what there’s consumer appetite for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:57] So, she wants to see the new privacy law that we already have play out for a bit, sounds like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:11:02] Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:03] I mean, that’s kind of taking a side?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:11:06] I mean, mainly in the sense that the EFF is following an ancient maxim in California ballot box politics: When in doubt, don’t vote yes. I don’t get the impression reading the foundation’s blog post explaining their position that anyone at the foundation believes Prop 24 is world ending or an unfixable giveaway to industry. It’s just, as we’ve been talking about, it’s way too hard to understand, even to people who know the territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:34] All right. Well, Rachael Myrow, thank you for walking us through this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:11:38] My pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:45] In a nutshell, a vote yes on Proposition 24 says you want to see California’s consumer data privacy laws expanded as outlined in the full 50 plus page text of this proposition. And you support creating a new state agency to enforce these laws. A no vote means businesses will continue to follow California’s current data privacy laws and the state’s Department of Justice would continue to enforce them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:14] That’s it on Proposition 24. We’ll be back tomorrow with our final episode of Prop Fest. It’ll cover Prop 25, which would end the use of cash bail in California. So it’s a big one. Catch up on all of our prop fest episodes in our podcast feed or online at Bay Curious dot org slash prop fest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:34] One reminder, October 19th is the last day you can register to vote. That’s this coming Monday. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Bay Curious Prop Fest\u003c/a> is produced by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/katrinaschwartz\">Katrina Schwartz\u003c/a>, Katie McMurran, Rob Speight and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Our show was made in San Francisco at member supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Bay Curious team is breaking down all 12 of the statewide propositions on the ballot this November. If you missed our coverage of Propositions 14-23, check out the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Prop Fest\u003c/a> homepage or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/baycurious\">subscribe to the Bay Curious podcast\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9691888386\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:00] Good morning, friends. Olivia Allen-Price here on our second to last day of Bay Curious Prop Fest, our twelve part series explaining the propositions on California’s statewide ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:12] Today, we take on \u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/24/\">Proposition 24\u003c/a>. It’s a measure about consumer data privacy. The full text of this prop is more than 50 pages and it has lots of provisions. And quite frankly, they’re not all easy to understand. We’ll go through some of them today on the show. It’s Proposition 24, the consumer privacy prop.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:00:36] Proposition 24 would change consumer privacy law in California in a lot of different ways. But before we can explain what it would do, it’s important to understand where we’ve been.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:00:48] Well, Olivia, it all starts at a dinner party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:51] This is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/rachael-myrow\">Rachael Myrow\u003c/a>, senior editor of KQED’s Silicon Valley Desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:00:55] This Bay Area real estate developer named \u003ca href=\"https://www.caprivacy.org/about-us/\">Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/a> gets to talking with a Google engineer at this party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:01:02] There was something in the press that day about privacy, and I asked him, hey, what’s – is there a big deal about this? And I expect him to say, nothing to see here. And he said, you’d be terrified if you knew how much we knew about everybody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:01:14] So he goes home and he starts learning about this global industry where people are buying and selling our data, essentially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart \u003c/strong>[00:01:20] We’re being tracked 24/7, 365. All of your searches, all of your location, who you’re standing next to, what apps you have installed, what you’re interested in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:32] Alastair Mactaggart decides to write a ballot proposition with a bunch of consumer privacy protections that he wants to see put in place. Lawmakers and the tech industry take notice, and they were worried that if a proposition like that went before voters and passed, it would be super difficult to amend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:01:49] They got him to wave it off with the promise that there would be a bill that would be passed in the state legislature and that during the legislative year that followed, there would be lots of little amendments that could be discussed, debated, passed or killed. And that’s exactly what happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:02:08] The \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa\">California Consumer Privacy Act\u003c/a> passes in 2018, then goes into effect in January of this year. You know, those dialog boxes that pop up when you visit websites all the time now? The ones with the big “accept” button. Yeah, that’s the California Consumer Privacy Act [CCPA] in action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:28] Basically, you can think about it in five easy pieces, right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:35] Number one, you have the right to go to any company that’s collecting information about you and ask, what are you collecting – specifically? Like, send me the details.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:46] Number two, you have the right to tell that company to delete your information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:02:52] Three, you have the right to demand that the company not sell the information on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:02:57] Number four, you, the consumer, can sue only if a company’s negligence leads to a hack that exposes your data. Otherwise, only the state attorney general’s office can sue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:03:10] Finally, number five, companies can’t create this two tier system where you get a lesser package of goods and services if you try to exercise your rights to privacy under the CCPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:03:27] So, that’s the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is in effect already. But Mactaggart and a lot of others aren’t quite satisfied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:03:35] You know, a lot of people would describe it as a hot mess. And, you know, quite possibly Mactaggart as well, because he’s back with this second proposition. It’s more of what he wants to see and less of what is kind of collectively hashed out by all of these different power players in Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:03:55] OK. So that gets us to today, we’re looking at Prop 24 on our ballot, a new collection of privacy measures. Rachel, what are we voting on here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] So many things, Olivia. Too many things, in fact, to explain without going into some depth. I’m going to talk about four of the biggies, although actually, why don’t we have Mactaggart talk about, number one:.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:04:13] Recreate a new category of sensitive personal information. That’s your race, your ethnicity, your health information, your sexual orientation. And you get to tell a business, look, that stuff is so sensitive, you shouldn’t even be able to use it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:04:29] Proposition 24 goes into further detail about what it defines as “sensitive data”. Number two, tougher fines for companies that violate children’s privacy rights. Number three, no holding onto data longer than necessary. Unclear exactly what that means, but that’s a concept in there. Number four, news state agency. This Olivia, I think, is the most intriguing aspect of Proposition 24, the creation of a new regulatory agency funded at a bare minimum of ten million dollars a year to work in tandem with the state attorney general’s office.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nAlastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:05:07] We should have more privacy professionals in this agency than right now exist in the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] for the entire country. The FTC only has about 40 lawyers for the entire country for privacy. And we’ll have about the same number here in California once it gets funded up and operating if the initiative passes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:05:21] Rachel, I thought Thomas was already the case under current consumer privacy law. Like that I could tell companies not to use my sensitive info.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:05:31] Right. That’s one of the confusing things about Proposition 24, that it promises to enshrine some things that are already law. Of course, there’s very little enforcement, and companies, big and small sidestep the laws a lot. So, it’s possible a new purpose built regulatory agency in Sacramento might enforce better behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:05:51] Mactaggart says consumer privacy protections would be more secure if this prop passes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:05:57] CCPA right now is “just a law”. It can get amended by the legislature tomorrow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:06:02] Voter passed initiatives are harder to amend. But Mactaggart says this one does give legislators a little more flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alastair Mactaggart\u003c/strong> [00:06:09] We do give the legislature the power to invent it, even with just a simple majority vote. But here’s the sort of protection: It has to be amended in furtherance of the purpose and intent of the act. And we have a section which is kinda of like a bill of rights for privacy, it just says, hey look, you can amend it, just don’t hurt consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:06:29] But this one isn’t all about increasing privacy for consumers. There are some provisions that seem like they might have the opposite effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:06:37] Frankly, Olivia, here’s where things get confusing. I mean, on the one hand, Prop 24 directs companies to collect only what they need to provide you with their service. But it would be easier for companies to refuse to delete your information when you asked them to. And easier for companies to squirrel out of making sure that other companies get some of that data are also complying with your request not to use it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:02] Prop 24 would also reduce the number of companies that have to comply with these privacy laws. Companies that buy or sell data from less than 100,000 households a year would be exempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:18] Where do the companies who this prop could impact come down on this one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:07:22] That’s an excellent question. And I really want to take this moment to make the point that we’re not just talking about tech companies like Facebook and Google collecting and selling your data. We’ve reached the point now in the global economy where your insurance company is in this game, your broadband provider, your retail outlets, and a host of companies you’ve never even heard of, located all over the world. And while we saw a lot of lobbyists paid for by these companies, saying a lot of things very loudly when the rollout of the current consumer privacy law was in play, most of them seemed to be weirdly silent right now. There are different ideas about why that is, but the one I’ve heard most often is that the industry knows data collection is not popular, knows that consumer privacy is popular, so, they’re just staying in the shadows to avoid blowback at the ballot box.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:08:17] All right. Well, let’s get into what makes this prop sort of especially fascinating to me. Who is for and against it? I understand that it’s kind of all over the place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:08:26] Yes. People and groups who are usually on the same page are split on this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:32] OK, let’s start with who’s for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:08:33] \u003ca href=\"https://consumerwatchdog.org/\">Consumer WatchDog\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.commonsensemedia.org/\">Common Sense\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/people/the-times-editorial-board\">The L.A. Times Editorial Board\u003c/a>, and perhaps the biggest headliner of all, \u003ca href=\"https://www.yang2020.com/\">Andrew Yang\u003c/a>, former presidential candidate who was one of the foremost techies on the early campaign trail. I would say, to put it succinctly, these folks like the basic premise of expanding consumer rights, and they trust Alastair Mactaggart, that his heart is in the right place, even if the language of the proposition is convoluted and unclear. The political action committee supporting the group is reporting 5.4 million dollars in contributions – nearly all of that, Olivia, from Alastair Mactaggart.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:09:13] And who’s come out against it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:09:15] On the no side we’ve got the \u003ca href=\"https://consumercal.org/\">Consumer Federation of California\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://media-alliance.org/\">Media Alliance\u003c/a>, a couple chapters of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aclu.org/\">ACLU\u003c/a> [American Civil Liberties Union]. These groups are against 24 for a host of different reasons. Some say the state doesn’t really need another regulatory agency, which Prop 24 would create. Others think this prop is simply the wrong way to solve this type of problem because laws voted in as propositions are harder to amend than laws passed by the state legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:09:45] I should also mention the no side has spent nowhere near the amount of money Mactaggart has. To date, not even 50 grand, according to the secretary of state’s website.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:09:56] And we should also mention that there are some pretty notable groups like \u003ca href=\"https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm\">Consumer Reports\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/why-eff-doesnt-support-cal-prop-24\">Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF]\u003c/a> who are not taking a side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:10:05] Yes. And this is particularly interesting to me. I reached out to Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative analyst at EFF, which is a well-respected consumer data privacy advocate.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nHayley Tsukayama\u003c/strong> [00:10:16] So, I’m not saying it’s the worst thing in the world, I’m just, it’s not something that we felt able to support.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nRachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:10:23] The EFF has dug into the details in a tech savvy way, but also they haven’t locked into a political position that makes you worry they’re shoving other concerns behind the curtain, trying to show a united front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hayley Tsukayama\u003c/strong> [00:10:36] I just think there are enough things in here that I don’t know what they would do, functionally, and I don’t know how hard they will be to fix if they do end up being wrong. It’s a funny time in privacy law, right? We’re trying a lot of things. We’re seeing what there’s political appetite for. We’re seeing what there’s consumer appetite for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:57] So, she wants to see the new privacy law that we already have play out for a bit, sounds like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow \u003c/strong>[00:11:02] Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:03] I mean, that’s kind of taking a side?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:11:06] I mean, mainly in the sense that the EFF is following an ancient maxim in California ballot box politics: When in doubt, don’t vote yes. I don’t get the impression reading the foundation’s blog post explaining their position that anyone at the foundation believes Prop 24 is world ending or an unfixable giveaway to industry. It’s just, as we’ve been talking about, it’s way too hard to understand, even to people who know the territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:34] All right. Well, Rachael Myrow, thank you for walking us through this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow\u003c/strong> [00:11:38] My pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:11:45] In a nutshell, a vote yes on Proposition 24 says you want to see California’s consumer data privacy laws expanded as outlined in the full 50 plus page text of this proposition. And you support creating a new state agency to enforce these laws. A no vote means businesses will continue to follow California’s current data privacy laws and the state’s Department of Justice would continue to enforce them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:14] That’s it on Proposition 24. We’ll be back tomorrow with our final episode of Prop Fest. It’ll cover Prop 25, which would end the use of cash bail in California. So it’s a big one. Catch up on all of our prop fest episodes in our podcast feed or online at Bay Curious dot org slash prop fest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:34] One reminder, October 19th is the last day you can register to vote. That’s this coming Monday. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Bay Curious Prop Fest\u003c/a> is produced by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/katrinaschwartz\">Katrina Schwartz\u003c/a>, Katie McMurran, Rob Speight and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Our show was made in San Francisco at member supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Bay Curious team is breaking down each statewide proposition on the California ballot this year. If you haven’t listened to our episodes on Propositions 14 to 22, check out the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Prop Fest\u003c/a> Page for more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, we take on Proposition 23, which would require dialysis clinics to have a physician on site while patients are receiving care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6767930943\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:00] Hello. Hello. You’re tuned in to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Bay Curious Prop Fest\u003c/a>, a twelve part series that explores the 12 propositions on the California ballot. I’m \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ohubertallen\">Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:11] Today we’re on to \u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/23/\">Proposition 23\u003c/a>, which would establish a new requirement for dialysis clinics. On your ballot it will read in part like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice 1\u003c/strong> [00:00:22] Prop 23 requires at least one licensed physician onsite during treatment at outpatient kidney dialysis clinics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:30] This one sounds simple on the surface, but has a lot going on when you take a closer look. We’ll go through the ins and outs today on Proposition 23, the dialysis prop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:43] KQED health correspondent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/adembosky\">April Dembosky\u003c/a> has been following Prop 23. Hey, April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo] \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:00:47] Hey, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:48] Let’s start off with just the top line here. What are we voting on in Prop 23?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:00:52] Proposition 23 is aimed at improving care at dialysis clinics in California. There are a few different parts to it, but the main thing is that it would require clinics to have a physician onsite during all hours patients are receiving treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:07] One of my first thoughts when I saw this on the ballot was, didn’t we already vote on this? Like I remember a ballot initiative from just a couple of years ago about dialysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:01:16] Yeah, a lot of people are having deja vu on this one. Two years ago, there was another dialysis measure on the ballot and the same groups that were for and against it last time are the same groups duking it out this time. So, at the core of both ballot measures is a labor dispute on the yes side is \u003ca href=\"https://www.seiu.org/\">SEIU [Service Employees International Union]\u003c/a> a union that represents health care workers at various hospitals like nurses and maintenance staff. And they’ve been trying to organize workers at dialysis clinics for about four or five years now. But the companies put up a fierce resistance to those efforts. That’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.davita.com/\">DeVita\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://fmcna.com/\">Fresenius [Medical Care]\u003c/a>, the two big dialysis companies in California, they are not interested in seeing their workforce unionized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:01:56] So in 2018, SEIU put a measure on the ballot to try to get leverage with the dialysis companies. And this is actually a typical MO of the union. In the past, they’ve put measures on the ballot that sound appealing to voters but that they know will irk the hospital they’re fighting with. Then if they get what they want from the hospital, they withdraw the measure. Now, with Prop 23, the companies say that the union is at it again and the union says they’ve given up trying to unionize dialysis workers, but they learned a lot about clinics along the way and the way that patients are cared for. And they say they’re doing this for the patients. This is Steve Trossman, a spokesman for the union.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nSteve Trossman\u003c/strong> [00:02:35] This initiative is about improving conditions for patients, improving safety for patients and making the dialysis clinic spend some of the billions of dollars they make every year to improve their clinics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:02:50] So is Prop 23 the exact same measure that we voted on in 2018?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nApril Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:02:54] No, it’s different. Two years ago, the measure was about trying to limit the revenues that dialysis companies could take in to try to direct more money to workers and patient care. And the union was trying to hit them in the wallet. But it was a really confusing measure and voters voted it down. So the union went back to the drawing board pretty much right away to come up with a new measure, one that they hoped would be easier for voters to understand and perhaps more appealing. And they decided on this: Let’s require dialysis companies to have doctors onsite full time for as long as patients are receiving treatment. Now, a lot of dialysis centers are open from 5:00 in the morning to 8:00 p.m. at night, so most are going to need two or three doctors to keep them fully staffed. And the state \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/\">Legislative Analyst’s Office\u003c/a> says that’s several hundred thousand dollars a year for each clinic. So, it’s still a way for the union to hit the clinics in the wallet, but this time, maybe a bit more appealing to voters.\u003cbr>\n \u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:03:52] Now, before we get into the details of the measure, can you explain a bit about what dialysis is first and who gets it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:03:59] Dialysis is for people with kidney failure. It’s a procedure that cleans toxins from the blood. Most patients go three times a week for three to four hours each time. And you’re exhausted afterwards. So it’s a big disruption to life. A lot of people have to quit their jobs. Kidney failure can result from a variety of health conditions, but most often it’s caused by diabetes or high blood pressure. And because people of color are more likely to experience these health conditions, they are more likely to be on dialysis. 57% of dialysis patients in California are either African American or Latino.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:04:37] Now, when I first read this measure, I thought, yeah, having doctors around to help with patients sounds like a great idea. I guess, is this a good idea?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky \u003c/strong>[00:04:46] So, healthcare is complicated and it’s hard to know if this would really help patients or if it might have unintended consequences. So patients already have their own doctors. They come see them in the clinics once a month or once a week to check on their dialysis, prescription medications, to monitor their labs. And researchers have studied whether the frequency of doctor’s visits makes a difference in patients’ health. Back in 2004, \u003ca href=\"https://www.medicare.gov/\">Medicare\u003c/a>, the government health program that pays for most dialysis treatment, created a new incentive to encourage doctors to visit their dialysis patients more often. So instead of one or two times a month, it pushed them to visit four or more times per month. Well, after more than 10 years of doing this, it turns out seeing your doctor more often has no impact on health outcomes. In fact, patients who were seen less often by their doctor actually had better survival rates. So the government was paying doctors more money for more services with no conclusive benefits to show for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky \u003c/strong>[00:05:51] Then there’s a question of emergencies. Emergencies do come up. Patients and employees have told me that they’ve seen patients faint during treatment, or code, which means their heart stops. If someone’s heart stops while they’re in the clinic, nurses or technicians will do CPR. Maybe use a defibrillator and they will call 911 to have paramedics take them to the hospital. I spoke with Magellan Handford. He’s been a dialysis nurse for almost 20 years and he’s in favor of Prop 23. He says having a doctor on site would help with these kinds of emergencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Magellan Handford\u003c/strong> [00:06:23] Before we used to have – in our crash cart – we used to have medications like epinephrine and bicarb and different things to assist in a code. And we don’t have those anymore. They took all of those off our crash carts because there’s no doctor there to give instructions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:06:41] But the people on the no side say that having a doctor there won’t change any of the protocols and won’t make any difference whether the patient survives or not. They would do the same CPR the nurses do, and they would still call an ambulance to take them to the ER. And there are some studies out there looking at ways to prevent this sudden cardiac death from happening, but they focus on medications patients take regularly or having patients use a wearable defibrillator to monitor their heart activity. But I haven’t found any studies that suggest having a doctor at a clinic full time will impact sudden cardiac death among dialysis patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:17] Could having doctors around help with other aspects of dialysis patient health?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:07:21] The other big concern at dialysis clinics is infections. You’re using catheters and needles to access the bloodstream. And dialysis patients have weakened immune systems that make it harder to fight infection. But all the best practices around how to prevent infections have to do with sanitation, cleaning the dialysis station, wearing gloves, washing your hands, and other antiseptic protocols. And doctor time doesn’t really seem to affect this. Giving nurses more time to do these things could improve outcomes. But this measure doesn’t mention anything like this. It would require clinics to report infection data to the state, but they already report the same data to the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:03] Is there possibly a downside to having doctors on site full time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:08:06] So, just to be clear, clinics do have doctors affiliated with them, they’re just not full time. Federal regulations require them to have medical directors and they’re required to be kidney specialists. Prop 23 doesn’t specify that the doctor on site has to be a kidney specialist. And there’s a question about whether there’s even enough kidney specialists in the state to go around. Dialysis patients will tell you that they’ve had encounters with other doctors at the hospital who are not specialists, who don’t really know how to treat them or they make mistakes. And so this actually kind of scares them a bit, that this could be harmful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:42] Yeah, some of the ads that I’ve seen are really scary and paint this as an issue of life or death. Let’s listen to one from the no on Prop 23 campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>No on Prop 23 advertisement\u003c/strong> [00:08:52] One special interest group, again, is putting my life at risk. And Prop 23 could shut down my clinic. I’m not going to die from dialysis. I’m going to die without it. Prop 23 is dangerous. Please vote no.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:09:09] So, April, let’s talk about this. Is it true that clinics will close if this passes because they just become too expensive to operate?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:09:17] So this is the same MO the dialysis companies used last time, threatening to shut down clinics. Two years ago they spent 111 million dollars on ads like this one to defeat the previous measure, and they’re approaching similar spending on this one. And while it’s possible that some clinics could close, it would likely not be an extraordinary number. And here’s why: 3/4 of dialysis clinics in California are owned by two companies, DaVita and Fresenius. They’re both for profit companies, and last year, they both did very well. Both made more than a billion in profits, and DaVita had a 16% operating margin last year. And for Fresenius it was 13%. And for health care, that is very good. But even beyond the question of whether these companies could even absorb these costs, there are ways that they could pass them on. So, they could go to insurance companies and say, hey, California passed this law, it’s now going to cost us X percent more to deliver dialysis treatment, and because we control most of the market, we’re going to need you to shoulder some of that costs. Otherwise, we’re not going to deliver the care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:23] OK, so maybe this won’t bankrupt the dialysis clinics, but it’s not really clear how much having doctors around will really help the situation either. So, I guess, is this worth some money?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:10:34] So, there’s a big picture consideration here. You know, more is not always better in health care. The U.S. spends almost 18% of GDP on health care, and that’s more than any other developed country. But our outcomes are worse. And so, you know, spending more money on health care does not always result in patients doing better. And health care policy in general is trying to take this into account. California and the country have actually been moving in the opposite direction of having doctors do everything. Doctor’s time is really expensive and there’s a recognition that there are a lot of health care duties that just don’t require the expertise of a doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:11:12] So, in fact, the governor, California governor, just signed a couple new laws that give nurse practitioners and nurse midwives more autonomy to practice without a doctor’s supervision. Health advocates believe that these kinds of measures will actually make healthcare more affordable and more widely available, like in rural areas where it’s hard to attract enough doctors. So, putting this measure on the ballot, voters are being given a big responsibility here, they’re being asked to make health policy. We have to decide how much better things might be having doctors on site, and if it’s worth the cost. And a lot of patients out there are really uncomfortable with voters being the one doing this balancing act, they think lawmakers should be the one to weigh all these factors and make decisions about how clinics should be regulated. I talked to one patient, DeWayne Cox, and he does not like Prop 23 at all because of this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DeWayne Cox\u003c/strong> [00:12:05] When I see these propositions that are put before the voters, who have no idea what we go through and what’s necessary to keep us alive, it makes me angry. Because they’re, they’re playing politics, for whatever their reasons are, but they’re putting patients like me in the middle of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:32] April, what’s the spending ban on this ballot measure so far?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:12:34] It’s been pretty lopsided. The dialysis companies have been putting in about 93 million dollars so far to try to defeat the measure. And the unions have put in just a little bit over 6 million to try to get voters to pass it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:51] All right, KQED health correspondent April Dembosky, thanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:12:55] You’re welcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:58] In a nutshell, a vote yes on Prop 23 says you want dialysis clinics to follow these new requirements. A no vote says you want to keep things the way they are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:13:12] Join us tomorrow for our episode on Prop 24 about consumer privacy. It’s one of the more complicated measures on the ballot this year. Bay Curious Prop Fest is made by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/katrinaschwartz\">Katrina Schwartz\u003c/a>, Rob Speight, Katie McMurran, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Our show is produced in San Francisco at Member Supported KQED. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Bay Curious team is breaking down each statewide proposition on the California ballot this year. If you haven’t listened to our episodes on Propositions 14 to 22, check out the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Prop Fest\u003c/a> Page for more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, we take on Proposition 23, which would require dialysis clinics to have a physician on site while patients are receiving care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6767930943\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:00] Hello. Hello. You’re tuned in to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/propfest\">Bay Curious Prop Fest\u003c/a>, a twelve part series that explores the 12 propositions on the California ballot. I’m \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ohubertallen\">Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:11] Today we’re on to \u003ca href=\"https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/23/\">Proposition 23\u003c/a>, which would establish a new requirement for dialysis clinics. On your ballot it will read in part like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice 1\u003c/strong> [00:00:22] Prop 23 requires at least one licensed physician onsite during treatment at outpatient kidney dialysis clinics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:30] This one sounds simple on the surface, but has a lot going on when you take a closer look. We’ll go through the ins and outs today on Proposition 23, the dialysis prop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:43] KQED health correspondent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/adembosky\">April Dembosky\u003c/a> has been following Prop 23. Hey, April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:00:47] Hey, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:00:48] Let’s start off with just the top line here. What are we voting on in Prop 23?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:00:52] Proposition 23 is aimed at improving care at dialysis clinics in California. There are a few different parts to it, but the main thing is that it would require clinics to have a physician onsite during all hours patients are receiving treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:01:07] One of my first thoughts when I saw this on the ballot was, didn’t we already vote on this? Like I remember a ballot initiative from just a couple of years ago about dialysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:01:16] Yeah, a lot of people are having deja vu on this one. Two years ago, there was another dialysis measure on the ballot and the same groups that were for and against it last time are the same groups duking it out this time. So, at the core of both ballot measures is a labor dispute on the yes side is \u003ca href=\"https://www.seiu.org/\">SEIU [Service Employees International Union]\u003c/a> a union that represents health care workers at various hospitals like nurses and maintenance staff. And they’ve been trying to organize workers at dialysis clinics for about four or five years now. But the companies put up a fierce resistance to those efforts. That’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.davita.com/\">DeVita\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://fmcna.com/\">Fresenius [Medical Care]\u003c/a>, the two big dialysis companies in California, they are not interested in seeing their workforce unionized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:01:56] So in 2018, SEIU put a measure on the ballot to try to get leverage with the dialysis companies. And this is actually a typical MO of the union. In the past, they’ve put measures on the ballot that sound appealing to voters but that they know will irk the hospital they’re fighting with. Then if they get what they want from the hospital, they withdraw the measure. Now, with Prop 23, the companies say that the union is at it again and the union says they’ve given up trying to unionize dialysis workers, but they learned a lot about clinics along the way and the way that patients are cared for. And they say they’re doing this for the patients. This is Steve Trossman, a spokesman for the union.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nSteve Trossman\u003c/strong> [00:02:35] This initiative is about improving conditions for patients, improving safety for patients and making the dialysis clinic spend some of the billions of dollars they make every year to improve their clinics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:02:50] So is Prop 23 the exact same measure that we voted on in 2018?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nApril Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:02:54] No, it’s different. Two years ago, the measure was about trying to limit the revenues that dialysis companies could take in to try to direct more money to workers and patient care. And the union was trying to hit them in the wallet. But it was a really confusing measure and voters voted it down. So the union went back to the drawing board pretty much right away to come up with a new measure, one that they hoped would be easier for voters to understand and perhaps more appealing. And they decided on this: Let’s require dialysis companies to have doctors onsite full time for as long as patients are receiving treatment. Now, a lot of dialysis centers are open from 5:00 in the morning to 8:00 p.m. at night, so most are going to need two or three doctors to keep them fully staffed. And the state \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/\">Legislative Analyst’s Office\u003c/a> says that’s several hundred thousand dollars a year for each clinic. So, it’s still a way for the union to hit the clinics in the wallet, but this time, maybe a bit more appealing to voters.\u003cbr>\n \u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:03:52] Now, before we get into the details of the measure, can you explain a bit about what dialysis is first and who gets it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:03:59] Dialysis is for people with kidney failure. It’s a procedure that cleans toxins from the blood. Most patients go three times a week for three to four hours each time. And you’re exhausted afterwards. So it’s a big disruption to life. A lot of people have to quit their jobs. Kidney failure can result from a variety of health conditions, but most often it’s caused by diabetes or high blood pressure. And because people of color are more likely to experience these health conditions, they are more likely to be on dialysis. 57% of dialysis patients in California are either African American or Latino.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:04:37] Now, when I first read this measure, I thought, yeah, having doctors around to help with patients sounds like a great idea. I guess, is this a good idea?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky \u003c/strong>[00:04:46] So, healthcare is complicated and it’s hard to know if this would really help patients or if it might have unintended consequences. So patients already have their own doctors. They come see them in the clinics once a month or once a week to check on their dialysis, prescription medications, to monitor their labs. And researchers have studied whether the frequency of doctor’s visits makes a difference in patients’ health. Back in 2004, \u003ca href=\"https://www.medicare.gov/\">Medicare\u003c/a>, the government health program that pays for most dialysis treatment, created a new incentive to encourage doctors to visit their dialysis patients more often. So instead of one or two times a month, it pushed them to visit four or more times per month. Well, after more than 10 years of doing this, it turns out seeing your doctor more often has no impact on health outcomes. In fact, patients who were seen less often by their doctor actually had better survival rates. So the government was paying doctors more money for more services with no conclusive benefits to show for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky \u003c/strong>[00:05:51] Then there’s a question of emergencies. Emergencies do come up. Patients and employees have told me that they’ve seen patients faint during treatment, or code, which means their heart stops. If someone’s heart stops while they’re in the clinic, nurses or technicians will do CPR. Maybe use a defibrillator and they will call 911 to have paramedics take them to the hospital. I spoke with Magellan Handford. He’s been a dialysis nurse for almost 20 years and he’s in favor of Prop 23. He says having a doctor on site would help with these kinds of emergencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Magellan Handford\u003c/strong> [00:06:23] Before we used to have – in our crash cart – we used to have medications like epinephrine and bicarb and different things to assist in a code. And we don’t have those anymore. They took all of those off our crash carts because there’s no doctor there to give instructions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:06:41] But the people on the no side say that having a doctor there won’t change any of the protocols and won’t make any difference whether the patient survives or not. They would do the same CPR the nurses do, and they would still call an ambulance to take them to the ER. And there are some studies out there looking at ways to prevent this sudden cardiac death from happening, but they focus on medications patients take regularly or having patients use a wearable defibrillator to monitor their heart activity. But I haven’t found any studies that suggest having a doctor at a clinic full time will impact sudden cardiac death among dialysis patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:07:17] Could having doctors around help with other aspects of dialysis patient health?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:07:21] The other big concern at dialysis clinics is infections. You’re using catheters and needles to access the bloodstream. And dialysis patients have weakened immune systems that make it harder to fight infection. But all the best practices around how to prevent infections have to do with sanitation, cleaning the dialysis station, wearing gloves, washing your hands, and other antiseptic protocols. And doctor time doesn’t really seem to affect this. Giving nurses more time to do these things could improve outcomes. But this measure doesn’t mention anything like this. It would require clinics to report infection data to the state, but they already report the same data to the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:03] Is there possibly a downside to having doctors on site full time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:08:06] So, just to be clear, clinics do have doctors affiliated with them, they’re just not full time. Federal regulations require them to have medical directors and they’re required to be kidney specialists. Prop 23 doesn’t specify that the doctor on site has to be a kidney specialist. And there’s a question about whether there’s even enough kidney specialists in the state to go around. Dialysis patients will tell you that they’ve had encounters with other doctors at the hospital who are not specialists, who don’t really know how to treat them or they make mistakes. And so this actually kind of scares them a bit, that this could be harmful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:08:42] Yeah, some of the ads that I’ve seen are really scary and paint this as an issue of life or death. Let’s listen to one from the no on Prop 23 campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>No on Prop 23 advertisement\u003c/strong> [00:08:52] One special interest group, again, is putting my life at risk. And Prop 23 could shut down my clinic. I’m not going to die from dialysis. I’m going to die without it. Prop 23 is dangerous. Please vote no.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>[00:09:09] So, April, let’s talk about this. Is it true that clinics will close if this passes because they just become too expensive to operate?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:09:17] So this is the same MO the dialysis companies used last time, threatening to shut down clinics. Two years ago they spent 111 million dollars on ads like this one to defeat the previous measure, and they’re approaching similar spending on this one. And while it’s possible that some clinics could close, it would likely not be an extraordinary number. And here’s why: 3/4 of dialysis clinics in California are owned by two companies, DaVita and Fresenius. They’re both for profit companies, and last year, they both did very well. Both made more than a billion in profits, and DaVita had a 16% operating margin last year. And for Fresenius it was 13%. And for health care, that is very good. But even beyond the question of whether these companies could even absorb these costs, there are ways that they could pass them on. So, they could go to insurance companies and say, hey, California passed this law, it’s now going to cost us X percent more to deliver dialysis treatment, and because we control most of the market, we’re going to need you to shoulder some of that costs. Otherwise, we’re not going to deliver the care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:10:23] OK, so maybe this won’t bankrupt the dialysis clinics, but it’s not really clear how much having doctors around will really help the situation either. So, I guess, is this worth some money?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:10:34] So, there’s a big picture consideration here. You know, more is not always better in health care. The U.S. spends almost 18% of GDP on health care, and that’s more than any other developed country. But our outcomes are worse. And so, you know, spending more money on health care does not always result in patients doing better. And health care policy in general is trying to take this into account. California and the country have actually been moving in the opposite direction of having doctors do everything. Doctor’s time is really expensive and there’s a recognition that there are a lot of health care duties that just don’t require the expertise of a doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:11:12] So, in fact, the governor, California governor, just signed a couple new laws that give nurse practitioners and nurse midwives more autonomy to practice without a doctor’s supervision. Health advocates believe that these kinds of measures will actually make healthcare more affordable and more widely available, like in rural areas where it’s hard to attract enough doctors. So, putting this measure on the ballot, voters are being given a big responsibility here, they’re being asked to make health policy. We have to decide how much better things might be having doctors on site, and if it’s worth the cost. And a lot of patients out there are really uncomfortable with voters being the one doing this balancing act, they think lawmakers should be the one to weigh all these factors and make decisions about how clinics should be regulated. I talked to one patient, DeWayne Cox, and he does not like Prop 23 at all because of this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DeWayne Cox\u003c/strong> [00:12:05] When I see these propositions that are put before the voters, who have no idea what we go through and what’s necessary to keep us alive, it makes me angry. Because they’re, they’re playing politics, for whatever their reasons are, but they’re putting patients like me in the middle of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:32] April, what’s the spending ban on this ballot measure so far?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:12:34] It’s been pretty lopsided. The dialysis companies have been putting in about 93 million dollars so far to try to defeat the measure. And the unions have put in just a little bit over 6 million to try to get voters to pass it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:51] All right, KQED health correspondent April Dembosky, thanks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>April Dembosky\u003c/strong> [00:12:55] You’re welcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:12:58] In a nutshell, a vote yes on Prop 23 says you want dialysis clinics to follow these new requirements. A no vote says you want to keep things the way they are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong> [00:13:12] Join us tomorrow for our episode on Prop 24 about consumer privacy. It’s one of the more complicated measures on the ballot this year. Bay Curious Prop Fest is made by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/katrinaschwartz\">Katrina Schwartz\u003c/a>, Rob Speight, Katie McMurran, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Our show is produced in San Francisco at Member Supported KQED. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
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