the dark side of Berkeley hill people

I was invited to a not-secret but invitation only meeting up in the Berkeley hills this week. I hesitated to attend, because the invitation list was only white people and that made me uneasy. This group purports to launch a new, all-inclusive city-wide coalition to organize for the 2016 city elections and I guess they think they can have a city-wide all inclusive coalition without inviting any nonwhites, eh?

One participant has run, and lost, for Mayor. That same participant ran for mayor and lost. I have never seen her at one of these invite-only, elitist strategy meetings before and I suspect she showed up cause she is going to run again and wants the coalition to help her, assuming this coalition grows legs up in the hills without any nonwhites driving it. This former mayoral and council candidate opened the meeting by saying she thinks it is a mistake for actitivsts to call for affordable housing for anyone but the middle class. She says we'll look better if we only call for affordable housing for the middle class. This chick has never deigned to show up at any of the dozens of strategy meetings I have attended until a whiff of 'let's build a coalition to elect our people in 2016 and then she shows up and opens with a racist, classist suggestion that we abandon the lower middle class, maids, janitors, artists, disabled, elderly and only focus on housing for the middle class. Oooh, what great values this coalition begins with.

And the whole room acquiesced to her elitist, classist idea.

Democracy in action, eh? Wolves eating lambs.