Ethnic studies petition misinterprets discussion

I am writing in response to the recently circulated petition by the Mill Valley Force for Racial Equality and Empowerment with the aim of quashing any criticism of the new “community and consciousness” class currently being rolled out for freshmen in the Tamalpais Union High School District.

I believe the petition wrongfully paints any critiques of the curriculum as being politically “right wing.” At best, I find the characterization to be a complete misunderstanding of the very nuanced and balanced objections to the ethnic studies content. At worst, it is an attempt to use inflammatory political name-calling to discredit any objections.

The group called Tam Union Together, along with many community members and parents, have consistently said that they support a robust ethnic studies curriculum that teaches students about some difficult and important parts of history. Additionally, it seeks to promote cross-cultural understanding, empathy and community.

With this curriculum, details matter. Yet the MVFREE petition appears to completely ignore those details. For example, the current curriculum devotes pages of content to teaching the armed resistance of groups like the Black Panthers, Malcolm X and the Third World Liberation Front, while not focusing enough on national civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the peaceful protest movements they led.

Suggesting that our curriculum focuses more on King’s influence to usher in the civil rights era rather than militant armed resistance groups is hardly a right-wing position. I think MVFREE is not only spouting a false narrative, but also injecting charged, politicized language and fanning the flames on an issue that needs anything but that.

— Melissa Cohen, Mill Valley

Government needs institutional memory

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk say they want to get rid of “deep state” employees, which I infer to be their name for career civil service workers.

This is a throwback idea that could bring back the patronage system of the robber-baron era. Back in those days, every change of administration meant new postmasters, city clerks and other public employees. Back then, there was no continuity, good order and institutional memory.

It took a generation and the election of a progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt, to push the bosses out of government and restore balance in public life.

— Potter Wickware, Mill Valley

Society must pollute less, commit to sustainability

The recent Los Angeles fires highlighted an uncomfortable reality. Growing climate change costs now exceed our ability to pay.

When the Industrial Revolution began around 1860, pollution costs were low. It’s different now. Over the last 50 years, these public cleanup costs have ballooned. They now vastly exceed the corporate profits from dumping.

Property losses from the L.A. fires are estimated to be more than $200 billion. I expect insurance companies will cover some of it, then they will raise rates or deny future coverage. The federal government will provide disaster relief, but that too has limits. The sad reality is, we can’t keep printing money to pay unexpected bills related to catastrophes worsened by climate change.

In the small town of Larkspur near my home, the projected economic loss from the first meter of sea-level rise is estimated at about $1 billion. For all Marin County it is $19 billion. For the Bay Area it is about $70 billion. By the end of the century, the sea-level rise may be twice that.

By 2050, the global costs of fires, floods and storm damage, amplified by human-caused climate change, is conservatively estimated between $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year.

Financially, our society would save trillions of climate-change-related dollars by paying corporations not to dump pollutants and not to make polluting products. Also, in this imaginary economically rational world, we would each pay our expenses.

My research shows the “social costs” from burning a 10-gallon tank of gas to be about $30, but my federal tax on that same tankful is about $2. That’s a $28 “hidden” subsidy.

Can we stop arguing and move to a more-sustainable, less-polluting society? Can we stop pretending we can afford climate change? Unless we do, today’s climate is as good as it will ever be.

— Barry Phegan, Greenbrae

Settlement helps park get into true compliance

In his Marin Voice commentary (“Pt. Reyes settlement turns workers into environmental refugees,” Feb. 11), Andrew Giacomini writes that Congress “explicitly made multigenerational ranching a legislatively authorized use” of Point Reyes National Seashore. Yes, Congress did make ranching an authorized use, for a time, but said nothing about “multigenerational” or ranching forever.

The deal was for 25-year leases to be renewed, or not, at the discretion of the U.S. secretary of the interior. Giacomini faults the National Park Service for mismanagement, citing the agency’s reintroduction of tule elk in 1978. If this is blameworthy — and I don’t believe it is — then he’s blaming the wrong entity. It was Congress, in the Endangered Species Act of 1973, that required the park service to protect threatened and endangered species.

In 1976, specific follow-up legislation required the secretary to make lands administered “available for the preservation and grazing of tule elk.” In response to this double mandate, park service officials reintroduced 10 tule elk to Point Reyes in 1978.

The recent settlement, in which all but two ranching families agreed to depart, is in fact a giant step away from mismanagement. It brings this park into compliance with park management policies (“phase out the commercial grazing of livestock whenever possible”) and with the park’s founding legislation (“maximum protection, restoration, and preservation of the natural environment.”)

— Ken Brower, Fairfax

Don’t blame solar for PG&E rate increases

I recently received a mailer from Patti Poppe, the CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. She signed her letter to her customers with “love,” yet used the body of the letter to blame rising rates on customers’ increased solar use and energy efficiency programs. She called those initiatives “less apparent” factors leading to price hikes. I consider her claim to be disgusting.

First off, Poppe, who was paid $17 million in 2023, should look at her own compensation as a possible culprit. If not her salary, maybe it has something to do with keeping up PG&E stock price and dividends. Or maybe it has to do with payouts following disastrous cost-cutting policies that may have worsened catastrophic wildfires that wiped out whole neighborhoods in recent years.

I could do with less love from Poppe and more customer-centric policies.

— Sally Champe, Sausalito

Gazans should not be expelled from homes

In a recently published letter, Jeff Saperstein discussed a proposal that could go in two rather different ways regarding the rebuilding of Gaza. If President Donald Trump’s plan results in the forced removal of all current Gaza residents, expelling them to neighboring countries, it would correspond exactly to the definition of ethnic cleansing. If that were the case, it would in fact be illegal, according to international law.

Saperstein also related the issues in Gaza to the emigration of war refugees from Syria and Ukraine, but I don’t think they are similar. It is of course true that the devastation and disruption of war causes large numbers of refugees to leave their homeland and seek refuge elsewhere. No one claims otherwise. But if Gaza residents are forced out of their home by a superpower like the U.S., that is quite different.

In his final paragraph, Saperstein describes a plan “offering Gazans a choice.” That seems quite reasonable, as long as it includes the choice for those who wish to remain.

— Todd Silverstein, San Rafael