This piece is called “Dogs Need Luxury Too” designed by Gensler; Team Members: Jeff Henry, Terry Walker, Katie Price, Genessee Rosal, Cecilia Kuan, Tom Owens
© Rik Clingerman, 2004
April 2005 | Dock of the Bay
Corporate Tax Dodgers
In 2001, 378,344 corporations doing business in California (including 46 large, well-known firms) paid only a token $800 in taxes. Many paid zilch; others received million-dollar refunds. Would you like to know the names of these tax dodgers? Sorry. By law, state officials can’t reveal their names. But according to the California Budget Project, these corporate freeloaders include: Walt Disney, Fluor, Health Net, Hewlett-Packard, Cypress Semiconductor and Computer Sciences (which made $1.29 million in profits in 2001, paid no taxes, and got a $31 million rebate from Sacramento).
In the 1950s, businesses covered 49 percent of the costs of running the federal government. By 2003, business’ contribution had shriveled to a measly 7.4 percent. Thanks to tax cuts and loopholes, one-in-six US mega-corps now pays no federal taxes. Meanwhile, children go without food, shelter, schoolbooks and medical care. And then there’s the $1 billion-a-day debacle in Iraq. To hide the true costs of war, Washington redesigned the federal budget to make it appear that military expenses only consume 19 percent of the federal pie when, in fact, past and current war costs swallow 48 percent of the pot. If all that taxes your sense of fair play, then…
DON’T JUST GET MAD….Get Active
In 2003, Julia Butterfly Hill, the eco-activist who heads the Circle of Life Foundation in Oakland, faced a moment of truth. The daughter of a minister, Hill took the First Commandment seriously. Striding to the steps of the SF Federal Building, she vowed that she would no longer pay taxes to support “the largest death machine humankind has ever known.”
Hill now channels her tax money into environmental restoration projects and to the People’s Life Fund, a 34-year-old Bay Area trust that redirects war taxes to serve local community needs. During the Vietnam War, Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and an estimated 500,000 fellow citizens became war-tax resisters. There weren’t enough IRS agents or jail cells to stop ‘em.
In 1972, Berkeley Congressman Ronald Dellums introduced the World Peace Tax Fund Act to permit conscientious objectors to redirect their taxes to peaceful purposes. Today, their legislation is known as the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Bill. Sometimes it’s not enough to just pray for peace: you need to call your representatives and ask them to legislate for it. There are dozens of ways to legally resist war taxes.
To learn more, contact the Northern California War Tax Resistance: (510) 843-9877. www.nowartax.org — Gar Smith
From Bauhaus to Bow-Wow House
Architecture has gone to the dogs! And to cats and other pets, as well. On April 8, 10 unique animal habitats built by world-renowned architects and designers will be auctioned off in San Francisco, while attendees — and their pets — paw-ty the night away. It’s all part of Petchitecture 2005, the 10th annual fundraiser for PAWS, a non-profit helping ill, impoverished people care for their pets.
“Our goal is to make sure people don’t lose [their pets] when they need them the most,” says John Lipp, executive director of PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support). Championing their moniker since 1987, the organization has provided everything from pet food to dog walking for ill, disabled and financially stressed people living with HIV and AIDS. PAWS’ success has spawned a litter of branches, from the East Bay (www.pawseastbay.org) to as far as Houston, Texas.
PAWS’ own mission has recently expanded to champion those facing pet-induced eviction — something illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act. “Our clients,” as Lipp affectionately calls PAWS beneficiaries, “are [just] cool people, in tough situations that any of us could be in.” For more on a night that promises to be purr-fect, visit www.pawssf.org. — David Sason
Truth is Treason
In the annals of Russian dissidence, journalist Grigory Pasko deserves a place alongside Natan Sharansky. An environmental journalist, this veteran of the Russian Navy and Russian prisons visited the Bay Area for a week in February to speak at an Amnesty International conference in San Francisco and a dinner hosted by Pacific Environment and the Fund for International Nonprofit Development.
In 1997, Russian authorities accused Pasko of treason for videotaping the Navy dumping liquid nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. He also took notes at a military meeting with the alleged intent of giving them to Japanese media. That charge stung: “I’m a journalist,’’ he says. “I take notes for myself.’’ In fact, he was working for a Russian Navy publication, though freelancing as well.
Imprisoned twice, Pasko was paroled after three years. He has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. He is sure he will be exonerated. He is also trying, with associates in Europe, to develop a universal legal standard for espionage to prevent governments from using spurious espionage charges to suppress embarrassing information.
Pasko’s sacrifice and persistence have not been in vain. When the G8 group of the richest industrialized nations met in Canada in 2002, billions were committed to secure Russian WMDs and nuclear waste. Pasko has been told that his contributions and those of another Russian environmentalist, Alexander Nikitin, were acknowledged in the corridors.
Recently, Pasko reports, Russian environmentalists have won court rulings against Shell, Exxon and a domestic logging company. The bad news is that environmental grant money is dwindling. Pasko says he will be unemployed after he returns from his six-month fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
Russians brutalize their environment, he claims, and “if Muir Woods were in Russia, people would build houses in it.’’ The Russian Constitution specifies the right to a healthy environment. But as a Russian adage puts it: “A law is like a telephone pole. You can’t jump over it, but you can walk around it.’’
While in solitary, Pasko read law, American novels and a wine encyclopedia. Now that he has visited Sonoma wineries, his pronouncements have the flavor of a seasoned connoisseur: “Drinking California wine is like hanging out with a friend who speaks loudly; drinking French wine is like being with a woman.” — Lewis Dolinsky
Sun to Set in June?
Last January, Berkeley became the first US city to adopt the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of Greenhouse Gases. With the poles melting and extreme weather raking the planet, any move to cut fossil fuel emissions is good news. Europeans have seen the blight at the end of the traffic-clogged tunnel. They are cutting oil consumption and upping energy efficiency. Germany and Japan are going solar in a big way. Unfortunately, the US (the only industrial nation to disdain the protocol’s carbon-cutting goals) still belches 25% of the planet’s climate-changing gases. If the oily-garchy running Washington won’t act to prevent global ruin, salvation must come from below.
More than 70 percent of Californians support investments in a renewable energy future. Imagine a future where the Golden State, the fifth largest economy in the world, abandoned oil, natural gas and nuclear power for wind, wave, and solar power. The green-blowback could transform the US economy.
Governor Schwarzenegger has called for a 20 percent renewables mix by 2010 but San Francisco has shown that cities can do even better. SF’s Solar Intiative is installing 31Mw of solar power [CG August 2004]. By 2010, thanks to Assembly member Carol Migden’s Community Choice law (AB117), 21 California towns plan to produce 40% of their power renewably and without rate increases. Community Choice allows cities to buy power from independent clean-energy suppliers.
But Paul Fenn, a grassroots solar lobbyist who helped author AB117, warns that the big utilities are massing their forces to beat back this challenge and city governments must act fast “before the energy cartel locks the state into long-term oil-fuel choices.” The governor, the utilities and the Bush administration are all maneuvering to commit the state to costly imports of liquefied natural gas from Russia and the Middle East. In the face of stiff resistance, 44 state representatives are demanding public hearings on the plan.
The timing couldn’t be more critical. According to former Public Utility Commission progressive Loretta Lynch (now a scholar-in-residence at UC Berkeley), “cities need to give formal notice of plans to buy clean power within the next few months. If communities don’t act by June, it’ll be all over for the next 10-20 years.”
For more information and downloadable instant-ordinances that you can take directly to your city leaders, go to: www.local.org . Other useful websites: www.kyotousa.org. www.pacificenvironment.org. www.postcarbon.org. — GS
Triple Bottom Line: The Ethical Marketplace
If necessity is truly the mother of invention, we can draw great hope from the birth of Ethical Marketplace, the first TV series to focus on the growth of socially responsible businesses. The weekly PBS program is the brainchild of Dr. Hazel Henderson, the world-renowned sustainable business expert who recognized that TV is the perfect medium for covering a multi-trillion-dollar industry that honors the “triple bottom line” of People, Profit and Planet.
As the only “financial lifestyle” show on television, Ethical Marketplace presents an all-encompassing picture for the viewing consumer. “The stories illustrate how our lifestyle choices affect the economy and world,” says executive producer Gary Tomchuk. “Every dollar [we] spend or invest has an impact on society and the planet.” The show’s ambitious list of topics — which ranges from Fair Trade and Renewable Energy to Socially Responsible Investing — are examined through in-studio and field-based interviews with start-up visionaries, novice entrepreneurs, and the heads of Fortune 500 firms.
“At a time when there is great distrust and fear of business in general,” Tomchuk explains, “We show that new, profitable business models are not only possible — they are working right now.”
This is certainly true in the Bay Area, which is home to several organizations featured on upcoming episodes, including SF-based human rights organization Global Exchange and Oakland’s own Transfair, a fair trade monitor. “From the restored wetlands of Crissy Field to community stability efforts in Oakland to the City of Berkeley’s sustainability development initiatives,” host Simran Sethi gushes, “the Bay Area is leading the shift towards sustainability.”
Sethi is convinced that highlighting these positive case studies will promote “empowerment through information.” The former MTV news producer sees young people as a critical audience. “It’s important to engage and educate the generation that will become the CEOs, presidents, policymakers and change agents of the future,” she says. With Ethical Marketplace guiding the way, consumers will no longer have an excuse for fiscal apathy. www.ethicalmarketplace.com — DS
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Chances are, if you decide to mark the 35th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, you’ll probably do something like plant a tree, clean up a beach, or maybe help restore a wooded trail. But if Theresa Marquez has her way, you’ll also consider inviting your mother to dinner. Mother Earth, that is.
This is the second year that Marquez, director of consumer affairs at Wisconsin-based Organic Valley Family of Farms, has been promoting the idea of Earth Dinner parties.
“Basically, there are two rules,” she said. “You have to identify where the [food] came from, and, for each course, you need to have an intimate conversation about your relationship with the Earth.”
To get the discussions rolling, Organic Valley has come up with a free deck of 50 discussion cards that includes inspirational sayings by everyone from former First Ladybird Johnson (“Where flowers bloom, so does hope”) to novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (“There is not a thing which is more positive than bread”). And they ask questions such as: “How much food do you throw away from your refrigerator every week?”
For menu ideas, table decorating suggestions and your own set of free Earth Dinner cards, visit www.earthdinner.org — Marla Donato
Play Ball
Feeling nostalgic about baseball before steroids and greed got in the way? George Krevsky’s eighth annual exhibit, More Than a Game: The Art of Baseball, celebrates the national pastime through drawings, prints, paintings, and sculpture by 28 local and national artists. An ardent A’s fan, Krevsky is no less a seasoned connoisseur of baseball than he is of American art. His show runs the bases with everything from Pop to folk art. Claes Oldenburg fields his catchy lithograph, Mitt, and Oakland A’s media director Debbie Gallas weaves while running the local press gauntlet with a quilt combining Egyptian imagery with baseball themes. This delightful show runs through April 30th at the George Krevsky Gallery, 77 Geary St. Admission is free. Call (415) 397 9748 for hours. — CN
Golden Rule?
It’s no longer placid in Placerville. Life in this charming northern California gold rush community has been disrupted by a small group of so-called “Christian” militants.
Armed with a “truth truck” plastered with messages ranging from “Homosexuality is Sin” to purportedly anti-gay Biblical passages, the members of this small church began their hate campaign last May.
They call for a boycott of nine gay-friendly, local businesses including the Sierra AIDS Foundation and Tony Matthews’ Fine Goods for Fine Living, a gourmet kitchen owned by Matt Huckabay and his partner.
The boycott is not succeeding. Huckabay, a past president of the Placerville Downtown Association, reports that business has actually increased, as citizens of all sexual persuasions open their hearts in support.
GaymarriageNO first began handing out anti-gay literature at El Dorado High School last fall. They also targeted an elementary school, distributing information asserting that gay men are child molesters.
When one GaymarriageNO partisan showed up at a high school protest and punched a male student in the face, he was charged with battery and released on $15,000 bail.
On February 8, Placerville Mayor Roberta Colvin declared Placerville a “Hate-Free Zone,” and several anti-hate rallies have since been staged. The largest drew 300 people, including 25 skinheads from the Bay Area’s Golden Gate Skins who had joined GaymarriageNo. Signs proclaiming “Jesus Kills! Repent!” darkened the proceedings.
Two more “truth-trucks” have since appeared, as GaymarriageNo begins targeting schools outside the Placerville area. For more information, contact El Dorado’s Human Rights Round Table, (530) 622-1368. www.edchumanrights.org . — Jason Victor Serinus
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