Recent Reads: "the warm terrarium of Alameda"

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This may become a new occasional series: Links and excerpts to articles I've read of potential interest to others here in Alameda. Readers are also welcome to share links to their own recent reads of relevance to Alameda in the comments.

An Investigation Into How Prosecutors Picked Death-Penalty Juries (The New Yorker) reported by Jennifer Gonnerman

“Your office has been dirty for forty years. You know it and I know it. If your D.A. really wants to be a progressive prosecutor, go into the files.”

It was later that same day that Solway found the stack of index cards, and later that week she e-mailed Pomerantz and Tria thirty-one pages of notes, some from the cards and some from yellow legal pads that she had also found in the boxes. Pomerantz read the notes in disbelief. “For ten years, I’ve been chasing this,” he told me, “looking at stuff from different Alameda cases and trying to prove pattern and practice, and suddenly it was all here.”

PLN2-0167 - 200 Wind River Way - Applicant: Blue Rise Ventures,
LLC. - Public workshop on Development Plan Amendment and
Design Review for an approximately 120,000 square foot life sciences
building and Bay Trail improvements agenda item at Alameda Planning Board meeting scheduled for December 16

Japanese Earthquake Tsunami Wave arrives in Emeryville CA (YouTube) from 2011

Every earthquake and every tsunami risk is probably somewhat different. Still, this video from 2011 looks like a useful reference point:

Turning San Francisco Bay into a bathtub (Politico California Climate) reported by Camille von Kaenel

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the state agency more mellifluously known as BCDC, is expected to approve new sea-level rise guidelines on Thursday in what would be the most detailed instructions yet for local governments trying to figure out what to do to prepare for the six to seven feet of sea level rise projected for the state by 2100.

The guidelines don’t come with any real teeth or funding, but they are binding. And they’ve forced a broad debate over logistics in an area that includes most of the state’s wetlands as well as big tech companies, San Francisco International Airport and millions of people struggling with the cost of living.

After that article was published, BCDC did adopt the new sea-level guidelines.
Related to sea-level rise, the Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee is currently running a series of in-person events, online events, and presentations at Alameda boards and commissions.

Democrats need to wake up and build real solutions to California’s affordability crisis (San Francisco Standard) opinion by State Senator Scott Wiener

After the disastrous recent election results — with right-wing extremists prepared to dominate the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court — it’s easy to curl up in a ball and disengage from politics. We must not take that path. Far too much is at stake.

An outgoing BART director gave a parting gift to her colleagues: MAGA hats (San Francisco Chronicle) reported by Rachel Swan

[Recently re-elected BART board member Janice] Li seemed to reference [outgoing board member Deborah] Allen’s letter and gifts in comments she made later at the meeting Thursday.

“Winning is the best revenge,” [Li] said. “Especially when it comes to toxic, hostile and uncooperative people.”

Marielle Heller Explores the Feral Side of Motherhood (The New Yorker) profile by Emily Nussbaum

Heller was a classic theatre kid, an extrovert whose talents first blossomed in the warm terrarium of Alameda, California, the Oakland suburb where she grew up.

[...]

And there was something to be said for shielding yourself, she’d begun to believe—some value in retreating to a protected creative space, an Alameda of the mind