Peace Wall nominations
Dear Friends,
I’m writing to let you know that the deadline for submitting a nomination for the Sebastopol Living Peace Wall is January 15, 2019.
If you know someone you feel deserves to be honored on the peace wall, please go to our website: www.sebastopollivingpeacewall.com and click ‘To Nominate’ at the top of the page and follow the instructions.Â
I want you to know how much we appreciate your participation in bringing forward deserving candidates and for helping to create a more loving and peaceful world by honoring the peacemakers among us.
I’m also attaching a link to the unedited full-length video of our most recent 2018 peace wall ceremony this past September. As those of you who attended know, it was a wonderful, inspiring day as we got to hear from our beautiful 2019 honorees: Daniel Ellsberg, Tui Wilschinsky, Therese Mughannam and Dolores Huerta.Â
The link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPa5jLyfSRw
Feel free to share it, if you’d like.
I hope to see you next September for our 5th Annual Living Peace Wall Ceremony!
In Peace,
Michael Gillotti
Chairman
Living Peace Wall Committee
Carnacchi shows up
EDITOR: I am sorry to read that Michael Carnacchi felt disrespected at a recent Sebastopol City Council meeting. I’m glad Sonoma West called this to our attention.
I am deeply concerned about the financial challenges facing three of our community’s most important institutions: our high school district, our hospital and our newspaper, Sonoma West.
Which city council person has been attending community meetings on all of these issues, expressing concern and offering suggestions?
Michael Carnacchi.
Thank you, Michael.
Mary Fricker
Sebastopol
Not a popularity contest
EDITOR:Our city council majority’s treatment of fellow council member Michael Carnacchi — apparently deeming him as having strayed a bit too far from the almighty status quo — formed what is tantamount to a conspiracy of sabotage to his rightful place in line for vice mayor/mayor and, in effect, created not only a travesty of just and professional behavior, but a slap in the face to the trust that the voting public might have toward city governance.
Here in Sebastopol, we all suffer, more deeply than many might realize, from perpetual inaction towards the all-too-familiar ills – the unsafe, pedestrian-unfriendly streets, the absence of effective public places, the general disheveled, under-inspired quality everywhere throughout our urban downtown (while the automobile, once again, gets top billing). We wait, and we wait, and we wait some more for desperately needed change and relief, to no avail. We need, least of all, a council majority that is so obsessively over-focused on the pragmatics of “city business” that the deeper, more elusive issues concerned with civic vitality – a fully humane and beautiful urban environment and what ought to be the true purpose for any such civic objectives — completely disappear from view. Nationally, Mr.Trump serves as what ought to be a sobering reminder of the very possible, eventual consequence of such continued reckless disregard.
City management ought neither be a popularity contest nor a proving ground for conformity to “political correctness”. Michael Carnacchi represents the alternative perspective, having the artful creativity and imagination, as well as the vision that would bring to the council the counter-viewpoints that it currently needs most. We need him, and others like him, to work together cooperatively alongside those whose concerns are are based within the more “practical” bent. Combined, and only so, we can then have hope for the truly effective leadership, and the great community that would normally follow, that we all deserve.
Robert Beauchamp
Sebastopol
A public humiliation
EDITOR: It’s horrifying that the Sebastopol City Council purposefully humiliated Michael Carnacchi by not appointing him to be vice-mayor of the council. Yes, let’s call it what it was — an intentional public humiliation. Why would the council act so unjustifiably toward a hard-working representative of the community, one who was elected to office without spending any money on his campaign? Doesn’t that demonstrate how Michael truly represents the grassroots public? Was that what set the council’s collective teeth on edge about Michael?
Earlier this year I wrote a letter to the editor here applauding the council for their thoughtful considerations of issues. Evidently, I wrote in ignorance. I was at a city council meeting at Michael’s invitation to speak to an issue about safety and access for the disability community to the streets of Sebastopol undergoing reconstruction by CalTrans. Was it this action on Michael’s part that turned the council against him? That he would champion the rights of people with disabilities? The behavior of the council begs this question.
A public humiliation of someone elected to represent the people is not something to be done unreservedly for even people of low character. Michael Carnacchi is a man of high principals whose actions do him and the council honor. Michael’s obvious credo is to show respect to everyone, regardless of social and economic status. It’s disgusting how the council pilloried Michael. One can only hope they find some integrity and a way to redeem their honor. For now they have neither.
Hollyn D’Lil
Graton
