5 Ways to Fight Back Locally

For many of us, the days after November 5 have been discouraging—and since January 20, things have only gotten worse. We’re experiencing a change in leadership that has left us feeling worried for ourselves, our families, our friends, and fellow citizens. Adding to that is the bafflement over how this all came to be. How did the other side win fair-and-square when it seemed so clear that our person was the better person for the job? Thus is politics in America, a place where logic has been lost for a long time now. How we respond to this is important for our souls and our sense of belonging. For the many who marched on Saturday, January 18, it felt good to be with others, carrying signs, exercising free speech, showing ourselves and the world that we’re down but not out.  But what next? What can and should we do to extend that feeling, to grow empowerment so that we not only feel better about things, but start to make things better? Here are 5 Ways to Fight Back Locally, inspired by the adage that we should think globally and act locally.

Keep Alameda neat and tidy.

For several years I had the pleasure of working with a remarkable educational leader, the incomparable Bill Sonneman. Bill’s enthusiasm for kids and learning was unmatched, and every day he inspired us with his energy and outright love for schools in Alameda. Bill also hated seeing trash on the ground. And without making a big deal of it, without making it into some sort of campaign, he’d just lean over, pick it up, and throw it away (or recycle it). To see your suit-wearing principal help keep the hallways neat and tidy was a small but remarkable thing. And because I admired Bill so much, and also appreciated clean floors and staircases, darned if I didn’t start to do the same- pause, pick up whatever needed picking up, and then go about my business. And once you get in the habit, you keep it up. If you see an older bike rider pick up trash tossed to the side of the road every day, that’s me. And you can do it too! If you’re out for a walk—maybe on one of my suggested Five Best Walks in Alameda—and see debris, just pick it up and drop it off in the nearest trash receptacle. You can also get involved in a Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the city of Alameda and the East Bay Parks, but in the meantime, Alamedans, let’s help Make America Clean Again.

Shop local.

There’s the legendary power of the pen, all that mightier than the sword business, but equally powerful is the power of the purse, or wallet or your watch if you’re one of those who bend their wrist to pay for things. To fight back against whatever injustice irks you- and there are many and they are legit- you can do two incredible things at the exact same time by shopping locally: not support super duper mega conglomerate businesses that are convenient and cheap but who do not treat their employees well, pollute the air and support candidates that maybe you did not vote for, and help keep cute shops open that you like popping into when you’re out for a stroll. It’s maybe the most simple and righteous and formidable thing you can do: buy your book or socks or widgets in town. Make every day Shop Small day! And I’m going to make a special pitch about this- we make too much stuff, we buy too much stuff, then we toss out too much stuff, so one way to combat this is to visit the many splendid resale shops in town. Need kid clothes and supplies- shop Mommy’s Trading Post on Park Street. Kids getting bigger, pre-teen cool, see Lauren’s Closet! Toys for your kids or when your kids have kids? Toy Safari! And as a segue to the next idea, if you need something green, how about Encinal Nursery on Encinal Avenue!

Save the world, plant a tree.

Alameda is a place where many streets and parks have many gorgeous trees from the giant redwood on the Encinal campus, to the palms of Washington Park, to the trees where a local poet posts his poems. Trees are an absolute good—you can climb on them, sit in their shade, eat their apples and lemons—and they produce the very air we breathe. Alameda is also home to a pretty remarkable tree project: 100K Trees for Humanity. From their website: “We came together as a response to the September 2019 Global Strike for Climate led by climate activist Greta Thunberg. We called our initiative 100K Trees for Humanity because it is our goal to organize every major urban city and their communities to plant 100,000 trees…”

Ingrid Ballmann and Amos White are the leaders of this terrific organization and they and their volunteers have been planting trees for a few years but more is good, more is necessary, more is essential. This was once a heavily forested continent and over the generations we’ve removed our tallest neighbors too fast and too furiously. Now we need to bring them back, and you can help in two ways: Visit their website to make a donation or grab a shovel from your garage and get your hands dirty helping them plant. Or do both!

Be a better citizen – show up.

Those who marched on January 18 not only got in their steps on a gorgeous California winter day, but they also experienced the warm buzz of being shoulder-to-shoulder sharing concern and passion. Theirs was a walk of hope. If you missed out, you can take a shorter walk, or bike ride, or bus and attend a local government meeting. Now, you in the back don’t shake your head so fast! Yes, these meetings are legendary for length, and you may have to be patient while your neighbor goes on and on about a particular parochial issue, but if you want to see government Iive and be part of the process, if you want to truly be a citizen of your community, then those meetings are where it all happens. Leaders you elected make decisions at the school board meetings that affect your kids—go and voice your opinion. Want to understand and share your point of view about how Alameda is growing and changing? There’s a Planning Board and they have meetings. One could argue that free speech is the most important right guaranteed in the Constitution. But like that old bike you keep in the garage gathering dust, if you don’t use your right,  if you don’t speak out on what you believe, well, it’s all just decorative. Trust me, the people who go to those meetings and say what they feel are invigorated by their expression and the leaders welcome being informed. Not sure when those many meetings are held? Check out the Alameda Post calendar, go to a meeting, and get in the game.

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Recycle smarter.

We in Alameda have three different color bin options to handle our refuse—blue (recycle), green (compost), and gray(trash). We have similar receptacles all over town. Woohoo for us! But, dear fellows and friends, we’re a bit clueless when it comes to the biggest bin, the one for recycling, big daddy blue (yes, I just gendered a bin). Don’t feel bad, even Starbucks is confused about what goes in which bin. Glass is easy, we know glass, glass breaks, glass goes in. Metal goes in, although this is where it gets murky—empty cans, yes, but tin foil, meh. Then there’s plastic, oh boy plastic! There are numbers which seem to help, but we found out that even those that can be recycled are ground up before being Frankensteined into something else, and thus we get microplastics which apparently are everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Even making yourself smarter is hard—a quick visit to the Alameda County Industries website takes you to the Residential Recycling Guide which runs nearly 10 pages in length. So here is Gene’s Shortcut to Recycling Smarter:

1. Get a water bottle and use it.
2. Do like my friend Mary and drink your Diet Coke from a fully recyclable aluminum can.
3. Use a spork. But not just any spork, get yourself the Cadillac of sporks, a titanium spork from REI ($10). Plastic flatware is miserable to eat with, it does not recycle, and when you whip out your spork at a picnic everyone will think you are so cool because you are.

So, Make America Spork Again!

Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.