Fresno County Dems Important News and Election Information July 8, 2022

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Newsletter: July 8, 2022
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** In This Newsletter:
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New Economic Bill of Rights (#Economic-Bill-of-Rights)

Local Electeds Need to Act on Gun Safety (#Gun-Safety)

Measure C Delay Needed for Community Input (#Measure-C)

Fresno County Democrats Stand with LGBTQ2+ (#Dems-Stand-With-LGBTQ2+)

Republican Fundraising Windfalls in School Board Race (#Republican-Trustees)

Clean Shared Mobility Network (#Mobility-Network)

Politics 101 Returns (#Politics-101)

California’s Plastics Law (#Plastics-Law)

Watch January 6 Committee Hearings at Democratic Party HQ (#Insurrection-Hearings)

Precinct Captains (#Precinct-Captain)

Fellowship Program (#Fellowship-Program)

Democratic Party Website and HQ (#Dem-HQ)

The Fresno County Democratic Party at its July 7 meeting approved a resolution in support of a new economic bill of rights, as outlined below.

The Republican stacked Supreme Court has highlighted how much mistaken trust progressives placed in “the right side of history” to protect our democracy. However, the fall of Roe v. Wade shows that anything not codified in law is written in sand—too easily erased.

This reliance on interpretation instead of relying on law is the deliberate outcome of conservative efforts to paralyze Congress with their undemocratic overrepresentation of sparsely populated areas, but we must still push back.

In a democratic republic, government is the embodiment and expression of the people’s will. Therefore, it is not sufficient for law to enumerate the freedoms of the individual.

We must also legislate the duties our government owes to us, for there are certain comforts that every human deserves. We are each entitled to economic security, social security and moral security.

Our nation’s original constitution was written with the aspiration to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

However, we cannot be united while some struggle to survive in a land that gifts bounty to others. There can be no justice when access to basic needs is received or denied by accident of birth.

Any provision for the common defense can erect no fortress on a foundation this uneven between comfortable wealth and dire poverty. And there is no liberty for any so bound into fruitless toil that they have no opportunity to seize it.

A new economic bill of rights for our country must include:
1. A useful job that pays a living wage
2. No barriers to unionization and collective bargaining
3. Complete cost-free public education
4. Comprehensive quality healthcare
5. Decent, safe, and affordable housing
6. A clean environment and a healthy planet
7. Broadband internet for all communities
8. A meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement
9. Equitable access to sound banking and financial services
10. An equitable and economically fair justice system
11. Protection for the recreation and participation in civic and democratic life

The Fresno County Democratic Party at its July 7 meeting approved a resolution encouraging local elected officials to take a stand on gun safety in our community.

Amid our nation’s seemingly unending stream of gun crimes, the Fresno County Democratic Party strongly supports gun buyback programs by local government entities, background checks, red-flag laws and a ban on assault weapons. The party calls on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and the Fresno City Council to go on the record with their own support for such necessary measures.

The tragic shooting in Uvalde is unfortunately only the most visible aspect of a constant threat, unique to our country. The United States suffers under a self-inflicted plague of gun violence. We have the highest gun ownership of any country in the world with Yemen, which is experiencing a civil war, coming in at No. 2. Our nation accounts for nearly 46% of all civilian-held firearms on the planet. We are awash in guns, and the death that results is all too predictable.

Gun control measures work. Fifteen years ago, California suffered under a rate of gun deaths almost as high as those of other big states such as Texas and Florida. But after passing a new round of slightly more restrictive regulations, California has seen a 10% reduction in those deaths, against the increasing national trend, whereas Texas and Florida have experienced 28% and 37% spikes, respectively.

Australia’s massive buyback program, which followed a 1996 mass shooting, in conjunction with a sweeping long-gun ban, was successful. There was a substantial decrease in gun suicide and gun homicide rates, with the areas featuring the largest buyback numbers seeing the greatest reduction.

In Boston, we saw that a buyback program was effective when part of a large-scale response to change policing and community attitudes toward conflict resolution and the overall attitude toward guns. Our own local governments can implement their own measures to save lives.

One part of the solution to our toxic gun culture must be keeping guns out of the hands of those who have already displayed a potential to harm others. This means effective national background checks and red-flag laws for when someone deteriorates after having previously passed a check.

Finally, there are some items for which there is no benefit of individual ownership, and only exist to bring danger to others. There are guns that are designed solely to kill humans efficiently and in great numbers. These are not meant for hunting or marksmanship, only homicide. This category of guns includes those called assault weapons, and banning their ownership is the only conscionable choice.

It is for these reasons that the Fresno County Democratic Party calls on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and the Fresno City Council to officially support the adoption of such measures. It is the duty of our elected officials to protect their constituents’ health and safety. Moreover, as the Board of Supervisors has already voted to harm our community’s health by advocating for expanded oil drilling this might be an opportunity to make some restitution.


The Fresno County Democratic Party calls on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and the Fresno County Council of Governments (COG) to delay offering up their version of the Measure C renewal to public vote until the distribution of those funds can be rewritten.

While the source of funding for construction and maintenance of our transportation infrastructure is necessary, as it stands the spending plan does not reflect the needs or desires of the many communities that make up our county. The plan shows there was an insufficient level of community engagement to determine the real needs of our residents.

In this demand for review, the Fresno County Democratic Party joins the Fresno City Council, the Fresno Coalition for Responsible Transportation Spending and many other community-based organizations. Fortunately, as the previous funding measure lasts until 2027, without renewal we have time to make this right.

The current proposed spending plan for the revenue from the 0.5-cent sales tax gives too much attention to expanding large-scale thoroughfares to new pricey housing developments at the edges of our cities with not enough being given to ensuring complete streets, street maintenance and public transit. Fresno County has spent decades leaving its historic communities to decay while benefiting both the big developers buying up farmland at our fringe and their customers well-off enough to buy big new single-family homes.

Continuing this outward cycle locks us into a deepening spiral of increasing cost for diminishing results. The more we support sprawl, the higher our annual maintenance costs rise as the total area increases, which means our older communities suffer from fewer repairs, which drives people away from them and out into the newer areas built at the edges of the sprawl, which then drives demand for ever larger and more expensive infrastructure to connect those inefficient far-flung developments. This is both a waste of money and drives further fragmentation of our society.

Getting people out of cars and into buses is not an “idyllic dream,” as Tony Boren (executive director of the Fresno COG) claims, it is the daily reality of the tens of thousands of Fresno County residents who cannot afford a car for every family member. Working-class blue-collar families depend heavily on public transportation and feel our deficiencies there keenly. Fresno City Council Member Miguel Arias keenly pointed out that failing to provide upkeep to our existing core roads threatens the fiscal health of our city.

Where is there mention of Mayor Jerry Dyer’s proposed trolley system, promising to connect Chukchansi Park and the Brewery District to Fresno State and Campus Pointe via the Tower District and Fresno City College? That is perhaps the grandest declaration he has made for reshaping the city around a more manageable core, and yet he has only spoken up to minimize critiques of the spending plan that misses his own project.

The Measure C plan must be rewritten. We cannot procrastinate renewal to continue heedless expansion, leaving an ever more untenable upkeep burden on future generations. The prosperity and health of our city depends on making the transformations necessary to meet the future, not continuing the shortsighted mistakes of the past.
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The Fresno County Democratic Party stands in solidarity with the LGBTQ2+ community, and their allies, local elected leaders and community organizations that seek to affirm and uphold LGBTQ2+ rights to dignity, respect and inclusion as honored and valued members of our community in the City and County of Fresno.

We condemn the hateful and exclusionary rhetoric and misinformation by Fresno City Council Member Garry Bredefeld regarding the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission’s celebration of the Pride event hosted by the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. His words and actions continue to stoke hostility, hatred and discrimination and incite his supporters and followers to create an unsafe environment for the Fresno LGBTQ2+ community and beyond.

Elected officials are entrusted with the sacred responsibility to represent and protect the rights of every member of the community they serve, not just those who share their ideological political views or their religious faith and convictions.

Bredefeld’s repeated attacks against the LGBTQ2+ community, the Fresno EOC’s Pride event and the City of Fresno’s Pride flag-raising ceremony is a dereliction of his duties and responsibilities as a public official and highlights how unsuitable he is to serve the people of Fresno as a City Council member.

His words and actions have potentially dangerous and consequential repercussions for the safety of those he blatantly and unapologetically attacks and antagonizes. We reject Mr. Bredefeld, his allies and supporters who attempt to perpetuate their hateful ideology and misguided culture war.

The month of June unites the LGBTQ2+ community and celebrates equality and acceptance and is a time dedicated to uplifting and highlighting LGBTQ2+ voices and rights across the country. Although, as a society, we have made significant progress regarding LGBTQ2+ rights, we are reminded by the voices of a small, rude and unenlightened minority, who seek to revoke the progress we have made and fail to accept those they deem different, that the struggle for acceptance and inclusion is not over.

As a nation, we are at our best when we embrace, acknowledge and celebrate the rich diversity of all members of our community without prejudice. The fight for equality has been long and difficult, but the fight for progress, equal rights and inclusion continues, and the Fresno County Democratic Party will always seek to be on the right side of history and help bend its arc toward a more just and accepting society.

—Ruben Zarate, Chair, Fresno County Democratic Party

The justly infamous Fresno Unified School District Trustee Terry Slatic has a slate of challengers for his Bullard area seat in the next election, which is good. However, one curious note lies with one of the challengers, Susan Wittrup, another Republican, who has already raised a mystifyingly huge amount of money. Earlier this year, she had already raised $117,000 for her race, more than 10 times that of any other candidate in the race.

As one of Wittrup’s campaign promises is to use education funding to build a raft of new sports stadiums, her victory is hardly likely to provide the institutional strength our teachers and students need. A possible choice between frontrunners Slatic and Wittrup highlights the importance of having Democratic candidates in every race on the ballot.
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For the third summer in a row, “Politics 101” will occur every Wednesday in July. The dates are July 13, 20 and 27 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. via Zoom.

Discussion topics include voting, elections, elected representatives, how to run for office and the Fresno region political power structure. There will be special guest speakers.

Meeting ID- 811 6440 1959
Meeting link- [link removed] ([link removed])
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Fresno’s Clean Shared Mobility Network will meet on July 19 and Aug. 16 at 5:30 p.m. The meetings will address how the bike share program will work in our city. Community input is encouraged and will be documented.

Join the Zoom meeting:

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Meeting ID: 874 8496 0971

Passcode: csmn

We are all suffering from the poison and climate damage caused by the fossil-carbon industry that we have tragically tethered our global civilization to. To save all our lives, we need to change nearly everything, from transportation to power generation, and the use of plastic itself.

We cannot survive the way things are. However, at a global level our plastics production is only increasing.

California’s recent law to ban some plastic uses and mandate the reduction of plastic packaging in other areas is a necessary start. And this law only got passed under the threat of a ballot proposition that would have instituted much less discriminate descriptions.

When the industry realized it was actually going to lose the fight, it suddenly came to the table to limit the damage to its bottom line. Mass pressure works to push change.

However, there are some problems with a focus on making plastic reusable and recyclable. Reusable designations sometimes result in plastics simply being made thicker and heavier-duty to be labeled reusable while being served exactly the same as before.

The problem has always been the need to reduce plastic production, so consumption-oriented legislation has issues. And recycling has proven to be far less effective when it comes to plastic as opposed to paper, metal and glass.

Plastics can only be downcycled, as each time you heat it down and reform it the quality degrades.

All told, this new law is a necessary step forward. However, we still need to destroy far more of the fossil carbon industry if we are to prevent the deaths and suffering of billions in an increasingly off-kilter world.
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Join us at the Democratic Party HQ (1033 U St.), to enjoy coffee and doughnuts as we watch more live broadcasts of the January 6 Committee hearings. Join like-minded friends as we hear the “whole story” about what happened on January 6, 2021.
The next committee hearing will be held on July 12 starting at 10 a.m.

Register to attend at

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The committee hasn’t announced a formal schedule for the rest of the hearings, but there could be as many as eight in total through June, and possibly a final hearing in September—right before the November midterm election.
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Want to help us win in 2022? Be a precinct captain! Become a part of our team! To join us, e-mail [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Precinct%20Captains) .
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We are helping to create the next generation of Democrats in the Central Valley. Are you a student interested in getting involved and learning more about the political world? You would be ideal for our fellowship program! For more information, e-mail [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re%3B%20Fellowship%20Program) .

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Visit Your Democratic Headquarters! Our office is open, and we can’t wait to see you again! Help us register people to vote or change to vote by mail. Pass out candidate or issue literature and pick up candidate swag! Sign up to help us around the office!

News and events will alway arise faster than this newsletter can come out. That is why the Fresno County Democratic Party website is the best place to get regular updates on upcoming events in the area, as well as information on ways to get involved. There is also information on scheduled meetings of the many Democratic clubs in Fresno County, so you can find one that most suits you and your interests

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The Democratic Party HQ (1033 U St ([link removed]) .) is open 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Monday–Friday. Call 559-495-0606 (tel:559-495-0606) or e-mail [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Newsletter-7-8-22) for information or to volunteer.

Support your local Democratic Party by donation viaActBlue ([link removed]) or by mailing a check to Fresno County Democratic Party, P.O. Box 5795, Fresno, CA 93755.


Our newsletter is prepared by Francis Horan.

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