The Buzz 03.01.18

WHO’S IN TOWN?

As Russian bots spread misinformation and the struggle between reality and fake news sends society into a tailspin, speaker and writer Charles Einstein elegantly frames the challenge as “a time of transition in the deep mythology that runs our civilization.” In his quest to help people answer life’s big questions, Einstein has written several books, including The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, and hosts a podcast, A New and Ancient Story. He’s in town to lead a four-day workshop at Esalen called “The Space Between Stories,” to help workshop attendees with their own personal transitions in work, health or relationships. He will help them with questions like “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “How do I navigate life?”

March 4-9. Esalen Institute, 55000 Highway 1, Big Sur. $675-$5,605. Sold out. charleseinstein.net/events.

FREE SPEECH

Seventeen days. That’s how long Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mark Konkol lasted in the executive editor’s chair at the Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly owned by the same company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times. It wasn’t his alleged bullying of staff that did him in, according to media critic Robert Feder. Instead it was a cover image – a cartoon – that portrayed Illinois Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker sitting on top of a black lawn jockey, spewing black smoke out of his mouth as an FBI agent listened in, to illustrate a story titled “J.B. Pritzker’s ‘African-American Thing.’” The image refers to a wiretapped conversation that Pritzker, a member of a billionaire hotel family, had in 2008 with then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, now a convicted felon. In that conversation, the two discussed the traits of various black politicians in Chicago, and which were “least offensive.” Reaction to the image was swift and loud – the writer of the story,Adeshina Emmanuel, said the cover made him feel “like that red-lipped lawn jockey and Konkol is the powerful white man on my back.”

GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK

GOOD:

Officials are flipping the on switch for Monterey Bay Community Power on March 1, making this a good week for renewable energy in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. This marks the first day the new electricity provider is operational, starting with commercial, agricultural and municipal customers; residential customers will have the opportunity to join in July. Pacific Gas & Electric ratepayers are automatically enrolled into MBCP unless they opt out, and only about 140 of 20,000 non-residential customers, 0.7 percent, have opted out. “We’ve maintained almost everybody so far,” MBCP spokesperson Shelly Whitworth says. “We’re able to hit the ground running.” MBCP is a joint powers authority in three counties that formed last year after dozens of public meetings and more than 100 presentations to various stakeholder groups over four years.

BAD:

Most school districts that used the Salinas Area Youth Drug Information/Crisis Center, also known as Sunrise House, saw its dissolution coming from a mile away when former employee Gilbert Olivares pleaded guilty to 56 counts of sex crimes against students at Salinas High School in 2014. After 50 years offering drug prevention education, counseling services and a 24-hour hotline, the organization was no longer financially solvent, leaving school districts to implement Plan Bs. Since 2016, North Monterey County Unified School District phased in its own school-based mental health counselors and also utilizes services fromCommunity Human Services as needed. Meanwhile, Santa Rita Union Elementary School District has also phased in its own counselors. Sunrise House is set to officially dissolve at a board meeting on March 8.