The Buzz 10.04.18

WHO’S IN TOWN?

Marce Gutiérrez-Graudins likes to tell people, “I used to sell the fish and now I save them.” She grew up blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Tijuana, and later went on to work for an international seafood company farming bluefin tuna in the open ocean. It gave her a front-row seat to the problem of overfishing, leading her to change course. She is founder and director of Azul, an Oakland-based environmental justice nonprofit that works with Latinos to protect coasts and oceans. Gutiérrez-Graudins is in town to talk about how Latinxs are missing from the majority of conversations in California around ocean conservation, why it’s an urgent problem and how to fix it.

6-7:30pm Tues Oct. 9. Middlebury Institute of International Studies, 411 Pacific St., Monterey. Free. middlebury.edu/institute/events.

FREE SPEECH

The Federal Communications Commission backed off this year on net neutrality, a policy that prohibits telecom companies from slowing down certain content for certain customers. California is among 20 states suing the feds over that rollback. California also stepped in with its own net neutrality rule, SB 822, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law on Sept. 30. Later that day, the U.S. Justice Department sued California, claiming the new law interferes with the FCC’s effort “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the internet… unfettered by federal or state regulation.” The gist of the feds’ case is that states should not override federal policy: “We have a duty to defend the prerogatives of the federal government and protect our constitutional order,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra pushed back: “California will not allow a handful of power brokers to dictate sources for information or the speed at which websites load.”

GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK

GOOD:

It was a historic day for marine mammals when on Sep. 27, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 1017, a law that phases out the use of drift gillnets – which are used to catch swordfish – over the next four years with a buyout program that pays fishermen $10,000 for their permits and $100,000 for their nets. The passage of the bill, which was co-authored by Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, is a huge victory for nonprofit Oceana, which had been battling for more than 10 years to ban the nets. They span about a mile long and indiscriminately entangle species like dolphins, whales, sea lions and endangered sea turtles. For years, the swordfish fishery has been among the nation’s dirtiest, and kills more dolphins on the U.S. West Coast than every other fishery combined. That is set to change as the fishermen transition to deep-set buoy gear, which have minimal bycatch.

BAD:

Bad news for a sweet fruit came to a head on Sept. 26, when workers for Premiere Raspberries LLC held a day-long demonstration in front of the Well-Pict cooler in Watsonville. The workers, who are represented by the United Farm Workers, are protesting the company’s refusal to implement and abide by a union contract which would give workers higher overtime pay, vacation, paid funeral and jury leave, and other benefits. Most notably the contract would raise wages by 15 percent over three years, according to the UFW. About a month before the protest, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board issued a ruling on Aug. 29 demanding the company abide by the contract. Premiere dragging its feet means that 550 workers have yet to receive the difference between wages and benefits they would have earned under their UFW contract since Dec. 29, 2017.