Wake Up Sonoma meeting notes

 

7/10/24 Wake Up Sonoma meeting notes

Fred Allebach

 

Wake Up started as a grassroots response to Mattson LeFever, since 2015

-became a non-profit April 2024

-resisted Christian nationalist plans, to take over a community

-"7 Branches" is an early harbinger of Project 2025

 

 This meeting is a pivot away from Mattson et al, to what they will do in the future

-preserve local character, foster DEI are top Wake Up values

-Sonoma has a lot of charity but “Sonoma doesn’t have an advocacy group”; “we need an advocacy group here”

-hard for them to get grants bc they are too political

 

The Board has four people, Lisa Storment, Jossette, David Eichar, someone else

-they are exhausted and overworked

-expensive flyers

-around 40 people attended, mostly all older white people, lots of gay men and women, (it’s clear to me that the DEI focus is mainly centered on LGBTQ issues but they don't ever really come out and say it)

 

Angela Ryan, Caty Webber, Gary Saperstein and Curran were small group facilitators 

 

Michelle from G3 Sonoma facilities the meeting

-she is your stereotypical upbeat, positive, motivational speaker type that plugs a few core buzz phrases

-relationship counseling issues are brought to a group level

-think globally, act locally

-foster leadership, values clarification, align values with action

-”why do you do what you do?”, Gary S. answers “Bc we love Sonoma”; Rich H. says Sonoma has a real lack of diversity and Latino segregation; another woman says she is here bc of here 10-year old African American grandson who she wants to see have an accepted place in the community, she doesn't see a lot of diversity at this meeting

 

Broke into five groups with five themes

-this was very similar to how Sustainable Soonma did it in the first few meetings to ID things to work on, post-it notes, collating the responses that will be on their webpage; Niki will collate all the notes and boards

-in his group, Fred asks, “who is we here? Where are the essential workers?” in the five groups, larger BIPOC social justice themes are not really taken up, although it is noted who is absent

 

Angela’s group (addressing local corporate investment)

-Niki said “change Wake Up name to Collaborate Sonoma”

-articulate what wants to be seen, advocacy, transparency 

-who will be responsible, who will be included, who will do the work?

-Fred gave idea to have Specific Plans/ General Plan to say and proscribe what projects are wanted here, aimed at Foley wine’s Sebastiani site, don’t need more market rate projects; who will define community values?  Who is the community? 

-(this is another Wake Up vague area, speaking of the community as if it was a homogeneous values group, as in the community all wants the same thing at SDC..)

 

Another group (how can local businesses be more DEI?)

-offer a  certification by the Chamber?

-(Fred: DEI is seen as diversity in hiring, not in a social justice, reparations, change the system way)

-Josette will look at systemic issues

 

Another group (include youth)

-BIPOC advocacy collapsed into outreach to LGBTQ

-sex and gender diffs with trans children

-we all have biases; mostly whites here/ can be offended when they think they are doing good but fail to see deeply covert privileges

-(Fred: Wake Up values are not clearly defined, they have already pivoted multiple times) 

-mental health; Hanna etc are noted as resources

-a Latina from Seattle who happened onto the meeting says to give as much consideration to brown people as to LGTBQ

-Sonoma valley BIPOC community has a really hard time, many microaggressions 

-(Fred: identity politics naturally centers on the core identify of the group in question, group interests are centered in particular advocacy groups; for example my spouse sees women’s issues as  having been taken over by gender issues in general, here we see LGBTQ asserting a space; hard to get all the identities to pull in the same direction… Fred’s post-its on segregation and AFFH did not make it into the discussion)

 

Another group

-don’t other people

-soften mission statement terminology

-gay guy says, “people don’t know what BIPOC is… makes them feel stupid”

 

Wrap up by Lisa Storment

-conversations can end up with people having dug-in positions, then there is intractable conflict

-look for common goals to bring community together

-align values

-learn to listen and hear each other

-bring assumptions to light

-just being able to have a conversation is a good step

 

Curran

-”illusions if difference”

-Respect for minority-view voices

-allow mistakes to be made

 

Lisa

-Build a sustainable Wake Up for the future

-if funds are not raised, Wake Up may not be here next year

-annual goal of $400,000 

-grants won’t sustain an organization

-get a development team, sustaining memberships

-Project 2025 is coming, Wake Up and Dems Club will partner to address it

-Queer Prom planned for Oct 5th