Other items in this column include:
*Bry to County COVID officials: Where’s the data?
*Ethnic Studies controversy coming to a head
SAN DIEGO — San Diego City Councilwoman Dr. Jen Campbell has taken exception to testimony by former mayoral candidate Tasha Williamson during a portion of the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Nov 10, when members of the public were invited to comment.
Campbell said that Williamson interjected into her testimony on another matter the issue of the race for the presidency of the next City Council in which Campbell and Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe are competitors.
Campbell told San Diego Jewish World, “In my experience with Monica, I’ve known her to be someone who is thoughtful and contributes very much during our Council meetings. That being said, though, it is unnecessary to receive threats from some of her supporters and so I hope she will denounce the threatening that is going on.”
Campbell explained, “On Council the other day, one of her supporters called in during comment on something we were considering and said that she [Monica] should be elected Council President and I better watch out because they were coming to get me.”
Campbell identified the caller as Williamson.
Williamson later denied threatening Campbell, explaining: “I’ve always told people openly before I protested them that ‘I’m coming for you,’ and everybody knows that means I am getting ready to protest because those are the words I use before the protest begins. Usually, I sit down and meet with people before I protest and then I tell them, ‘I’ll come for you; I have no problem coming for you.’ It means protest. I have never intentionally done anything in the manner that she is talking about … I protest at demonstrations, at the mayor’s home, at politicians’ homes, in City Hall. I protest everywhere, and that is all I have ever done is protest. I have never injured anyone — maybe their feelings — and I have never threatened to injure anyone. I would never. I’m not going to prison for anybody. I don’t take things to that extreme.”
The reason she is upset with Campbell, she said, is because “I think it is important that White people say that they support Black people and Black leadership and they do that. She is a Democrat and as far as I remember Democrats do not go against other Democrats who are extremely qualified for a position. She is acting like a Republican. Monica said she was running first. Monica let everyone know that she was running first and at no point in time did Jen Campbell say until recently that she was going to run opposing Monica. Somebody who said that they have no ambition to go higher up in politics is now trying to go higher up in politics to be (Council) President. Shame on her!”
Councilwoman Montgomery Steppe, asked her viewpoint, responded through her communications director, Perri Storey: “From the beginning of declaring her run for the Council Presidency, the Councilmember has maintained that she wanted the tone of the race to be peaceful. The Councilmember’s broad coalition of supporters include community activists, restorative justice advocates, environmentalists, youth organizations, and San Diegans across all nine Council Districts. The Councilmember supports First Amendment expression, but also understands that we have to be mindful of words and word choices that may trigger misunderstanding. Threatening to organize a peaceful protest doesn’t need to be denounced, but the Councilmember does denounce threats of violence of any kind.”
Storey also said, “The race for the Council’s Presidency is about the two visions. The Councilmember is focusing on the heart of the race and not anything that could be a distraction from the real issues around these two very different candidates, and two very different directions for this new Council.”
Campbell said she put her candidacy forward because, “I have more life experience. I have been around longer. I’ve had a lot of experience on the Council with collaboration and coalition building and I think that I will be able to take a pragmatic, objective approach to all the key issues that are going on in our city. I am also a backer of Todd Gloria and I am so excited that he won… He and I are pretty much on the same wave length and I think we will be able to make things work very smoothly as we go forward to bring progress to our city.”
Asked if Gloria had formally endorsed her, Campbell responded, “No,” but added, “He and I are like brother and sister. We are very close, very much on the same wave length. We would work together very well.”
She added that campaigning for the presidency of the Council “usually is not done in public” but that Montgomery Steppe decided to announce her candidacy to the Voice of San Diego. “She had asked me a long time ago whether I would run. I promised that I would let her know. She told me she wasn’t going to put this in the press, that she didn’t want to make a public spectacle, but then she did. So I have to respond when people ask me, ‘Are you running too?’
A request is pending for comment from Mayor-elect Gloria.
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Bry to County COVID officials: Where’s the data?
San Diego City Councilwoman Barbara Bry, alarmed that San Diego County will move on Saturday into the Purple Tier of COVID-19 restrictions, has urged county officials to show any data proving the relationship between certain activities at small businesses, including restaurants, and the coronavirus.
She told San Diego Jewish World she plans to send a formal request to county authorities asking them to show what data justifies the closing of businesses, or requiring them to operate only outdoors.
“I am very concerned that the county is back in the most restrictive tier and about the impact on our small businesses and people’s lives,” she said in a brief interview. “I want to see the data on where COVID cases are coming from. Are they coming from people going to the gym? Are they coming from people eating indoors at a restaurant? Tell us where the cases are coming from, but don’t shut down these businesses without this data.”
Bry noted that with the imposition of “Purple Tier” restrictions, the following will occur:
* Bars that do not serve meals must close.
*Restaurants, gyms, houses of worship, movie theaters, museums, zoos and aquariums may only operate outdoors.
*Retail stores, shopping centers and bookstores may operate indoors at 25 percent capacity.
* Grocery stores are considered essential and are allowed to operate indoors at 50 percent capacity.
She added that “These restrictions will remain in place for at least three weeks before San Diego can return to the less restrictive Red Tier. This happened because San Diego County reported more than 7.0 adjusted new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents for the second week in a row. In fact, the number was much higher at a whopping 8.9 cases.
“Please wear a mask every single time that you leave your home,” the councilwoman and former mayoral candidate added. “Please also social distance and wash your hands frequently. It is up to us to do everything that we can to return to a less restrictive tier.”
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Ethnic Studies Controversy Coming to a Head
Roz Rothstein, chief executive officer of StandWithUs, has urged the state’s Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) within the California Department of Education to approve changes to make the proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) for high schools “more balanced and inclusive.”
“We also remain deeply concerned that education officials have not committed to adding a comprehensive definition of antisemitism in all its forms,” he said. “Furthermore, anti-Israel extremists are now pressuring the IQC to reject many positive revisions. They are demanding a special place for Arab Americans and anti-Israel propaganda in the ESMC, and calling it an ‘insult’ to treat Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Sikhs, Koreans and otheer communtieis equally. That means we still have a lot of work to do to ensure California gets this right.”
Meanwhile, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee issued a counter press release in which it made a “demand that Arab American Studies is restored to the Core Curriculum of Ethnic Studies in the California educational system. We are alarmed that elected officials within the Education Department and state legislatures have determined through discriminatory logic to exclude Arab-Americans from California’s high school Ethnic Studies core curriculum.”
The press release went on to make these other demands:
* Re-insert Arab American studies with Asian-American studies.
* The Arab-American lesson plan submitted to the California Department of Education by the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum advisory committee must be reinstated.
* Arab Americans belong within the anti-racist, decolonial, and liberatory lesson plans.
*Remove the extreme definition of antisemitism that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism because it violates our First Amendment rights.
The debate was fostered when the state Legislature passed a bill requiring that high school students be required for graduation to pass a course relating to the history of at least one of these groups: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans, and Native Americans. Israel and a number of Arab countries are located on the Asian continent, and the struggle has concerned what Asian-American Studies should or should not include.
Rothstein noted that “the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) will vote on recommended changes submitted by the CA Department of Education (CDE) and many others across the state at a meeting on November 18th. StandWithUs will release a call to action before this meeting, which is open to the public. After the IQC vote, there will be a 45-day period in which concerned citizens can submit additional feedback to the State Board of Education, prior to the ESMC’s scheduled approval date in March, 2021.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com