I’ve gotten a fair amount of grief from some progressives over the fact that I’m supporting Paula Williams over Jane Rands of the Green Party for Fullerton City Council. (Esteemed OJB publisher Vern is a Jane Rands guy, too but he’s nice about it. We haven’t discussed it, but I expect that he might post his own pro-Jane response to this later — as he should!)
My friends insinuate that my support for Paula is all about my ties to my party, which I’m told is not what a non-partisan election should be about. Jane has done the work that one should do before running for Council, I’m told; she has studied the City’s issues, spoke in front of the Council, been part of the Kelly Thomas protests, etc. No one knows Paula, they tell me. “What has she done for Fullerton?”
This has started to irk me. She’s done plenty for Fullerton residents — but most of it is outside of the circles where my bourgeois political associates travel. What she hasn’t done is grandstand over it. I think that it’s way past time that I explain why I support Paula Williams for City Council.
The first thing I have to say is that my support for Paula is not at all about any objection to Jane Rands. I think that Jane would be a fine Council member; my hope is that 2013 will dawn with both Paula and Jane being on City Council. But I think that Paula brings things to the table that Jane does not — that, in fact, few Fullerton City Councilmembers ever have. She is well-placed to represent people who generally do not get represented. I think that that’s very important.
Many people judge qualifications for Council through a myopic lens, in which protesting and speaking to Council are actual qualifications rather than just admirable political advocacy (or sometimes calculated self-promotion. I’m not singling anyone out here.) It’s the same kind of view that judges legislators by their speeches, teachers by their lectures, doctors by their publications, rather than by the totality of the mostly invisible work they do, outside of the spotlight, to serve people well. Sure, I love having an activist on City Council. I also want someone who can best serve the public — all of the public.
Yes, Kiger and Levinson and Sebourn have all been appointed to City commissions (I believe all by Bruce Whitaker or maybe Sean Nelson.) In those seats, they roundly denounce city policies for the audience and the camera. So what? That’s not actual governing. It’s more like three-dimensional blogging.
Among the candidates whom I like best among those running, Jane Rands has the sort of intellect and analytic ability that you also see in Glenn Georgieff, Matt Rowe, and Doug Chaffee — as well as in some of the candidates whose possible policies most worry me, like Greg Sebourn, Travis Kiger, and Sean Paden. In terms of abilities and approaches, there’s a lot of redundancy there, even beyond the diversity of political opinions.
Paula is also plenty smart, as I’ll note below — that’s among the many things that those who criticize her for not being a fixture at Council meetings or an agitator on City Commissions don’t know about her. But she brings a background and experience that no one else on Council has.
- She has tremendous expertise in working with government codes and understanding budgets
- She has a different, valuable, and well-grounded perspective on the “war against public employees”
- As an African-American single mother, she represents the minority and working-class communities that are often overlooked in city and county politics
- She literally makes her living helping people in need navigate through government bureaucracies
It’s that last one that actually means the most to me. Paula Williams, who has worked for Orange County Social Services for more than two decades (yes, she did start young), helps desperate people for a living. She has to understand the complex interaction of local, state, and federal codes; she has to figure out who can best be helped in what ways. In these hard times — and yes, unlike those people with cushy political jobs, she knows that these are hard times because she sees it every day — she understands where poorer people are coming from; she understands what makes their lives better, longer, and more bearable. She understands aspects of life, at a visceral level, that other political candidates don’t.
She doesn’t protect people from crime, as police (ideally) do; she doesn’t protect people from fire. She protects people from the onslaughts of fate — losing medical coverage, losing a home — and from public indifference. By any reasonable definition of “public safety,” she is as much of a public safety employee as a copy or firefighter. After so many years on the job, her skills are probably harder to replace than a police officer or firefighter at her level — and she gets paid much, much less.
I’m not saying that Fullerton needs five people like Paula Williams on its City Council — but the City should snap up the chance to get at least one of them — someone who can understand the concerns of non-ideological citizens, as well as the language of mid-level and lower-level city employees.
As a party official, I recruited Paula to run this year — for Assembly District 65 against Chris Norby.
Yes, for AD-65. At the time, people did not think that Sharon Quirk-Silva, who was practically tailor-made for the district, was going to run — Sharon included. We needed a Democratic candidate. That picture above was from the California Democratic Party convention in mid-February, where as it happened Sharon was sitting nearby where I made one last push to try to get Paula to run.
Pretty much everyone in the Democratic Party, of course, knew that Sharon would be the perfect candidate for the district, capable of holding Norby to a near-draw in Fullerton while thumping him like a broom against a soggy cardboard box south of I-5. At the time, though, she had not yet been drafted into the race by the combined force of seemingly every Democrat in or near the district. Time was a-wastin’ back then — and we needed a candidate. I recruited Paula Williams because I thought that she would be a perfect person to challenge Norby’s obsession with wrecking public unions and destroying public pensions.
As a public employee within the Orange County Department of Social Services, Paula helps people get the medical, housing, and other social welfare benefits that, quite literally, keep them alive. (As I’ve told audiences over the past few months, it would not surprise me if she has saved more lives by doing her job well than Dr. Dick Jones has saved as a medical doctor.)
Among other things, to manage the enormous case load that she has and the maze of regulations that apply to each case, Paula has to be really smart — and she is. ( Someone slamming other people on a Council or a Commission may be smart, but they don’t have to be; they just have a learn a few facts and a few lines.) Beyond that, Paula has a completely different perspective on public employees than the one you hear about from Norby and his supporters. She has a better idea than they do of where there is actually waste in government bureaucracy — but she would also be much more careful about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Paula’s work environment is not at the upper levels of a public department, where people rub shoulders with those making decisions on their pensions and get help — it is alleged — gaming the system. She’s an experienced mid-level employee, with expertise that the county could ill-afford to lose — and she was feeling the pinch. There are no special deals for those at her level; medical costs were going up, pensions — not lavish to begin with — were going down, and she was seeing many of the brightest people around her regretfully making a hard-nosed economic decision to leave.
Yes, that can lead to bad government. But this was not a matter of cops being poorly trained and too inclined to arrest and beat people who didn’t deserve it. This was the consequence of “starving the beast” of government — a matter of inadequate resources leading to a drain of expertise, which would mean more delays, worse service, more missed opportunities for valid placements, and ultimately possibly more suffering and death per year than all of the police departments in the county could inflict in a decade.
Deaths by neglect, by lack of care that a smart and driven bureaucrat like Paula can circumvent, don’t make the headlines — there’s no lurid video of someone dying of a stroke caused by hypertension for which free services were available but the employee charged to help them didn’t know about them — but they are deaths all the same, and deaths largely of precisely the same class of people to which homeless man Kelly Thomas belonged before he because a cause celebre.
It’s simple: take away people like Paula and more of the most vulnerable people in our county die — people in Fullerton included. And the “war on public employees,” justified by the self-serving and headline-grabbing abuses of people at the top of the heap, was doing most of its damage to people at Paula’s level and below — because there are so many more of them.
Yes, someone like Paula could be replaced by an ill-trained temporary contractor. We’d save a little money — and vulnerable people would die. Paula has the ability to give an battlefield-level look at the war on public employees — and to say who was actually being mowed down in the campaigns against them.
I really liked the idea of her taking on Chris Norby, for whom theoretical issues of shrinking government seem to be concrete — and the actual work of people at Paula’s level with people in need apparently seems abstract. But then people demanded that Sharon win the district rather than Paula just putting up a good fight. Paula switched to City Council — somewhat of a relief for her, I think, as she liked the idea of staying in town near her job and her youngest son.
She also understood something really important: the poorer residents of Fullerton — like those around her apartment where West Fullerton meets South Fullerton, far from the buzzing downtown and the well-manicured college lawns — don’t get a whole lot of support from the City Council. Paula didn’t just live in the neighborhood, she was of the neighborhood — and around her were the sorts of people who she has to help in her job every day. She was unusual in the neighborhood is that she was involved in politics — that photo shows her at her fourth state party convention — but she also understood the issues in ways that many other people do not.
Take the issue of the killing of Kelly Thomas. She was as disgusted as anyone by what happened, but she had a perspective that the loudest critics of the event don’t. She understood that what you see at the beginning of the video is a roust — and that rousts happen all the time. Many people seem to be shocked at Manuel Ramos swinging his baton at the beginning and ordering him around even before he was under arrest. Paula, having the advantage of living in a lower-income area, was not surprised by this: she knows that this is just how police act when they want to control a situation. (Can you imagine what would happen if an eighteen year old Black kid had talked back to a police officer and refused to obey orders the way that Kelly Thomas did? It might have been a much shorter video — but you would probably not have seen it.)
Paula gets stopped for “Driving While Black” sometimes — a stop without cause that might send a Dick Jones or a Bruce Whitaker around the bend with apoplexy — and she is committed to fighting racism and profiling. But when I asked her what her major problem was with the Fullerton police, she gave the answer that would probably be most common within her home area. It’s not the rousts; it’s not the stops without pretexts, as galling as they are. It is … well, first take a guess, Dear Reader.
Ready?
It’s the lack of police presence in her community and the lack of adequate and timely police response.
The police don’t show up soon enough to combat crime. They aren’t around when needed; they have tended to stay within the safety of their cars as they drive past. So, people are often left to fend for themselves, often to be victimized, with often terrible results. This situation is getting better, as I’ll note below — but first let me ask you a question.
Have you heard that identified as a problem over the past year, in all of the attacks that you hear on the FPD? If you haven’t, it’s because you’re getting your information from too narrow a swath of experience within the city — from a whiter, wealthier, more privileged, more sheltered segment of the community.
Shouldn’t there be one person on the City Council, at least, who gets it?
Here’s something else that galls Paula — the snide attacks made on Community Policing. Community Policing — getting cops integrated into the community, on the streets, winning the trust and cooperation of the residents rather than treating them like residents in an occupied territory — is exactly what can help address the problems of inadequate police response in rougher neighborhoods. Say what you will about anything else he’s done, but this has been a major initiative and priority for Interim Chief Dan Hughes.
When Doug Chaffee — who does understand this despite his more privileged perspective — talked about Community Policing in the Fullerton Observer as a needed reform for the FPD, cackling critics sawed off his butt and shoved it into his face. How dare he not see that the issue with the Fullerton police was Kelly Thomas and more Kelly Thomas? Well, actually, there is another issue for the critics — the police are unionized and collect large pensions. So maybe we need to outsource policing to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, to save money.
You may have heard that suggestion made. But let me ask you this: when you’ve heard it made, has anyone asked what such a change would mean for neighborhoods like the one Paula Williams lives in? Is the OCSD going to engage in community policing — or will they just drive by?
Don’t we need at least one person on City Council who will think to ask that sort of question first?
Jane Rands is a good person with good values — but she is a comfortable professional. I expect that if and when (as I hope) she is on the City Council with Paula Williams, she will be sympathetic to the sorts of concerns that Paula brings up — but I don’t think that she will be as likely to bring them up on her own, because she does not come from the same sort of life experience as Paula. (We should have both on City Council, but at least one will have to wait until November.)
I also know Paula to be a person of excellent character. I’ll give two examples — actually, pretty much the same example twice, applied to different people — of why that is. In the past month, a longtime blogger associate of mine and a newer associate from Occupy Orange County have both faced serious medical problems — the sorts of problems that, combined with unemployment, gets people killed — and have needed help. They could not navigate their way through the terrain of the bureaucracy; without a competent guide, they might well end up pulling off the trail to die. The explanations they got about where they stood and why help was not available to them did not make sense. I referred them to state legislators’ offices; they got no relief and eventually got onto a “we’ll take a message and not get back to you” list.
In both cases, I called Paula. “Paula, my friend is having trouble — can’t get medical insurance, can’t get medical care, can’t (in one case) get housing. My friend is getting the runaround. Can you help?”
At her level, Paula doesn’t see people in her office anymore — she sees files. (Because of staff cuts, she and her colleagues see twice as many files as she used to — and yes, people do die needlessly as a result.) But she agreed to see my friends casually; they came to the campaign office that she and I share with Jay Chen.
My friends both came away dazzled. They understood it now; each was visibly relieved. Paula knows her stuff. She knows if there is a way to get something done within the system — and if there isn’t a way to get it done, she has plenty of experience with gently telling people the truth. I caught just bits of each conversation, but in both cases what I saw from Paula was the virtuosity of true expertise. She cared; in both cases, she followed up.
“What has Paula done for Fullerton?” My office is in Fullerton. She helps people. She does it without grandstanding; she does it in a spirit of charity and caring. She’s a quick study and she has a finely honed BS detector and the grace to wield it gently when possible. Are there issues she may not know about? Sure — just like everyone else. But she’s a quick study, she’s not ideological, and she’s willing to make her decisions on the merits.
Why do I support Paula Williams? Because these are hard times and people need help — and by temperament and training, she is the sort of person who helps. Once elected, I predict that she’ll be among the most popular City Councilmembers in recent memory, because she will be the one that citizens can go to. And, particularly for the minority and working-class or lower members of the community, she will be especially cherished, because she will be the one who gets it.
No, Fullerton does not need five copies of Paula Williams on its City Council. But I think it sure does need one of them — and she’s the only one like her who’s running. That’s why I hope that she wins.
Disclosure: beyond our being friends and renting space in the same campaign office, Paula and I share a campaign treasurer, for whom my daughter works; among her responsibilities are doing the financial reports for Paula’s campaign.
Mr. Chaffee’s criticism roots itself in dodging the question. He ducked a direct question about Kelly Thomas with a statement about community policing. Let’s not turn his non-answer around and make it something noble. While a valid concept on it’s face, it was a pitiful answer to a very serious question. He rightfully got his butt sawn off as you put it, and his critics most certainly were not cackling.
Other than that, nice post. I’m glad to see a good story about someone who cares stepping up to lead.
Paula sounds pretty cool.
I don’t feel the need to write about Jane Rands, even though we’ve been friends and colleagues for six years or so. That’s because the people of Fullerton already know her as well as I do.
But one reasons I’ve been supporting her – aside from her own merits – and am irritated that there’s a Dem running against her – is because I’d like third party candidates to be able to get a foothold in local offices, where they’re not also spoiler candidates that help a Republican beat a Democrat – and I thought this was going to be such a rare situation. Oh well – Jane in June, Jane in November!
Jane’s candidacy was doomed when Greg Sebourn filed to run against her for the Banky seat rather than taking on Chaffee for the McKinley seat. (Unlike Paula, Sebourn is supposed to be Jane’s friend!) That took away the FFFF vote. Tony should have embraced Jane’s candidacy and told Levinson, who seems relatively hapless, to stand down. But he didn’t — because Jane’s not “orthodox FFFF.”
Paula had intended to run for a different seat than Jane until Chaffee decided to get into the race after all (after he’d waited long enough that people no longer expected it.) As one who worked on the Esiquio Uballe campaign against Norby in 2010, the idea of Jane complaining about someone else being a spoiler strikes me as ironic.
Jane did not say spoiler, I said that it often works out that the Green is.
“Oh well – Jane in June, Jane in November!”………. Hmmmmm
Now, if you can compose something in the E flat on your piano, you may have a hit, love song, in your hands.
ms. williams is black!!! living in south county i was unaware that there were black people in fullerton, much less the rest of northern orange county. this is so cool.
Yup, go to Fullerton or Anaheim if you want to see the only real diversity in this County.
I believe that Yorba Linda has the largest African-American church in the county. The things one learns while running for office!
There’s diversity all over the county, Vern — but North OC diversity tends to be more diverse, i.e., beyond white, Latino, and East Asian.
“There’s diversity all over the county, Vern”……. Hmmmmm
Especially the LA county’s Fairfax District.
“this is so cool”……. Hmmmmm
Obama got elected based on same platform.
I think that cool people should govern this country until the word cool becomes politically incorrect.
It would be cool if Golem would not stick his tongue out of his mouth when he is taking pictures — he looks somewhat uncool and retarded by doing so.
Maybe he is!
You’re right — not a good pic of me. It’s the best pic I have of Paula, though, so I went with it.
“You’re right — not a good pic of me”…….. Hmmmmmm
Every pic has your tongue hanging out.
So when the people say “should shut your mouth” they are doing so in your own best interest.
Yeah, Michael Jordan had the same problem.
Except, of course, that that isn’t true of most pictures of me, not that it matters to you.
Jane Rands is no stranger to the working class. She grew up in a single parent household with a schoolteacher mother who worked hard for her family. Jane is now an accomplished Systems Engineer who worked for years as a house cleaner putting herself through college to earn her degree in computer science.
Support who you want to Greg. When you move to Fullerton let me know and I’ll send you some information on Jane Rands. Meantime, you can check out her website at http://www.janerands.com. Let me know where I can find the website of Paula Williams please.
Of course any African American has a different understanding of police in our society, and would probably not be surprised to see the police hassling, and even beating, a harmless poor person, but everyone should have been outraged by it. Jane was, and that’s why she spent months with hundreds of others protesting in front of the police station. Because of the killing of Kelly Thomas and myriad lawsuits brought against the FPD Jane Rands has campaigned on police reform with citizen oversight of procedures and any complaints made against police officers, helping to formulate a plan with a dedicated group of likeminded individuals and professionals.
I admire people who help others for a living. I look forward to getting to know Ms. Williams, who I did not know until I read her name on a filing log. I know many other candidates already because for years I have seen and talked to them at city meetings.
“I look forward to getting to know Ms. Williams, who I did not know until I read her name on a filing log.”………. Hmmmmmm
Drp hmp croat?
“Drp hmp croat?”…….. Hmmmmm
Grow up Nelson!…… No left-progressive overwrites.
“I admire people who help others for a living.”
I admire people who help others and don’t get compensated. They are the real heroes. (not that there’s anything wrong with being a paid welfare official)
Paula may be good but Jane is definitely better because she knows Fullerton far better than Paula.
“Paula may be good but Jane is definitely better because she knows Fullerton far better than Paula.”……… Hmmmmmm
But Paula is cool!…….. the liberal-left-progressive buzzword.
Paula wasn’t compensated for helping the two friends I referred to her.
Jane knows much of Fullerton better than Paula. Paula knows some of Fullerton better than Jane. Each seat represents 20% of the Council. I think that the part of Fullerton that Jane knows better is well-represented, even if by the wrong people. The part of Fullerton that Paula knows better is usually not represented at all.
Like I said — by November I hope that they’re both on council.
Matt, first of all, thank you for writing, because I think that the other perspective on the race absolutely should be present here and as Jane’s husband — unless someone was pulling my leg again — you’re the best one to write it.
I think that you misunderstand my point with this story. It’s not a “vote for her because she was born in a log cabin” sort of appeal. That Jane grew up non-entitled and worked her way to a fine career through menial labor speaks well of her — but it’s not the point.
The point is something that has been made by feminists, by gays, by ethnic and racial minority groups — there is no ready substitute for being part of a group in order to gain that group’s perspective. Jane was a house cleaner — and that perspective was surely valuable, just like my understanding of life was and is colored by the menial jobs I’ve had in the past.
But, as a systems engineer, Jane doesn’t view the world through the perspective of a house cleaner, but through the lens of a systems engineer. (Her analytic approach shows, to her benefit, in her approach to the city’s problems.) You and Jane don’t live in a poor area — and there’s no reason you should. But the fact that you don’t colors your perspective of the city and the world, just as Jones’s perspective is colored by his being a wealthy doctor and Bankhead’s and McKinley’s by their being (retired) cops.
It’s telling — and I think it’s probably a good basis for choosing a candidate — that you think that talking to people at city council meetings is a critical qualification for city office. That’s one path to office, sure — although it’s a path often taken by cranks and self-serving bloviators, neither of which I consider Jane to be. Another path is to come out of one’s particular community, know its concerns, and to be prepared to represent them. I know that Paula was disgusted by the Kelly Thomas interview, but to view the Kelly Thomas case as the only roust, the only unjustified beating, the only significant tragedy in Fullerton is, frankly, a perspective of privilege.
I had a conversation on that topic with someone other than Paula who had asked this question: what would the public reaction be if it had been a homeless man other than Kelly who was videoed in a fatal beating, but if they had been Black or Latino and it had happened in a predominantly minority part of the city. Do you think that we would have seen the same result? Would Tony Bushala have championed the response, and if so with the same success? Maybe so — but I’m sure that you can understand the suspicions that it would not have turned out the same way. So Jane’s being proud of having donated such a substantial portion of her free time to this case is nice — but also, for those in the underserved areas of Fullerton it’s also “selective.”
One thing that you mention that does speak to Jane’s credit is the solutions she has favored, such as a citizens’ oversight commission for brutality complaints. But tell me — has Jane engaged the problem of poor police responsiveness in the poorer areas of West and South Fullerton? I’m interested in her responses to what is also a very significant problem.
You descend a bit in your second paragraph. Yes, I live 1/3 mile outside of Fullerton; no, that doesn’t matter. I also live over 1500 miles away from Wisconsin, but its recall election is the result I actually care most about on June 5. I’m not sure if Paula has a website; she set her position forth in her ballot statement. One thing that you may not appreciate is that she has been getting abused and insulted to her face for having the temerity to run — in a way that you and Jane do not — including by some of Jane’s supporters (not that I hold Jane responsible for that.) If she had a website, the next question people would ask is why doesn’t she turn on commenting — and that is a question that people in Paula’s part of town would not see the need to ask. They’d already know without asking.
greg, the only thing you have to worry about is does ms. greg like your tongue out
The only thing I have to worry about is what happens to me if I were to actually answer a question like that.
ewww, greg diamond and sharon I cheated on my husband quirk…sorry lady you lost my vote.next time get people with morals, might help you win. We refer to Petty letty sanchez and squirk as the “Me;ho’s, two fake latinas with zero morals…Loretta Sanchez make out session with GWB at the state of the union and everyone laughing at her calling her a whore at the dem convention, made me leave that party completely..the people who were calling her a whore, were people like Deninis Kucinich, laughing opening at her, then they started with her christmas cards…message to the lady running,aligning yourself with these people will end your career…I put it to you in a sarah palin, way I see your career ending from hy balcony when your out in that parking lot talking to greg whilst he eats all those cupcakes…do you ever make eye contact are you spending your time itemizing what was left on his button popping food stained shirt?
FLocal, do you PROMISE ME that you won’t support anyone who has ever cheated on their spouse? Do you, um, expect to vote for Norby? Really? (All I’ll say about my own race, given your position, is that from what I understand I look forward to receiving your vote in November!)
Loretta is awfully popular within the party; I think that maybe you were hanging out with the wrong sorts of Democrats.
I was at the latter half of Loretta’s campaign office event this weekend. I had one cupcake. (It was just OK.) I didn’t get a chance to talk to Loretta, who was very busy with well-wishers. So you were there? Hiding in a nearby trash bin to do surveillance?
Um, no, I live above your lil o campaign head quarters, Yep, in this building we dont care who we have here, you pay your rent you dwell here just fine, we dont care, I did see you talking with Loretta, I absolutely hate her, she has lied so many times, nah never mind, I did see you, did you see your guys illegally walk onto my private property and hang their sign and were rude to boot? Nah, guess not, but I will tell you I will never ever vote for someone who cheats on their spouse…dont care what party, I figure if you stand before god, ( i dont do the religion thing) and promise, you made a committmnet and if you will f your mate over, what would you do to a mouthy citizen.. the only thing I can promise you sir and neighbor,I will never ever knowingly vote for a cheater…Ill give you that!
I just wish that ms Williams runs again she would be a fine city of Fullerton representatives as I have severs family members that live in Fullerton you go Paula.