This x100. Thank you Jerusalem

“Community input,” where the 0.001% of the population who shows up to meetings gets to veto the actions of people elected by over half of it, is just voter suppression with extra steps.

Like, Prop HHH passed in LA with ~1 million votes (77%!) to create housing for the homeless.

But then when it comes to picking a site for homeless housing, 30-300 people show up to a 'community meeting,' complain it shouldn't be there, and it's blocked.

That's not democracy!

Thanks for reading! This isn’t going away and if folks want to prevent reform from benefitting fossil fuels, they would do well to engage on the merits (put forth a bill that would actually address legitimate concerns about our sluggish ability to build renewable infrastructure!)

I would also posit to some of the angry commenters that assuming you speak for people of color because you did a few focus groups or round tables is absurd. Very few (if any) groups in non profit spaces have any legitimate claim to representation.

So how do we sort out the bad faith trolls from the good faith disagreers? Well, by evaluating the validity of their opinions! By pointing out contradictions, bad evidence, failures of reason. Bad faith does in fact out itself!

Given that the vast majority of us have more privilege than the people who will be most harmed by climate change we have then two obligations:

1) to accurately understand their opinions and
2) engage with differing viewpoints on the merits

Some relevant passages from the Taiwo piece.

My privilege is of course evident - if you have access to prominent discursive spaces, it would be remarkable to find you lacking priv. in all areas. The fact of my identity does not mean I get to speak on behalf of marginalized groups — no one does.

thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-…

I even saw one public official claim that because her anecdotal experience was largely people of color opposing new housing development, we ought to defer to that. This is, of course, the problem — the people who show up DO NOT REPRESENT THE MAJORITY.

Making leftist spaces so insulated from differing ideas does a disservice to progressive ideology. If you think my critique of our community input processes in this country can only come from privileged oil developers, it’s you who is out of touch.

It is in fact it’s own form of racism that people to police the bounds of acceptable Black opinion. You actually don’t get to tell me what’s legitimate for a Black person to believe 🙃

(To those who have engaged in some light antisemitism, I regret to inform you that you have wildly misunderstood Jewish naming conventions.)