I was surprised to see Jim Leonard’s screed in the Enterprise referencing the Vanguard’s article from prior to the election. In it, he says that a friend had a discussion with a long-time staffer at City Hall, complaining about a guest piece written by a number of local politicians.
(Here is the link to Jim Leonard’s letter which I shall reference but not extensively quote from, and here is the link to the June 6 Guest Commentary that I assume he is referring to).
Mr. Leonard’s friend was upset that the guest commentary “ignored air quality in the argument for the project” and became shocked when the staffer apparently dismissed the complaint by arguing, “Democracy is adversarial.”
At this point Mr. Leonard proclaims that this is “why democracy does not work in Davis.” And he proceeds to divide democracy into “communicative democracy and adversarial democracy.”
“Communicative democracy encourages all opponents to share whatever truth they have with everyone. When it is determined who has won, everybody celebrates and learning continues. Nobody is bitter. Everybody is energized by the process. And, if a collective mistake was made, the mistake can be easily undone,” he writes.
On the other hand, “Adversarial democracy is all about who gets power and resources. Lying, distorting the truth, withholding information and undermining reputations are acceptable. There are winners and losers. There is no situation within which everyone wins.”
He argues, “Power is the object of this kind of democracy.”
Needless to say, I have a lot of problems with this whole construct. I believe that democracy is at its core the marketplace of ideas. Under this construct, the truth emerges from a competition of ideas in a free and transparent manner of public discourse.
In fact that is the raison d’être of the Vanguard. The idea is that we push ideas out there to the public, competing ideas at times, and the public discusses and debates them.
In my view, the Nishi election, regardless of your preferred outcome, worked reasonably well. The developer put down the proposal. The opposition attacked key vulnerable points of that proposal. The developer attempted to mitigate some of their weaknesses during the course of the campaign. The opposition was able to criticize those fixes and push forward their own narrative.
The one shortcoming in the process is that it would have been better if this sort of give and take, proposal and counterproposal would have allowed for being able to offer the public different iterations of the project – each of which improved upon each other. But the structure of an election does not permit that kind of give and take.
Mr. Leonard argues that lying and distorting the truth are acceptable, but, in my view, lies and distortions get exposed and debunked through this deliberative process.
That is certainly what happened here. The issue of air quality certainly got a lot of play during the election. In fact, the Vanguard published at least two pieces before the matter was even put on the ballot, highlighting the concerns about air quality as expressed by Thomas Cahill.
During the election, we had a piece that laid out Dr. Cahill’s concerns and the responses from the city and the EIR consultant to his concerns. Dr. Cahill expressed to me that he felt that the current standards are inadequate, that he would prefer to err on the side of caution, i.e. no housing until we were assured that there were not harmful health effects.
While I respect that position and where Dr. Cahill was coming from, it was not one I shared.
There were also legitimate concerns about traffic on Richards Boulevard that the developer and city council attempted to mitigate and that the opposition believed was inadequate.
Finally, I think the opposition had legitimate concerns about the affordable housing exemption – I did not agree it was illegal, but the optics of it were horrendous and definitely harmed the project at the ballot box.
What I don’t understand is the notion of “why permit adversarial democracy?” In the case of Nishi, there were two opposing viewpoints on what the future of Davis looked like. We had a defined process in a defined period of time. Each side made their case.
I do not see how what Mr. Leonard seems to advocate is possible. He notes, “Communicative democracy encourages all opponents to share whatever truth they have with everyone.” That certainly occurred in this process. The Vanguard, through a system of article submissions and moderated comments, attempts to do exactly that.
Mr. Leonard then offers, “When it is determined who has won, everybody celebrates and learning continues. Nobody is bitter.” How do you operationalize that? A local governance system comes closer to avoiding the struggles of power politics than state or national systems with political parties as power brokers, but even at the local level – there are strongly held views and competing visions.
Mr. Leonard argues that this is the “true democracy.” I think a more realistic goal is more a hybrid between Mr. Leonard’s two models. That is our goal at the Vanguard: present different views of preferred policy goals, push for transparency in government, call out public officials when they lack transparency, obfuscate or attempt to game the system, and allow the marketplace of ideas to come out through discourse.
Will there be some winners and some losers in this process? That is unavoidable.
Mr. Leonard closes by arguing, “I believe communicative democracy is true democracy. In contrast, adversarial democracy is a raid on democracy by anti-democratic forces, democracy with a false face, and undermines true democracy. I think the staffer revealed how undemocratic our city’s politics are and how hostile the city is to the community it supposedly serves. This situation needs to be remedied, badly. The only cure is direct democracy and more honest and open communication among the citizens.”
I am not going to argue that there aren’t problems with the current system. The Vanguard was founded ten years ago this month to increase transparency and accountability for local elected officials.
But I don’t agree that the system is broken or even hostile to the community – I simply believe that there are competing views about the best way forward for the community. And to that, I think we need some sort of facilitated visioning process to see if there is a common path forward.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Hi David,
I read Mr. Leonard’s letter when published. The Vanguard did an excellent job teasing out the alleged air pollution in detail. I believe Dr. Cahill’s work, which was based on some pretty rough assumptions, resembled Feng Shui more than a scientific analysis. You either believe it or you don’t. When I read the letter it seemed to me that the subtext was agreeing with his opinion was true democracy while disagreeing was fake democracy.
I will note that this country has provided free healthcare to old people but not to children. Is this because old people are more valuable than young people or because they are able to vote? My truth is my children are more important than Mr. Leonard so I would advocate the feds no longer to pay his medicare and instead pay for my kids. Hopefully he will find this a cause for celebration.
David,
You seem to recommend “a facilitated visioning process”.
In your opinion, what does that really look like and how would it work? What do you hope might result from such a process and why would it be of value to the community?
I actually laid out some of the guts of it earlier this week in one of these columns
Who would you have design, oversee, convene and facilitate the process?
I would submit therein lies one of the greatest challenges.
I’d trust Robb Davis and Brett Lee to oversee and convene it. But a professional facilitator would almost certainly be necessary.
“Operationalize”? To quote Calvin (the associate of Hobbes), “Verbing weirds language.”
Yep…
Democracy is always adversarial because most people are not really rational in opinion, or they see the opening for self enrichment. Representative democracy, assuming there is nothing connecting enrichment of the elected officials, is designed to check and balance that lack of rational decision capability. Direct democracy is generally fatal.
I like direct democracy
We reversed 5-0 CC votes that were terrible for the City. Three reversals in only five years
Many Davis features people like result from voter revolt against crazy votes of CC majorities led by power elites.
Who is we? As I recall you, Eileen and Alan were the main actors this time and they were on the other side on your other reversals. I think you better be careful with your use of pronouns.
“We” means thoughtful voters.
Don Shor: Lee and Davis convene a discussion ? They were the dancing show guys trying to sell Nishi. Let’s get someone neutral.
I eagerly await your suggestions.
David, you refer to Jim Leonard’s piece as a “screed.” Some of the definitions of that term include: “a long and often angry piece of writing that usually accuses someone of something or complains about something” and “a long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe.” To my read, Jim’s letter was brief and measured in tone. Thus, your use of the word “screed” is, ironically, an example of the “adversarial democracy” that Jim was criticizing.
Indeed, you seem to have completely missed Jim’s point. When someone leaves out an important element in a discussion (in this case, air quality and Nishi), they are not engaged in a mutual search for the truth. Rather, they are engaging in adversarial democracy, where the goal is, instead, simply to win. (Note that I am not saying that the discussion in question should have agreed with Dr. Cahill – I am saying that any piece that failed to mention and address the air quality issue is problematic, because it is simply seeking to win without fully engaging the issues).
It wasn’t an important element. It isn’t an important element. The real important element is the people that make up crap and then complain when they don’t get free advertising for it. Sort of like how Trump operates.
Glad to see Frankly back in good spirits. Want to talk sometime about a better long range community plan? Your conference room or mine?
Check your email Mike. We need to replace the fence between us. It is falling down. No doubt it has been destabilized a bit by the political winds blowing back and forth.
Sigh … Instead of a conference, dear hard headed Frankly only wants to talk about fences between us …
MIchael
“ Your conference room or mine?”
Why not the comments section of the Vanguard or the Enterprise ?
Frankly, I’d be very interested for you to cite any studies that overturned the findings of the studies that Dr. Cahill cited, or to show the fatal flaws in the studies that he cited. Until then, your claim that “It wasn’t an important element. It isn’t an important element” is utterly empty, and your assertion “The real important element is the people that make up crap and then complain when they don’t get free advertising for it” is a fine example of adversarial democracy in action.
But that’s the point. Communicative democracy is where we respond to each others points (which is not to say we always agree), rather than dismiss or ignore them.
I don’t waste my time on twaddle. Only the real, factual and important stuff for me. Stuff like not enough housing or business property, much too little tax revenue derived from local business activity, crumbling roads, poorly maintained parks, growing city deficits in the hundreds of millions, bad intersections that frustrate drivers and causes safety issues for bikes and pedestrians.
Peer-reviewed scientific studies about human health are “twaddle,” not real or factual. Got it.
Peer-reviewed? I doubt it unless you are talking about peers with the same social bias.
Based on the known severe bias in social science that relies on peer review, scientific peer review is a broken mechanism worthy of suspect and scorn.
As I understand it, Dr Cahill is a competent scientist, measuring levels of pollution, but is not an epidemiologist. Many folk tried to link the data to health risk… without connecting the dots…
Guess we should change the laws and ban all cell phones, radios, broadcast TV, and overhead electric transmission lines to avoid the dangers of EMF.
[BTW, any of you posting, with your computer using a home wi-fi, have even more exposure to EMF risks…]
Roberta: When I saw it in the paper, my impression was angry and not measured. I also don’t believe that every discussion has to mention every single issue. We all tend to focus on a few key points most important to us.
Chamber Fan, the health of residents is not just any issue. Again, you don’t have to agree that there were health concerns at Nishi, but it ought to be addressed and not simply ignored.
For a piece to read as angry to me, it has to contain angry language. I just don’t see a diatribe here.
Jim’s words seem measured and thoughtful to me …. The attacks on him feel like more sour grapes following June 7?
The inner circle of Yes on A leaders knew that the pollution is so bad and estimates of 5% decrease in lung capacity per year of living there So the City and Nishi were promoting a project they knew had serious issues and could destroy the lungs of other parents’ children …. All for the money, baby.
Yes, please, go ahead and “Do the David ” and try to flip a few NO voters to YES for Nishi 2. We are ready …
OK… 5% decrease in lung capacity / year… right… so is everyone living along Olive Drive (residing 10 years or more) on oxygen? Am thinking not…
Alan M… given your proximity to both, and number of years you’ve been living in Old East, let me treat you to your next bottle of oxygen…
Michael
“The inner circle of Yes on A leaders knew that the pollution is so bad and estimates of 5% decrease in lung capacity per year of living there”
Well then, they “knew” a lot more than many of the medical specialists, public health experts and epidemiologist “knew”. Just like you seem to be claiming that you know more than the experts. Roberta is honest, if misguided, in my opinion, in her concerns about the medical risks. You with your “toxic soup” and amazing mind reading abilities with regard to the proponents of measure A, I cannot say the same for.
Mike, you are hard at work implementing the “throw the spitballs at the wall, and then see what sticks” approach to hyperbolic political argument. If you are going to engage the air quality issue, take some lessons from Roberta Millstein. She approaches it from a reasoned and reasonable and balanced perspective . . . and she listens rather than lectures.
I don’t view poisoning innocent children while ripping off their international parents with sky high rents as something I feel very measured about. And now we have Tia calling me a liar. Nice. Tia, ever wonder why Nishi hasn’t done the studies Cahill urges ?
“Don’t collect the data, don’t get the answers” Regan gutted data collection at EEOC and EPA in about 1981. Smart guy. Smart Ruff and Whitcomb.
Michael
“Poison soup ?” ” Poisoning innocent children ?” Despite the lack of medical and or epidemiological evidence ! Definitive statements about what others do or don’t “know”. Nice ?
When you are honest in your statements and conclusions, I promise that I will play nice. Until then, I will call it as I see it.
Mike, you are channeling Harold Hill.
First, there will be either no children or very, very close to no children ever living on the Nishi site.
Second, the $1,500-$1,800 per month rental rate for a 2-bedroom apartment fits in the middle of the current market for 2-bedroom apartment rentals (ranging from a low of $925 to a high of $2,178 in the 2015 UC Davis Appartment Rental Rate Survey).
Third, if you paid any attention to Roberta’s discussions, her advocacy for both education and proactive noticing for the parents of any children (if there ever are any) provides “informed consent.”
Fourth, I could be wrong, but my recollection of the first time that Dr. Cahill spoke about Nishi specifically was quite recently. Given the very small amount of time (when compared to the elapsed amount of time that such a Cahill study takes) that has elapsed since that first utterance by Dr. Cahill, no one on the planet Earth could have “done” such a study, not even Dr. Cahill himself.
Fifth, you need to check your math. The last time I checked losing 5% of an amount each year means the whole amount will be gone in 20 years, and half the amount will be gone in 10 years. Given your vast medical knowledge, how would you assess the health of a person who has lost 50% of his/her lung capacity?
Bottom-line, we’ve got trouble right here in Hyperbole City, trouble with a capital “Hy” and that rhymes with “Y” and that stands for you.
Matt, just some comments about a few things you wrote… first, I see no reason for the assumption that parents with children would not live at Nishi – recall the glossy photos with families from the developers, clearly a marketing target for them. Second, I described what would be necessary (a fairly high bar) to provide informed consent, but in no way was that ever anything that was part of the developer agreement, so it’s misleading to say I “provided” for it. The fact that I described how it could be done doesn’t make it happen. Third, some studies of the site were in fact done (and are mentioned in the EIR), but they were adjacent and not on the site (due to lack of power on the site), which is why Dr. Cahill called for more and better studies. Fourth, as I noted in my comment elsewhere on this page, there is a document from Dr. Cahill dated as early as Jan 9, 2015, so it appears that he was involved at least that early. Remember, he met with the developers in the planning stages, as the developers repeatedly emphasized. (Note that my numbers don’t correspond to yours).
Roberta, first, I understand your skepticism about families and children based on the marketing materials. I personally found those marketing materials misleading and inconsistent with common sense parenting.
Second, do you believe that you were not approaching the issue “from a reasoned and reasonable and balanced perspective . . . and listening rather than lecturing” when you put forward your thoughts about compliance using a high bar level of noticing in order to achieve informed consent? I agree with you that the reasoned, reasonable and balanced way forward that you described in our conversation did not get into the Development Agreement, but that doesn’t in any way compromise the collaborativeness of the approach you took, nor does it change the comparison to Mike’s confrontational approach.
Third, as I noted a few minutes ago, thank you for pointing me to that specific information. We are both in agreement that the tests Dr Cahill suggested were indeed conducted. When was the supplemental request for additional testing submitted by Dr. Cahill?
Fourth, we are in agreement, and I copied and pasted that passage of the FEIR to eliminate any confusion over dates. Thank you again for helping me increase my knowledge.
Matt, who doesn’t want to be told that they are “approaching the issue from a reasoned and reasonable and balanced perspective . . . and listening rather than lecturing”? Thank you for that – that’s very kind. I am indeed trying to do those things.
And as I explained in my comment below, I don’t think that the fuller study that Dr. Cahill called for was ever performed.
Oh we got trouble right here in Davis city,
With a capital T and that rhymes with P
and that stands for phools.
With apologies to Harold Hill and Meredith Wilson
Roberta, as we have peeled beck the onion it has become pretty clear (for me at least) that the second round of tests has indeed not been done.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Cahill was not more explicit in his Draft EIR comments that he was calling for the second round of tests, so that what he perceived as the shortcomings of the first (preliminary) tests could and should be remedied.
In effect he was too “polite” in his comments, which is an ironic outcome in a thread that started by calling for more politeness and collaborativeness in our political dialogue.
Would be nice, Mr Herringtongue if you could spell others’ surnames correctly… just a thot.
It is written, “… the truth is not in him…”… if the foo sh!ts…
There are people living next to freeways and train tracks and ports all over CA> I have never heard of anyone losing 5% of lung capacity per year anyway. Do you have any evidence?
You are off by a factor of more than 1300x. That’s assuming a child grows up there (8 year study). And the data applies to any site near a freeway, including most of Olive Drive and, of course, New Harmony.
Took me about two minutes on Google, Mike.
And your evidence for the “5% decrease in lung capacity for living there”? Have you been monitoring the air on the parcel? Have you compared mortality rates to other parcels in the area?
Or are you just blowing smoke, shall we say.
The real question is not only if, but what orifice the smoke was/is coming from…
I’m well acquainted with the friend that Jim is channeling when he writes these letters, and I know s/he is perfectly capable of writing letters and essays, so I’m not sure why Jim keeps doing this.
The premise seems to be that every essay needs to cover every aspect of a topic. That isn’t reasonable or effective. I know as a columnist that you are stretching the limits of the reader’s attention when you go much beyond 800 – 1000 words. You need to be succinct and provide support for your key points. It’s not a matter of fairness. A series of columns is more effective than one big attempt at covering everything, and that’s exactly what the Vanguard did.
See ya’ll later … Been fun but gotta make a living.
Reading Jim’s letter, David’s article, Roberta’s comment and the original OpEd, my first instinct was to put them into the context of a lesson I learned repeatedly during my campaign for a seat on the City Council . . . specifically, word limits are very constraining.
Jim’s friend’s concern about what was left out of the OpEd would carry a whole lot more weight (with me) if I knew that the Enterprise did not impose any limit on the length of the submission. In that case the omission would have been (A) a denial of the validity of the issue, (B) a conscious desire to channel the community conversation away from the issue, or (C) ignorance of the issue.
However, the Enterprise does impose word limits on the submissions they accept for publication, so the authors had to deal with weighing the trade-offs between what they included and what they didn’t include. Given the fact that Op is an abbreviation for Opinion, all I saw that omission as (when I read it for the first time) was that in the opinion of the authors, the air quality issue was more subjective, less objective, and more mitigatable than the other issues that they did actually include in their submission. Bottom-line, they faced (and subjectively dealt with) trade-offs.
I actually saw that submission as a whole lot less adversarial than a lot of the other parts of the collective/aggregate Measure A campaign activities.
I also believe that David overlooks word limits in his criticism of Jim’s letter to the editor.
With that said, it is ironic that Jim would take to task “adversarial democracy” since he very frequently has put in his two cents of dissent in the comments section of a wealth of Enterprise articles over the past three years. He was a constant critic of Robb Davis in the 2014 election. He regularly provides the rebuttal message whenever an article or letter supports “the other side” of whatever election issue he supports. He and Elaine Roberts Musser and Noreen Mazelis and Coleman Thomas Randall, Jr. have breathed life into the Enterprise Comments section.
I suspect that when David was writing today’s article it was hard for him to separate Jim’s prior Enterprise comments from today’s letter to the editor. Because of that suspicion on my part, Roberta’s comment about the use of the word “screed” rings true when applied to just Jim’s letter, but loses some of its power when the totality of Jim’s Enterprise contributions is considered.
With all the above ruminations shared, I will close with a brief reference to davisite4’s plea last week that we “take a break.” Why that is germane for me is that when the stakes are high (economically in the case of the Yes on Measure A side, and viscerally in the case of the No on Measure A side) then democracy becomes much more adversarial and much less collaborative than it is when there isn’t a winner takes all vote in process. When you have to choose between “yes” and “no” it doesn’t leave much room for collaboration.
“I believe that democracy is at its core the marketplace of ideas. Under this construct, the truth emerges from a competition of ideas in a free and transparent manner of public discourse.” David: you conflate democracy with capitalism which is confuses the difference between the two, self serving, and unhelpful. In true democracy, people talk to people to arrive at an evolving sense of the truth. People are respectful and want to be respectful to each other as well in order to make sure all participants continue to pursue the truth. In the conflated (and, in my opinion, phony) version of democracy you advocate for (winners/losers, power more important than truth), participants other than the winners lose their appetites for participation; they also feel shame since their participation actually promotes dishonesty and disrespect. Under “marketplace of ideas” and “competition”, ideas are lost and participants quit. Please stop using the phrase. It is violent and hostile to community. We can do better.
We do not have and never had consensus based decision making. The point of the constitution was to provide a defense against the tyranny of the majority. “Truth” is an elusive concept that really has no application to democracy as everybody will claim exclusive ownership of the “truth”. Just like “social justice” has no real meaning as there is not universal standard of justice. It sounds even more that “truth” is whatever you believe.
Rarely, with two committed parents, we actually have… but even then rarely… for a City of 68k, or a Nation of ~ 320 MM? (census data est.)?
As with most attempts to draw simple dichotomies—the distinction between communicative (or consensual) and adversarial democracy is an oversimplification. In fact, both forms co-exist. One is no more “true democracy” than the other. The former typically occurs within smaller groups, with shared goals and common interests. Small businesses or small towns may operate on a communicative or consensual model. It becomes more difficult as group size increases—except, on occasion, in instances where the community comes together with common goals, e.g., in times of crisis. Our state Legislature is a hybrid model, with issues initially discussed in committees where issues can, in theory, be discussed and consensus can be reached before voted on by the body as a whole.
Direct democracy—by initiative or referendum—would appear to be more communicative and less adversarial but it is the opposite. As Matt points out, this form of decision-making leaves no room for communication, compromise, or consensus. It’s an up or down vote.
(Side note: The Op, in OpEd does not stand for opinion, as Matt suggests. OpEd is short for opposite the editorial page, which is where contributions from outside sources were traditionally placed.)
Thanks for that side note clarification Eric. One of the fun things about the Vanguard is I learn new things here frequently. Looking at Wikipedia (not a definitive source admittedly), it appears that the expression both/and applies in this case.
I agree with Eric that it is easier to achieve consensus in a smaller venue however the system is designed to produce a decision whether or not there is widespread agreement. I will also note that positions that reflect widespread agreement may look very much like lack of choice to people with a different opinion.
Jim democracy has a number of different forms. Some forms provide better representation and more freedom for their citizens than others. To name just a few . . .
Athenian democracy
Authoritarian democracy
Classical democracy
Council democracy
Direct democracy
Electoral democracy
Industrial democracy
Jacksonian democracy
Liberal democracy
Non-partisan democracy
Parliamentary democracy
Popular democracy
Presidential democracy
Representative democracy
Soviet democracy
Totalitarian democracy
Westminster democracy
Workplace democracy
You appear to be saying that only one of these is a true democracy. Is that correct? If so, which one?
We don’t have a true democracy with Measure R because all those students who live on campus don’t get to vote. Nor do non-citizens who live in town.
I don’t agree with that assessment. Most people who live on campus are freshmen ad will live off-campus by their second year. There is a rotation of college students, those living on campus probably don’t have the experience in town yet to cast an informed vote while those who are graduating basically are voting on something they’ll never live in. I think it balances in the long run.
But their voting power is diluted. If students who live on campus were allowed to vote we might have a different outcome on Nishi. You believe 18 year olds aren’t informed enough to vote. So much for upholding the constitution.
You also think that someone who lives here for only a few years should not have their interests represented at the ballot box. This is such an interesting argument because it in effect argues against a class of people participating because they have interests that are different from another class of people. I wonder what kind of democracy you call that?
By all means, Misanthrope, let’s empower freshman students, living on campus, who have no intention of living in Davis after graduation, and will have no taxes levied on them while freshman, vote for multi-million dollar tax measures than have 20-30-40 year payoff timelines… great idea!
If UCD on-campus students vote in City elections, they get to vote the FULL ballot, not just selected items…