The Emeryville Face of Citizen Engagement and Activism: RULE Folds After 14 Years

 RULE Showed Us How It's Done

The Emeryville resident activist group known as RULE announced in a press release through its steering committee last week, that it is disbanding after 14 years, having run its course as well as having been sidelined as a result of the pandemic over the last two years.  The group, who’s name is an acronym for Residents United for a Livable Emeryville and who has been the focus of many Tattler stories over the years, was ambiguous in its reasons for folding now, stating only that it had reached a “natural stopping place”.  The press release singled out the local social justice activist group EBASE (East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy) for helping get RULE off the ground and thanking them, noting the remaining funds in its bank account ($1317) would be donated to EBASE.

Having the ear of the City Council, RULE contributed much to Emeryville, having endorsed every winning Council member over the years.  In fact, one of the the most extraordinary things RULE accomplished in its 14 years was its perfect record on selecting politicians and local electoral measures and ballot initiatives.  Every single RULE endorsement was victorious, including even every School Board candidate selectee; a remarkable consummation of its political clout and indicative of its Emeryville centrist values and political bonafides, made even more remarkable considering its inauspicious beginnings.

Some 50 dues paying members strong at its outset, RULE was forged in 2008 during a time of business and developer hegemony in Emeryville history when resident’s interests took a back seat to business interests at City Hall.  The City Council, stacked up five deep in order to help those seeking to make a profit in our town, were in the thrall of the business community.  The locus of the power resided in the long standing Councilwoman Nora Davis.  At her zenith at RULE’s inception, Ms Davis, was a stalwart and generous friend to developers and the powerful Emeryville Chamber of Commerce who ran City Hall out of its taxpayer funded headquarters on Harlan Street.  Together, they provided the leadership to build the town as the developers and business owners prescribed.  

RULE joined with EBASE to help give 
the City Council space to raise Emeryville's
minimum wage to the highest in the nation.

In this milieu and made up of only residents, RULE took on a plucky and adversarial role with enough audacity to imagine a more democratic city that would work for the residents.  The Tattler was there, ready to support RULE since its beginning.

With its outrageous pro-resident and left wing demands, like more locally serving retail as well as a place at the table for unions in construction and a higher minimum wage in Emeryville, RULE was mostly just ignored by the elite….at first.  But as successes came, derision came, followed by fighting and vilifying from the businesses community and their Council sycophants, and especially from former resident Rob Arias, who helped form a pro-business blog the E’Ville Eye meant to counter the Tattler and RULE.  Mr Arias, who has since moved on to Pleasant Hill in Contra Costa County, provided the pushback and as the powerful Chamber of Commerce foundered, he helped form a replacement business lobbying group known as Little City Emeryville. 

That group, undemocratic and secretive, also folded against mounting RULE successes.  Little City Emeryville and the E’Ville Eye ultimately served as an impotent foil to RULE and the Tattler.  Emeryville voters wanted none of what the business community was selling; Mr Arias and Little City Emeryville backed the loser in every Emeryville election before Rob finally packed it in and moved out to the suburbs.

RULE went to the residents to see what they wanted in a city-wide survey at its inception.  Now, having achieved most of its goals identified by that survey, the most influential resident interest group in the City’s history leaves the scene with much to be proud of.  Its work included installing a progressive vision and a progressive City Council to implement that vision in order to deliver among other things, a minimum wage high enough to keep full time workers out of poverty and real solutions to address the region-wide lack of affordable housing.  These progressive policies and more for which Emeryville is now known and emulated among California communities were brought to fruition in no small part by RULE.

In its swan song March 21st press release, RULE takes a bow for its impressive game changing list of accomplishments and they throw down a challenge to new residents who might take it all for granted.  Warning against a reinvigorated business community rising, RULE  reminds new residents as it exits the stage; ‘It’s only when residents get involved, raise their voices, organize, and go to the polls that positive change is possible’ .