Super Bowl Fever? That's One Thing, Democratic Party Politics Fever is Another

The Bay Area Hosting One of the Biggest Spectacles in American Culture

Moscone Center in San Francisco is the Center of the Action

Super Bowl LX is bringing tens of thousands of visitors to the region, filling San Francisco hotels and pushing tourism outward into nearby cities like Emeryville, where proximity to downtown San Francisco, Oakland, and the South Bay makes it a convenient landing spot for visitors priced out of the city.

For a few days, football will dominate the headlines.

A big distraction for Bay Area residents.

But the Super Bowl won’t be the most consequential gathering in the Bay Area this month.

That distinction belongs to the California Democratic Party’s 2026 State Convention at Moscone Center, where elected officials, party leaders, and delegates will gather to shape endorsements and strategy heading into the next election cycle.

The convention’s official theme is “Together, we win.”
But behind the slogan lies a deeper conflict that has been building for nearly a decade inside California Democratic politics: a struggle between the party’s corporate-aligned centrist leadership and a growing populist-progressive wing increasingly skeptical that establishment Democrats can deliver on affordability, housing, and economic inequality.

The same political divide shaping the CADEM convention can be seen in miniature at Emeryville City Hall - in council proceedings, censure politics, and the isolation of a democratic-socialist voice on the council. The dynamic mirrors the leadership culture of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, chaired by Igor Tregub, where party discipline and coalition management often take precedence over ideological debate.

The question facing Democrats at this year's convention - locally and statewide: when progressives challenge the establishment, does the party include them or discipline them?

That question won’t draw the attention of the Super Bowl but in Emeryville, that question has already been answered as its lone Democratic Socialist faces a shadow censure and the Wrath of Kaur.

The story is HERE: When Procedure Becomes Punishment: The East Bay’s Censure Politics—and the National Democratic Crack-Up

Here's the State Democratic Party Candidate Endorsement Guide:

https://cadem.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2026_Statewide_Candidate_Endorsement_Guide.pdf

One Party Rule Skews Politics in the Bay Area: Progressives Face Erasure

 When Procedure Becomes Punishment: The East Bay’s Censure Politics and the National Democratic Crack-Up

In December, 2024 the Emeryville city council majority took a controversial and precedent setting move to censure and sanction their colleague Kalimah Priforce for being late on his FPPC filings, a harsh sentence considering many council members over the years have run afoul of the FPPC schedule and that the accusers themselves were also revealed to be late on their own FPPC filings.  Nonetheless, Mr Priforce was released from his censure and sanction in January as per City Hall rules.  But his colleagues on the council are still not satisfied.  So they have now moved to block the Councilman from all boards and committees as well as all regional boards and committees, the same punishment as when they placed him under official sanction but this time without the benefit of a legal vote to sanction.  Mr Priforce, the only progressive on the council and unsurprisingly also the most popular council member, is under permanent censure and sanction, put there by his conservative colleagues without transparency and accountability.  They have done so because of Mr Priforce’s progressive populist politics and because they can.  

It is no coincidence that Emeryville’s Council member Priforce, a Democratic Socialist, is shunned by the centrist majority establishment at the Democratic Party of Alameda County and in the region.  Indeed, politics outside Emeryville’s borders is controlling the anti-Priforce narrative and dictating a project of action against our Council member.  To understand why the politics in Emeryville is so mean and skewed against the popular Kalimah Priforce, one needs to look outside our little town.  

Mayor Kaur's latest silencing of Mr Priforce for asking questions “at the wrong time”  (covered by the Tattler)  is part of this new censure and sanction culture among the Corporate Democrat majority against a progressive Democrat that’s happening now around the whole Bay Area.

News Analysis

If you want to understand a political era, don’t start with campaign slogans. Start with process: who gets heard, who gets disciplined, and who gets told—explicitly or implicitly—that their job is to sit down and comply.

In Emeryville, Council member Kalimah Priforce’s formal censure brought by his four Council colleagues in 2024 may have ended on paper, but close observers realize it persists in practice—as a “shadow censure,” an unofficial regime where the status quo remains: the same narrowing of debate, the same chilling of oversight, and the same public scolding deployed as a governing style.  The four couldn’t defeat him at the polls (he won with the highest vote percentage among all five Council members), so this is how they take him down.

Igor Tregub
Chair of the Alameda County Democratic Party
He signed an anti-ceasefire in Gaza letter for the 
right wing Jewish Community Relations Council.

The city’s newest mayor, Sukhdeep Kaur, has become a focal point of that critique after a council meeting exchange in which Priforce sought to ask questions of staff during deliberations—a routine practice in many cities, and historically in Emeryville. Instead, he was admonished from the dais. Residents in the room pushed back, arguing the rebuke was out of line and selective. The episode is now preserved in the meeting record.

The immediate question is simple: Why is a Council member being disciplined for doing the job voters elected them to do—asking questions, interrogating assumptions, working in such a manner as to empower citizens and demanding clarity?

The larger question is bigger: Is Emeryville becoming a local case study in how centrist Democratic majorities use ‘decorum' and ‘censure’ to suppress democratic-socialist dissent—rather than defeat it on policy?

And if that sounds dramatic, look north to Richmond—where this same political epistemology is being tested, argued over, and normalized.

From ‘Accountability’ to Containment

Kalimah Priforce
 Emeryville City Council Member
A progressive Democrat, he voted for a ceasefire
in Gaza.  He's got a target on his back, put there
by establishment Democrats.  Priforce is the 
most popular council member in Emeryville.

Censure is often described as a tool of accountability. But in practice, it can function as something else: a vote of institutional ostracism by a domineering majority—a formal declaration that a colleague is outside the circle of legitimate participation.

That was the vibe in Emeryville when the Council majority voted to censure Mr  Priforce after a heated, highly attended meeting that local outlets framed as political theater and civic dysfunction.   East Bay Insider, a center right political Substack platform, described the special meeting as raucous and reported Mr Priforce argued the council provided no evidence of wrongdoing.

The Emeryville Tattler went further, portraying the episode as political punishment made possible by a structural flaw: Emeryville’s ethics enforcement is largely internal—City Council judging City Council—without an independent ethics commission to create a firewall between politics and discipline.

That structural critique matters because it points to the heart of the “shadow censure” argument: when a body can discipline a member without meaningful independent review, “ethics” can become a weapon—especially when power is held by a stable establishment majority and the target is a lone progressive dissenter.

Even critics of Priforce should be able to recognize the danger. If a council can define ‘decorum’ as ‘don’t embarrass the majority’, then democracy becomes stage-managed compliance.

Emeryville’s Long Political Backstory: Redevelopment, Power, and Whom City Hall Serves

This fight didn’t begin with one personality clash or one mayoral gavel.

Emeryville’s modern identity has been shaped by redevelopment-era politics: aggressive commercial transformation, land deals ostensibly in the public interest and a model of governance that often treated this model of growth as an unquestioned public good.

The City’s own redevelopment history notes that Emeryville’s redevelopment plans date back decades (including a 1976 plan and the Shellmound Park redevelopment plan adopted in 1987).  That redevelopment focus included major projects like Bay Street, built on land tied to heavy industrial contamination and the layered history of the Shellmound area.

Sukhdeep Kaur
Emeryville Mayor
She's leading a charge in Emeryville to
erase the progressive Democrat,
Council member Kalimah Priforce.

UC Berkeley alumni and documentary filmmaker Andrés Cediel documented the Shellmound controversy directly in a 2005 documentary examining the Native American cultural archeology that was destroyed and buried under Bay Street development.  KQED too has reported on how the Bay Area shellmounds—central to Ohlone life and burial practices—were erased through rapacious development across the region.

That history matters because Emeryville’s political center of gravity has long tilted toward pro-development governance skewed towards connected developers—a tendency documented by academic and policy observers who describe how redevelopment tools (subsidies, tax incentives, land assembly) were deployed to remake the city’s economy.  A landmark labor-oriented report by EBASE, a locally based social justice organization, on Emeryville redevelopment likewise treated the city’s boom as a political-economic project with winners and losers—not simply ‘growth’.

So when residents today watch City Hall clamp down on the council member who’s politics are most associated with anti-corporate populism—tenant protections, accountability rhetoric, and ‘people first’, especially working people—they read it not as a random interpersonal conflict, but as continuity: a city political machine defending its equilibrium.

Richmond’s Mirror: Censure Politics Goes Regional

In January 2026, the City of Richmond became the regional mirror of this new politics.

A proposed Richmond resolution formally censuring Mayor Eduardo Martinez described alleged conduct in sweeping moral and civic terms and sought to censure and bind the mayor to trainings and structured engagement.  Mr Martinez had forwarded an internet post that was construed as anti-semitic, a transgression he said he had done inadvertently and without malice and for which he apologized publicly.   The press covered competing narratives: harm and accountability on one side, and claims of political targeting and silencing on the other.

ABC channel 7 quoted Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) leadership calling for accountability, while also quoting Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) arguing Mayor Martinez was being targeted because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy and that the response should not be “isolation or silencing”.

KQED reported Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller of Temple Beth Hillel describing the posts as “shocking” and outlining fear within a small community, while also emphasizing the value of conversation and learning over immediate resignation demands.

Local News Matters later reported that the council did not ultimately adopt the censure resolution that night, instead advancing a separate “atonement plan” proposed by Martinez—while the censure item was pushed to a future meeting amid procedural wrangling about agenda order and time.

This is the pattern: whether in Emeryville, Richmond or elsewhere in the Bay Area; censure fights become proxy wars over legitimacy—who gets to speak, what counts as acceptable politics, and whether the institution will rehabilitate dissent or punish it.

‘Shadow Censure’ as Governing Style

In Emeryville, the claim now is that formal censure has given way to something quieter but arguably more corrosive: procedural discipline as a daily operating system.

What does that look like?

-Questions treated as disruption.

-Rules interpreted narrowly only when one member presses too hard.

-Public reprimands that signal to staff and colleagues: don’t engage the dissenter.

-A majority bloc that governs by denying oxygen rather than winning debate.

When ‘process’ becomes punishment, the public loses twice: once because oversight is weakened, and again because the whole council learns to fear conflict more than it fears being wrong.

Why This Is Happening Now: The National Rise of Populist Socialists—and Establishment Democratic Failure on Affordability

To understand why these fights are intensifying, zoom out.

Across the U.S., democratic-socialist and populist-left politics have grown—not because of a TikTok algorithm, but because material conditions are crushing people, and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party has offered promises that don’t cash out in daily life.

Start with housing:

-Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that renter cost burdens have hit record highs, with tens of millions of households paying unaffordable shares of income.

-HUD reported more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, the highest on record, and an 18% increase from 2023.

-California’s affordability crisis remains structurally entrenched, as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office continues to track persistent housing-cost pressures.

-Multiple sources show a majority of California renters are cost-burdened (paying >30% of income toward housing), which turns “affordability” from a talking point into a lived emergency.

So when establishment Democrats run on affordability and inclusion while housing costs, homelessness, and rent burdens continue climbing, many voters conclude: the establishment is performing progressivism, not delivering it.

That’s the fuel.

Now add the organizational fact:

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has expanded dramatically since 2016—DSA’s own “State of DSA” notes that the organization is more than ten times larger than a decade ago, with the overwhelming majority of members joining after 2016.  It’s no coincidence that our own Kalimah Priforce, a DSA member, is the most popular politician in Emeryville.

This growth is not an abstraction. It translates into local races, local canvasses, and local governing fights. And it triggers establishment backlash—often framed as “responsible governance,” but experienced by insurgents as containment.

International media coverage of insurgent socialist campaigns (including New York’s) has highlighted both the appeal—rent freezes, transit affordability, public options—and the counterattack: establishment officials and aligned donors treating left candidates as existential threats rather than internal debate partners.

In other words: the ‘anti–Zohran Mamdani’ sentiment is not really about one person.  It is about a broader insurgency that threatens the donor-mediated equilibrium of the Democratic Party.

The East Bay Version of a National Story

What makes Emeryville and Richmond important is not that they are famous. It’s that they are legible.

They show how a centrist establishment Democratic majority manages a left insurgent when it cannot easily remove them: not by debating them, but by disciplining them.  Not by winning policy, but by controlling procedure.

And if that is what is happening—if Emeryville City Council rules are being applied selectively, if deliberation is being narrowed, if censure logic is lingering as ‘shadow censure’—then Emeryville isn’t just having a personality conflict:  it’s rehearsing a regional and national fight inside a five-seat chamber.

The question for residents, then, is not whether they like any particular Council member.  The question is whether they want a city government where asking hard questions is treated as misconduct.  Because if procedure becomes punishment, the next target won’t be a democratic socialist.  It will be the general public—finding out, too late, that the Council no longer debates anything that matters.

Mayor Kaur Goes on Attack Against Councilman Priforce

Mayor Kaur Attacks Council Member Priforce From the Dais

Flashing Anger and Denunciations Directed at Priforce for His Questions

Citizens' Access to Their Government Ratcheted Down to Get Priforce

News Analysis

Kalimah Priforce, being the only progressive on the five member Emeryville City Council, gets a lot of knocks and worse from his colleagues on the council but few can be seen as so petty in its histrionics as was delivered against him by Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur on Tuesday.  Mayor Kaur was extremely angry that Councilman Priforce asked a question of a staff member before he was ready to cast his vote on an action item before the Council.  Where normal people saw a Council member doing his duty, asking a question before a vote, Mayor Kaur saw chaos or perhaps nefarious intent. Surprisingly, Council members asking questions about details of an impending vote is over the top in its audaciousness according to Mayor Kaur.

Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur
Angry.
A conservative, by her vote,
she is in favor of a ceasefire
in Ukraine but NOT Gaza.

Readers may have trouble understanding what transpired at the council chambers Tuesday because how Ms Kaur’s tirade against Mr Priforce seemed so unbelievable.  Why was she so angry?  Surely there must be some back story, readers are likely to think.  Surely the politics at the Emeryville City Council chambers have not gotten so dysfunctional that a Council member can’t ask a question before a vote.  But to those readers who are having trouble, understand that there is no back story other than a moral panic if not pure hatred by the four members against the one.  That is what's driving the current dysfunction in our Emeryville government.

The problem as stated by Mayor Kaur is meeting protocol.  Mr Priforce asked to ask a question during the “deliberation period”, and that is not permitted said our Mayor.  Ms Kaur quoted from Robert’s Rules of Order: deliberation periods are not a time of asking questions, Ms Kaur says Robert’s Rules says.  Her anger came from Mr Priforce violating her interpretation of Robert’s Rules.  However what Ms Kaur, being a new member and a relatively new Emeryville resident, doesn’t realize is our 40 year precedent of letting citizens address the Council and letting the Council ask questions of the staff (or the presenter at the meeting) about things related to citizen comments.

The way council meetings are run in Emeryville with regard to action items or public hearings is as follows (approved by California’s Brown Act):

1)  A presenter makes a presentation for a proposed new thing for the Council to vote on.

2)  The Council asks ‘clarifying’ questions of the presenter.

3)  The citizens are heard.

4)  The Council deliberates (including asking questions about citizens’ points made during public comment).

5)  The Council then votes.

It has been set up this way for decades because the City of Emeryville has been sensitive about not just allowing citizens to speak, but also about the notion that a citizen could conceivably bring up a good idea that a Council member might want to explore.  That might require additional questions by Council members after the public had their three minutes to speak before a vote could be taken.  

Council member Kalimah Priforce
The object of Mayor Kaur's disdain.
A progressive, he is in favor of a
ceasefire in Ukraine AND Gaza. 
A 'peacenik'.

Democracy Takes a Backseat in Mayor Kaur's Emeryville

Mayor Kaur has a problem with the way Emeryville has conducted meetings for at least 40 years.  She sees a new way, a Robert’s Rules way, that means the citizens’ comments will have no effect on the Council member’s decisions.  Citizens are allowed to speak as the law dictates, but they don’t have the power to change a Council member’s mind in Mayor Kaur's view.  In a word, Ms Kaur will let citizens make comments as before but she is putting forward a new way that means public  comments are free floating and not connected to actual public policy.  It's an autocratic way of looking at the role of government. 

What exactly is Mayor Kaur’s point (never mind her anger)?  She wouldn’t say on Tuesday and we doubt she will ever say because the truth is probably too embarrassing.  There is nothing for the people to gain by the Mayor's new way of running our meetings.  In fact there is only downside for the people.  It makes public comment unnecessary.  It locks the public out of the deliberation.  The up side is for the four conservative Council members.  They don't have to listen to the public and they can excoriate and berate the progressive Council member Kalimah Priforce for listening to the citizens as the Mayor did Tuesday.

For his part, Mr Priforce seems to be just continuing on as Council members have done for the last 40 years, as if this new undemocratic polity at the council chambers angrily stated by Ms Kaur is not the actual new paradigm.  

The law, interestingly, is rather mute on this subject.  Citizens have a legal right to be heard (the Brown Act guarantees that).  But the Council doesn’t have to listen to them.  They can put in their ear buds and zone out when the citizens are addressing the Council if they want (as Council member Courtney Welch frequently does).  Notably, Mayor Kaur’s reading of Robert’s Rules of Order do not carry the force of law here.   However the Brown Act IS law in California and any fair reading of that suggests that citizens’ rights to speak can be extended to where they could conceivably have an effect on government decisions. 

 The democratically concocted Brown Act does posit in its highfalutin preamble the following poetic prose:

The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. 

Notwithstanding that, it is seen as problematic that Emeryville’s mayor, an attorney, cannot seem to wrap her head around this basic concept of citizen empowerment and engagement (that is also law).  Either that or she sees tamping down citizen engagement as a smaller price to pay in order to do the essential work of  public admonishment of Council member Priforce.

The people of Emeryville have a right to expect a functioning government without petty squabbles among the Council members erupting and subverting their interests as does this new set of rules issued by decree from the mayor.

How long before one of the four conservative Council members violates the mayor’s new rules?  We know they have all been ‘violating’ it for years before Tuesday night, including Council member Kaur herself.  Will Ms Kaur be a fair and faithful arbiter of her new rules, assuring all Council members be equally constrained by her loudly slammed gavel?  We will see and the Tattler will report.

Mayor Kaur was contacted for comment for this story but she did not return calls.

Not that it matters much to his colleagues on the Council but Council member Priforce is the most popular Council member in Emeryville with the people, having won his election with 23.9% of the vote.  Every other Council member won with a lower percentage.  Interestingly, Ms Kaur won her election (after having been appointed by former City Council member John Bauters) with 20.7% of the vote.  The people's choice is Kalimah Priforce.  In a better Emeryville, our conservative Council member majority would acknowledge this basic if difficult for them fact.

Below: The Mayor melts down at 53:00 - 53:51

Tokyo Central Market Opens to crowd of 4000

A year after first estimates, Tokyo Central Market at the Bay Street Mall opened this morning, to a large crowd hoping to get in on opening day to do their food shopping.  Emeryville police estimated the crowd to be 4000 people at its peak.  Tokyo Central, a southern California based chain of 11 grocery stores with a Japanese twist, will compete against long established Berkeley Bowl, an independent grocer also with a Japanese twist.  Tokyo Central benefits by being the new Japanese grocer despite its generally higher prices than Berkeley Bowl.  

Higher prices didn’t seem to dampen interest though as shoppers waited in line for over an hour, a prospect an Emeryville police employee watching over the crowd characterized as ‘kind of crazy’.

At its peak, 4000 people queued up to shop.

Because of the fire marshal, wait times to get in were
in excess of one hour.

Oranges were in high demand.

500 Drawn to ICE protest at Huchiun Park, Target & Home Depot

Breaking News

Despite a drenching rainstorm, almost 500 people gathered in Emeryville’s Huchiun Park and marched to Emeryville’s Target store and Home Depot to protest corporate connection to ICE and Donald Trump tonight.  The event lasted about three hours and was peaceful.  

The City of Emeryville received two days warning about the event hosted by EBASE and other local social justice organizations and they were told more than 100 people would likely be in the park but the City refused to provide toilet paper for the park bathroom which stays open until 8:00 PM.  The police were called when the crowd swelled and people started getting desperate, could an officer bring some toilet paper?  But EPD said NO and they added that is the job of the Public Works Department. 

Several shoppers at the stores put down their merchandise and joined the protest.  The crowd loudly marched through the Target store and the Home Depot and dispersed peacefully by about 9:00 PM.

ICE Protest in Emeryville Today

Scenes from a peaceful Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest at Frontage Road and Powell Street today.  About 200 protesters assembled and presented a petition to the Emeryville Hilton Hotel asking that the hotel not accept ICE personnel as guests.  The Manager of the hotel accepted the petition and the throng ultimately dispersed.  EPD observed from afar and did not interact.

Protesters signed the petition for the Hilton Hotel

The protesters made their thoughts known by 
sidewalk communication.

Who Owns Bay Street and the Sidewalks? City Can't or Won't Say Definitively

 Once Again, Ownership of  Bay Street is in Question:

Do We Have to Stop at the Stop Signs at Bay Street? Maybe Not  

The City of Emeryville Says Emphatically We Own the Street AND We Don't Own the Street

A Checkered History Reveals Claims of Ownership of the Street Has Gone Back and Forth Between Public and Private

News Analysis

A vehicle that runs a stop sign or who speeds on Emeryville’s Bay Street is subject to a citation under California’s vehicle code, right?  Maybe not as it turns out.  Inexplicably, 26 years after its construction, the people of Emeryville still do not know who owns Bay Street and its sidewalk and the City of Emeryville can’t decide about that for sure.  

Bay Street
Does this stop sign have the force of law? 
Or is it like one of those shopping mall parking lot stop signs?
The City of Emeryville says YES and NO to both questions.

It seems like it should be a very basic question- does the City of Emeryville own a street or does it not?  But if you ask the City Attorney and the Chief of Police, both experts in a position to know, you’ll get contradictory answers.  Consequential public policy and serious legal effect flows from the real answer to this question.  Policy and legal questions vex, such as: Does the public have to pay citations issued for parking violations on the street?  What about violations of the California Vehicle Code?  Are constitutional rights like free assembly and the right to protest on the street and sidewalks applicable?  Does the Bay Street Mall corporation have a right to close or partially close the street for vehicular traffic at times of their choosing without permission from the city?  Can citizens not violating the law be trespassed from the street or the sidewalk?  These questions cannot be definitively answered by the City of Emeryville.

Unresolved Agreement Over Ownership

In an email to the Tattler, City Attorney John Kennedy was unequivocal: Bay Street and its sidewalks are private property.  They are owned by CenterCal Properties LLC (The Bay Street Mall) , a southern California corporation, and the public right to use the street and sidewalk are conditional he says.  Mr Kennedy says the owner retains the right to trespass from the street or sidewalks, any member of the public any time, even if they are not breaking the law.  Emeryville's Chief of Police, Jeff Jennings, is equally unequivocal: The street and its sidewalks are public property he says and citizens may use them the same as any other Emeryville City owned streets and sidewalks.  People may not be trespassed for any reason but they are subject to arrest if they break the law like anywhere else in the public commons, he says.

City Attorney John Kennedy
Bay Street is private.  Sidewalks too.
The stop signs are a recommendation.
Protesters can be trespassed.

Case for Public Ownership

The street was built as part of the Bay Street Mall project in 1999.  Over the years, events have hinted that the street and the sidewalks are indeed public.  Vehicle parking costs money at Bay Street and parking meter violation income goes to the City of Emeryville.  Citizens have received citations for violations of the California Vehicle Code by EPD on the street, something not possible in the absence of a special agreement between the City and the owner (which there is not).  With approval from the corporate owner, private venders have set up carts on street parallel parking spots, but the police have closed down the carts for lack of a City of Emeryville encroachment permit.  These venders paid rent to the Bay Street Mall.  The mall police (private security guards), regularly insist that double parkers leave upon threat of being issued a “ticket” but these have been revealed to be a request for renumeration to a private company in Contra Cost County contracted with CenterCal Properties.  These requests are issued to cars “illegally” parked by way of an official looking citation with a return envelope (postal stamp required).

Case for Private Ownership

The other side of the argument is provided by Emeryville’s City Attorney who insists the Mall corporation owns everything.  A simple ‘Google’ search indicates Mr Kennedy could be right.  If Mr Kennedy is correct though, the City of Emeryville is exposed to all manner of civil litigation for the litany of past and present actions based on City ownership of the street it should be noted.  

Disagreement Between Two City Attorneys

So while the current city attorney is adamant that Bay Street is not public property, the former City Attorney for the City of Emeryville, Michael Guina ruled that the street is indeed owned by the city.  Mr Guina's public pronouncements about Bay Street set off a row between the city and the mall owner in 2016.  The dust up began after the mall, claiming they owned the street, started putting up signs claiming they could tow cars who's owners aren't shopping at the mall.  The City of Emeryville moved to protect its claim on Bay Street and Madison Marquette (the former corporate owner of the mall) finally backed down.

Chief of Police Jeff Jennings
Bay Street is public and so are the sidewalks.
The stop signs carry the force of law.
Protesters cannot be trespassed.

But that was 2016.  Now the City of Emeryville is wavering on its ownership claims.  You would have to go back to 2000 to see a different view from the City regarding Bay Street. 

Former Chief of Police Had a Different Take

Shortly after the mall’s completion in 2000, then Emeryville Chief of Police, Ken James, publicly announced the commons at the Bay Street Mall were a hybrid.  Chief James said the City of Emeryville owns the street outright but the sidewalks were owned by the mall owner (then Madison Marquette, a developer and Real Estate Investment Trust corporation headquartered in Washington DC).  At the time, Chief James indicated citizens could be trespassed carte blanch from the sidewalks by the corporation.  That statement does not account for the US Supreme Court’s Pruneyard decision that ruled the common areas of shopping malls as traditional public forums, thereby guaranteeing the public’s right to be there however.

Planning Department Said Bay Street is Public 

In 1999, the City of Emeryville Planning Department told the City Council that the proposed Bay Street would be public and that was used as a selling point to Emeryville residents for buy-in as the developer sought approval of the project.  It was presented that the corporation would pay for street maintenance.    

Supreme Court Says Bay Street is a "Public Forum" Regardless of Ownership

Users of the Bay Street Mall should be advised that these two contradictory statements from the City of Emeryville are independent of constitutional rights recognized at common areas of private shopping malls.  The PruneYard decision (PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74) is a landmark 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case that affirmed the right of states to provide their citizens with broader free speech protections than those guaranteed by the federal Constitution.   In California, the state's highest court ruled that the California Constitution protected such speech specifically in shopping malls, overturning a previous precedent.

In essence, the Pruneyard decision allows states to treat large shopping centers as public forums for speech because by 1980, the Supreme Court had realized that Americans use shopping malls as they did previously the downtown square, the traditional public forum.  Emeryville, lacking a central business district (downtown) lacks a traditional public forum and Bay Street and its sidewalks have served this function.  The lack of a downtown and traditional public forum place speaks to Emeryville’s failure to imagine the value of a democratic commons.

The City may not ever settle this issue, seeing advantage to have the public think the street is public AND private.  With a government short on accountability, there is utility is not revealing the actual facts about the public commons.

Bay Street Mall owners first test Emeryville's claim of ownership (in 2014)  HERE

The 2016 showdown between the former city attorney and the Bay Street corporation HERE

Mall owner once again pushes back against City after the 2016 drama is 'resolved'  HERE

City Manager & City Attorney Remove Grassroots Community Free Food Table Pantry

 Mean Spirited City:

Food Insecure Community Members Left Out 

in the Cold by City

Popular Free Food Table Taken Down Because of 'Code Violation'

Breaking News

Emeryville's food insecure lost another resource today, as city public works crews removed a table that has been offering free, non-perishable food to the community, on orders of Emeryville City Attorney John Kennedy and City Manager LaTanya Bellow. 

The Tattler Free Food Table on its first day.

According to a written notice signed by Mr Kennedy, the table was in violation of  municipal code section 7-2.02 (a).

The table was set out in November, as a community response both to the federal government 'shutdown' crisis, which threatened SNAP, formerly USDA food stamps, and the extended relocation of E.C.A.P., a critical local food bank distribution point, to West Oakland.

Conceived, constructed and initiated by the Tattler's Editor,  Brian Donahue, the table quickly became a node of community activity. Local neighbors continuously replenished what was made available and those in need could take what they wished with dignity.  

The table was located at the Horton and Sherwin street intersection near the Emeryville Artists' Cooperative driveway.

The Food Table on Monday.

The food table has helped dozens since its inception, with food being delivered and taken daily. Not meant to supply every need, it served as an important supplement or emergency source of sustenance. The local community's generosity and provision of nutritionally dense food was impressive.

It is unclear how disruptive the table's removal will prove to those who have come to rely on it. 

While ECAP recently returned to its longtime home on San Pablo Avenue, long lines and limited hours make it inconvenient to access for some, such as those in low-paid jobs with inflexible hours. 

Renewed assault on programs at the federal level such as SNAP and Medicaid could drive more people into food insecurity.  Some users of the food table expressed to the Tattler their dismay at the prospect of its closing.  

The Tattler will continue following this story and will provide an update as more facts become known.

City Manager LaTanya Bellow has so far declined to respond by press time, to multiple attempts to reach her via telephone and email.

The initial story on the table is HERE.

The Department of Public Works removed the table today at 8:30 AM.
It is unknown what will become of the table or the food that was on it when it was taken.

Non-Profit 'Operation Dignity' Says Emeryville Police Removed a Homeless Man, Police Deny It

 Somebody is Lying:

Police Department Says They Didn't Remove a Homeless Man

Emeryville Non-Profit Contractor Says They Did

Police Sergeant Says She Can't Remember 

Planet Fitness Says They're a Judgement Free Zone*

*Except For Homeless People

News Analysis

Regardless of strongly asserted public denials over the years, the police have been and continue to roust homeless people camped on public property in Emeryville before and after a 2024 US Supreme Court decision legalizing it.  The proof recently came as a result of a Tattler public records request that denied any records about a specific man formerly camped alongside 45th Street near San Pablo Avenue who has since been removed by the police against a countermanding statement about it from the local homeless shelter non-profit organization that contracts with the City of Emeryville.  

Oakland based emergency shelter, Operation Dignity, says Emeryville police, operating at the behest of Planet Fitness Inc, forced the man who had been camped nearby, to leave Emeryville against his will.  The police are denying a public record exists that would document the removal.  It is a crime for a municipality to deny public records requested via the California Public Records Act and a public agency that played a part in a removal of a camped individual would be required to document it.

Inside Emeryville's New Planet Fitness
They call the police on homeless people camped 
nearby on public property: That's a judgement.

 

In an email to the Tattler, Operation Dignity Executive Director Tim Evans says the Emeryville Police Department indicated that the man, who had been camping on public property alongside 45th Street near the Planet Fitness exercise facility location for months, would no longer be allowed there at the insistance of that corporation.  Mr Evans stated that Planet Fitness was readying a grand opening for their new Emeryville facility and that was the reason for their call made to the police.  Operation Dignity did not say whether they were able to provide a bed for the man but shelters across the Bay Area have indicated there are not enough beds on any given night and women with children usually get preference.    

In 2024, the Supreme Court found that municipalities may henceforth remove or arrest people caught sleeping on public property even if no shelter beds are available.  However Emeryville has not changed its municipal code or its stated intension to allow for the police to arrest or remove such people that way.

You belong at Planet Fitness Emeryville!*
*Unless you're homeless
Then we call the police on you.

In an email to the Tattler, Operation Dignity Director Evans, stated their organization had reached out to the man in question several times as a result of EPD requests and “The individual expressed hesitancy about engaging in services and declined ongoing assistance at that time”.  Evans added, “Unfortunately, due to a new business moving into that location, he could not continue camping there.”

A manager at the Planet Fitness has denied anyone from their facility made the call to the police.  

The Tattler began its investigation after EPD Sergeant Michelle Shepard said she had no recollection of a man camped at that location over the last many months.  Because we had direct knowledge of the man in question and we were aware of the Planet Fitness opening, we initiated a public records request for all documents regarding a man camped at the 45th Street location from ‘November 27th to today’ (the time the man would have been forced out).  The City responded with a blanket “no disclosable documents” statement.  The curious lack of memory of Sergeant Shepard also prompted us to inquire about the homeless man from a different police department employee who stated off the record, “Of course we noticed him”.  Observation and situational awareness is a central job description of police work.

After the man was removed from public property, the $9 billion corporate giant hosted their grand opening at the facility located at 45th Street and San Pablo Avenue.

EPD Sergeant Michelle Sheperd
She is paid to be observant but
she didn't notice a man camped in
plain sight for four months on 45th Street.

 

So the story stops at an intriguing impasse: the police department and Planet Fitness representatives both deny they interacted in any way with the man in question but the non-profit homeless advocacy organization Operation Dignity, who are contracted by the City of Emeryville, says both did interact with the man. The Emeryville police have denied rousting homeless people for years regardless of any Supreme Court ruling but the Tattler has found evidence they lied about past rousting and encampment clearances.  People who have noticed that Oakland and Berkeley both have a lot of encampments but Emeryville has had almost zero have been left wondering against loud proclamations from both the police and the City Council saying rousting just doesn’t happen in Emeryville.  The police, if they played a part in rousting this 45th Street man in addition to violating the California Public Records Act, will be revealed to have violated their own stated policies.

Emeryville has an official 'no clearances' policy as far as homeless encampments go.  The policy has always been to direct campers to shelters if beds are available and if the person is willing to go.  After it became legal for cities to clear out encampments regardless of shelter bed availability as was made clear by the Court's decision in 2024, the City of Emeryville never changed its policy.  Then and now, City Hall has always loudly and proudly taken the humane and compassionate way dealing with encampments.  Any clearances the City has done over the years have been despite the official policy.     

Three of the four claims presented in this story appear to be dubious and a skeptic would note that a police sergeant, who's job it is to be observant, would fail to notice a man camped in plain sight for more than four months in a town as small as Emeryville.  Further, said skeptic would note that a profit seeking corporation has an interest in lying to protect their PR and their shareholders while the police department has an existential interest in lying, to protect their image in the eyes of the public.  An emergency shelter non-profit has no discernible interest in lying about their bailiwick.

The law allowing cities to arrest people for public camping stems from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which ruled that cities can enforce bans on sleeping and camping in public spaces without violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, even if no shelter beds are available.

The public has a right to know how the least fortunate in our community are treated by government but unfortunately, governments have been known to lie.  Distressingly, any mistreatment is done in our name.  

The Tattler reached out to former mayor David Mourra, current mayor Sukhdeep Kaur and City Manager La Tanya Bellow about this story but none returned our inquiries.