My Own Private California
Every sunset in California is beautiful.
My job has let me see sunsets in almost every part of the state – from the pinks and purples of southern California to the warm oranges of Central Valley to the blues and grays that dominate the Lost Coast. I understand how those who are new to California see this land and its sunsets and fall in love. And alongside every person who wishes to love California as she is, there are those who wish to conquer and reshape her to their will.
*
I heard Ta-Nehisi Coates speak in Oakland last month. It was a packed audience at a church neighboring a car rental agency and a Whole Foods. My friend wanted to get as close as possible to receive the full ministry of Ta-Nehisi; I wanted to hide in the back so I could cry privately. “Thugs don’t cry in public, Nadia,” I told her. She was right - the intimacy that came with the physical proximity was a gift.
Ta-Nehisi spoke about Palestine, of land, love and loss, and our moral responsibility. In the weeks after, I kept coming back to his point about how he saw the world through the Black liberation politics he was raised in. I dug through the memories deep in my mind, my journals, and my photos from childhood:
My grandfather helping with my history homework and teaching me how we as Indians came into formation before and after British colonialism.
My grandmother cooking another meal in her tiny kitchen and warning me to be good so that my bad deeds don’t catch up to me in this lifetime or the next one.
My best friend’s grandmother finally worn down by us bugging her about Partition and explaining how it wasn’t just a separation of land between India and Pakistan but a violent cleaving of families and communities.
I guess I come from a political tradition too, one that makes Ta-Nehisi’s memories feel so familiar.
*
A core tenet of my political tradition is standing up for others. No one likes a bully. It doesn’t matter if you grow up with an anti-colonial perspective like I did or if you were picked on for being “weird” in school. Mainstream American culture is full of stories about the little guy beating the big one against all odds. These stories get Oscars, are lauded on morning TV shows, and are our own brand of folklore.
So last August, when the New York Times reported on a mysterious consortium of tech investors who were looking to build a new mid-sized city in Solano County, which is nestled between San Francisco and Sacramento, locals lost it. Annie, a community organizer, said that “it felt like a bunch of bored tech bros looked on a map, found out we existed” and felt it was the right fit for their techno-utopia.[1]
The consortium called it California Forever, a romantic name which ultimately served as a veneer for a massive corporate endeavor. Over the past 7 years, the real estate company representing the consortium has purchased nearly a billion dollars of land, becoming the largest landowner in the country. Fortunately, California’s bureaucracy doesn’t allow bullies, even the wealthy ones, to easily build cities from scratch but how long can it withstand such a well-resourced assault?
*
What is it about land that drives people with money and power so crazy?
This question is at the heart of the origin story of the United States. Manifest Destiny was the guiding doctrine of American exceptionalism in the 1800s. This principle was how the westward expansion and resettlement of America was justified. A new name for an old trick: colonialism.
In the 1845 Inaugural Address, the 11th President of the United States, James K. Polk spoke extensively about spreading the new American republic’s values and laws to the Western lands. “As our boundaries have been enlarged and our agricultural population has been spread over a large surface, our federative system has acquired additional strength and security. It may well be doubted whether it would not be in greater danger of overthrow if our present population were confined to the comparatively narrow limits of the original thirteen States than it is now that they are sparsely settled over a more expanded territory.”
Polk refers to the settlers as “emigrants” and portrays them as divinely ordained warriors in the American war for civility and liberty. Even then, people recognized this was a thinly veiled code for the continued enslavement of Black people and violent displacement of indigenous communities. American imperialism has rarely been able to cover its tracks as neatly as some of the other empires – a byproduct of this country’s democracy coming into existence by revolution against British colonizers.
This is California’s history too.
*
Annie and I are bonding and vibing in the ways that leftists do- yelling about the present while toggling between the past and the future. I still haven’t met her in person but in my mind, we are very close friends. We both admit to stalking the other on LinkedIn and are overjoyed to find out about our shared history of activism. Her profile photo looks like it belongs in an Anthropologie catalog with its sunny forest background and bohemian aura. She’s definitely from the Bay Area.
Annie talks rapidly at me and tries to dump as much information and analysis as possible about California Forever. She’s beyond mad and has choice words for everyone involved with the project. “Finance and tech people are inherently untrustworthy,” she says, “They [California Forever] lied to everyone about who and what they are from the jump…they still won’t admit they’re trying to build a techno-utopia for themselves and their friends, they still keep talking about it as a folksy Solano town.”
She tells me to look up the public commitments that California Forever’s CEO is making. The project makes wild promises about jobs and home guarantees that are difficult to believe. The Solano Homes for All guarantee commits “$400 million in community benefits funding to help Solano County residents buy homes in the new community, and to build subsidized affordable housing.” This is just one of ten very expensive guarantees they make – another promise is that this entire plan will be paid for by existing tax revenue with no additional cost to Solano taxpayers, except for future residents.
“Why would you believe a finance bro who comes out of Goldman Sachs?,” asks Annie. At this point, we’re trading stories about the weird crypto and venture capital guys we’ve met in the Bay and maybe if we could contain all of them in one city, we’d all be better off; jokes to make this tech version of Manifest Destiny feel a little less heavy.
*
The United States has just elected a dangerous and cruel reactionary as the next President. My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing since Election Day. I find out my parents voted for Trump and feel intense shock and grief. I hold onto what Ta-Nehisi said and what it evoked in me - that my own political tradition isn’t shared with my parents who have been radicalized in America, but rather, with my grandparents who raised me in India. I feel even greater kinship with those who are resisting bullies everywhere.
*
The same coalition of tech and finance guys who brought Trump into power are associated with California Forever. In the late 2000s, tech investor Peter Thiel began proselytizing about his political beliefs and declared, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” The solution according to Thiel and his acolytes is to secede from current liberal democracy through privatization and innovation. Essentially, Thiel and his fellow reactionaries were looking to usher in a new political order- one that would run cities and nations like corporations.
If it sounds familiar, it is because Trump shares this worldview and has increasingly echoed this sentiment. His vice-president, JD Vance, is one of Thiel’s protégés and has recruited people into their campaign who also come from tech and finance and wholeheartedly embrace Thiel’s gospel. Corporate buzzwords like “efficiency” and “innovation” have been thrown about frequently in the past two weeks as the new administration comes into formation.
Thiel’s ultimate dream is to create free-market utopias worldwide by acquiring land to build cities with no laws or regulations. This is the guiding ideology behind California Forever and what makes it so dangerous to the residents of Solano County.
Annie tells me that the project can’t answer questions about its infrastructure or governance. Because the land they have acquired is unincorporated, it is unclear whether the project would be a part of the county or have its own systems. “I don’t know if their hospitals will have unionized nurses or not,” she says. “I don’t know how it’s logistically possible to scale up water, sewers, highways for this project. I don’t think they know either.” She calls the project a “resource suck” that doesn’t have the infrastructure to ramp up and is, for once, grateful for California’s red tape.
*
Annie loves California in ways that are intrinsic to natives of any land.
I think about the Annies of the past – those who have resisted any invasion of their land and erosion of their communities. In 2017, a UCLA historian put out a book that details “the systematic and brutal campaigns of slaughter and enslavement during which California’s indigenous population plunged from as many as 150,000 people to around 30,000.” The state and federal governments, the most ardent supporters of Manifest Destiny, spent over $1.7 million – an astronomical sum for the mid 1800s – on campaigns against indigenous communities in California which the historian calls a “well-funded killing machine”.
I cannot fathom how unbearable life must have become for California Indians in those decades of genocide.
A mother hiding her children from murderous state militias.
Loved ones quietly making escape plans before vigilantes come to kill them.
Families hysterical over women and children who are kidnapped and sold into slavery.
There is no amount of sunshine in California that can erase this horrific past. All of this death and destruction just so white settlers could take this land and build it to serve their needs. But for all of this violence, there was also resistance.
Sacrificing your life to buy time for the elderly and children to escape.
Facing down guns with homemade weapons that pale in comparison.
Burning down the buildings that imprison you and your people.
The history of resistance is hard to catalog as much of it is written by the victors. I’d like to think that for every act of colonial violence, there was an equal act of courageous resistance.
*
I ask Annie how all of this ends. “We’ll definitely win,” she says with confidence.
She has a point. The resistance to California Forever has brought together a large coalition of unlikely allies from farmers to artists to elected officials. In Solano County, converting dry farmland into urban development is massively unpopular, both with voters and politicians. Regardless of party, county residents care deeply about agriculture and conservation, and consistently oppose projects that threaten their local environment or strain natural resources, such as water. California Forever sought to fast track its plans with no regard for local attitudes – yet they needed voter approval to rezone land for urban development through a ballot measure.
However, the measure was pulled a few months ago because of how wildly unpopular the project was. In April, a poll conducted by the opposition coalition, Solano Together, showed that 70% of respondents would vote no on the measure if elections were held that day, and 79% opposed the proposal in general. According to organizers with Solano Forever, California Forever never gained the trust of residents or local elected officials. Their lack of transparency about the project, combined with false promises and outright lies, added to county voters’ overwhelming disapproval of the plan.
Groups like Solano Together and organizers like Annie were a critical part of getting everyone to speak with one voice against California Forever. They were present at farmers markets, city and county board meetings, union halls and other civic spaces. Their mobilization has made it extremely complicated for California Forever to proceed with their original plans.
But the project still lives on. Annie thinks they will try to figure something out- either flip the land they have for loss or just be a weird little city that is massively scaled back. I tell her that in my experience, extremely wealthy people don’t give up until they succeed.
She tells me she’s not a loser either.
*
My job has me out at the Capitol in Sacramento again. My co-worker is with me and we’re driving back to the Bay after a long day of lobbying. When he’s not reviewing policy memos, he’s out in nature so he knows Solano County well. As we cut through the towns and cities, he’s telling me about cute hikes in Vacaville or facts about the Sacramento River that cuts through Rio Vista.
I admire people like him, those who genuinely love and care about the land around them and are curious to learn more. I enjoy learning about the county through his adventures even though I’ll never go on any of these hikes. It reminds me that our spaces and cities are worth fighting for – the people and the land.
The sun is setting, beautiful streaks of pink and purple above tracts of farmland that look so open and free.
Every sunset in California is beautiful.
[1] Names and other personal information have been changed to protect their identity.
