When then council member Jesse Arreguin was elected Berkeley mayor in that bittersweet November 2016, he supported Kate Harrison’s campaign to succeed him in District 4. Council member Harrison, or just “Kate,” maintained a progressive legacy dating back to the beloved Dona Spring who represented the Green Party from 1992 to 2008, and before Dona, Berkeley Citizens Action leader Ann Chandler.
Kate’s life work shows a commitment not only to public service, but to Berkeley in particular. A graduate of both UC Berkeley and its public policy graduate school, she used that opportunity to work on the City’s rent control and tenant protection ordinance, way back in 1979.
Her career since then is one of solving problems for local and international governments. A major focus has been establishing independent and functional court systems, whether in California or the Balkans. Kate’s experience running a billion dollar budget for the state court system prepared her to joust with the Berkeley city manager, to uncover wasted money and other monkey business.
But Kate describes the heart of her career as helping people in need, for example, “Native American foster youth in North Dakota, defendants without lawyers in Serbia and people returning to their communities from prison.”
Kate bills herself as a progressive who gets things done. See https://electkateharrison.com/ What does this mean? In politics, it seems universal that cool-sounding words get co-opted and everyone begins to sound the same. Everyone wants affordable housing. Everyone wants to save the climate. Everyone wants police to be accountable. Everyone wants peace in the Middle East. And everyone hates Trump, who wants to abolish democracy entirely.
Kate, however, does have significant accomplishments to testify to her integrity and skill. We’ll pick out a few from the many she helpfully lists on her campaign site:
- Policing: Co-wrote and led the campaign to pass 2020’s Measure ii for Police Accountability, to strengthen community oversight of the BPD.
- Climate: She carried an ordinance to require gas-free energy in all new construction and funded the Climate Equity fund so lower-income households could make their existing buildings less polluting and healthier and reduce their energy bills;
- Housing: Another ordinance to give incentives to landlords to put 1,200 long-term vacant units back on the market;
- Labor Rights: Another to guarantee a fair work week for low-wage employees, giving them scheduling certainty or compensation when their schedules are changed without notice
- Health and Safety: Fought for and funded key initiatives from the Reimagining Public Safety program, including youth mental health services in the high school;
- Anti-racism and Health: Consistent supporter of full funding for the African American Holistic Resource Center;
- Democracy: Supports independence of commissions and their role in city government.
In her seven years as a city council member, Kate developed an independent voice. She grew into a leader who put the priority on systemic change and not simply going along with the clubby council scene.
In her video “Together we can create change,” Kate talks about how discouraging it can be to deal with a city government that often seems broken. But she has “got the receipts” that show how she knows how to make change, and has done so as a hands-on council member, from issues including opening up vacant housing for people to move into, providing mental health and suicide prevention services for our high school students, and the terrible practice of single-use plastic bags choking our environment.
A second video, “Serving Berkeley Means Standing Up To Big Money,” is brief hard-hitting. It’s a commentary on the unbridled development, which she describes as speculative. It is also a lament about builders who buy housing or small businesses, evict the tenants, then fail to build the promised housing, “treating our downtown as a shell.” She calls for the City to pass a vacancy tax on business properties as she famously did with residences.
Yet a third video, “I’m running for the future of Berkeley,” packs in a lot of insight—but not in an abstract way. Kate reveals how “Each permit now is granted without thinking about how collectively these buildings impact our retail, open space, and cultural lively art scene.” It’s almost like we don’t have a functional planning process. She says “we must get away from the culture of development without planning.” In conclusion Kate points out, “You need a mayor, frankly, who’s willing to stand up to moneyed interests. We must be in charge of our city’s destiny because if we aren’t, somebody else will be. I’m not running for the status quo of the Berkeley City Council, I’m running for the future of Berkeley.”
Privatizing the Waterfront
One final issue is worth highlighting—and you may never think about the Waterfront in the same way again. Kate held a large campaign event on July 7 at the edge of the Bay in Cesar Chavez Park. She spoke about City management’s plan to treat the Waterfront as a cash cow. The priority seems always to be on investing in projects that promise a good return on investment, such as hotels, yachting, and a heliport.
By the way, this plan is scheduled for action at a special meeting of the city council on Monday November 18, that is, after the election, but before the new mayor and council are seated. So a lame-duck council will decide how to dispose of one of Berkeley’s natural gems.
It’s understandable that the city administration would want to bring in revenue to help pay for human needs. But sacrificing precious natural and recreational resources for fiscal gain is just immoral. The management plan is to orient development toward those who can afford to pay to play. What’s at stake are elements of the Waterfront that get in the way of this plan, such as Cal Sailing, native plants, and just enjoying the environment.
It’s a classic fight over social priorities. The departed city manager was fond of saying that the Waterfront must pay for itself through paying customers. This is simply privatization of a public asset. As the National Lawyers Guild motto goes, human rights are more important than property interests; or, social needs over capital needs.
The Waterfront plans are also so poorly constructed, for example lacking a study of demand for a high-end hotel, that they are likely to be a net drain on the city treasury.
You can see Kate’s comment at https://electkateharrison.com/priorities (scroll down to read “On the Waterfront”).