My E-FORUM story yesterday on the power struggle within the 23rd Street Merchants Association was intended to inject a little levity into a Richmond post-New Year’s news desert. Several people, however, took exception to the story (most of which quoted other sources) or were offended by it.

Eric Zell, whom La VOZ listed as a voting member of the 23rd Street Merchants Association, insists that he is neither a member nor a voting member. Eric writes:
I am not now nor have I ever been a voting member of the 23rd Street Merchants Association.  I have never even been to one of their meetings...I have never even received a meeting announcement.  How can I be a voting member of an organization that has never invited me to a meeting?
Perhaps, a number of years ago, when Rafael was President, I probably wrote a check to support the Cinco de Mayo event. They may have listed me as a supporting business as a result. However, it's completely untrue to say I  am a voting member who is influencing or directing their decisions as a "chevron lobbyist". 
I queried one of the sources at La VOZ, who wrote:
According to the acting president Sergio Rios and secretary Juan Munoz the list of members in the website is the list of all members of  the 23rd St Merchants Association, and , according to the same sources, every member of the association has the right to participate and vote on  officers' elections and other matters during general meetings. Whoever is a member is a voting member. All they have to do is to show up  at the meetings and cast their votes. The board of directors vote on some issues that the general  membership does not vote on, but all members are voting members in matters  of electing officers and other issues presented to general membership  meetings.
In any event, let the E-FORUM record reflect that according to Eric Zell, he has never attended a 23rd Street Merchants Association meeting and has never voted on a 23rd Street Merchants Association issue.

Another E-FORUM reader involved in the Richmond  Neighborhood Coordination Council writes:

Oh man, what a situation! It reminds me of the attempt not long ago of a Bey family member from Oakland who came into North Richmond and, from that vantage point, tried to take over the Shields-Reid Neighborhood Council.  Shields-Reid people took exception and the difficulties started.  Various slates of officers appeared and named themselves as officers of the NC.  Quiet has settled in, the NC is active and actively led by strong people from Richmond.  The Bey person has not been seen or heard from for many months. Maybe the 23rd Street Merchants can settle their issues and get on with working for the community.
One of my most frequent critics wrote:

Hard to fathom why Tom would throw a fellow Rotarian (Lara) under the bus just to attack Chevron. He should at least disclose that La Voz was founded by RPA activists who've been at every anti-Chevron rally in recent memory. The referenced ban on passing out literature away from the booths at Cinco de Mayo applied to all vendors, even the Police Commission booth I helped staff, so take the RPA grousing with a healthy bucketful of salt. 
I responded:

I was not throwing anyone under the bus, just trying to dissect a major power struggle in a local high profile organization. The similarities to Chamber of Commerce politics and the connection with Chevron and the conservative establishment in Richmond make this an interesting story. If it is true about the ban on passing out literature, it is clearly a First Amendment issue.
Even Nat Bates was bored yesterday. He wrote:

Seems Tom Butt and the RPA have jumped the gun with the November 2014 city council election some eleven month away with all sorts of politics. See Don Gosney comments and the attached RPA’s new  La VOZ newspaper, January 2014 article. One thing for sure is that Tom has clarified on page 17 that he, McLaughlin, Beckles and Myrick are member of the RPA (Richmond Progressive Alliance). Looking at the members of La VOZ on page 2, one cannot help but notice they are all RPA members. It would be interesting to find out who is funding this RPA newspaper.
And Finally, Don Gosney weighed in:

It sounds to me as though the 23rd Street Merchants Association needs to send letters to Chevron AND the City disassociating themselves and letting them know that they will return all checks sent their way from these two groups.  This includes any sponsorship of their Cinco de Mayo celebration.

I’m having a real tough time with a couple of quotes from La Voz:

Rios: I am the current president of the Association. I was elected by the majority of the three members remaining in the board after the separation of the president and the resignation of the treasurer Gonzalo Ochoa, who gave us a letter of resignation stating he was too busy to continue.

And Muñoz: The details included in the letter of separation will be revealed to the members of the Association in due time because we want an Association that has clarity with all its members.  I will only say that if I am elected by the merchants to represent all the merchants I cannot arrive in front of the cake and be the only one eating the cake. I have to do things that benefit all the merchants. Our decisions are based on documents.

First, there were only THREE Board members present to separate the Association’s President and vote in a new President?  Mr. Rios writes that he was elected by a “majority” of the three present which suggests that he may have had as few as two votes.  And was his one of the two votes?  There’s nothing about this election or process that suggests that this is the will of the Association.

Then, Muñoz writes about the details that will be revealed in due time?  What’s wrong with revealing them now?  What’s wrong with revealing them in this extremely partisan newsletter?  What’s wrong with revealing them in writing where the rest of the world can review the details and decide for themselves just how valid these reasons might be and how transparent the process was?

And what’s all this about the “cake”?  His reference suggests that Ms. Lara was the one reaping the benefits but Councilmember Butt writes that Mr. Muñoz was paid $3500 for the use of his bouncy castles.  That seems like a lot of money to use these airbags for a single day.

This is a strange newsletter in that three of the largest photos are a copy of an anti-Chevron flier, RPA Council candidate Eduardo Martinez and RPA Councilmember Jovanka Beckles.

I’m also curious about the news report about the soda tax passed by the Mexican LEGISLATURE (not the Mexican people who are already working on recalls of some of those elected legislators).  What I’m curious about is the fact that the Mexican tax is EIGHT times larger than what Richmond proposed but will only generate about $1.5 million per year in taxes.  How is it that with a tax that high, the entire soda tax revenue from the country of Mexico is only about the same as what the tax revenue would have been for Richmond?  Something doesn’t add up. [If Richmond had passed a tax at that rate, it would have been a 96¢ per can tax on a can of soda purchased at Costco for 26¢.]

The news report ends with the suggestion that this Mexican soda tax will be used to promote more sports when the news reports coming out of Mexico suggest that the new tax will simply fill in the holes in the Mexican budget.  All indications are that while this tax will have a benefit to Mexican children in helping to reduce childhood obesity, the main purpose of this tax was to raise money.  It was all about the pesos.  Of course, I could have misunderstood the news reports about this in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Al Jazeera, Fox News and the San Francisco Chronicle.]

And I especially enjoyed the news report about how Richmond’s Mayor is advocating the release of the Cuban Five.  I was uninformed about who these five were so I looked them up online [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five ].  While I have posted a link here to Wikipedia, there are plenty of other links that validate much of what’s included here.  What I read in the first two paragraphs of the wiki report tell me that these five are/were “Cuban intelligence officers convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States.”  Wiki goes on to say: “For their part, Cuba acknowledged, after denying the fact for nearly three years, that the five men were intelligence agents.”

I can’t speak for the rest of Richmond but I have never been too keen on intelligence agents from ANY country infiltrating the US, getting jobs at a US military facility [Key West Naval Air Station] and sending information back to their home country [information that was used to shoot down an unarmed plane and killing the five passengers].  I would rather that the Mayor of Richmond not speak for me in support of spies and persons convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.  La Voz can call them political prisoners but when they spy on the US and conspire to commit murder it really is something more than being jailed for signing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church.

On the whole, though, I have to compliment the people who put this newsletter together.  They did a very good job.  I have to wonder, though, where they get their financing.

Of course, to suggest that this is the “Voice of Richmond” is laughable.  This is pure politics and little more.  It touts the Richmond Progressive Alliance and their positions and denounces Chevron and anyone who does not agree with them that Chevron is bad.