The Bee's takes can be hit or miss but this one has them sounding very progressive! I'm impressed.

The Candidate is Mai Vang in case you don't want to read the article. I've met her and she's cool. One of the reasons she decided to run was because democrats were refusing to abolish ICE.

The architect noted that the building's permanent closure actually predates construction, a first for the region.

Shamelessly stolen from /u/sankeytm on Reddit.

On the second day of the ceremony, Feay said officers from the Sacramento Police Department broke up the gathering. After that, they charged her fiance, who was leading the morning sunrise song and prayers, with two misdemeanors – unlawful camping and obstructing the street.

The same day, police seized the tipi and labeled it as a tarp and bamboo sticks, according to the agency’s Feb. 5 booking receipt reviewed by CapRadio.

“I’m hurt, I feel disrespected. My treaty rights were violated,” Feay said. “They took my church. Where am I going to go pray?"

This is the same dude who went viral after he was shoved by an ICE agent who kicked over a memorial for Renee Good. He's been protesting our local ICE office every day for months. Hope he is alright.

At a friend's house was a copy of heckinsick's first zine in print format. He explains the concept in video format, available on all the popular platforms:

https://youtube.com/shorts/znUhsjeTlUc https://www.tiktok.com/@heckinsick/video/7593459537311468855 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTSEbgJiuPR/

Having read through it in about 15 minutes, it seemed to me like a miniature version of the previously-monthly, DIY-focused Maker Magazine, but focused on artists in general and with a single narrator rather than various authors writing about the artists featured.

Some of the articles take on a Q&A format, while others are essentially a show-and-tell and he distills the essence alongside detailed color photos. The artistry is diverse, including photography to furniture to pumpkins.

This first edition is more "pamphlet" than "zine", but the printing looked and felt premium, and I could see myself buying a copy as a coffee table read.

Just passing this along for those interested.

(if there's a paywall, you might try archive.ph to see if the article is available there)

This article is about the local impacts following the gutting of the state-wide ebike incentive program, interviewing people who were able to receive the incentives and how it changed their lives.

That said, the start of the article badly misrepresents how the program came into being. The $10 million budgeted by the Legislature in 2021 was vetoed, and so isn't even relevant to the program. Instead, the program was funded with $30 million within CARB's overall budget, not a mandate from the Legislature. CARB's spokesperson punts their responsibility by saying the Legislature told CARB to slim down their budget, but that's clearly irrelevant because CARB took the funds and shifted them to electric cars. That obviously doesn't save any money, and CARB just wants to deflect blame for cutting the ebike program.

I wish the SacBee's reporter would have pressed CARB about their contradiction, rather than acting as a stenographer. Still, the reporting about the impacts is important: the ebikes gave people real improvements in mobility, and the electric car program doesn't make any sense unless someone already has a car.

IMO, it's a better use of tax dollars to give 10 people something that they need but don't have (ie basic transportation), than to upgrade for 1 person something they already have.

A California judge ordered the end of a dragnet law enforcement program that surveilled the electrical smart meter data of thousands of Sacramento residents.

The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and police violated a state privacy statute, which bars the disclosure of residents’ electrical usage data with narrow exceptions. For more than a decade, SMUD coordinated with the Sacramento Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to sift through the granular smart meter data of residents without suspicion to find evidence of cannabis growing.

The court ruled that the challenged surveillance program was not part of any traditional law enforcement investigation. Investigations happen when police try to solve particular crimes and identify particular suspects. The dragnet that turned all 650,000 SMUD customers into suspects was not an investigation.

“[T]he process of making regular requests for all customer information in numerous city zip codes, in the hopes of identifying evidence that could possibly be evidence of illegal activity, without any report or other evidence to suggest that such a crime may have occurred, is not an ongoing investigation,” the court ruled, finding that SMUD violated its “obligations of confidentiality” under a data privacy statute.

Granular electrical usage data can reveal intimate details inside the home—including when you go to sleep, when you take a shower, when you are away, and other personal habits and demographics. In creating and running the dragnet surveillance program, according to the court, SMUD and police “developed a relationship beyond that of utility provider and law enforcement.” Multiple times a year, the police asked SMUD to search its entire database of 650,000 customers to identify people who used a large amount of monthly electricity and to analyze granular 1-hour electrical usage data to identify residents with certain electricity “consumption patterns.” SMUD passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly “high” usage households to police.

SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. (KCRA) -- Silvia Reyna Mendoza, a mother who has lived in the U.S. for nearly 40 years, is currently in ICE detention in Kern County, California, after her family claims she was retaliated against for reporting sexual harassment by an ICE contractor.

Reyna Mendoza arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager. Her family said she was fleeing domestic violence. Over the last 40 years, she has raised eight children here.

She was a long time Sacramento resident.

Sacramento Councilmember Mai Vang is launching a campaign to unseat Rep. Doris Matsui, who has held the seat since 2005. Vang pledges a grassroots run as critics question Matsui’s accessibility.

Among the claims:

Police allegedly submitted false sworn statements to obtain a warrant for Cervantes to undergo a blood test when she had indicated she would do voluntarily. Police allegedly submitted false sworn statements to the Department of Motor Vehicles, "forcing her to defend unfounded claims to regain her driving privileges." Police allegedly leaked false claims to the media that she was driving under the influence because they wanted to damage her reputation. Police allegedly retaliated against her "due to her introduction of legislation to curb abuse by police of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems and due to bias related to her identity as an openly LGBTQ+ Latina elected official."

Sacramento leaders sent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement letters regarding individuals who are allegedly being held in the John Moss Federal Building in Sacramento.

Allegedly, Sacramento leaders have received reports from the Sacramento community organizations of detained individuals being held in inadequate conditions. The 2025 National Detention Standards are in place to ensure proper conditions in ICE detention facilities.

The non-profit digital human rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, donation link) asserts that electricity provider SMUD in Sacramento County conducted racial profiling and surveillance of customers, passing tips of suspected drug manufacturing to local law enforcement. All this in violation of the California Constitution's protection of reasonable privacy within the home. EFF and plaintiff Asian American Liberation Network seek a court order to prohibit further carte-blanche sharing of confidential customer information with law enforcement agencies, unless such an agency already has cause for initial suspicion.

A local US citizen was taken by the Feds today. They were said to be a volunteer with NorCal Resist, which is a great and very well organized local activist group for those who don’t know them.

Here’s an update from their Instagram:

If anyone has a mirror drop it here, I couldn’t get any of the normal ones to work.

Edit: https://archive.ph/mNZoP