An Early Morning “Suspicious” Fire in City Heights
Officially, the pre-dawn fire on Wednesday at the home of former assembly member Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher and County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher is being called suspicious.
The only thing suspicious about this blaze is the caution being shown over calling a spade a spade. It took me about a nanosecond to realize this was arson, aimed at invoking terror in the hearts and minds of the many good people working to make San Diego a better place to live.
America’s Finest City has a history of this crap… It’s threat, threat, threat, slander, and then “poof,” a bad thing happens to good people.
From the Union-Tribune:
The fire was contained to the front of the home. It caused about $30,000 damage to the house and another $6,000 in damage to a vehicle parked in front of the home, San Diego Fire-Rescue spokesperson Mónica Muñoz said.
Among the items damaged in the fire was a U.S. flag posted outside the front of the home, according to a tweet from Fletcher, a former Marine who served two combat tours. But, he said, the fire crew gave the family a new flag. He tweeted a photo of it flying just feet from the home’s blackened facade.
“This really means something to my family,” he said. “Thank you.”
While Gonzalez and Fletcher may live at this address and have to deal with the emotional after effects of being victims, the ultimate target was the agenda they’ve come to represent. If anything, I predict this sort of act will only toughen their resolve.
The personal part of being attacked, the one where you fantasize about what could have been and try to compartmentalize it behind the memory of what actually happened and what you want the public to see, that’s the tough part.
Sidebar– Whenever something like this comes up I get flashbacks tinged with survivors’ guilt.
I wasn’t home on the January night nearly 50 years ago when the Muir Street address our community organizing collective lived at was fired on by a gunman in a drive-by shooting.
Activist Paula Tharpe had her elbow shattered by the bullet. The police told the news media that we’d likely staged the shooting ourselves to draw sympathy.
At the wheel of the shooter’s car was an FBI informant working with a right wing group called the Secret Army Organization.
It took years for us to learn the truth, which started to take shape when a bomb went off at a Hillcrest adult theater. Suffice it to say the vice cops sitting in the audience looking for prurient content in I Am Curious, Yellow didn’t think the theater operator was looking for sympathy. (Here’s the back story, via the New York Times.)
***
Wading through lists of possible suspects is going to be a full time job for whatever arson investigator gets handed this case. Let’s face it, so many people would love to claim a piece of this action if they thought they would get away with it.
Maybe the cops/fire department will get a lucky break. Maybe there’s an informant stashed away somewhere who’ll text-in a tip. Maybe the authorities can review the hours of public testimony before Gonzalez in Sacramento and Fletcher at the County Building and come up with a list of all the people who walked up and sort of threatened them in public testimony about controversial matters.
In my mind there will only be candidate for the best supporting stochastic terrorist award, and that’s KUSI TV. Roll it, Kevin…
The station’s news staff is so far out there in delusion land that I’d say there's a 50/50 chance KUSI will interview somebody who’ll claim Gonzalez/Fletcher hired Antifa to gain sympathy for their causes.
***
Now let’s examine what the arsonist(s) hoped to accomplish beyond the physical damage. Haters’ gonna hate. And politicians who deign to do stuff get a lot of haters.
During her time in Sacramento, Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher achieved national recognition as a legislator willing to take on the politically tough issues concerning working people. I say politically tough because of the implicit price politicians are expected to pay when they go head-to-head with the market-irst economic alliances that dominate politics on both sides of the aisle in the Golden State.
Gonzalez wore the scorn of the Chamber of Commerce types in the state with pride, as her annual lineup of bills got branded as business killers. She didn’t buy into the all-too-often bipartisan ethic holding that a rising tide of cash was good for everybody.
Nothing pissed off our modern day oligarchs more than Assembly Bill 5, Gonzalez’ effort to codify a court decision that shot holes in the mythology of the independent contractor as a miracle of modern business practices.
Rideshare and delivery companies funded a $200+ million effort to override the law at the ballot box, complete with armies of social media trolls attacking Gonzalez and organized labor. The amount of venom generated was astounding, including personal attacks on the assembly member and her family.
The claims of Proposition 22’s funders prevailed at the ballot box. After all, nobody wanted to see poor orphans from contractor families begging for food in front of supermarkets. And the companies kept repeating promises about good wages and benefits while holding the costs to consumers down. (All those promises have gone by the wayside, but that’s another story.)
Prop 22’s clever legal authors overshot the mark while trying to protect their handiwork from future legal assaults. A clause in the law requiring a ⅞ approval from the legislature for passage of any future amendments didn’t make it past the first round of legal challenges.
That ruling is currently under appeal, but it won’t make much difference to most of the companies. They’ve made it to the promised IPO-land, raised their rates just like they said they wouldn’t, short changed most of their workers, and created a newly indoctrinated generation of misled middle class haters.
Along the way, Gonzalez's willingness to go head-to-head with opponents of toughening up the rules on childhood vaccinations (pre-Covid, by the way), earned her a spot on KUSI’s list of Evil People Who Must Be Stopped.
Her “crime” was insisting that those providing statements yea or nay on vaxx legislation the follow the rules and not allowing them to disrupt a hearing. Several of those offended by this insistence on an orderly flow of advocates earned Gonzalez what I’d call borderline threats. She’d probably call it another day at the office, but these people were r.u.d.e.
Now, Gonzalez –after some time off to further convalesce after a double mastectomy– will be heading up the California Labor Federation. Labor is powerful in California, but is facing some historical challenges brought on by four decades of unfavorable national policies, and a socioeconomic order with changed attitudes about jobs and work.
***
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher’s first offense on the bingo card of right wing angst was a decision to stop being a Republican, and then, joining the Democratic party. Some Democrats of the progressive persuasion weren’t exactly initially enthralled by his continued political ambitions.
But when it came time to flesh out an earlier scheme to overhaul the Board of Supervisors via term limits and redistricting, Fletcher was an easy choice for most Democrats. Republicans hoped to exploit a split in the labor movement to divide the vote, but failed miserably.
He ended up being the only Democrat on a board with two stone-age fossils and two Republicans whose party had left them behind. And he succeeded in starting the process of overhauling a government more concerned with hoarding its assets than serving its constituents.
Now there’s a Democratic majority on the Board of Supes, and I hear they’re working hard at clearing away decades worth of crud from the County government. They’re not there yet, but the days of stodge and smut are coming to an end.
Nathan Fletcher has been cast as the Really Bad Guy by the anti-vaxx crowd. Like his wife did in Sacramento, he refused to allow government meetings to become an ongoing cirque de la conspiration.
Needless to say, a decision to make Supes meeting virtual wasn’t popular with the horse tranquilizer set. They just couldn’t grasp why county officials and employees wouldn’t want to sit through threats and racist commentary.
Once again, from the Union-Tribune:
Both Gonzalez and Fletcher have spoken publicly about receiving death threats. In a February 2020 story — pre-pandemic — Gonzalez told the Los Angeles Times she’d faced them during a 2019 legislative debate over exemptions to school vaccine mandates.
Amid COVID-19 vaccine pushback last summer, Board of Supervisors meetings turned caustic, with personal and nasty attacks lobbed by some members of the public. Fletcher told Channel 8 that he “dealt with threats for the last year and a half, death threats and people coming to our house and all of that — at the end of the day, I’m not going to back down from what I know is the right thing to do, which is trust our doctors.”
***
If we get lucky somebody in charge will take a look at the growing overlap between anti-vaxxers, evangelical sects, and the Tea Party leftovers who want a real civil war. It’s not all that hard. They’re having recruiting events nearly every weekend. Heck, the Sheriff’s Department even hangs out at these things looking for recruits.
These local folks are the street warriors for the larger authoritarian movement with Democracy in its gun sights.
Finally, here’s Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher on Facebook last night:
Together, we will continue to work towards a just society. They say people have a fight or flight instinct. We don’t even consider the flight portion. We will continue to be here for the good fight. With eyes to the heavens. Thank you for your love and support. Fire… cancer… disparagement… none of it will stop us. Adelante.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com