Yet the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund, continues to insist that engagement, rather than divestment, is the most effective way to address climate change. Divestment is “a very inelegant solution,” said Peter Cashion, head of CalPERS sustainable investment, in unveiling in November the retirement system’s new 2030 Sustainable Investment Plan.

So how effective and “elegant” has engagement been?

CalPERS’  December 2019 “Addressing Climate Change Risk” report admitted that only 9% of companies it engages with had targets in line with the Paris Agreement goals, and only 8% had lobbying efforts aligned with necessary climate action.

This report considered one of the “significant impacts of engagement” is the fact that Shell announced targets for reductions every three to five years toward a goal of shrinking its net carbon by about half by 2050 and agreed to include its emissions across its supply and demand chains. But one half of net carbon emission by 2050 is far too little, too late.

Worse, a Financial Times article revealed a disclaimer at the end of the announcement that Shell will not change its strategy or capital deployment plans until society acts. Thus it is going ahead with a new project in Nigeria to produce 30 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year to meet an expected doubled demand by 2040.

The CalPERS report also lauded Chevron’s announced reduction goals for greenhouse gas intensity in production. However, Chevron at the same time plans to double its production in the Permian Basin, in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and produce 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, so its overall emissions can only rise. In the same doublespeak, Exxon Mobil promised reductions of flaring and methane emissions while planning to triple production in the Permian Basin.

CalPERS claimed success in the shareholder vote for three new “climate friendly” Exxon board members in May 2021, yet the company since then has made no changes in climate-related policy and has announced expanded greenfield drilling in Guyana.

This is the big picture of engagement: Companies announce misleading targets of reduced carbon intensity in production rather than overall greenhouse gas reduction or set goals of net zero by 2050 without concrete interim steps. The companies then tout these resolutions to maintain the support of their investors while actually making huge investments in hydrocarbon expansion in expectation of increased demand (and increased profits) through at least 2040.

In December 2022 the House Oversight Committee, released a damning report demonstrating that major fossil fuel companies such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell have no intention of moving away from oil and gas production but are instead using false “net-zero” commitments to mislead the public, while doubling down on expansion and production. The committee published an internal memo of the American Petroleum Institute written by the CEO, Mike Summers, that says it all: publicizing the industry’s efforts to reduce emissions from natural gas production presents “an opportunity to further secure the industry’s license to operate.”

Despite CalPERS’ opposition to divestment, the new 2030 Plan does allow for an “exit” from securities that don’t have credible net-zero plans; however, it fails to specify how or when that determination will be made. All the evidence shows that no net-zero plans are credible, and the time to divest is now.

Sheila Thorne, of Berkeley, is a retired San Jose State University instructor, CalPERS recipient and member of Fossil Free California.

Traditionally, most local measures lack information that voters should have in order to make informed decisions. Worse, the local agencies behind the measures — cities, counties and school districts — often deliberately leave out that information.

Indeed, they usually hire consultants to help them craft the deceptive ballot language. They give you just part of the information — the good part that gets your vote of support.

State law requires that the ballot language “shall give a true and impartial statement of the purpose of the measure in such language that the ballot title and summary shall neither be argumentative nor be likely to create prejudice, for or against the proposed measure.” But the up to 75 words you see on your ballot for each local measure are reviewed and approved only by members of the jurisdiction proposing the measure, who want it to pass. It’s the classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse.

Typically, the language exaggerates benefits, glosses over costs and throws in meaningless stuff like “cannot be taken by the State” or “will only be spent in San Leandro” or hides the fact that the tax is permanent by saying, “until ended by the voters.”

General tax-increase measures regularly tout benefits popular with the public, like fixing potholes, more cops or housing the homeless. Unfortunately, those benefits are not actually required in the official ordinance raising the tax. Instead, the tax revenues could be spent on anything, and nothing need be spent on the improvements or services claimed in the ballot language.

This is not a Democratic or a Republican issue or a conservative vs. liberal issue. This is simply a question about transparency and good governance.

The ballot wording of Alameda County’s Measure W in 2020 was an example of the deception:

“Shall a County of Alameda ordinance be adopted to establish a half percent sales tax for 10 years, to provide essential County services, including housing and services for those experiencing homelessness, mental health services, job training, social safety net and other general fund services, providing approximately $150,000,000 annually, with annual audits and citizen oversight?”

If you thought this was about voting for money to fund homeless issues, it wasn’t. This measure would not require that a single dollar be spent on homeless issues. Instead, this was a general tax going into the general fund to be spent on any county expense. The giveaway is the phrase “and other general fund services.”

That’s just one example of how we’re being duped. To counteract this persistent problem, the 2021 Alameda County Civil Grand Jury recommended that the county Board of Supervisors create a watchdog review panel to check this abuse. Not surprisingly, the board refused, preferring to continue to mislead voters.

Our ratings for the transparency of Alameda County measures on the upcoming March 5 ballot range from a low of 2.2 points for San Leandro Unified School District’s most-misleading bond measure language, to 4.2 for Piedmont’s parcel tax ballot wording, which was relatively straightforward and informative.

You can find the ballot title ratings on the Alameda County Grand Jury Association website at acgrandjuryassn.org.

Sandy McCabe is president and Michael Henn is a member of the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury Association. 

A key element of this extraordinary dynamism is a revolutionary bill passed in 1980, the Bayh-Dole Act, which enabled the transfer of patented university inventions to the private sector for commercial development.

The Biden administration recently proposed changes that would undermine Bayh-Dole. Draft guidelines would expand Washington’s power to “march in” and effectively void patents on university inventions if government officials deem the prices of resulting products too high.

Officials claim this leverage would reduce drug prices. But this unprecedented expansion of the government’s authority would uproot America’s research ecosystem.

Since 1990, more than 280 high-growth companies have been founded to commercialize UC Berkeley research. They leveraged $51 million in initial government grants into more than $25 billion in private investment. Given that Berkeley now receives anywhere between $400 million and $600 million in federal research funding annually, our ability to spur groundbreaking entrepreneurship keeps growing.

None of this would be possible without Bayh-Dole, which allows universities to own, patent and license inventions arising from federally funded research. Prior to Bayh-Dole, the government held such patents and promising discoveries languished on lab shelves.

Thanks to Bayh-Dole, companies are eager to access the early-stage research that takes place at universities. These firms also sponsor research in academic labs, join industry affiliate programs and routinely hire university inventors as consultants.

Consumers everywhere benefit from the commercialization of university technology. From UC Berkeley alone, those inventions include medicines for cancer and malaria, gene-editing technology being used to solve health, climate and agricultural problems worldwide, and wave-powered electricity generation.

The Biden administration’s march-in proposal introduces deep uncertainty into this wildly successful system. If agencies can seize control of intellectual property rights without warning, startups will hesitate to license federally funded research in the first place. Doing so would make it practically impossible for startups to attract venture capitalists, who rely on reliable IP rights when making investment decisions.

The proposal would be catastrophic for research institutions, which reinvest licensing revenue into research to help brilliant researchers — including students — produce more world-changing solutions.  Government-sponsored inventions have generated more than $221 million for UC Berkeley to date, with scores of future revenue-generating products under development.

If adopted, the proposed march-in framework would jeopardize this beneficial cycle of discovery, translation and reinvestment. Components of the innovation system outside universities — including capital providers, incubators and accelerators, business parks and law firms — would suffer, too.

Weakening intellectual property protections would also undermine crucial government initiatives such as the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs and the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps. Innovators may hesitate to accept any funding or other assistance from the government if it puts their intellectual property in jeopardy.

We must nurture and protect the policy infrastructure that makes success possible. The stakes extend well beyond the Bay Area. Our country’s future as an innovation-based economy depends on it.

Carol Mimura is the former executive director of the Office of Technology Licensing at UC Berkeley and current assistant vice chancellor for intellectual property and industry research alliances.

The proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Think Roosevelt and Churchill helping dictator Stalin repel Hitler in World War II. Or the Reagan administration backing Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in his war against anti-American Iran in the 1980s.

True, a Senate race isn’t the same as a shooting war. Not exactly. But as Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it in the early 1800s: “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”

In war or politics, the old proverb speaks to a similar tactic: Do what’s necessary to remove your biggest threat.

In the race to fill Feinstein’s former seat, the Democratic front-runner’s biggest threat is not the leading Republican contender, but another Democrat. It’s practically impossible for a Republican to win a California Senate seat in a state where Democrats hold a nearly 2-to-1 voter registration advantage and the GOP has imploded.

That’s why Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Burbank — the front-runner based on polling and campaign cash — is going full bore to boost Republican former baseball star Steve Garvey in the March 5 primary election. Garvey, who has some name identification among older baseball fans but only pocket change in his campaign kitty and no political experience, would be an easy out in the November general election.

So Schiff is focused on promoting his preferred November opponent, Garvey. It reminds me of gerrymandering — now outlawed in California but still practiced in many states — in which politicians choose their own voters in redrawing legislative and congressional districts.

Politicians helping their weakest opponent — while odorous — makes strategic sense in California. Our open primary system allows everyone to vote on the same ballot, regardless of their party. And the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the November election. So it opens the door for two Democrats to compete against each other.

Schiff’s biggest political threat is fellow Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine. She could be a tough competitor in November. Porter currently is in a close fight with Garvey for the No. 2 runoff spot.

That’s why Schiff’s television ads are promoting Garvey among Republican viewers as a two-time Donald Trump supporter who could swing the Senate to GOP control. That’s ostensibly a knock on Garvey, but it’s intended to rally support for him among Republican viewers. Garvey doesn’t have any money to promote himself on TV, so Schiff is doing it for him.

Meanwhile, the way I view Schiff’s latest TV ad, he’s now also subtly promoting Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has been trailing the field in fourth place. It’s another way of helping Garvey.

Schiff is hoping that Lee will draw liberal and female votes away from Porter. Women dominate the Democratic voter base.

Schiff’s new TV spot uses footage from the four candidates’ first debate last month.

A narrator begins: “Democrats agree. Conservative Republican Steve Garvey is the wrong choice for the Senate.”

Then the camera cuts to Lee, who looks and sounds solid: “Our Republican opponent here on this stage has voted for Donald Trump twice.”

Schiff doesn’t spend much time on himself: “Mr. Garvey, you voted for him twice.”

Then comes Porter. Schiff’s ad maker couldn’t have chosen a worse clip of her. She looks agitated and awkward, waving her hand, presumably at Garvey. And she’s not understandable because someone is talking over her.

“It’s a really clever ad,” says Republican consultant Rob Stutzman. “It features Lee prominently. And Porter, you can barely see her face. … It’s three-dimensional chess.”

A Schiff campaign spokesperson denied that helping Lee was part of the plan. Regardless, it might well do that. And it’s likely to hurt Porter.

In the interest of good government and democracy, I’d rather see Porter or Lee run against Schiff in November. Garvey seems to possess little knowledge of national issues or have any policy agenda. He’s floating through the contest on his remaining name ID and GOP brand among Republican voters. Porter or Lee would generate a more interesting face-off and give voters a credible choice.

After Schiff began promoting Garvey on TV, Porter wrote on X: “Adam Schiff knows he will lose to me in November. That’s what this brazenly cynical ad is about — furthering his own political career, boxing out qualified Democratic women candidates. … We need honest leadership, not political games.”

But now Porter has descended from the high road and is playing the same political game she initially castigated Schiff for employing. She’s running an online ad designed to boost virtually unknown GOP candidate Eric Early among Republican voters. Her aim is to help Early draw Republican votes away from Garvey.

“MAGA Republican Eric Early proudly stands with Donald Trump while Steve Garvey refuses to tell us who he supports,” the Porter ad says. “Garvey claimed he might even vote for Joe Biden.”

It’s true that Garvey has dodged answering whom he supports for president this year.

Schiff and Porter are both cleverly playing by the rules. It’s not dirty. But as Porter first said, it’s blatantly cynical.

Gov. Gavin Newsom used the same tactic in 2018 while running against two high-profile Democrats — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang — in the gubernatorial primary.

Newsom ran a TV ad promoting obscure Republican John Cox and pushing him into the November runoff. Newsom ostensibly attacked Cox for “standing with Donald Trump.” That sold him to Republican voters.

Republican Garvey is now Democrat Schiff’s best friend — and Early is Porter’s — until both GOP also-rans are dropped cold on March 6.

___

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In a painful stroke of irony, the United States would respond in part with a spell of infamy of its own. Just two months after the attack, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, initiating a campaign to round up innocent Americans of Japanese descent, bus them to detention centers in remote areas across the nation, and keep them incarcerated, some for several years until the end of World War II. The evolution was a violation of the civil rights of tens of thousands of American citizens, leading to disrupted lives, separated families, surrender of property and loss of dignity.

The oldest public university in the West, San José State University holds a deep and rich history of diversity, tolerance and social justice. Unfortunately, it also played a role in this shameful evolution. Serving as a processing site for Santa Clara County, San José State College (as it was then known) actively and knowingly participated in the effort, with administrators enlisting their own students and employees to process nearly 2,500 members of the local community for relocation. More than 100 San José State students were among those incarcerated, forced to abandon studies that many of them never returned to complete.

All told, more than 120,000 people — nearly two-thirds of whom were American citizens — fell victim to the initiative, none ever to face any charges related to disloyalty. Eventually released, some never returned to their original homes, or even a sense of normalcy. The campaign was hasty. It was inhumane. And it was wrong.

So too was our university’s involvement in it. Fueled by impulse and hysteria, the relocation and incarceration efforts are a stain on our nation’s history, their impact affecting the lives of members of our own community both then and now.

In the decades since, small measures of justice have been served. For instance, one of the buildings on our campus that was used for relocation processing was in 1997 renamed Yoshihiro Uchida Hall, in honor of the Japanese American judo legend whose own studies at SJSU were interrupted by World War II. Additionally, former San José Mayor, Congressmember and U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (himself sent to a detention center as a child) co-sponsored a bill that became the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, providing for reparations to be paid to those who survived the ordeal. They each also received a written apology from the president of the United States.

And today, I offer my own apology, on behalf of our university, to the entire San José community. To those personally affected by this dark period in American history, and to those feeling the impact as allies for racial equality and social justice: I am sorry.

Monday marks the 82nd anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. Our university, which has designated the date, Feb. 19, as an annual Day of Remembrance, will host a day-long program dedicated to remembering the role of the executive order in the incarceration campaign. More than 80 years later, we cannot go back in time to change what happened; but, we can — and will — refuse to forget the pain and indignity inflicted on not only U.S. citizens, but human beings, including on our own campus.

Cynthia Teniente-Matson is president of San Jose State University.

Alzheimer’s is a disease that is largely misunderstood — many people think of it as something that only affects the elderly or that it is a normal part of aging. The prevalence of this disease is growing, unfortunately. But being common hasn’t made it normal. And being young doesn’t make you immune.

My wife, 52, who is already a caregiver to our pre-teen son, will eventually be a caregiver to me, too, as my disease progresses. She’s not alone. Across California there are nearly 1.4 million family and friends providing more than 1.8 billion hours of unpaid care annually to loved ones living with Alzheimer’s, a generosity valued at more than $44 billion, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Despite its prevalence and the sheer number of people it touches, in our experience there are limited resources and support for caregivers faced with managing Alzheimer’s — and even fewer for those experiencing Alzheimer’s at a young age, wondering how to explain or support our children through this diagnosis. There are no resources for teachers or counselors, because supportive care for young children whose parents are living with Alzheimer’s isn’t widely recognized.

Of all the misconceptions about Alzheimer’s, the one most frustrating to me is when people learn of my diagnosis: They assume I’m no longer capable of carrying on conversations or making decisions. Because so little is understood about the disease, people aren’t sure how to interact with me. The result is often experiencing a frustrating lack of connection with other people, which can compound our Alzheimer’s diagnosis with depression.

But despite the challenges, I am hopeful about the important research advancements that have been made. Most significant is the opportunity to consider newly developed treatments — the first ever shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s — approved by the FDA last year.

That opportunity is possible because of increased federal investments in Alzheimer’s research over the last decade. This significant effort to address Alzheimer’s and other dementia, a result of Congress passing the bipartisan National Alzheimer’s Project Act, has changed the path of Alzheimer’s research. Equally instrumental is the bipartisan Alzheimer’s Accountability Act that has ensured that Congress hears directly from scientists at the NIH about the amount of resources needed to address the Alzheimer’s public health crisis. 

Both of these laws have changed the trajectory of Alzheimer’s for those living with the disease and their caregivers. And both of these laws are set to expire soon.

Too many of us in the Bay Area are impacted by this disease to allow smart and meaningful policies that are effectively addressing Alzheimer’s and other dementia to lapse.

I am grateful that my congressional representative, Anna Eshoo, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, has shown leadership and continued support for the Alzheimer’s and dementia community. With Congress back in session, I hope we can count on Congress to swiftly reauthorize the two acts to build on the progress made over the last decade, renewing our nation’s commitment to fighting Alzheimer’s and other dementia.

Taisei Kinoshita is a long-time resident of San Jose living with Alzheimer’s disease. Following his diagnosis, he recently retired after 25 years as a biotechnology scientist in cancer research.

The governor had chosen Riverview Elementary School, in Parlier, southeast of Fresno, to dramatize his first bill-signing, an interim fix to provide tens of millions of dollars to buy bottled water for communities with contaminated wells. “We can’t even provide basic drinking water to a million-plus Californians?” Newsom said, before posing for photo ops where drinking fountains had been sealed for more than a year. “Pathetic.”

He vowed to find money to finance permanent solutions to the problem, most prevalent in the Central Valley. “I don’t deserve to be your governor if I can’t figure out a way to get that done.”

A few months later, he and the Legislature did find funds: $1.3 billion over 10 years to help hundreds of small water districts that rely on groundwater from wells that have gone dry or become contaminated by agricultural and industrial waste.

Finding the money has turned out to be the easy part. Five years after the governor’s visit, students at Riverview still drink bottled water.

Faced with attitudes toward state government that range from distrust to low expectations, Sacramento officials have struggled to forge partnerships in communities divided by class and race. For once, the state has money, along with increased authority to force changes. What’s missing is leadership to disrupt a process where intolerable delays are accepted as inevitable.

The State Water Resources Control Board, which administers the $1.3 billion drinking water program, has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in planning, technical assistance and construction grants, and some progress has been made. But water districts are joining the failing list as fast as they are moving off it. Of California’s 3,000-plus water districts, the most recent data show 386 systems failing, 507 at risk and 403 more potentially at risk.

The state’s inability to get ahead of the crisis is due in part to complications made worse by intransigence, in part to better data and stricter safety standards that implicate more systems, and in part to drought and climate change. But it’s also due to reliance on a state agency built for regulatory functions, now called on to collaborate with struggling and polarized communities and ensure pipelines get built. The water board took particular umbrage at the title of a recent state audit that criticized its lack of urgency; it is hard to see how any other word could be appropriate.

The red dots on the water board’s map that tracks water systems dependent on unsafe or dry wells are clustered in unincorporated areas, overwhelmingly lower income, home to people of color, historically shut out of cities by racial covenants and redlining. Forced to live in places without public services, they dug wells, and when the wells ran dry, they dug deeper. The most realistic solution for many of these communities is to consolidate — with the local governments that historically shut them out.

In Tulare County, the hostility now is more veiled than in the 1970s, when the General Plan deemed 15 communities nonviable and recommended withholding public services, including water, so they would “enter a process of long term, natural decline” and fade away. Thirteen are still around. One of them is Tooleville, 77 homes separated from the Sierra Nevada foothills by the Friant-Kern Canal, full of water the residents cannot touch. The state pays for each home to receive six five-gallon jugs every two weeks.

For decades, the solution has been clear: Connect Tooleville with the city of Exeter’s water supply — less than one mile away. Exeter refused, repeatedly. After state money became available to cover the added costs, and it seemed the city had run out of excuses, the council voted unanimously to discontinue talks. “We have our own issues,” Exeter Mayor Mary Waterman-Philpot told a roomful of Tooleville residents, snorting at the idea the state would pay for the one-mile extension. “I’d like Santa Claus to come do things, too.”

Eventually, the state ordered them to consolidate; an agreement was finalized last year. A short-term fix to connect Tooleville homes to Exeter’s water is supposed to be in place by September, but the full project is estimated to take eight years.

In the nearby hamlet of Tombstone, a $3 million project that was supposed to be finished in 2022 is now a $6 million project with an estimated completion at the end of 2026, delayed by difficulties negotiating with owners of land needed to run one mile of pipe to connect to a nearby system.

The Essential Question on the white board in the Parlier school remains as unresolved as the solution to the school’s water supply: how to meet the challenges.

Newsom is on the record: “That we’re living in a state with a million people that don’t have access to clean, safe, affordable drinking water is a disgrace.” In 2019, he took his Cabinet to the Central Valley to impress upon top aides the import of the drinking water issue. In his first State of the State, the governor stressed that correcting the crisis would “demand political will from each and every one of us.”

Newsom needs to renew and revisit that commitment, and use both his power and his bully pulpit to analyze delays and impose urgency, so that actions live up to rhetoric.

Miriam Pawel is the author of, among other books, “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography.” ©2024 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

That effort has entered hyperdrive as property crime rates have ticked up from historic lows since the start of the global pandemic. Powerful law enforcement interests hope that will cause collective amnesia, that we all forget the disastrous ruin wrought by the failed “tough on crime” policies of the 1980s and 1990s.

The truth is criminal justice reforms like Proposition 47, approved overwhelmingly by voters nine years ago, have pulled California out of a crisis that included multiple people dying weekly from medical neglect in its overstuffed state prisons, a statewide re-arrest rate of over 75% and the entire state prison system nearly being taken over by the federal government.

We were failing by every conceivable measure to provide the safety Californians deserve.

Proposition 47 promised there was a more effective and sustainable way of creating the durable safety every California community should expect. If, instead of using all the tens of billions of dollars we spend every year for public safety on enforcement and incarceration, we invested some of that money back into local communities and into preventing crime and harm from occurring in the first place, we’d produce better safety outcomes.

Voters were clear when they approved Proposition 47 that the failure of the status quo was no longer acceptable, and that we needed to pursue safety strategies grounded in data, research and science. They should be proud of what they’ve achieved so far.

By no longer sending people accused of petty theft or possession of drugs for personal use to state prison for several years at enormous taxpayer expense, and instead making those crimes punishable by up to a year in local jail, California has accomplished two critical things.

First, the state prison population has been safely reduced to a level below a court-ordered population cap that, if exceeded, could trigger a federal takeover.

Second, the state has saved more than $750 million as a result of that reduction in state prison incarceration. That money has been reallocated back to local communities across the state to fund programs data shows are having remarkable success reducing recidivism, increasing housing and employment stability, and making our communities safer.

Data released by the California Board of State and Community Corrections shows that, statewide, Proposition 47-funded programs saw employment increase threefold since 2017 among participants, while participants’ rates of homelessness fell by nearly half.

The Proposition 47-funded program in San Francisco has shown particularly big declines in homelessness (78% of participants were homeless before programming and just 15% after), while Alameda County’s Proposition 47-funded program has also made big strides reducing homelessness (53% before programming to just 10% after).

Since the pandemic, property crime has ticked up from those historic lows, presenting new challenges we must meet. It’s critical the public be assured that when crime does occur, law enforcement will solve it and use existing law to hold people accountable. Government and law enforcement leaders across the state must double down on their commitment to addressing organized retail theft syndicates.

But it’s also imperative we not forget reforms like Proposition 47 continue to work and show us that true safety for all our communities is possible when we prioritize crime and harm prevention.

Tinisch Hollins is executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, the state’s leading public safety advocacy organization, which co-authored Proposition 47 in 2014.

But the prohibitive cost of living in the Bay Area coupled with the government’s rollback of pandemic-era support has magnified our role. Food banks have become the safety net for many Bay Area families, seniors, veterans and students.

Across the Bay Area, reliance on food banks and our partner distribution sites has increased and, in many cases, returned to the same level it was at the peak of the pandemic.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley is serving an average of half a million people every month in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In Alameda County, an estimated 1 in 4 residents is struggling to afford sufficient food. Alameda County Community Food Bank is on pace to provide more food than ever.

Half the people we serve are children and seniors. Most of the other clients are employed, often working multiple jobs — yet their earnings aren’t enough to pay all of their bills. In a recent Second Harvest client survey, more than 70% of respondents reported feeling worried about being able to pay all of their bills the following month.

Government programs are important, but they are based on federal poverty limits, which do not consider the local cost of living. This means many high-need Bay Area families aren’t eligible. This is a systemic issue and yet, increasingly, the only solution is for people to turn to their local food bank.

Food banks are volunteer-dependent and donation-driven. In fact, most Bay Area food banks receive over 80% of their operating revenue from private donations. Right now, the rate of people seeking our support is outpacing donations.

The economics simply don’t add up.

They won’t until our state and federal leaders come together to enforce policies that address food insecurity; the power to determine whether this problem gets worse or better lies squarely with decision-makers in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. We’ve seen the positive impact of programs such as the Child Tax Credit reduce child poverty to historically low levels. Then child poverty doubled when these enhanced benefits were not reauthorized by Congress.

This is a solvable problem, but we need help. This year, it will be critical to call on state legislators, local representatives and Congress to advocate for sustainable systems that reduce food insecurity. Meanwhile, we need people to donate or volunteer to make an immediate, tangible difference right here in our local community.

There is no need more basic than food. We must all work together to meet the short-term need while using our voices to push for long-term solutions that will address hunger and its root causes in our communities.

Leslie Bacho is CEO of Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. Regi Young is Executive Director of Alameda County Community Food Bank.

They would do it alone if need be, their backs to the wall, at a terrifying human cost.

They would be in largely the same situation they were in during the first phase of Russia’s full-scale invasion. After all, the Ukrainians had to wait months to more than a year for the United States to provide the weapons they needed. During those long months, the courage of the Ukrainians and the talent of their commanders were enough to hold off a Russian military whose troops still were fresh, motivated and sure of themselves.

In a worst-case scenario in which Congress continues to refuse to approve the funds requested by President Joe Biden and Europe follows suit in withdrawing support, the conflict would revert to those early stages. And the Ukrainian forces, which I’ve observed for two years while making three documentaries from the front lines, would shift to a long and grueling war of resistance.

But they would not lay down their arms. This war is existential. Of this I am sure.

The choice for the U.S.

So here’s the question: Given that the war will go on, are we going to prolong the fighting or shorten it?

Are we going to allow civilian deaths to pile up or try to minimize them?

Will the United States, for vile political reasons, let the conflict fester and encourage authoritarian and anti-American forces throughout Europe? Or will it decide to come to the aid of its natural and reliable allies in Ukraine?

What message will the country choose to send to imperial China, neo-Ottoman Turkey and an Iran racing toward the nuclear threshold? Will America welcome a multipolar world in which unchecked dictatorships once again lay down the law? Or, having abandoned its allies in Kabul, Aleppo, Erbil and Yerevan, will the country pull itself together behind Kyiv because it’s never too late to correct a series of mistakes?

If it’s the latter — if enough Republicans reconnect with the spirit of Reagan and enough Democrats remain faithful to that of Kennedy; if they want the world’s people to know they are right to rebel and to dream of liberal democracy — then American and allied aid must urgently flow to Ukraine.

Weapons Ukraine needs

European Storm Shadow cruise missiles must be delivered to the Zaporizhzhia region to enable the men and women of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade — which took the village of Robotyne last summer in bold commando operations — to push south past Russian fortifications toward occupied Verbove, Tokmak, Berdyansk and the Azov Sea.

F-16s, whose arrival near Donbas is equally overdue, are an essential complement to the artillery and infantry units working to liberate the Bakhmut and Avdiivka zones and the routes in and out of Donetsk and Luhansk.

To the south, in the Kherson zone, which was liberated more than a year ago by unassisted Ukrainian forces, the need is for river-crossing gear, amphibious equipment and light Bradley tanks. That would enable the Ukrainian commandos under the command of Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk to expand the operations I watched them conducting on far too small a scale to the eastern side of the Dnipro River, near the villages of Krynky, Kozachi Laheri and Korsunka.

For the most part, these weapons are readily available in American and European stockpiles. They come at a cost, of course. But that cost is far lower than that of a defeated Ukraine, which could well embolden Russia to go after a NATO country and force a full-scale U.S. and European intervention.

Our defense budgets today are half what they were during the Cold War — and of what they will have to be if we allow Russia to become an offensive threat again. While we hesitate to pay our respects to international law in dollars, the Ukrainians are paying in blood.

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, author and filmmaker. His latest documentary from the front lines of the war on Ukraine, “Glory to the Heroes,” was released recently nationwide and follows two others, “Slava Ukraini” and “Why Ukraine.”. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.