A Time for Reflection
The Jewish New Year of 5783 began at sundown on Sept. 25. The start of a new year begins a 10-day process known in Hebrew as “teshuvah”, which means return — a return to who we intrinsically and authentically are. It is a time of self-reflection; taking inventory of the past year and making note of when we embodied our best self and when we didn’t. It is a time of forgiveness, both of self and other. Once we see where we have missed the mark — where we have not been who we aspire to be — we come to understand ourselves more deeply. Then, we can make a commitment to do better in the coming year. To bring more kindness, compassion, love and peace into our lives.
If we were to apply this teshuvah/returning process to our city government, what would we discover?
In Sept. 2021, a homeless shelter was opened on Grayson Street, along with a safe parking lot for RV dwellers. Both of these leases — for the shelter and for the lot — were due to expire on Friday Sept. 30, 2022. The residents were not informed of any plan for when the lease expired and feared being back on the street. Just one day before the leases were due to expire, the City Manager introduced a last minute ordinance at a city council meeting to extend the lease for the shelter by one month. There was nothing in the ordinance about extending the lease on the safe parking lot.
At the meeting, several RV dwellers from the safe lot described the humanitarian crisis that would ensue if the lot closed. Unfortunately, the response from our city leaders remained disjointed and reactive. The City Manager, speaking at the invitation of the Mayor, said “All remaining vehicles [in the safe parking lot] can stay through the weekend. Starting at 11pm on Friday Sept. 30, BPD officers will provide onsite security as we secure security services.” There had been no security services at the lot during the past year; why would they be needed now?
Then, the Mayor announced that the lease for the shelter would be extended through December 31, not only for a month. It remained unclear whether the lease for the lot would be extended, too, and there was no discussion about creating a thoughtful, coherent plan for what will be done to prevent a similar crisis at the end of the year. The city’s lack of oversight and coordination continues to perpetuate the growing mental health crisis in both housed and unhoused residents.
Let’s apply a “teshuvah” framework to this situation: city leaders would reflect on how this went unaddressed until the very last minute; the effect it had on staff, service providers, shelter residents and RV dwellers. Then, in an effort to create a more compassionate outcome, a plan with clear oversight and coordination that centered the people involved would be implemented.
This is just one of many issues where our city leaders have missed the mark. There’s the paltry response thus far to the BPD overtime audit completed March 2022 that revealed abuse of overtime and egregious lack of accountability. There’s the unknown status of funded Reimagining Public Safety initiatives — including a gun violence prevention program that our community has requested for years. There’s the lack of transparency in hiring a new Chief of Police and on and on.
We the people must employ a kind of “teshuvah” process ourselves: let’s reflect on how our city leaders have performed, see where they continue to miss the mark and make a new choice when we vote in November.
This piece was first published in the Berkeley Times on October 6, 2022.
