I’m the default emcee for these things as President of GCCA. It’s wonderful to be very involved with my neighborhood and getting to know so many of my neighbors here in Vallejo. Kudos to my husband for recording most of the meeting with his phone.
Fundraising and hoping to get permanent homes for dogs at the Humane Society of the North Bay we tried selling donated items in San Rafael’s cute French Antique market.
Our coalition of Bay Area Community Resources, Tobacco Free Solano, and LGBTQ Minus Tobacco held a town hall with youth activists at which many dignitaries showed up. Vice-Mayor Verder-Aliga, Councilmember Peter Bregenzer, Vallejo School Board Trustee John Fox, and County Supervisor Monica Brown were in attendance.
The youth activists gave us a presentation and, despite the rain, we were in a beautiful venue of the Dan Foley Center at Lake Chabot in Vallejo, with a covered wraparound patio that allowed us to look over the lake, hills, and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.
I’m very proud to advocate for a Vallejo Tobacco Retail License (TRL) with a coalition of activists from LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, Bay Area Community Resources (BACR) and in my capacity as Co-Chair of Tobacco Free Solano (a program of the Solano Department of Health aka Vibe Solano).
We spoke at the VCUSD School Board meeting and they approved the Tobacco control resolution unanimously. Thank you school board member John Fox for agendizing us and allowing us to speak about this important issue. We are also honored with an opportunity to speak at Vallejo City Council on April 11 about the issue for our city.
Adjoa, Nefer, Tino, Tara, Amaya, me and Jimmy.
With the passage of Prop 31 to ban most flavored tobacco products in California, there is a call to action for local jurisdictions to enforce this new edict. Surveys our coalition did in January, weeks after the law went into effect, showed poor compliance among the 25 tobacco retailers in Vallejo. A Vallejo-specific TRL can accomplish this. TRL’s like the one hundreds of California jurisdictions have like Benicia, are revenue NEUTRAL. The funding from the retail license fees pays for gravely needed code enforcement resources, a bolstering which we know Vallejo could use. TRL’s that are written well can:
Vallejo youth deserve a chance at living their best lives without the fate of struggling health due to a difficult addiction to break. Please endorse a Vallejo-specific TRL to make an impact.
We had a lot of good things going on in February with the Humane Society of the North Bay shelter!
We were given a check from the Vallejo Waterfront Festival as one of the non-profits that benefitted from this two-day event in 2022. Photo courtesy of Vallejo Times Herald.
Volunteers from Cal Maritime Academy here in Vallejo came to volunteer with us, as they regularly do.
My friends and fellow volunteers, Linda Overton and Carlene Coury take two seniors to the wonderful Muttville facility in San Francisco.
Yesterday several of us on the Board of the Humane Society of the North Bay (please donate at HSNB.org) received a generous beneficiary check from the Vallejo Waterfront Weekend, as did numerous other local charities. Go Vallejo!
Found wandering around Vallejo with no microchip and no collar, Snoopy came across as a senior with his white whiskers, mangy hair, and a disheveled look. I didn’t really like him at first especially because he would dart out the door and at one point I had to run after him in slippers. He did not know his name. That was before we had him microchipped and neutered, and also before we put an external gate on our front porch.
I named him after a similarly-colored dog that my grandfather had when I was very young. My grandfather was a big fan of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip.
My friend, neighbor, and fellow Humane Society of the North Bay volunteer, Carlene Coury, directed a staged reading of The White Card, written by Claudia Rankine, at the Pinole Community Theater. In the audience were some activist Vallejoans I was able to introduce her to. After the reading, we got to discuss the multi-layered script with the cast and director. It was quite a moving and timely experience for Black History Month.
I’ve been doing activism against Big Tobacco for years as a volunteer. This week I got my official title as a Co-Chair of Tobacco Free Solano (TFS), a program of Vibe Solano (the Solano County Department of Health). It’s a two-year volunteer term. The picture below is a little gift package they sent which is very sweet. Little do they know I have no intention of watching the Super Bowl, but instead will be going to a play for Black History Month in Pinole, which was directed by my friend.
