St Helena Star Editorial

Time to face reality

By Doug Ernst
PUBLISHER
Thursday, May 13, 2010

Several letter writers in this week’s edition complain that the Star had the temerity last week to publish — on the front page, no less — a threat by Santa Rosa attorney David Grabill to sue the City of St. Helena if its soon-to-be-completed General Plan Housing Element fails to comply with state law.

One writer says she “resented” the Star for publishing the threat so prominently.

Still another said that publishing the threat was tantamount to inciting “outside agitators.”

“Who is David Grabill?” a third letter writer wants to know.

The outrage reminded me of a 1966 Mad Magazine parody of Ozzie and Harriet, the television sitcom portraying the perfect American family, the Nelsons.

The satire featured “Oozie” and “Harried” and their two sons, “Divot” and “Rickety.” It opens with “Oozie” reading a newspaper with articles missing from beneath headlines such as “Vietnam,” “Laos” and “Race Riots.”

“Harried” is telling a neighbor, “I cut out the articles that might disturb him.”

“Oozie” tells his wife: “I think we should vacation in Cuba this year…”

The point is, newspapers in 1966 printed a lot of “bad news” that Americans didn’t like reading but needed to see. Television comedies were crafted to buffer Americans from bad news.

Forty-four years later, there’s no way to protect people from bad news. Not only is it all around us, it’s also printed, broadcast, podcast, i-cast, e-mailed, Twittered and Facebooked from sea to shining sea.

The truth is, attorneys like David Grabill are going to continue to threaten to sue cities whether the St. Helena Star publishes his threats or not. Nevertheless, let me take a stab at answering the question, “Who is David Grabill?”

According to information gleaned from a 2003 article by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and a Tuesday morning phone interview, the 68-year-old Grabill:

• Participated in Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic 1963 march on Washington, D.C.

• Worked on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968.

• Worked 14 years with California Rural Legal Assistance in Santa Rosa as a legal aid lawyer and housing advocate for farm workers.

• Won a court injunction, in 1982, voiding the arrests of about 50 farmworkers by federal immigration officials and the City of Calistoga, who raided homes and marched arrestees through town in handcuffs. He was assisted by Lincoln Avenue social worker Ana Gonzalez, who is now Ana Vigil, owner of Ana’s Cantina in St. Helena.

• Went to work as a lawyer with the Santa Rosa-based Housing Advocacy Group, formed in 1998 by activists trying to provide housing for low-income people, seniors, farm workers, the disabled and the homeless.

• Sued or threatened to sue more than a half-dozen local governments, winning at least seven major lawsuits against Healdsburg (1991), Sonoma County (1998), Rohnert Park (2001), Santa Rosa (2002), Napa County (2004), Humboldt County (2010) and Mendocino County (2010), requiring taxpayers to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and reaching settlements that require planning for thousands of affordable homes and apartments.

• Worked with Father John Brenkle, the St. Helena monsignor, on housing issues.

• Worked on behalf of St. Helena tenants being forced out of mobile homes by Hall Winery.

• Forced developers to develop less profitable homes.

• Worked with environmentalists to accept housing on land they wanted to protect.

St. Helena residents can follow the example set by Mad Magazine’s “Harried Nilson,” cut articles out of the newspaper and, as the parody said, “live completely and hermetically sealed off from reality,” but that won’t stop David Grabill.

Instead, residents can keep Grabill out of St. Helena City Hall and Napa County Superior Court by making sure that the city’s Housing Element complies with state law.

Thanks for reading.