"Sunrise, Sun-SET!" Ongoing Misreporting from The Pacific Sun, Currently Under Boycott
The Publication That Failed To Report on the $330 million Ponzi Scheme Run by Marin's Late, Longtime "Human Rights Commissioner" Ken Casey, Suddenly Wants To Talk About the HRC Under Guise of "Equity"
On Saturday, March 16, 2024, I received an email from Pacific Sun reporter Nikki Silverstein, from whom I had been trying to get answers from for over two years with no response. Without any acknowledgment of my previous queries, Silverstein's March 16 email curtly announced that she was writing an article about Marin County's troubled "Human Rights Commission", whose meetings I regularly monitored and critiqued, and she required responses to four paragraphs of answers within 25 hours. As it turned out, Ms. Silverstein had been working on the story for "nearly a year", but had chosen not to ask me any questions about the meetings until a day before her deadline. Such is generally not the sign of a serious publication.
The questions Silverstein submitted showed such a strong bias in favor of the HRC that I immediately forwarded Silverstein's email to Dan Pulcrano, the Pacific Sun's publisher. I informed him that I was willing to give The Pacific Sun, (which had published a prior investigative article I wrote, and previously covered racial arrest data I had collected and analyzed), an exclusive on the HRC, complete with GoPro video showing the male Chair and another male commissioner willfully violating my First Amendment Rights, followed by the Chair shoving me into the doorframe. These violations occurred at the conclusion of the December 2023 HRC meeting, as I politely and civilly attempted to ask questions of the commissioners’ friend, a former Marin and Sonoma deputy who is married to the third most powerful law enforcement official in Sonoma County. In the email to Pulcrano, I pointed out that Silverstein, who is close not only to both of those HRC commissioners, but to members of their cohort, was incapable of remaining objective in reporting this story.
Pulcrano did not respond, and neither did his Editor, Daedalus Howell. Silverstein then wrote back and said that she was the only reporter assigned to the story. In point of fact, Silverstein is the only remaining "reporter" at The Pacific Sun; it is a weekly that is currently being boycotted by many in Marin, and Silverstein's reporting (or lack thereof) is a factor in that boycott. (Other factors include the funding that the Pacific Sun receives via County government for sponsored content, and most notably, the historically anti-war publication's current pro-Israel position amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.)
At A Meeting With Silverstein, The Ghost of Ken Casey Hovers
In the interest of transparency, I called Silverstein, and over a period of three hours and fifty-four minutes, I patiently answered her questions, and asked some of my own. Much of that time Silverstein spent complaining about me, about the County, and overall conveyed a deep sense of fatigue about the hardship of having to produce a weekly short article for publication. (This last part struck me as surprising, given that many of Silverstein's articles are so light that they constitute a form of undisclosed marketing for one subject or another, and might very well be written by AI.)
Silverstein also asked to see the video, and so the following morning, I graciously complied, riding my bike from Berkeley to Marin Civic Center. I showed Silverstein the video, including showing her the assault portion of the video three times, continually scrolling back at her request. Silverstein was also shown video of a third commissioner, Curtis Aikens, dissembling about a very serious use-of-force incident involving his son, Cole Aikens, a Sonoma County deputy.
During any such viewing, one might expect a reporter to ask a subject questions about what they are viewing on the video. But Silverstein wasn't interested in the video so much as she was interested in haranguing me for daring to criticize (how dare you!) the mostly-white homeowners appointed to County Boards and Commissions, in particular two white women with powerful political connections, Heidi Merchen and Ruby Gibney. Silverstein made clear she sees appointees strictly as "volunteers" who have no obligation to disclose their serious conflicts of interest. In fact, Silverstein had spent much of the prior day's conversation revealing that she does not actually understand the term conflict of interest.
But if Silverstein had ever understood conflict of interest, she might have bothered to report on semi-recent, now-deceased Marin Human Rights Commission Chair Ken Casey, who used his position as HRC Chair to help launder his criminal past, and build a $330 million Ponzi scheme out of Marin County. That scheme wiped out the retirement savings of countless Bay Area retirees and no doubt produced some level of additional homelessness. In fact, the story continues to make news over three years after Casey's passing, which is when the grift was finally discovered. But to this day, The Pacific Sun has never covered Ken Casey's Ponzi Scheme, and the Marin I-J has done only minimal reporting on it. (North Bay Business Journal is how most of us learned that the scheme was in the hundreds of millions rather than the mere $70 million reported by the I-J.)
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 1: Recognition of Conflicts of Interest
It should be no surprise that in Silverstein’s March 22, 2024 article on the HRC, which was published several days later than the usual schedule, Silverstein does not even mention conflict of interest, a point in common with her very late article on the failures of the AB 1185 Sheriff Civilian Oversight Working Group (SCOWG), which was rife with severe and undisclosed conflicts of interest. (In fact, neither the Marin Independent-Journal nor The Pacific Sun ever reported the HRC's or SCOWG's conflicts of interest, although the I-J has reported on lesser conflicts of interest when it suits them.)
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 2: How The HRC Helped Tank the SCOWG
Silverstein's article on the HRC misrepresents not only the failures of the HRC, but the ways in which the Chair and Vice-Chair were fitted into the County's SCOWG in order to botch both the SCOWG nomination process and the SCOWG survey process.
The SCOWG nomination process produced a final group that managed to specifically exclude any Black residents of Marin City and any residents of the Canal District. But it was also ideologically narrow, excluding anyone who had a serious desire to challenge County processes, or who would dare to point out that "civilian oversight" has not, in fact, resulted in much or any reform of police and sheriff departments, who continue to grow in size and power.
Meanwhile, the survey process not only failed to return an adequate number of responses, but it was overly focused on white homeowners. This was somewhat predictable, as the Chair and Vice Chair were unfamiliar with Marin City, and with the Canal District, where the over-policing is most common.
Outsiders who would have been able to spot some of these issues were excluded from the process altogether, as the SCOWG meetings were totally secretive. But even at public HRC meetings, the Chair and Vice Chair revealed little of what they were actually doing with SCOWG. I was forced to run multiple CPRA's to figure basic details about SCOWG, but even then we were not permitted even to listen to the meetings, and of the 12 meeting recordings that were made, a full eight were deliberately deleted by the County.
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 3: Any Real Understanding of Diversity
In her article, Silverstein attempts to paint the HRC as a model of diversity, but she declines to note a complaint that was repeatedly raised at HRC meetings: that the same Black and Latino commissioners on HRC were appointed to multiple boards and commissions throughout the County, a process which has willfully excluded more relevant and brighter Black, Latino and other voices who are more critical of County government.
In Silverstein's dim worldview, a Black person with powerful connections who has moved to Novato and who largely agrees with County policy can substitute for a Black person from Marin City, the most overpoliced area in the County, where residents have a longer history pushing back on the County and the Sheriff. Even though the distinction has often been explained by Marin City residents, Silverstein, who reportedly lives in the hills above Marin City, does not yet grasp it.
Notably, Silverstein's HRC article declined to point out that the critics of the HRC were themselves multi-racial. In addition to the concerns expressed by a Black County staffer, Roger Crawford, and a Black former Chair, Curtis Aikens, there were the regular public attendees. This group comprised a Latino retired firefighter who had made history integrating the ranks of SFFD; myself, a biracial white/Asian female reporter who grew up in Marin County; and occasionally a Black Marin City resident who also lent a voice in urging the HRC to place the 32 years of racial arrest demographics I had CPRA'd on the HRC agenda.
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 4: Full Disclosure on Supposed "Lack of Training"
Silverstein never asked why the HRC refused to put the item on the agenda; instead, her article promotes the notion that the HRC members simply lacked sufficient training to do their jobs. But the commissioners all receive the same training. And still the recordings show two years of HRC meetings wherein commissioners and Chairs still did not understand how to run a meeting or what the Brown Act required. This was no lack of intellect: Their contempt for the rules indicated commissioners' extreme confidence that the County would have their backs since they presented no real challenge to the County.
But there's another question Silverstein failed to ask: How could people who had not been properly trained have been assigned to so many other Boards and Commissions? Were they as willfully incompetent on the other boards and commissions? Or was it only when they were on HRC?
Again, by failing to question the strategy of appointing the same compliant people to multiple boards and commissions, local media is complicit in a system wherein more thoughtful residents are blocked from appointment. Silverstein is afraid to point out the obvious: there's no reason for the County to continue appointing the same people to multiple boards/commissions.
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 5: HRC Willfully Neglected Racial Arrest Data
In her article, Silverstein implies the arrest data was something the HRC was concerned about, but declines to note that one of the principal reasons I attended the HRC meetings so consistently was to try to get the commissioners to place the 32 years of arrests referred to prosecution data (1989 through 2020) on the agenda. The significance of that data cannot be overstated given its stark disparities; sadly, the HRC and the Board of Supervisors have refused to put the data on the agenda, ever.
Moreover, Silverstein chose not to include the fact that my merely trying to make a public comment about this data into the record during the April 2023 meeting resulted in the Chair's wife, Amy Portje, shrieking at me from across the room as her husband, the Chair, singled me out as the problem for merely reporting the information. That same batch of video from the April meeting also shows Silverstein's friend, Meg Brizzolara, repeatedly calling me a "carpetbagger" because I had bothered to show up to a meeting in Marin County. (As historian Eric Foner has pointed out, "Carpetbagger" is a racist term.) Silverstein did not acknowledge watching the video of her friend Brizzolara engaged in this racialized harassment.
On the audio recording of that meeting, my own voice remains on point and even somewhat plaintive despite the bullying that Portje and his cohort brought to bear, while the voice of the Chair’s wife is, for no good reason, on the level of a horror film scream. It is no surprise that the group of County insiders whom Chair Portje had collected for that meeting complained that the more polite participant was the problem and not either of the Portjes. And for the record, Silverstein did not show any interest in seeing this video, even though she was informed of it.
(I note that, although Silverstein has been employed by the Pacific Sun for the last 19 years, she never bothered to run any CPRA for that racial arrest data. Similarly: she never wrote a single article dealing with the Sausalito Marin City School District, even though the struggles in that District were ongoing for decades, culminating in a historic 2019 desegregation order. That Silverstein has begun to cover any issues in Marin City in the last two years is largely the result of considerable complaint about her prior failures.)
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 6: HRC's Claims Don't Hold Up
Silverstein also doesn't include in her article the fact that many of the HRC's claims about its accomplishments simply don't hold up. In a December 12 email sent to Matthew Hymel at 1:26 a.m., Chair Portje made the astouding claim that, after he became Chair, "the HRC achieved several milestones, including advising County Supervisors on establishing more humane criteria for opening the County's emergency shelter". But Portje made no acknowledgment that the shelter opened even less frequently after this amazing "humane criteria" than before.
Similarly, Silverstein omits the fact that the HRC, well aware of the plight of Black USMC veteran Jimmy Sanders, whose case was repeatedly brought forward to the HRC and the County, was allowed to die on the streets of San Rafael last August, with no intervention on the part of the HRC members who claimed to be so concerned about racial discrimination and homelessness. Yet in our discussion, Silverstein repeatedly berated me for pointing out that Commissioner Jason Sarris, who is white and younger than Jimmy Sanders, was housed by the County, while Jimmy Sanders' housing voucher was allowed to expire. But the point stands: Sanders was treated unfairly because he was Black, and Sarris was favored both in housing and in appointments. Moreover, Sanders would never have needed a housing voucher if officials had not improperly seized his RV, in which he lived. And fair to say that Sanders, whose health was rapidly deteriorating since he was placed in San Rafael's notorious SSA internment camp, which the HRC also took no action on, should have had priority.
Further, Silverstein makes no mention of the meetings when the inhumane practices at the Marin County Jail were defended by then-Chair Curtis Aikens, with absolutely zero pushback from then-Vice-Chair Portje. In fact, most of the time, the HRC seemed more intent on complaining that the County wasn't providing them with business cards, than with actually engaging with the community.
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 7: Full Explanation About Claims About Community Fridges and Brake Light Clinics
Silverstein attempts to portray the HRC as victims of a County that simply didn't inform them that there was no way to fund their community fridges and brake light clinic programs. But as anyone who attended the meetings could tell you, there were valid reasons for the County to question the community fridges concept.
The County has stated it wants to expand the SNAP program, and with good reason. Expanded SNAP benefits allow low-income households to buy fresh food from reputable grocers that fit their nutritional needs. This is not the case with community fridges, which, for all their good intentions, can unfortunately create a two-tiered system wherein the poor must hope that something that suits their family will be available, uncontaminated, in a community fridge that may or may not maintain standard temperatures. What the community fridges project really does is create a feel-good distraction rather than address massive cuts to benefits programs and rising food costs.
The brake light clinic, which was a novel idea many years ago thanks to DSA, is not so popular in 2024. One obvious reason is that pre-textual stops didn't magically disappear when people got their brake lights fixed; in some places, they increased. That's because pre-textual stops never had anything to do with brake lights – if it's not brake lights, it will be something else. What the brake light clinic does provide is, like the community fridge, a distraction, much like the "civilian oversight" process that makes "progressives" look busy as more power and money is handed to the police. No County appointees are allowed to ask that the police hand any money back, and certainly not the HRC.
What's Missing From Silverstein's Article 8: An Honest Appraisal of the Go-Pro Video
What is particularly disconcerting about Silverstein's article is that she claims that Portje's assault of me was not clear to her. It is very clear what Portje is doing on the video. This is in line with her failing to question Portje on his false claim that he was the one who was assaulted.
Silverstein falsely claims that I only showed the video to her once. Silverstein's claims are untrue.
Some people questioned why I granted Silverstein an interview at all, given her serial misrepresentations, or worse, why I would trouble myself to show her the video of the assault. I understand their discomfort. But Silverstein's article makes clear why my judgment may have been correct: I generously provided her with proof of what had occurred, and she still very willfully chose to refute even the video evidence that shows her friends violating the law.
Preview:
This week, I have a meeting scheduled with Supervisor Eric Lucan. He is the first Marin County official to agree to watch the GoPro video of the December meeting. There is much more to write about the relationship between Silverstein and Portje, between The Pacific Sun and Marin County's local government, and what Silverstein has repeatedly omitted from her reporting – with generous permission from her editors and her publisher. I will wait until after the meeting with Lucan to report on that.
I add as a preview that Silverstein made a rather shocking comment last Monday about the kids in the ceasefire movement in Marin, and part of the next article will deal with Silverstein's (and the Pacific Sun's) pro-military bias.
©️2024 Eva Chrysanthe