The Wheel – September 2, 2020

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Due to the recent concerns about the COVID-19 virus and a desire to follow the suggestions of health care professionals, the club will be having virtual meetings until further notice.

“The Rotary Club of Stockton Begins the 2nd Century of Service to the Stockton Community”
(8)

Activities

• Call to Order and Welcome! President Gary welcomed members and guests to the Virtual Rotary Club of Stockton meeting!
• Pledge of Allegiance & Four Way Test – SRE President Paul Kozlow.
• 

  Steve Reid

  Thought for the Day – Steve Reid quoted Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville , colloquially known as Tocqueville (/ˈtɒkvɪl, ˈtoʊk-/), was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840):

  “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

  “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

  “It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

  “I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

  “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

• Special Thanks Today to – Matt Grizzle for orchestrating these meetings, Dudley Drake for his work on speaker recruitment, Past-President and Assistant Governor Waqar Rizvi for taking notes, Frank Whitney for the photo’s and Eric Duran’s role of keeping The Wheel rolling.
• 

  Past-President Nick Curtin

  Concern Report – Kathy Wary passing wife of Dick Wary, Past member of Rotary Club of Stockton: Past President, Nick Curtain talked about Dick and Kathy Wary. Dick was an active member of Rotary Club of Stockton and a generous contributor of Stockton Rotary Endowment. Both his wife and him were one of the sponsors of the Woodward Literacy fund.

• Rotary Direct – No sign ups this past week stuck at 9.  Please consider signing up; it’s easy to do!
• Club Service & District Calendar for 2020-2021 – Click HERE for the latest list! Don’t miss out on some great activities that may or may not happen in the near future (due to the COVID-19 virus.)

Club Announcements

• Fantasy Football – Secretary Matt announced he has contacted the members that participated in the past draft.
• Meeting Note Takers – PLEASE Volunteer for a once a month opportunity to keep the Wheel roll along. Our Wheel editor will appreciate you stepping up to assist! What’s a better way to know what’s going on in your club? -editor. Contact Corie Stewart at corie@gemcorp.com

When we resume regular meetings..

• Use That Credit Card at The Meeting – You may now pay for lunch, raffle tickets (minimum Credit Card Purchase of $5.00) and other purchase at the Club meetings with a credit Card.
• Potential Members – To encourage Club members to bring a potential member to the Wednesday meetings the Rotary Club of Stockton will pay for the 1st meal of a potential member brought by a Club member. For the proper procedure when proposing a new member, read this document.

PLEASE Volunteer for a once a month opportunity to keep the Wheel roll along.  Our Wheel editor will appreciate you stepping up to assist!  What’s a better way to know what’s going on in your club? -editor.  Contact Corie Stewart at corie@gemcorp.com

 Vocational Talk

Michael Blower

Past President, Rotarian Michael started working in the real estate industry in 2002 when he was working for a title company. Michael’s dad Past Rotary Club of Stockton President, Bob Blower trained him to be a real estate agent. On the very first day as an agent Michael sold a house. Bob Blower and Kris Blower moved to Hawaii.  When Bob & Kris went to Hawaii, he worked in Bob’s agency, Bob Blower Realtors, to keep it going.  When they returned, Michael decided to start his my own real estate office.

A few years ago he started working for Grupe Real Estate.  Michael also said that the difference between a realtor and real estate agent is that a realtor in governed strictly under the code of ethics where as a real estate agent is not.

Stockton Rotary Endowment and
The Rotary Club of Stockton Charity Allocations

The Stockton Rotary Endowment Fund (SRE) and the Rotary Club of Stockton are soliciting requests for funds for the projects of charitable organizations operating in San Joaquin County. There are various funds within SRE that have specific requirements related to funding amount and approval. For applications and complete explanations as to the funding process, specific fund requirements, amounts available, etc. Go to this link for more information, or send mail to Peter Gormsen, Charity Allocations Committee Chairman, 1401 N. Hunter Street, Stockton, Ca 95202. Deadline for applications is September 30, 2020.

Guest Speaker

Speaker: Leonard Hansen, CEO, “Emergency Food Bank”
Introduced By: Steve Morales

Steve Morales

Rotarian, Steve Morales, Chair of the Board of Director of the Emergency Food Bank introduced Dr. Leonard Hansen, Ph.D, who is the newly appointed CEO of the Emergency Good Bank. He has been with the Emergency Food Bank for 100 days.  Previously, Dr. Hansen was a professor in a college and has an extensive background in retail food industry. Dr. Hansen comes to the Emergency Food Bank from Howard Training Center in Modesto where he served as Director of Operations for over 5 years, supervising training of adults with disabilities in multiple settings. He managed the Senior Meals-On-Wheels Program for Stanislaus County.

Leonard Hansen

Leonard Hansen Emergency Food Bank: Leonard shared a picture of a warehouse filled with food items. He said at the Emergency Food Bank, they are trying to expand to store more food. Community has been generous in their donations. USDA and local grocery stores have been also making generous donations.. At the Emergency Food Bank they service about 8000 plus families every month. The pantry is open from 9 am to noon every day and there are 250 cars and families they serve. They have two public pantries that goes out with appointments to deliver food. Due to COVID-19 they have changed their distribution protocols. Due to lack of volunteers, they had National Guard helping out for food distribution. The cars line up and everyone stays in their cars and drive up to collect the food items. The cars line up to three blocks. People stay in the cars and they don’t get out. The employees check them in. The Emergency Food Bank also does distribution for the Visionary Homes project. There is also a partnership developed with 211 and door dash. Community members can call 211 and signup and then can be qualified. First day of this service there were 35 deliveries and the second day there were 71. National Guard have been really helpful. They have been critical to help out serving the clients as they were no volunteers due to COVID19. Till end of September, National guard will be helping out. The food bank is trying to build a volunteer program. At the moment there are 5 guards and 14 volunteers. Several Stockton groups have helped out volunteering. There are also two 40 feet containers that are used as refrigeration. Once a year Run and Walk Against Hunger is done near Thanksgiving to raise funds. This year the plan is to the same virtually. They need volunteer services are needed during the weekday from 8 m to 1 pm. The food statistics are as follows. 8,396 families are served every month, 128 thousand pounds and 483 thousand pounds Meat and Diary is distributed

Birthday Celebration Challenge!!!

July finals 14/15 or 93.3%
August Wrap up – 10/11 or 90.1%
September Birthday Celebrations: 15 birthdays this month!

Recognitions

• $70 – Paul Kozlow for his birthday (9/1) – $70 to SRE
• $100 – Steve Luthy – $100 for his birthday next week – to SRE

Next Meeting: September 9, 2020
Davis Harper, “Community Choice Energy”

My name is Davis Harper, and I am a writer, organizer, and advocate for the sustainable practices necessary to protect the planet’s most vulnerable communities. I’m very excited to be the newest member of The Climate Center team as the Community Outreach Specialist for Stockton and San Joaquin County. My role at The Climate Center focuses on encouraging the city and county to establish a Community Choice Energy agency (CCA) to serve residents and businesses in the city and county with cleaner electricity at competitive rates. About twenty CCAs operate in California, and it’s high time that our community begin to enjoy the benefits other communities are experiencing.

My appreciation for nature started from a young age, growing up in a small valley town an hour-and-a-half west of Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest.

At the time, the deceptive calm of a quiet Sierra meadow or trickling creek felt untouched – a forever moment that had been and would always be. It wasn’t until much later that I would start to understand the many threats to these places, which often seem to be grounded in ideals of economic development.

I can still recite parts of the speech I gave on restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley in one of my first college courses. The flooding of the valley in 1923 was the first issue for me that highlighted the dominant reckless attitudes we’ve exhibited toward the environment over the past century. Open grasslands? Graze them. Pine forests? Clear cut and send them off to a mill. More than a thousand acres of wetlands and serene meadows with towering Ponderosa pines, vibrant wildflowers, mule deer, black bears and more? Looks like an opportunity to funnel water to San Francisco.

With that speech, a seed had been planted.

The environmental impacts of mining and cattle ranching and the dislocation of indigenous inhabitants from national forests and parklands were likely not reflected in my Freshman presentation. This was before my time at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where terms like “political ecology” and “environmental justice” were integrated into my vocabulary. After earning my B.A. in Environmental Studies in 2018, I took a job at a local newspaper in the Sierra Nevada foothills, reporting on environmental issues and local government.

The work has helped me contextualize the concept that no issue lives in a vacuum, which makes careful reporting all the more important. Consider the intersection of wildfire protection strategies, forest restoration initiatives, logging interests, community power dynamics, climate change and, among members of the public, a general paranoia that their house will be the next to go up in flames come summer. With each stakeholder introduced to the mix, compromises across what appear to be a convoluted tangle of agendas start to emerge.

The experience has ingrained in me the principle that global change starts one conversation at a time. Concepts that seemed too “big” or “complicated” to have an opinion about were starting to occupy my daily Google searches. Talks with elected officials, passionate community organizers, off-the-grid recluses and business owners – all of whom landed across the spectrum on local and regional political issues – helped paint a picture in my mind of a divided community with so much potential for unity.

Everyone’s worth hearing out, and they’re worth protecting, too.

In Stockton, I spent the summer of 2019 collaborating with Rise Stockton – a coalition of nonprofits and the City – on the City’s Sustainable Neighborhood Plan, a long-term framework meant to inform the City Council on viable avenues for shifting to sustainable development practices. The emphasis is on carbon sequestration and emissions reductions in lower-income communities. Some efforts to achieve that include urban greening initiatives, walkable and bikable transportation planning and the promotion and organization of worker-owned cooperatives to sell fresh produce to local residents.

As we face climate change and its cascading consequences, it’s more imperative now than ever to practice historical and cross-cultural empathy – to share and hear the stories of those who came before us. That’s how we’ll build lasting partnerships with the diverse range of stakeholders necessary for meaningful climate action.

It’s not enough to only consider the soundbites of a global 1°C increase since the Industrial Revolution – upticks in severe droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and other natural disasters. Equally crucial are the quantifiable, albeit, quieter injustices on each other and the planet that we’ve mined, fracked, clear cut and sprayed pesticides on for more than a century.

Lower-income communities in the City of Stockton and the Central Valley, in general, endure some of the worst air quality in the state.

We can’t let fears of changing marketplaces scare us away from breaking cycles we’ve known for decades to be impacting air, soil and water quality all over the world.

Advancing Community Choice Energy in Stockton and San Joaquin County will put power into the hands of community members to determine where their energy comes from and keep local dollars circulating in the local economy. It’ll take a commitment from the city and other community leaders to embrace Community Choice, and I hope to encourage those conversations and continue building momentum for this necessary transition.

I’m excited to grow, educate, and share positivity and hope in my work with The Climate Center and make some new friends along the way.

Please reach out to davis@theclimatecenter.org if you’d like to know more about what community choice energy is and how you can support efforts in Stockton to establish a community choice energy agency.

Upcoming Speakers

(Virtual unless otherwise noted)

September 2020

• 16 – Sylvan Young, “The Salvation Army”
• 23 – Paul Stebbins, “FixUS”
• 30 – Christopher Callahan, UOP President

October 2020

• 07 – Kuy Ky, “RYLA”
• 14 – Peter Jaffee, “Stockton Symphony”
• 21 – Dr. Joe Serra, “Polio Update”
• 28 – TBA

September Birthdays…

Photos…