It's been quite frustrating to watch the leader(s) of the ill-informed and misguided boycott campaign at the Sacramento Natural Foods Cooperative rant and rave about the alleged lack of democracy at our member-owned Co-op. For months, the chief protagonist and a handful of her followers have picketed the store, harassed customers, and generally tried to create mayhem within the Co-op community. Last Saturday, they wore Statue of Liberty hats in some sort of convoluted attempt to convince people that democracy isn't alive and well at the store. And now, after having exhausted every available option permitted within the Cooperatives by-laws, they are trying to sue their way onto our Co-op's

Midtown residents have been dealing for years with the impacts of a City led campaign to "Bring People Downtown" that ignored the fact that people are already here. Media and Midtown Business Association boosters have contributed by consistently disparaging the existing mixed-use neighborhoods as a desolate, disgusting and scary wasteland; a "dead zone" with invisible/irrelevant residents. Yet, Midtown's now-attractive and lucrative historic neighborhoods ONLY exist, due to the diligent, hard work and determination of residents, preservationists and neighborhoods associations, over the past few decades. Residents met with the MBA and other stakeholders in 2009 as part of MBA's Regional

 As the last of the election ballots are being counted, with pundits and pollsters settling down to a long required sabbatical, a major question comes to my mind. It’s a question of “Social Responsibility.” I know a few readers hear the word social, and images of Lenin, Stalin, and the last 3 letters “i-s-m”, flash in bold tangential obscurity. No doubt, with the post election blues looming so close, the word still strikes a provocative reaction from the newly branded neo-libertarians. Let me alleviate the idea by stipulating, this opinion has nothing to do with socioeconomic structure. First, let me preface this piece by saying, I refused to write this before the election. Maybe it’s my