Last weekend, Sacramento City leaders shut down the Tower Bridge to host Sacramento elite at a dinner to celebrate their self-designated "Farm to Fork Capitol" of America. This gala dinner, which cost between $175 and $625 per person (depending on how close to the King you wanted to sit), capped off two weeks of self-indulgent faux service to the Sacramento community. Sacramento's leading couple, Kevin Johnson and Angelique Ashby were in attendance.
The inappropriateness of this event was noted in the Sacramento Bee and Sacramento News & Review, among other places. Each recognized that with a median household income of $55,000, farm to fork groceries are a stretch on the budget, and this event was just over-the-top.
What this celebration highlighted most of all is the low wages and poverty that pervades significant portions of Sacramento. In the City of Sacramento, more than one-fourth of residents live below the poverty level, compared to one-fifth statewide. Local farmers markets throughout our communities have been a welcome staple of Sacramento since long before City leaders decided to politically capitalize on the backs of local growers. However, fresh fruits and vegetables, grass-fed beef, and ranch-made cheese and butter are normally too pricey for struggling families to eat more than a couple times each month.
Promoters of "organic" produce and locally grown products tend to brush aside this simple economic fact, saying, "sure it's a little more expensive, but it's better for you". For families who know exactly how much money is in their bank account - to the penny - because they need every penny to eat and survive, eating "better" just isn't part of the equation. The struggle is to survive, and City leaders aren't helping ease that struggle.
If City leaders are going to go through the time, expense, and public inconvenience of holding a two-week festival and shutting down a major thoroughfare in Sacramento, shouldn't that event focus on creating jobs and economic opportunities for the 40,000+ Sacramentans unemployed and looking for jobs, or the 58,000 Sacramentans out of work and collecting social security disability? City leaders regularly extol the virtues of Farm to Fork, a new Entertainment Sports Complex, and recently a new MLS Soccer Stadium, but when was the last time you heard them talk about the rest of us.
The rest of us are those that are taking care of our families and making ends meet. The rest of us are the 125,000 that are struggling with a wage less than $24,000/yr for a family of four (25.6%). The rest of us are the 40,000 that are out of work, but desperately looking for a job (8.4%). The rest of us are the thousands of college graduates that must spend two hours of their day (that could be spent with family) commuting to the bay area, because there are no opportunities for them in Sacramento.
The rest of us aren't paying for the privilege of sitting next to the man who wants all of the power (http://yesonmeasurel.org/), and the rest of us aren't developers making billions on large City-promoted projects. The rest of us are voters and taxpayers, though.
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