To the editor: Northern California (by which I imply the counties north of Sacramento, not San Francisco) is our house. Studying employees author Jessica Garrison’s article on redistricting, nevertheless, it seems extra like a set of stereotypes (“Why many citizens in deep-red Northern California are fuming about Newsom’s maps,” Aug. 20).
Sure, our counties are largely rural. Agriculture kinds the spine of many native economies. A few of the stereotypes do maintain true, and it’s no secret that our area tends to vote extra conservatively. However that’s not the entire story. We’re additionally house to universities, hospitals, cultural occasions, museums and rising cities like Chico and Redding. And like each different a part of California, we share the identical elementary wants: protected communities, entry to healthcare, good colleges, inexpensive housing and alternatives for our kids.
What the article missed most is the frustration we really feel at being left behind. The challenges going through our area — healthcare shortages, excessive most cancers and opioid abuse charges, suicide, underperforming colleges, rising housing prices and restricted job alternatives — mirror these in California’s city facilities. But our communities are routinely ignored by Sacramento.
It’s simpler to dismiss folks by labeling their beliefs as unpopular or out of contact than it’s to have interaction with the true points. The reality is that we aren’t so completely different from our fellow Californians within the south. We wish good jobs, properties for our households and higher futures for our kids.
If certainly the energy of our state is variety, then we have to additionally contemplate that we’re far more related than this story made us seem. Maybe then we will begin addressing the true points we face and shutting the political divide between the far proper and much left in each our state and nation. Maybe there might be a realization that limiting our voices via redistricting attributable to nationwide upheaval has the unintended consequence of letting extra Californians fall into the abyss of getting their wants being ignored.
Andrew Coolidge, Chico
This author is the previous mayor of Chico.
