Will California Legislature Help People Resist MLPAI “Fisheries Fascism?”

Will California Legislature Help People Resist MLPAI “Fisheries Fascism?”

by John Lewallen, Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company

“I have looked fascism in the face,” my wife Barbara said, when we came out of the August 5 Fish & Game Commission hearing. The Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) has brought fascism to California’s public fisheries regulatory process. If we can look this private-foundation takeover of public process in the face now, we may be able to stop it in its early phases.

Fascism’s first target in California is independent ocean food providers operating in clean, wild ocean ecosystems. A group of oil-company lobbyists, marina developers, and advocates of “ecosystem management” by removing human ocean food providers, have hijacked the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999. The MLAPI has completely shaped the 1999 Act into a force it was never intended to be, a means not of protecting fisheries but of managing people.

With the sudden August 1 appointment of lobbyist Donald Benninghoven to the State Fish & Game Commission, an unconstitutional appointment made by Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman with the Governor out-of-state, the private-money takeover of the commission became complete. Along with Commissioners Sutton and Rogers, the Blue Ribbon Task Force running the privately-funded MLAPI is sure of a three-vote majority to adopt any South Coast or North Coast marine protected areas they want.

Commissioner-designate Benninghoven’s conflict of interest is shockingly blatant: Benninghoven was a leading member of the privately-funded MLAPI Blue Ribbon Task Force that created the controversial plan for huge, permanent closures of fisheries and intertidal subsistence-harvesting on the North Central Coast.

Commissioner-designate Benninghoven’s approval of the “North Central Coast IPA” was the deciding vote. Senate confirmation is required of all State Fish & Game Commission nominees, and Senate hearings about the Benninghoven appointment should begin at once! It’s as if an unconfirmed Supreme Court nominee had put on official robes and cast the deciding vote for a plan their employer had ordered them to push through.

This vote scornfully ignored the years of work by North Central Coast tribes, fishermen, and abalone divers to make their own plan for marine protected areas, to better suit local needs. Now North Coast ocean food providers are being encouraged by MLAPI staff to raise money and spend hundreds of hours making our own plan. Are we window-dressing for fascism?

We, the people of California, could really use the help of the legislature now . If unchecked, fisheries fascism will move to privately-funded guards and surveillance technology keeping people from taking food from California public waters and intertidal zones. Commissioner Michael Sutton said on August 5 that the Blue Ribbon Task Force estimates that enforcement of new reserves will cost $11 million a year, with two-thirds of the cost of guards coming from private funding sources, not California state money.

The California legislature could suspend the MLAPI at any time by de-funding it. All the North Coast county supervisors, many city governments, tribes and community members have contacted Resorces Secretary Mike Chrisman, asking Secretary Chrisman to suspend the MLAPI process.

Chrisman’s answer was the Benninghoven appointment. The whole North Coast community is being tormented and distressed by this fascist attack on ocean food providers!

The California State Legislature is the people’s next line of defense against MLAPI fisheries fascism. I believe it’s time for all of us who want to nip facsism in the bud to contact Senator Patricia Wiggins, Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, and any other California legislators we know. We need immediate suspension of the MLAPI process. We need hearings on the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999, and on the “memorandum of understanding” which gives all power to the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation.

The longer we, the people of California, let this MLAPI fisheries fascism run, the more damage it will do to people, environments, and democratic public process in California.