26 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY november 9-15, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com and the best way to build trust is from neighbors. “We’re talking about the Jetsons in real life. There’s a healthy suspicion,” Quinonez says. “If you have a relative or neighbor vouching for it, you feel like you have a stake in it.” That’s beneficial for Joby’s longterm prospects. But Quinonez goes a step further. “Frankly, Joby would not have established its status without the partnership with SIEDI,” he says. “They would not have made it this far.” Joby announced earlier this year that its big headquarters will be in Dayton, Ohio, but the company still plans to keep a local presence. Within weeks, a vote is expected from the board of the California Competes Grant Program for $9 million to Joby. If awarded, they plan to invest $50 million to expand the Marina facility to over 200,000 square feet and create up to 600 new jobs, on top of 447 today. “A stronger community is going to benefit everybody,” Manzo says. “People might be open to, ‘It’s in my own interest—if there is a better economy, people are buying more things.’ But if we see it as us and them—well, who is us?” Growing the pie so that everyone gets a piece—including the poor and the working class—is better for those at the top of the economic ladder as well. “It might sound radical,” Manzo adds, “but it should be common sense.” Many community-based organizations exist to help fill the gaps that the economy leaves behind. People who cannot afford food for themselves and their families, a workforce that cannot afford housing, students who cannot afford technology needed to study—many rely upon the services of the nonprofit sector to help them get access to essentials like food, housing, recreation, laptops and more. At its core, SIEDI envisions a different idea for what role those organizations might play: Instead of serving people who find themselves desperate and unable to afford a basic standard of living, what if those people simply had enough? What if they were not marginalized by the economy to begin with? “The future is going to depend on how economically viable Salinas is,” says Luis xago Juarez, a neighborhood organizer with Building Healthy Communities. “We have students that are graduating and going to universities. Are they able to come back home and find a career that’s going to help them? Is this going to be home for them? Do residents here in Salinas belong here?” SIEDI’s vision is to create an economic future in which Salinas residents do belong, and can create a realistic plan to thrive and prosper. And that means getting involved from a different perspective. Loaves, Fishes, and Computers, for example, is advocating to extend a pandemic-era federal benefit called the emergency broadband benefit, $50/ month for low-income households. The renamed Affordable Connectivity Program was extended at up to $30/ month in the Infrastructure Act, and over 20 million households have enrolled—but only 29 percent of Monterey County residents have applied for the benefit, although 47 percent actually qualify. LFC continues working on outreach to eligible residents and helping them apply, but also thinking about the program itself. The benefit is set to run out after five years, and LFC is advocating to make it permanent. Then there’s the statewide Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF), established by Senate Bill 162 in 2022, allocating $600 million from the state’s 2021 Coronavirus Fiscal Recovery Fund to the workforce services branch for the purpose of economic development. Several SIEDI members serve on the steering committee for a six-county regional group that will compete for funds. Housing is an issue the SIEDI cohort has explored and in October, Salinas City Council initiated a process to consider rent stabilization, something Juarez, along with other cohort members, champions. Juarez talks less about empowering renters than he does about growing the economy for all. If rent isn’t exorbitantly high, he says, “our residents are going to be able to spend their money in this local economy.” For some local organizers, that is a new way of thinking, and that’s the whole point. Jackie Cruz, executive director of the Hartnell College Foundation, told the cohort during a July convening: “SIEDI is probably the most important movement right now for the Salinas Valley.” She adds that the premise might seem simple, but it’s not: “Engaging with institutions and building a future for themselves shouldn’t be radical,” Cruz says. “Doesn’t that seem like a reasonable thing to do, to expect the community to create their own destiny?” Her unspoken answer is a solid yes. SIEDI is wrapping its initial two-year period, and the Irvine Foundation is considering whether or not to extend it. Conceptually, Smith says, real change won’t happen for a long time, even if it’s extended. “This is not a two-year project, or a five-year project, or even a 20-year project,” he says. “It’s a generational project. The profound questions about the future of the Salinas Valley economy, they are very long-term questions.” Still, there are examples of SIEDI’s impact to date: the emerging discussion of rent stabilization in Salinas, the positions at Joby, engagement in the state’s CERF process. “These stories seem small, but they prove a theory,” Smith says. (After getting the initiative started over its first two years, Smith is stepping down.) Dan Baldwin, president and CEO of the Community Foundation, is hopeful about a two-year extension. That’s where he sees the next critical step as inviting the private sector and business leaders into the room. He paraphrases the perspective of organizers: “‘We need to be at this table, and if we’re not at this table, we’re going to get left out.’ Historically, these groups felt left out, and I would agree with them. “What SIEDI 1 did is create this sense of empowerment,” Baldwin says. “My hope is SIEDI 2 actually creates these tables.” The Community Foundation is in a unique position in that it works with members of the business community, and also nonprofit organizers. Baldwin sees that as a critical bridge between these two groups that historically have too often been viewed, by themselves and by others, as adversaries. “We want to use the Community Foundation’s trusted relationships to create tables where more meaningful conversations can take place,” he says. “This cohort is now more equipped to be at that table.” It’s a literal table, Baldwin adds—not a golf course, or an exclusive club, or any venue that has historically excluded people of color, working-class people, immigrants and others. Michael Castro, who runs SIEDI for the Community Foundation, says success will take a long time to see. “It’s not a project where we will be able to say, ‘We created this many jobs.’ In a two-year timeline, that’s impossible.” Instead, Castro says, a generation from now things will look different. How will we know if SIEDI is working? “The residents have enough. There are family-sustaining jobs. It sounds so simple.” “We have to listen to those who are trying to survive,” says Luis xago Juarez of Building Healthy Communities. He is also a Chicano theater artist and teaches ethnic studies at Hartnell College, in addition to participating in the SIEDI cohort. “SIEDI is probably the most important movement right now for the Salinas Valley.”
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