We can work TOGETHER on NARRATIVE CHANGE

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WAKE UP CALIFORNIA is a new 501c4 dedicated to narrative change, to take back “reality” from our politicians and special interest groups who have completely saturated the press  with falsehoods about the nature of our housing crisis. and the tools needed to actually solve it. 

To have an impact we need to lobby collectively, challenge the laws and corporate press, and be visible. We must support candidates with platforms of common sense housing policy that create affordable housing without destroying communities’ quality of life or putting residents at risk. 

WAKE UP CALIFORNIA was conceived by Amy Kalish as a way to bring statewide and community organizations together to create a unified voice for a reason around housing policy.

After several years running Citizen Marin, which started as a local resource to track housing projects, Amy  expanded it to take on a state wide focus.  Fire and evacuation access are vital, but irrelevant to the state housing mandates. This must change. 

Amy has attended meetings and interfaced with many state, city, and neighborhoods groups. Though all organizations serve their important purpose, a connection to unite their messaging will increase our collective strength. 

To succeed we need to create short, compelling media,  engage the press, advertise,  lobby, and support candidates.

WAKE UP CALIFORNIA welcomes individuals and organizations small and large to join together for this purpose.

Amy Kalish had been researching fire and evacuation issues after the PGE PSPS when she learned about the 6th Cycle RHNA and the housing density it required. She became a conduit for information through Citizen Marin, which has been  both a resource website and an organizational tool for Marin County involvement for almost four years.

As more information about conflagrations being fueled by wind blown embers that ignited homes - the homes became the fuel - her concerns about forced density grew. Astonished that fire and evacuation safety were set aside in the blitz of laws and new California policy, she shifted her attention upstream to the dictates coming from Sacramento.

This last legislative session eviscerated CEQA and environmental protections, reduced affordabilty requirements, and has shut the public completely out of the process. Responsible city and county planning have become obsolete.

To work more effoctively at the state level, she started WAKE UP CALIFORNIA as a 501(c)4 non-profit. WAKE UP has been working with a coalition of similarly focused organizations to better address our common concerns: a state enabled onslaught of overdevelopment at community expense, with no thought to safely or infrastructure; a transfer of wealth and ownership to Wall Street that creates a perpetual renter society.

Amy is a CERT and NRG volunteer, a FireWise Leader, and serves on the county appointed Tam Design Review Board in Unincorporated Mill Valley.

Meeting Carolyn Scott and seeing the Small is Beautiful (see  film and events page) changed the trajectory of Amy's work. Scott uses effective, heartfelt storytelling that can reach audiences in ways that writing can't. WAKE UP will be producing visual materials that people can understand quickly. One astonishing aspect of this film: Scott features frank and refreshing interviews with professional firefighters (refired) who understand the fragility of our existing evacuation infrastructure, and do not hold back on their assessment of the real risks that increased density in the area pose.

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