Snapp Shots: Albany OKs fall election measure to let 16-year-olds vote

Albany High School students have convinced the school board and City Council to put the on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Another win for the students at Albany High! They’ve been campaigning for months to lower the voting age for school board and City Council elections from 18 to 16, and they passed the first hurdle on March 25, when the Albany school board approved the idea. Unfortunately, the victory was marred by the sad, sudden death two weeks before of the city’s school district Superintendent Frank Wells, one of their strongest supporters.

The students never stopped working, though, and on July 15 they faced an even bigger task: convincing the City Council. They had to overcome opposition — one speaker warned that “16-year-olds are only interested in social media and what their friends are going to be wearing at school the next day” — but the council approved the measure anyway with just one dissenting vote.

“People who have doubts about the fitness of 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in our elections need to look not only at the example of these high schoolers who have been driving this campaign but also to the example of all the young people who are already serving on our city’s commissions, including the police commission, planning and zoning, racial inclusivity and social equity,” Councilmember Aaron Tiedemann told me.

“Pretty much all our commissions have youth members, and they’re doing a great job making our community better.”

Recent graduate Alex Li, who has been spearheading the campaign along with Albany High student Nirvaan Jaswal, agrees.

“People who think all we care about are social media or what we’re going to wear have a very narrow view of teenagers,” Li said. “Maybe it’s true in romcoms (romantic comedy films), but not in Albany.

“The teacher’s union is supporting us, and they’re in the classroom with us every day, so they know us. The League of Women Voters is supporting us too.”

Now the battle moves to its peak: Nov. 5, when the voters will have the final say, and the students are already enlisting their schoolmates for the big push.

“We’re reaching out to the Youth Council, the Model United Nations Club and other campus groups whose members are engaged with the world and the political issues around us,” says Alex. “We’re talking with them about how they want to be involved. We’ll be using mailers, texting and, yes, social media. It’s a great mobilizing tool.”

Needless to say, I’ll be rooting for them. These thoughtful, well-informed and dedicated young people are the best evidence for their own case. They give me a lot of hope for the future.

In memoriam: Alas, the rest of the news from Albany and El Cerrito is sad. Former two-time El Cerrito Mayor Jane Bartke died June 22.

Some will remember her as the city’s mayor (as was her husband, Rich) or as president of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II National Historical Park in nearby Richmond or for her membership in the National Women’s Political Caucus, Soroptimist International of El Cerrito, the Contra Costa Chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus and many other local organizations. However, I will always remember her as the woman who saved the Shadi sculptures.

Sundar Shadi was an immigrant from India who moved to the East Bay in 1921. On Christmas morning, 1949, his neighbors on El Cerrito’s Arlington Lane woke up to find a large sculpture of a star he had created in the yard next to his home.

The next year, he added some sheep and shepherd figures. The year after that, he added camels and donkeys. He kept adding figures year after year, including villagers and angels — all lovingly hand-crafted out of common household items like coat hangers, juice bottles, coffee and cookie tins, stucco, plaster of Paris and chicken wire — until they numbered in the hundreds.

Finally, he had a total reproduction of the city of Bethlehem, and people drove from miles away every Christmas, year after year, to see it. Shadi was not a Christian himself; he was a Sikh.

“I think it was his way of saying, ‘I love you’ to his neighbors in a language we could all understand,” Jane told me.

After Shadi died in 2002, Jane created the El Cerrito Community Foundation to assume guardianship of the sculptures and enlisted the whole community, including firefighters, to haul them up the hill from a warehouse where they’re stored to the lot on Moeser Lane where they’re displayed every December to the delight of all who behold them.

It could have all gone away so easily but didn’t thanks to one indefatigable woman. Thanks, Jane.

Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.