When local Sacramento government officials hold public hearings over climate change plans, dozens of residents often show up and share their perspectives.
It isn’t a coincidence that many speakers start public comments by introducing themselves as members or volunteers with activist organizations.
Groups rally people to speak at meetings through a variety of strategies, from building relationships over time to making social media posts. But whether they ask volunteers to comment on environmental, housing or other issues, organizers say they have similar goals: to empower people to participate in local government, share personal testimonies with decision-makers and build movements.
When volunteers give public comments, they show up for their communities and share the public’s interests, said Katie McCammon, communications and volunteer coordinator for 350 Sacramento.
“People hear from politicians a lot,” McCammon said. “But when we hear from our own community members and we hear from our own peers, those are the people we want to hear from. Those are the people that really kind of reach us on a deeper level.”
As a local grassroots organization, McCammon said 350 Sacramento builds relationships with volunteers. She gets to know their interests and availability, so when an issue comes up on a government meeting agenda, she can reach out to them directly.
If a discussion is scheduled at a time that may work for high school or college students, McCammon said she contacts them, adding that fewer young people tend to participate compared to retirees.
“People get to know you; they trust you,” McCammon said. “And then when you reach out with upcoming events or something that they should show up to, they really know who you are and they feel far more inclined to show up as opposed to if you're just getting a text out of nowhere from a larger organization.”
350 Sacramento prioritizes encouraging people to attend meetings where the Sacramento City Council or the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors discuss climate action plans and electrification. Focusing on those larger issues helps avoid burning people out, McCammon said.
Jovana Fajardo, Director of the Sacramento Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, said community members determine which meetings the organization rallies people to attend. The organization supports members’ efforts to push for policies and changes, whether it’s a tenant anti-harassment ordinance or budget issues.
ACCE encourages people to share personal testimonies covering how an issue affects them and their families, Fajardo said. If ACCE members didn’t give public comments in a September Board of Supervisors hearing on a tenant anti-harassment proposal, Fajardo said very few people would have given renters’ perspectives.
Fajardo added it’s important to bring personal experiences to elected officials’ attention.
“We want to make sure that they're hearing from the tenants that are directly affected because we see it as a problem day to day,” Fajardo said. “And so we want to make sure that they're not missing that part of the community that they might not be regularly talking to.”
When members wear ACCE’s yellow shirts to meetings, Fajarado said it helps them feel like they are part of a group and a larger fight. Rallying together in public hearings also aligns with the organization’s goals of uplifting members to speak out for themselves and push for systemic changes rather than focusing on individual services.
“We know that if you try to put a bandage on a large wound, it’s never going to solve the issue,” Fajardo said. “And so as we do help individual members [with] their cases and support and legal clinics, we want to fight for the bigger policy system changes because we know it's a bigger problem that's affecting more than one person.”
Decarcerate Sacramento, which advocates to prevent jail expansions and reduce the number of people incarcerated in them, similarly encourages community members to mobilize through public comment. Community Organizer Mack Wilson said the coalition tries to make participating in public hearings more accessible by sharing information in a variety of ways, including via email, social media and community meetings.
The organization creates graphics breaking down talking points, Wilson said, as well as group chats where people can share reactions and rebuttals as they watch board discussions. Acknowledging how many local government meetings take place while people are at work, Wilson said the coalition’s petitions and templates can also help people participate in the process.
But those efforts don’t guarantee officials vote the way Decarcerate Sacramento urges them. After listening to more than 150 public comments in December, the board approved a jail expansion plan, despite opposition.
The coalition creates debriefing spaces after such decisions so people don’t get lost in hopelessness, Wilson said. They added that Decarcerate Sacramento also plans hangouts and bonfires to bring people together and build connections extending beyond board votes.
“We have a vision of another world being possible,” Wilson said. “And when we rally together into our so-called democratic space to demand the building of a new kind of care economy, what we're doing is bringing together people with that like-mind and that like-vision. Even if we walk out of that space not receiving the decision that we want, it rallies us to work harder and closer together to begin to build that world outside of that space.”
Both the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and the Sacramento City Council have recently decided to end remote public comment options they began offering in 2020. The city announced the change in September, while Supervisor Rich Desmond decided to discontinue the call-in option beginning with the board’s Oct. 17 meeting, county spokesperson Kim Nava said in an email.
The board and council allow in-person public comments. Written comments are accepted via email for the board and on the city’s website for the council.
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