David Atkins wrote this for Calitics

Finally, as to the character of the local Republicans and conservatives, it was clear once again that the GOP has a massive demographic problem. The vast majority of those who gave conservative testimony at the commission were white and over the age of 65, while those on the left-hand side skewed somewhat younger and considerably browner. The refrains included a panoply of coded racial resentments ("culture", "lifestyle" "our interests" and "our heritage" being among them) expressing outrage, as the Ventura County Star's Timm Herdt aptly notes, at being associated with Los Angeles, Oxnard or other dreaded areas where (gasp!) brown people might congregate:

David Atkins is one of the finest progressive activists we have in this county. He makes it his business to actually get out and do something instead of talking about it. And he attended that meeting. Not only did he attend that meeting, he sent out some live tweets about it in real time. As you might imagine, he wasn't shy about calling out the old white Republican demographic for what they were: bigoted, selfish racists. Of course, this is nothing new when it comes to the abuse this commission has been taking from the tea party and its minions.

It's not new, this "not in my backyard" attitude. In 2005 and again in 2008 I stood against an effort to break off the local high school from the Oxnard Union High School District, which was initiated by east county residents in Camarillo who didn't want their kids going to school with the kids whose parents pick the strawberries they had for breakfast that morning. Fortunately, both efforts failed, but I'm certain they'll be revived again.