WHEREAS, hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as “fracking,” is a technique that injects water, sand, and toxic chemicals at high pressure deep into the ground, often traveling horizontally, to extract oil or gas from shale or other dense rock;

WHEREAS, fracking uses large amounts of water, thus reducing its availability for agriculture and other public use; uses chemicals that can contaminate the water supply and can cause cancer; creates wastewater that can bring deep earth contaminants to the surface; releases methane gas that exacerbates climate change and pollutes the air with asthma-causing smog; can induce earthquakes; and continues our dependence on fossil fuels;

WHEREAS, fracking is currently exempt from regulation under the Safe Water Drinking Act and is not yet regulated in California, and as a result the chemicals are treated as trade secrets and location of fracked wells is not made public;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Ventura County Democratic Party supports an immediate moratorium on fracking with such a moratorium to remain in place until (a) legislation, ordinances, and regulations are put in place that guarantee public health and safety, and address the impacts of climate change; (b) immediate testing and disclosure of all sites currently being fracked or that have been fracked in the past; and c) substitution of renewable energy wherever feasible;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Ventura County Democratic Party send a copy of this resolution to the Governor of the State of California, United States Senators representing California, Members of Congress representing any part of Ventura County, members of the state senate and state assembly representing any part of Ventura County, and all members of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, asking them to take action.

Sponsor: RL Miller

Passed by the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee on 02/26/2013

WHEREAS the existing US immigration system has been broken for decades, was not appropriately addressed in the 1986 Immigration Reform Act or by the post-2001 reforms of the U.S. Immigration Service and Naturalization (now ICE), and no U.S. policy has been developed to alleviate the root causes of the massively increasing influx of undocumented immigrants since the 1990’s,

WHEREAS the militarization of the U.S. border and massive deportations have utterly failed to provide a long-term solution to the push-and-pull factors which bring immigrants across our borders and resulted in the death of thousands and separation of families,

WHEREAS the current Obama Administration has placed fair and comprehensive Immigration Reform on the top of its agenda and CAUSE, the Coastal Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, based in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, has done a substantive analysis of present policies and their effect on immigration,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Ventura County Democratic Party support principles of Fair and Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Specifically, we:

• recognize the full humanity of immigrants and protection guaranteed by law of their human and civil rights,
  
• stand in favor of laws which uphold family unity and the end of the criminalization of immigrants,
  
• believe that comprehensive immigration reform will provide economic opportunity to our region while upholding worker rights, especially concerning the farm workers who are vital in the local and national economy,
  
• seek a just and humane reform that will provide a fair process to secure legal residency and a path to U.S. citizenship,
  

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Ventura County Democratic Party applauds and supports the efforts of CAUSE; will contribute to our democratic process by facilitating cross-cultural coalition building and educating ourselves, the public, and our elected public representatives about the complex historical and urgent present day elements of immigration reform; and will communicate passage of this resolution to CAUSE and to all members of Congress representing any part of Ventura County.

Sponsor: Ruth Maria Cappelle

Passed by the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee on 02/26/2013

WHEREAS, almost every government in the world has agreed that any warming above a 2°C (3.6°F) rise would be unsafe. We have already raised the temperature .8°C, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, consequences of inaction will result in devastating floods and drought;

WHEREAS, scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees, while proven coal, oil, and gas reserves equals about 2,795 gigatons of CO2, or five times the amount we can release to maintain 2 degrees of warming;

and WHEREAS, California’s institutions of higher education and pension funds should encourage only those investments that allow students and retirees to live healthy lives without the impact of a warming planet, and thus campaigns to divest from fossil fuels have begun at campuses within both the University of California and California State University systems;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Ventura County Democratic Party calls upon the University of California and California State University endowments, and CALPERS, CALSTRS, and Ventura County Employees Retirement Account pension funds to immediately stop new investments in fossil fuel companies, to take steps to divest all holdings from the top 200 fossil fuel companies as determined by the Carbon Tracker list within five years, and to release updates available to the public, detailing progress made toward full divestment;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Ventura County Democratic Party send a copy of this resolution to the Governor of the State of California, Board of Regents of the University of California, Chancellor of the California State University system, United States Senators representing California, Members of Congress representing any part of Ventura County, members of the state senate and state assembly representing any part of Ventura County, and all members of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, asking support for divestment from fossil fuels.

Sponsor: RL Miller

Passed by the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee on 02/26/2013