Feature Archives

On July 11th, about 30 people, brought together by Youth Coalition Santa Cruz (YCSC), the Resource Center for Nonviolence, and the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz, displayed a series of radical and contemplative statements to motorists on Highway 1 during rush hour. Dubbed, the "Freeway Banner Manifesto" by organizers, it was an attempt to present a different message on every overpass from Santa Cruz to Watsonville. 13 different banners were displayed for aproxiamately 45 minutes right in the middle of rush hour.

Glen Chase, a Professor of Systems Management, has released a report identifying the California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) eradication program as a fraud. "CDFA claims the moth is an emergency and pretends that they can eradicate it in order to steal $100's of millions from taxpayer emergency funds, set aside for real emergencies."

In response to international pressure, US officials returned to members of Pastors for Peace 32 computers bound for Cuba. Federal agents seized the computers from the humanitarian group as they attempted to cross the Pharr International Bridge early on July 3 at the US-Mexico border. The confiscated computers were officially released by US authorities early this week and are now en route to Cuba.

In a July 14th, New York Times Op Ed, Barack Obama says, "As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces."

Post-Katrina reconstruction is still in progress throughout the Gulf Coast, with much of the City of New Orleans still in ruins. Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans is a documentary focused on those rebuilding the city through interviews with some of the estimated 100,000 Latino migrant laborers who have converged in the area over the past two and a half years. Despite terrible working conditions, massive fraud, a housing crisis, severe harassment by law enforcement, and very limited resources, New Orleans’ Latino community has mushroomed since the storm and is establishing an infrastructure proportional to its size.

Tim Rumford writes, "Here in Santa Cruz we have our own county based health insurance providing healthcare for the poor, MediCruz. Although MediCruz has many problems, it has to be said that it is not a requirement of the City nor the County to provide such services. As of July 1st, MediCruz applicants have 30 days after applying to prove they filed their 2007 income taxes to be considered for eligibility. This additional layer of red tape is not designed to make the poor pay their fair share."

Consensual Liberation through Intimate Tactics Collective (C.L.I.T. Collective) is a collective of folks who have come together to open dialog about Sexual/Intimate Violence. CLIT Collective is hosting a 6 week series of classes as part of Free Skool Santa Cruz from July through September. A workshop on consent and sexual/intimate violence will be held on Wednesday, July 16th at 6:00pm at the Zami! Co-op.