Feature Archives

On November 1st, Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Paul Burdick denied the County of Santa Cruz's request for a temporary restraining order to halt the aerial spraying of CheckMate LBAM-F over Santa Cruz County by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Three state-owned airplanes are scheduled to begin spraying pesticides over North Monterey County on Sunday, November 4th, and then over Santa Cruz County sometime early next week.

The United States Geological Survey reports, "a moderate earthquake occurred at 8:04:54 PM (PDT) on Tuesday, October 30, 2007. The magnitude 5.6 event occurred 8 km (5 miles) NNE of Alum Rock, CA."

The UC Santa Cruz Long Range Development Plan is a blueprint for expanding the physical campus to accommodate approximately 4,500 new students by 2020. On November 1st, UCSC Writing Lecturer Jeff Arnett gave a presentation on the "Unnatural History of UCSC." The presentation covered special sites on the UCSC campus and the story of Elfland. Other presenters provided an overview of campus expansion plans and the impacts on biodiverse habitat.

Nick Oliva writes, "Big Sur. A place of great beauty and drama. A Wonder of the World, an international treasure taken for granted stands waiting mindless of humanity. The sheer cliffs that drop a thousand feet or more to the violent sea thrashing and pounding at the granite below. The dichotomy of danger and great beauty can only be watched from a distance, less one be swallowed up and taken by the forces of nature."

The 5th annual Practical Activism Conference at UC Santa Cruz took place on October 27th. Practical Activism is a free, student-led conference providing learning opportunities and tools to create local and global change. There were workshops, speakers, tabling organizations, spoken word performances and more. This year's keynote speaker was Angela Davis.

On October 22nd, Riva Love of the Watsonville Brown Berets interviewed Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald, the longest incarcerated Black Panther Party member. Chip discusses his early days in the streets, how he came to join the Black Panther party, and his words for young people oppressed by the current power structure. Currently housed at Imperial Valley State Prison in Southern California, he has had two parole hearings scheduled in the past six months, but neither have taken place.

The Third World And Native American Students Press Collective (TWANAS) was established in 1979 as a response to the violent racism, sexism, classism and homophobia at the University of California Santa Cruz campus. TWANAS is a quarterly student-run publication dedicated to the liberation of "Third World" and Indigenous peoples. The TWANAS collective strives to create a publication that demands justice for all peoples and that serves as a vehicle for true unapologetic expression.