Month: September 2019

‘Cluster of mistakes’ by officers in Rushing killing

Cop experts: Police dog attack on Tyler caused flailing
by Dave Waddell | Posted September 22, 2019

photo courtesy of Rushing family

Tyler Rushing

A law enforcement veteran who is also a police dog expert has called the strategy used to apprehend wounded Tyler Rushing “a cluster of mistakes from the time the officers knew where Rushing was barricaded, until he was shot and killed.”

Ernest Burwell, a Thompson Falls, Mont.-based consultant, was hired by Rushing’s family to study and evaluate the July 23, 2017, shooting of the 34-year-old Ventura man at a downtown Chico title company. Rushing was behaving bizarrely on the title company’s property when he was shot once by private security guard Edgar Sanchez, whom he had attacked and cut with a small glass flower pot.

Later, Rushing was shot two more times at close range by then-Sgt. Scott Ruppel of the Chico Police Department. The Rushing family has brought a wrongful death suit against the city of Chico, Butte County and Armed Guard Private Protection Inc. in Tyler’s death. read more

Hundreds rally at City Plaza on #GlobalClimateStrikeDay

Some 200 students walk out of Chico classrooms
by Leslie Layton | Posted September 21, 2019

photo by Karen Laslo
Students Sar Moch, CORE Butte Charter School, and Maggie Pope, from Inspire, attended the rally.

A couple hundred teen and pre-teen students filed out of classrooms today and marched to City Plaza to join the Chico Climate Strike rally, an event that was both upbeat and insistent as speakers demanded bolder climate action.

The Chico event coincided with demonstrations throughout the world that turned out millions of people demanding action. Together, they made up the largest climate change demonstration in history. The Chico rally was co-sponsored by Sunrise Movement Chico and Butte 350 and drew about 500 people — students, teachers, parents, families — to City Plaza.

“Today we strike school, a gateway to our future, so that we can have a future,” said speaker Serena Kuhn, senior class president at Inspire School of Arts & Sciences. “We’re here to get the attention of our politicians.” read more

Wrestling with the climate threat to human civilization

"Maybe our purpose is not to go gently"
by Anna Blackmon Moore | Posted September 5, 2019

Anna Blackmon Moore

When I was 16, I was watching a sitcom on my 8-inch black and white TV. Outside my bedroom window, the sun had set. At the start of a commercial, it occurred to me that I was wracked with fear and dread. By the commercial’s end, the dread had anchored itself inside my body— my chest, my limbs, my temples.

I wasn’t better the following day; I wasn’t better the following week. Anxiety became incapacitating. Two months later, I was taking a now ancient antidepressant, beginning what would become a lifelong path of medication and treatment.

Over all these decades, therapy has been crucial in my recovering from neglect and abuse and countering a deep sense of failure. The issues and illness I confront require consistent strength and will to overpower the monsters in my brain — but relief has always been accessible. I can take my pill. I can unpack personal despair, understand that feelings can be distortions. I can meditate. In short, I can change. Serenity isn’t easy or always achievable, but the tools are there. It will never be too late to use them. read more