Border-crossing journalism from the Sacramento Valley
Editor’s note: ChicoSol is reviving its Highway 99 series that was popular some 10 years ago to mark this year’s Cesar Chavez Day. State Route 99 cuts through California’s Central Valley, where union organizing had a tremendous impact.
by Lindajoy Fenley
posted March 27
The final resting place of Cesar Chavez, who led strikes to improve the lot of underpaid and disrespected farmworkers nationwide more than 50 years ago, has the peaceful moniker Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz.
A group of Chico residents again have called on city leaders — in a third effort — to pass a ceasefire resolution that would show support for the Palestinian community amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
At the meeting earlier this week (March 19), activist Rain Scher stepped to the podium to present a revised ceasefire resolution to the City Council. Scher, a member of Chico Jews in Solidarity with Palestine, pointed out that the new resolution calls for declaring that all human life is “precious.” Scher told ChicoSol that the resolution “explicity names both the Palestinian and Israeli casualties.”
Retired Superior Court Judge Ann Rutherford, the first female judge in Butte County, served 40 years on the California bench. She died Feb. 16.
The people who Judge Ann Rutherford left behind are now sharing their verities about her. Groundbreaking, she was, and trailblazing. Remarkable. Highly regarded, sharp-minded, and quick-witted, too. She was all that.
But no words capture her depth of commitment to justice, or the fierceness of her intelligence and character. Anyone who mistook her decency and fairness for gullibility would regret it. She took no prisoners.
Editor’s note: The Butte County Clerk-Recorder’s office released official election results on March 28 that show that almost 63% voted NO on Measure O and 62% opposed Measure P.
Preliminary results in the primary election show Chico voters rejecting the controversial Valley’s Edge project that would produce a planned community east of City limits.
As of March 8, the preliminary count showed the number of “NO” votes on measures O and P at 62% of some 19,000 ballots that had been counted. Those measures would amend the General Plan and the Valley’s Edge Specific Plan to allow the development.
