Category: Community

by Ron Reed

When Besta Mlowe was born 18 years ago in the town of Ifunda in Tanzania, it seemed this would be her future: she would marry young, have many children, be dominated by her husband and live in a mud hut.

Mlowe was the second born in a family of four children. When she was 2, her father abandoned the family. When she was 14, her mother died. She and her siblings had been working in the fields to get money for food, and Besta had been to primary school and had learned to read in Swahili.

After her mother’s death, the four Mlowe children went to live with their grandparents in a village in the Kilolo District of Iringa. Now, her grandfather is 85 and unable to work. The children cultivate maize and beans, living in a small hut with a dirt floor. read more

In nationwide protests Jan 10, thousands of Americans encouraged debate over Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza. In Chico, several dozen people gathered at City Plaza and later downtown to condemn attacks that are killing hundreds of civilians, to call for a ceasefire, and to call on the United States to end its unconditional support of Israel. Tens of thousands of people protested in Europe and elsewhere, including about 2,000 Israelis who demonstrated in Tel Aviv against their government’s offensive, according to Inter Press Service. read more

by Jennifer MacDonald

Patsy Seek combed the banks of Northern California’s Feather River, scoured the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and made house calls in Oroville searching for Native American children skipping school.

“I’d drag ’em out of bed,” she says. “They’d hide in the mountains and I’d go find them.”

Seek could relate to the troubled students. Herself a Maidu woman, Seek dropped out of high school during her first year.

In Oroville and surrounding Butte County, the Native American population is mostly Maidu. The Maidu were among the largest of the California tribes, occupying large parts of Northern and Central California before white settlers came.  read more