Border-crossing journalism from the Sacramento Valley
by Lindajoy Fenley
Colombian schoolteacher Luis Soriano began his literacy campaign with just a few books in the 1990s, delivering them to remote areas from the back of his burro.
His efforts have since become internationally known, bringing thousands of books to rural areas. The film “Biblioburro” that tells his remarkable story will be screened at the Butte County Library at 6 p.m. Oct. 17.
by Leslie Layton
In July 2018, a Sacramento civil rights attorney noted just how much information had been withheld in the shooting by Butte County sheriff’s deputies three months earlier that had killed a Palermo woman.
Myra Micalizio, 56, died in April of that year during an encounter with a pair of deputies who together fired 13 rounds. Attorney Mark Merin, representing Micalizio’s family, issued a press release noting that Butte County had “refused to produce any interviews, investigation reports… statements of the officers, coroner’s report…”
Tyler Rushing
by Dave Waddell
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.
by Leslie Layton
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.
by Anna Blackmon Moore
commentary
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.
by Leslie Layton
Autumn Gonzalez, an attorney who helps lead the Sacramento-based NorCal Resist group, spoke at the Blackbird Chico cafe this evening on how community members can support immigrants and monitor ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) during raids or other actions that might occur in this area.
Gonzalez said residents of the North State can support immigrant communities by acting as observers during ICE detentions, or by conducting a simple protest during immigration enforcement actions or by accompanying asylum seekers who need support and/or rides to appointments and court. Those who attended today’s “Chico Accompaniment & Rapid Response to ICE Training” session were invited to fill out applications to become NorCal Resist observers who contact a hotline if they think they’ve spotted ICE in their community and then record or take notes if officers question or detain people.
