Border-crossing journalism from the Sacramento Valley
Emily Alma
By Dave Waddell
A group of citizens that has produced an ambitious “vision” for Chico police reform first came together last year after the officer-involved-shooting deaths of Desmond Phillips and Tyler Rushing.
“We were like magnets,” said Margaret Swick, a member of a group calling itself Concerned Citizens for Justice. “We were just pulled together. We were just concerned about the police shootings.”
by Peter Schurmann
Almost thirty years ago East Los Angeles resident and mother of nine kids, Juana Gutierrez, took on an oil giant and won. Hailed at the time in national and international media, Gutierrez was seen as being in the vanguard of a “fledgling” environmental movement, one deeply rooted in California’s expanding communities of color. (Lea esta nota en ingles aqui.)
by Jae Siqueiros
The origin of Inday’s Restaurant started with a friendly neighborhood cookout 20 years ago after Ethel “Inday” Geiger emigrated from the Philippines to Chico.
Her deep craving for traditional Filipino meals was so persistent that she started preparing them at home with her husband, John Geiger.
by Alisa Thorsen
When Kanako Otani first left Hiroshima, Japan, to study at Chico State, she was afraid she would face discrimination on a daily basis. To Otani’s surprise, she found that the culture in the United States was very open, expressive and diverse.
“Here, I can pursue whatever I want and be whoever I want to be,” said Otani, who came to the United States four years ago. “In Japan we practice collectivism, so everyone tries to be the same. If you do something different you might be considered weird and a lot of people don’t like that.”
By Dave Waddell
With isolationism on the rise nationally, Chico State’s commitment to internationalism and to having its students learn a foreign language is likewise “in retreat,” a veteran sociology professor argued last week.
“Is Chico State really not bucking national trends which trend toward isolation despite the rhetoric about inclusivity coming from Kendall Hall (the university’s administration building)?” asks a speech written by Professor Tony Waters, who read portions of it May 8 at the spring semester’s final International Forum program.
“My real calling is I’m a pollinator. I kind of look at this world of people and nature as this thing that we need to better connect with. …it’s just that we sometimes fail to recognize that the connection is real and that it’s important to us as human beings” — Eva Butler, Splash founder.
(video by Guillermo Mash for AquAlliance.)
