Five teenagers from this area who have participated recently in Migrant Education summer leadership programs described a transformational experience in presentations Monday to the Butte County Office of Education board.
Migrant Ed student presentations
Oct. 16 Butte County Office of Education board meeting
Marco Antonio Villa Cruz
"One of the most interesting things I learned was about how Martin Luther King fought for the freedom of African Americans. He wanted a new way of living and he believed we could do it."
Angel Barrera
The 14-year-old Gridley student visited sites in Washington, D.C., including, he said, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Marine Corps War Memorial and Lincoln Memorial.
Noemi Chavez
"I was forced to get out of my comfort zone and make friends."
Victor Jimenez
He couldn't get into the flamenco guitar elective, because it was full, but liked theater "even better."
Janet Velazquez
"My parents work their butts off and I have to make them proud."
Noemi Chavez, a Gridley High School senior, said the Migrant Student Leadership Institute (MSLI) program at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS), “taught me how to be myself.”read more
ChicoSol is partnering with newsrooms around the country to create a national database of hate crimes and bias incidents for use by journalists and civil-rights organizations. There’s no authoritative data on hate incidents in America, and the Documenting Hate project led by the nonprofit ProPublica wants to change that.read more
More than 300 people gathered Saturday at City Plaza and then walked through downtown Chico in support of suicide prevention.
Chico’s eighth annual Out of the Darkness Walk included some emotional remembrances from nine area residents, each holding a paper heart representing being touched by suicide or attempted suicide.
The event drew 307 walkers and raised nearly $10,500 that will be used “to prevent suicide, to defeat the stigma surrounding mental illness, and to support survivors of suicide loss and those at risk of suicide,” said walker co-organizer Lisa Currier, who directs Crisis Care Advocacy and Triage.
More than 30 people gathered Friday outside Chico State’s Bell Memorial Union (BMU) to protest a Christian clinic — Women’s Resource Clinic — that was hosting an anti-abortion speaker at its annual gala.
Protesters, organized by a Mobilize Chico group called “Women on Reproductive Defense,” or “WORD,” said the Women’s Resource Clinic – not to be confused with Chico’s Women’s Health Specialists – is actually an anti-abortion organization that fails to provide “medical treatment” or “clinical care” and has intentionally confused the community about its purpose.read more
upper photo shows billboard as it was Wednesday night; lower photo by Chicosol shows removed art on Thursday morning.
by Leslie Layton
The brief appearance of a billboard that depicted President Trump as a Hitler-esque figure has unleashed a wave of hateful, threatening messages directed at a Chico woman and her vintage clothing store.
Nicholle Haber, owner of “Rouse & Revolt,” said Thursday she was shocked by the maliciousness of people who were upset by the billboard art that was posted at East Third and Mangrove avenues in Chico Wednesday night. The billboard appeared to have been scraped off entirely by early Thursday, hours after a Chico television station aired a story.read more
We will never be the same because of you,
We will never be the same without you,
You will be remembered. –From a poem by film director Lee Mun Wah in remembrance of Marc Anthony Thompson
by Dave Waddell
Marc Thompson had a big smile – broad and gap-toothed — and an even bigger personality. He made a mark on people, “like a blazing star across the midnight sky,” in the words of activist Lee Mun Wah, one of Thompson’s mentors. And he had dedicated his young life to fighting against a litany of social injustices.read more
