By Jonathan Luevanos Background On Feb. 10, the State of California’s Public Safety Committee held an informational hearing intended to address the problems of law enforcement and community trust [...] Continue Reading
Local & State
SEQUOIA Before and After the Drought
By Hannah Brandt This former history teacher is slow to jump on the “world is going to hell in a handbasket” bandwagon. The historian’s tendency is to reflect upon other periods of collective [...] Continue Reading
Letters to the Editor
Parks Near Freeways Are Disgusting By Barbara Christl (Editor’s note: This comment is in reference to “More Poison Parks Planned” in the February 2015 issue.) Thank you Kevin Hall for continuing to [...] Continue Reading
Who Came First, the Chicken or the Prisoner?
By Daniel Tregila The hunger strikes launched here in the Pelican Bay Special Housing Unit (SHU/solitary confinement) in 2011 was based on decades of the use and abuse of solitary confinement against [...] Continue Reading
Fresno County on Cannabis Collision Course
By Michael S. Green As medical cannabis patients and social users turn their attention toward adult-use legalization in 2016, Fresno County continues to preach the gospel of pot prohibition. The [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: The Unborn Child Most Affected by Air Pollution
During 2014, there were 150 days in the San Joaquin Valley when monitors recorded air pollution levels that were either “unhealthy for sensitive groups” or worse. These are the Orange days on the air [...] Continue Reading
More Poison Parks Planned by Mayor Swearengin and City Council
By Kevin Hall Here is another one for the “Only in Fresno” file. After arbitrarily cutting short the public review process late last year, Mayor Ashley Swearengin successfully pushed through an [...] Continue Reading
A Divestment Movement
By Carolina Lopez, Sara Hilliard, Yesenia Magaña-Rocha, and Araceli Cuentas “Divestment is the opposite of an investment—it simply means getting rid of stocks, bonds, or investment funds that are [...] Continue Reading
March for Climate Leadership
By Richard D. Iyall On Feb. 7, thousands of people are gathering in Oakland to urge California Governor Jerry Brown to “protect all Californians from dangerous oil activities that harm our water, our [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air– Fireplace Madness
By Tom Frantz San Joaquin Valley residents may have noticed there are new air district rules this year for wood burning in fireplaces and woodstoves. There have been ridiculous ads on TV recently with [...] Continue Reading
From the Editor: February 2015
By Ernesto Saavedra It was a sunny day Dec. 27, 2014, in Fresno. People were slowly recovering from the holidays and preparing for New Year’s. Early that afternoon, while many were on their way to [...] Continue Reading
Environmentally Speaking
By Ruth Gadebusch Growing up as I did on a Georgia farm, I have always been somewhat aware of the environment, the word not often heard. We were dependent on the weather that all too often seemed to [...] Continue Reading