By Mike Rhodes In early September 2011, the Community Alliance newspaper, through a California Public Records Act request, asked the Fresno Police Department (FPD) for its Policies and Procedures [...] Continue Reading
Social Justice
The Prison Press
By Boston Woodard Newspapers written and published in prison have been in existence in America since 1800, beginning with the Forlorn Hope in New York state. The paper’s founder, prisoner William [...] Continue Reading
Missionary Zeal: County Supervisors Ban Indian Handgames in 1920
By Pepper Heredia Some of the first farmworkers in the Central Valley were California Indians. Captured Indians plowed and tilled for the missions. After 1850, they were used in even greater [...] Continue Reading
CHP Targets Farmworkers for Car Impounds
By Pam Whalen In what has become a regular event in the Caruthers area, every year at the peak of the harvest the California Highway Patrol cruisers start showing up in the early morning when [...] Continue Reading
New Marshal in Dodge City: Fresno’s Second Police Auditor Sets Up Shop
By Richard Stone So Fresno has a new person in the Office of Independent Review, with the task of reviewing all cases of an officer-involved shooting (OIS) and auditing the handling of public [...] Continue Reading
Human Rights Commemoration in Fresno
By Sudarshan Kapoor “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the [...] Continue Reading
Where Am I?
By Maria Telesco On election night, a TV pundit proclaimed, “Tomorrow, half the people will be happy, and the other half will be angry.” The problem is, he failed to tell me which group I’d be in, [...] Continue Reading
Next Generation
By Richard Stone (Author’s note: The following is an excerpt from the book Incarnation: Coming to Life in Mind and Body.) A person-to-person encounter takes place, and the gist of it is magically [...] Continue Reading
November is Native American Month
By Pepper Heredia Red Fox James stands, holding his horse’s reins, on a cold December day in Washington, D.C. He’s just ridden 4,000 miles, the newspapers say, from either Sheridan, Wyoming or the [...] Continue Reading
Journey to Freedom
By Maria Telesco What would you do if your sister was convicted of murder and sentenced to death? If there was no body found, no blood, no “missing person” report, no evidence that a murder had even [...] Continue Reading
Police Auditor Hired: How Good Is Half a Loaf?
By Richard Stone As reported in our local daily on Sept. 4, the City of Fresno officially hired Rick Rasmussen as head of the Office of Independent Review (OIR) aka the police auditor. The good news [...] Continue Reading
Soul Calling: A Photographic Journey through the Hmong Diaspora
By Paul Gilmore Over the years—from the time I was a kid in Baraboo, Wisc., to just last week at the bar—I’ve run across a great many people whose formative experiences had something to do with what [...] Continue Reading