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Community Voices
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Listen to voices you rarely hear: the mothers who pick your strawberries. They say their kids are paying the price for our bounty.
Lookout spoke to five Watsonville berry pickers, all of them mothers, about the effect working around pesticides has had on them and their kids. It’s part of our continuing series on the issue. Leukemia, asthma, learning disorders, all they believe, were caused by the exposure. Agricultural giants dumped 620,000 pounds of pesticides on Santa Cruz County crops in 2021, some of them near schools in Watsonville. We’ve provided video snippets of our interviews so you can see and hear these mothers and grandmothers talk about themselves and their kids.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Wondering about the value of mentoring? Take a peek at Santa Cruz County’s Big Brother Big Sister pair of the year
Lookout caught up with Santa Cruz County’s Big Brother Big Sister pair of the year at Shadowbrook restaurant just before Christmas. In this video, the two — selected from the county’s 50 pairs of mentors and mentees — showcase their strong bond. They laugh, tease each other and explain why relationships like theirs can change lives.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
My Stanford education was best in class, yet left big ‘life skills’ gaps
Marisa Messina went to private schools and attended Stanford University for college and business school. But, she writes, she still finds her education lacking in fundamentals, particularly life skills — like handling personal finances, doing home repairs and dealing with emotions. She wonders what a proper modern education should include — and who is responsible for filling in the holes.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Letter to the editor: Story on unhoused deaths ignores ‘personal responsibility’
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Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Coonerty: Data drove my work, but Santa Cruz’s stories have my heart
Ryan Coonerty is bidding farewell to public life after 16 years in office. Here, he talks about his legacy, his Santa Cruz family’s addiction to stories (his sister owns and runs Bookshop Santa Cruz) and why atoms rightly rule the universe. He also shares his biggest mistake.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
This really is a season of magic and memories
Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach remembers her “Christmas pasts” in Santa Cruz, when as a young mother she tried to give her daughter the sort of memories she didn’t have as a child. She remembers window shopping at Leask’s department store on Pacific Avenue and when shopkeepers handed out cookies and cocoa. Now, she realizes, the memories are more hers than her daughter’s. She’s OK with that. The memories sustain her all year.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
It’s time for Watsonville to move forward, but also to protect farmland
Measure Q was a huge success for Watsonville, writes advocate and former farmer Sam Earnshaw; by renewing the urban limit line, voters showed they don’t want Watsonville to sprawl unchecked like San Jose. Instead, he and others “envision a more positive and imaginative future for our city.”
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Letter to the editor: Numbers in Benchlands overdose story don’t line up
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Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
National midterm election results offer real reason to have a happy holiday season
Mike Rotkin reviews the outcome of the national midterm elections and finds muted, but real, reasons for a happy holiday season. The midterms turned out well for Democrats — putting off what he describes as “the terrifying prospect of a House of Representatives controlled by a supermajority of election and climate change deniers, gun fanatics and anti-feminist, LGBTQ+ bashers.” But losing the House will have consequences, and the tight races in many states don’t bode well for the future, he writes.
