Category Archives: Activism

Crescent City People’s March Calls For Unity, Safeguarding the Vulnerable As Trump Starts Second Term

Thumbnail photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews; video by Bryce Evans, Gavin Van Alstine and Ethan Caudill-DeRego

Hilda Yepes Contreras fought back tears as she described how anti-immigration rhetoric during the first Trump administration reached her family.

“My grandson, he was 8 and he was in school and kids went up to him and said that he needed to go back to Mexico,” she said. “And he said, ‘But I don’t live there. I live here.’ And they said, ‘Well, you need to go back or you’re going to get your head cut off.’”

Speaking to more than 100 people at the Crescent City Cultural Center on Saturday — ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration — Yepes Contreras said her family wasn’t alone in enduring the racist rhetoric that was the norm the last time Trump was in the White House.

Continue reading Crescent City People’s March Calls For Unity, Safeguarding the Vulnerable As Trump Starts Second Term

Activists Organize Local Action For “People’s March”

(Disclosure: this article was written as an editorial piece due to the author’s own personal biases in favor of civil rights, affordable healthcare, empathy, and free appropriate public education.)


While mindlessly scrolling social media sourcing stories for the Redwood Voice Community Newscast, a digital flyer for a Crescent City “People’s March” kept popping up in my feed. Apparently, the data-mining chaos goblins of the Metasphere insisted quite strongly that this post specifically would be of interest to me.  I found myself annoyed, first and foremost, at the way the almighty Facebook algorithm prioritizes delivery of content. My annoyance, however, was quickly replaced with a sense of amusement that the event infographic attempted to recruit and rally potential participants with the bold declaration of “UNITED WE STAND!”

“…do we, really?”  I chuckled to myself.  “ …and for what?”

If you buy into national narratives parroted by political pundits through conglomerated media, you’d believe that we are living in extraordinarily divided times.  

The way I personally see it, we’ve all been through so many “unprecedented” circumstances in recent times, that at this point, it seems as though dissociative apathy has just sort of blanketed our political climate like a creeping fog on our collective consciousness.  Either way, aiming for unity in this era of American sociocultural history seems like a bit of a moonshot.

Continue reading Activists Organize Local Action For “People’s March”

Crescent City, CA People’s March 2025

Recorded 1-15-25 for KFUG Community Radio’s “Community Service” segment: a conversation with Lupe Gutiérrez and Kevin Hendrick, organizers for 2025’s “People’s March.”

The Crescent City, CA event will take place Saturday January 18th 2025. Participants will meet at the Cultural Center on Front Street. Doors open at 10:30 AM, with speakers taking the stage at 11 AM. At 11:30 AM participants are invited to march (on the sidewalks) northbound on Highway 101 before crossing at Cooper street and returning south on Highway 101.

“Deshelve Sabra” — Marching with Protesters on Wildberries & College Creek Marketplaces

The flier for the protest | Credit Unknown

“It’s important to remember that there’s no such thing as empires that last forever,” one protester, Ryan, declared before an assembled crowd.

Over 30 people by my count gathered at the Arcata Plaza on Oct. 4th at around 4:30 PM. They stood around one protester holding a Palestinian flag and two others carrying a large banner, reading: “Boycott Sabra Genocide Hummus.” Stragglers made their way from every side of the Plaza and a small marching band began to set up with instruments. Two protesters brought their own drums, another hand bells, to join in the making of noise.

Ryan — addressing the crowd with no bullhorn nor microphone, and who would later describe himself as “not some kind of grand leader, [just] some guy that felt strongly that this should happen,” — continued to address the growing crowd. “It’s a time where many of us feel powerless with the intensified Israeli assault on Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But it’s important to remember that we can look back into our history, and we can look at tactics that have historically worked.”

Continue reading “Deshelve Sabra” — Marching with Protesters on Wildberries & College Creek Marketplaces