News Now is a co-production of KFUG Community Radio, Wild Rivers Outpost, & Redwood Voice. You can listen live to News Now live every other Wednesday at 5pm on 101.1 FM or kfugradio.org. On tonight’s stories, we’re bringing you through a wide array of topics, including:
• 03:00 – Wildfire Updates, including an update on Highway 199.
• 06:42 – Tensions rising in DNUSD as staff feel leadership has not prepared them properly for introducing students back into campuses, to the point that the possibility of striking has been put on the table.
• 15:07 – 200 6th Graders have received chromebooks, but because of a shortage, the digital gap may not yet be filled.
• 20:19 – A Preview on Persephone’s recent report, “The Saga of the CalEndow Billboard – How We Got Here.”
• 22:38 – National forests are closed due to wildfires, despite hunting season being upon us.
• 23:52 – Solid Waste Authority and Recology are seeking a consultant to decide new garbage rates.
• 27:05 – One shot after roommate dispute in Klamath.
In case you missed the story surrounding the vandalized California Endowment billboard for proclaiming that Black Lives Matter, you’re in luck, as your very own Redwood Voice Director Persephone Corvid Rose has created a report on the matter.
This report goes through all the gritty details of the timeline, because now that the events have transpired, it is interesting to see exactly how these things began. In this video, I explore Del Norte’s 1st District Supervisor Roger Gitlin (but nowhere near as much as I do in the recent Accountability Corner that was specifically about him) and his initial spouting of hate speech that has cumulated into a borderline obsession, alongside his festering denial of the COVID-19 Pandemic and its dangers. Exploring this, we talk about the cycle he perpetuates and how it plays into his vehement attitude towards the billboard set by the California Endowment, his hatred, his supporters, and how the accumulation of his own created tensions inspired someone to vandalize billboard. Then, the community response, the rally that took place to ensure that everyone knew Del Norte would not stand for such racist nonsense in our community.
All of that and more in this report! Basically: Here’s How We Got Here.
I had an opportunity to talk to Elijah Brunson, a concerned member of the community. Elijah, who has lived in Crescent City for about 5 years now, with much of his work has revolved around working with youth, recently posted a photo on social media depicting a piece of racist graffiti depicting the words hastily spray-painted, quote, “White Lives Matter More.” The post garnered quite a bit of attention.
Elijah reached out to Redwood Voice with the photo, hoping to inform us of the graffiti. I asked to interview him in order to get both the situation documented and get his thoughts on the matter. While he discusses both the vandalism of the billboard and the graffiti, and how these acts of racism are despicable, he also talks about how they are taking away from the many genuine problems our community is facing due to the division.
Elijah was a wonderful interviewee and walked me through a lot of his thinking in this! It seemed he really wanted to cover his bases, and while he spends time talking about the bigotry of the recent acts of vandalism regarding the Cal Endow Billboard and the graffiti in question, he talks through why these acts of racism are literally taking away time and energy that could be used on genuine problems in our community, especially among our youth! You can watch the interview below.
Welcome to the first episode of The Accountability Corner: a show where we take public officials who promote and engage in harmful ideologies or actions, and we break it all down to hold them accountable.
This episode discusses First District Supervisor Roger Gitlin, with the sparking point of his sharing and incitement of hate speech—and the absolute turbulence since then. I break down why the ideas spread are wrong (in more ways than one), highlight the community backlash, bring it back around to how his actions have inspired further harm, and wrap it up with a showcase of the rally that took place in front of the Flynn Center.
This is the first video I’ve made of this nature. I hope you enjoy and that it’s the first of many!
The July 15th, 2020 airing of News Now features the following stories:
• 01:48 – The COVID-19 Update, including the numbers after the sudden surge from Pelican Bay State Prison.
• 04:48 – A wildfire near milepost marker 21 on Highway 96 is 90 percent contained according to Hoopa Valley Tribal officials.
• 06:40 – If you or someone you know has been affected by Opioid Use Disorder, RX Safe Del Norte is and has been providing the Wellness & Recovery Series.
• 09:00 – Information on the Yurok Tribe Election.
• 09:51 – The Accountability Corner, regarding District Supervisor Roger Gitlin, in an original segment by Redwood Voice. Persephone explains the current situation regarding Roger Gitlin and speaks to Julia Dorman on her experience speaking up and the unexpected trouble that had arrived since then.
• 22:19 – The Flynn Center Protest & Rally. Technically a continuation of the previous Roger Gitlin piece, but deserving of its own spotlight, highlighting the rally and important things that were said.
• 35:55 – Avi Critz follows up on his previous #DefundThePolice segment by talking about it with Sheriff Erik Apperson in this Redwood Voice segment.
• 59:49 – The Redwood Voicecast #3 is out. Persephone breaks down what happened. Maybe it’ll intrigue you into taking a listen?
We’re a little tired in this one, but it picks up pretty quickly! Persephone gives themself and Avi a challenge, to give Redwood Voicecast a new radio promo while also balancing their busy work schedules. The crew talks about the previous News Now newscast and the one coming up, so you get all the juicy behind-the-scenes on the stories (from the lens of last week.) Conversations lead a bit into things we miss, but also things we like—the Food Forest, for instance. We hope they’re doing well, and Persephone recounts a wonderful one-on-one class they recorded for a project for some folks at the station. We also talk about why it’s important to support the Saturday Farmer’s Market, our experience with it, and some of the things going on. All of this and more in the third ever production of the Redwood Voicecast, a podcast where we talk about the latest and greatest happenings behind the scenes of Redwood Voice. Join us!
Black Lives Matter. Black Lives have always Mattered. Black Lives will continue to Matter. Black Lives STILL Matter. The fact that these words would cause some people’s blood to boil in outrage is a testament to the fight that Black people are facing, a fight that some may believe has been over due to the lack of news on the matter—
Or, at least, that’s the stance I was writing from when I recorded this segment for KFUG Community Radio’s News Now (the original newscast, by the way, can be heard here.) With the arrival of Federal Officers in Portland, some news outlets have been discussing the movement. However, that should be held under a critical eye. Black Lives Matter protests, rallies, and the movement itself never stopped, as some may have believed from the absence of a media presence. With these new violent developments, the same violent developments that attracted such large news presences in the first place, we must think about why we are reporting these things, and to what end. Especially since it seems after initial acts ended, such as the early on looting, many news outlets stopped reporting despite these movements still fully continuing.
For us, we unflinchingly support the cause. As an all white crew, there are always things we need to learn, improve, and do to be better allies and use our privilege to amplify Black voices any way we can. This video has one simple message: Black Lives STILL Matter, even if you haven’t been thinking about it—here are things you can do right now to support the cause.
This video can be utilized as a tool. Know the comprehensive list yourself and the advice that comes with it. Show it to your friends, family, loved ones, neighbors, coworkers, however many people you’ve added to Facebook, whoever cares to give it a watch and think, “Oh, well, I can do that. Black Lives Matter.”
As mentioned in the video, we are looking to work with Black voices in order to provide any amplification we can. We are hesitant to plan the exact project—we want to work fully with Black People interested so that whatever we do is genuinely beneficial to the Black community, not just some small show of allyship or a chance for brownie points for committing basic moral decency. If you are interested, you can reach us at our Facebook Page or email us at redwoodvoicedn@gmail.com.
Some of you may have bore witness to the glorious uprising of Redwood Voice’s newest, radical (in the 90s way), totally tubular (there’s no other meaning for that one) project to come out of this newest iteration of Redwood Voice: the Redwood Voicecast.
What’s the Redwood Voicecast, you may ask? Well, what isn’t the Redwood Voicecast? In some sense, that’s not even a rhetorical question.
The serious answer: I wanted us to connect to the community. Too often our work has been straight edge, pointy corner journalism without too much personality. (Or at least certainly the past news work we’ve been doing, but in some ways that’s starting to change with the new production value of the News New newscast we’ve seen at the beginning of this month.) The Redwood Voicecast is an uncut version of your beloved Redwood Voice team – at this point, Avi Critz, and, yours truly, the one and only Persephone Corvid Rose – to simply tell you what we’re doing at a given moment. We zoom through so many projects at a time, need so much community input, and quite simply do so much that a Facebook post or a tweet just don’t cut it. We wanna connect with you, tell you what’s up, even work with you!
So the Redwood Voicecast? It’s many things. It’s cool, it’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s sometimes even trying, but it’s ours, and it’s whatever we need it to be. It’s whatever we need it to be to do what we love, to amplify the unheard voices in our community, and to connect with you in all that we do.
So, why not give ’em a listen? Below are the first two episodes, and in the future there will be individual articles written for Redwood Voicecast episodes!
On the July 1st, 2020 News Now newscast, our very own Avi Critz wrote up a report and even spoke to Mayor Blake Inscore with a simple question: what does defunding the police mean, and what does it mean for us here?
Now, there’s a lot to unpack. Avi Critz succinctly summarizes what Defunding the Police means in metropolitan areas, in the areas where police budgets are immense and where we have seen the highest demand for defunding, especially in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, and many others.
As Avi Critz brings up, however, these tend to happen in much larger metropolitan areas where the police don’t live in or understand the neighborhoods they patrol. That’s quite different from our small town where we know quite well who our police officers are—and Avi would know, having had a college math class with our very own Sheriff Apperson.
Regardless of where you stand and your depth of understanding on what defunding the police entails, we strongly recommending watching this report. What does it mean? Where does the defunded money go, and how could it help us? Where does the budget for our officers go? What are other programs that could take over problems law enforcement can’t working with? Here’s what Avi Critz and Mayor Blake Inscore have to say.
Last Wednesday’s News Now is the second to be created under the management of Redwood Voice’s Persephone Rose—yours truly, the one writing this very article. As we’ve started to create content at an alarmingly quick pace compared to what we’ve produced before with far higher quality than we’ve seen in the past, I will begin employing a new posting system that covers all of our social media domains whenever new content is created in order to achieve the widest reach. That will include, after being posted to our YouTube Channel or right here on our website, going to our Facebook Page, Instagram, & Twitter. And of course, if you would like to know when we post videos the very second we post them, we recommend subscribing to our channel!
Part of this entails advertising KFUG Community Radio’s News Now, a co-production between KFUG, the Wild Rivers Outpost, and Redwood Voice.
The July 15th, 2020 airing of News Now features the following stories:
02:10 – The COVID-19 Update you’ve come to expect from your favorite bi-weekly newscast, including the reclosure of California and what that applies to. Even though we’re not on the list of 29 monitored counties, we will still be affected. Here’s what you need to know.
04:00 – DNUSD Considerations regarding plans for how to make this school year work in the midst of the pandemic.
08:50 – A Redwood Voice Original Segment: Black Lives STILL Matter, even if you’re not seeing it a lot in mainstream media. Here’s what you can do to support the movement. Redwood Voice is also interested in amplifying Black voices in our community.
14:08 – The Nick & Lisa Rail Fund seeds $100 million for a new performing arts center.
16:22 – Yurok Tribe Press Release: Governor Gavin Newsom names Yurok education director Jim McQuillen to the State Board of Education.
19:55 – Yurok Tribe Press Release: Using COVID-19 federal relief dollars for an emergency operations center.
22:11 – A Redwood Voice Original Segment: Roger Gitlin recently made a Facebook post quoting and supporting a speech that incited hate, according to the Redwood Voice team and many members of the community. This RV Segment is to hold accountability to him, and further to act as a sneak preview of a longer form story in the future.
31:48 – A Redwood Voice Original Segment: Avi Critz speaks out to remember Naya Rivera, and tells his personal experience about how it has led to his realization of the effects of constant media barrage, and how we should all step back every once and while to take care of ourselves.
36:48 – The Redwood Voicecast #2 is out. Persephone breaks down what happened. Maybe it’ll intrigue you into taking a listen?
Listen for yourself right here!
Telling the untold stories of Del Norte and Tribal Lands through amplified youth voices.
