Redwood Voice’s Persephone Corvid Rose filed a piece last week, Student Activists Accuse CPH of Suppressing Dissent After Harassment & Arrests, and the comments it’s garnered online deserve a response. Those comments, at least on the Facebook pages it’s been shared to, have been mostly negative. Understandable, in our little red county. But one in particular needs to be addressed. In it, the commenter thought they were pointing something out by saying the piece isn’t “reporting,” and that no article should start with a press release. I agree, in a sense, this piece is not “reporting” in the inferred sense the commenter seems to have meant. It has a point of view, takes a stand, and ends with a “call to action” — all things that would have both purists and partisans up in arms if they occurred above the fold in the Times or Post.
Continue reading What Does In Media Res Mean?Category Archives: In Media Res
Some stories from Redwood Voice fall into a strange category. They aren’t quite an Opinion piece, but neither are they a cold, hard News report. Yet stories like these have been foundational to Redwood Voice—firsthand accounts, media activism, and all manner of stories that are, at their core, a human side of journalism. Stories that very clearly express a person wrote, and, dare we say, felt something.
Those stories we have come to call In Media Res — “In the middle of things.” Coined originally by our Station Manager Paul Critz as the name to his column (so a very special thanks to him in giving the name for the broader use of Redwood Voice), it has now become the label for these pieces. Those that do indeed report, and yet do feel, or have that otherwise personal touch given to a work will end up here.
Student Activists Accuse CPH of Suppressing Dissent After Harassment & Arrests
Thumbnail image courtesy of the Redheaded Blackbelt’s livestream of the Jan. 21st protest, taken as a screenshot and edited.
Update, 1:23 p.m. March 7: An anonymous source reached out to inform us that the date for Raymond Evans’ arraignment has been pushed back, before clarifying the case is still being reviewed and the court date has not yet been set. Redwood Voice reached out to the Humboldt County District Attorney’s office to verify, which confirmed that Evans’ court date is still pending. They gave no estimation for when it may be set.
Update, 1:30 p.m. March 20: Redwood Voice reached out to the Humboldt County District Attorney’s office again to check on Maggie Rasch’s court date, and found that her case is also pending review. Evans’ court date is also still pending review.
On the evening of March 1st, Redwood Voice received the following press release via email, from the Friends of Raymond and Maggie:
“Cal Poly Humboldt Orders Arrests of Activists, Seeks to Quietly Criminalize Dissent. Don’t Let Them!”
In their latest flailing attempt to supress any dissent, Cal Poly Humboldt and the University Police Department (UPD) have leveled charges against community members Maggie Rasch and Raymond Evans, accusing the two activists of felony “conspiracy to commit a crime,” “vandalism,” and “unlawful use of a mask” just over a week after a January 21st protest. When Evans asked what vandalism he was accused of, the arresting officer Joseph Conlin stated that he witnessed Evans loading signs, drums, and a wagon into his pickup truck after the protest, and that this constituted criminal conspiracy. Is this a reasonable basis for a felony arrest warrant?
In the week prior to obtaining warrants, police twice appeared outside a local house at odd hours of the night, stalking and surveiling anyone they assumed to be associated with the residence. In the first instance, two UPD officers arrived outside the house around 10 PM, shined flashlights into cars parked on the street outside, and knowingly deadnamed Maggie (a trans woman). In the second instance, an Arcata Police cruiser and a Humboldt County Sheriffs vehicle were spotted around 10 PM staking out a street corner one block from the house. Upon leaving, one friend was tailed by the sheriff all the way home.
Continue reading Student Activists Accuse CPH of Suppressing Dissent After Harassment & Arrests
Local Family Responsible for Community Scares Is Met With Love After House Fire
“I woke up to flames six feet from my bed,” JoAnn Holcomb said. “I could spend hours listing the things lost, I want to list the things we have received. We are blessed to have homeowners’ insurance. While it may not cover the cost of everything, it gives us hope that rebuilding our home is possible.”
JoAnn and David Holcomb are the owner-operators of David’s Haunted Manor, the only haunted house attraction in Del Norte County. Every year they and their two kids spend weeks putting on a show for the community, and donate a portion of their proceeds to a scholarship fund in collaboration with the Humboldt Area Foundation.
On Feb. 12, the master bedroom and hallway of their family home was engulfed in flames, forcing them to flee. Luckily, the Holcombs survived with minimal injury.
“Our Haunt family reached out immediately to ask what they could do for us. Some brought clothing, others gave us a place to keep our reptiles and amphibians until a long-term solution is found. Others have offered their hands and all have sent their love,” Holcomb said via text Thursday.
Continue reading Local Family Responsible for Community Scares Is Met With Love After House Fire
Del Norte County Office of Education Hosts Inaugural ‘Building Bridges’ Family Summit
Climbing the stairs that lead to the main entrance of Crescent Elk Middle School feels an awful lot like stepping through a time machine.
It’s not just the building’s 1930’s Art Deco aesthetic that immerses me in nostalgia every time I walk through its doors. I graduated from the school in 1999, sure, but I’ve wandered through those halls for a myriad of reasons over the decades. Most recently, I found myself returning to my adolescent alma mater for an entirely new reason. As the parent of a student, I was invited by the Del Norte County Office of Education and the Del Norte Unified School District to their inaugural “Family Summit” event. This conference, called “Building Bridges”, was an effort undertaken by DNCOE and DNUSD to strengthen student and family connections between home, school, and resources available within the broader community.
Continue reading Del Norte County Office of Education Hosts Inaugural ‘Building Bridges’ Family Summit
How a Community Dies…
Cherece Norris laughs into the phone, though there remains a hint of something else in her voice.
“Everybody keeps calling and saying they’re waiting for the ‘Ha-ha, I was only joking!’ I wish I was…”
Cherece, along with her husband Eric and their sons, Eric and Brent, run two businesses in Crescent City: Norris Family Kitchen and the Park City Superette. The restaurant began in the tiny building in front of the Superette at the corner of Howland Hill and Elk Valley but quickly became too popular — with their selection of “smash” burgers and Indian tacos — for the location. Two years ago, Cherece moved her restaurant into town, along the 101 corridor, to both better serve her expanding clientele and catch some of the tourist dollars that blow along the highway.
Her son Eric and his wife run the Superette, and have made it a hub in the marginal mixed-use neighborhood on the edge of town, providing the usual selection of small-store fare, as well as some fresh produce and prepared food. Outside the front door is a cabinet in which donated food stuffs are left for the local homeless population to take, free of charge.
If you drive down Elk Valley, past the Superette, the first street you come to on the right is Norris. The short, tree-lined street runs past the Elk Valley Rancheria’s education building and disappears in a knot of houses belonging to tribal members. The street’s name isn’t a coincidence. The Norris family has been part of the Rancheria for decades.
Continue reading How a Community Dies…
Automated License-Plate Reading Cameras Are Back on the Table
Thumbnail photo courtesy of AS Photography, which has been edited.
The Eureka City Council will be voting today at 6pm on whether or not to install 21 automated license-plate reading (ALPR) cameras throughout the city. There are also considerations to introduce these cameras into Arcata, Fortuna, and on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus, according to an article from the Lost Coast Outpost’s Isabella Vanderheiden.
These ALPR cameras are provided by Flock Technology, a private company specializing in AI-based visual surveillance systems. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital world, ALPR cameras can capture license plate numbers as well as identifying details of any passing vehicle, such as make, model, color, physical damage, bumper stickers, and more—so-called “vehicle fingerprints” that enable easier tracking. It does this, Flock claims, in order to compare license plate numbers against stolen vehicles or individuals wanted on criminal charges.
Continue reading Automated License-Plate Reading Cameras Are Back on the TableActivists 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”What the Heck Happened to KFUG??
As many in the community have noticed, the FM band at 101.1 megahertz is all static, and not the usual mix of static and music that would signal the low-power presence of KFUG Community Radio. What happened? Where did KFUG go?
There is a certain amount of sorcery involved in the complicated process behind shoving an antenna into the sky and subsequently hearing a voice come out of a paper cone several miles removed. Maybe it’s the panoply of compounding variables that gives broadcasting this numinous quality, but after twenty years of radio-living, I can confidently assert what I have learned: Radio is NOT science. Sure, it incorporates wires and circuit boards and math, but really it’s witchcraft. And just as with Elphaba, this witch’s bane is water.
Continue reading What the Heck Happened to KFUG??
Finding My Faith — In Media Res
Photo courtesy of www.sportograf.com
“…I was playing my guitar
Lying underneath the stars
Just thanking the Lord
For my fingers
For my fingers”
I’m not religious, or even spiritual, yet I’ve experienced moments more than once this year where I’m astonished at what I can achieve and I’m grateful to… someone.
One of the first came at the San Diego Spartan Race in Pala on April 13. I had hoisted a 40-pound sandbag on my shoulder and carried it for a quarter of a mile. I did the same for a 60-pound weighted bucket and a 70-pound Atlas ball, though the distance I had to schlep that last monstrosity wasn’t as long and I had help getting it off the ground.
Continue reading Finding My Faith — In Media Res
Alissia Northrup Has Concerns – In Media Res
Alissia Northrup and I pass through a room with multiple computers at parade rest and I recognize it at once, though it looks different from down here. It’s the room where the County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Alissia, and her staff tally the votes each election night. I’m used to the perspective of the web stream, somewhere up near the margin of wall and ceiling; passing through the room at this angle feels funny, like being backstage, a kind of liminal sense that isn’t dispelled by the familiar anonymity of the conference room we enter.
Alissia settles in a seat at the large table and I join her with my digital recorder. She has a message for Del Norte County voters. It’s written on the small piece of paper she’s holding. “I just want to tell the voters of Del Norte…” she begins. “You want me to do it now?”
Before I can answer, one of Alissia’s staff ducks a head in from behind the door. She presents a mangled mail-in ballot. “This person would like a replacement ballot,” the woman chuckles and holds the ballot up for Alissia’s official inspection. The end has been punctured repeatedly and perhaps slobbered on. “Her dog ate it.”
“No fibbin’ on this one, huh?” Alissia laughs and leaves me to go replace the ballot. I look around the blank laminate room. The last time I was in this room I was with Jessica Cejnar-Andrews. We were interviewing Dr. Rehwaldt about why we all had to start shaking hands with our elbows. Funny how time works.
“Sorry about that.” Alissia reappears, having successfully dealt with the canine ballot tampering, and picks up the thread of a thought she’d begun expressing on the phone earlier. “I have this…” she tells me, allowing her pause and matter-of-fact shrug to speak for her. “…for young people voting. I like to get young people volunteering at the polls. It’s good for them, but it’s good for us, it’s good for the community, seeing young people at the polls. I’ve had people say it gives them hope.”
Continue reading Alissia Northrup Has Concerns – In Media Res