Help Wanted: Redwood Voice Recruiting Youth Media Producers

Are you a young person in Del Norte and Adjacent Tribal Lands? Do you have a story to tell? A message people need to hear? A creative digital masterpiece brewing in your mind? Interested in learning more about media production? Need equipment, training, or a push in the right direction? Redwood Voice wants YOU!

Our team at the Redwood Voice is looking for youth and young adults who have an interest in
utilizing multimedia production, creative expression, and/or community journalism to tell the
untold stories that need to be heard.

The Redwood Voice is a youth media organization in Del Norte and Tribal Lands with the
mission of providing a creative outlet for amplifying local youth voice and shining a light on
disparities as well as lifting up the great community work and the positive local stories that don’t
always make “the news.” We believe in the power of youth voice and its ability to ignite changes
in policies, ordinances, and the narratives of the community.

Redwood Voice is a mobile organization funded by Building Healthy Communities with work
stations currently residing within Coastal Connections: Youth and Young Adult Resource Center
and Wild Rivers Community Foundation. There are plans to expand these work stations beyond
Crescent City, with hopes of reaching Smith River, Klamath, and the Gasquet/Hiouchi areas.
We are in the early stages of our new beginning, being led by Makenzy Williams, who is now
working as the newly-hired Youth Media Coordinator with Building Healthy Communities, and
Jacob Patterson, youth journalist, social activist, and facilitator of Gender Talk.

Redwood Voice owns equipment that is available for youth working on projects to borrow,
including camcorders, DSLR cameras, iPads, tripods, audio recording equipment, lighting
equipment, a small green screen, and several iMacs with iMovie and Adobe Creative Cloud.
We are available for guidance and support to youth, groups, or organizations working on media
projects from brainstorming and storyboarding to publishing your work. If you have a media
production you would like to have shared on our website and social media pages, please share
it with us! We are always in search of great, local media that we can help uplift!

To keep up with us, please visit out website, www.RedwoodVoice.com and follow us on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/redwoodvoice.dnatl For more information, questions, to share
content, or if you are interested in joining, please contact Makenzy Williams, Youth Media
Coordinator with Building Healthy Communities at (707) 465-1238 x123, email
mwilliams@wildriverscf.org, or stop by Wild Rivers Community Foundation at 990 Front St. in
Crescent City.

Enjoying the Little Things in Life on Walker Road

When you enter Walker Road (off of Highway 199) you encounter a beautiful dirt and gravel road that runs through the redwoods that is very pleasing to the eye. If you follow the road as it forks to the right it will lead you to the Smith River.

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As you walk down the stones to the waters’ edge, there are many things you can see such as frogs, toads, deer, snakes, mice, osprey, dragonflies, fish and even water spiders.

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The frogs are likely to be sitting right at the water’s edge ready to hop in and away the second they see you. However, if you don’t make any noise or let them see your shadow, you might be able to get closer without one hopping off.

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Although they are still interesting little critters as you view them on land, the water is the other half of the frog’s natural habitat and also the habitat where they move most gracefully. As opposed to their frantic hopping about on land, they fluidly swim through the water with ease. They also have special membranes similar to an eyelid that covers their eyes as they swim, allowing them to see clearly under water and hunt all variations of water life.

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Toads are also a critter that you have a chance to find on shore. At certain times of year you may even see piles of baby toads huddled up for safety, that is if you can tell them apart from the sand and rocks. Or you may see a larger adult toad sitting in a moist spot somewhere waiting for food to pass by. Toads can burrow into dirt and sand to make a home, though not nearly as deep as a gopher. However in some areas, toads have been known to crawl into an empty gopher hole and call it home.

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Snakes are yet another thing you have a chance to view at Walker Road. Water snakes are amazing little guys that have taken a semi-amphibious turn to life. They are like little garter snakes that swim underwater to hunt small fish, water bugs of all types, tadpoles and small toads. Even frogs make up a large part of their diet. On top of water hunting they are also land hunters and eat a wide menagerie of small land creatures. Water snakes are also pretty fun to catch and are completely harmless, but that does not mean the snake will thank you for bothering them and typically will “skunk” you. This is a defensive reflex that covers whatever part of you is touching the snake with a VERY stinky hormone-based fluid meant to repel predators. However, this fluid does come out of the rear end of the snake adding to the gross factor. The snake, in its displeasure, may also bite you.

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Yet another living thing you have a chance to see are lizards, as surprising as it sounds. Lizards will pop up in the hottest part of summer mostly and at higher elevations where it is warmer. You can hear them skittering off in the grass when they see you. Lizards are found in hot places because their digestion depends on being warm. They cannot generate their own heat so they bask in the hot sun to regulate their body temperature, which is where you are likely to find them. On Walker Road, lizards are often found on the rocks sunning themselves or looking for bugs in the grass. They are hard to catch as they dart through the grass and under rocks. I can’t count the times I’ve seen a predator sit there, frustrated, trying to catch one of these fast little guys or get a face full of dirt due to literally not looking before they leap.

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Water spiders are the last, but not least, thing I would like to tell you about. I find water spiders to be especially interesting. One of the neatest things about them is their ability to walk on water, which is accomplished with many tiny hairs that cause something called surface tension. These spiders are a type of ground spider that does not make a web to catch prey. Instead, it ambushes its food by sitting and waiting in one place very patiently. They can even catch small water prey with the same method. These fuzzy little spiders are sometimes hard to see as they are the same light gray color of the rocks at Walker Road. They are nonetheless fun to watch.

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These are a mere few of the many living things that can be found at Walker Road if you have the patience to look. Though Walker Road is an amazing swimming and family area, sometimes it pays to take some time to enjoy the little things in life. You may be surprised at what you find.

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Trail Notes below are courtesy of Richard Weins and the Del Norte Triplicate:

THE HIKE: A 2.2-mile double-loop through old-growth redwoods off of Walker Road north of U.S. Highway 199. Start on Leiffer Trial, then make a series of right turns onto Leiffer Loop, Ellsworth Loop and eventually back to Leiffer Trail.

HIGHLIGHTS: A giant walk-through redwood stump in the middle of the trail. Numerous benches, some at the end of short side trails, with philosophical engravings left behind by preservationists.

SWEAT LEVEL: Some moderately strenuous climbs at the start of each loop, and a few newly fallen small trees to pick your way through in a couple of spots.

GETTING THERE: From Crescent City, drive north on U.S. Highway 101, then east for almost 3 miles on Highway 199. Turn north on Walker Road, drive just under a mile, veer left at a fork, then drive another half-mile to the trailhead for Leiffer Trail, which is on your left. There’s a small parking area, but the trailhead sign is set far back from the road and easy to miss. On the way there or back, you might enjoy a few short side trails off of Walker Road.

True North Seeks End to Racial Profiling with Passing of AB953

The statewide push for accountability with law enforcement in their relations with communities of color has come to Del Norte County and Tribal Lands. Local organizing network, True North, have been collecting prayer cards signed by citizens urging Governor Brown to pass Assembly Bill 953, the Racial and Identity Profiling Act, a data collecting bill making it mandatory for law enforcement to track and report the race of persons they make contact with.

Redwood Voice reporters followed some of the leaders and organizers of True North as they made their trek through our region on their way to the State Capitol.

Video: Quiltbags PLUS Campaign Launch

This kickoff video for the Quiltbags PLUS campaign is a collaboration of Redwood Voice and Gender Talk in partnership with young people enrolled in the 2015 Youth Training Academy. The Quiltbags PLUS Campaign was designed by youth to address visibility and representation of marginalized individuals in the LGBTQ+ communities. The YTA was put on by Building Healthy Communities and California Center for Rural Policy in the Del Norte County and Adjacent Tribal Lands area.

True North’s First Parent Engagement Team Meeting

Parents, school officials, and True North organizers met at the Wild Rivers Community Foundation building on June 23 for their inaugural Parent Engagement Team meeting, after making an agreement during the Action on Education that was held in May. Five parents and four our out of the five selected school representatives attended. The focus of these meetings is to create and propose a strategy to increase communication between families and schools.

Josh Norris, parent of four and True North community organizer, briefly described the event during an interview on June 30. He stated that after they shared their experiences with working parent-school communication, the group identified three major values that they will utilize when crafting an engagement strategy. First is teamwork because, as Norris stated, “it’s not going to work unless we have teachers, administrators, and families working together.” Next is the idea that school should be a community hub. The third value is to create a partnership “between schools, tribes, other community resources and organizations.” The group also came to the decision that they should expand their outreach beyond just parents, and focus on communicating with families.

The rest of the meeting was spent developing a timeline. Their goal is to propose their findings to the school board in November and begin implementation in Spring 2016. Margaret Keating Elementary, Smith River Elementary, and (possibly) Crescent Elk Middle School were selected as pilot candidates for implementation. According to Norris, “the reason we’re looking at those schools is because some of the outlying schools like Margaret Keating are the lowest performing schools. They have the highest amount of need.”

The strategy will encompass all aspects of scholastic life, from advanced policy reform to simple changes like, for example, having a fun picnic with barbecue instead of an average back-to-school night. Parents will be able to sit down with teachers as equals.

Norris stated that this inaugural meeting “was a powerful experience because a lot of these folks, you could tell, have not sat down in a room all together. I think that was pretty groundbreaking. What we discovered, of course, is that we have a lot more in common than we thought.” He said that the event “went the way that it should have been. You have these different interests coming together for the same purpose.”

He finishes by stating, “Del Norte schools are about to turn it around. I think that some things have happened in the recent year that haven’t happened for many years before. I think people are now finally ready. They just need some encouragement from the outside, and that’s where we come in.”

The next Parent Engagement Team meeting will be held on July 14 at 6:00 p.m. Parents and family members are encouraged to contact Josh Norris at (707) 954-7226 about involvement.