Alex Bielecki is a frequent public speaker during Shasta County’s public meetings. 

But at the Board’s last meeting, as Bielecki spoke to the Board about whether to amend County zoning codes to allow for tiny home permitting, he veered into racist speech.

“I’m not a fool. I’m not a n*****,” Bielecki, a White man, told the Board, using a racist slur as he explained how he came to his position on the topic. His statement was met with immediate gasps from the public, to which Bielecki responded with an emphatic, “That’s right!”

In the front row, Nathan Pinkney, a Black man who’s become well known in Shasta County for his local political activism, immediately spoke up. 

“Shut the hell up,” he said loudly to Bielecki as several other voices in the room yelled out similar sentiments. “Shut up.”

“Make me,” Bielecki responded, flashing his middle finger at Pinkney.

Since the May 30 meeting, Shasta County Supervisor and Board Chair Patrick Jones has come under fire for allowing Bielecky’s use of the racial slur in the public forum. A decision, he says, which was dictated by the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

His intentionality about protecting Bielecki’s First Amendment rights stands in sharp contrast to a decision he made later in the meeting, to have Pinkney removed from the Board room after he verbally protested Jones handling of the racist slur incident.

Jones said the decision to have Pinkney removed from the meeting was based on a Board’s policy against disruptive behavior. But Pinkney’s right to attend the meeting is also protected by the First Amendment, and California’s Brown Act.

Those two decisions by Jones, first to allow racist speech by a White man during public comment, then to remove a Black man for protesting that speech from the Board floor, have triggered widespread community outrage in Shasta County.

On Wednesday, May 31, several local justice groups, including the United Way of California, the Shasta Equal Justice Coalition, and Shasta County Citizens Advocating Respect (SCCAR), released statements about the events, calling on community leaders to promote the and of civil discourse that protects community members from hate and violence.

Some of those statements said the decision to allow the use of a racist slur in a public meeting was wrong.

But David Loy, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition who spoke to Shasta Scout by phone yesterday, says Jones was right to have protected Bielecky’s freedom of speech when he used the racist slur during public comment. 

“No matter how offensive or hateful it may be,” Loy say, “If he’s talking about a particular agenda item, and he’s on topic to that agenda item, then the Board is not allowed to censor or silence him simply because of the way he discusses it or the viewpoint he expresses.”

“The First Amendment does not have an exception for so-called hate speech,” Loy continued, “or speech which is profoundly offensive.”

While Bielecky’s use of a racist term was obviously “vile, despicable and revolting,” Loy said, it’s also speech that’s clearly protected by the Constitution and important to allow in public settings.

The First Amendment doesn’t allow the government to define or outlaw hate speech, Loy said, in part because what is considered hate speech can change depending on who is in power. 

“It’s very dangerous to give the government the power to define speech,” Loy explained. “Because it gives the government power to silence dissent, critique and protest.”

That’s where Jones likely went wrong, Loy said, by silencing Pinkney’s protest against the hate speech under the guise of keeping order.

The details of situations like these are very important, Loy said, because First Amendment rights in public meetings hinge in part on the balance between the public’s right to free speech and their right to conduct public business without disruption.

In order to remove someone from a public meeting the Board chair has to first warn the individual, and give them an opportunity to stop disrupting the meeting, Loy explained, which Jones did. 

But officials also have a responsibility to protect the public’s right to be at the meeting, unless the disruption they are causing is actually making it impossible for the government to do business. 

“Under Government Code section 54957.95,” Loy said, “A person can be removed from a meeting (but only) for actually disrupting, impeding or rendering infeasible the orderly conduct of the meeting.”

“That’s a pretty high burden,” Loy added, saying removing Pinkney from the meeting was only appropriate if his protest from the floor of the Board room was significant enough to actually disrupt the public’s business. 

“From a First Amendment perspective,” Loy explained, “People have a right to attend and participate (in public meetings) and a First Amendment right not to be excluded unless they disrupt the meeting. Not every minor interruption rises to the level of a continual and substantial interruption that makes it impossible to run the meeting.”

Furthermore, Loy explained, if Pinkney was removed from the Board room for a level of disruption that others have engaged in without being removed, he’s also had his First Amendment rights violated in a second way, known as “viewpoint discrimination” or “unequal enforcement.”

Viewpoint discrimination comes in when policies are unequally enforced by public officials, which has the effect, intended or not, of providing unequal protection for certain people, viewpoints, or kinds of speech.

“If they’re routinely tolerating other forms of outburst  . . . that’s a very troubling set of facts,” Loy said. “It suggests the possibility that (Board rules are) being selectively enforced against someone who objected to racist speech . . .  which would constitute unequal enforcement.”

“If you’re going to have rules,” Loy continued “they have to be a) valid and b) equally applied across the Board.” 

It’s also important to remember that while speech may be protected legally, that doesn’t make it acceptable ethically or morally, a distinction drawn by Shasta County Deputy CEO Mary Williams, who responded to a request for comment sent to newly appointed County CEO, David Rickert.

In her emailed statement, Williams said Shasta County is committed to both protecting free speech and fostering an environment of safety and respectful communication.

“We firmly condemn the use of profane and discriminatory language during public comment sessions,” Williams wrote, alluding not to the legality of the speech, but its appropriateness in civil discourse.

“We believe in creating an atmosphere where all participants can express their views in a respectful manner,” Williams continued. “We encourage individuals to engage in civil discourse while exercising their right to free speech.”

Jones did not take a similar stand during the public meeting, focusing on free speech protections but failing to address the racist speech as destructive and reprehensible.

His failure to do so was a serious mistake, says Susan Wilson, who sits on the Board of Shasta County Citizens Advocating Respect (SCCAR).

“Any and every member of the BOS should have acted immediately to caution Alex Bielecki regarding the use of the word in the Chambers in the BOS meeting,” Susan wrote to Shasta Scout by email.

“It is my sincere hope that the members of the BOS and their staff have a discussion about how to address this issue if it should come up again, and to take steps to keep it from coming up again if possible. This is an ideal time for David J. Rickert, our new Chief Executive Officer, to help our Board of Supervisors develop some standards of decorum for their meetings.”

Shasta County’s Board policies already prohibit the use of “threatening, profane or abusive language which disrupts, disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the Board meeting.” Those policies also allow the Board Chair to remove from the chamber any person who is disruptive to the meeting. 

But Board policies don’t take precedence over California’s Brown Act, or the First Amendment, First Amendment attorney Loy emphasized. And those policies may not be valid if they violate individual rights to free speech and public meeting access. 

Instead of stopping public speech which is offensive, Loy said, the Board’s recourse is to stand up to it with verbal rebuke.

“The Chair, the Board, the (public) is free and encouraged to share their point of view,” Loys said.

“Speak back to the commenter saying you may have the right to say that but we don’t think you should. That’s how the first amendment works,” Loy continued.

The Shasta Equal Justice Coalition called for that kind of active response to racist speech in their statement about the incident, which was released Wednesday, May 31.

Failing to challenge racist speech in public settings, the SEJC’s statement said, limits Shasta County’s progress towards justice.

“The SEJC envisions a Shasta County where there exists equity and justice for every community member, inclusive of all identities, backgrounds, or circumstances.”

“That possibility is constrained when derisive speech  . . . . remains unchallenged. Particularly in public forums where critical decisions about public safety, education, and well-being are discussed.”

If you have a correction to this story you can submit it here. Have information to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org 

Elwood Dryden was born in 1919. The well-known local businessman and former owner of the Sugar Plum Farm Restaurant turns 104 on June 1.

“I remember when the county was only 3,000 people,” Elwood said during an interview at his Ridgemark home in Hollister in mid-May. He looks back at his childhood in San Benito County with fondness, when neighbors helped each other and he “pretty much knew everyone.” 

His grandfather, John Dryden, came from England and then from the Midwest to San Jose in 1885. John Dryden stayed there for three years, moving to San Benito County to become foreman of the Brewster Ranch. Within three years, he had bought his own place on Riverside Road and began raising chickens and managing his orchards.

On Elwood’s kitchen table is a small collection of mementos. A book with a bio about his grandfather, photos of him with his parents, another with his 4-H lamb. One photo is of three young men: Kenny Sugioka, Roy Stickler and Elwood. He said that they met at San Benito High School and became friends.  Back then many of the rural schools would host dances. So they put together a small band to provide the music for local events, playing popular tunes of the time. 

Both Kenny’s and Elwood’s families had orchards and so they had a lot in common. The Dryden family grew mostly apricots and prunes. 

Elwood soon started college in Hollister. In those days, the college was right downtown in the same area as the San Benito High School. As he became an adult, the slow-paced life of orchard work and music was disrupted by World War II. 

Elwood said this was when his friend Kenny moved away. Japanese American families like the Sugiokas, were being sent to internment camps in other states during the war. It became hard to keep track of him, moving from place to place, but somehow they managed. 

His friend Roy Stickler moved to Hollywood and pursued a career in the film industry. 

For a while Elwood took jobs in other parts of the state. He has fond memories of working among the redwoods of Northern California and in Yosemite, where he developed a great love for fishing and the outdoor life. 

Then he moved to San Jose for a job with Permanente Cement Company and met his wife, Catherine, at a company dance. Eventually, he and Cathy returned to San Benito County to work at the packing house on Riverside Road and sell fruit to stores.

In the 1960s, he started a small fruit stand along Highway 156 between Fairview Road and Pacheco Pass, near Barnheisel Road. “We opened the little fruit stand and we had drinks and that’s about it,” he said. The stand centered around an “Apricot Freeze” made with apricot syrup, ice and milk. Customers could get “all you can drink.” 

“Then they wanted food and we added hamburgers,” Elwood said about the customers traveling between “the valley and the coast.”

His son David Dryden said, “They just kept adding to it. I think there were at least three additions and it eventually became a restaurant.”

They called it the Sugar Plum Farm Restaurant and it was known especially for its apricot and boysenberry tarts. “Everyone in town had their favorite dish and we still run into people who say, ‘I miss your chicken or Swiss steak,’” said Kim Dryden, David’s wife. “It was open breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Elwood closed the restaurant in 1998, but it has been memorialized with a miniature model at [Bonfante] Gilroy Gardens. Elwood and Cathy had three children; Barbara, Dave and Diane. Cathy passed away in 2003. Today, he has seven grandchildren and  11 great grandchildren. 

Elwood and Kenny Sugioka stayed in touch through letters and phone calls. Kenny settled in North Carolina and became a professor at Duke University’s School of Medicine. Although Kenny has since passed away, they were able to remain friends and even visit one another.

Inevitably, when speaking to a 104-year-old gentleman, one feels compelled to ask, “To what do you credit your long and healthy life?” At first Elwood mentioned that he never smoked and was always very moderate when it came to drinking alcohol. But after a little more thought, he said he loved spending time outdoors, especially fishing. He said he watched very little television. “If it’s junk, I just turn it off,” he said. 

Daughter-in-law Kim Dryden, credits his mental alertness to his lifelong interest in news and current events. He has continued to read the Wall Street Journal and has kept up with local and national events. “He doesn’t live in the past and stays up to date,” Kim said. 

 

 We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. It is expensive to produce local news and community support is what keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service, nonprofit news.

The post Still telling stories, Elwood Dryden turns 104 appeared first on BenitoLink.

Last year, Fairmead received a grant to help plan for farmland retirement in order to recharge groundwater under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA. But the community’s vision for the future is bigger than that: The locals also want to see improved air quality, a community center and reliable domestic wells.

The West is not just facing an energy transition, it is also at the beginning of a major transition in land and water use. In California’s Central Valley, groundwater regulations will require retiring between 500,000 and 1 million acres by 2040. (Retirement, or “fallowing,” refers to taking lands out of agricultural production.) The planning and decision-making now underway across more than 260 regional Groundwater Sustainability Agencies will determine how SGMA plays out across different groundwater basins: whether landowners will be compensated for retired lands, what the lands will become and who will manage them, and how counties will replace the revenues they currently collect from agricultural lands and use to help provide services to residents in need.

“The side effects of agriculture have a huge impact on the environment and on everyone.”

But while groundwater sustainability is SGMA’s focus, it’s not the only thing on Central Valley residents’ minds: They also need jobs, as well as clean air and water. Many Central Valley towns have diverse demographics; Fairmead, for example, is over 70% Latino — mostly immigrant and predominately Spanish-speaking — but there are also Black, Asian, Indigenous, mixed-race and white individuals. The median household income is less than half of the state’s average, and the residents are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards.

“The side effects of agriculture have a huge impact on the environment and on everyone,” said Ángel Fernández-Bou, a climate scientist at the nonprofit science advocacy organization Union of Concerned Scientists, which is researching the Central Valley’s land-use transition. He and others spoke to High County News about how SGMA can help create a healthier and more sustainable post-agriculture Central Valley:

Improved air and water quality: Locals are in dire need of better air quality. “When they spray, they spray all kinds of pesticides,” said Nelson, who is also president of the organization Fairmead Community and Friends. “The Central Valley has a lot of problems with people with asthma and COPD because they grow so much stuff out here. The environment is bad to breathe, plus it’s super-hot.”

Around 200 million pounds of pesticides are used in California each year, and the geographical pattern of their application is one of environmental inequality: According to the Pesticide Action Network, majority-Latino counties see 906% more pesticide use than counties with fewer than 24% Latino residents. Fernández-Bou calculated that creating “buffer zones” by retiring the farmland in a one-mile radius around the Central Valley’s “disadvantaged communities” — a term used by the state of California for municipalities with median household incomes lower than 80% of the state’s — would decrease pesticide use by 12 million pounds, and also combat the health effects of pesticide drift.

Agricultural inputs also affect the water quality. When the nitrate from fertilizers leaches into aquifers, it can cause chronic health effects and conditions, such as blue baby syndrome. A long-term study by the Environmental Working Group found that 69 Central Valley water systems serving at least 1.5 million residents — the majority of them Latino — exceeded federal standards for nitrate. The impact is likely even higher, given the numerous domestic wells. Creating buffer zones would reduce nitrate leaching into aquifers by over 200 million pounds, per year, Fernández-Bou calculated.

The impact of land fallowing on dust is less clear. The Public Policy Institute of California has raised concerns about increased dust blowing off fallowed lands and affecting farmworkers and nearby communities. But Fernández-Bou took a more optimistic view, saying that dust is most often a problem when farmers till fallowed fields; left alone, he said, cover crops or weeds will grow roots that hold the soil in place.

Workforce transition: For many Central Valley residents, the biggest question concerns jobs, wondering how they’ll make a living once farmland is retired. Transitioning away from agriculture is “a hard pill to swallow,” said Eddie Ocampo, director of the organization Self-Help Enterprises. “Everyone is for economic diversity, but there’s going to be a gap, and those who are the most vulnerable are going to be the most affected.”

Under Fernández-Bou’s buffer-zone model, an estimated 25,682 agricultural jobs would be lost. Communities are only beginning to think about what will replace them. One option is renewable energy: California’s SB100 requires the state to be 100% renewable by 2045 — a timeline similar to SGMA’s land fallowing — and the Central Valley is being eyed for significant solar production. “We’re going to see long-term sustained demand for solar construction and maintenance jobs,” said Andrew Ayres of the Public Policy Institute of California. Community colleges in the Central Valley are working to develop training programs for these jobs. Another initiative plans to re-train farmworkers to install water recycling systems.

“Everyone is for economic diversity, but there’s going to be a gap, and those who are the most vulnerable are going to be the most affected.”

Access to drinking water: Like Fairmead, many of the Central Valley’s low-income rural communities lack urban water infrastructure and must rely on shallow domestic and municipals wells to meet their drinking water needs. Because SGMA prioritizes access to drinking water, many people believe it could improve the health of those wells. “Generally speaking, SGMA implementation is going to be good for rural groundwater wells,” said Ayres. Recharging groundwater, he said, “can buoy those community wells.”

Dialogue: The planning process itself, said Ocampo, has been beneficial for the Central Valley. Developing successful land-repurposing plans, he said, requires the participation of diverse interests — agribusiness, environmental justice organizations, land trusts and under-represented communities. “A lot of stakeholders realize that the more diversity of opinion there is, the more multi-beneficial and inclusive the outcome will be,” said Ocampo.

Planning for groundwater sustainability gives historically agricultural communities the chance to envision myriad new economies and land uses that will shape the future of the Central Valley. Habitat restoration, parks, regenerative agriculture, community centers and cooling centers are all on the table.

“I would say the possibilities are endless,” said Fernández-Bou. “But please don’t bring bad stuff to the valley.”

Caroline Tracey is the climate justice fellow at High Country News. Email her at caroline.tracey@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

Follow @ce_tracey

About two weeks after poultry plant worker Jesus “Chuy” Salazar died in a workplace accident, family and friends are mourning the loss of their colleague, father and grandfather.

Salazar, 66, of the Fresno County city of Sanger, died on the morning of May 7 while working at Pitman Family Farms.

That morning, according to a Sanger Police report obtained by The Bee, Salazar was assigned to check pipes around an indoor poultry waste pit — a 14-foot-wide, 18-foot-long and​ 18- to 25-foot-deep rectangular structure containing a mixture of chicken feathers, remains, waste, fat and water.

When a fellow employee noticed Salazar went missing, a Pitman supervisor called the police, concerned that Salazar had fallen into the pit and died, the report said. Police who responded to the scene said they saw in the pit, “a set of boots with the toes pointed upwards.”

The Fresno County Coroner’s Office said in an email statement to The Bee that Salazar’s cause of death was drowning.

Pitman Farms — the family-owned farm and poultry processing company behind “Mary’s Chicken,” a popular line of organic and free-range chickens — is one of the largest employers in Fresno County, according to state employment data. Workers at the Sanger-based processing plant cut, grind and package chickens, as well as other poultry products.

Pitman Farms did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Cal/OSHA, is investigating the workplace fatality. The federal agency says there are many “serious safety and health hazards” in the poultry processing industry, due to the common use of dangerous equipment and hazardous chemicals, and the risk of chronic injuries.

Salazar’s family shared a statement with The Bee, authored by his son, Richard Castillo, his daughter-in-law, Lina Castillo, his daughter, Clarissa Reyes, and his grandchildren Paris, Roman and Landon.

“Losing a loved one is never easy, especially someone as remarkable as Jesus,” the family said in the statement. “He was not only a great father, but a great human being.”

‘A lot of people’ loved him at Pitman Farms

Salazar was originally from the town of Jiquilpan, Michoacán, México and eventually moved to the United States to make a living.

His children remember him as a “very hard worker.”

Prior to working at Pitman Farms, where his family estimates he worked for around two years, he worked in the hospitality industry in the city of San Jose, helping with hotel banquets.

At Pitman Farms, Salazar, affectionately known as “Don Chuy,” was the kind of coworker that looked out for others.

In the mornings when clocking in, Salazar would greet his colleagues with a spirited, “good morning! How did we wake up today?” He would offer you a soda or water from his lunch box, coworkers recalled, or offer to buy you a snack if he thought you looked famished.

He cracked jokes with his coworkers and offered words of encouragement during the workday, which workers said could sometimes last between 10 and 14 hours.

He was a good, respectful man, fellow Pitman Farms employee Karina Torres said in an interview. “Bien amiguero, bien campechano,” she said. “Very friendly, very cheerful.”

And he loved his family, Torres said. “We’d be there working and he’d talk about his children and his grandchildren,” she said. “And when he talked about them, his beautiful eyes would light up.”

Now, ‘Don Chuy’ is on everyone’s minds at work, Torres said, and as soon as a group of four or five people are together, “we start to cry.”

Some of his colleagues, family and friends gathered last Saturday in Sanger for a small memorial in his name.

“Muchas personas lo queríamos allí,” said another Pitman Farms worker who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “A lot of us there loved him.”

Salazar’s family to hold funeral service later this month

Salazar’s family remembers him as someone who had an “infectious” love for life, and love for those around him.

One way he expressed this passion was through music and dance. He especially loved mariachi music. One song family members say he sang well was “Volver, Volver,” a Mexican ranchero song made popular by the late Vicente Fernandez.

“Everyone always asked him to sing and he did it so well,” said his daughter-in-law Lina Castillo.

The Castillo family said they’ll find comfort remembering “the sound of his voice as he sang and danced, the warmth of his embrace, and the joy he brought to those around him.”

His family will hold private funeral services for Salazar later this month.

The post Worker who drowned at Fresno-area poultry plant remembered as ‘a great human being’ appeared first on Fresnoland.

This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice.

When two aunties visit parents in need, there is no scolding, shame or surveillance. Instead, they set themselves to the immediate tasks at hand on these southern California reservations — at times simply pitching in to fold a pile of laundry, or patting a baby to sleep with Kumeyaay lullabies.

Then there are the variety of lessons with mom and dad to nurture safe parenting that fold in traditional Indigenous teachings. Establishing family routines and healthy diets are taught alongside lessons in burning sage for cleansing, growing herbal medicines in a family’s backyard, and making basic introductions in a child’s Native language. 

“As a home-based program, if both of the aunties come in, it’s not necessarily a reprimand,” said auntie Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lycett. “It’s, ‘Let me take care of the child over here, so you can have your class.’”

Since its formal inception in 2019, My Two Aunties has assisted hundreds of Indigenous families in California’s San Diego, Imperial and Riverside counties. From its base on the Rincon Indian Reservation, the small program with a staff of three is among the many ongoing efforts in Indian Country to keep children out of foster care and ensure Indigenous families remain safe and intact.

Beyond parenting support, the aunties seek to repair intergenerational trauma that can result in substance abuse, domestic violence and unsafe environments for children. They equip parents with cultural tools through “Indigenous Ways Of Knowing” that they may have missed out on due to their own childhoods in foster and adoptive homes. The goals are to reduce family separation, build parents’ trust in social services and help members of tribal communities heal.

My Two Aunties partners with nine local tribes, the local Indian Health Council and San Diego County, and is funded by California’s Office of Child Abuse Prevention and the Department of Social Services. 

The key component is the “aunties,” whose role “builds upon the strengths of family legacies, patterns, and kinship traditions that have endured since time immemorial,” the My Two Aunties’ program guide states. In contrast to the fear instilled by county social workers going into the homes of parents under threat of child removal, Lycett describes her work as an abundance of acceptance and understanding. Some home visits require just one auntie; others, two.

“When you have one auntie, everything is fine and dandy,” Lycett said with a grin. “But if two come into the door, you better duck for cover.” 

Lycett, 28 and fellow auntie Cori Biggs, 63, are descended from the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. Lycett has an associate degree in sociology and is studying for a bachelor’s degree in the sociology field. She has been trained in the well-regarded Family Spirit program since 2019. Biggs has a master’s degree in social work.

They aim to build relationships between children, parents and their tribes to combat the cultural erasure that happens when a child is taken from their tribal home. So in addition to training in case management, mandated reporting protocols and developing safety plans, they’re also versed in local languages, legends and Native history, including the impacts of colonization.

Aunties’ responsibilities include supporting parents at risk for abusing substances, working with pregnant moms and guiding families for one year after a child’s birth. 

“WHENEVER WE’RE WORKING WITH THESE FAMILIES, THEY HAVE TO BE THE LEADER.”

— LIZZIE LYCETT, MY TWO AUNTIES

Lycett said “our first and foremost priority is the safety of our families,” and she and Biggs are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect. If concerning issues arise that require a call to the child protection hotline, program staff may contact CPS, or encourage direct witnesses to do so. Aunties do not make foster care recommendations, however — that determination is made following an investigation by a tribal or county social worker. 

Clients were not interviewed for this article to maintain their privacy, but feedback the program has received shows family members’ appreciation for the guidance and support. “Raising a Native baby to be proud of being Native is a huge thing,” one parent said in a survey response. “That’s something that I really wanted and the main reason I wanted to be in this program.”

Former director Karan Thorne —  a member of the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians — retired last year after a three-decade journey to develop My Two Aunties. Thorne said that unlike the typical approach of social workers, the aunties focus on strengths within the household: “Instead of ‘What’s wrong with you?’ they ask: ‘What’s strong with you?’” 

She said generations to come are being positively impacted.

“I’m seeing such great change with these pregnant women, and a lot of the babies have tribal names now,” Thorne said. “To me, that says they’re proud of their culture and where their kids are coming from.”

At a recent National Indian Child Welfare Association conference highlighting noteworthy practices across the country, the nonprofit Indian Health Council described the program as “well received” among the members it serves as a tribal health organization. “In our community it takes trust to build a relationship,” a representative said. “It appears our Aunties are able to make that connection.”

Art Martinez of the Chumash tribe is a consulting psychologist who has worked on its curriculum and evaluations. He said the strength of My Two Aunties lies in the people it serves.

“In our ways, we never had child removal,” Martinez said. “We never had prisons, we never had jails. Why? Because we worked off a very basic understanding of living an honorable life in the way we were meant to be and the way we were meant to represent our own families.”

Martinez said he sees the program’s current caseload growing and shifting — from parents who are required by the court to participate, to parents who want to participate to reconnect with their cultural and spiritual pasts.

“IF BOTH OF THE AUNTIES COME IN, IT’S NOT NECESSARILY A REPRIMAND. IT’S, ‘LET ME TAKE CARE OF THE CHILD OVER HERE, SO YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CLASS.’”

— LIZZIE LYCETT, MY TWO AUNTIES

The My Two Aunties curriculum begins with lessons structured around the growth of an acorn into an oak tree. 

Lessons in the roots that strengthen families and communities involve practicing patience and staying grounded in tradition. The course evolves through teachings about a balanced diet and healthy relationships, and ends in a final class symbolized by a drawing of a towering oak. The tree is surrounded by a forest fed by the knowledge of elders, ancestral medicine and spiritual practice.

The aunties’ caseloads have grown steadily over the past four years, including parents who voluntarily seek their support and services, and those referred by physicians. Clients of the child welfare system arrive at different stages — some parents are under investigation for child maltreatment, some have children placed in foster homes, and others are in the final stages of reunification. Each family receives between one and 12 visits, depending on the level of need. 

In 2022, the program served 97 families and held 411 parenting classes. Those numbers have grown from 2021, when the program assisted 73 families and provided 133 parenting classes. 

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, families picked up workbooks and other material at outdoor drive-through sites, and dozens of mothers received pre- and post-natal check-ins through video conferencing. But new opportunities were created as well, and the program continues to connect with families through virtual visits.

“It’s an option that has proven to be very convenient for our families and sometimes increases the chances that they will participate in the program,” current director Nancy Spence said.

The work of relying on traditional teachings to reduce the number of tribal families separated by foster care began over 20 years ago in this community. At the time, the consortium of tribes served by the Indian Health Council’s Tribal Family Services had nearly 500 children in local child welfare systems. 

Indian Health Council data show there are currently 30 children in out-of-home care among the populations served by the agency serves, who include members of nine federally recognized tribes in San Diego, Imperial and Riverside counties.

My Two Aunties is a key contributor to the low numbers in recent years, according to the organization. 

After publishing its 2022 evaluation report, the program is now working on its next robust set of findings. The measures that are being examined by Martinez and Jeremy Braithwaite of the Tribal Law and Policy Institute focus on the program’s ability to strengthen families: “How did families’ participation in various aspects of the program build/enhance/restore cultural resilience and how did they see this contributing to stronger, healthier families?” Braithwaite noted in an email. The evaluation centers on Indigenous Ways of Knowing methods, which the researcher described as “both culturally and scientifically rigorous.”

A final report on outcomes-to-date is forthcoming. But state data already show why the program is urgently needed in these southern California counties.

Native children make up roughly 600 of the more than 52,000 children in foster care in the state, or just 1.3%. But like Black children, they are, relative to their population size, the most likely to be reported as subjects of maltreatment and to enter foster care, according to state data.

“WHEN MY CLIENTS DON’T REUNIFY, I TELL THEM TO GET THAT ROOM READY ANYWAY. BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH HE’S IN FOSTER CARE, HE’S GOING TO AGE OUT AND COME HOME, SO YOU HAVE TO BE READY.”

— KARAN THORNE, FORMER DIRECTOR, MY TWO AUNTIES

The aunties’ care of these children’s families stands in stark contrast with the approach of county child welfare agencies — and it is more broadly defined. Some work is preventive — such as parents who have a family member with substance use disorder and need support “to ensure both the resiliency of the family and the family’s place in a Native community of wellness,” the program’s description states. 

Others, even after losing their custody rights to their children, remain in the program — parents who’ve had their rights terminated are still treated as care-worthy.

“When my clients don’t reunify, I tell them to get that room ready anyway,” said former director Thorne. “Because even though he’s in foster care, he’s going to age out and come home so you have to be ready.” 

The care is distinct in other ways as well. The aunties address and acknowledge the struggles Indigenous parents face that is a result of colonization, misrepresentation and social worker bias. Thorne said skepticism about Indigenous peoples’ ability to care for themselves and their families leads to the disproportionate numbers of child removals in Native communities. That includes conflating child neglect with poverty, in tribal communities, where as many as one-third live below the federal income level. 

“You have to get to that root cause of what’s really happening with these families,” Thorne said, noting that too often, children are removed because of “conditions that non-Native social workers didn’t feel were right.”

Under the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and state law in California, child welfare agencies must make extra efforts to avoid the separation of Native families. To address historic injustice, that means making “active” — not simply “reasonable” — efforts to provide services to parents and to avoid placing children away from kin. That work is another central goal of My Two Aunties.

“ICWA says social workers have to use active efforts to help reunify families,” Thorne said. “We’re doing the active efforts to prevent those removals.”

The distrust parents have toward child welfare agencies in low-income and communities of color is not an exceptional experience in California or among tribal members. Lycett has seen it first-hand. In her initial home visits, she routinely encounters tension that must be overcome before she can earn a family’s trust. Some of her clients have a deep-seated fear of social workers taking away their children, and they’ve been left to feel powerless.

“With historical trauma and generational trauma, these families view social services as the Big Bad Wolf,” Lycett said. “Whenever we’re working with these families, they have to be the leader.”

To counter the mistrust, the My Two Aunties model is anchored in storytelling: “native cosmologies or ways of knowing related to the seasons, nature, familial kinship relations, spirits or trickster figures.” These oral traditions “carry the weight of wisdom passed on through countless generations,” the program description states, imparting “important lessons about how one should act in the world.”

“RAISING A NATIVE BABY TO BE PROUD OF BEING NATIVE IS A HUGE THING. THAT’S SOMETHING THAT I REALLY WANTED AND THE MAIN REASON I WANTED TO BE IN THIS PROGRAM.”

— PARENT SURVEY RESPONSE

To that end, the program’s Cultural Family Life Skills Discussion Guide curriculum draws on the storytelling traditions of southern California tribes. Life lessons are taught through an array of human and animal characters. A lesson in humility, for example, involves Turkey Vulture — whose now-bald head was scorched after Coyote tricked it into putting its head in a fire pit.

A version of the widely told Legend of the Three Sisters is another theme. In it, three sisters are going through the forest when they pass a river, and hear infant cries. As they get closer to the river, they see babies in the water.

The first sister jumps in immediately to save them. Thorne said this represents the Indian Health Council’s work with families navigating dependency courts. The second sister jumps in next, helping kids swim ashore. This sister represents foster care prevention skills — the work coaching families to heath and wellness through culturally-relevant lessons and values. The third sister goes upstream to keep any future children from falling into the river, which represents their prevention services. 

When parents are finishing their My Two Aunties visits, they fill out a Personal Reflection Tool worksheet. 

The document features a giant tree in the shape of a woman’s form, with deep roots beneath her feet and powerful branches for limbs. Around the tree are words for parents to pick from that span the emotional spectrum: Alone. Shame. Uncertain. Supported. Grateful. Rejuvenated. Positive. Stressed. Parents circle four or five primary emotions they are experiencing.

Filling out this worksheet began as a tool for evaluators to gather insights on the program’s impact, tracking any changes over time. But it has since become a routine part of aunties’ visits. Of the dozen parents who participated in the latest evaluation, eight consented to their worksheet responses being used. None circled the words “alone,” “shame,” or “scared.”

One mother described moving from initial feelings of insecurity to empowerment. She reported feeling more motivated and happier as visits progressed. And she was learning to look toward the future with optimism.

Reflecting on the Mighty Oak lesson of the day, she acknowledged ongoing struggles, circling: “tired” and “stressed.”  But she circled three hopeful words and phrases as well: “okay,” “I got this” and “positive.” 

One of the auntie’s responses is noted in the evaluation.

“I was happy there were more positives than negatives,” she stated, “which shows the client is learning how to find hope and look forward to a better future for her and her family.”

This story is the first in an ongoing series by The Imprint examining tribal child welfare best practices and the steps Indigenous communities are taking to heal from and limit the use of foster care.

The post <strong>Protecting Children and Healing Families, One Native Auntie at a Time</strong> appeared first on Buffalo’s Fire.

Information provided by California Nurses Association 

Registered nurses at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital are asking the public to join them in demanding that the Board of Directors of the San Benito Health Care District be transparent about the hospital’s fiscal crisis as the board is set to consider filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy at a board meeting on Monday, May 22, announced California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) today.

“We are very distressed and disappointed to find ourselves back to square one with hospital administration, as the threat of bankruptcy looms large for the second time in six months,” said Diane Beck, an operating nurse at Hazel Hawkins. “The nurses are committed to doing all we can to ensure that our patients have access to and receive the highest quality of care. However, we are losing faith in our hospital administrators’ ability to find a path out of this fiscal crisis. We need more transparency into the finances of this hospital and a better understanding of where the money they take in is going.”

What: Nurses rally for transparency and accountability as San Benito Health Care District Board of Directors considers Chapter 9 Bankruptcy

When: Monday, May 22, 4:30 p.m.

Where: Hazel Hawkins Hospital, 911 Sunset Drive, in Hollister.

Nurses say it is imperative that Hazel Hawkins remains a full-service hospital and maintains all current service lines to best serve the people of San Benito County. Hazel Hawkins is the only hospital in Hollister, a city of 43,000 people, and serves all of San Benito County.

Last November, the board declared a fiscal emergency and authorized the district to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy. In December, the hospital administrators said they only had enough money to keep the hospital open through mid-February and issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice to all employees. Against this backdrop, nurses agreed to postpone a pay raise schedule to begin in January 2023 for 90 days.

In late March, the hospital rescinded the WARN notice and nurses were led to believe that the hospital was moving towards fiscal health. However, in the last month, hospital administrators have called on the nurses to give up negotiated health and compensation benefits.

“We are doing our part to fight for this hospital and this community,” said Beck. “We have delayed raises and we are working in very difficult conditions in understaffed units in order to make sure our patients get the care they deserve. It should not fall on those who care for our community to shoulder this burden alone. If we are to recruit and retain experienced nurses we must ensure that our compensation is competitive and that our working conditions are safe. This is how we can provide the best care to our patients.”

Over the last five years, Hazel Hawkins has received more than $20 million from property taxes collected by San Benito County. Last December, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors agreed to give Hazel Hawkins a tax advance of more than $2 million, and in January the hospital was granted a $3 million loan by the state.

“We are seeing millions of dollars being poured into this hospital, but we know very little about how it is being spent,” said Beck. “We believe the taxpayers who pay into this hospital and the community that is served by this hospital have the right to demand transparency and a prudent path to solvency.”

California Nurses Association represents 120 nurses at Hazel Hawkins.

The post RNs at Hazel Hawkins demand transparency as board considers Chapter 9 bankruptcy appeared first on BenitoLink.

As California closes three more prisons and downsizes six others, some prisoners aren’t ready to go. They are worried about the future of their education. 

For more than 1,500 prisoners who attend college in these closing facilities, closures mean they could transfer to a new prison where the courses may not line up, leaving some students a few credits short of a degree. Education can offer tangible, real-world benefits to prisoners: They can earn degrees and gain merit credits that chip off time from a sentence. Research shows that prison education also reduces recidivism.

California’s shrinking prison population — the state had 160,000 prisoners in 2011, down to just 96,000 as of May 10 — has also created an unexpected problem for the state’s community college system, which has developed special programs to help prisoners earn degrees. Palo Verde Community College in Blythe, for example, draws almost half of its students from the nearby prison. 

As the prisons close down, at least three community colleges stand to lose more than 10 percent of their student enrollment and millions of dollars in state funding, collectively. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has been interested in closing prisons since at least 2019. Since then, the state has closed one in Tracy and nearly finished closing another Susanville.

Last December, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it would close a prison in Blythe and end the contract with a private prison company in California City. The corrections department also said it would close parts of six other prisons throughout the state. 

[READ MORE: When colleges are abortion providers and firefighters]

In a statement to CalMatters, the corrections department said that it is committed to preventing “academic disruption” for students at the closing prisons and pointed to the work of the Rising Scholars Network at the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, which oversees various higher education programs across all of the state’s 34 adult prisons. 

But local community college administrators say communication from the corrections department is limited and that they have few resources to help prisoners  who fall through the cracks.

Learning in D Yard

Former prisoner David Zemp, a self-described nerd, gets wistful when he talks about prison education. 

He spent seven years locked up in the D Yard at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. By the time he was released in 2022, he said the prison unit looked more like a college campus than a prison. 

Prisoners made their own salsa at the nearby garden and covered the white walls with murals: a dinosaur fossil, an astronaut, and at the entrance, the March of Progress in which a monkey evolves into man with a cap and gown. 

“It was falling apart, but the people who were investing in it were in love with it,” he said. He earned five degrees while incarcerated, which ultimately knocked off roughly three years of his twelve-year prison sentence.

Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cerro Coso Community College taught over 35 in-person classes inside the D yard of the Tehachapi prison.

In addition to its murals that covered the walls and gardens outside, the college was also working with the prison to build portable classrooms on-site. 

In December 2022, that all came to a halt. The college learned that the corrections department  planned to close the D yard in Tehachapi this summer as well as the California City Correctional Center, another prison where Cerro Coso also teaches, by next year. 

Dropping out in California prisons

Professors and administrators were in a bind. Almost 20 percent of Cerro Coso’s students were incarcerated at one of the two prisons. At the time, Anna Carlson, the program director for the college’s incarcerated education program, had little information about the timeline for the closures, except a promise from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that students would be able to stay throughout the spring semester.

“That just didn’t happen,” Carlson said. “Some were able to stay, and some were not.” Her office at Cerro Coso, a trailer that abuts the local school, is at the epicenter of the prison closures, fielding calls and sorting files from students and professors who are frantic or frustrated.

Throughout the spring, professors arrived at the prisons only to find that some of their students were gone. 

Peter Fulks, a professor at Cerro Coso, spoke to over 100 people who are imprisoned and who told him  continuing their education was consistently a top concern. Some men broke into tears because they were so worried about what might happen next, Fulks said. 

Over 400 of Cerro Coso’s incarcerated students left prison before they could finish their semester. Of those students, 126 have been paroled; the rest are scattered across at least 27 different state prisons, according to data from Carlson’s department at Cerro Coso Community College. 

Others dropped out of school even before they were transferred, said Fulks, resulting in an enrollment dip before the spring semester, right as news got out about the prison closures. 

Bureaucratic coordination

The corrections department said in a statement that it is committed to preventing prison transfers during the semester, but that it does happen. The corrections department also said that the special credits awarded for classes — the ones which can give people who are imprisoned years off of their sentence — will transfer to the new prison, too. 

Some students who leave in the middle of a semester strike special agreements with their teachers to finish the rest of the class via mail, but not every professor is willing or able to do that. Unlucky students must withdraw or take an incomplete.

In general, educational options for students vary depending on which prison they are sent to, according to the statement. Some prisons only offer classes via email, known as “correspondence-based” courses; others have partnerships akin to Cerro Coso’s model and focus on in-person instruction.

The statement said it is up to the community colleges, with the state’s help “if needed,” to ensure the students’ credits transfer.

While the corrections department later clarified that it tracks where it moves each prisoner, administrators at two community colleges told CalMatters that they don’t have access to that information and said there’s no coordinated system among community colleges to communicate which students have transferred where. 

Moreover, colleges need the written consent of the student before they can communicate with one another due to privacy laws. 

Correspondence classes push on

Cerro Coso Community College is more vulnerable to the effects of prison closures because its classes are primarily in-person. 

Statewide, most college classes in prison are by mail, where students communicate through letters with a community college professor they have never met.

That’s the case at both Palo Verde College on the Colorado River and Lassen College near Northern Nevada, which also face looming prison closures.  

Palo Verde College expects to lose about 10 percent of its student body — about 520 people — when nearby Chuckawalla Valley State Prison closes in 2025, but President Don Wallace said the college can easily make up the lost enrollment by gaining correspondence-based students from other colleges around the state. 

All told, nearly half of Palo Verde’s current students are incarcerated, a number that has more than doubled since 2016. The vast majority of those students are correspondence-based.

While the college will find other students, Wallace said the transfers will have a “horrific impact” on the current ones, who he worries may never finish their education. “It’s a stop-out point,” he said. “Even among people that are not incarcerated, when they have to change from one college to another or they move from a community college to a four-year university, those are points where people quit.”

Lassen College, whose nearby prison began closing last year, has been able to continue educating about three-quarters of its 200 students at their new prisons via correspondence, said Colleen Baker, interim dean of instruction. She did not respond to questions about the fate of the 50 of students who did not continue their education via correspondence. 

To Fulks at Cerro Coso, who recently defended a dissertation about prison education, the difference in prison between in-person instruction and correspondence-based classes is stark. “Correspondence success rates are extremely low, about 68 percent compared to face-to-face, which was about 81.6 percent,” he said, adding that the performance for correspondence classes may be even lower since some of the remote classes he studied had professors stop by occasionally. 

But for colleges, who receive state money based in part on the number of students they enroll, correspondence classes bring in a lot more revenue. “Each one of their students counts the same as a face to face. You don’t have to pay for location, materials for students, they limit how much support they provide to students and that money goes in,” he said. 

Millions lost as degrees delay 

Once the prison fully closes, Cerro Coso will lose just over 900 students, more than 10 percent of its total enrollment. The college’s vice president of finance, Chad Houck, said the college did not know how much funding would be lost. Palo Verde and Lassen College will each lose an estimated $1.7 million this academic year, according to an estimate by CalMatters using the state’s funding formula. While Lassen College was able to continue educating most of the prison’s students, it lost nearly 1,800 incarcerated students who were studying at the fire training center adjacent to the prison.

But unlike Lassen and Palo Verde colleges, Cerro Coso Community College will not offer any additional correspondence-based classes as a result of the prison closures, said Houck. He said the “quality is not the same” and that neither students nor faculty prefer it. Instead, the college will focus on recruiting more students from the local prison units that will remain.

As for the incarcerated Cerro Coso students who are leaving, they will need to connect with a new college at the prison where they go next. 

Carlson has few options to help them and typically must wait for the prisoners to contact her office and request a transcript. As of May 11, roughly 60 students from the D Yard in Tehachapi and the California City prison have reached out to her team to request a transcript, and most people reached out before their transfer, at the moment they knew their destination.

Carlson and her colleagues predict those numbers will go up as more people settle into their next prison, but they also know some may never finish their degrees. 

Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Several of these stories are part of “Adrift,” a three-part series byEnvironmental Health News, and palabra, a multimedia platform of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, on pesticide use in California that finds rural communities of color and farmworkers are disproportionately exposed to some of the most dangerous chemicals approved for use in agriculture. Voices […]

---

EXPOSED was first posted on May 18, 2023 at 7:30 am.
©2017 “Voices of Monterey Bay“. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at julie@voicesofmontereybay.org

For more than twenty-five years, the Noel family have farmed wild rice in the Fall River Valley in Northeastern Shasta County. 

Their 318 acres of land will now be permanently protected through a collaboration with the Shasta Land Trust and the California Department of Conservation. 

Ted Noel, the property’s owner, told the Shasta Land Trust he’s pleased that the conservation agreement allows the property to continue to be used as a working wild rice farm while benefiting wildlife.

“The property is important for migrating waterfowl,” Noel said, “with our rice fields acting as a surrogate wetland for bird species migrating up in the spring, and down in the fall.”

Birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway use flooded rice fields as migratory habitat along the way. In the winter, those migrating birds include sandhill cranes, mallards, widgeons, gadwalls, and a variety of geese.

Paul Vienneau, Executive Director of the Shasta Land Trust, told Shasta Scout by phone this week that the Noel family approached his organization in hopes of having their family property conserved, in order to continue using it for agricultural purposes, while ensuring it won’t be developed in future. 

The Shasta Land Trust is a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving the beauty, character and diversity of significant Northern California land. Since its founding in 1998, the Land Trust has completed almost thirty conservation agreements, allowing over 44,000 acres of Shasta County land to be preserved for environmental benefit. 

Similarly to all conservation easements, Vienneau explained, the land will continue to be privately owned by the Noel family. What’s changed is that the Shasta Land Trust has purchased development rights to the property, using California Department of Conservation funds. 

“If you pulled this project (on County documents),” Vienneau said, “you’d see the Shasta Land Trust listed on the title. Technically, we now hold an interest in this property. The landowner can continue to farm it, ranch it, live on it, sell it, lease it, or give it up as part of an inheritance. The only thing they can’t do is (use it) for commercial development.”

And neither can anyone else. Once in place, the conservation easement remains with the property regardless of who owns it, Viennneau said. 

The newly-conserved Noel Ranch property includes almost 10% of the shoreline along Shasta County’s Fall River. The property contains what is known as emergent wetland habitat which benefits over 160 species of birds. The property also falls within a designated Audubon Society Important Bird Area, providing critical habitat for birds migrating along the Pacific Coast Flyway, according to the Land Trust.

The Noel Ranch easement, like many the Shasta Land Trust has been focusing on, is agriculturally focused. The easement on the property was purchased with funds provided through the California Strategic Growth Council’s Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC) program. Some SALC grants, like the one used for the Noel Ranch, support the permanent protection of of croplands and rangelands to protect them from being converted to non-agricultural uses, such as housing developments.​

“These ranchers and farmers are getting money to protect these properties because the state has highlighted agricultural areas as important and placed a large amount of cap-and-trade money into investing in them,” Vienneau explained.  

He said ranchers in the Shasta County area are well aware of the work of the Land Trust and routinely approach the organization asking to be considered for a conservation easement. 

Once a property is chosen to be conserved, the Land Trust will apply for State grant funds and utilize them to put the formal conservation easement in place. The funds pay the property owner for the value of the land, as determined by an outside auditor. 

The Land Trust currently has about fifteen properties on a waiting list to be considered for easements, but only has the resources to apply for 2–3 grants for conservation a year. Choosing which properties to prioritize, Vienneau said, involves a formal internal decision-making process.

“We go through a process internally through a Lands Committee composed of community members and Board members. They make a recommendation to the overall Board who then gives the go-ahead on which easements to write grants for.”

Conserving the Noel Ranch is part of Shasta Land Trust’s larger efforts across the ecologically important area known as the Fall River Valley watershed. The organization has now worked to conserve over 8,200 acres of this watershed, which was originally stewarded by the Pit River Tribe. 

It’s a special and ecologically important area, Vienneau said. And because the Fall River Valley is relatively small, investing in conservation easements also provides an opportunity for the Shasta Land Trust to increase environmental connectivity throughout the space.

“It’s kind of what we deem to be a very unique valley. It has a high concentration of farming capacity . . . and incredible habitat for migratory birds”

“It’s also one of the most famous fly-fishing areas in the country,” Vienneau continued. “It very rarely changes temperature throughout the year, so it’s phenomenal for fly fishing.”

If you have a correction to this story you can submit it here. Have information to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org