Talk of the Bay from KSQD

On this episode of Talk of the Bay, host George Cadman welcomes Lourdes and Gabriel Barraza, Ami Chen Mills, Julia Monahan, of Get The Flock Out — a grassroots group raising the alarm about mass surveillance in Santa Cruz County. Also joining the show: Peter Gelblum of the Northern California ACLU, who has been tracking the installation and use of “Flock” cameras in our county for several years. Their concern? Flock license plate reader cameras, now installed in multiple cities across the county, including Santa Cruz, Capitola, and Watsonville (Watsonville has twice as many as the other two cities). These devices, funded by Department of Homeland Security federal grants, collect billions of travel records that are being shared with ICE, Homeland Security, and police departments nationwide — all with little to no oversight. GTFO argues these cameras threaten civil liberties and have already been misused — including in a case where a woman was tracked post-abortion by a Texas police agency. The group is calling on local governments to remove Flock cameras, hold public discussions on mass surveillance and how it might be used at this time by various actors, and protect residents’ Fourth Amendment rights. Want to get involved? Learn how to take action, get informed, and contact your city council. See many links to resources at the following two sites. (Paid subscription is not required.) Moment of Truth Dispatch landing page for GTFO. Essay on Mass Surveillance in the US, also in Moment of Truth Dispatch

  On today’s Talk of the Bay, at 5PM host Meilin Obinata introduces you to Youth Against Displacement, a grassroots organization which racked up multiple rounds of victories against gentrification and displacement of long-time residents in the real estate capital of America, New York City, regardless of Mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams. How do the issues of affordable housing, small businesses, workers’ rights, zoning limits on building heights, stealing workers’ wages to build luxury towers, identity politics, the role of academia in forming narratives and even the emotions of burnout and misplaced guilt all collide in Chinatown and the Lower East Side? Tune in, today, August 7th at 5PM, for Talk of the Bay, right here on KSQD and also available now as a podcast.

  Charles Pasternak is the Artistic Director for Santa Cruz Shakespeare, where he has served in that role since 2023. Before that he served as Artistic Director of The Porters of Hellsgate Theatre Company in Los Angeles for over fifteen years. He has had a wide-ranging career as an actor and director at theatres across this country including American Players Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Clarence Brown Theatre, The Denver Center, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, three seasons with The Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis and four with Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

  The Western Flyer has returned from a remarkable 100-day expedition (March 16, 2025 to June 24, 2025) to the Gulf of California — retracing the 1940 voyage of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts and bringing their story into a new century. From tide pool surveys to classroom visits, from dockside festivals to long days at sea, this was more than a scientific expedition — it was a layered, collaborative journey fueled by curiosity and connection. Students, scientists, artists, and community partners across two countries came together to make it happen. Sherry Flumerfelt is the Executive Director of the Western flyer Foundation, and since 2022 she’s been guiding the vision behind the rebirth of the Western Flyer—the storied boat once sailed by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, a voyage described in Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez. With a background in ocean conservation, international fieldwork, and nonprofit leadership, Sherry has spent the past three decades building partnerships that connect people to the sea. Now she’s channeling that experience into transforming the Flyer into a floating classroom and research vessel. Captain Paul Tate is a U.S. Coast Guard-certified Master, with more than five decades of experience at sea. Paul’s career has included commercial fishing in the Bering Sea, captaining private yachts in the Caribbean, and leading research expeditions from Alaska to the Arctic. He’s been at the helm of everything from crab boats to scientific vessels, and now brings his deep knowledge and steady hand to the Western Flyer as it sets off on its newest chapter.

KSQD’s David Bean presents street interviews with locals protesting on August 2, 2025 in Monterey.

Host Meilin Obinata introduces you to Andrew Sandoval, City of Salinas Councilmember of District Five. What is it like to survive a recall campaign when the big money is after you? Or what it’s like to advocate for renters rights when the majority of the city council isn’t? And what it was like to be the one to blow the whistle on the new Amazon distribution center? Let’s get to know Salinas City Councilmember Sandoval and his perspective on all things Salinas.  

On this episode of Talk of the Bay, host PK Hattis speaks with Amanda Poulsen, Assistant Vector Control Manager for Santa Cruz County, about one of summer’s most persistent pests: mosquitoes.

  On this episode of Talk of the Bay, host PK Hattis is joined by Dan Emmanuel, Director of Research at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, for a critical conversation. They dive into the freshly released 2025 Out of Reach Report, which once again names Santa Cruz County the least affordable rental market in the country, for the third straight year. Renter Wages vs. Reality By contrast, the average renter wage in Santa Cruz is about $22.13 per hour, meaning a worker would need 3.7 full-time jobs at that wage just to afford rent. National Housing Wage Landscape Across the U.S., the national housing wage is $33.63/hr for a two-bedroom rent, and $28.17/hr for a one-bedroom. Nearly half of workers earn less than the wage needed for a modest one-bedroom home Widening Gap from Second Place Santa Cruz’s lead over the second most expensive market, Santa Clara County, is pronounced. Its housing wage of $81.21/hr surpasses Santa Clara’s $66.27/hr by nearly $15/hr, and fair market rent in Santa Cruz ($4,223/month 2br) is 22% higher than in Santa Clara ($3,446/month 2br)

Talk of the Bay’s host Omar Diéguez brings you an interview with Sylvia Reyes on From the Streets. In this episode of Talk of the Bay: From the Streets host Omar Diéguez. welcomes a powerful voice of entrepreneurship, empowerment, and corazón, Sylvia Reyes. A proud Latina and dynamic force in Santa Cruz County, Sylvia wears many hats: She’s the owner of California Coffee in Aptos, where café cultura meets live music, local education, and warm community. She’s also a seasoned business broker with Coast Business Brokerage, guiding others through the journey of buying, selling, and growing their dreams with integrity and clarity. But Sylvia’s story doesn’t stop at business. As a board member of the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, she’s deeply committed to financial justice and creating access for all, especially for underserved communities. From humble beginnings to building community, one cup of coffee, one client, and one corazón at a time, Sylvia Reyes joins us to talk cultura, connection, and what it really means to build something that lasts.

In this episode of Talk of the Bay, your host Meilin Obinata welcomes Pastor Julie of Somos Watsonville to the KSQD studio! Learn about a new way to practice ministry and fellowshipping from Pastor Julie. What is Somos about? Why is a church campus hosting health clinics for young people? What’s the secret to a great mocha? What makes a place into a destination for creating community? And how did a Southern Californian like her, armed with an Ivy-league education, end up as a pastor despite all her attempts to resist becoming one (and when everyone says it wasn’t “cool”)? How did her desire to write the Great American Novel lead her to work on a farm, and ultimately help her see what her purpose was?

    In this episode of Talk of the Bay, host Omar Dieguez introduces you guests Dr. Ann López and Adam Bolaños Scow who are alerting us to the dangers of pesticides being sprayed near schools in Watsonville and Pajaro. Over ten schools sit near fields owned by Driscolls, who continue to spray harmful pesticides, harming our community, teachers, students, Indigenous community farmworkers, and Mother Earth.   Guest Adam Bolaños Scow is a Public-Interest Advocate, Violinist, and Music Teacher. For over 15 years Adam has helped win environmental campaigns in the Monterey Bay region including the efforts to ban fracking in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito Counties. He is a co-founder of the Campaign for Organic & Regenerative Agriculture, a grassroots group working to transition agricultural fields away from toxic pesticides to organic in the Watsonville area. He has served on the boards of Regeneracion Pajaro Valley Climate Action, Watsonville Wetlands Watch, and the Sierra Club. He previously served as a Board Trustee for the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, where he helped win one the largest salary increases for teachers and staff in the history of the district and protected vital arts and music programs. As a violinist Adam performs with the Santa Cruz Symphony and also performs Mariachi music with the ensembles RosaAzul and Mariachi Libertad. Adam teaches both orchestra and mariachi through the award-winning El Sistema program in Watsonville.   Guest Dr. Ann López is the Executive Director of Center for Farmworker Families. She is an emerita professor and taught courses in biology, environmental science, ecology and botany in the biology department at San José City College for many years. She has a Ph.D. from UCSC in Environmental Studies where she studied the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the farms of west central Mexico. Her book entitled The Farmworkers’ Journey summarizes the results, arguments and conclusions of her research and was published by UC Press.. She has been recognized for her work by The U.S. Congress and many organizations. She was chosen as a Woman of the Year for 2013 and 2014 by the National Association of Professional Women. In March 2018, she was chosen for a 16th Annual Cesar E. Chavez Community Award in Watsonville and as Woman of the Year by Mark Stone’s 29th District for 2019.  

  On this episode of Moment of Truth, host Meilin Obinata introduces you to the Chair of the Housing Committee and District 10 California State Senator Aisha Wahab. In this housing-centric conversation, you’ll hear about her personal experiences as a rare renter in the state legislature, her views on affordable housing and her concerns about the “silver tsunami” of seniors who will need housing that matches their income as they leave the workforce. Our conversation also included consumer protection topics beyond housing, such as her battle with investor-owned utilities such as PG&E (SB 332) and online pricing protections to ensure all consumers are paying the same price for a service or product (SB 259).

Host Suki Wessling of the Babblery spoke to Aptos residents out for the “Good Trouble” protest on July 17, 2025. Visit goodtroubleliveson.org and www.indivisiblesantacruzcounty.com for more information. Photos by Suki Wessling.

  On this episode of Talk of the Bay, your host Meilin Obinata spoke with Heather Edney a pioneering co-founder of the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange Program which made history in the early 1990’s for being one of a handful of needle exchange harm reduction programs in the United States, in the grip of the AIDS epidemic. How did a group of young women stigmatized as sex workers and injection drug users save lives of their peers when the medical establishment wasn't? What did mayonnaise jars in front of Dominican Hospital send a message to the medical establishment? What does Edney tell doctors-to-be when she visits medical schools to share her expertise? Connect with a national, living treasure, who saved lives locally and continues to do so, Heather Edney. You can see a short film about Edney’s work in the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange Program called "Love is the Drug" this Saturday, July 19, at 4PM at the 418 Project at a benefit for the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County.

  Marichka is a Ukrainian-Canadian singer and human rights advocate, winner of the Amnesty International Prize and creator of the folk music website, https://folk-ukraine.com. She is the former lead singer with Balaklava Blues and Lemon Bucket Orkestra. She has performed at top venues around the world including Carnegie Hall in New York, The Barbican Centre in London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2023 Marichka joined Ukrainian Army Forces as a volunteer combat medic and an embedded journalist in the Donbás region in Eastern Ukraine. Her latest project is producing, composing and singing on the music/human rights album, Daughters of Donbas – Songs of Stolen Children. The album deals with the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children that have been abducted from occupied regions in Eastern Ukraine and taken to Russia. The song 4.5.0 from that album (an excerpt is heard during the interview) is in the words of a mother singing to her far-away daughter, reassuring her that everything will someday be alright. 4.5.0 is a code used by the Ukrainian army to indicate that all is well. Marichka’s teaching and singing repertoire is over 500 years old and was collected over the past 20 years on various ethnographic field expeditions to Ukrainian villages by the renowned folk ensemble Bozhychi, of which she was a founding member.

On Tuesday, June 24th, 2025, host George Cadman interviewed Paul Johnston of the Santa Cruz Welcoming Network, a 100% volunteer-run community network that is dedicated to welcoming and supporting asylum seekers and other refugees in Santa Cruz County. Paul Johnston is a sociologist and labor/community organizer. He has been an advocate for immigrant rights in the Monterey Bay region for decades. As a young man he was an organizer against the Vietnam War, both in the army and among veterans, and also an organizer for the United Farm Workers and for the Service Employees International Union. More recently he served as executive director of both the Central Coast Citizenship Project in Salinas and the Central Labor Council for the Monterey Bay region. In between, he earned a doctorate in sociology at UC Berkeley and was a professor at Yale University, where he directed the organizational behavior program. He subsequently held research appointments at UCSC. In the past few years he helped to develop the Santa Cruz Welcoming Network and the new Interfaith Network. In this interview, Paul and George talk about the history of the Santa Cruz Welcoming Network, how and why it was created, the “new neighbors” they support, the types of support they offer, and why their efforts – and our new neighbors – are important and valued in our community. They also discuss new challenges facing asylum seekers and other refugees in the current political climate, and how community members can support our new neighbors and the work of the SC Welcoming Network.

  Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, as well as the recent Team Human, based on his podcast, and the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Media Ecology Association honored him with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

  Charles Hood is a naturalist, adventurer, and poet. He has also been a factory worker, a ski instructor, a dishwasher, and a nature guide in Africa. Nature study has taken him to all 50 U.S. states, 80 countries, and the South Pole. Along the way, he has been lost in a whiteout in Tibet, contracted and survived bubonic plague, and published 20 books and over 800 photographs. His essay collection A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat was named the Nonfiction Book of the Year by the editors of Foreword book review. He lives in the Mojave Desert with two kayaks, two mountain bikes, two dogs, and 5,000 books. While old tales warn us that danger lies waiting in the dark, there is actually an abundance of thriving, colorful life at night. In his latest book NATURE AT NIGHT, Charles Hood discovers the wildlife that awakens when the sun goes down, revealing a strange and surprisingly beautiful world.

  Michael Gene Sullivan is an Actor/Writer/Director/Activist based in SF. He is an alum of the Playwrights Foundation, and has been awarded both a Djerassi Arts Center Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship as a dramatist. Michael is also Resident Playwright for the Tony and OBIE award-winning SF Mime Troupe, where he has written or co-written over 30 plays, including “1600 Transylvania Avenue”, “Too Big To Fail”, “Freedomland”, “Making a Killing”, and “Back To The Way Thing Were”, as well as the Tales of the Resistance radio/podcast series. In 2024, in addition to writing SFMT’s summer hit “American Dreams”, his play Sign My Name To Freedom: The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin opened to critical-acclaim at the SF Bay Area Theatre Company, and his stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 – already translated into six languages and performed in fourteen countries on five continents – was produced by The Aurora Theatre. Michael’s other plays include The Great Khan, which premiered at SF Playhouse, San Diego Rep. and Chicago’s Red Twist Theatre. Michael has taught playwriting at the ACT, SFMT’s Young California Writers Project, has guest lectured on play creation or taught playwriting workshops at Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, and USC. For ten years Michael was also a Contributing Writer for The Huffington Post. Michael’s directing credits include work with the SF Shakespeare Festival, Marin Shakespeare Company, the African American Shakespeare Company, Mystic Bison Theatre, TheatreFirst, and a dozen productions with the SF Mime Troupe. As an actor Michael has performed at theaters throughout the Bay Area (including at all four of the Bay Area’s Tony-winning theaters), has toured nationally and internationally – including off-Broadway and at the Kennedy Center. San Francisco Mime Troupe’s latest production, “Disruption“, will be performed in Santa Cruz on July 13, 2025.

You may have heard of President Donald Trump’s spending bill moving through Congress known as “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Yes, that’s the actual title of the 1,000 plus page piece of legislature. In fact, if you’re a regular listener of Talk of the Bay have indeed because we’ve had many guests on in recent weeks to discuss the myriad ways the bill is expected to impact communities across the Central Coast and country as a whole. While the president and Republicans in Congress insist it is meant to weed out waste, fraud and abuse, Democrats in Congress and nonpartisan leaders across the Santa Cruz County region have warned for months that the legislation spells for devastating impacts to the social safety net including massive cuts to Medicaid or Medi-Cal and the decimation of budgets for local governments. The bill proposes to cut $300 BILLION from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through 2034—the largest cut in the program’s history. The program, known in California as CalfFresh, fed an average of 42 million low-income people per month in 2023. Host PK Hattis was recently joined in-studio by Erica Padilla-Chavez, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County and Tony Nunez, board chair, Watsonville Community Hospital and marketing and community relations manager for the nonprofit Community Bridges. Both have been working in this space for years and have been sounding the alarm about the damage this bill could do to so many communities across the country. https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/house-reconciliation-bill-proposes-deepest-snap-cut-in-history-would-take

Remembering Mike Rotkin: A Special Talk of the Bay Tribute Hello again, Santa Cruz and beyond! Welcome to Talk of the Bay on KSQD 90.7 FM — now proudly broadcasting to more of our coastal neighbors in Salinas and Monterey too! This week’s show is a heartfelt special: “Remembering Mike” — a tribute to the life and legacy of former Santa Cruz mayor, educator, union organizer, and all-around community force, Michael E. Rotkin. Mike passed away peacefully at his home in Santa Cruz on June 18th, 2025. He leaves behind a deep imprint on our city and our people. A Studio Full of Stories To remember Mike, five of us gathered in KSQD’s Harvey West Park studio: Former Santa Cruz Mayors Tim Fitzmaurice and Jane Weed Writer and former student of Mike’s, Susie Bright Lifelong friend and community ally, Ron Pomerantz And me, Chris Krohn, your host and friend of Mike’s Together, we shared laughter, grief, admiration, and the kind of stories that only surface when remembering someone who mattered this much. Who Was Mike Rotkin? Mike wasn’t just a politician — he was a movement.Elected to the Santa Cruz City Council in 1978 as a self-described “Marxist-feminist,” Mike rode the wave of progressive politics that crested with UCSC’s founding and reshaped Santa Cruz in the decades that followed. He served six terms on the City Council and held the position of Mayor five times, always pushing the city to think bigger, act more compassionately, and stay rooted in justice. As a UCSC lecturer in Community Studies, Mike educated generations on activism, organizing, and the intersections of labor and local policy. He was also a labor organizer, a founding force in the creation of the UC-AFT lecturers’ union — a fierce advocate for working people at the university and beyond. From the Guests: Memories, Politics, and Music Tim Fitzmaurice remembered their union work in the 1980s — a time, he said, “filled with love and fire.” The UC-AFT effort was hard, gritty organizing — and Mike was in it for the long haul. Tim also reflected on the tough moment in 1998 when he, along with a voting bloc of new progressives, chose not to support Mike for Mayor — a political decision rooted in respect for another colleague, but one that nonetheless had emotional weight. They also shared a different kind of harmony: Tim and Mike occasionally

This Talk of the Bay episode from Monday, June 16th, 2025 was originally a two part show starting with a conversation with the comedian and impresario DNA. That conversation with DNA will be released as a separate podcast later. We spent the rest of the hour with community organizer Hector Marin. In 2024, he ran as a candidate for Santa Cruz City Council District 2, earning 40.6% of the vote as a first-time challenger against the 58% garnered by incumbent Sonja Brunner. He is a staunch advocate for affordable housing, is a renter himself, and is a community organizer. Our conversation covered the weekend of June 14th filled with protests nationwide and local ones, as well as current events including ICE raids. We touched on Marin's recent article published in Lookout regarding Mayor Fred Keeley's Workforce Housing Affordability Act. The City of Los Angeles's nicknamed the "Mansion Tax" which was a tax on any sale of real estate exceeding $5 million came up in our conversation. As of November 2024, that tax, which was originally named the Measure ULA (United to House LA), has raised $470M. We also talked about how Marin's work as an educator brought awareness to the plight of homelessness among students. It's worth noting that Monterey County clocks in at a staggering 18% while Santa Cruz County clocks in at 9.5% - both of these numbers are multiples of the California average which is under 4%. If you are interested in more episodes about land use, you might also be interested in these Talk of the Bay episodes with Dr. Silva of the Protect Salinas Renters Coalition as well as Dr. Erin McElroy who discusses the role of technology such as surveillance and biometrics in modern landlord and tenant relationships along with concepts from their book, "Silicon Valley Imperialism" which include real estate dynamics.

On this episode of From the Streets, Omar Dieguez speaks with Rolla Alaydi, a Palestinian American organizer who has spent months fighting to evacuate her family from Gaza. Since November 2023, Rolla has made countless appeals to Representative Jimmy Panetta’s office—pleas that have been met with silence, even as she has lost over 100 loved ones to Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.Joining us are two of Rolla’s supporters: Christine Hong, a local ethnic studies educator, and Unghae Langis, a member of Panetta Vigil—a grassroots group demanding that Rep. Panetta support an arms embargo on Israel and reject donations from war profiteers and AIPAC.This episode is a powerful testament to resistance, grief, and the urgent need for political accountability.

Talk of the Bay: From the Streets host Omar Dieguez, a mentor with Barrios Unidos, sits down with a group of girls from Pajaro Valley High School to discuss the powerful role mentors play in schools. Listen in as they share how Barrios Unidos creates safe spaces for students to express themselves, connect with their cultura, and find empowerment through education. The conversation also explores how Barrios Unidos supports students beyond the classroom—teaching them about their communities, standing up for their rights, and even advocating for them in the courts. Discover the many ways mentorship transforms lives from the streets and into brighter futures.

KSQD presents a conversation between Chris Krohn and Mike Rotkin, recorded just 2 months before Rotkin’s death on Wednesday (06/18/2025). Rotkin served 25 years on the Santa Cruz City Council, and 5 terms as mayor. He was active in local political and social issues for more than 50 years, and loved and respected for his teaching Community Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. This show was not previously aired till now.

  On Tuesday, June 10th, host Meilin Obinata spoke with Dr. John Silva from the Protect Salinas Renters coalition. This coalition is seeking signatures for a referendum campaign to repeal the Salinas City Council's recent vote to repeal four renters' rights ordinances including one for rent stabilization. We learn from Dr. Silva, whose years of treating patients taught him about the health impacts of precarious housing.

Host George Cadman discusses the civil rights issues raised by recent ICE deportation raids with constitutional law attorney, Mauni Jalali. Jalali is instituting a call to action, to motivate local electeds to answer to the voters. He has developed expertise in administrative law matters, government regulation, and plaintiff-side antitrust, with particular emphasis on cases involving big tech, big agriculture, big pharma, and ticketing services. He has worked on investment risk analysis due to presidential impoundments, SEC securities actions, and assessing APA challenges to FTC rulemaking. His recent work includes drafting appellate briefing on nationwide injunctions protecting thousands of international students across the United States from visa revocation, handling AEA deportation cases in court, and filing briefing in administrative law matters regarding childhood separation at the border.

On this special FanimeCon edition of Inside Education, host Meilin Obinata speaks with Gilles Poitras, an expert in the realms of anime and manga, Japanese forms of comic book and animated entertainment which have caught popularity around the world. What connections do these storytelling formats have upon learning? How do librarians benefit from having manga and anime in their collections? All this and more on this episode of Inside Education. Intro music used with kind permission of @subrizedubs. https://www.stonebridge.com/authors/gilles-poitras https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:egbby7jkbjeyfbs3zf65vcof https://www.fanime.com

Our intrepid reporter/intern Maury Burnett-Cavoto asks: How are you dealing with the rise in egg prices?

What happens when a former Soviet state experiments with Silicon Valley-style capitalism - when the worlds of open source hardware collide with proprietary corporate control? What happens when American landlords use the latest and greatest in surveillance tech to terrorize renters? McElroy also shares the origin story of SF BARF which Sonja Trauss led, which later became the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement. Entertain these questions and more in a chat between Talk of the Bay host Meilin Obinata and guest Dr. Erin McElroy, a professor of Geography at the University of Washington who co-founded the AntiEviction Mapping Project which includes maps of the "worst evictors" in the Bay Area and Landlord Tech Watch "dedicated to producing collective knowledge about landlord-driven surveillance techniques." If you like hearing about data practices, you also might enjoy this Moment of Truth episode featuring Dr. Anita Say Chan, author of "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech" from March 2025.

Are universities hedge funds? Is knowledge political? What do you think? Join host, Meilin Obinata, for a discussion with Max Sárosi, an organizer of of the Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS) chapter at UCSC. Sárosi has studied how billionaire philanthropy impacts the University of California, including UC Santa Cruz. What secrets lurk in the gifts of real estate billionaires? Along the way, we learn about how Max’s identity evolved as he searched for what it means to be Jewish while studying in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies program at UCSC and what led him to found the JAWS chapter there. We touched on the reasons and ways in which JAWS has demanded UCSC cut ties with the Helen Diller Foundation. Max frames the activity of the foundation in the context of billionaire philanthropy and specifically within related industry – real estate and the connections to the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. This show originally aired on Tuesday, February 25, 2025. You can follow Jews Against White Supremacy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jawsucsc/

In this episode of Talk of the Bay, host Meilin Obinata introduces two members of the Tzimtzum Community, which offers Jewish Gatherings for Personal and Collective Liberation. One is the founder Rabbi Chel Mandell, and the other guest is a Jewish educator and is a dedicated member, Ben Yanowitz (who is also a host on The Jewish Diasporist podcast). Learn: what it’s like to start up a new Jewish community in the post-COVID world, how to increase access and inclusivity in Jewish spaces by consciously centering marginalized populations, and why it’s important to create opportunities for understanding leftism within Jewish communities and traditions in the context of Judaism as a cultural practice. This globe-trotting conversation will take you to Krakow, Poland, Palestine, Israel, the United Kingdom and back to the USA. We also touch on fascinating linguistic, historical and religious insights into Jewish life. Instagram: @tzimtzumcommunity@jewishdiasporistpod

In early May, dozens of nonprofit and health care leaders assembled outside of Watsonville Community Hospital to altogether issue a desperate plea: hands off our health care. The message came hours before the U.S. Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for health care funding, began debating a Republican-sponsored spending bill in Congress that seeks to cut $880 billion mostly from the budget funding Medicaid, or Medi-Cal as it’s known in California. The unprecedented slashing of the federal program, established almost 60 years ago, will help pay for $4.5 trillion in planned tax breaks being pushed by the White House. Republicans in the House insist they’re eliminating wasteful spending while Democrats warn that millions of Americans will be dropped from their coverage if the bill becomes law. Here in Santa Cruz County, almost 90,000 residents are Medi-Cal beneficiaries and many of them go to Watsonville-based Salud Para La Gente to receive care. That’s why Salud’s chief medical officer, Dr. Devon Francis, was present at the press event outside of Watsonville hospital and gave an impassioned speech not just about the harmful impacts of gutting the program, but to also highlight the important role Medi-Cal plays in preserving our health care system more broadly. Dr. Francis joined Talk of the Bay to share more about why she’s pushing back against the proposed cuts to Medicaid.

Sara Barth, executive director of Sempervirens fund, joined Talk of the Bay just a few days shy of a monumental occasion for California’s first land trust — its 125th anniversary. The conservation group, focused on forest protection and restoration since 1900, commemorated the milestone with the first-ever Redwoods Festival at the historic Roaring Camp property in Felton. The organization has played an enduring role in managing and protecting the majestic, ancient redwoods that continue to grow tall in the Santa Cruz Mountains. They have also spearheaded efforts to help the local environment recover from climate-change fueled disasters, such as the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in 2020 which decimated the region and California’s first state park—Big Basin Redwoods. Barth, who has been with Sempervirens since 2016, arrived at K-Squid’s studios ready tell us all about what this landmark nonprofit has managed to achieve in its first 125 years, what it has in mind for the next 125, and just what in the heck a Sempervirens is.

We have the pleasure to talk to the family of Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer Ritchie Valens. He was the first Chicano to reach such accomplishments. On this episode of Talk of the Bay, From the Streets, host Omar Dieguez interviewed multiple members of the Ritchie Valens family, including his brother’s daughters Brenda Morales and Bly Morales Chandler, and Bly’s husband Mike Chandler. Learn about the family which nurtured Ritchie Valens, including the relationship he had with his brother, Bob Morales. Locals will relish hearing about the world premiere of the film, “La Bamba” in Watsonville. This show warms your heart with all the memories and reflections of a family filled with love, loss, laughter and togetherness. We will discuss his music his brother Bob and his family originally from San Fernando Valley who later moved to Watsonville, California. We will also talk about about the upcoming remake of the movie La Bamba!  

I am traveling in Italy, in the Garfagnana region, a hilly, remote valley with ancient hilltowns and castles. In the small town of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, we come upon a protest organized by the villagers decrying conditions in Gaza. Here is what we recorded from the few who could speak English.

Our intrepid Squid on the Street, UCSC Humanities intern, Maury Burnett-Cavoto asked people how they feel about traveling out of the country under Trump’s current border security crackdowns.

On KSQD’s Talk of the Bay, host Omar Diegez speaks with Bobby Pelz, Ethnic Studies teacher at the Pajaro Valley High School, and Caroline Kuspa, of Jews for a Free Palestine. They discuss the curriculum in the school district and the recent tensions and controversies, around the failed censure of trustee Gabe Medina.

The host was Omar Diguez. Our guests discussed what it’s like to be in recovery, the sense of desperation, seeking healing though ceremonies. many different forms of recovery through twelve step programs and spiritual practices such as praying at sweat lodges. One guest, Eric, a resident of Salinas, has been in recovery for 14 years. He helps many people in recovery to find a better path in life in both English and Spanish. Our other guest was Sergio, a 17 year old youth who has found recovery after working with his mentor to find a higher power and spirituality to stay clean. Sergio was incarcerated at juvenile hall and started working with Omar through Barrios Unidos turning around his life after learning about recovery and aspects of indigenous teachings.

“From the Streets,” is a new Talk of the Bay series, hosted by Omar Dieguez. His guests for this show were Professor Christine Hong of UC Santa Cruz and Pajaro Valley Unified School District Trustee, Gabriel Medina. They discuss the dedicated community work that recently led to the reinstatement of ethnic studies in the Pajaro Valley school district.

“From the Streets,” is a new Talk of the Bay series, hosted by Omar Dieguez. His guests are Roy Recio, Watsonville native and founder of the Tobera Project, preserving Fililpino immigrant history in the Pajaro Valley; and marine ecologist Nat Low of Aptos, director of the Asian American Justice and Innovation Lab. They discuss their dedicated community work that recently led to the reinstatement of ethnic studies in the Pajaro Valley school district.

On Talk of the Bay host Andrew Schoneberg interviews leaders from the Carmel Foundation, a non-profit service organization that facilitates successful aging by providing a rich spectrum of interactive activities and services for the ever-changing physical, social, emotional and cognitive needs for those 55 and older. Have a listen to learn about the history of the Carmel Foundation and the powerful outcomes it facilitates for its members as they transition into their elder years. Members enjoying some time together on the beautiful patio of the Carmel Foundation. Some of the services offered to Foundation members include: Over 60 interesting classes and activities weekly Affordable lunches four days per week served on site Fifty affordable apartments for low-income seniors Technology Center Day excursions outside of the Monterey-Carmel area to museums, plays and shopping Wednesday programs featuring lecturers, presentations and entertainment Meal delivery to homebound members Free medical equipment loans Free lending library Café with free WiFi access Free blood pressure checks Caregiver support groups The Carmel Foundation also partners with senior-serving agencies to provide additional services such as: Legal Services for Seniors, providing free legal consultations Alliance on Aging, providing assistance with Medicare or supplemental insurance Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice (VNA), providing a grief support group Independent Transportation Network (ITN) Monterey County, offers rides to seniors in Monterey County

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and immigration activist. He tells the story of coming to the U.S. as a child, unaware that he was entering without legal documents. His 31-year quest to obtain legal status led to a life of hiding until he “came out” in a New York Times article titled, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant”. Vargas, who was born in the Philipines, talks about the prospect of seeing his mother for the first time since he was twelve and the cost to families of being separated by law and geography. His new project is called “Define American” and includes documentary films, short features and a podcast. Then, we hear from Brenda Avila, programmer at the Watsonville Film Festival about how the protagonist of one of the films recently screened at the festival, Jeanette Vizguerra, was recently arrested by ICE at her job, and sent to a detention center in Aurora Colorado, most likely targeted due to her increased profile via the film. We also hear from the filmmaker, Theo Rigby, who created “Si Pudiera Quedarme” (If I Could Stay) about Jeannette Vizguerra and other asylum seekers who seek sanctuary in houses of worship.  

In this show, engineer Sandy Stone and board chair Rachel Anne Goodman reminisce about the circuitous route that KSQD’s founders took in getting on the air. Here is something I wrote up trying to capture a lot of the milestones. Our story: Once upon a time back in the 1970’s there was a visionary writer and entrepreneur named Lorenzo Milam who had some money and an audacious dream that if you gave regular people access to a radio microphone, they would make their community a better place to live, or in his words, “to walk their walk, and talk their talk and know that they and the rest of the world are not irrevocably dead.” Among the many community stations he founded throughout the U.S. was KUSP in Santa Cruz, California, run by the ‘Pataphysical Broadcasting Foundation. At first it was in a tiny space and run on a shoestring with mostly volunteers and a skeleton crew. Then it grew bigger, got CPB funding, had a full staff, five translators, and reached four counties. At first, the programming was eclectic beyond belief. Programmed by mostly volunteers, characters like Corky Walsh, The Hamster of Love, Vicky Bolam, Tim Eagan, Paul Hostetter, Don Mussell, Leigh Hill, Lance Linares, Nikki Silva and more,, the programs ranged from Tibetan nose flute to Indian ragas to modern classical to bluegrass and beyond. There were public auctions at the Octogon Museum and Cajun Chomp and Stomp concerts and remotes from Kuumbwa and the Catalyst, Monterey Jazz and Bach Festivals. The spirit that imbued the station then was to play music that was unknown to the audience. Because it was the only game in town, it could be a trend setter. This went on for almost two decades. And then KUSP began running NPR programs, just All Things Considered and Morning Edition at first. Nobody else had done that. It was popular. NPR audiences began asking for more NPR shows. They would pay good money for them. Soon, that was the majority of programming on the station. Names like Terry Gross, Noah Adams, Susan Stamberg and Garrison Keillor became better known than local djs. Eventually, as the station leadership grew more money-focused, they relied more heavily on NPR, and most of the volunteers were “fired” in favor of paid announcers who management could depend on to read exactly what they were told, no more, no less. So much for talking the talk, eh, Lorenzo? Then in the late nineties, KAZU in Pacific Grove, a local community radio station, went bankrupt, giving its license to CSUMB, who commenced to run all NPR, too. The format wars between KAZU and KUSP, and the loss of exclusivity in NPR branding, left KUSP bankrupt and deeply in debt to NPR. In a last ditch effort to save its debt-ridden organization, the station went all “Triple A” format, fired its manager Terry Green, and brought in consultant Lee Ferraro from Minneapolis who said publicly he disliked Santa Cruz. It’s no wonder. He was hired to fire the rest of the local voices and put in a kind of bland indie “Triple -A” pop music that was supposed to attract a new, younger audience. This did not work to save KUSP financially and he soon packed up and (no doubt relieved) high-tailed it back to the mid-west. As KUSP was heading toward bankruptcy, a group calling itself “KUSP Forward” was formed to try to persuade its board of directors to downsize and go all-volunteer as a bail out plan. Hundreds showed up to a public board meeting at Loudon Nelson Center pleading with the board to change course. Their proposal was rejected and the station went bankrupt in 2016 under a debt load of $850,000. The last broadcast was in August of that year. Many tears were shed and friendships lost over its demise, which many said was preventable. Others disagreed. Either way, it was over. Late in the day on Christmas eve, I went down to the station where there was a bankruptcy liquidation sale underway. A guy whose name I think was Sharky

It’s no secret that Santa Cruz County loves its weed. Take a trip to UCSC’s campus on April 20th and you’ll get a sense of what I mean. But despite the community enthusiasm for the flowering herb, the industry has struggled to take off both at the local and statewide level after it was legalized almost a decade ago. Those struggles are part of what inspired Santa Cruz County supervisors Manu Koenig and Felipe Hernandez to sponsor a pair of county ordinances designed to give the struggling industry an added spark. The Board of Supervisors recently gave the green light to new local rules that allow for on-site consumption lounges at local cannabis retail businesses. They have also given an initial go-ahead to establish a three-year pilot program that would permit similar on-site consumption areas at cannabis farms, among other things. An initial read of the farm-specific ordinance was approved last week, but it will need to get a second majority vote when a final version of the ordinance appears on the board’s agenda next week. To tell us more about the intended benefits of the new local laws and to address some of the concerns voiced by the community and even some of his colleagues on the board, Talk of the Bay Host PK Hattis was recently joined by 1st district Supervisor Manu Koenig. NOTE: Since this episode aired, the Board of Supervisors officially delivered a final vote to approve the three-year pilot program at local cannabis farms. Part 2: Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County CEO Erica Padilla-Chavez will give us the latest on the federal food deliveries to the Watsonville-based food bank that were abruptly halted four weeks ago. She’ll share how this has impacted local services and what the community can do to help. Show Links: https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2025/03/11/santa-cruz-county-supervisors-give-cannabis-consumption-lounges-the-green-light/ https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2025/03/27/santa-cruz-county-cannabis-lounge-policy-clears-final-hurdle/ https://donate.thefoodbank.org/campaign/659968/donate?c_src=website

Artistic Director for Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Charles Pasternak talks about the bard and how his plays always provide fresh insights, as the four-decade-old company readies for its new season in July.

  Vicki Abeles is a filmmaker, attorney and change agent. She directed the award-winning documentaries Race to Nowhere and Beyond Measure and reached millions of viewers by focusing on social impact. She is the author of the NYT best-selling book Beyond Measure. Additional film credits include Associate Producer on the Sundance favorite Miss Representation (2011) and Associate Producer on Plastic Man: The Artful Life of Jerry Ross Barrish (2014). Continuing to bring communities together around the power of stories, Vicki’s work as an Impact Producer for Chasing Childhood and High School 9-1-1, along with producing the national live-stream event, “State of the Kids: Uniting for Youth Mental Health,” has built alliances across the world to empower kids to thrive. Her most recent film, Counted Out, was recently shown in the Monterey Bay area, and exposes the consequences of a society where people are shut out of effective math education, and shows examples of successful alternative approaches to learning.

This compilation of audio impressions reflects the sentiments of the people gathered with estimated 8,000 others to protest the takedown of our government by Musk and MAGA.

  David Woodbury is the founder and host of the Central Coast Conference (now in its 2nd year), a weekend-long lecture series dedicated to topics in American history. He earned a degree in History from the University of Evansville, in Indiana, before moving to California 40 years ago. He pursued a long career in publishing, beginning as co-founder of Savas Woodbury Publishers (now Savas Beatie), spent a decade with Stanford University Press, and later, Cengage Learning in San Francisco. David is the editor of Talking about History: Historians Discuss the Civil War (2014), and was the cartographer for the Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. David has organized group tours of America’s Civil War battlefields for over 30 years. Upon retiring from publishing, David launched Woodbury Historical Tours, expanding their tour offerings into other areas, including Indian Wars, and themes related to the American West. He began the Central Coast Conference in 2024, and plans to keep this lecture series going annually, at the Stanton Center in Monterey. This year’s conference theme is Seldom Heard History of the Civil War Era. David lives in Palo Alto with his wife Anne, where they raised three sons.  

  John Brown Childs is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was born on December 2, 1942, in a public housing project, in the Roxbury section of Boston. In 1963, he co-organized a group of students from the University of Massachusetts to go to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where MLK delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. In 1965, he took part in the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, AL, as a member of “Friends of SNCC”. For the past 17 years, as a partner with the community organization Barrios Unidos, John Brown Childs has been doing volunteer teaching and speaking on peacemaking and “transcommunal cooperation” in Soledad Prison, where he works with the diverse “Cemanahuac One-World Cultural Group” of incarcerated men. He is the author of numerous works, including the book Transcommunality, from the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect. This book, rooted in the ancient philosophy of the indigenous Haudenosaunee Peacemaker, Deganawidah, discusses ways in which people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives can, with mutual respect, work together, and learn from one another, while holding on to their own cultural and personal foundations. In 1997, John Brown Childs was awarded the Fulbright Foundation’s “Thomas Jefferson Chair of Distinguished Teaching” which he held in the Netherlands at the University of Utrecht. In 2019 he received the University of California Social Science Division’s Distinguished Emeriti Faculty award, and in 2022, he earned the University of California’s system-wide highest award for emeriti faculty, the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award, which has been awarded to only 49 emeriti faculty throughout the UC system. Of African-Madagascan and Native American descent, John is, through his mother’s side of the family, an enrolled member of the Massachuset Tribe of Indigenous People at Ponkapoag, or “Sweet Water Pond”, on whose ancestral land, now known as Boston, he was born.