Vote Like Lives Depend on it
What made you mad in the last two years? Maybe it was the president saying it’s alright to violate women, the U.S. leaving the Paris Climate Agreement or white supremacists marching on Charlottesville, Virginia. What broke your heart? Maybe the administration putting children in internment...
They Can Make Excuses, Voter Suppression is Still Racist
Every election season, we hear people say “Every vote counts.” It’s a powerful sentiment, but less so in practice. In this country, not all voting opportunities are created equal. The “land of the free” has a shameful history of selectively listening to its citizens. Spoiler...
Only We Can Prevent Wildfires
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to see it land on a power line, can it still catch fire? Obviously, yes. Given, however, that Cal Fire faulted Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) for at least a dozen of the...
Resist Trump, Keep Immigrant Protections
The White House’s assault on people of color grows more aggressive by the day, as the latest attack comes in the form of deporting protected immigrants back to potentially life-threatening conditions. Immigrant families have been systematically oppressed at the hands of U.S. immigration policy, but...
Take Down the Mission Bell
Columbus Day is a celebration of brutal conquest and white supremacy — one that UC Santa Cruz is complicit in by ignoring calls to remove the mission bell in front of McHenry Library. The bell is a constant reminder of the genocide of indigenous people...
One Overpriced Diploma, To Go, Please!
What I like about Chipotle is the limited menu. You stand in the line, get either brown rice or white rice, black beans or pinto beans, you put a little cheese, a little this, a little that, and you’re out of there. I think that’s...
We Believe Dr. Blasey Ford
Why are you afraid of flying? Why do you have two front doors? What music was playing when you were leaving the party? None of these are relevant or appropriate questions to ask a potential rape survivor. But the relentless and condescending panel of senators...
What’s More Lost: Migrant Kids or US Humanity?
Please, don’t feign surprise when our government lies to us again and again about the state of immigrant affairs and detention centers. Don’t feign shock when news of 1,475 unaccompanied immigrant children disappearing from government oversight hits the headlines. Don’t feign sympathy when you know...
Voluntourism Won’t Help Your Resume
Graduates or students with the privilege to pay to travel the world this summer should be doing so ethically, not with the mentality of ‘fixing’ non-western communities or using their degree to be saviors. Voluntourism is traveling to a county with the intentions of...
Transgender Inmates Confined to Conformity
In a brazen display of its hate-fueled anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda, the Trump administration is retracting Obama-era protections for transgender inmates. Without these desperately needed protections, which aimed to stop the rampant verbal, physical and sexual harassment transgender inmates face behind prison walls, assailants will go unchecked....