Talk of the Bay from KSQD

Rachel Anne Goodman speaks with Richard Ginell author of a book about the famed sixties trio, The Limeliters. The book, Makin’ A Joyful Noise, the Lives and Times of the (Slightly) Fabulous Limeliters explores the meteoric rise of the band and their role in shaping the music of that era. The interview includes a musical exploration of their history as well as the author’s memories as a superfan and music critic. Limeliters member and banjo player, Alex Hassilev, the last surviving member of the band, passed away in April, so this program is a kind of tribute to him.

On May 4th, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed Kent State students protesting the war in Vietnam, killing 4 students and wounding 9 others. Local author Lois Van Buren was there. Having spent the last 45 years in Santa Cruz, raising a family, running a business, and working as an educator, Lois reflects on how that experience affected her life, about some of the hard lessons, great good fortune, and iconic milestones of the 60s counterculture, and how nature came to the rescue.

Anthony Suau, director of Organic Rising, talks about the rise of organic agriculture and its importance to health, the environment and slowing global warming, Organic Rising will be screened at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz on May 3 at 5PM. The screening is being hosted by CCOF, UCSC, SCCFM and the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). The film began production in Santa Cruz, CA in 2012 and features a number of local organic farmers including: Tom Broz, of Live Earth Farm, Jeff Larkey of Route 1 Farms, Caleb Barron of Fogline Farm and Joe Schirmer of Dirty Girl Produce. We also worked extensively with CCOF and filmed throughout the Salinas Valley. Myra Goodman, the founder of Earthbound Farms, was interviewed and appears in the film. We spent days at Eco Farm and filmed at UCSC’s Center for Agroecology interviewing now executive director Darryl Wong and instructor Kistin Yogg and Orin Martin. The film looks at both conventional and organic agricultural practices. Scientists present their research on conventional pesticides: glyphosate as well as 2,4-D, dicamba and atrazine and their long term effect on humans and the environment. This is to present what organic agriculture is not. Organic Rising is a 2-hour documentary produced by Goldcrest Films with executive producer Deepak Chopra. The film has been selected for more than a dozen film festivals around the world and to date has won Best Feature Documentary at several. Following the screenings there will be a panel discussion and Q&A with Tom Broz, Jeff Lackey, Nesh Dhillon, Jessy Beckett Parr of CCOF and Director, Anthony Suau. The Q&As, following the screenings, have been intense as consumers are desperate for answers about the USDA organic label. Tickets available at: https://organirising.ticketspice.com/organic-rising-public-screening

Filmmaker Gloria Morán discusses her film, Unique Ladies about an all-female lowrider club in San Diego. Her screening is part of a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Watsonville of lowrider culture. Cinco de Mayo becomes Cinco de Lowrider Week What: 5 days celebrating Chicano ingenuity and the creativity of Lowrider culture When: Wed. – Sunday, May 1st – 5th at various times & locations Just added: the Barrio Bus will be at MAH, 705 Front St. in Santa Cruz for the First Friday event in Abbot Sq. from 4:30-7pm. Folks can get onboard and learn more about Chicano & Lowrider history, watch videos and take photos with the colorful murals! The Watsonville Film Festival (WFF) is reclaiming the Cinco de Mayo holiday with five days of films and festivities honoring Mexican and Chicano heritage and pride. The celebration is part of a prestigious California Humanities grant awarded to WFF to create the “More than Cars: Celebrating Lowrider Culture” and a series of cultural events in partnership with Pajaro Valley Arts and local car clubs. Humanities advisor, Dr. Alberto Lopez Pulido, Chair of the University of San Diego Ethnic Studies Dept., and a renowned Lowrider author and filmmaker, will bring the iconic 38-foot mural-covered “Barrio Bus,” aka classroom on wheels, from San Diego to visit PVUSD schools. From May 1-3, students will have the opportunity to tour the Barrio Bus and engage with Professor Pulido, who is also Vice-Chair of Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center, to learn about the 8 Principles of Lowriding and the significance of 5 de Mayo. “Since the 1940s, lowriding has been a source of pride and a symbol of Chicano ingenuity,” says Dr. Pulido, “Yet for decades, many cities passed laws banning Lowriders from gathering and cruising. They were targeted with negative stereotypes when in fact they represent a unique form of “art on wheels.” In 2024, California finally repealed the bans after a grassroots campaign organized by Lowrider clubs across the state. On Saturday, May 4 at 6pm, the Watsonville Film Festival will present Dr. Pulido’s award-winning documentary, Everything Comes from The Streets about the history of Lowriding. UCSC graduate Gloria Morán will present her film, The Unique Ladies about women Lowriders in a culture traditionally dominated by men. There will be a Q&A after the films with the directors and Dr. Pulido’s co-producers Rigoberto Reyes and Kelly Whalen at Cinelux Green Valley Cinema, 1125 S. Green Valley Rd. Starting at 9pm, DJ XXIII will be spinning Lowrider tunes at a free after-party at Fruition Brewing, 918 E. Lake Ave in Watsonville. On Sunday, May 5, there will be free ‘Cinco de Lowrider’ festivities at Pajaro Valley Arts, where the “More Than Cars: Celebrating Lowrider Culture” exhibit will be open to the public. The Watsonville Riders will host their club’s showcase and talk from 1-2pm. There will be music, food vendors, and lots of beautiful Lowrider cars outside of the Porter Building at 280 Main Street between 11am–4pm.

Just ahead of his sold-out talk in Santa Cruz on April 25th, Ami Chen Mills grabbed a half hour with actor, comedian and author Rainn Wilson (formerly Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) to discuss his book SoulBoom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, his Ba’hai faith, the kind of God he believes in, how spirituality has become too individualistic and consumeristic … and many other profound concerns for the human race. This is a shorter version of this interview, edited for KSQD’s spring pledge drive. Find the full interview (“Director’s Cut”) at Moment of Truth with Ami Chen Mills soon at the show page here at KSQD and at all your favorite podcast sites.

Kyndal Edwards is a 30-something man walking across America to raise awareness about mental health and addiction. Past his 4,000 mile, he was on his way to the Mexican border when I caught up with him to hear how the journey was going.

The Low Impact Camping Ordinance drafted by the Santa Cruz County Planning Commission took some rural residents by surprise. On one hand, people are already renting out camping sites on their private properties, sometimes with negative impacts on neighbors, sometimes not. But with the state striving to regulate private camping, such as HipCamp.com (similar to Air B and B, but camping) has already made this a common practice. While some say regulating is the only way to enforce safety rules on private property, others say without enforcement, these rules just rubber-stamp dangerous practices, such as open fires and lax supervision of guest safety. Supporters say some enforcement is better than none, and they want to follow guidelines so they know what is legal. Bonny Doon resident, Nancy Kille came on the program to share her reservations about this new planned ordinance. Here is a powerpoint showing the parameters of the proposed ordinance. https://www2.santacruzcountyca.gov/planning/plnmeetings/PLNSupMaterial/PC/agendas/2024/20240313/007c.pdf

The Gipsy Kings have sold 20 million records worldwide, won a Grammy for best World Music Record, and four other grammy nominations. They have played the great concert halls of the world, appeared in movies (Big Lebowski, Toy Story III) and wowed audiences with their combination of rumba, salsa, flamenco and pop music. In this interview Rachel talks with founder and lead guitarist, Tonino Baliardo, who only speaks French and Spanish, so had a translator. The Gipsy Kings will play the Warrior’s Stadium in Santa Cruz on May 19th.

In part II of “Have you Been Canceled?”, a look at California’s homeowner’s insurance crisis, Rachel Anne Goodman talks with Deputy Insurance Commissioner and spokesperson for Commissioner Ricardo Lara, Michael Soller. She asks him about the proposed fixes coming from his boss and how that may impact insurance availability.

This month at the Actors’ Theater in downtown Santa Cruz we have a rare opportunity to experience a very local story. White Sky, Falling Dragon is a play in two acts by playwright, and Director, Steve “Spike” Wong. The play runs April 19 through May 5. Inspired by Spike’s own father, Captain Ernest Wong, USAAF, the play tells the story of a young Chinese-American man’s return to small town Watsonville, California in 1944 after his WWII service as a bombardier. This production, featuring an all Asian cast in primary roles, offers a rare opportunity to experience a largely untold story of the heroic contributions of Chinese-Americans, and a dramatic telling of the aftermath of war. With its focus on Chinese-American culture, immigration, and military service during wartime, the play is a unique blend of drama and comedy and a moving tribute to the complexities of what it means to come home. For more information and to purchase tickets: Actors Theater

In this program, State Senator John Laird and Executive Director of Consumer Watchdog, Carmen Balber discuss California’s homeowner’s insurance crisis and whether Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s proposed fixes will actually help the flight of insurance companies from the state or make it worse. Listeners weigh in, too.

Omer Bartov was born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His early research concerned the Nazi indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II, analyzed in his books, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945 (1985), and Hitler’s Army (1991). He then turned to the links between total war and genocide, discussed in his books Murder in Our Midst (1996), Mirrors of Destruction (2000), and Germany’s War and the Holocaust (2003). Omer Bartov’s interest in representation also led to his study, The “Jew” in Cinema (2005), which examines the recycling of antisemitic stereotypes in film. His more recent work has focused on interethnic relations in the borderlands of Eastern Europe. His book Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (2007), investigates the politics of memory in West Ukraine, while Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), is a microhistory of ethnic coexistence and violence. The book received the National Jewish Book Award and the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research, among others, and has been translated into several languages. Bartov’s Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (2022) explores the centuries pre-dating the Holocaust. He has edited several volumes, including Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (2013), Voices on War and Genocide: Three Accounts of the World Wars in a Galician Town (2020) and, reflecting his new interest, Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples (2021). His novel, The Butterfly and the Axe, was published in January 2023. His new book, Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, has just come out. Omer Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000.

Martin Rizzo-Martinez is a historian and a producer of film, podcast, and other media content. After completing his PhD at UC Santa Cruz in 2016, he became a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Dr. Cliff Trafzer at UC Riverside. Following his postdoc, he worked with California State Parks as the Historian & Tribal Liaison for the Santa Cruz District, which allowed him to work closely with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and other tribal partners in the region. He is currently a professor in the Film and Digital Media program at UCSC. Martin is the author of the recently released book We Are Not Animals, a detailed look at the lives and survival strategies of the native peoples of the Monterey Bay area who survived the Spanish mission system, and the Mexican and American colonizing forces that followed it. He is also co-producer of the podcast “Challenging Colonialism”.

While the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission celebrates the groundbreaking of the Highway 1 auxiliary lane, bus on shoulder, and Mar Vista bike and pedestrian overcrossing, a lawsuit has been filed by the Sierra Club and The Campaign for Sustainable Transportation seeking to halt the Highway 1 expansion in Aptos. Our Talk of the Bay guests are Campaingn for Sustainable Transportation Co-Chair Rick Longinotti, along with Lani Faulkner of the Sierra Club Ventana Chapter Executive Committee and Founder of Equity Transit. Together they address their organization’s views on why investing in multi-modal transit options and making our streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians should be a higher priority than road expansions that don’t realize their stated goals. Lawsuit press release: The Sierra Club and Campaign for Sustainable Transportation (CFST) filed suit in Sacramento Superior Court regarding Caltrans’ plan to widen Highway 1 in Aptos to build auxiliary lanes between State Park Dr. and Freedom Blvd. The complaint argues that Caltrans’ Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the project unlawfully evades the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA): The EIR did not analyze the alternative of building the rail and trail segment parallel to the highway without combining that project with the auxiliary lanes. The Sierra Club and the Campaign for Sensible Transportation support the rail and trail project as envisioned in the EIR. “This project is based on the discredited belief that auxiliary lanes will reduce congestion,” says Rick Longinotti, Chair of CFST and Sierra Club’s local Transportation Committee. The Caltrans EIR estimates that congestion in the northbound morning commute would get worse if the project is built. The EIR’s claim that there would be congestion relief in the southbound afternoon commute is based on the opening year of the project. It’s an empirical fact that any congestion relief is short-term, because more vehicles fill up the expanded road in what transportation researchers call “induced travel”. Longinotti states, “What we need are alternatives to being stuck in traffic. Spending $180 million on a futile project makes it less possible to fund those alternatives.” He points to other cities such as Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Atlanta that have genuine bus-on-shoulder operations that attract riders because the buses are not stuck in traffic. Sierra Club and CFST argue that investing in making our streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians should be a higher priority than road expansions that don’t reduce congestion. Santa Cruz County ranks 5th worst in rate of serious injuries to pedestrians (out of 58 counties) and 2nd worst in rate of injuries to bicyclists.

As the Watsonville Film Festival approaches its final weekend, documentary filmmakers Jeff Dunn and Jon Silver talk about the changing world of their craft. Jon Silver’s short film, “Living in in Exile”, about the life of Nicaraguan “nuevo cancion” singer, Carlos Mejia Godoy, is playing at the festival in Seaside on March 15th. Mejia Godoy was forced to flee his homeland after speaking out against the government of Daniel Ortega, who he had once supported through his music and his work as a radio host.

Woody Hastings is the Phase Out Polluting Fuels program manager for The Climate Center. He is an energy and environmental policy analyst, strategic planner, and community organizer with over thirty years of experience in the non-profit, governmental, and private sectors. Woody has been with The Climate Center since 2010 when he was hired to help lead the formation of what became California’s second Community Choice Agency (CCA), Sonoma Clean Power (SCP). After the launch of SCP Woody worked to expand CCA in other parts of California including the Central Coast. In 2020, with CCAs established throughout the state, Woody’s focus shifted to work in the oil & gas supply side issues of extraction and refining of fossil fuels. The emphasis is on how to advance a comprehensive, coordinated, equity-centered, worker-friendly managed transition away from fossil fuels in California. The initiative he manages also includes demand-side end-use of fossil and other polluting fuels, particularly in transportation policy and building electrification. Woody received his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from San Francisco State University with an emphasis on sustainability and social justice. He is also a Fellow of the Leadership Institute for Just and Resilient Communities.

It’s no small task to start something new and keep it going for 12 years. That’s the story for film maker and mover and shaker, Consuelo Alba. Seeing a lack of Latino/a representation in film, and especially film festivals, she decided to do something about it. Now in its 12th year, the festival has become the landmark event for Latine film makers from local and Bay Area cities.

Sifting through the results of the primary election, we find some trends locally and statewide and discuss the future of the progressive movement in Santa Cruz. Is it dead, or just dormant?

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) PACS have been flooded with donations since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Congressional Candidate in California District 19 (Santa Cruz to Paso Robles) Sean Dougherty is running against incumbent Jimmy Panetta, an establishment Democrat whose father, Leon Panetta, served as Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, and as both CIA Director and Defense Secretary under President Obama. Dougherty called a press conference on Feb. 28 at the Santa Cruz, CA County Courthouse to discuss Panetta’s “windfall” contributions from the AIPAC PAC, totaling $184,400.00. Panetta received the largest, single-day donation from the AIPAC PAC in December of 2023—more than any other Congressional candidate. And this amount represents Panetta’s largest single donation. Why is the AIPAC PAC spending so much money on this California Congressional district? Ami Chen Mills interviews Sean about campaign finance; polling figures on the American public’s feelings about a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza; big money in US political campaigns; why Jimmy Panetta is being accused of voting to “end social security,” according to critics–and what the candidate (Sean) would do with the US military budget, after cutting it in half, if elected. A special Talk of the Bay news segment produced by the Moment of the Truth team. Notes and Resources: Sean Dougherty website: www.SeanforPeace.com The Lever Online News and Commentary: https://www.levernews.com/ On AIPAC’s new funds and how it is spending them: https://www.levernews.com/inside-the-israel-lobbys-new-90-million-war-chest/ Interviews with global journalists on the ongoing death toll and destruction in Gaza, and on AIPAC funds. Plus: US Senate Candidates and more–excellent and in-depth election coverage from Rose Aguilar at Your Call (a KSQD morning program produced by Pacifica’s KALW): https://www.kalw.org/people/rose-aguilar

Talk of the Bay hosted by Bodie Shargel features an interview with County Supervisor of District 3 Justin Cummings about Measure K and L, a 1/2 cent sales tax for the County and City respectively. Later Bodi talks with Tony Nuñez, committee member for YES on Measure N, supporting a bond for the Pajaro Valley Health Care District. https://santacruzlocal.org/election/2024-mar-05/measures/k-county-sales-tax/ https://santacruzlocal.org/election/2024-mar-05/measures/l-santa-cruz-sales-tax/ https://santacruzlocal.org/election/2024-mar-05/measures/measure-n-pajaro-health/