Santa Cruz County Local News

Un terreno al final de la calle Gonda es el sitio donde se propone construir un complejo de viviendas para 248 campesinos temporales. Al lado del sitio es un proyecto construido recientemente con vivienda para 360 campesinos temporales. (Fidel M. Soto — Noticias Watsonville)

Aptos began the 2024 regular season with three consecutive losses, including two against a pair of defending league champions.

This episode of Talk of the Bay, with host Meilin Obinata, honors Labor Day by diving into modern labor issues with health and technology workers. We heard from an anonymous local CVS worker, who shared some of the workplace struggles workers are experiencing, and the role customers can serve to advocate for workers when we visit retail environments. The show included a snippet of music by Jimmy Kelly from the Labor Day festivities hosted by the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council in Romo Park in Watsonville, California.
We spent the bulk of the show with Mia Casesa and Ike McCreery of the Tech Workers Coalition. Casesa and McCreery shared their individual journeys to developing an awareness of themselves as workers – Mia, coming from a fine arts and graphic design background, and Ike from a math, computer science and engineering one. Despite having experiences which appear different on the surface, both found alienation as workers whether from precarious employment post-college leading to jobs paying less than before college or becoming disillusioned with the purposes to which tech employers were directing one's labor.
Artificial intelligence came up as a topic at different points in our discussion – in the context of Project Maven, a project which attracted labor actions from workers at Google, in response to the goal of producing AI software for the US military along with the different ways the unions in Hollywood handled the issue of AI. We also heard about the role of technology companies in politics and within military applications of tech.
The definition of who "is" a tech worker is something the guests defined as encompassing not only engineers and designers such as the guests but culinary workers, drivers and other workers within tech companies who hold a variety of responsibilities.
The guests invited the workers in the audience to visit the Tech Workers Coalition site and join the Slack.
The Tech Workers Coalition is hosting an event "Circuit Breakers" Saturday October 12 and Sunday October 13 in San Francisco: https://techworkerscoalition.org/circuit-breakers/
To learn more about topics from the show, feel free to see these links:
https://labornotes.org/techcon2023
https://kickstarterunited.org/
link to article about Google's Project Maven to provide artificial intelligence software to the US  military which caused some workers to quit in protest https://archive.ph/BOCLJ
Sharing the Moment of Truth with Ami Chen Mills episode of an interview of Malcolm Harris, the author of the book "Palo Alto" which covers the hidden history of Silicon Valley from the last 170 years.

Voters in San Lorenzo Valley Water District in November will decide whether to reverse a recent water bill hike and cap some future charges.

Scott Gale is on the board of the Monterey History & Art Association.  He is the curator of the Jo Mora: Cartographer exhibit, which is currently on display at The Stanton Center on Custom House Plaza in Monterey.  For several months, Scott has been planning the upcoming Jo Mora Gathering weekend, to be held October 5-6 in Monterey, with Peter Hiller.  Peter is the author of the book “The Life and Times of Jo Mora.”
Scott has a passion for art, no doubt inherited.  His grandfather was Donald Teague, a highly-regarded, Carmel-based illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's, as well as an outstanding fine artist.  His great grandfather was Harry Timmins, another highly regarded illustrator during the Golden Era of Illustration.  Scott is a semi-retired physician, and lives in Carmel with his wife Nina.

This Saturday at 11AM on WHAT A WEEK! host Erik Nelson will be joined live by Atlantic Magazine staff writer Franklin Foer, as they discuss all things Election 2024, and the role the “Mainstream Media” might have in influencing the outcome. Foer is the author of "The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future”, and was previously the editor of The New Republic and a writer at Slate and New York magazine, so, his insights on the current ecology of the media should be most insightful. That’s WHAT A WEEK, this Saturday at 11AM PST, 2PM EST, only on KSQD. 90.7, 89.7, 89.5FM, and streaming live on KSQD.org.

Live Music Santa Cruz! The weekend roundup of concerts and festivals. Easy at-a-glance quick reference music guide!

By M.C. Dwyer

Alan Ritch remembers his brother-in-law's banner.

Santa Cruz Mountains Theater Goers Anticipate Cult Production

Watsonville City Councilman Jimmy Dutra was in Santa Cruz County Superior Court Tuesday, where jury selection began for his civil trial.

The 2024 fall season for Scotts Valley junior Hayden Smith and the Falcons girls’ volleyball team just got underway.

The 2024 fall season for Scotts Valley junior Hayden Smith and the Falcons girls’ volleyball team just got underway.