Opinion

I'm sick to my stomach as I watch helplessly the common recurrence of mass shootings and with the paralysis of our nation to do anything about it. I feel assaulted and traumatized by the sheer volume of violence I witness on television and mass...

For decades in the Salinas Valley, the short-handle hoe, known as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that kept farmworkers stooped over for long hours each day. Workers were only able to stand and stretch when they reached the...

“I’m tired of hoping.” That sentence, spoken to me by a member of our congregation last week, summarizes the mood of many. Tired of hoping. Tired of waiting, tired of trying, tired of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel grow dimmer. At the start...

Over the past five years, we’ve learned how to navigate successive disasters in Santa Cruz County.  We fill sandbags, dig ditches, clear fallen trees, clean up debris, distribute food and help folks cover critical expenses when they are out of work due to shutdowns, floods,...

By Jimmy Dutra, Watsonville Mayor This week my grandmother, Epi Tavarez, turned 100. Just seeing that number is surreal. She was born one year after the 19th Amendment was ratified and women got the right to vote. My grandma has been a lifelong voter who...

Questioning God’s character and promises? Welcome to the Bible! Most readers of the Bible spend little time in the book of Lamentations, a short book of five poems composed by an anonymous Hebrew poet, reflecting on the fall of Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE....