Opinion

Water legislation recently introduced in the U.S. Senate recognizes the continued crisis facing water reliability in the West, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF).

Dutra is the most qualified, hands down The time has come to make the choice for our next District 4 County Supervisor. Jimmy Dutra is the only one with an impeccable track record from his six-plus years as a city councilman and a year serving as...

Time for Watsonville to work together The passage of Measure Q by voters shows that Watsonville citizens want to see the city grow in an orderly manner, which does not involve willy-nilly searching around for nice flat pieces of farmland, to put up a Costco...

The Watsonville City Council on Tuesday voted to close the crosswind runway at the airport, a move city officials say will open up more of the city for development of housing and commercial space. Airport Director Rayvon Williams told the council that closing the shorter...

“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...

It is widely accepted that our dependency on automobiles is a potent contributor to the climate crisis. What is not so well understood is how auto dependency initiated a new phenomenon: transportation poverty.  Prior to the automobile revolution, walking was how both rich and poor...

By Frances Salgado-Chavez Racism didn’t end with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a dream’ speech in 1963. Further, his critiques of the United States government as the ‘greatest purveyor of violence in the world’ led to his assassination. Racism is alive and the...

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...

What is normal? I thought things would return to normal following the three-year Covid pandemic and devastating Santa Cruz Mountain fires. I thought we’d survived the worst. But nothing could have prepared me for the first three months of 2023 and the meteorological disasters...

MEMO FROM REV. SHINSEKI Blood stains cannot be removed by more blood; resentment cannot be removed by more resentment; resentment can only be removed by letting it go. —Teachings of the Buddha This month will mark the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nakasaki...