Oak Leaf Spring 2019 Magazine by The Oak Leaf News

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DACA STUDENTS SHARE THEIR STORIES

SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE PG 32

PG 20

SEXUAL ASSAULT IN SONOMA COUNTY PG 52

Contents Community

Campus Life

“THIS IS MY HOME”

SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE

BY LUKE W. MORROW

RESISTANCE: NOW AND FOREVER

SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS

ON THE SIDELINES WITH AMY

STEP INTO THE DAYLIGHT AND LET IT GO

BY JACKSON ETIENNE

BY ZANE ZINKL

BY JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ

BY MARILYN SANTOS

“

I’M A BELIEVER Hadyn, Page 57

WHAT THE HELL IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

BY LENITA MARIE JOHNSON

Additional Content LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

IN MEMORIAM

PG 2

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ONLINE DOESN’T EQUAL EASY BY LESLIE M. LEVY

SUBSCRIPTION WARS

BY ABRAHAM FUENTES

TOP 5 MOVIES (SO FAR) OF 2019 BY JORDAN ALLUMS

16 18

A PASSION FOR FASHION BY ARIA QUINN

BY DAKOTA McGRANAHAN

Opinion

GO, FIGHT, WIN! WITH DORI ELDER

BY CELINA OCHELTREE

LESSONS FROM MY AUTISTIC BROTHER

FIGHTING WORDS BY JESSE KAPUKUI

HOSPICE CARE

BY RILEY PALMER

MAKEUP HAS NO GENDER

BY RAUL OJEDA

BY KAILA BOHLER

CBD: NATURAL REMEDY FOR TODAY’S ILLS?

DISNEYBLAND BY EDGAR SORIA GARCIA

“

BY DAVID TAMAYO

PERIOD PAINS

BY MARK FERNQUEST

RELAXING HIKES FOR STRESSED STUDENTS BY SÉAMUS REED

MORE THAN

$1,000 I N

FREE ENTRY TO: • Athletic Home Games

($880 value)

• Petaluma Cinema

($150 value)

• Theatre Arts

($58 value)

Series

B U Y AT

Performances

santa rosa: Bertolini Stu-

dent Center, Student Life Office, and Admissions & Records, Plover Hall

10% OFF:

• Textbooks on Aug. 19-22 • Bookstore items every day

$5 Parking Discount • $2 for Motorcycles 50¢ Off Cafeteria with $4.95 Food Purchase

petaluma:

Student Life & Engagement Office, Richard Call Bldg, Rm. 608 and Admissions & Records, Jacobs Hall, Rm 109

Ask about: Book Loans, Emergency Loans, & Off Campus Discounts

SCAN

For a full list of discounts

Your Pell Grant may pay for your $15 Cub Card.

GET INVOLVED: Join Student Government by contacting the SGA President: studentpresident@santarosa.edu Or visit Student Life, Equity & Engagement

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D I S C O U N T S

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

FOR ONLY

Student Life, Equity & Engagement: Santa Rosa Campus: 707.527.4424 Petaluma Campus: 707.778.4141 srjcstudentlife@santarosa.edu

SRJC Student Life

Student Government Assembly

@SRJC.cublife @SRJCstudentlife

The Sonoma County Junior College District does not discriminate on the basis of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, ethnic group identification, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic condition, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information or sexual orientation in any of its policies, procedures or practices; nor does the District discriminate against any employees or applicants for employment on the basis of their age. This non-discrimination policy covers admission, access and treatment in District programs and activities--including but not limited to academic admissions, financial aid, educational services and athletics--and application for District employment.

oak leaf magazine STAFF JORDAN ALLUMS GRAYSON EDGEMON JACKSON ETIENNE MARK FERNQUEST JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ

Dakota McGranahan

Co-Magazine Editor

I think I set a new record for the most consecutive all-nighters in the time it took to create this magazine, but the sleepless nights and stress were worth it to see the final product. The memories I created with my amazing editors while blasting T-Swift, eating pizza and laughing while simultaneously crying, are memories I’ll remember for eternity.

ALBERT GREGORY LENITA MARIE JOHNSON JESSE KAPUKUI LESLIE M. LEVY LUKE W. MORROW CELINA OCHELTREE RAUL OJEDA

Kaila Bohler

Co-Magazine Editor If I had to use one word to describe my experience at The Oak Leaf, I would say rewarding. I’ll never forget the memes and the endless slumber parties during production. In particular, I’ll always cherish the memories I created and the new bonds I made with the editors of this magazine. Honestly though, I miss my cat and my boyfriend so I’m slightly glad production is now over. Enjoy!

RILEY PALMER ANDRES PIMENTEL ARIA QUINN SÉAMUS REED MARILYN SANTOS DEVIN SCHWARZ LAUREN A. SPATES DAVID TAMAYO ZANE ZINKL

ADVERTISING COURTNEY PAIGE

ADVISER ANNE BELDEN 4

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Edgar Soria Garcia Illustrations Editor

This is our magazine! We’ve worked very hard to get to this point, and I am proud of the commitment our team has shown. Everything was a labor of love, from the content to the type of teared paper on the cover. Between the insane late nights and the attempt to summon the AP Style gods with a Scotch tape pentagram, my favorite part of this experience by far was the bonding.

Abraham Fuentes Photo Editor

I started doing photography two years ago, and I hold myself to a high standard of quality. As a photographer, I try to show the world as I see it, one picture at a time. I’m transferring to a four-year college after my last semester at The Oak Leaf next year. This magazine is made by students for the community, and I hope you love the stories and photos that we worked so hard to produce.

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS kaila bohler & dakota mcgranahan Identity plays a major role in our lives. It defines how we interact, where we go and what we do, among hundreds of other decisions we make daily. For Oak Leaf Magazine’s second issue, we chose “Identity” as the theme for a multitude of reasons. This semester, The Oak Leaf gained a new member, but we also lost one. Beatrice Jay Wieser was born March 13, 2019, and Thomas Eliazar De Alba died April 30, 2019. Thomas was a beloved sports editor and editor-inchief at The Oak Leaf for many years. Last semester, we had the pleasure of meeting Thomas for the first time when he returned to be our opinion editor. He sadly had to leave halfway through the semester due to health complications. Although our encounter with Thomas was brief, it was memorable. Beatrice was introduced to The Oak Leaf through our Editor-in-Chief Lauren A. Spates, her mother. Though she was born less than two months ago, she’s already made a lasting impression in the hearts of all those on staff. Just like her mother, Beatrice is a breath of fresh air. Together, Lauren and Beatrice bring a warmth to the staff that couldn’t be filled by anyone else. From DACA students discovering where their heritage lies, to formerly incarcerated students creating new identities, the stories written in this issue reflect on what identity means to different people. Somewhere between birth and death, we find our identity and define the reputation we will leave behind. To Beatrice and Thomas, their identities will be forever imprinted into The Oak Leaf’s history. That is why we dedicate this issue to the people who contribute to The Oak Leaf’s identity. The following four outstanding individuals have come into our lives and, because of their contributions, we are forever in debt. To Thomas, we will never forget the humor, dedication and leadership you brought both times you were an Oak Leaf editor. To Beatrice, we will forever be invested in your success, and you will always have a home at The Oak Leaf. To Lauren, we will never forget the commitment you have to improving not just the paper, but us as individuals. To our adviser, Anne Belden, words cannot begin to decribe the passion you have for your students or the love we share for you in return. To our readers, we hope you enjoy the “Identity” issue. Outside of the stories you’ll read are memories made that will forever be embedded in our identity as a staff.

Dakota McGranahan

Kaila Bohler theoakleafnews.com

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‘You Aced life, my friend’: A Tribute to oak leafer thomas de alba May 30, 1991–April 30, 2019 by former oak leaf staff Oak Leaf staff members past and present are mourning the loss of Thomas De Alba, former sports editor and coeditor-in-chief known for his huge heart, fearless reporting and bold, candid and confident style. He died April 30 surrounded by family after an 18-month battle with cancer. He was 27.

De Alba was one of the first students Chong met when he arrived at SRJC in 2012. “We immediately shared a love for Bear Cubs sports,” Chong said. “I loved Thomas’ defiant and ornery style. He was fearless, as evidenced in how he courageously battled his illness.” A competitive tennis player and second degree black belt in the martial art of Farang Mu Sul, De Alba suffered a sudden seizure in October 2017. Doctors initially diagnosed a benign brain tumor. Surgery left him partially paralyzed. He fought his way back, endured a round of chemotherapy and radiation and relearned how to smile, talk and walk ahead of doctors’ expectations. He chronicled his comeback on social media, gathering a cadre of devoted friends and family members known as #TeamThomas, who encouraged him along the way. “We’ve been watching Thomas conquer each and every challenge over the last year and a half with inspiring strength, courage and such a positive attitude,” said former Oak Leaf Sports Reporter Leah Mae Phillips.

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Photo courtesy The Oak Leaf archives

“Thomas was a sweet young man who burned bright like a comet,” said Santa Rosa Junior College President Dr. Frank Chong. “His life won’t be measured by years but [by] moments. I am fortunate to have shared some moments with Thomas. You aced life, my friend.”

A 2013 Oak Leaf staff photo of Thomas Eliazer De Alba. He was an avid San Francisco 49ers fan who covered SRJC football and other sports for The Oak Leaf as sports editor and co-editor-in-chief.

Ironically, journalism instructor Anne Belden didn’t have high hopes for De Alba when he first entered her Journalism 2 class in spring 2012. “He was late almost every day, and we had some serious discussions about missing assignments,” she recalled. She was surprised when he turned up at The Oak Leaf that fall and even more so when he quickly became the paper’s most dedicated new member. “He roared onto the staff and said, ‘I’m here. Teach me everything I need to know,’” she said. “Thomas had more heart, more determination and more dedication than an entire class of students.” Though he teased Belden about virtually everything, he also proved to be one of her sweetest and most devoted students.

“I found a random text from Thomas in 2015 that simply said, ‘Hi Anne, you are awesome. Have a great day!’” Modeling senior Oak Leafers who had shown him the ropes, he in turn took others under his tutelage, especially championing the sports editors who followed him. “I owe the start of my writing career to him,” said former Sports Editor Robert Marshall. “He helped me with my first article, taught me all about AP Style and assured me I would be a good writer.” Former Co-Editor-in-Chief Jarrett Rodriguez remembers De Alba taking him out on his first assignment and showing him how to talk to police. “He was a good man and an amazing writer,” he said.

#TeamThomas Forever by isabel Baskerville When Thomas De Alba first walked into The Oak Leaf newsroom in Fall 2012, he bypassed the seats where all the new people were huddled and sat down with the returning staff. He walked into a room full of complete strangers and settled right in. Zero hesitation. Yes, he was immediately my favorite — sorry, everyone, but let’s not pretend this was ever a secret. When his first story came back covered in my particularly gleeful style of brutal copy edits, he wasn’t even a little offended. We went over it together, word for word, and he learned. Classmate Spencer Harris told the new reporters about the time I took one of his stories, folded it into a paper airplane and threw it at his head. Thomas demanded I do the same thing with his next story. It became our thing. So when Thomas faced not one, not two, but three brain tumors with bravado, humor and courage, it shouldn’t have surprised me. If anyone could keep his head up while going through hell, it’d be Thomas. He fought so hard and with such incredible bravery. In a recent farewell letter to Thomas, former Oak Leaf Editor-in-Chief William Rohrs said, “You haven’t changed to me. In my mind, I see the lanky, heel-toe swagger you do when you walk into the newsroom with the next scoop. While everyone’s nodding their heads yes,

you’re the one with the balls to say ‘I don’t like that, and here’s why.’” I see the same thing. I have so many, many memories of him just being a perfect friend, a good bro, a great man. “Thomas was one badass, manspreading, karate-chopping, Spanish-speaking motherf*cker who knew his sports and was never afraid to ask the real hard questions of anyone,” former Oak Leaf Photo Editor Joe Barkoff said. One time, Thomas and I spent the better part of half an hour debating who was tougher: football or hockey players? The debate remains unsettled, but we managed to have a great time being animated, Baskerville and De Alba, friends and Warriors fans. passionate, loud and generally disruptive — everyone else in the office His progress from barely-a-writer to was convinced we were about to murder edtor-in-chief was mirrored by his rapid each other. rise from random-guy-who-isn’t-scaredof-me to one of the best friends I ever When he transferred to San Francisco had. You could tease him when he was State to finish his degree, it became being silly, and he’d laugh at himself. harder to spend time together. I didn’t have a driver’s license at the time, and Thomas was an honest, loyal, brilliant we both had other obligations. But even person. He didn’t allow pride to get without hours to agonize over layout and in the way of learning. If you needed barely manage to submit copy to the back up, a hug, a sounding board or printers at 4 a.m. for the Nth newspaper just someone to keep you company production weekend in a row, we could while grinding through a long night of still slip into our same routine. editing, Thomas was there. I cannot possibly express the degree to which he Over the years, Thomas went from was MVP of every party, every editor’s limping his way through journalism’s meeting, every day. basics to becoming a great reporter with amazing instincts. He was never afraid to We’ll all miss him. I hope I never forget ask tough questions; he was never afraid how it felt to have a friend like him. to speak truth to power.

After SRJC, De Alba transferred to San Francisco State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He wrote sports stories for SF Bay and video game stories at Shoryuken.com before returning to Sonoma County to pursue a master’s in counseling at Sonoma State. He hoped to help high school students in underserved communities get into college.

tumor surfaced. A second round of chemotherapy and radiation could not stop the disease’s progression.

He attempted to return to the JC in fall 2018 to complete a few prerequisites for the master’s program, but his illness derailed his plan.

“You’ve always said things plainly, whether or not the people you were talking to wanted to hear the truth. It’s a trait I’ve admired; your behavior to others always showed who you were. I envied the way you could speak honestly to people and be reciprocated in turn.” Rohrs addressed how De Alba didn’t let

He did rejoin The Oak Leaf in a mentorship role, but was forced to leave after two months when a new brain

Several former Oak Leafers visited or sent messages to De Alba in his final days. “You were never one to mince words and try to skirt around the issue,” former CoEditor-in-Chief William Rohrs wrote.

the illness change his brash, optimistic, honest essence. “I’ve listened about how you lost the ability to walk, but you stuck your middle fingers up to your sickness and put your feet back on the ground. You went back to school, you mentored another generation of journalists and you never let your affliction take your spirit.” Perhaps former Oak Leafer Tara Kaveh summed up best how many Oak Leafers feel about losing one of their own. “Thomas was one of the most positive and pure-hearted people I've ever met,” she wrote. “I'm honored to have known him, too. He fought HARD and there are no words to describe how difficult it is to see someone so beautiful go so soon.” theoakleafnews.com

OAK LEAF MAGAZINE

What the hell

For some people, learning social media is like studying a foreign language: it’s confusing, complicated and, at times, frustrating. In particular, older students have a harder time learning this new language. This is because we come from a time when verbal and written communication were the only methods of staying informed. Simply saying “hello” now is more complicated than it was before.

There was no social media when I grew up, just social interaction. 8

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Tweeting, liking, reblogging and direct messaging are only a fraction of the mediums in which we say “hello” today, and that’s only the beginning to the social media universe. We didn’t have the technology we do now to aid our daily lives when I was younger (and no I am not going to give up my age). While social media was created to bridge the gap in communication, I feel it’s only furthered the disconnect. Once upon a time your social life centered around your ability to talk to someone faceto-face, as opposed to on a cell phone, laptop or social media platform. In fact, the better you could hold a conversation, the more “hip” you were thought to be. There was also a time when we wrote letters to one another while traveling with family or friends. I remember when writing cursive in a foreign land nearly made you famous with the locals and caused people to absorb every word you wrote. Why? Because it meant you were smart and cooler than a cucumber. There was no

“social media,” when I grew up, just social interaction. Now I see so many younger college students with their heads buried in their phones, virtually ignoring the people they are walking with. This is partially because they grew up in this new tech-savvy universe. In my journalism class, it seems nearly everyone has a presence on every social media platform in existence. I remember when typewriting was a requirement in school. I had used my mom’s typewriter when I was in elementary school and could only type a few keys a minute, but still wrote letters and all kinds of notes. Now my typing speed is nearly 150 words per minute, and I have a more profound appreciation for the art form; even if it’s a dying mode of communication. Communication now is often reduced to hashtags, ampersands and run-on sentences in a new language void of punctuation. Even the accompanying

Photo illustration by Edgar Soria Garcia

is social media? By Lenita Marie Johnson

photos, memes and GIFs aren’t always clear or easy to understand. Yet the language of social media is expanding at warp speed. Not only do you have to keep up, there’s an expectation that you must post every aspect of your life onto social media or you get left behind. It seems unfair to anyone who doesn’t have command of computers, let alone the ability to navigate the internet. Or simply to those who took the time to learn cursive or type on a typewriter.

As an older college student, I find it exasperating. I ask myself, “What am I really learning, and what’s the point anyway?” Yet, let’s keep it real: it’s here to stay. Today, students need to commit to learning social media for our education and careers. In my world, I’m determined to learn more social media platforms, one day at a time. In fact, I call my path “Mission Possible,” because I can and will be fluent in this new language.

Take me for instance. I actually know a little about this expansive world of social media — and I emphasize “a little.” I’m able to navigate Facebook occasionally; yet, I don’t know Twitter, Instagram or any of the other multitude of sites. I’m clearly not an internet expert, but I can send an email or Gmail.

I’ve learned new languages before, and social media is no different. Hard work and practice will pay off in the long run.

I often operate at a snail’s pace. This is because I was introduced to social media simply as another medium of writing.

Although I’m learning the universe of social media, I’ll continue to live my life face-to-face.

How do I know this? Because I took a social media class last semester. While tumultuous, I passed. Basically, if I can learn social media, anyone can.

You belong at Sonoma State Recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top public universities in the West Ranked by Money magazine as the 12th best college in the nation for transfer students Take your next step at admissions.sonoma.edu

Illustration by Edgar Soria Garcia

Online Does Not Equal Easy By Leslie M. Levy

The lure of online classes for students is the flexibility of completing their work “whenever.” This leads to laziness and even lamer excuses than teachers hear in person. (Your Google Drive crashed? Really?) Instructors choose to teach online classes for similar reasons as students. Maybe they have two or three jobs because they’re underpaid, or they have a full life. That doesn’t mean that teachers don’t catch the online sluggard bug, too. The value of having online classes available is undeniable, but when are they a waste of time and energy for both students and instructors? I can tell you all online classes are not created equal. Most are not an “easy A,” nor should they be. If a class is worth paying for, it should be worth the effort to earn that grade, but not every online class is well run. In one class the instructor sent out one email a week saying “good job on the discussion questions, next up is another topic” and otherwise had no presence in the class. I was actually quite taken with the material and was disappointed the class not only required little input, but

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provided zero instructor feedback. Even our midterm essays got no commentary. None. I ended up losing my zeal because the teacher was lazy. A good online class involves interaction with students and constructive feedback, plus teaching students related subjects we cannot get from the reading, or nuances that we may not catch on our own — just like live teachers do in regular classrooms. I completed a social media marketing certificate solely online. It involved numerous webinar sessions with live questions answered both during and after the presentations. We were encouraged to make profiles on several social media platforms and received feedback on what was or wasn’t appropriate for each platform and what to change. That was back in 2010, and every platform has expanded since then (Snapchat didn’t even exist yet), so it’s functionally useless on a resume today, but the class was highly interactive and stuck with me. I also learned some basic, but huge, concepts about different social platforms, how they work and how the

social atmosphere differs between them. That foundation is indispensable to me nine years later. It was money well spent. I barely passed one online class — Digital Color Theory — because it crammed a full semester’s work into five weeks and required using either Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, neither of which I had opened experienced before. If you’ve ever worked with either of these programs, you know that learning the class material wasn’t the issue. The homework projects coupled with the timeline and inexperience with the software made me want to stab my eyes out and chuck my computer across the room like She-Hulk. An online class is also not meant to be an easy paycheck for some tech savvy yet mindless faculty member. That is how poor instructors contribute to the poor relationship with adjuncts, which results in pay cuts, lack of benefits and delays or refusal in granting permanent status. They point to bad examples and deem every adjunct just as disposable. One of my in-person teachers said to “Google YouTube for how-to videos” when I asked about a function in

Premiere Pro, an equally foreign Adobe behemoth. A peer taught me the needed one-click fix in a quick minute, whereas my actual teacher had treated me like a waste of time. Teachers sometimes want us to spend days on end wading through all of the waste-of-time online tutorials to somehow magically find the gold nugget in the dungheap. I appreciate their not spoon feeding students, but my response to “Google it” is this: if I wanted to learn that way, I wouldn’t be enrolled in any class, online or not. I don’t want to watch an hour-long tutorial for a two-minute answer, nor do I want to endure 15 or 20 different how-to videos that miss the specific detail I’m looking for. I don’t want to waste my time any more than you want to waste yours. Though, I am open to watching tutorials when the payoff is worthwhile. A good online instructor will post links to specific tutorials they recommend, not just say to “Google it.” The justification is the instructor is putting responsibility for course material on the student, where it belongs, but it’s just lazy teaching. Take the aforementioned Digital Color Theory class I took. I needed something outside of the class material to learn how to use Illustrator. However, after one day of Googling, I was in tears and had gotten absolutely nowhere except more behind in the work. I emailed my instructor about my frustration and she responded with links to relevant tutorials.

If my teacher had left me to twist in the wind, I would not be where I am today. The communications and multimedia journalism fields require a LOT of technical knowledge I never dreamed of developing, let alone using efficiently. If that teacher hadn’t been so communicative, helpful and involved, I would not have persisted in my life journey. I look back on that class and know that it changed the direction of my life.

Why? Because learning and motivation involves a tease and chase pattern, which ultimately drives learning in any educational setting.

We are here to learn, and we expect you to teach — even if our class is entirely online. What are you offering in your class that I couldn’t do for free with nothing but internet access, time and tedium?

When a teacher ignites a fire in a student that consumes their consciousness in a way no one could have predicted, the student sometimes surpasses the teacher.

We are here to absorb what you — as people, as teachers — have to offer. We are inundated by information everywhere, but still chose to be “taught” even if we never see your face.

A teacher can also dampen desire, quell passions that might have kept cold hearts moving when life was dying all around them, or crush potential into the dust of yesterday’s dreams.

Most stumble through the learning process. Contrary to popular belief, the ability to Google for information or watch YouTube videos does not make one an autodidact, and not everyone has polyhistic tendencies, nor do they achieve their goals with sprezzatura.

As students, we never know what courses are going to be explosive for our psyche or complete duds. No one can know what will light up their life and send them rocketing to new heights until it happens, but you, our instructors, are here to light our fuses.

Most people reading this won’t even know what those weird words mean, but I bet after reading that sentence they suddenly want to (and they can easily Google those definitions).

We need you, whether we see you faceto-face or not. Good teachers change lives. The class format does not impact your ability to do that. You do.

A teacher shows knowledge that piques curiosity and a student suddenly wants something they never cared about before. A teacher shows application of knowledge in how they conduct their life or career and a student wants to emulate it.

I still barely made the cut, but I passed the class. I would have failed without her specific recommendations. I’m more proud of that D than I am the A’s I’ve gotten in my communications, journalism and video production classes. Why? Because it was really hard, yet my teacher was actually teaching me. She answered my emails and phone calls quickly and addressed my questions rather than passing me off to Google. Even though I was just an avatar online, she treated me like a real person. That was the first of two classes marking my college re-entry after mothering four children full-time for 18 years. Passing the course in five weeks, all while knowing nothing about the software, gave me motivation to proceed, and fortified me for later. If I could do that, I could do anything. theoakleafnews.com

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SUBSCRIPTION BY ABRAHAM FUENTES

You enter a binge-worthy new dimension between the darkness of your living room and the daylight of your daily commute, where you need to pay for only one streaming service and every great show is available to you: “Stranger Things,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” But then you emerge into reality and find yourself paying for five different subscriptions and considering adding one more because “The Twilight Zone” remake and “Star Trek: Discovery” are now available on CBS All Access. This is the never-ending war for your eyeballs, fought by companies such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime, with Apple the latest to announce its battle plans. There has been only one casualty: the consumer. The consumer is stuck deciding what to pay for and most of the time she is unable to cut a subscription because of one show. I can’t get rid of Netflix because of “Sabrina.” The same goes for Hulu and SNL. Amazon’s basic subscription plan is a must, not only for its streaming content but because it includes twoday shipping, Prime reading, Prime music, Prime video and Amazon photos with options to upgrade plans for more content. A student discount is available, dropping the price by half. So, how do we choose where to spend our time? Consider the price, content and extras your subscriptions include to decide if it’s worth it. The problem is it takes only one exclusive show or movie to lure you into signing up. Apple plans to release four new subscriptions: Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Arcade and Apple News. The main focus for Apple seems to be Apple TV+, a video subscription service that will compete against HBO, Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.

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Apple plans to use original content from big names such as Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan and J.J. Abrams to compete with the other subscription

giants. Its secret weapon — Oprah Winfrey, who will release multiple documentaries and produce a health series with Prince Harry.

WARS:

the battle for your wallet This subscription will rely on its own new content and its massive vault. Content will include all of Marvel, “Star Wars,” Pixar, Disney Animation and everything under 21st Century Fox.

Illustration by Abraham Fuentes

Because of its new platform, Disney is removing its content from Netflix. This will create a gap that Netflix will have to fill with original content. If you want to add both Apple and Disney, your subscription budget could increase by about $17 per month. All of these services are targeted towards cord cutters, with the promise of lower prices than cable — but this has shown to be false. Yes, subscription prices are less than cable if you only get one — but add up every $10 subscription and you could easily top $100 or more per month. The gaming and music industries face a similar problem. You can pay $9.99 for a music library of a million songs or a game library of about 100 games for the same price as an album or video game. Although not as extreme as the video subscriptions, Xbox has two subscriptions: Xbox Game Pass and EA Access. The music industry has three big players at the moment: Spotify, Google Play Music and Apple Music. Netflix steadily increased its prices in the last few years, with the newest price bump going into effect May 2019; the standard subscription will go from $8 to $9 and the premium plan will rise from $14 to $16. Companies keep subscribers hooked to their services with a continual stream of compelling original content, such as Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” and Amazon’s “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.” Apple’s subscription services currently range from $5 to $15, which allows users to estimate the potential pricing for Apple TV+.

The other giant entering the subscription business is Disney. It’s new streaming service, Disney+, will be priced at $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year.

The problem subscribers face is staying up to date on all the popular shows to binge so they’re not left out of the conversation.

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Oak Leaf Magazine

) r a f o s ( TOP 5

MOVIES OF 2019 5The Hidden World Based on the book series by Cressida Cowell, “The Hidden World” is the farewell film for Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless. The evolution of the film series is apparent in its third installment; the development of Hiccup, the quality of the animation and the emotional connection with the audience have been improved upon from beginning to end. Watching Hiccup grow alongside Toothless and the other teens of Berk was an experience worthwhile and endearingly moving. “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” is filled with high-flying fun, fire-breathing action and doe-eyed cutesy moments that’ll appeal to audiences of all ages. Fans of the series will find the conclusion satisfying and heart-warming.

4Shazam!

“Shazam!” is lightning in a bottle for the DC Extended Universe. This superhero movie from the DCEU is the first to portray a child protagonist, and that’s its greatest strength. “Shazam!” is about 14-year-old Billy Batson’s becoming the champion of an all-powerful wizard named Shazam. Once he says Shazam’s name, Batson is struck by magical lightning and given the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury. Wow, that’s a mouthful! “Shazam!” is riveting and lets audiences live their superhero fantasy vicariously through the main character. Finally, a fun DCEU film.

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By Jordan Allums

Photos Courtesy of Google Images

3US

Haunting. Sinister. Nightmarish. Thought-provoking. “Us” is a bad dream you just can’t seem to shake. After the success of “Get Out,” Jordan Peele crafted his terrifying sophomore film “Us,” a story of a family terrorized by killer dopplegängers. “Us” is a masterclass in horror film, blending suspense and classic slasher tropes with chilling sound design, cinematography and a unique story unlike any horror movie before it. No one could have predicted the star of “Key & Peele” and “Mad TV” would go on to become one of this generation’s greatest horror directors.

2Alita: Battle Angel

Ultra-stylistic, photorealistic and undeniably cool, “Alita: Battle Angel” is the product of legendary director James Cameron, who spent nearly two decades working on it, and is a gorgeous adaptation of an early ‘90s Japanese cyberpunk manga series written by Yukito Kishiro called “Battle Angel Alita.”

1Captain Marvel

Fully-realized in unbelievably life-like computer-generated imaging (CGI), Alita is a cybernetic being with a mechanical body and a human brain. Just watching her explore her world on screen is mesmerizing, even more so when she’s flying across the screen kicking ass and taking names. The action sequences in “Alita: Battle Angel” are some the best of this decade, rivaling that of “The Raid: Redemption” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

Brie Larson finally joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe as one of its mightiest heroes: Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel. Despite the nay-saying of internet trolls hell-bent on ruining Larson’s reputation and the movie’s credibility before its opening weekend even concluded, “Captain Marvel” has grossed over $1 billion worldwide since its release March 8. Larson’s portrayal of the character was likable and charming, and her chemistry with co-stars Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn proves that Oscar win wasn’t for nothing. Audiences worldwide were excited to see her return in “Avengers: Endgame” as she faced off against Thanos with the rest of the Avengers April 26.

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Illustration by Edgar Soria Garcia

Disneybland By Edgar Soria Garcia The most magical place on Earth? The Magic Kingdom? With all the hype surrounding Disneyland, I had to cough up the $104 to see what it’s all about. Characters and whimsical adventures awaited, but would I feel the magic? After I sat in traffic to get into the Magic Kingdom parking lot, fought through a massive crowd of impatient park-goers to board the Magic Kingdom tram and waited in line to get into the park, I finally got through the gate. I hadn’t even spent five seconds in the park before being bombarded with survey takers. I still hoped to feel the magic. I walked down Main Street USA, surrounded by even larger crowds and more pushing and running around than the mosh pit from my last punk rock concert. I finally made it to the first attraction: the fast pass dispenser for Indiana Jones

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Adventure because the ride was down until further notice. I still hoped to feel the magic. I segued to a nearby ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, and waited in a line of people standing so close to me I felt they should’ve taken me out to dinner first. The immersion of the dark-water ride was completely shattered as an ecstatic park attendee began to take photos — with the flash on. Blinded, I still hoped to feel the magic. Now it was time for a personal favorite — Splash Mountain. My friends could not believe the expression on my face when I saw it was shut down for maintenance.

So to compensate (sort of), we went on Winnie the Pooh’s adventure ride, which was just as exciting as standing in line. The magic? Still nowhere to be found. Two rides down and it was time for lunch at the anticipated Pizza Planet, the gag of Pixar films. However, I was an alien to this planet because the pizza was out of this world, in the worst way. As I was downing antacids, I felt something, but it definitely wasn’t magic. We passed the one-hour wait to drive a car going less than 10 mph and headed towards Fantasy Land.

No magic, but it’s a small world after all.

We waited 30 minutes in line to ride a slow boat with cult-like chanting about how the world isn’t as big as we imagine.

minute story, Big Thunder Mountain was a heart-pumping ride and Matterhorn was one of my favorites.

No magic, but it’s a small world after all.

Things were starting to look up — and then the park closed. My friends and I were waiting to see if they would do the usual fireworks, but park attendants pushed us out. The journey leaving the park was just as exhilarating as the park entrance sequence.

Toontown was next. Maybe I could take some photos with my favorite Disney characters. Nope, I’d have to wait in an even longer line for one shot of Mr. Mouse. Leaving Toontown, I still wondered where the “magic” came from in this so-called “Magic Kingdom.” Next was an interactive shooting ride themed after Buzz Lightyear, with frantic friends shooting all the targets for the high score in a spinning car. This was actually fun — except the ride broke every two minutes. Stranded, I don’t think the magic could have saved me, so I left to see what else was in store. We went into a few shops to see if we could buy some magic to take home. For

$24.99, I found a souvenir with velvet ears that was falling apart at the seams. Maybe I’ll feel whatever magic these ears have at home. The day grew as long as the lines on what the employees called a “slow day.” My stomach ached for more food, and I was worried. I thought I’d get a light snack until we left for dinner. I passed the popcorn machine and thought “Hey, popcorn can’t be made too terribly.” I handed over $12. Stale corn and dry mouthed, I was coughing up the magic feeling. Then a trickle of hope, Space Mountain was as exciting as it always had been, Indiana Jones was told a great two-

After waiting to get onto the “magic” tram the fireworks started once everyone was outside of the park. Unfortunately, all I saw were flashing lights in the cloudy sky behind the big construction wall covering the park. Finally, after what felt like an hour of just trying to get back on the freeway, I started analyzing my trip. I paid $104 for park admission, and the money I spent for just one meal and a cookie was roughly $50. So, for those saving up for this trip and those who cannot wait to see their favorite Disney characters, I’m still waiting for that magic. I doubt it’ll ever come.

FIGHTING WORDS

BY JESSE KAPUKUI

Musicians respond to white nationalism in Trump’s America Photo Illustration by Dakota McGranahan

WHEN WHEN Janelle Monae sings “Just love me baby, love me for who I am” in her song “Americans,” she’s not asking for the romantic love of any single partner. Instead, Monae is begging for the respect of her fellow man or, more specifically, white men who identify as white nationalists. It’s not uncommon for musicians to wade into sociopolitical waters when tensions run high. Musicians have always responded to unjust regimes and advocated for social change. During the ‘30s Woody Guthrie

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advocated for the rights of field workers. During the ‘60s, John Lee Hooker, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Buffalo Springfield spoke out against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Thirty years later, N.W.A. protested police violence and mass incarceration, while Public Enemy shed light on issues of drug abuse and gang violence as a part of the black experience.

The scourge of white nationalism reared its ugly head again March 15 when a white nationalist murdered 50 people after opening fire in two New Zealand mosques.

History has heard musicians resist, and today is no different.

The shooter linked his rampage to our president, a man he called a symbol of “renewed white identity.” This echoed the sentiment of many white nationalists who suggest a silent genocide of white values and culture is at work, a genocide that is sacrificing superior values of whites to the inferior values of minorities.

Music is an effective medium for artists to speak truth to power, and musicians from across all genres have been addressing the increase in public hate witnessed since President Trump took office three years ago, in January 2017.

When President Trump was asked that same day whether white nationalism is a growing problem around the world, he said, “I don’t, really. I think it’s a small group of people with very serious problems.”

While the Trump administration may downplay the threat of white nationalist violence, data suggests otherwise. The Department of Justice’s latest data shows hate crimes increased 17% between 2016 and 2017. The AntiDefamation League reports the number of white supremacist rallies increased from 76 in 2017 to 91 last year. In a March 2019 article, The Washington Post notes counties that held rallies for Trump in 2016 have witnessed a 226% increase in hate crimes since he was elected. As these white men get louder in their hatred, so do American musicians in their defiance. A standout example of music reacting to the current sociopolitical climate is Donald Glover’s “This is America.” Released under his stage name Childish Gambino, “This is America” is an example of one politically charged song which topped the charts last year. The violence and chaos on display throughout his entrancing music video is juxtaposed with Gambino and a group of black students dancing erratically from one shooting to the next, turning a blind eye to the bloodshed and murder of their own people. Previously, Gambino never really addressed politics in his music. He started his career as a lighthearted rapper making soulful groovy songs; he never seemed compelled to speak on greater issues. But all that changed when he recorded this track: a song with instrumentals, vocals and visuals that boldly sport an antiracism message. Another song that grew in popularity around the issue of racism and the antiimmigration sentiment is Joyner Lucas’ “I’m Not Racist”; it has garnered 115 million views on YouTube since its 2017 release. Like Glover, Lucas only briefly mentioned politics on past songs, but in light of the country’s increasing racial tensions, he created “I’m Not Racist” to spark discussion on racism. One half of his song is told through the eyes of a white nationalist who explains why he is resentful of black people and other minorities. The second half is a response to those arguments through the eyes of a black person who is resentful towards white people who have marginalized him and created a stigmatized image of black people.

In an interview with Genius.com, Lucas explained, “This record was definitely meant to make people open up, pause and look at each other and look at ourselves. There is a lot of things that we don’t know about each other.” The song ends by promising conditions will improve if we understand each other, and Lucas encourages listeners to go outside their comfort zone and reconsider their values. And the music world’s response to more vocal white nationalists isn’t only coming from black rappers. The punk band Parquet Courts’ latest album, “Wide Awake,” features social commentary songs including “Violence,” in which the four white band members sing, “Violence is daily life. Violence happens every day.” In an interview with NPR, Parquet Courts’ singer Andrew Savage explained that while some of their prior work addressed violence, they felt motivated on their most recent album to address the increasing anger in the country. “Violence is so omnipresent, so integrated in your daily reality, you forget to notice it happens every day,” Savage said. “I also think it was appropriate to honor black artists in a song about American violence, which is disproportionately targeted at black lives. Inherently because of this, it’s also about white privilege and my complicity in the (power) imbalances.” Then there’s Father John Misty, an indiefolk songwriter whose recent track “Pure Comedy” is a nihilistic take on what he sees as the country’s current “outrage culture.” In an interview with The New York Times, Misty recounted never being keen on speaking about the political climate, but said he’d grown tired of writing the same old folk songs. He felt compelled to use his voice to address how tumultuous the world around us feels.

On “Pure Comedy” Misty calls out white nationalists as people trapped in a prison of their own beliefs, unable to compromise. He sees them as incapable of understanding anyone with different values or identities. The song ends with a plea for unity: “I hate to say it, but each other's all we got.” Even pop music, usually the land of frivolous storylines, has gotten involved. Monae’s “Americans” poses some questions: Why do white nationalists see her skin color before anything else? Why can’t she wield power in society? Why does racism impact every facet of her life from where she can live to how much money she earns? In an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Monae discussed the message behind “Americans” in greater detail. She said people of color “don’t need to be reprogrammed or deprogrammed — we’re fine how we are. We too are American.” But she acknowledges equality is still not possible. “Until Latinos and Latinas don't have to run from walls, this is not my America,” she sings. In the song’s spoken word passage, she ruminates on how even the idea of America will never be possible as long as racist white men are in power. Despite her clear upset at the current state of affairs, Monae ends on a positive note. “But I tell you today that the devil is a liar because it's gon' be my America before it's all over.” Looking back, we see how this is not just one group of artists or people speaking about this problem. The fact nationalism is starting to be addressed by a range of artists in different genres speaks to the seriousness of this growing problem. While it may be easy to feel hopeless in response to our world, one thing is assured. As nationalist voices continue to shout, the higher musicians will crank the volume in rebellion.

“THIS IS NOT MY AMERICA” - JANELLE MONAE theoakleafnews.com

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This is my Home

three SRJC students share what it means to be undocumented

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by luke W. morrow

Photos by Abraham Fuentes

SRJC nursing student Jocelyn Zhaori Contreras-Toscano, 19, is vice president of Student Life and co-chair of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanista de Aztlรกn (MEChA) .

The Beginning

jocelyn

A fractured identity. Unable to travel freely. Feeling unwelcome in the place they’ve made home. Such are the circumstances for millions of undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. in search of a better life — and for three Santa Rosa Junior College students who immigrated from Mexico as toddlers.

Jocelyn Zhaori Contreras-Toscano was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico to a stay-at-home mother and metal shop worker father. Before she turned 2, Contreras-Toscano was flown to California on the lap of a stranger before being reunited with her parents who traveled separately to the U.S.

Despite growing up in California, attending the state’s schools and being immersed in its culture for two decades before enrolling at SRJC, all three students feel caught between two worlds. They don’t feel entirely American, but they don’t fully relate to being Mexican, either. For these three — Jocelyn Zhaori Contreras-Toscano, Bibiana “Bibi” and “Aaron” — their identities are as unclear as their immigration status. Two of the three students weren’t aware of their undocumented status until high school; the third knew he was “illegal” from childhood. But in 2012, during their freshman year of high school, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) gave each of them a temporary social security number in order to work, drive and go to school legally. The program began during President Barack Obama’s second term to give stability to children whose parents brought them to the U.S. without documentation. And while it provided opportunity for all three of these students to continue their education or travel back to Mexico, DACA did not help them feel more welcome in America. In fact, since President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the opposite is true for them. All three hear the president’s rhetoric categorizing Mexicans as undesirable future citizens. All three see the hatefilled posts that pack social media feeds. And all three have leaned on SRJC to navigate all aspects of their situation, from this lack of acceptance to the requirements of immigration paperwork. Through their education and hard work, these students hope to give back to their communities and contribute to American society — a society that doesn’t always embrace them — even if they never become U.S. citizens themselves. These are their stories.

Her parents hoped immigrating would allow her to “have a better life,” and in many ways it has. Contreras-Toscano, 19, graduated from Sonoma Valley High School and attends SRJC as a nursing major with plans to become a nurse. But she isn’t content with her identity. “I don’t consider myself American, but I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said. “It’s basically the culture I grew up in.” Contreras-Toscano considers herself Mexican because she was born in Mexico, but that’s where her Mexicanness ends. She did not have a quinceañera, and her family rarely goes to church — both considered hallmarks of Mexican culture and family life. Her family is divided between the U.S. and Mexico. Her grandmother has visited this country several times, but ContrerasToscano has only been back to her native country once since arriving as a toddler. Her murky immigration status prevented her from visiting; she was concerned that if she left the states, she would be prohibited from returning. Her single trip back to her birth country happened in 2016 when she returned to visit her dying grandmother. She felt comfortable traveling because she was awarded a permit through advance parole, a program allowing non-U.S. nationals without immigrant visas to reenter the country after traveling abroad.

The JC has been integral in helping her find her place. She joined Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanista de Aztlán (MEChA), Mujeres Chingonas, Feminists United, the Puentes learning community and the Undocumented Students Union (USU). “I have chosen to surround myself with people who are supportive of undocumented students, people from other cultures and people of color. That’s why I feel [SRJC] is such a safe place,” Contreras-Toscano said. “I chose to do these things and make myself more vulnerable for the people who are too scared to.” She believes navigating the path to citizenship is largely a waiting game, whether it’s waiting for approval within the existing immigration system or waiting for the laws to change. Like other undocumented people, Contreras-Toscano could apply for a green card formally recognizing her U.S. residency; both her 16-year-old sister and 8-year-old brother were born in the U.S. and could sponsor her application when they turn 21. But the process is long and arduous. According to ContrerasToscano, it could take anywhere from 10 to 30 years for a green card application to be approved. So rather than focusing all her effort on gaining citizenship, Contreras-Toscano continues advocating for minority groups through social activism, volunteerism and mentoring, and making the most of her blended Mexican-American life. “I am grateful that my parents brought me here.”

Contreras-Toscano’s trip to Mexico was a revelation. “I am more Americanized than I am Mexican,” she said. The locals treated her like an outsider, like a visitor. Her Spanish accent was notably different than theirs, and she felt she didn’t belong. “The best way to describe [the trip] was very surreal,” she said. “I was caught between two worlds.”

Jocelyn Contreras-Toscano prepares for the March 27 “Take Back the Night” event. theoakleafnews.com

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Photo by Dakota McGranahan

Bibi SRJC student Bibiana is a student success team member and psychology major who came to the U.S. at 2 years old. Now a 20-year-old with plans to pursue a psychology degree, “Bibi” wants to become a marriage and family therapist — and a U.S citizen. She grew up considering herself Mexican. She didn’t worry about her place in the world or what her identity would mean to her future. “My parents brought Mexico to me: the food, the language and the music,” she said. They encouraged her to hold onto her heritage, which became harder to do as she got older. “In middle school we were all friends: everyone mixed. There was no racism. Everyone just blended together,” she said. But when Bibi reached high school, everything changed. Listening to traditional Mexican music made her a target for bullying, even among her Mexican classmates.

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Bibiana draws motivation from SRJC’s Dream Center symbol, a Mariposa butterfly.

Where do I belong? “I like what I know from my culture, but I’m also part of the U.S.,” Bibi said. It bothers her that people think undocumented immigrants should return to Mexico, particularly when so many have spent almost their entire lives living in the United States and contributing to American society.

Bibi’s parents also want her to contribute and succeed; her goal is to work with foster children and provide therapy for adolescent Latinos. She hopes her successes will show that negative connotations about Mexicans are wrong. Her motivation to succeed: President Donald Trump.

“Sometimes I want to give up, but then I remember that Trump said [undocumented Mexicans] are ‘criminals’ and that we’re ‘rapists,’’’ she said. “And I’m like, no we’re not. Let me prove to you and show you that I’m here to graduate.” To help support her on campus, Bibi relies on multiple campus groups including Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS), MEChA and the Dream Center (DC). The DC offers undocumented students access to lawyers, advice for DACA renewal and help with scholarships. DC staff also provide information about the California Dream Act allowing undocumented students to get financial aid from the state. “Getting involved made me feel a lot safer and a lot more comfortable here as an undocumented student,” she said. Many immigrants feel unsafe in America, particularly since President Trump took office and tightened immigration policy. Although the laws for traveling to and from Mexico have not changed, many undocumented immigrants are hesitant to leave the U.S. for fear U.S. Customs and Border Protection will deny them re-entry. Bibi herself struggled with this. In 2017, she planned to travel to Mexico to visit her grandmother and uncle, but her lawyer advised her to remain in the U.S. She reluctantly canceled her trip and never got to see them before they died within one month of each other. The occasional phone call or video is the only contact she has with her relatives. She wishes it wasn’t this way. Bibi wants Earth to be freer, a place where people can easily cross from one country to another. From her perspective, a country’s borders are based on nothing more than history; California used to belong to Mexico and before that to the Native Americans. She wishes governments recognized the arbitrary nature of their country’s borders and relaxed the laws for crossing them. If that were the case, Bibi might find answers to some of the tough questions that have followed her since she arrived in the U.S. 18 years ago. “Where do I belong? Where am I from?” Bibi asked. “This is my home. What do you mean ‘go home’?”

A photo of Jocelyn Zhaori Contreras-Toscano in Mexico sits on her desk in Bertollini.

“Aaron”

An SRJC engineering major who wishes to remain anonymous, “Aaron” is an undocumented immigrant who was brought to the U.S. when he was 1 year old. He lived with his two parents and two younger siblings in Cotati for his first four years in the U.S.; now he and his family live in Petaluma. Growing up, Aaron was anxious about his undocumented status, a familiar feeling for many immigrants. “Out there in society, there really is a curtain that you can’t tell people you’re undocumented because of embarrassment and fear,” he said. While attending Casa Grande High School, he was accepted into the DACA program, which relieved some of his fear of being identified and deported and allowed Aaron to work and go to school legally. “I really believe that DACA is going to change something and help me,” Aaron said. He also looks to SRJC for support. Its English as a second language classes, EOPS programs and clubs, including MEChA, are a vital part of the community the college provides for undocumented students. “I feel safe at the JC,” Aaron said. “I don’t feel discriminated for being undocumented.” But off-campus is a different story. Last spring, Aaron boarded his first flight for a spring break trip with friends. While passing through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint, Aaron was stopped

for an extended period of time because his documentation differed from an American citizen’s. Aaron knew his DACA status allowed him to travel legally within the U.S., but he couldn’t shake the feeling something bad was going to happen. “I was super scared when I went through TSA,” he said. “Even though I was OK to travel, I still had that fear of being deported.” He looks forward to the day he can travel outside the U.S., too, without fear of being denied reentry. This would require Aaron attain formal U.S. residency, a status that might also help him sort out his identity. “I live in two worlds,” Aaron said. “In the American world, I am not welcome. I don’t have freedom, and I’m somewhat like a prisoner.” But he doesn’t feel welcome in the Mexican world either, and, even worse, he feels his Mexican heritage has made it harder to fully assimilate into American culture. His identity struggles aren’t limited to his nationality or ethnicity. He feels he is breaking the law just for living in a place that’s been his home his whole life. “I just want the freedom to not be a criminal, because I just realized undocumented means criminal,” Aaron said. “I don’t want to be a criminal.” For now, he finds peace attending the JC and knowing he lives in one of the most accepting states in the country. “I accept being Californian, and I’m happy with it,” he said. “I’m happy that I don’t identify as American or Mexican.” theoakleafnews.com

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lessons i learned from my autistic brother by riley palmer My brother Julian and I have completely different minds. He is fascinated by the world of 1980s VHS tapes and has shelves upon shelves of colorful cardboard boxes, while I am more of a Netflix person. He has a mysterious fear of dogs, but I welcome any that show up on our porch. He has no concept of an inside voice and chews so loud it’s as if he’s having a conversation with his bag of Doritos; I prefer to internalize my satisfaction with the infamous orange chips. Typical as it may be for two siblings to have different tastes, hobbies and patterns, the world also treats us differently. In the eyes of society, a typical teenager experiences the thrill of driving for the first time and gearing up for their future. He’s 16, may never drive, and his education past high school is shrouded in ambiguity. The way he carries himself in public usually attracts the eyes of strangers. The world may treat us differently, but more importantly, he sees the world differently, because he is on the autism spectrum. Julian started speaking at age 5 and has constantly struggled with speech and social interactions. In a society where differently developed minds are seen as uncomfortable to be around, being his older sister has been inspiring, heartwrenching, mystifying, nerve-wracking and unique. My brother and I are about four years apart, and growing up close in age to a sibling with a disability changes how you grow up thinking the world should be. I was an idealistic kid with assumptions about how our family should be, how my life would be and what I looked like to the outside world. Over the years I’ve learned about the impact of assumptions, my brother’s educational pathway, the virtue of patience and who my brother really is. Without further adieu, I would like to share these lessons with those who don’t live the life I do.

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Riley, 4 backy , helps Juil ian, 1, ard ph oto. hold s till f

or a

Lesson One: Assumptions — good or bad — can hurt Growing up with Julian wasn’t easy. Born an Aries, he was destined to be a handful, but it went further than that. He was prone to angry outbursts, which made family outings to restaurants and parks difficult and embarrassing. What made public trips even harder were the dirty looks from mothers with their perfectly controlled children or the looks of sympathy from strangers eating their salads, pretending not to listen. These strangers made negative assumptions about not only my brother, but also about my parents. They often categorized my mother as a bad parent. At the YMCA, she got in word wars constantly with other mothers who couldn’t understand why she was having such a hard time containing the tornado that was Julian. The assumptions people thrust upon my parents stayed with them for years. Now that my brother is older and has chilled out for the most part, those negative assumptions have been replaced with assumptions about how “brave” or “strong” my family and I are for taking on this responsibility, as if it was a choice we made.

Assumptions about anyone can backfire majorly, and this applies to my brother and my family. Because of the labels that have been thrust upon my family over the years, I treat people the way I’d like to be treated: with an open ear and conversation that lacks prejudice. The common label people have placed upon us is a “disability family.” In reality, Julian is simply someone who processes the world differently, and my family has adjusted to meet these needs. Lesson two: Higher education is not out of the question My perspective of my brother changes daily. I watched him learn to communicate using laminated cards with a speech therapist — and now he can hold a long-winded conversation about the game “Red Dead Redemption 2.” His progress still throws me for a loop. While there were times I felt he might never go to college, hindering his opportunities in adulthood, my view of this has changed. Recently, there is more room for him to grow; I know this because I’ve seen it already. Kimberly Starke, Santa Rosa Junior College’s dean of disability resources, says there are two pathways for

someone like my brother to attend SRJC, with one called College to Career. College to Career is a three-year program that educates and trains students who need additional support to be employed in their area of interest. Program qualities include small class sizes, learning organizational and technical skills, practicing social behavior and gaining work experience— all qualities necessary for Julian’s educational growth. Starke fondly calls it a “how-to-college” program. I didn’t know programs like this existed for my brother. While he might not want to go to college, it is comforting to know he has a legitimate choice with a great program. Lesson three: Patience is a virtue. During our childhood, my brother and I fought a lot. I had no concept of how his brain processed information and that in itself resulted in tension. Julian fixated on words he couldn’t comprehend, such as the word “stop” in any other context that wasn’t a stop sign, or words such as “few” or “some” that didn’t have definitive numbers attached to them. These words caused a physical halt, and conversations would often halt in their tracks as well. When I uttered one of these words in a context he couldn’t fully grasp, such as “stop yelling so loud in the house,” he’d begin lengthy arguments, trying to establish that “stop” strictly referred to a stop sign. At times these fixations resulted in 10 or more minutes of arguing. As we grew older and learned from each other, these arguments began to dissipate. I realized that if I got frustrated he would, too, and nothing would get resolved. Being able to calmly redirect a volatile conversation and prevent it from turning into an all-out war is one of my greatest accomplishments. It has helped me deal with people outside my family more compassionately.

It’s easy to pigeonhole him when you don’t see him everyday and get to know him, yet it is also important to realize that he’s a person who feels deeply. Another assumption I’ve discovered is many people believe that it is hard to connect with someone who has autism because they have a hard time outwardly expressing their feelings. My mother often says Julian’s autism is a handicap, but highlights a fact that most people don’t realize: There’s a person in there trying to get his message out. Julian is a masterful VHS collector, with hundreds of titles organized methodically on the shelves in his room. Movies such as “The Sandlot,” “The Little Rascals,” “Home Alone” and “Shrek” sit proudly along his wall. He’s even started his own YouTube channel to share his collection with the online community, but he’s very secretive about his favorites, refusing to even share that information with me.

who doesn’t care for small talk and is honest about whether or not he cares about the conversation we’re having. People often don’t see the nuances in disability, and they choose to turn their nose up when confronted with something different. I can understand, because if Julian wasn’t my brother, I might think along the same lines. Every person who has autism is different in how he expresses it. Experiencing his mysterious mind up close has caused me to think differently about human nature. To his credit, Julian has the strongest sense of self I’ve ever witnessed. Yet for someone like me, though, someone who’s worked hard to erase rigid ways of being from my brain, it’s going to take my entire lifetime to grow and transcend my ideas on human nature.

Julian also likes to cook. Unlike me, he’s brave in the kitchen and will put slabs of meat right on the skillet and hope for the best. His go-to meal is ramen noodles with chicken concentrate for less sodium than the provided flavor packets.

I’m hesitant to not be polite in every possible moment, and sometimes when I try to voice my opinions it’s as if a small mouse has taken residency in my vocal cords. Julian has never suppressed himself in this way, and I wish I was more like him.

Above all, Julian is fearlessly himself and the most honest person I know. Never in his life has he questioned his significance or dealt with the self-esteem issues that took me years to work through.

As a society, we reduce everyday activities and communication to black and white. The biggest problem with this is it leaves no room for people like my brother to live in grey areas without criticism.

While sometimes he can be so honest it hurts, like when he notices me being emotional and loudly announces “Riley is crying!” he’s coming from an inherently good place.

The best lessons one can learn involve speaking with people who are completely different from themselves. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to search far to meet Julian.

I often think of conversations with my brother as a nice break from the conversations I have with other people. Our communication is far from perfect, but it’s refreshing to speak to someone

In the words of Maya Angelou, “We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.” Illustration by Kaila Bohler

Lesson four: Personality shines brighter than diagnosis Some people see my brother as one thing: autistic.

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by celina ocheltree My sophomore year of high school I took care of a 96-year-old woman named Clara. She was mobile and always found a reason to smile, despite all the pain and discomfort she was in. For more than three years I sat, comforted and supported my first patient until she took her final breath. I watched Clara go from walking around her living room and putting together puzzles to being bedridden and unable to perform basic functions. I’m a hospice caregiver. I comfort and support individuals during the final stages of their lives. People always ask, “Isn’t it scary working in a field where people literally die in front of you?” Hospice care in my own words may be defined as a structure of care that

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supports an individual who is enduring an irreversible illness by catering to all their mental, physical and emotional necessities. When people reach the final days of their lives due to terminal illness, they want to consider how to spend them — and with whom. Hospice care offers people the ability to spend their remaining time within the comfort of their own homes, typically surrounded by loved ones or in the company of a caregiver like me who will support and nurture the dying just as a loved one would. This is the reality of hospice care. We either watch patients like Clara decline, or we walk into a home where the patient has already declined and we comfort them for the rest of their lives.

she was the first person i ever saw take a last breath.

People always ask, “Isn’t it scary working in a field where people literally die in front of you?” my relationships may have been like with my own grandfathers if I’d had the opportunity to meet them. Bud had dementia, and although he wasn’t always mentally present, he impacted me greatly in all the stories and memories he shared with me. I had never met someone so willing to disclose so many personal moments from his lives so quickly after meeting. It felt like he was there one day and gone the next. I had been warned the work was consuming both physically and mentally, and after Bud and Clara died, I agreed and took a break from caregiving.

Photo illustration by Kaila Bohler

She was the first person I ever saw take a last breath. When I witnessed Clara die, I finally understood why people ask me about the experience. I held a nebulizer which gives out oxygen to Clara’s nose but she pushed it away. She was ready to pass on, and soon enough, later that evening she was gone. It was scary, and it’s never gotten easier as the years go by. For patient after patient, death is death — plain and simple. Shortly after Clara died, comedian Dana Carvey’s father, Bud Carvey, became my next patient. Although I only knew Bud for a short period of time, caring for him was joyful. We sat and read together, and like Clara, Bud always found a reason to smile. His passing was hard on me because he reminded me of what

I found myself overwhelmed and asked myself questions like, “I’m 18 years old now. Shouldn’t I be spending more of my time in the present with teenagers my age, rather than with those who walk into my life for a short period of time and then die?” So I did, for a while at least. Until I was offered another job — caregiving for a 97-year-old woman named Eva. I spent two and half years with her — more time in her home than my own it seemed — and learned from her the lessons of patience and empathy. Over time Eva lost her ability to speak clearly. She was constantly frustrated with this change and so eventually it was a matter of my interpreting her needs and receiving her denial or approval. That is a skill I soon learned would apply to almost every job I had in the future. Hospice care requires you to constantly adapt and learn new people skills. More often than not, as a caretaker you must interpret or guess what your patient needs based on the fact that they will

either never ask for help or they no longer have the ability to do so. Though surrounded by neighbors and friends who loved her dearly, Eva had already lost all of her family members. She treated me like her family, and I treated her the same. The first day I introduced myself, she pointed to a beautiful painting of a sunset on the wall and said, “Do you see that painting there? I want you to have it when I pass away.” In that moment I remembered the impact of my job and my presence in these individuals’ lives. Caregivers like me are often among the last people they spend their final days with, and, like with Eva, I noticed they often seem inclined to show gratitude and offer kindness. So yes, it is scary to be in the presence of death, and hospice caretaking is not an easy field to work in. The patients are mostly loving and gracious; but, as expected, they are also in pain, and they are tired. They have bad days, too. I’ve learned to love and care for them unconditionally, and I’ve learned the importance of making every day count. I’ve also learned death is not the worst thing one can witness — it is more difficult to witness suffering and grief. That’s why I chose hospice care. Through their grief and pain, I can be a loving and joyful light in these individuals’ lives until the moment that they pass. Eva’s painting now hangs on my wall, and it is a symbolic reminder to me of how the patients I have lovingly served will always be with me in some way.

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RESISTANCE NOW AND FOREVER By Zane Zinkl

It’s hard to imagine Laure Reichek, now a little old lady, weaving down the winding roads of Chateaumeillant, through the idyllic French countryside with a bicycle and a revolver. It’s harder to imagine the order she carried with her: put the barrel in her mouth and pull the trigger should she be caught. It’s hard to imagine, but not impossible. It’s the little things: the way she carries herself, the look in her eye, the unmistakable French accent, her words still willful. “You have to resist! Even though there is no hope, even though you might lose, you have to keep resisting, for your very soul, if nothing else, if you believe in such a thing. You must keep fighting because you know it is wrong.” Laure Reichek is an 88-year-old Jewish French-American living in West Marin outside Petaluma. An avid political activist, social worker and French Resistance fighter, Laure is a regular speaker at Santa Rosa Junior College. She is also one of the founding members of the Committee on the Shelterless (COTS), a local organization dedicated to helping the homeless transition to permanent housing. The COTS Laure Reichek Housing Hub in Santa Rosa honors her relentless dedication to fighting social ills in Sonoma County. Laure was born in 1930 in the town of Chateaumeillant, France. Her Bohemian father lived in Paris on a boat without electricity or running water. Her mother, a French Canadian of Native American descent, died when she was young. She never really knew her father, who fought against the fascist Franco in Spain with the International Brigades, ragtag

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band of volunteer fighters from all over the world who possessed an ideological enmity toward fascism.

off along with her skin. She looked like someone had pulled her skin off, a lifeless sculpture of raw muscle.

Laure was raised by her grandfather, a small-town doctor working in Chateaumeillant and an avowed Socialist. They lived in a farmhouse and depended on the land for subsistence. It taught her the value of a simple life, and her grandfather taught her to be “dedicated to serving the most people.”

Thinking back to the ugliness of that time, Laure said, “It’s shocking, for the first time. The second time, strangely enough, it’s not so shocking.”

“Those values were inculcated in me at an early age,” she said. “This was what a thinking, feeling human being was on the Earth for. If you had the privilege of having enough food, and good shelter, and all kinds of extras, that put on you the responsibility of helping those who didn’t.” When the war started in 1939, the German Army crossed the Maginot Line, the militarized border between France and Germany. The French were no match for the Germans’ overwhelming force. Laure never forgot the image of French soldiers running away. First went the officers in their cars; men on foot soon followed. It was “The Debacle,” or the defeat.

Laure witnessed things during the war that changed her forever. Her grandfather was a Resistance doctor. Men would come in the middle of the night bleeding all over themselves, begging for help. “I saw one man holding his guts in his hands,” she said. Laure doesn’t know exactly when her family became involved in the Resistance. These were things they did not tell children. Her grandfather had a clandestine radio in the chicken coop, where they coordinated airdrops and shared information with Allied radiomen in Great Britain. In French, through the radio, they were told, “Dr. Scalpel is going to operate street-time tonight.”

“I remember I was taking food for my great-grandmother’s dog, and a French soldier came and asked me for the soup. I said, ‘It’s for a dog.’ He said, ‘Yes, but I am hungry,” Reichek said.

“Street-time” was their sector. The sectors and safe-houses were separate and isolated from one another. No one could ever be sure who was or wasn’t part of the Resistance.

They fed and housed him for the night. French soldiers, unable to maneuver the zigzag of village streets, abandoned an anti-aircraft gun in the village center. Bombs fell out of the sky twice, dropped by Mussolini’s airmen targeting the gun.

At nightfall, Laure and her grandfather would prepare the field with a triangle of fires, waiting for “some poor little airman from London,” to see their signal and drop a shipment of weapons and coded orders.

Laure and the children went out to pick up the pieces: the fragments, the shrapnel, broken glass and broken doors. They found a woman’s body. She still had her boots on, but her clothes had been blown

The orders would come in a crossword. Laure or her grandfather would listen to the radio and write in each line through all the black and white squares across each row. What came through white was the real message providing crucial intelligence

Photos Courtesy of Laure Reichek

Laure Reichek participates in Santa Rosa’s Women’s March. At 88-years-old, Reichek is still an active participant in protests.

on targets and the next drop’s location. Laure’s sector did not engage in direct combat, only dealt with its fallout. Her sector’s primary designation was sabotage; blasting bridges was the norm. As a girl of 14, Laure had a different task. “My job was to take messages to the various Resistance groups.” She knew who they were. She knew where she could find them. She had a bicycle and a revolver “with the order that if you are stopped, you put it in your mouth and you shoot.” Laure laughed sarcastically and said, “And no problem! No problem. Because you’re a teenager! You don’t even think you die when you die. You think you’re immortal!” Her grandfather died on Aug. 1, 1944, shortly after a “collaborator” denounced him. Collaborators were Nazi supporters who sold out neighbors and drowned Jews in wells, Laure explained. “So many people… so many people were in support [of the Nazis],” she said. Nazis pulled her grandfather over and shot him on a dirt road. He had warned other Resistance members in Chateaumeillant to run for the hills. Many did not listen.

Those who stayed were lined up against the cemetery wall and shot. After the war, Resistance fighters raided the municipal buildings and found records of those who had collaborated. The head of the school, a devout Catholic, had denounced Laure’s grandfather. They gathered the collaborators and paraded them through the streets. They shaved the heads of the women and alienated the men. Some collaborators fled or moved elsewhere. Others stayed put and got on with their lives. Eventually their memories of treason began to fade. “Life goes on,” Laure said with a shrug. Asked about the nature of the collaborators, Laure said, “They’re in evidence today. They’re everywhere, and unfortunately they’re the majority of the population. Even here in the U.S., it’s basically the same.” She said the far-right forces rising in democracies today on nations’ fear of immigrants — the exact same fascists that they were all those years ago. They may have different names or different faces, but their goal is the same. Nothing has changed.

The counter to these forces, Laure said, is resistance. Her generation, “the Greatest Generation” that survived the Depression and fought the Nazis, benefited greatly from the advancement of the welfare state. They became complacent and “accumulated much more than they needed,” she said. As a result, the system responsible for their prosperity declined. “They assumed this was going to last forever,” she said, “[Twenty-somethings] don’t have the promise that if you keep your nose clean and you work hard, you can have a bedroom house, a car and a decent job.” The forces of reaction due to changes in demographics and the means of production are fomenting rebellion from a global order where corporations dominate. The industrial supply chains that sustain global corporations feed into a culture of consumerism that is killing us. “Those machines are so terribly addictive,” Laure said. “People say nothing because their mind is hacked, their body is hacked and they go along like sheep to a slaughter.” Her biggest fear is the conjunction of climate change, reactionary politics and theoakleafnews.com

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demographic shifts happening all around the world. “I mean, the Earth has had enough with us,” she said. Laure worries about the damage and degradation being dealt to our natural and social systems by the same big corporate system dominating global politics. Separations at the border, police shootings, the Saudi war in Yemen, the Israeli dominion over the West Bank, Laure sees all these things as streams flowing from the same fountain: fascism. “A very few are fighting for the last resources of the planet,” Laure said. “It stinks of fascism here, I’m sorry, but it does. I know what it looks like. People say, ‘Well nothing’s changed. It’s still very nice,’ but I don’t have to go far to see it.” Working with immigrants and the homeless has shown Laure the living conditions of this country’s poor, conditions that “should be unacceptable in the United States of America,” she said. “If Jesus Christ himself came to the door of most Americans, they’d call the cops,” she said. Laure thinks the oligarchs —those who accumulate as much as possible at the lowest possible cost and make life miserable for most — have gone too far, and it’s too late to stop them. “But that doesn’t mean we can stop resisting,” she said stridently. “Each time you allow it, each time you’re not there to hold it back, it’s coming towards you.” She continued, “It’s going to get so much worse before your generation decides, ‘We’ve had enough.’” But Laure made clear economic and demographic change is not the only issue. “Until this country acknowledges its role in genocide and slavery, it’s not going to go anywhere,” she said. The problem becomes more acute as resources become more scarce, but the problem was always there. Laure is an environmentalist. She lives an eco-friendly life in the country, with rescue donkeys (yes, rescue donkeys from Arizona) who cut her grass, and does her best not to be a consumer.

“I am in awe of the diversity of creation,” she said. “I am in love with the variety of birds and plants. There are some landscapes I would fight for, [such as] the road by which I live, the road to Point. Reyes Station. Oh, if they wanted to frack that, I’d get my gun.” Laure lamented, “It’s just so goddamn beautiful! How dare they? And how do they not realize that the tree doesn’t need me, but by golly I need that tree!” She added, “Hopefully they’ll still teach poetry so that kids can imagine [the tree].” Laure worries about survival, not just the survival of the planet, but the “survival of ideals.” She worries people are losing the ability to question, to ask the deeper questions. More people need to ask themselves, “Am I here just to consume, and then grow old, and then retire in Florida or something? What the hell am I here for?” Laure said, “The most revolutionary thing a human being can do today is say, ‘No.’” It is that radical capability to reject the rationale of consumption being forced upon you and the mental enslavement that comes with it. “Because this is what a collaborator is,” Laure said. “Someone who takes the easy road. ‘Don’t tell me that. I want to sleep well tonight. Let’s go shopping.’” What gives Laure hope and keeps her going is that she’s had the good fortune to meet people, such as her friend Therese Mughannam and all the other people who dedicate their lives to helping others. Therese is a Palestinian American activist living in Sonoma County. She and her family fled Palestine in 1946 during Al Nabka (the cataclysm) when the UN partition between Palestine and Israel was established. Together, the two visit Sonoma County schools advocating for peace between neighboring nations, teaching students the importance of honest reporting and impartiality. Standing before students as a Palestinian and a Jew, they make the argument that the hatred between their peoples is not as “ancient” or “natural” as the U.S. government and the State of Israel would like you to believe.

French Resistance fighter Laure Reichek still has her original passport photo from the 1940s. She is pictured here in her teens, likely during the period she worked with her grandfather as a Resistance messenger in the French countryside.

“I have always felt that Laure Reichek is a treasure,” Therese said. “In our speaking together in front of many audiences over the years, I have seen her captivate students of all ages by the power of her message about what it means to be a human being on this planet and how to live our lives with discerning minds and open hearts in service of the poor and oppressed in the world.” SRJC Instructor Johnny Sarraf couldn’t agree more. He teaches a critical thinking and composition course on the Petaluma campus with a focus on Israel, Palestine and Middle Eastern affairs; and every semester he makes sure Laure and Therese make it to his classroom. “Laure is an outspoken advocate for social justice, even when it is met with tremendous resistance, as it is in examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said. “She is a local treasure, and we have been privileged to hear her stories and perspectives.” Laure downplayed her impact on people. “I yell. I yell. I do what I can, you know? It’s not enough. It’s absolutely not enough,” she said. Therese had other ideas. “No one who has had the privilege of hearing Laure speak will ever forget her or the urgency of her message.”

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Photos by Abraham Fuentes

Photo by David Tamayo

polinar Vega sits quietly at a table in Bertolini Student Center, listening as fellow students trickle into the conference room discussing exams, family and summer plans. One woman keeps her distance in the corner, worried the stink from her cabbage lunch concoction will offend if she gets too close. Vega and the other students are waiting for an unusual club’s meeting to begin. Chatting about classes and using critical thinking skills is a stark contrast from a typical day in jail where the most stimulating endeavors are poker games with Top Ramen buy-ins or the unending and inexplicable selection of Danielle Steel books proliferating the communal book cart. A year ago, the 23-year-old Vega was locked up in the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility (MADF) awaiting sentencing for three felony counts of drug possession. Vega, like many others caught in the system, was unable to afford bail and had no understanding of the law; he was forced to bide his time in custody while others decided his fate. After a few months, the confinement overwhelmed him so much he was willing to accept any deal if it meant an early release.

Santa Rosa Junior College’s Second Chance Club provides support and resources for formerly incarcerated students.

“I couldn’t take it in there. I was kind of going crazy,” Vega said as he thought back to a conversation with his legal aide. “I just told him, ‘Try and get the best deal you can, and I’m going to take it.’ Now that I think about it, it was a stupid move.”

Many of the warm-hearted people sitting at the table with Vega have spent time in jails and prisons throughout the U.S.; all of them have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. The Second Chance Club helps each of them navigate college after serving time.

Two of the three felony charges were dropped, but Vega was convicted of felony possession of methamphetamines with intent to sell.

Vega has attended regularly since his release.

He narrowly avoided a prison term. After the judge considered time served, Vega was released on three-years probation, which he hopes to reduce with the support and guidance of the Second Chance Club.

The Second Chance Club members help each other make the transition from jail to school.

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As the meeting’s start time draws near, faculty adviser Rhonda Findling joins the group. It’s a picturesque, familial atmosphere as students of all ages gather to discuss the club’s plans for community outreach in Sonoma County. Many club members have already engaged with the community

either as motivational speakers at local high schools or by creating workshops that feature local guest speakers. “I think that if you give people with backgrounds the right support, they can turn their lives around — they do turn their lives around,” Findling said. “That’s what Second Chance is all about. Helping people with backgrounds feel like they have a place where they belong. A place that’s home.” Take Jerry Loya, for example. The 38-year-old club member spent nearly 12 years behind bars, bouncing in and out of incarceration since age 15 — until he decided to attend SRJC. Loya recently stepped down as vice president of the Second Chance Club to pursue a full-time job and help support his family. “Just because we’ve done bad things don’t mean we’re bad people,” Loya

booking and tell you to strip, bend over and cough while they watch — to be sure you’re not hiding contraband in your rectum. “The treatment was f***ed up, man. Correctional officers, intake, everyone treats you like nothing, like you ain’t sh*t,” Vega said as he recalled his initial experiences in MADF. “Made me realize that I don’t ever want to come back in here; I’m just a number here.” Vega, released from Sonoma County jail just prior to the 2018 “Ban the Box” law that prohibits employers from inquiring about criminal history on a job application, found it difficult to get work. “It was tough. Everything would be going good until that felony thing at the end. ‘You’re pretty much hired, but all you gotta do is pass this background check,’” he said. Vega also felt increasingly isolated and unsure of how to proceed or cope with his new reality. His five-year romantic relationship crumbled in the aftermath of his incarceration. Friends and family began to distance themselves. “Felon” is a label not many are willing to associate with, even indirectly.

said. “Everybody that’s in Second Chance — especially the ones going to the meetings — we’re all focused on what we want to do, and we’re all about helping people out and trying to get people to turn their lives around.” His transition from life in the system to life in academia was not easy. “I was still smoking crystal. I was still selling dope, running around when I was first going to school,” Loya said. “I was living in a trap house. It was crazy..., motherf*****s out there, shooting guns in the backyard.” Loya may have served far more time than Vega, but being locked up is the same wherever you go. Feelings of helplessness and worthlessness are prevalent, from the moment guards move you from

“I went through it and I’m still going through it to this day,” he said. “I suffer a lot from depression and anxiety. I’m in the guilt phase right now. I’ve reflected on everything that I’ve done and, straight up, I messed up.”

In the absence of direction or purpose, Vega found inspiration to seek out college again in an unlikely place. He visited a friend in jail who shared the same detention unit with Logologoa Taumaloto Tevaseu, the former SRJC football coach now in jail for his involvement in a fatal car crash that killed a Sonoma State University student. “He was locked up in that same mod as one of my friends,” Vega said, referring to Tevaseu. “He was spreading the word in there, ‘If anyone gets a chance to go to school, there’s a program called Second Chance. You guys should go, and you should go check it out.’” Navigating the enrollment process and everything SRJC has to offer is a daunting affair for even the most dedicated of students. But for the formerly incarcerated, many of whom had no previous education prior to enrolling, the whole endeavor can seem insurmountable. “You get [to the JC] and there’s nothing implemented or installed for you to hear about all the resources. All these resources are not advertised out there on campus,” Loya said. “There’s no guidance here for that — that’s why I like Second Chance, because we can offer those resources for somebody just getting out jail.” As of Fall 2018, the club is also an official student services program, providing support and resources for formerly incarcerated students.

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Old hands like adviser Findling and club president Elizabeth Quiroz strive to make the Second Chance Club an all-inclusive resource for those in need. In 2005, Findling and two other staff members from the Extended Opportunity Programs & Services (EOPS), saw a need to create a support team for formerly incarcerated students. This precursor to the club in its modern incarnation was modeled after City College of San Francisco’s Second Chance Program. SRJC’s program now serves more than 100 formerly incarcerated students, 40 of whom received grants for books this semester. “We’re really building a jail to JC pipeline,” Findling said. “That’s why our motto is, ‘Education, not incarceration,’ because education turns people’s lives around.” Quiroz, in addition to leading the club, is also part of Sonoma County’s Human Trafficking Task Force and assists with Woman’s Recovery Services in Santa Rosa. She is working toward her master’s degree in sociology with the singular mindset of giving back to the community. “We have no judgment for one another and we feel like a family,” Quiroz said. “This is our family. It’s all love.” Through Second Chance, Vega found a community he could relate to; he found people who understood what he was going through because they’re going through it as well. While he is still trying to find his rhythm in college, Vega is content with how things have been developing since he enrolled. For the first time, he’s looking forward to what his future may bring. “I’m just grateful for the chance of education being able to come here,” Vega said. “It’s been the best thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”

Adviser Rhonda Findling, Second Chance Club Vice President Jason Dorfer, Co-Founder Elizabth Quiroz and club member Jerry Loya work to support the formerly incarcerated as they transition into college life.

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Waisea Jikoiono laces up his cleats before a track meet.

SOARING BY JACKSON ETIENNE If you raise the bar, Santa Rosa Junior College freshman Waisea Jikoiono will jump over it. The 6-foot-1 athlete is shattering the mold of your typical first-year high jumper by setting this season’s highest mark in his very first collegiate meet. Jikoiono is driven by his faith, his love for the sport and his determination. He set his previous personal record of 6 feet, 5 inches while jumping for Montgomery High School, but exceeded that mark for SRJC at the Jack Albiani Invitational in Modesto March 1. Jikoiono reached this new height after being frustrated with his previous personal record and wanted to challenge himself. So the freshman set the bar 2 inches higher to 6-foot-7.5 inch, unaware this height would put him at the top of the state leaderboard. “I was psyched!” Jikoiono said about setting this new personal best. “I had so much adrenaline, the entire high jump team was watching in the high jump pit, and they were going crazy. I didn’t know it was going to be the highest jump in the state and I didn’t know I would qualify. I was just jumping.” Head coach David Wellman was confident in Jikoiono’s jumping ability and his willingness to compete in college. “I half expected [him to set a new personal record] because he was jumping well in practice, but it’s always surprising when someone jumps that well that early. I was really surprised how well he competed and how focused he was,” Wellman said. Jikoiono isn’t looking for notoriety or attention but enjoys competing to the best of his ability. He draws inspiration from multiple sources. Former California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger is one person who

TO NEW HEIGHTS inspires him. “I remember watching a video by [him], and he was talking about his six steps to success. One of them was don’t be afraid to fail,” Jikoiono said. “No matter how high you get, at some point you’re going to have to fail because it’s a competition between you and the bar.” He’s also inspired by a second famous Californian, Golden State Warrior Steph Curry, and his connection between his craft and his faith. And although Jikoiono’s faith does not define him, it helps him strive to be better. “I align myself with Stephen Curry in terms of my faith. That’s where I find my source of strength in every aspect,” Jikoiono said. The third person who inspires Jikoiono is his mother, a national champion high jumper in their native Fiji and the reason he took up high jump in the first place. “She would always tell me and my brothers to try high jump. None of them tried, but I remember back in eighth grade in Fiji, my coach was making everyone try something. It came down to high jump, so I tried it. It ended up working out,” Jikoiono said. When Jikoiono is preparing for a jump, he blocks out everything. He tries to clear his head and relieve any anxiety or pressure. “I look at the sky, not thinking about what I’m about to do,” Jikoiono said. “I find that when I think it too much I don’t perform as well, so I try to relax, breathing in and out.” This routine that helped him hit the top mark in the state. “Once you clear a height and you land on the mat, seeing that you’ve cleared the height, it’s such an amazing feeling,” Jikoiono said. “Most high jumpers would tell you it’s one of the best feelings in the world. It’s like hitting that game-winning shot in basketball.”

Jikoiono’s love for the event sparks a light in him; when Jikoiono is jumping, it’s as if nothing else matters. But that’s not the case when he’s in the classroom. One of his highest priorities is to further himself academically, and high jump is an avenue toward his goal. Jikoiono’s plans to transfer to a four-year college after his stint at SRJC. While he isn’t looking at any specific schools now, he’s willing to attend any university that allows him to both compete in track and earn his bachelor’s degree in psychology. Until then, Jikoiono is working toward an associate degree in communications and preparing for meets that are only getting more and more competitive. According to Coach Wellman, Jikoiono seems up for the challenge of competing against the best jumpers in the state. “He’s a levelheaded and humble person before we even get to athlete. He’s very gracious, smart, nice and compassionate,” Wellman said.

“And when it comes to competition, he’s got another level of focus and drive. When someone clears a height before him, he gets even more excited.” This is a good foundation for an athlete currently being scouted by his home country. The Fiji national team has already reached out to Jikoiono to join its summer program. In the meantime, the Bear Cubs track and field team will continue to practice off campus due to renovations to Bailey Field. But the lack of a home track has not stopped the freshman from shattering expectations. “High jump is really all about you jumping against yourself,” Jikoiono said. “Really trying to push past your limit is one of the best things you can experience.” theoakleafnews.com

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‘

by Jose Gonzalez

Go! Fight!

Win! Dori Elder with

Trust, stability and high expectations: Dori Elder plans to bring all three to the Santa Rosa Junior College cheerleading team. Elder is the new Bear Cubs cheer coach. She has 19 years’ coaching experience, from Pop Warner to high school teams around Sonoma County, including Analy and Casa Grande High Schools. Now she has brought her expertise to SRJC. Cheerleading is one of the most dangerous sports, yet it continues to grow. In the U.S., more than 3.3 million cheerleaders participate in the sport. At SRJC, the cheer team performs at football and basketball games, attends community events. Elder is forging a new path to success for the cheer team. She is majoring in deaf studies and is student government’s Vice President of Clubs. When previous assistant coach Hannah Harries mentioned the cheer team had a position open for a head coach, Elder decided to add her name to the running. Over the past four years, the SRJC cheer team has struggled with the turnover of coaches.

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Elder doesn’t know why previous coaches left, but said she wants to believe it was because they came from dance backgrounds and weren’t familiar with cheerleading. “Dance and cheer are two different sports,” Elder said. “Having someone that is dance-based and really doesn’t know cheer, is almost setting them up to fail. Just like I don’t know dance terminology; they don’t know cheer terminology.” As with other sports, the relationship between athletes and coaches is very important, and trust plays a big role. “If you come and try to talk ‘cheer talk’ and you’re making mistakes, cheerleaders are going to look at you and be like ‘Nope, I can’t trust you,’ especially with stunting because it’s very dangerous,” she said. “Trust is very important between a cheerleader and a coach,” Elder said. Chazz Madereros joined the SRJC cheer team in fall 2014 and cheered for three seasons. The 23-year-old music major became co-captain during the Spring 2015 season and maintained the position through 2017. “I think the SRJC cheer team has gone through so many coaches due to the

lack of level-appropriate skills, as well as knowledge of how to manage a team, by the coaches who are being hired,” Madereros said. He also senses a huge lack of support from the SRJC administration. “Whether it be something as ‘complicated’ as recognizing cheer on an athletic level and making it a sport that is included among the other athletes on campus, or simpler things like the team being given a space to practice,” Madereros said. For a new coach, integrating with and leading athletes you’ve never worked with can be difficult. “Attitude is a big thing. It’s not just the coach’s fault; it takes two. There are young women on the team. A lot of them are right out of high school; they have attitudes,” Elder said. Madereros said there are always some athletes on every team who cause drama. “That’s why they’re there — just for the title of being a cheerleader and not the rigid beauty of the sport itself. That can cause a team to become unmanageable internally and then fall apart all together,” Madereros said.

Photo by Abraham Fuentes

After revitalizing the cheer program, Dori Elder hosts SRJC Cheer team tryouts on April 8.

Elder agrees and believes athletes need structure. “First thing I did was sit down and lay out some rules,” she said. “I run a very tight ship. I don’t play games, but I’m respectful.” She might be tough, but Elder wants to promote a positive and welcoming environment for everyone. “One thing I did was have girls write down what they want from a coach. If I have expectations for them, they should have expectations for a coach, too. I need to know what those are,” she said. Cheerleader Lili Levy knew it was a good sign when Elder announced their brand new speaker system will be arriving soon.

SRJC team by printing sponsorship shirts for athletes to sell, as well as organizing dine-and-donate events. Her goal is for each athlete to raise enough money to cover all fees. “Their account has always been low or at zero. I want money to be in the account so when we need mats, we get mats, and when we need signs, we get signs,” she said. Because cheer is considered a club sport, SRJC does not pay members’ expenses. Joining the team costs a new female athlete $1,720 and a male athlete $1,573, which covers costs for his or her uniform, monthly dues and cheer camp. A returning female cheerleader pays $1,373 and a male pays $1,343, reduced fees because they already own the uniform.

In addition to unclear expectations, fees can be a barrier to successful participation, too.

Taking the team to cheer camp off-site isn’t the only opportunity Elder plans to offer her athletes. She also plans to host “home camps” to promote camaraderie within the team.

Elder plans to host fundraising events throughout the semester to help athletes afford their $65 monthly dues and other equipment needs.

“It’s very important for the team to do outdoor side activities that aren’t related to cheer, like go to the movies, [or] go camping,” she said.

She plans to bring her fundraising experience with high school cheer to the

One of Elder’s main goals is to attend competitions. The last time SRJC

“We love a productive coach,” Levy said.

competed was in 1998 at the United Spirit Association in Anaheim. “Competition is one of the things athletes always look forward to,” she said. She hopes to fill SRJC’s two teams this season. The “sideline” team will support SRJC athletics with 25 cheerleaders; the competitive team will offer spots for 15 to 25 athletes who will compete solely against other collegiate cheer programs. “Dori is amazing,” Madereros said. “I believe she has the will and means to make SRJC cheerleading the collegiate cheer team it’s been longing to be. Her skills and agility as a coach are great, and it’s fantastic to see the JC administration recognizing that.” SRJC hosted tryouts April 14, and after a five-week clinic, the remaining 29 athletes became the new SRJC cheerleading team. The new team is struggling to find a permanent location to practice. “Because we are a club sport team, we are last priority to be in a gym,” Elder said. Regardless, Elder and the athletes are excited for the program to progress. “I can’t wait to see what the team has in store for the college next season,” Madereros said. theoakleafnews.com

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In the dugout

with AMY By Marilyn Santos Amy Gutierrez, the San Francisco Giants sideline reporter and a native of Sonoma County, always knew she wanted to be on television, but never thought she would become a sports journalist. “As a kid, my mom said I would always pretend to be a news anchor,” the 45-yearold Gutierrez said. A Casa Grande High School alumna, Gutierrez grew up in Petaluma and vividly recalls how she first got into TV. She had to create a volleyball tape for her high school and got taken to the scorer’s tables. In that moment she realized TV was something she loved to do. After high school, Gutierrez attended the University of California, Davis and majored in communications with a focus on TV. She wanted to become a hard news journalist. “I definitely didn’t think about sports at all. I thought I was going to be a news reporter. I envisioned myself on the 6 o‘clock news, out in the flood reporting,” she said. It wasn’t easy for Gutierrez to land an onair job after college. She carved her path by writing and becoming a producer, even working in sales at a television station in Los Angeles. Gutierrez said her first gig was as a part-time producer for Santa Rosa Channel 50 KFTY. “I think I got paid $8 an hour and had to be there at three in the morning until 8 a.m. I had to swing, like, three jobs

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because I couldn’t afford my rent with that job, but I loved it. I loved the job, and I was writing,” she said. After multiple promotions, she came to work for San Francisco KRON-TV, where she produced a consumer report show but was later laid off. “They always say you really haven’t worked in television until you've lost a job,” Gutierrez said. This was the unexpected catalyst for her future career as a sports journalist. She landed a job with Fox Sports Los Angeles that lasted years. Then she moved home to the Bay Area, began freelancing and published a feature story about the San Jose Giants. During this time she also gave birth to her first child, but in spite of this, the powers that be at Fox Sports Bay Area, known as NBC Bay Area today, believed she had what it took and put her on air. Gutierrez covered Pac-10 football, the San Francisco 49ers, the Oakland Raiders and the Oakland A’s for two seasons and became the San Francisco Giants’ full-time sideline reporter in 2008 — a role she’s held ever since. “I just put my head down and tried to navigate uncharted waters, learning the job. It was a new job. You kind of just figure it out and I had the help of supportive co-workers, colleagues and a family,” she said. Gutierrez has covered multiple World Series games, traveled with the team through the 2014 run and even followed players,

including Javier Lopez and Hunter Pence through multiple states during the trade deadline. In the beginning, traveling with the Giants was a bit of a challenge. “It was that time where they didn’t have places where you could breastfeed, but now they have added so many new amenities for women. Women have really reinforced the work environment because you do have to work through these things.” Being a woman in sports media, Gutierrez knows the stereotypes many women face going into a male-dominated industry. “Women are working together to break the stereotype of ageism and that once you hit a certain age, you can’t do something anymore. Also, everything is based on what you look like, and not what you know,” Gutierrez said. Gutierrez has seen and experienced how women bring a different audience to sports. When she first started working with the A’s in 2006, only one or two women, including herself, were in the clubhouse. Now there are around seven or eight female reporters, each with different backgrounds and reporting for different outlets, who work alongside her in the Giants clubhouse. Gutierrez lives in Petaluma with her three children and her husband. She’s also the author of three books: “Smarty Marty's Got Game” (2013), “Smarty Marty's Official Gameday Scorebook” (2015) and “Smarty Marty Steps Up Her Game (2017).” You can catch her on the diamond, reporting for the San Francisco Giants.

Photos Courtesy of Bay Area Women Magazine

(Top) Amy Gutierrez sits in the San Francisco Giants dugout at AT&T Park. (Bottom) Gutierrez broadcasts live in front of a packed stadium.

Amy Gutierrez poses with Madison Bumgarner. theoakleafnews.com

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Photos by Abraham Fuentes

pass ion passion for fashion By Aria Quinn Santa Rosa Junior College student Shae Bent comes from a long line of seamstresses and is in her second semester of clothing construction. While she has multiple majors, her eyes light up the most when she talks about what she’s learning in fashion studies. Modern beauty and fashion can change at the literal drop of a hat. Students enrolled in SRJC fashion studies program aim to be the next generation of creative influencers. Bent passionately explains her dreams to get her hands dirty with designers and create beautiful, life-changing clothes. “I want to be the one that’s doing the actual work, putting in the real work,” Bent said. She specifically chose SRJC over one of the more famous local or national fashion schools. “I noticed how the JC is so helpful. The people there really do care about where I’m going, they care about what I’m striving to do,” she said. The fashion studies program teaches all the skills required in the industry, from basic sewing to design and marketing and even puts on a fashion show every year to showcase the students’ hard work. Two different certificates are available: Retail Merchandising and Fashion Designer Assistant.

Shae Bent models her handmade dress at the Day Under the Oaks fashion show in Bertolini Student Center.

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The retail merchandising requirements focus on product development, marketing and styling, while the fashion

designer assistant requirements focus on the actual design and construction of garments. However, the annual fashion show is part of both courses. Robyn Spencer-Crompton is an adjunct faculty member who’s been teaching the skills necessary to put on this exhibition since 2000. “When you get a certificate out of our program, you’re ready for a job,” she said. “The passion that [Spencer-Crompton] brings out to us, just makes me feel like I’m at home. She’s just as creative, she’s just as passionate about this as I am. I want to be like that, I want to be as happy as she is, doing exactly what she loves,” Bent said. The theme of the show changes every year and is largely influenced by the materials available to work with. This year’s theme is “Metamorphosis” — a fitting subject due to how the community has changed in the wake of recent local natural disasters. While the fashion show acts as a showcase for students to display their hard work and talent, it is also a contest with prizes attractive to those hoping to break into the fashion industry. New and expensive sewing machines and a custom dress form will go to the students who win the best in show and viewers choice awards as well as the classic first, second and third places. While Bent is not in it for the competition, having her unfinished project and her sewing machine stolen out of her car in San Francisco during spring break, weeks before the show, was still heart-breaking. The thieves missed the wallets under the seats but Bent didn’t realize until she had gotten home what they had taken.

Shae Bent works on her new project after her original was stolen from her car in San Francisco.

“I did four months of work in one. I said I would give it my all even after what happened to me, so I did just that,” Bent said. Students and teachers both agree that passion is the crucial factor required for success in this program. “They aren’t going to choose you to make them a beautiful gown, if all you have is an A,” Bent said. “You gotta want it.” Spencer-Crompton agrees. “[The students] come in with a deep interest, or a deep love for it and then they find the tools that lead them down a pathway where they can actually make a good living out in the real world, using their skills,” SpencerCromptom said.

“My car gets broken into and my sewing machine that I bought to learn to sew and develop my skills as a kid, through my teen years and now as a young adult... it was devastating. My machine had sentimental value that can’t be replaced,” Bent said.

Students in this program come from far and wide, from a retired teacher who figured it was time to learn how to sew, to an experienced designer with a bachelor’s degree and even someone whose grandmother made hippie skirts in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Despite this setback, Bent put together a new dress and overcoat, which she wore on the runway at the fashion show, during SRJC’s Day Under the Oaks event on April 28 in the Bertolini Student Center.

Passion is an important component of success in any SRJC major, but the fashion studies program is one of the few majors that channels a student’s passion into artistic expression that comes to life before our very eyes.

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makeup has no gender by raul ojeda The first time I heard someone say “makeup is only for girls,” I was about 8 years old — too young to really care, but old enough to understand what was being said. The more I grew and began to understand the beauty community, the more I realized the industry was marketed specifically to women. This trend of male influencers wasn’t integrated into pop culture until early 2015, but the truth is, male celebrities have always used makeup. Male actors and musicians have worn makeup on the downlow for decades now, some have even sported makeup as part of their “looks” or personas. James Charles and Jeffree Star both began wearing makeup, Star with his dark gothic makeup and Charles with his unique artistic creations he would post on instagram. On Oct. 11, 2016, Charles became Covergirl’s first male spokesperson. Since then, makeup artists (MUAs) including Manny Mua and Patrick Starr have partnered with other makeup companies like OFRA Cosmetics and MAC Cosmetics to showcase their products on the faces of male MUAs. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the word makeup is defined as “cosmetics (such as lipstick, mascara and eye shadow) used to color and beautify the face.” This definition makes no mention on makeup being exclusively for women.

If makeup was meant solely for women, the companies that advertise the makeup would be advertising it as such. The word is broken into two syllables: “make” and “up”, as in, you “make up” whatever you want.

expression. The beauty industry has become a safe place where men can make careers as makeup artists and not have a single person bat a single eyelash.

Sometimes people forget that makeup is an art form and an artistic escape and

Charles is a modern example of a makeup artist-turned-entrepreneur,

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from his collaborations with makeup brand Morphe and unveiling his new successful clothing line “Sisters Apparel.” The notion that wearing makeup makes someone less of a man is an outdated and tired stereotype. As we move

Photo by Raul Ojeda

SRJC student Ammon Sigur, 27, experiments with makeup for the first time.

forward, let’s normalize men in the makeup community and respect the courage they exhibit online and in person. “I had just been posting my Instagram pictures; it was just like everyday...just post my makeup looks and go,” said

Charles on ”The Ellen Show,” explaining how he caught the attention of makeup company Covergirl.

Vang and Thomas Halbert helping pave the way with their fresh content.

It continues to grow with videos from creators like Charles and Star constantly in the trending page and other men like Gabriel Zamora, Zackary

Makeup is a one-size-fits-all product, and men shouldn’t be ashamed to wear it, whether they want to cover a pimple or give themselves a red cut crease.

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PERIOD PAINS: how menstruation still holds women back

by kaila bohler

Illustrations by Kaila Bohler

Women’s health is rarely discussed outside of the political forum and the secrecy of our own bedrooms. When I was in grade school I remember being separated from the boys in my class to learn about my body. Soon my female classmates and I would begin transitioning into womanhood, so my fifth-grade teacher warned us about the impending changes to our body. Having a period was a mark of maturity, but with this change came additional responsibilities and concerns that boys our age didn’t have to deal with. My worries about my next math test grade were interrupted by whether or not I’d get my period in the middle of class. I remember feeling guilty that my mom had to buy me pads, something my brothers didn’t need. Just because I was a girl. It wasn’t strange at the time, but this initial separation between boys and girls would launch a lifetime of misunderstandings and confusion about the opposite sex. For one, girls don’t have cooties, and boys don’t come from Mars. But when does this innocent, playground banter become institutionalized discrimination? Behind those closed doors I was taught my period was shameful and something that shouldn’t be talked about in the open. For a long time I’d feel the need to whisper when asking another woman for a tampon. Like it was a secret I was meant to keep. I realize that many who menstruate don’t conform to the feminine gender, and not every person who identifies as a woman experiences menstruation; I am writing from my own experience. Because of prevalent misconceptions, information and sympathy have been hard to come

by. Menstruation is a dirty word even though it’s experienced by 50.8% of the U.S. population. Companies and government make money off women’s experience, charging higher prices and taxing products targeted to women. For those who don’t know, menstruation is a period of time (no pun intended) that women experience once a month involving the shedding of the uterine lining and egg that the body had prepared for pregnancy. The process of menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth is often portrayed as a magical experience; in reality it is based on fact and science and not sparkles and unicorn dust. During the 2019 Academy Awards, a film called “Period. End of Sentence.” won best documentary on a short subject, forcing Hollywood to give a previously taboo subject the star treatment. The film’s director, Rayka Zehtabchi, made history as the first Iranian-American woman to win an Oscar. “I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar,” Zehtabchi said, accepting her award. Yes, the film is about menstruation, but it’s more than that. The Netflix documentary follows a group of women in an Indian village working towards affordable and accessible feminine products in the face of stigma. Menstruating women in many countries and cultures are seen as unclean and are ostracized from the kitchen, religious activity and often an education. The film and my own experiences with menstruation lead me to believe that a lack of understanding about the menstrual cycle fuels inequality between men and women. Unfortunately, this experience is a common one. Although we don’t have

these same deep-seated reservations surrounding menstruation, American women still don’t have equality and control over their own bodies. But we’re not here to whine. We’re here to change the conversation about menstruation. Even just uttering the word out loud moves us that much closer to equality and understanding. The conversation around periods is often negative, highlighting the most extreme symptoms: cramps, bloating, mood swings and the uncontrollable urge to eat a pint of ice cream in one sitting. Normalized stigma surrounding periods breeds stereotypes instead of understanding. Women’s anger, irritability or sadness is brushed aside as PMS. Period pain is not considered an adequate excuse to skip work. A 2012 Birmingham Women’s National Health Service Foundation study found that 20% of women experience periods painful enough to interfere with daily activities. Some companies have implemented available sick days for chronic illness and for periods, but many fear being a women will become synonymous for being ill. Many companies hesitate to hire women, fearing high insurance premiums, multiple sick days, pregnancy leave and sexual harassment cases. According to a study conducted by Slater and Gordon, 40% of managers avoid hiring younger women to get around possible maternity leave. Just being a woman is basis to warrant being overlooked and left out. It’s these situations that the Equal Opportunity Act was created to prevent, but more cases keep falling through the cracks. More than 25,000 sex discrimination cases were reported in 2018 in the U.S., making up 32% of all discrimination cases reported.

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No man ever has to deal with this. I think it is a major disadvantage Genevieve Bertone, SRJC director of student equity and persistence, describes getting her period at the beginning of a keynote panel and having to sit through the entire event, leaving in a hurry when it was over. “No man ever has to deal with this. I think it is a major disadvantage,” she said. Bertone’s experience is not uncommon. A similar situation has happened to almost every menstruating person at least once in her lifetime. Menstruation also puts women at a disadvantage financially. Period poverty is a thing. The availability of feminine hygiene products is minimal for homeless, incarcerated and impoverished women. In 35 states, feminine hygiene products are taxed as “non-essential goods.” This tax is also often referred to as the “Luxury Tax,” a legal way for states to charge more money for products they deem a luxury, like cars and jewelry. Because women are the targeted consumers of these products, this tax is discriminatory.

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Similar to the ”Luxury Tax,” there is the “Pink Tax.” Although tax is in the name, it’s not really a tax, but a ploy to charge more for products that appeal to females: pink razors, floral-scented shaving cream and the luxurious tampon. The “Pink Tax” costs the average women an extra $1,351 every year. There are some women who choose to forgo tampons and pads in general, choosing sustainable products such as the menstrual cup or period underwear that can be used more than once. For some women, simply talking about menstruation isn’t enough to enact change. Some choose to free bleed to bring awareness to those without access to feminine hygiene products, while others do it to shed the stigma attached to period blood. Musician Kiran Ganhi ran the London Marathon while free bleeding. “I ran with blood dripping down my legs for sisters who don’t have access to tampons and sisters who, despite cramping and pain, hide it away and pretend like it doesn’t exist,” Ganhi told People Magazine. “If we don’t own the narrative of our own bodies, somebody else will use it against us.”

The Women’s March and #Metoo movement have made strides in changing the conversation about several women’s issues. Just as sexual harassment and assault are now part of the mainstream conversation, so should menstruation be. When we don’t talk about menstruation, women’s health suffers. When we don’t talk about menstruation, women’s wellbeing suffers. When we don’t talk about menstruation, women suffer.

period.

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Step into th and let it go

title ix sheds light on the realities for sexual assault survivors 52

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he Daylight by Dakota mcgranahan

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Silence blankets a packed Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park. Backstage, a nervous Rhiannon Jones prepares to recite her platform statement for the Miss Sonoma County competition. She stands, closes her eyes and collects her thoughts. The click-clack of her heels echoes as she approaches the podium. A panel of judges awaits, pens in hand, eyes glued to their scorecards. When they look up, they make eye contact with Jones. She composes herself, pauses, then takes a deep breath. When she speaks, her words are atypical of a beauty pageant contestant’s platform. But she says them anyway. “I was raped on December 23, 2018.” What Jones experienced isn’t uncommon for college students her age. She is one of thousands of people sexually assaulted annually on college campuses in the U.S. In 1990, Congress passed the Clery Act, federal legislation that provides transparency for campus crime policy and statistics. The Clery Act outlines multiple categories of crime on college campuses, including sexual assault. While campus crime logs are published monthly, the Clery Act also requires colleges to compile a three-year summary of all crimes on campuses, providing an annual analysis of crimes. According to the Clery Act, Santa Rosa Junior College reported two sexual assault crimes from 2015 to 2017; Sonoma State University reported 19. No definitive statistics collected nationally to illustrate the number of sexual assaults annually, but organizations like the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) state that college students are two times more likely to be sexually assaulted than young adults of the same age who don’t attend a university. Additionally, while there is no definitive data repository, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system allows precincts to self-report data; but not every county, state or city reports its information. Jones had multiple alternatives when choosing to report her assault. “I originally wasn’t going to report it at all because there wasn’t enough evidence for my case,” she says. “But I didn’t

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even know Title IX was an option since it occurred off campus.” According to The American Association of University Women (AAUW), Title IX is a comprehensive federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Both sexual harassment and sexual violence are forms of sex discrimination covered under Title IX. The law protects students from sexual harassment and violence that occurs in the course of a school’s education programs and activities. Once a school knows of or reasonably should have known about sexual harassment or sexual assault on campus, Title IX requires the school to promptly investigate the complaint and take steps to protect its students. Jones ultimately pursued a criminal case, but she is in the minority of victims. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) states 95% of college sexual assaults go unreported, with the top three reasons being fear of retaliation, belief there wasn’t enough proof or simply not knowing how to report. SRJC District Police Lt. Robert Brownlee has an opinion on why reports have increased on Sonoma County campuses. “With Title IX, the #MeToo movement and help from local law enforcement, I think what we’re seeing is it’s easier for survivors to report. There are more resources and an easier and better way to interact with law enforcement [with Title IX],” Brownlee says. “I think we’re not necessarily seeing an increase in sexual assaults; I think they’ve always been out there on a fairly steady level, but...people are reporting them more and shining a light on the issue.” After Title IX was refined during President Barack Obama’s first term, SRJC created a position to oversee Title IX reporting and processing on campus. Stephanie Jarrett, manager of training and compliance at SRJC, oversees the decisions made in Title IX reports. Jarrett’s position was created to improve SRJC’s approach to sexual misconduct and inform students on campus. Because of Jarrett’s work, students and faculty are required to take online training on sexual misconduct. “We’re really trying to promote awareness and with the social climate now. There is

so much more of an empowerment, and that’s why we’re receiving more reports,” she says. Like Brownlee, Jarrett also thinks the increase of Title IX reports stems from the #MeToo movement. “People now feel empowered that others will believe them if they report. When I see an increase in reports, I actually think that’s a positive sign, that people are now saying ‘Hey, this is not OK and we need this to stop.’ I think with more reports we can really address the larger issue,” Jarrett says. In addition to managing the online education and case processing, Jarrett gives presentations year-round to various classes. “Survivors sometimes come forward after presentations because I explain what constitutes sexual assault or misconduct,” Jarrett says. “They have these ‘aha’ moments because I give them language to identify the situation.” Jones says the #MeToo movement inspired her to come forward. “It originally helped me come to terms with a previous assault,” she says. “Just seeing that I wasn’t alone and admitting to myself and others that ‘yeah, this happened to me, too’ was very relieving.” But before she felt empowered, Jones was devastated. The night of her assault is seared into her memory. “Even though I was drunk, I remember everything,” Jones says. It was Dec. 23. She had driven to a coworker’s house to spend time together after a shift. They stayed up late drinking and talking, and decided to have sex; both were drunk. As it progressed, Jones became uncomfortable and said their safe word, “camp.” He didn’t stop. She repeated the safe word over and over, but he wasn’t listening. Later in the night, while her perpetrator slept, an unnerved Jones quickly collected herself and left his apartment complex. She sprinted to her car, fearful her perpetrator was following her, but too afraid to check.

Photos by Dakota McGranahan

She called a friend to pick her up. While she waited, she lay in the back of her car swaddled in a blanket, replaying the assault but desperately trying to forget. “I wish I had blacked out because then I wouldn’t have to remember everything,” Jones says. “Even though it would suck not knowing, at least it wouldn’t be so vivid for me.” The color of his couch, the color of his bed and the contents of his fridge are embedded into her memory. The next day, on Christmas Eve, she took a hot shower before calling Verity, a sexual assault and rape crisis center in Santa Rosa. Then she went to work and found herself sobbing uncontrollably. She decided to tell her manager. Her manager dismissed her so she could go to the hospital, where staff administered a medical rape kit, various injections for sexually transmitted infections (STI) and a Plan B pill. Later that day, Jones reported the assault to Rohnert Park police. She did not report through Title IX, unlike an increasing number of college students. Although Title IX is an efficient process for some survivors, not all walk away satisfied with their experience. Amoura Deering, an SRJC alumna, felt the process was too invasive. At one point, her Title IX processor wanted to examine Deering’s phone to acquire more proof for her case. Deering felt the request was an invasion of privacy, one that was as traumatic as the assault. However, her perspective of the Title IX process changed when she transferred to University of Nevada, Reno. Deering was at a local bar when two men attempted to kidnap and sexually assault her. When she reported through Title IX, she was met with compassion and comfort, something she believes was lacking at SRJC. “Whenever there’s another incident on campus, they always call me to make sure I’m safe, and I’m OK,” Deering says. Both Jones and Deering felt the huge range of emotions that follow reporting an assault. Feelings of doubt, insecurity and, on occasion, fear plagued Jones through

For Rhiannon Jones, the phoenix symbolizes rebirth after her trauma.

her reporting process. At one point she contemplated dropping out of the Miss Sonoma County competition, but realized in the wake of her trauma, she wanted to win more than anything. “It’s a hard thing to face. Dr. [Christine Blasey] Ford had her name dragged through the mud, and I was fearful of the same thing happening to me,” Jones recalled of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing. “I’ve learned though that there is always someone who favors your perpetrator, but it’s inspiring to me to have the confidence I do in the face of it all.” As Jones finished her platform statement, she walks out of the judges’ room nervous, but more confident than before. Her heart racing, she joins the other contestants on stage. As she stood

side by side with the other girls, hand in hand, all she hears is the thud of her heart against her chest. “Please be me,” she thought to herself, “Please let it be me.” The audience is silent. Jones holds her breath, waiting for the judges to announce their choice. “Your 2019 Miss Sonoma County is Rhiannon Jones.” She exhales and hears the roar of the crowd before her. Yes, this is a proud moment for her, but it isn’t the crown that satisfies her most. Instead it’s the realization she can accomplish anything in the face of adversity. theoakleafnews.com

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cbd: a natural remedy for today’s ills? by mark fernquest and michaella peake A promising new health product with much-touted medical benefits is gaining both a national and statewide reputation. It’s called CBD, and it’s available throughout Sonoma County and California, without prescription. CBD, short for cannabidiol, is the second most prevalent of the 60 cannabinoids found in marijuana, after THC. Mark Brocker, a manager at local marijuana dispensary SPARC in Sebastopol, said CBD was first recognized as the chemical compound in marijuana responsible for “body” sensation as opposed to the mental “high” caused by THC. Subsequent medical research revealed strong anti-inflammatory properties. From there, CBD became an alternative health product and gained national attention as a cure-all for any number of aches and pains, purportedly without any debilitating side effects.

According to Brocker, SPARC customers use CBD to treat conditions and illnesses including cancer and rheumatoid arthritis with varying results. Everest Rosa-Barnett, 18, a freshman at Santa Rosa Junior College, recently used CBD ointment for a leg cramp and found it relaxed the muscle and alleviated the pain. He would “absolutely” use it again, adding that his grandmother used it regularly for the last year for rheumatoid arthritis. “It makes the pain go away,” RosaBarnett said. SPARC sells CBD in numerous forms: as an edible, in lotions or ointments for topical use, raw for smoking, as a tincture for under-the-tongue application and in cartridges for vaping. Because state law requires SPARC, and all marijuana dispensaries, to sell products containing some measure of THC, customers must be 21 or possess a medical prescription. However, local health food stores sell over-the-counter, hemp-derived CBD lotions, ointments and tinctures which do not contain THC. Because hemp-derived CBD contains no psychoactive component, neither proofof-age nor a prescription is required for its purchase. Given hemp production was recently legalized in all 50 states per the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, the number of THC-free, hemp-derived CBD products may multiply in the coming months and years.

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In his article “Cannabidiol (CBD) — what we know and what we don’t,” Dr. Peter Grinspoon, a contributing editor to the Harvard Medical School Health blog, writes that research shows CBD effectively reduces pain, anxiety and seizures.

“You can still feel productive without feeling like you’re stressed out,” Khouri said. “My best friend’s sister went from having a seizure a day to having one once a month, just by using [CBD] tinctures every day. Her parents would always talk about other medications they tried and said the side effects were so bad that the seizures were almost preferable.”

It also effectively treats insomnia for some users.

His mother now uses it to treat her neck pain and relax tense muscles.

A February 2019 poll of 50 random SRJC students on the Santa Rosa campus indicated 36% knew of CBD and 22% took it to treat ailments including pain, PTSD, sciatica, insomnia, arthritis, fibromyalgia and vision problems.

“CBD helps you deal in the short term,” said Leona Dang-Kilduff, regional perinatal programs of California coordinator for North Coast, East Bay and Mid-Coastal California.

But does CBD live up to the hype?

Of those who’d used it, 91% found it effective and would try it again. SRJC student Haydn, 22, uses a CBD tincture her sister gave her for insomnia and finds it extremely effective. “Instantly I could get a good night’s sleep,” Haydn said. “I’m a believer.” Matt Khouri, 20, a Sonoma State University junior, began using CBD twoand-a-half years ago. He learned about cannabidiol before he started college and now uses it almost every day to treat his anxiety and insomnia. He estimates nearly half his friends do, too.

She’s seen CBD help veterans, college students, assault victims and people with anxiety and depression. Dang-Kilduff confirmed CBD helps reduce some types of seizures, isn’t neuroactive and doesn’t impair brain function (unlike THC), is anti-inflammatory, loosens muscles and helps people sleep. It shows promise in reducing anxiety and depression and in treating PTSD. There is no indication CBD slows brain development, while THC does. On the negative side, no studies exist on its long-term effects, and its effects sometimes fade with frequent use, making it a short-term solution.

There’s also the possibility of failing a drug test while using CBD. Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) Sheri Kasper explained in a March 2019 BBC article “New heights but no high — why hemp sales are soaring” that while most companies and labs test solely for THC, some test for a wider variety of cannabinoids. This may allow for a THC-free CBD product to register “false positive” for THC during testing. California consumers should also remember that unless the CBD they consume is hemp derived, it will, by law, contain some amount of THC. It’s important to check the amount of THC per dose because THC content can vary from very low (.3% or less) to very high (24% and above). Regarding CBD’s general health benefits, Grinspoon reminds us it’s important to remember CBD’s effectiveness varies and more research is necessary to determine long-term effects. Meanwhile, CBD’s popularity keeps growing at SPARC Sebastopol. “Most of the people who walk in this door are done with Western medicine. Nothing is working. So hopefully [they] can find something in here that does.”

Relaxing hikes in sonoma county '

by sEamus reed

Sonoma Coast State Park Take Highway 1 north past Bodega Bay, and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find yourself at Shell Beach, the trailhead for the Pomo Canyon Trail. Park at the beach, and cross the highway. The trail loop takes you right into the hills and gives you a great view of Bodega Bay and the headlands. Starting out steep, the trail levels off as you enter the redwoods and leads you downhill to the old Pomo Canyon campsite. Hikers can opt to try the Red Hill Trail Loop to gain some altitude and enjoy more great views. Make sure to bring water because this hike is a great workout; every step uphill is worth the view. Before heading out, hikers can climb down the cliffs to the waves at Shell Beach. Bodega Bay lies on the route back to Santa Rosa and makes for a good seafood stop. Expect only a few other hikers; this one is off the beaten path. A hike here will take you about three hours.

trionne-annadel state park Annadel State Park is a mainstay of Sonoma County hiking culture with its familiar and gorgeous scenery. East of Santa Rosa, Annadel Park is accessible by trail at Channel Drive and Howarth Park. Open from 8 a.m. until sunset, Annadel offers students and other hikers many options in distance, intensity and scenery. While most trails will lead to beautiful Lake Ilsanjo, hikers can opt for the Ridge Trail and take on some extra mileage. This park is big enough for everyone, so hikers can expect some peace and quiet out on the trail. Depending on what trail you choose your hike can take you two hours or more.

shiloh ranch regional park A great place to go in Windsor to get away from schoolwork for an hour or two. Only 15 minutes from SRJC's Santa Rosa campus, Shiloh is the perfect spot to hit after a long day of classes or studying. Parking passes are required, but you can park on the road for free.

Shiloh Ranch Park

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Photo courtesy of All Trails

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Shiloh Ranch has nearly eight miles of trails available to hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders. Be warned; the North Ridge and Ridge trails have some sharp inclines, but there are plenty of other options to pick from. Bring water, because this two- to three-hour hike somehow always manages to be hot and humid.

Armstrong Woods Natural Reserve

' Po mo Ca nyo n

Trail

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sugarloaf ridge state park If you’re looking to spend a day relaxing and hiking in the Mayacamas mountains above Kenwood, look no further than Sugarloaf. Adjacent to the equally beautiful Hood Mountain Regional Park, Sugarloaf offers many trails for hikers with time to kill. Boasting a plethora of trails, waterfalls and a few opportunities for bouldering, this park is a great getaway. Hikers also share the trails with mountain bikers and the occasional horse. The Meadow Trail will take about an hour and is the most accessible for Disability Resources Department (DRD) students. For students with children, the Quest Hike offers educational opportunities to learn about the flora and fauna in the park. For more experienced hikers, the 6.5 mile Bald Mountain Loop will provide spectacular views at 1,500 feet. Family-friendly trails will take about an hour, while the extended trails can be a welcome five-hour getaway.

Photo by Abraham Fuentes

armstrong woods natural reserve A stone’s throw away from Guerneville, Armstrong Woods is a well known spot to get some fresh air and exercise. This park is pretty well traveled, so expect to share the trails with other visitors. Hikers have two general options for trails: quick and easy, or long and steep. The Discovery Trail and Pioneer Nature Trail will bring you through the redwoods on the forest floor and offer natural education opportunities for students with young kids. If you’re looking for a more strenuous hike to take up a few more hours, opt for the Pool Ridge Trail, which will take you to beautiful Bullfrog Pond. The longer hikes take around three hours. Expect it to be cold at the base of the redwoods, so bring layers.

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