NEWS

NEWS BRIEFS

Campus will be closed Thursday Nov. 25 & Friday Nov. 26 Finals Week is Dec. 10-16

CSU & UC Transfer Workshops:

CSU San Bernardino is hosting career opportunity webinars for psychology and sociology students Nov. 19. The webinars are open to all students interested in transferring and will introduce students to resources available to them upon transfer.

Psychology Webinar from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Link: https://csusb.zoom. us/webinar/register/ WN_wKU2Cj6pTKMh0Ky54ntDg

Sociology Webinar from 1-2 p.m. Link: https://csusb.zoom.us/ webinar/register/WN_mvX_ w89mSUC8JD668_Aj9w

CSU/UC Application Workshops: CSU

Nov. 22 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Workshop link: https://bit.ly/ CSUAppWks Password: Transfer

UC

Nov. 23 from 2-4 p.m. Workshop link: https://bit.ly/ UCAppWk Password: Transfer

UC Personal Insight Questions Workshop

Nov. 24 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Link: https://bit.ly/UCPIQsWK Password: Transfer

CPR Workshop Hosted by Red Cross Club

Nov. 29 from 5-7 p.m. Location: Quad Courtyard

CORRECTIONS:

In the previous issue, there was a typo in the story on the study abroad program that stated Fabian Biancardi’s first name as “Fibian.” The story has been updated on viewpointsonline.org to refect the correct spelling.

All of these dates are subject to change due to possible regulations to come involving the containment of the coronavirus.

To stay up to date on upcoming campus events, visit the Viewpoints calendar listed at viewpointsonline.org.

If you have events happening on campus that you want featured on the calendar, send information about the event to viewpoints. news@gmail.com.

Police evict Palo Verde residents on May 9, 1959.

IMAGE COURTESY OF BURIED UNDER THE BLUE

STADIUM from page 1

a perfect time where people are starting to rediscover their indigenous roots,” Montalvo said. “With all that education we’ve given to them I think that’s helped them come to an understanding that they must question everything now.”

He strives to tell the story accurately of how his grandparents experienced it. He said how unfortunate it is that he, and many former residents or relatives of residents, realized their families’ story of displacement was being told incorrectly.

“Most of it was obviously the opposite of what happened in the books,” Montalvo said, recounting one of many stories his grandparents shared with him. “I’ve listened to my grandfather’s ways of life there. They farmed, they raised their own food and they policed themselves, that’s another big one.”

He said, because the communities were closeknit and lacked telephone signals, they did not reach out to law enforcement for any occurrence and handled it themselves. Similar to a tribal council.

Montalvo said this was the norm in the three communities because they all relied on each other and created family-like bonds.

There was no police interaction within those communities until it got close to the time to to remove everyone from their homes forcibly. Only White police officers were sent to the communities to harass them, beat them and shove them in patrol cars and drop them off in other neighborhoods to send the message that they needed to leave soon.

“At the end of the day our country paid us by kicking us out of our homes,” Montalvo said. “And that’s one of the main things that stuck with them and why it was so painful and stinging to this day. Most of the elders would never step foot at a (Dodgers) game or even watch a game, and if you think about it that’s what the psychologists talk about with inherited trauma.”

Another Buried Under the Blue spokesperson, Melissa Arechiga, experienced the displacement firsthand because her family was among those in Palo Verde that refused to leave their homes and were forcefully removed by police. People around the country watched from home as it was broadcasted on the news.

“I’m upset, I’m disappointed, I feel like our people deserve so much better,” Arechiga said. “People say I’m upset because, ‘It’s just because it’s your family.’ And yeah, it is my family, you’re 100% right, but if it wasn’t my family it would still be brown history. If it’s not brown history then what is their history? Christopher Columbus?”

Arechiga’s family was one of the remaining families in Palo Verde. The other two communities that had not sold and left their homes were displaced after Black Friday.

She said she hopes that by bringing broader awareness to what their families went through and their deep-rooted trauma that people who have not experienced similar situations will want to learn more.

“Maybe they can start to grow a sense of understanding to lay the foundation,” Arechiga said. “When it’s personalized and they’ve experienced it themselves it changes the dynamics of how they digest the history ... but somebody who’s never experienced these things, it’s like they’re removed from it, they haven’t been touched by those life experiences. So it’s always good to start there and ask, ‘Have you been or do you know anyone who’s been displaced’ and take it from there.”

She hopes they will further the conversation and prevent further gentrification and displacements in browndominated communities by asking those questions.

Only one would remain after the untimely demise of most of the student publications at Riverside City College. It, too, would face strife as it attempted to service the community.

The biweekly newspaper Viewpoints, previously known as the Tiger Times until its name changed until 1973, would be the only surviving publication to this day. Efforts to revive or create new publications would fzzle out and be for naught.

The decline in interest in publications affected the journalism department as well. Jan Abrahams, who took over the reins of the publication in 1971, ran the entire program by herself. Faculty in the photography and mass communications department assisted her, but she was tasked with advising the paper and holding journalism lectures.

Between the period of l972-1981, Viewpoints had a variety of issues afflicting the publications. Financial instability would directly affect the paper’s production. The responsibility of funding the college paper would frequently change between the Associated Students of Riverside City College and the district. This instability disrupted Viewpoints’ distribution throughout the campus, affecting its biweekly schedule.

The news, or lack of it, happening on campus was another major factor affecting interest in the paper. Fewer events would be held on campus, club activities would be less prevalent and major events were no longer commonplace within the college’s property. If an event was covered, the news was no longer relevant by the time the publication was distributed.

This led to the paper producing more opinion-based writing and growing the features section. Profles on faculty, guest speakers, reviews, photo wild art and poetry became more common within the publication’s pages. The paper broadened its focus in the news as well. It began to cover state ballots, administrative policy changes and propositions that could affect district funding.

Overall, the focus of Viewpoints would change yearly due to the talent of the students who walked through the newsroom doors.

The rocky start of a new era

DANIEL HERNANDEZ MANAGING EDITOR

JOYCE NUGENT | VIEWPOINTS On a remote corner in Thermal sits a 300-acre parcel of fertile farmland that the landowner is trying to lease because it is no longer cost-effective to plant, grow and harvest his crops. The drought, water scarcity and increased labor costs are driving farmers out of business. WATER from page 1 water quality and fisheries, wildlife and recreational interests. use it. The water rights system is

If your food was grown or based on seniority. State offcials raised by farmers or ranchers, can require junior water users to you depend on someone who cut back when water is scarce, either has a water right or buys starting with those who recently water from a water supplier, such established their claims. as an irrigation district that has a “Everybody with senior water water right. rights has a huge interest in The Process keeping the system exactly the

If you live in the city or way it is, even if it means hurting suburbs and drink, cook with, other people — which it does,” wash with, or water your yard said Thomas Holyoke, a water with water, you can do so because politics expert at California State your city has a water right or buys University Fresno. “Everybody is water from someone who has a retreating into their corners and water right. arming themselves legalistically

When you turn on your lights to defend what little water they or use appliances in California, at still have.” least some of the electricity you Most experts agree that are using was likely generated California’s complex, multiby a power company that can level web of outdated water operate a hydropower plant rights laws hinder the state’s because it has a water right. ability to ensure everyone has

If you swim, fsh, or boat in enough water. This is a problem a man-made lake or raft below a that will only get worse as the dam, you can do so because the drought makes severe water dam owner has a water right. shortages a reality.

Food and Water Watch in “Water rights can be October 2021 compared water something that helps us adapt rights allocations and California’s and create resiliency, or it can actual supply of water and really hinder us,” said Joaquin concluded that the state had issued Esquivel, SWRCB chair, at the rights for fve times as much water Board’s Feb. 16 meeting. as it can deliver based on mean According to Chris annual water supplies. Scheuring, legal counsel to The Politics the California Farm Bureau,

Water continues to be a source the state needs to address new of decades-long political wars infrastructure and water storage. burdened with territorial priorities. “One thing it does not Besides satisfying the needs of a need to do, however, is require growing population, demands for reorganization of water rights,” more water also come from the Scheuring said. “In fact, the agricultural industry, businesses, state’s water rights system is manufacturers and developers. fundamentally conceived to These needs must be balanced deal with scarcity in dry years against demands for protecting by providing for a hierarchy of priority upon which to base necessary curtailments.” Many farmers have blamed the environmentalists who, the farmers argue, are choosing to waste water on fish at the expense of people. Setting aside water for environmental purposes might be the most contentious issue in state water politics. For decades, farmers, environmental groups and government agencies have fought over how much water should be kept in rivers, streams and estuaries across Northern California and the Central Valley to ensure healthy ecosystems and help endangered species. But water rights holders who depend on rivers and streams have fought to take more water from those sources, arguing that state offcials unfairly prioritize fsh over people. “You’ve got debates with a number of folks saying, ‘no, the water rights system should just be applied until every last drop in the river is gone,’ ” said Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based think tank. Water conservation, development and management should be a collaborative effort. This more inclusive approach to negotiations is essential to address the severe challenges to California’s future. “Everybody is terrifed of moving to anything else because nobody has any idea of what the alternative system would be,” Holyoke said. “They’re afraid they would lose out under the new system.”

Mallard ducks foat on a pond at the Whitewater Preserve near Palm Springs on Nov. 12. The Whitewater River provides a year-round water source for native and migrating birds like Mallard ducks.

Above: Two caspian terns on the shore of Lake Cahuilla are migrating. On their journey from Alaska to Southern California, they use rivers, reservoirs, lagoons and estuaries to feed and rest.

Left: A snowy egret waits to feed on fsh from Lake Cahuilla. As the drought causes deterioration of the waterfowl habitat at the lake, the snowy egret will become endangered.

PHOTOS BY JOYCE NUGENT

RIALTO from page 1 a member since 2020. As soon as she found out that the program journalist to remove the article.” had been cut, she investigated

The First Amendment the matter. protects student journalists from “I decided to set up a censorship and retaliation against meeting with the principal faculty for the content produced to get answers,” Williams by the students. said. “During our meeting my

Principal Caroline Sweeney questions were misunderstood declined to comment on the or met with answers that didn’t matter. add up.”

“The article was allowed to This year, RHS still does not print, but it appeared bad blood have a journalism program and had formed,” Rodriguez said. is instead operating as a club.

Tyzhera Williams, co-editor “Over 70 students enrolled of the journalism club, had been for the class, cementing the fact that the students want this curriculum,” Rodriguez said. “Yet after giving me my teaching assignment for the year, showing two sections of journalism, the principal ultimately cut the course again.”

In 1988, the Supreme Court of the United States had dealt with a similar case, Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier, on a matter of Hazelwood East High School principal attempting to censor two articles from the high school paper. The majority of the Justices declared “a school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission.”

“It upset me when I found out the journalism class had been cut,” said Cynthia Soto, a junior at RHS and secretary of the journalism program. “It meant students would not be able to publish articles or read them.”

The students at RHS are missing out on the opportunity to gain skills and earn credits in journalism while it operates as a club and not an offcial class.

“The principal started the year off by holding up our articles for longer than they needed,” Isaac Escamilla, sophomore at RHS, said. “The journalism program means a lot to me, I intend on making a career as a journalist.”

The journalism club intends to continue the fght to reinstate the program.

“This is only the beginning,” Escamilla said.

The students have started a petition to show administration that their needs are not being met.