Rightnowish

This week on Rightnowish we've got a special episode from our friends at KQED's The California Report Magazine. They’ve launched a new series called MIXED: Stories of Mixed Race Californians.  Over 7 episodes, the hosts Sasha Khokha and Marisa Lagos have honest conversations with other mixed race Californians about the challenges and joys of being multi racial. 

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Northern California is this beautiful piece of land where high mountains, deep valleys, and cold beaches can bring about a sense of peace. At the same time, the people who live here are constantly debating the land itself.

So over the past five weeks we decided to focus on stories broadly about life and land in Northern California, as a part of our From The Soil series. More specifically, we honed in on what people from communities directly impacted by climate change, polluted soil and the privatization of land are doing to right the wrongs of this piece of earth we call home.

After racking up over 1,000 miles reporting these audio stories, for the final episode in this series, Rightnowish producer Marisol Medina-Cadena and Rightnowish host Pendarvis Harshaw take a minute to sit down and discuss the behind-the-scenes of making the series. From herds of elk grazing near the 101 south bypass to the prevalence of people walking on freeways, this land tells so many stories, so we figured we’d share a few more with you all.

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At the southern edge of the South Bay in Santa Clara County, where the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains meet the town of Gilroy, there is a grassy pasture. Here, a small stream runs through acres of land while cattle graze and birds fly above.

This piece of land is a proposed mining site—but it's also traditional ceremonial ground for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

For over 200 years, the Amah Mutsun have been unable to access one of their most sacred sites, known as Juristac.

"Juristac translates to the place of the Big Head. Our most important ceremonies were Big Head ceremonies. And so this location is where our ancestors, for thousands and thousands of years, held Big Head dances and ceremony," says Valentine Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

For the last seven years the tribal band has organized support from the local community, religious leaders, conservation groups and nearby city councils to stand in support against the development of the Sargent Quarry project, a proposal to use the land for mining purposes.

The Santa Clara Board of Supervisors is currently reviewing the proposed mining project's environmental impact report.

This week we hear from Valentin Lopez , the tribal chairman of the Amah Mutsun, speak about the historical and spiritual significance of Juristac, and the movement to protect the land for the Amah Mutsun.

Read the episode transcript.

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In honor of her late mother's efforts, Arieann Harrison is continuing the fight against environmental racism in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. She is the founder of Can We Live, an organization that is working with local residents to screen them for toxins and install devices to monitor airborne pollutants. Can We Live also offers scholarships for students interested in studying environmental justice.

This week we talk to Arieann Harrison about growing up in toxic terrain and how her work doesn't fall far from the family tree.

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On a steep hillside in San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Park, nestled between the Alemany Apartments, the 280 Freeway and the Bernal Heights Neighborhood, there’s a wine vineyard that doubles as a teaching tool.

A patch of land adjacent to Alemany Farm is being cultivated by Christopher Renfro and Jannea Tschirch, the co-founders of The 280 Project.

Their aim is to use public land to grow crops and introduce people to the world of agriculture, with a specific focus on getting young African-American residents of San Francisco interested in viticulture.

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On a crisp afternoon at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen, a group of twenty one farmworkers suit up in firefighter gear. Woman and men take turns helping each other strap on backpacks and fire helmets in preparation for another intense day of prescribed burn training. These are carefully planned low intensity fires set under specific environmental conditions, intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Many of these immigrant and Indigenous farmworkers typically work in the grape fields throughout Sonoma County, but extreme drought, flooding, and massive wildfires have made these jobs more precarious.

Seeing the need for alternative jobs that provide safety training and fair wages, a coalition of organizations including North Bay Jobs with Justice, Audubon Canyon Ranch, and Resilience Force teamed up to create paid opportunities that tackle our climate crisis head on. Part of this work includes certifying farmworkers to do prescribed burns on private lands throughout the North Bay, as a way to prevent the build up of fuel before fire season.

Prescribed burns are not a new practice by any means. They are rooted in many cultures. Some of these farmworkers have already practiced prescribed burns in their homelands in Mexico and Central America, and bring this ancestral ecological knowledge to their new line of work.

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A few miles northeast of the California state capital, in the city of Folsom, a public recreation area has recently been renamed Black Miners Bar, after years of being called Negro Bar. Historically, the site is where African American miners were relegated to panning during California’s Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. In the summer of 2022, California State Parks unanimously voted to change the name of Negro Bar to Black Miners Bar temporarily, while the department conducts more research into the true history of the area. 

For more on what actually transpired on this piece of land we talk to one of the lead researchers on the project, Susan D. Anderson, History Curator and Program Manager at the California African American Museum. We also talk to Michael Harris, a historian and chair of the Friends of Negro Bar community group.

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This story is part of That’s My Word, KQED’s year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history, with new content dropping all throughout 2023.

Dave “Davey D” Cook is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture.

He currently co-hosts KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio and serves as a processor of Africana studies at San Francisco State University, where he teaches popular courses on hip-hop and African American music. Davey D is a practitioner of the culture as well as a critic. Over the span of five decades, he’s been an MC, DJ, journalist, activist — the list goes on.

Originally from The Bronx, New York, Davey D was there when this thing we call hip-hop was in its nascent form, before it even had a name. When he arrived in the Bay Area in the early ’80s, one of his missions as a UC Berkeley student was to lend some insight to this burgeoning culture. So he put on a few events, one of which was The Day in Hip-Hop on Oct. 24, 1984. With the 50th anniversary of hip-hop at the front of mind, I spoke to Davey D about what the culture was like back then and how far it has come.

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This episode was originally part of the four-part series on BIG LOVE from 2021. We're revisiting it as a part of our 2023 kickoff series highlighting some of the best stories from our archives.

AB Banks, defines love as "doing the right thing with a passion." That means taking care of themselves and their folks, and they see the potential of self-love to be communal and revolutionary.

Day-to-day AB works with the People’s Programs in Oakland, supporting their unhoused neighbors through clinics and food donations. Outside of that, AB is deep in the practice of meditation. This is after setting out on a personal journey to learn the art of meditation, which included a trip abroad to study with renowned practitioners. In 2021 AB launched the Mad Chill series of short meditative videos with the aim of making this practice more accessible.

In our conversation, AB shares what they've learned and some of the tools they've acquired on this journey to understanding the various shapes self-love can take. 

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This episode was originally part of the Roll With Us: Community and Culture on Wheels series from 2021. We're revisiting it as a part of our 2023 kickoff series highlighting some of the best stories from our archives.

Dueñas Car Club is a sisterhood that rolls on 100-spoke rims.

Angel Romero is president of the club, which was founded in 2019 and is based in Sunnyvale, California. She's been cruising the strip since she was a kid in the passenger seat of her mother's lowrider.

It was through her mother that Angel inherited her passion for cool cars, cruising through the city, and serving the community.

Now, the members of the car club work with local organization to hold toy drives and distribute safety kits. They also pull up to events like car hops and car shows, stunting in full force.

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