Your Squid on the Street, Suki Wessling, caught up with Kelly Menehan and Faye Johnson of Indivisible to talk a little bit about the rally and their organization at the January 2026 Get ICE out for Good Rally in Santa Cruz.

Your Squid on the Street interviews rally-goers at the corner of Ocean and Water Streets in Santa Cruz about their reasons for attending the rally on January 11, 2026.

If you’ve had writer’s block — and for all the listeners out there who have ever put pen to paper, chances are a good that you have — there’s no shortage of pithy quotes or “how to” books from famous authors that can help snap you out of it.

“Write what you know,” goes one.

“No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader,” goes another.

As inspiring as some of these aphorisms can be, perhaps our deepest understanding of writer’s block can be gleaned from fictional representations of the commonly experienced phenomena — a meta analysis, if you will, provided by the authors themselves. Because there’s no shortage of those either.

And nobody know’s that better than writer, educator Aaron Colton.

“Writing Through Writer’s Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction” is the title of a new book by Colton, an associate teaching professor and director of first-year writing in the Department of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Within his authorial debut, Colton offers the first book-length analysis of the archetype of the blocked writer, at once acting as a thorough meditation on literary theory while also providing practical insights into the complex thoughts and feelings of the working writer, novice and veteran alike. In doing so, Colton reframes blockage not as something to be desperately avoided, but as something that could be deputized or even befriended by the aspiring writer.

Colton completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Virginia, and has previously taught at The Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University. His research focuses on representations of writers and writing in American literature, and his scholarship has appeared in venues including Arizona Quarterly, Studies in American Fiction, College Literature, and Pedagogy, as well as in Public Books and Inside Higher Ed.

He also happens to have grown up here in Santa Cruz, so we were extra pleased to welcome a local boy to the show.

Sara Niedzwieck is a professor of politics at UC Santa Cruz and studies South American politics. She offers her analysis of what is currently happening in Venezuela, a developing story.

On January 3rd the U.S. military conducted a strike on the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, killing dozens of people, and capturing President Maduro and his wife and bringing them to New York to stand trial. What does this mean for the region? What is it really about?  Michael Fox is a Latin America-based media maker and the former director of video production at teleSUR English. He puts the action into context.

Omar Dieguez reports live from the vigil marking the killing by an ICE agent of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

From the Streets brings you a powerful live podcast and performance featuring Dub Souljah, Safaa (Baytal), Miguel Kultura, and Shinelight—artists using resistance music to inspire, awaken, and empower our youth to rise as leaders. Join us January 24, 2026, at the Veterans Hall, 846 Front St. Doors open at 12 PM. Featuring additional performances by The Neighborhood Kids and The Indigenous Cats, plus vendors, drum circles, and danzantes. Part of the proceeds benefit The Center for Farmworkers. Come show love, build community, and support the movement.

This event is sponsored by Indigenous Justice.

More info: @RESISTANCE.ENTERTAINMENT ✊🔥

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-neighborhood-kids-full-live-band-indigenous-cats-in-santa-cruz-tickets-1977304939301

Mark Toney has been the Executive Director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN) since 2008. Mark has transformed TURN into a social movement organization, whose 27 staff are two-thirds women and two-thirds people of color, and has expanded its impact to promote and win racial and economic justice in energy affordability, climate action, and broadband equity.

Mark was appointed in 2020 to the California State Bar Board of Trustees by Governor Newsom and reappointed in 2024. He also currently serves on the National Whistleblower Center board, and previously served on the boards of ACLU Northern California and California Shakespeare Theatre.

Mark served as executive director of the Center for Third World Organizing for four years, and of Direct Action for Rights & Equality for eight years. He holds a B.A. from Brown University, a Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and has been recognized as a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow, National Science Foundation Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, and Mother Jones Heroes for Hard Times.

Christine Barrington starts a new show on KSQD this Friday: Apocalyptic Supper Club. But Christine is hardly new to KSQD—in fact, she’s a Squid super-volunteer. Apart from hosting Talk of the Bay for several years, Christine was a board member, volunteer coordinator, behind-the-scenes producer, and host of a series called Behind the Mic. In this series she interviewed many of the roster of fascinating people who make up KSQD’s volunteer on-air presence.

This week, Babblery host Suki Wessling turns the tables and sends Christine to the other side of the board so she can talk about her new show. Christine explained what it’s all about:

“It’s called The Apocalyptic Supper Club, nourishment for dire times. And the reason I call it that is it’s sort of at many levels, but most important, it’s that for us to show up when times are so hard, I believe we have to be fed many, many more stories, many, many more ideas and strategies that actually lift us up and make us feel better. So much political news and political talk is really quite depressing. It fills us with fear and uncertainty, it impacts our neurochemistry and instills what I call civic learned helplessnessPeople kind of check out and we need them to check in and find joy in getting involved. So they need to get nourished. And so it’s a supper club. It’s gonna all kinds of beautiful, tasty things.”

The first episode airs Friday at 5 pm PT and will be available as a podcast. Please listen in and subscribe.

Long-time arts and culture journalist for Santa Cruz, Wallace Baine is retiring from his post at Lookout, the online news site, but not before they won the Pulitzer Prize for local journalism. We look back at some of his most exciting interviews with the likes of Randy Newman and Carol Burnett, plus his take on the changes he’s seen over his thirty year tenure covering the cultural life of our community.