March 8 International Women’s Day – So What

By SARAH RINGLER

In my experience, there has never been much of a deal made about International Women’s Day. No sales, gifts, cards and few events if any.

Back in the nineties in Santa Cruz when I was part of SCAR, Santa Cruz Art and Revolution, I contacted our activist list calling for a gathering at the Town Clock to remind people of the one day out of the year, when women’s issues might get a little attention. Only my friend, long-time dedicated labor supporter and activist, Jean Piraino, showed up. We desolately stood there waving signs around for a while, then called it quits.

Another time, as Guerrilla Girls, a few more of us went out on a poster campaign calling attention to famous women as well as women’s issues like unpaid child support, inequality in pay, violence against women, lack of good child care, the usual garden variety abuse that has not abated and in some cases only gotten worse. See posters at top and bottom from around 2004.

I moved to Santa Cruz in 1980 after living 10 years in British Columbia. Before that, I had mostly lived in California. I now was a single mom with two kids under eleven. I rented a small two-bedroom house in downtown Santa Cruz for $250 a month. I regaled the women at where I get my hair done a short while back when I told them how in the 1980s, I supported two kids while working at the Bagelry and going to UCSC in Santa Cruz. They were shocked. I didn’t receive welfare or foodstamps but my tuition at UCSC was reduced because I was a single parent. I believe I paid around $400 a quarter. 

That was then and this is now. 

Today is International Women’s Day. I was happy to see that the local Democratic Socialist of America, Santa Cruz, sent the following notice in an email March 5: 

'"It was in 1857, that on 8 March in New York City, garments workers went on strike. Suffering horrific conditions, endless hours and low pay, they took to the streets demanding better money and working conditions. Dispersed after being attacked by police, the women continued to fight and from their movement the first women’s labour unions were established.

"In the early 20th century, their movement blossomed. New York City’s streets again saw women march demanding shorter hours, better pay, an end to child labour and the right to vote in 1908. Leading labour organizers sought to strengthen the movement internationally. At the Conference of Working Women held in Copenhagen in 1910, Clara Zetkin asked over 100 women from 17 countries – representing unions, socialist parties and women’s working clubs – to pass a motion for an International Working Women’s Day. They did so, unanimously, and the so International Women’s Day was born.(source: The Independent)'

"Celebrate International Working Women's Day this Saturday at Lupolo! We will have drinks and talk socialism, working women, and more. There will also be t-shirts and buttons, pins available as well. We hope to see you there!”

March 12 in a few days, is Equal Pay Day. It notes how many additional days a year women have to work to earn what men did the previous year; this year it is 72 days. According to payscale.com, in 2024, a woman makes $.83 for every $1 a man makes. As women have children and get older the gap widens. When women become a parent or primary care giver, their pay drops to $.75 to every dollar. For women age 45 or older the gap becomes $.74 to every dollar a man makes.

The Equal Pay Act has been law for more than 50 years yet the gap in income has changed little in that time. President Bill Clinton, when he ended “welfare as we know it,” a federal entitlement going back 61 years to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, he removed a safety net for many mothers sometimes casting them and their children into poverty and into abusive relationships.

I don’t need to remind anyone of the current assault on our right to determine whether we want or don’t want to bring life into this world —children that we carry in our bodies for nine months and give birth to, a true miracle if there ever is one. There is a long way to go.

Action items: Join or start a union. March in the streets. If you are doing more than your share at home or at work, go on strike.

Posters at top and below are from Santa Cruz Guerrilla Girls, 2004.

PHOTO BY TARMO HANNULA

Above is a field covered in legumes, fava beans, along Holohan Road in the Pajaro Valley this week.

Metrics on Carbon Sequestration

BY WOODY REHANEK, CAMPAIGN FOR REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

"If compost were added to 5% of California's rangelands, UC Berkeley bio-geochemist Silver calculates, those 3.2 million acres could eliminate 7.6 million tons of carbon emissions over a three-year period, equal to taking about 2 million cars off the road annually." - Erik Neumann, "Science Has Found a Brilliant New Use for Your Kitchen Scraps," Mother Jones, March 2, 2016

This gets a little wonky, but for me, metrics are where climate change and healthy soils converge. Our Santa Cruz and Watsonville Climate Action Plans, as well as the county's, mention organic/regenerative carbon sequestration in the same breath as tree planting, but there are no details and no metrics. We could be using Comet Planner's Healthy Soils computer program--developed by USDA and NRCS—to estimate carbon sequestration by various climate smart farming practices, such as compost application, hedgerow planting, cover cropping, mulching, reduced tilling, conservation crop rotation, grassed waterways, etc. 

The Comet Planner gives estimates in metric tons per acre per year for each practice. For example, in 2023 Santa Cruz County had 8,000 organic acres. The fundamental first step for transitioning to organics, other than ending the application of toxic chemicals, is to apply compost in order to revitalize soil and inoculate it with carbon-sequestering microbes. Comet Planner estimates that an application of quality compost results in average carbon storage of 4 metric tons per acre per yr. 8,000 x 4 = 32,000 metric tons of stored carbon, per year, for 3 years or more. These metrics could, and should, be factored into all climate action plans.

The more climate-smart on-the-ground practices applied, the more carbon is sequestered. For example, a mixed legume cover crop planted on 2,819 acres of county apples, wine grapes, and miscellaneous fruit orchards, calculates at 1.6 metric tons CO2 per acre per year, or 4,510 metric tons per year. And so on. The Comet Planner is grouped into Annual Cropland, Orchards and Vineyards, and Ranchland. Each category lists carbon sequestering practices and calculates C02 storage in metric tons per acre per year.

At the extreme wish list end of things, if all 64,000 acres of Santa Cruz County's farm and ranchland went organic at the wave of a magic wand, one compost application per acre would result in estimated 264,000 metric ton per year C02 storage for 1-3 years. To put that in perspective, Watsonville's Climate Action Plan estimates that the city in 2030 will be 100,000 metric tons short of carbon neutrality.

Our county could follow Santa Clara County's lead in quantifying carbon storage in healthy soils, where, Rep. Zoe Lofgren earmarked $750,000 of federal money for Santa Clara County's Agricultural Resilience Incentive (ARI) program. It funds specific "agricultural management practices that help sequester atmospheric carbon and improve soil health, water retention, and irrigation efficiency, which would benefit regional ecosystems, ag operations, and the public at large. The first round of funded projects is expected to span 3,700 acres and capture between 1,860 and 2,400 metric tons of atmospheric carbon per year, equivalent to reducing annual vehicle miles traveled by 6,282,995 miles or swapping out 94,753 incandescent light bulbs to LEDs every year." -- Pajaronian, 1-23

The grants, up to $30,000, are aimed at small farms. The application process is only 2 pages long, and the deadline in Santa Clara County is May 31. Farmers and ranchers can request funds for multiple practices, with a total cap of $30,000 per farm or ranch.

Last November, Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture, CORA, met with our county's Commission on the Environment. The Commission voted unanimously to send a letter to our County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience [OR3], asking them to contact Santa Clara County in order to move forward with our own version of their Agricultural Resilience Incentive program. CORA has also contacted Rep. Zoe Lofgren in order to funnel federal funds into such a program.

Adelante! Action Items: Contact Zoe Lofgren's Salinas Office at 831.867.6000 to request federal funding for an Ag Resilience Incentive program in Santa Cruz County, similar to the program in Santa Clara County because such a program promotes healthy, climate-smart, carbon sequestering soil. Or email: BoardOfSupervisors@santacruzcountyca.gov 

The Soil Food Web below is by Emma K. Morris.

Help Us Weather the Storm

BY DAVID BLUME

What happened? How did Whiskey Hill Farms get into this predicament? Our important work in regenerative food and fuel has brought us to the brink of disaster here at Whiskey Hill Farms and Science Center.This past winter, California was hit with around 20 “atmospheric rivers,” and we were deluged with 300% of our normal rainfall, a 100+ year record. The weather was abnormally cold, followed by an abnormally sharp heat wave. This tricked the turmeric — the crop that pays our bills — into thinking it was spring. It caused the rhizomes to sprout, which made them unattractive to consumers.

So we lost the sales of the whole year’s crop — but we didn’t actually lose the crop. In the same way that you can make a lot of potatoes by planting a single sprouting potato, we harvested and replanted the 14 tons of very healthy, and a-bit-too-willing-to-grow, turmeric roots in early 2023.

Now we’re in a race against time — harvesting turmeric as fast as we're able, while we struggle to recover from being so behind for so long.

We’re not the first farmers to run short of money before the harvests. Since biblical times, those with surplus funds have loaned money to farmers needing it to get over the shortfall before harvests. The collateral for these loans are the crops themselves. Its such a normal transaction that nowadays selling those very loans to others is called the Futures Market on stock exchanges.

Small farms have no access to that sort of big finance. But before the advent of stock market futures investments, when all farmers were small, there was a community means to save their farms from foreclosure by banks. If a small farmer who needed help was well thought of in their community — if they shared some of their crops with the hungry, helped their neighbors when they needed it, and were generous in their greater community dealings — then the community would come together to prevent losing that farm and its value to the community.

The community could collectively make the farm loans collateralized by the crops themselves. A loan consortium is where individuals can join to fund the farm at an attractive return greater than the maximum 9.99% by allowed by law for a standard loan.

A consortium to fund the farm through this current crisis and beyond has been formed to do just that. For information on the consortium, Agricultural Investments LLC, you can contact Dirk Coldewey at (831) 246-2455.

Can you help us keep Whiskey Hill Farms going? We’ve put together some unique and appealing premiums to tempt you to help us. Your donation could be eligible to sponsor trips, workshops, and classes, or to earn a Whiskey Hill Farms work experience day, for yourself and friends, or a discussion with Dave.

Donate via the Buckminster Fuller Institute. Your qualified donations are tax-deductible under the generous sponsorship of the Buckminster Fuller Institute. We are aiming to retire the Farm debt and establish an agricultural easement to keep the Farm from real estate development forever. Any size donation is very welcome.

Whether you can make a direct financial contribution or not, you can still be a big help. Learn more about ways you can get involved with what Whiskey Hill Farms is doing.

“Bucky’s quote was ‘make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone’ — and Dave Blume is one of the top people in the world that’s ever truly made that come true.”

George Orbelian, Board Member at the Buckminster Fuller Institute, fiscal sponsor of Whiskey Hill Farms

Photo below. We lost the sales of the whole year’s crop — but we didn’t actually lose the crop. In the same way that you can make a lot of potatoes by planting a single sprouting potato, we harvested and replanted the 14 tons of very healthy, and a-bit-too-willing-to-grow, turmeric roots in early 2023.

PHOTO DAVID BLUME

Film and Concert with Nicaraguan Musician and Poet Carlos Mejía Godoy at Watsonville Film Festival

BY JON SILVER

My short film Living in Exile was postponed at last year’s Watsonville Film Festival when the Pajaro River Levee failed and hundreds of farmworker families were flooded out of their homes in Pajaro and many people lost their jobs in the nearby strawberry fields which were underwater.

I’m pleased to announce that Living in Exile is scheduled to screen in this year’s film festival, and that Carlos Mejía Godoy will treat the audience to a musical performance after the screenings. The event is co-sponsored by Palenque Arts and takes place at the Oldenmeyer Center at 986 Hilby Ave., in Seaside on March 15 at 6:30pm. 

And a shout out to Consuelo Alba and John Speyer for building the Watsonville Film Festival into a vital community institution over the last 12 years! Check out the entire Festival lineup HERE: 

About Living In Exile:

Legendary musician and poet of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, Carlos Mejía Godoy shares his music, poetry and paintings, while reflecting on Nicaragua’s current and historic fight for liberty. Through his art and music he takes us to his hometown– Somoto, Nicaragua, from where he draws hope and inspiration.

"For over half a century Nicaraguan singer, songwriter and poet Carlos Mejía Godoy brought to peoples around the world Nicaragua’s cry for freedom, first in their struggle against the Somoza dictatorship, then against U.S. counterrevolutionary intervention, and now against the Ortega dictatorship.This urgent new documentary, Living in Exile, gives us a homegrown account of the dark night that has once again descended on Nicaragua. Yet it is also full of love for his people and his country and of hope for the future. Don’t miss it!" William I. Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Global Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara.

Caltrans Whistleblower Reveals Misuse of Re-paving Funds

BY RICK LONGINOTTI

The Campaign for Sustainable Transportation is hosting a Zoom interview with Jeanie Ward-Waller, who was removed from her job as Deputy Director of Caltrans, because she blew the whistle on Caltrans diversion of repaving money to widen a highway. Contributions are accepted for CFST’s fight against the expansion of Highway 1.

Register for the Zoom webinar HERE.

Please share the Facebook event HERE. 

How a Heartsong Moved a Mountain

By WOODY REHANEK

In the early 1990s, Battle Mountain Gold

proposed an open-pit, cyanide leach gold

mine on Buckhorn Mountain in Okanogan

County WA, east of the cascades on the

Canadian border. We lived west of Buck-

horn, which sourced five creeks. We 

quickly formed Okanogan Highlands 

Alliance to oppose the 1,000-foot deep

pit with a toxic tailings pond 50 feet

deep and mountains of waste rock.

*I brought videos to the Colville Tribes

in Omak, but was unsure how I would

come across as an Anglo. The tribes

were already familiar with an exploratory

molybdenum mine on Mt. Tolman, & Steven

Iukes Jr. got up and literally sang a heart

song & wept over the desecration of that

mountain. The Iukes clan decided that,

as Battle Mountain toured the res to pro-

mote their high-impact gold mine, tribal 

elders would follow with info. about

harm to the Earth. 

Years later, state reg-

ulators said that approving water permits

for the mine "would be like driving

the wrong way on Interstate 5..."

******************** 

Photo by TARMO HANNULA 

A coyote in a field by Aptos High School on Freedom Blvd.

Santa Cruz County Covid-19 Report - Rt Numbers Graphs Confusing for Feb. 28 and March 6

By SARAH RINGLER

The California Department of Public Health and Santa Cruz County Health Department regularly release data on the current status of Covid-19 in the county as well as information on influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and Mpox. Since cases of Covid are still appearing, and there are still vulnerable people, I will continue reporting the graphs below.

At-home Covid-19 test kits that were sent free from the government earlier are now expiring. The program that started in Jan. 2022 has distributed 600 million test kits. If you still have those tests, before using, check the date on your box or go HERE to get information. Go HERE for free tests.

Three graphs of the four graphs below were updated on March 6. The first graph below shows the Rt Number from Feb. 28, last week's. The one below shows the Rt number from March 6. I'm waiting a response from the Health Department for clarification as to why the graphs look so different. Feb. 28 showed the Rt above 1. This week's showed the Rt was below. Numbers above one show the spread of the virus is increasing. Below one means the spread is decreasing. 

The third graph below shows data that the Health Department collects for Covid from wastewater at the City Influent, for the city of Santa Cruz, and from the Lode Street pump stations for the county.



The fourth graph below shows hospitalizations.



The vaccination data for the county has stayed fairly constant increasing very little over time. Go HERE for new information on vaccination records, treatments, vaccines, tests, safety in the workplace and more.

Photo Tarmo Hannula

Fashion Street - Artfully done crochet on the spare wheel cover at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor.

Labor History Calendar - March 8-14, 2024

a.k.a Know Our History Lest We Forget

International Woman’s Day March 8, 1908: Thousands in New York needle trades demand higher wages, shorter hours and end to child labor.

March 8, 1995: US stock market crashes, too many workers have jobs.

March 8, 2021: 700 strike St. Vincent Hospital, longest nurses’ strike in Massachusetts’s history.

March 9, 1879: Italian IWW leader Carlo Tresca born in Sulmona, Italy.

March 9, 1986: 100,000 march for freedom of choice.

March 9, 2017: Egyptian court orders release of oil workers arrested for striking. 

March 10, 1906: Coal dust explosion kills 1,060 workers in Courrieres, France sparking 55-day strike.

March 10, 1913: Harriet Tubman dies.

March 10, 2023: Belgian unions strike against understaffing in public services.

March 11, 1811: Luddites smash 63 looms.

March 11, 1930: Gandhi begins Salt March to Delhi.

March 11, 2010: Greek general strike demands bosses, not workers, pay for crises.

March 12, 1912: IWW wins Lawrence strike.

March 12, 1982: 300 women workers slow down at Control Data in Korea to protest firing of union president.

March 12, 2011: 100,000 rally in Madison, Wisconsin to support workers’ rights.

March 13, 1938: Labor attorney Clarence Darrow dies.

March 13, 2015: General Strike against austerity in Northern Ireland.

March 13, 2020: Strikes seeking Covid protection sweep across Italy, forcing bosses to free to safety measure.

March 14, 1988: 8 million strike against austerity in Spain.

March 14, 1991: Brazil’s government workers, unpaid since November, seize governor’s palace. 

Labor History Calendar has been published yearly by the Hungarian Literature Fund since 1985.

"I cannot be an optimist but I am a

prisoner of hope."

Cornell West

Photo by TARMO HANNULA

Sweet Brown Sugar and Peanut-Filled Pancakes

By SARAH RINGLER 

These little pancakes look like a cross between an English muffin and a crumpet. You bite inside the warm crust to a sweet and crunchy peanut and brown sugar center. They are called hotteok, and according to Priya Krishna, who presented the recipe in an article in the New York Times, they are a typical Korean winter treat sold in stalls in the markets. The fillings vary between savory and sweet, but these ones are pretty special. 

I think that this recipe is more than the sum of its parts. It looks like a basic yeast bread recipe with some filling added. Maybe because the dough rises so many times, it adds to the flavor. I really don’t know. I do know that this recipe can’t be thrown together in a few hours. It is adapted from “Judy Joo’s Korean Soul Food.” 

The dough mixture is very soft and gooey at first. After the two risings and being shaped into balls, it firms up and holds it shape so keep yourself from adding too much flour in the beginning. 

Mochiko flour is available in Watsonville at the Oriental Store and Food to Go at 205 East Lake Ave, and Staff of Life in East Lake Village Shopping Center. Staff of Life has bulk cinnamon, flour and unsalted peanuts. Buying bulk means you can purchase just as much as you need and always have fresh ingredients.  

Dough:

1 ½ cup whole milk

2 tablespoons white sugar

2 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour plus more rolling out, etc. 

1 cup sweet rice flour, like Mochiko flour

1 ½ tablespoons cornstarch

½ teaspoon coarse salt

Neutral tasting vegetable oil like corn or sunflower oil for frying and handling dough

Filling: 

½ cup packed dark brown sugar

½ cup coarsely chopped roasted and unsalted peanuts 

1 tablespoon cinnamon

¾ teaspoon coarse salt

Gently heat milk in a small saucepan over medium heat until it is just warm to the touch. Remove from the heat and stir in sugar and yeast. Set aside for 3-5 minutes until the yeast is bubbling.

In a large bowl, add the all-purpose flour, rice flour, cornstarch and salt. Use a whisk to combine.  Slowly pour in the milk-yeast mixture. Mix well with a wooden spoon. The dough will be very wet and sticky. 

Get another bowl and spread some vegetable oil on the inside of the bowl and on your hands. Form the dough into a single mass then put it into the bowl. Cover with a clean dishcloth and let rise in a warm place for 1 ½ to 2 hours. Punch down, cover and let rise again until doubled – about another 1 ½ hours.

While the dough is rising, make the filling. In a small bowl combine dark brown sugar, chopped peanuts, cinnamon and salt. 

After the final rising, sprinkle some flour on a work surface. Add the dough. Sprinkle some flour on the dough and knead it a few times. It will still be very pliable.

Shape the dough into a long fat log. Cut into 10 pieces of equal size. Shape each one into a ball. Set on a floured surface and cover with the kitchen towel. Dust with flour. 

Take one ball at a time, and press into a 4-inch disk that is evenly thick. Keep remaining balls covered on a floured surface.

Take the disk and cup it into your hand. Spoon in about 2 packed tablespoons of filling into the center. Wrap the dough around the filling and pinch the top to close. Reshape it into a disk and set aside on the floured work surface covered with a dish towel. 

In a large fry pan, heat about 3 tablespoons of oil over medium high heat. When the oil is hot, add about 3 disks to the oil with the seam side down. Immediately flatten with a spatula to about a 4-inch diameter. Reduce heat to medium and fry until golden brown and crisp for about 3-4 minutes. Flip and fry for about another 3-4 minutes. Adjust the heat as necessary. 

Continue frying pancakes, adding fresh oil as needed. Wipe the pan if it becomes dirty. 

Let cool before serving; hot sugar can burn your mouth. Leftovers can be cooled and frozen in an airtight container. Reheat in 350-degree oven and refry with oil. Makes 10 hotteoks. 

Send your story, poetry or art here: Please submit a story, poem or photo of your art that you think would be of interest to the people of Santa Cruz County. Try and keep the word count to around 400. Also, there should be suggested actions if this is a political issue. Submit to coluyaki@gmail.com

Send comments to coluyaki@gmail.com

If you are enjoying the Serf City Times, forward it on to others. We need readers, artists, photographers and writers.

Subscribe, contact or find back issues at the website https://serf-city-times.constantcontactsites.com

Thanks, Sarah Ringler

Welcome to Serf City Times Our county has problems and many people feel left out. Housing affordability, racism and low wages are the most obvious factors. However, many groups and individuals in Santa Cruz County work tirelessly to make our county a better place for everyone. These people work on the environment, housing, economic justice, health, criminal justice, disability rights, immigrant rights, racial justice, transportation, workers’ rights, education reform, gender issues, equity issues, electoral politics and more. Often, one group doesn’t know what another is doing. The Serf City Times is dedicated to serving as a clearinghouse for those issues by letting you know what is going on, what actions you can take and how you can support these groups.This is a self-funded enterprise and all work is volunteer. 

Copyright © 2024 Sarah Ringler - All rights reserved