On the good news front, May 3 is Kids Day downtown, the most wonderful transformation of Santa Cruz into a huge family festival with kids playing music, dancing, being DJs, acting, doing art, you name it.
Streets are closed to cars and booths of kids’ programs are set up along the streets by Abbott Square. If you want to see the city at its shiniest and most fun, come down and check it out from noon to 4pm.
If you won our coloring contest and can bring in your photo from the issue to our Growing Up in Santa Cruz booth, we have prizes for you. First come, first served.
On the dark side, the racism expressed by two members of the Pajaro Valley School Board has received international attention and a condemnation from School District Superintendent Faris Sabbah. It’s hard to believe it’s happening here and now, as minorities are divided against each other while a dictatorial government seeks to take away the rights and freedoms of all of them.
We won’t survive if we don’t stand together.
Trustees Joy Flynn, who was appointed and not elected, and Gabriel Medina, the newest member elected last year, attacked Jewish people who questioned an ethnic studies program they feared was simplistic and didn’t present both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Flynn, who is Black, said that Jewish people have economic power that Black and brown people don’t have and claimed Jews have “presentation power, the privilege that comes with presenting as white.”
That is wrong on two fronts. First, there is plenty of discrimination of a racial minority despite skin color. They know your race, as surely as if your skin color were green. It’s terrifying to even admit being Jewish in a time when antisemitism is on the rise, even by elected officials in liberal California.
Second, by blending in with a room of white people you get to hear racist slurs about Jews you would never be able to hear if you were Black or brown. It’s horrifying and more present than you would want to believe.
Then, there’s Gabriel Medina, a left-wing name-calling reactionary much like the racists on the right.
“I don’t see you people at protests against immigration,” said Medina to the board audience in April.
“I don’t see you at protests when people are being taken away right now. I don’t see you advocating to bring back Abrego Garcia or Mahmoud Khalil. I don’t see you guys doing that. You only show up to meetings when it’s beneficial for you, so you can tell brown people who they are.”
When I called him out on it on his Facebook page and noted that Jewish people have supported minorities throughout their history–having been enslaved and later victims of the holocaust–he said he wasn’t speaking about Jews, but rather about conservatives. I don’t buy it.
Neither did Sabbah, the superintendent of the County Office of Education, who wrote that the board members “appeared to invoke anti-Semitic tropes.”
He added: “I trust your Board agrees that anti-Semitic rhetoric has no place in PVUSD, least of all from the trustees charged with upholding students’ rights, ensuring nondiscrimination, and fostering safe, inclusive educational environments.”
Are these board members really the people we want making decisions for 17,000 diverse students? I think not.
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Thanks for reading.
Brad Kava,
Editor and Publisher
Brad Kava is the editor and publisher for Growing Up in Santa Cruz.
