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Pink clouds

Manuel Ortiz
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Pink clouds
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Manuel Ortiz Escámez. Peninsula 360 Press.

"In Redwood City, the clouds are pink," I told my wife years ago - while in Mexico - and she didn't believe me. In time, when she first visited this city, she agreed with me.

From my perspective, I see, over the daily Redwood City, beautiful pink clouds, with tones that intermingle and degrade into oranges and blues.

But bad news for you: I'm colorblind. 

Don't feel sorry for yourself. Fortunately, colorblind people are not hurt at all; it is a condition of the whims of Genetics. We simply see different shades of color than most people do. So I can't say for sure if the clouds of Redwood City are really pink; I like to think so. 

Pink, as well as the other shades of color the sky can be tinged with, combines in Redwood City with the vast colors of the sea, the salt flats, the dense vegetation and the murals. To me, this huge range of colors represents the very rich ethnic diversity of the San Francisco Peninsula. 

In the meantime, we cannot conclude whether or not we agree that the clouds here are pink. We must keep in mind my colorblindness. What is definitely not controversial is ethnic diversity. In Redwood City, over 38% of the population is Latino, over 10% is Asian, 2.2% is African American, and here there is also a Native American and Native Hawaiian population, as well as whites, of course.  

The enormous ethnic variety of the pink cloud city, Redwood City, which brings knowledge, cultural and economic wealth, should be a source of pride for all the inhabitants of this region. However, this diversity is not adequately represented in those in power.

The efforts of some local politicians, such as Mayor Diane Howard, as well as Council members Alicia Aguirre and Giselle Hale, should be recognized for giving the importance they deserve to conducting diagnostics and open forums with the community in the search for "best practices on racial equity. 

The adoption of Resolution 15877 is positive; it commits the Redwood City government to do more work for ethnic equity. But, as people in the community pointed out - last October 5th at the city's study session called Racial Equality, Services and City Policies - "there is still a lot to do". 

It is important that we not only see white male faces at the helm of the Fire Department. In addition, while our police do not behave like some of the brutish officers in Kentucky, Michigan and much of the United States, the local demands of the Black Lives Matter movement need to be heard and addressed. It is urgent that more Latinos, Asians and Blacks represent their communities on the City Council. 

Racism and ethnic inequality in the United States is a systemic issue. Yet the country is going through a critical and shameful time of division and brutal racism reinforced by Donald J. Trump and his disoriented spokesmen.

Elections are coming soon and, consequently, ethnic communities must vote with a social conscience and, above all, with historical memory. At the national level, "the man whose head the flies stand on" and his "patron" represent ignorance, division and hatred of our communities - a vote for them is a bullet in the foot! 

Fortunately for Redwood City, there are good candidates for City Council. It is important to vote for who you choose.

From my perspective, Jeff Gee (District 1), Michael Smith (District 4), Alicia Aguirre (District 7), as well as Lissete Espinoza-García and Isabella Chu (District 3), have proposals and trajectories more in line with the theme of this column: the recognition of diversity and ethnic equity in the city. 

We may or may not agree that the clouds of Redwood City are pink. However, let us not lose attention to the truly important detail: that we are able to recognise those who attack us and then vote against them, that we manage to preserve and give the enormous natural and ethnic wealth of our habitat the place it deserves.

Redwood City and the San Francisco Peninsula could - with time and hard work from our communities - become a good example of ethnic inclusion and equity for the entire country.

It's up to us to make it happen. 

Manuel Ortiz Escámez is a sociologist, journalist and photographer.

Aggressions towards Asian-American community grow after Trump's speeches on COVID-19

Pamela Cruz
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Aggressions towards Asian-American community grow after Trump's speeches on COVID-19
Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press.

The number of attacks on the Asian-American community in the U.S. has grown suddenly, after President Donald Trump has maintained a negative discourse on China, so the number of incidents reached more than 2,700 in the last six months, when in previous years only 100 cases were recorded.

This was stated by Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), who pointed out that this increase was registered after the hate speech by President Trump as soon as COVID-19 reached these shores.

The activist and lawyer also noted that the discourse shifted from political and economic issues to health issues, and by blaming the country for creating and hiding the virus, has led to racist incidents or even hate crimes against Asian people or people of Asian origin.

During a virtual meeting organized by Ethnic Media Services, entitled "The contagion of hate. The other virus of America", the expert stressed that, of the 2,700 reported cases, most are incidents and not hate crimes.

These incidents, he said, were reported in 46 states and the District of Columbia, with 56% of the cases occurring in California and New York.

He also pointed out that women in that community experience 2.3 times as many hate incidents as men, and 7.0% is against people over 60.

Kulkarni reported that 70.9% of incidents involved verbal harassment, 8.8% involved physical harassment, and 10% involved civil rights violations such as workplace discrimination and denial of services, among others.

While the ethnicity with the highest number of attacks was Chinese (40.8%), followed by Korean (15.4%).

The places where discrimination is experienced most often are varied, however, the surveys revealed that the highest number of cases (38.6%) occur in businesses such as stores, pharmacies, and restaurants, followed by public streets and sidewalks (21.0%), public parks (11.1%), the Internet (10.4%), private residences (9.5%), public transportation (9.2%), schools (3.6%), and universities (2.0%).

The rhetoric in these incidents encompasses a virulent antipathy toward Chinese Americans, as 60% involve profanity and verbal taunts; while 23% of the perpetrators blame China and its people as the source of COVID-19.

The activist pointed out that there is an anti-immigrant nationalism, as in 19% of the occasions that these hate incidents took place, the Asian-American victims were demanded to "go back to China".

Similarly, he said that there is a racist characterization because in 18% out of 789 incidents, perpetrators described China and its people as dirty, sick and having strange eating habits.

In turn, 14% of the cases involved racial slurs with words that were extremely insulting to the Asian-American community, calling them by words such as "chinks" or "chinaman".

Given the rhetoric of discrimination that exists in the world and an increase in supremacist groups, Manjusha Kulkarni considered that this hate violence against the Asian-American community could continue to be experienced for a decade.

For his part, Jhonatan Yang, executive director of the organization "Asian American Advancing Justice", said that the extremism that currently exists in the U.S. against Asian Americans is not a new issue, as it has always had to deal with it, however, currently the president's speech has made even between different communities there are clashes.

He added that hate speech has consequences because of the violent extremism that exists, as there have even been death threats to people in the community or to those who defend them.

However, he said, we must empower not only this ethnic group, but everyone so that there is support that can really confront the hate speech that prevails in the country, especially in these times when we are facing a pandemic, a situation that joins an election year.

In that sense, he invited to be part of those who protect others who are more vulnerable when they see that they are being victims of harassment, such as accompanying them to a safe place or to the next station if the aggression occurs on the train or on public transport.

In addition, if possible, put a verbal stop to those who are attacking or generating hate speech against a person, or generate some distraction that allows the victim to move away from the place where he or she is attacked.

"These kinds of actions (exacerbated violence against the Asian-American community) we're going to see over the next few weeks, and even if (Joe) Biden wins, they're not going to go away anytime soon. We can't let our guard down even though there may be a political change in the presidency," he added.

For Neil Ruiz, associate director of global migration and demographics at the Pew Research Center, he noted that, according to a study conducted by the research center, four in 10 Americans believe it is more common for people to express racist views about Asian people today than it was before COVID-19.

He added that Asian-American and African-American communities, more than any other ethnic group, have reported negative experiences because of their race since the coronavirus outbreak.

The study, he said, shows that "about half of Americans believe that President Donald Trump has made race relations worse."

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Michael German said that during the current administration there has been an escalation in the number of supremacist organizations, however, there are no numbers because no investigations have been conducted.

However, he said, members of these supremacist groups have infiltrated police departments in several states and now serve as officers, "which is why many don't trust the authorities.

COVID-19: Free trial in Redwood City; Spanish spoken

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COVID-19: Free trial in Redwood City; Spanish spoken
Listen to this note. In compliance with accessibility standards.
Staff of Casa Círculo Cultural and Sequoia Hospital A Dignity Health Member, are coordinated in the Mural, where they will be the free tests of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not over. Although the rate of cases and the rate of positive tests have decreased in recent days in San Mateo County, it's important to know that the traffic light is still red.

Therefore, the virus could still take lives and generate irreparable damage, particularly in the Latino communitywhich is the one that has been seen the most affected by COVID-19.

In a major effort to counteract the effects caused by the pandemic in Redwood City - where the Latino community exceeds 38% of the population - the Casa Circulo CulturalThe the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, Dignity Health and the organization Community Alliance to Revitalize our Neighborhood (CARON), joined together to bring to town free trials of COVID-19 with service in Spanish.

It is important to note that these tests may also be applied to minors from the age of 10 onwards.

The appointment will be next Sunday, October 11 between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm in the parking lot of the Mural, located at 3090 Middlefield Road, in Redwood City.

Redwood City: salt flats subject to environmental protection, judge

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Redwood City: salt flats subject to environmental protection, judge

A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday overturned a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruling that would have allowed dredging - cleaning and deepening a body of water by removing rocks and sediments - and filling Redwood City's salt ponds without obtaining permits from the appropriate federal agencies.

In a 21-page review, U.S. District Judge William Alsup determined that the EPA ignored its own regulations and misinterpreted relevant case law. Therefore, the judge overturned the determination and remanded the case to the EPA for reconsideration under the current rule.

In 2019, the EPA determined that the Redwood City salt ponds - an area comprising 1,365 acres (about 552 hectares) - adjacent to the San Francisco Bay filled with tide pools, wetlands and commercial salt mining operations; the latter were not part of the United States aquifers.

The determination had important consequences: If salt ponds were not considered U.S. waters, they were not subject to the Drinking Water Act; this meant that private development could proceed without complying with the law; in conclusion, the regulations required permits before filling and dredging.

The salt ponds are owned by a subsidiary of Cargill, Inc. a large, privately owned multinational food company. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and a group of environmental organizations, including Save the Bay and San Francisco Baykeeper, sued the EPA to challenge the ruling.

The salt ponds are filled with dikes for use in salt extraction operations. The saline water fills a series of evaporation ponds that result in salt deposits that can ultimately be extracted and profit from your product.

The controversy revolved around whether the fact that the salt ponds were separated from the Bay itself by the development of a system of dikes and dams meant that they no longer formed part of the navigable waters of the Bay and therefore of US territory.

"The salt mines in the area have not dried up and have had continuous connections to the Bay," the judge ruled. Based on that, the EPA was wrong to determine that they were not part of the navigable waters of the Bay.

The court overturned the determination and sent the case back to the EPA for reconsideration, this time applying the appropriate legal standards.

[With NCB information]

COVID-19: St. Matthew sees favorable numbers

Peninsula 360 Press
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COVID-19: St. Matthew sees favorable numbers

San Mateo County continues to see improvement in COVID-19 numbers, as the case rate and positive test rate decreased in the week of September 26.

The case rate dropped from 6 to 4.3 per 100,000, while the positive rate decreased from 3.7 percent to 2.6 percent. The county, however, remains at a red light - high risk - in accordance with the state's Safer Economy Plan.

"The use of face masks, healthy distance and resumption of outdoor activities have been positive factors," County Manager Mike Callagy said during a press conference on COVID-19 with media Wednesday.

Callagy said the county is close to moving to a less restrictive, moderate-risk orange light, but it is not yet time to make that transition. Recall that the county moved to a red light on Sept. 22 and will remain red for at least three more weeks to meet the criteria required to move to an orange light.

With a low 2.6 percent positive testing rate, the county already meets the Orange Light's required range for test results; however, the county has not yet met the Orange Light's compliance incidence rate.

To reach the orange light, a case rate of less than 4 per 100,000 is required. The county must also remain census-compliant in the lowest quartile of the state's Healthy Places Index (HPI).

The goal of this new measurement is to encourage counties to decrease COVID-19 transmission rates in high-risk communities that are being affected by the virus.

Currently, San Mateo County's HPI positivity rate is 5.3 percent; 5.2 percent is required to advance to the orange light.

Callagy also said the state is working with counties to improve data by race and ethnicity, which is unknown in one-third of state data and 21 percent of county cases.

In San Mateo County, COVID-19 cases continue to be concentrated in the Latino community, with 51 percent of cases, even though they make up only 24 percent of the county's total population. 

"We are working with local organizations to amplify the message of wearing masks, keeping a safe distance, hand washing and testing, especially for essential activity workers," Callagy said.

Thus, San Mateo County has expanded the population's options for accessing COVID-19 testing: at the San Mateo County Event Center, mobile testing sites, and targeted neighborhood testing.

People can visit the county website www.smcgov.org/testing for the full testing schedule. The county increased its testing by 8 percent last week, with about 281 tests per 100,000, compared to 260 the week before.

Callagy said the county completed a daily average of 481 tests at the event center and 311 tests at the mobile sites in the past week. The county will continue to increase the number of tests, as the event center has a testing capacity limit of up to 1,000 tests per day.

Finally, Callagy and San Mateo County Deputy Chief Health Officer Srija Srinivasan encouraged everyone to get vaccinated against influenza as the flu season approaches.

"The symptoms of the flu and COVID-19 share similarities," Srinivasan said. "The more we can protect ourselves from the flu, the more we can protect others."

Although the CDC reported that flu cases may decrease due to the health measures that have been taken against COVID-19, Srinivasan said everyone should "stay on top of it" and continue the basic behaviors of frequent hand washing, healthy distance and wearing a mask.

[With NCB information]

Nobel Prize in Literature 2020: Louise Glück, poet

Peninsula 360 Press
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Nobel Prize in Literature 2020: Louise Glück, poet
Christian Carlos. Peninsula 360 Press.

On his Twitter account, @NobelPrizeannounced this morning that the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the poet Louise Glück.

Born in New York in 1943, the Stockholm-based Swedish Academy noted that the prize was awarded to Glück because of "her unmistakable poetic voice which, through an austere beauty, makes individual life universal".

Glück currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a professor of English at Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut.

The Swedish Academy highlighted the career of Glück, who has published more than ten books and essays on poetry, are characterized by the effort that imposes Glück for reading. The themes covered by the American poet range from childhood to family life; the close relationship with parents and siblings with a universal vision, using myths and classic literature that is reflected in most of her work.

The works highlighted by the Swedish Academy by poet Louise Glück include "Avernus", published in 2006 as "a masterful collection and avant-garde interpretation of the mythology of Persephone's descent into hell, in the captivity of Hades, the God of Death".

"Another spectacular achievement is Louise Glück's latest collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night, published in 2014," he added. At the time, The New York Times, said that this work is one of Glück's best essays, as "knowledge of the future will erase the present".

San Mateo: Migrant support fund depleted

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San Mateo: Migrant support fund depleted

San Mateo County has exhausted 96 percent of its $10.6 million immigrant assistance fund at its inception, and only met half of the demand, county supervisors were told.

County Management Analyst Sophie Mintier said in a presentation that 10,156 grants - $1,000 each - had been approved out of a total of 22,745 grant applications submitted by Sept. 28 of the current fiscal year.

The Migrant Support Fund provides financial assistance to low-income residents and undocumented persons in San Mateo County who are not eligible for unemployment or federal assistance programs. The fund is administered by the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County and the Mission Asset Fund, the latter of which is a non-profit organization.

With a contribution of $5 million from the Sobrato Organization, $2 million allocated in early July by the Board of Supervisors, plus other donations, the fund was able to accumulate a total of $10.6 million.

Still, it's not enough. Mintier said additional funds are needed to support the remaining applicants, 46 percent of whom have no fixed monthly income.

Many applicants have also been directly affected by the 19-COVID pandemic: 34 percent had contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus or know a person who had the new coronavirus.

It is important to know that most grant applications come from North Fair Oaks, Redwood City, San Mateo and East Palo Alto.

John Sobrato, a real estate developer and founder of the Sobrato Organization, asked the board to inject an additional $3 million to match his $5 million contribution, which he had originally requested in July.

"We haven't finished meeting the demand," said Sobrato. "However, the private sector cannot do it alone. We need the leadership of the board to set an example of how to encourage the private community.

José Quinñnez, founder of the Mission Asset Fund, also requested the board's support and recognized partner organizations such as Faith in Action - which helped immigrant communities and provided personalized support to more than 600 applicants. They are also working with Casa Samaritana to provide follow-up services to households.

The supervisors supported the fund and finally agreed that they would be willing to provide an additional $2 million.

Supervisor Don Horsley said it's time for the board to stretch its funding. "It's worth remembering that all that money is not going to other instances," Horsley said. "It's going directly to our local economy and we're expecting its multiplier effect."

Supervisor David Canepa said that for immigrant communities, programs like this are their only option. "We live in uncertain times. Making these kinds of decisions is not easy, but I think it justifies us going all out," Canepa said. "People are getting by as best they can. They live in fear. If there's any way I can help with that, I'm there for you.

Board Chairman Warren Slocum challenged Sobrato Organization to raise an additional $5 million.

Sobrato said it has been difficult to get the business community to make any donations and asked employers to set an example, as many of their office buildings are closed because they previously had some of the people on their payroll who now depend on the fund.

The board requested that county staff prepare an agenda item making a recommendation for an additional $2 million contribution to the migrant assistance fund to be given on October 20.

[With BNC information]

Nobel Prize in Physics 2020: UCLA and Berkeley Professors

Pamela Cruz
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Nobel Prize in Physics 2020: UCLA and Berkeley Professors
Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, as Professor Andrea Ghez and Professor Emeritus Reinhard Genzel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020. The Nobel committee recognized them for their work on "the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy".

The other part of the award went to Professor Roger Penrose of Oxford University for his discovery "that the formation of black holes is a strong prediction of the general theory of relativity".

Thus, this year the prize was about "the darkest secrets of the universe", the black holes, said the secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Göran Hansson, who said that because of the pandemic of COVID-19 could not carry out the traditional ceremony; however, the awards will be presented before the end of the year in Stockholm.

The work that received the recognition talks about one of the strangest predictions of the general theory of relativity, adopted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago, which stated that if an object were massive enough, its gravity would be so strong that nothing, not even light, could escape.

In 1965, Penrose proved that black holes really can form and described them in detail, showing that, deep down, they hide the singularity at which all known laws of nature cease.

By 1969, Genzel was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, working with the late Nobel laureate Charles Townes. The two presented the first observations that suggested that the center of our galaxy harbored a supermassive black hole, although the evidence was weak.

Genzel worked vigorously over the following decades to prove his case and developed a technique in which he can very accurately measure and determine the mass and behavior of stars circling the galactic center.

He and his colleagues substantiated their claims in 2002 when they reported the orbit of a star around the galactic center and concluded that it surrounded an object with the mass of several million stars like our sun, all packed together in a region smaller than the size of our solar system.

For his part, Ghez led a team at UCLA that confirmed that finding, and as the two groups mapped the galactic center more precisely using the world's largest telescopes, they provided the most convincing evidence yet for a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, an invisible, extremely heavy object about 4 million times the mass of our sun.

"The discoveries of this year's awardees have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still raise many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research, not only questions about their internal structure, but also about how to test our theory of gravity in the extreme conditions in the vicinity of a black hole," said David Haviland, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, at the press conference in Sweden to announce the prize.

With Genzel, UC Berkeley is now home to 9 Nobel laureates, while in total, 24 faculty members have received the same award.

Meanwhile, Ghez is the eighth UCLA faculty member to be named a Nobel laureate, and is the fourth woman to receive the physics prize, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018.

Silicon Valley: Supporting the return to Levi's Stadium

Peninsula 360 Press
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Silicon Valley: Supporting the return to Levi's Stadium

"Pedro Nakamura". Peninsula 360 Press.

The Santa Clara stadium in California was the first to implement technology that would help reduce the spread of COVID-19 once fans return to the stands.

Much is being said today about the great stadiums that the National Football League (NFL) has unveiled in this 101st season. Both SoFi Stadium - home of the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams - and Allegiant Stadium - home of the Las Vegas Raiders - represented a huge investment to host games of the best football in the world.

However, the San Francisco Forty-Niners in Santa Clara, California, predicted that issues that today could be sources of infection would be put aside.

With an investment of 1.3 billion dollars and opened in 2014, Levi's Stadium, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, implemented a technology capable of reducing human-to-human contact at mass events.

The building has more than 1,200 free high-speed Wi-Fi hotspots for every 100 people and can accommodate more than 68,000 spectators, a figure that can be increased to 75,000 due to its modular technology.

Because of the pandemic of COVID-19 and questioning for the return of fans, one avenue that would facilitate the situation is with the use of smartphones; with this, it would propose to encourage social distancing for the most part.

Access tickets will be scanned using QR codes - dimensional image that can be read electronically - and you have iBeacons - Apple's location technology.

Fans can join the conversation of the game in real time, access replays, statistics and buy the typical souvenirs, as well as food without generating traffic of people, that is to say, brought to the customer's seat.

The proposed return for Santa Clara football fans is starting to become a reality, but no date has been set yet.

The protocols are in place for Jimmy Garoppolo, Raheem Mostert and company to once again feel the warmth of their supporters.

Vote 2020: Over 4 million Americans have already voted

Pamela Cruz
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Vote 2020: Over 4 million Americans have already voted

Voter turnout could be the highest since 1908.

Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press 

With just 28 days until the Nov. 3 election, about 4.25 million Americans have already cast their ballots, which is a much higher level than in 2016, according to estimates from the U.S. Elections Project.

The University of Florida professor and project administrator, Michael McDonald, this number represents an exponential advance over the number registered in the elections four years ago, when 750,000 people voted.

For the election specialist, this change is driven by an expansion of early voting options in many states, as well as increased interest among voters in casting an early vote by mail.

And is that the growth in the pace of early voting in some states is "really surprising", for example, in South Dakota there is an advance of 22.8 percent compared to 2016, in Virginia of 16.6 percent, in Wisconsin of 14.7 percent and in Minnesota of 11.3 percent.

"Early voting generally starts to rush in the first few days of early voting, especially among people anxious to vote. It then declines and increases sharply again as Election Day approaches," he said.

Thus, McDonald posits two possible scenarios: in the first, voters have heeded the call to vote and have successfully flattened the voting curve, so you won't see the typical surge in votes around Nov. 3.

In the second scenario he mentions that early voting follows the atypical behavior in which turnout increases as election day approaches, so turnout could register unprecedented levels.

And even though the number of early votes more than doubled from 2004 to 2016, from 25 million to 57 million, at the current level the specialist projects record turnout at around 150 million votes (65% of eligible voters), the highest rate since 1908.

"We can't know for sure at this point which scenario is correct. Rather, I suspect there are some factors of both behaviors at play, and the truth lies in the middle of both scenarios."

The numbers reported so far are from 31 states, according to McDonald, and will grow quickly because many states will begin early in-person voting in the coming weeks.

While nearly every state in the country - with the exception of six - allows some degree of in-person advance voting.

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