STICKEY WICKET, APTOS 1953. This used to be the Red Door before it became Santa Cruz County's most famous coffee house. It's here that the informal musical performances that became the Cabrillo Music Festival started. Liberals hung out here, it could hold them all before the 70's. Ask Wally Trabing or Norm Lezin about the old days here. It was, and the building still is, located right off the freeway on Mar Vista Drive by the old golf course and the Aptos Grange. photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection, click for bigger version. Additional information always welcome: email photo@brattononline.com

IMMIGRANTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES. Watsonville City Councilman Ramón Gómez & The Santa Cruz County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are hosting a panel and public forum on the civil rights and liberties of immigrants. The forum, Immigrants and Civil Liberties will be held Thursday, October 6 at 7pm, at the Watsonville City Council chambers. Here's their press release.....

"The United States depends on Mexican & other immigrant labor. Hundreds of thousands of people come here every year to take jobs that pay better than jobs available at home. However, resistance to Mexican immigration runs high, and a variety of barriers stand between immigrants and social, educational and legal services. Front line workers providing these services are limited mostly to helping overcome ever-changing artificial barriers.

But the U.S. also needs these immigrants as citizens. It needs for them to assume the responsibilities of citizens, to enrich the national political process through their active participation in all aspects of the life of this country. Immigrants are hard-working, tax-paying residents and consumers. They attend churches, form volunteer organizations, and their children also grow up to become active members of their communities. Immigrants are full-fledged participants in the life of this country, but the U.S. has failed to provide ways to assist new residents in taking up their critical roles in a participatory democracy, to obtain legal standing as residents and eventually citizens. This failure, costly to our society, is in part a failure to guarantee the exercise of civil liberties and civil and human rights to newly arrived immigrants.

The forum will address the following questions: Which of the civil liberties and rights of US citizens, and which of the internationally recognized human rights, apply to legal immigrants to the US? Which apply to undocumented immigrants? Which of these remain to be extended to both legal and undocumented immigrants? How can the ACLU and other organizations committed to the defense of civil liberties expand these rights, especially for Mexican & other Latin American immigrants in the State of California?

Panelists include: Luis Angel Alejo staff attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance. Doug Keegan, Director, Santa Cruz County Immigration Project and Cesar Lara, Director, The Citizenship Project.

NOTES FROM LOUISIANA. Dorene Blake is a longtime friend, Santa Cruzan and a therapist. She has worked as a volunteer on three Red Cross disasters. The first was in Alaska at the air crash in 2000. She worked in New Jersey with the victims of 9/11 and she emailed us her diary from her recent trip to Louisiana to work with the Katrina survivors. Read it here.

THREE EXCELLENT ACTIVIST WEBSITES. There's little doubt about the fact that emails and websites are literally helping to change the world. SCRP's (Santa Cruzans for Responsible Planning) use of the internet was of key importance in educating Santa Cruz in the many flaws in the Coast Hotel plans. Now as newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury) are laying off more and more employees, the problem is finding the time to read all the online news sources. Here's three.

RANCHO SAN JUAN. The original proposal of developing 2,500 acres just north of Salinas has now been limited just to the 671 acre Butterfly Village golf village concept.

Read that news report from the Monterey Herald's Larry Parsons right here. Julie Engell, chair of the Rancho San Juan Opposition Coalition, tells us that the convoluted details of the Rancho San Juan make it the biggest project ever proposed for the Monterey Coast. Readers of this column should be sure to add this new website to their "favorites" links. It'll keep us up to date on the exact same developer and politico dealing we have faced, and continue to face, here in Santa Cruz County. www.stopranchosanjuan.org

FRIENDS OF BUENA VISTA. Watsonville, or some people in Watsonville, want to annex 400 acres of land and let developers build 2250 homes there. That means not just the loss of that farmland but it will add 9000 residents to the area. California cities are desperate for money, and are all to willing to sell out to anybody for anything that will appear to bring in cash ASAP. Click here www.friendsofbuenavista.com to see how Friends of Buena Vista are dealing with those gullible politicians and the wily developers. Again, it's another land use battle exactly like we have in Santa Cruz. We've got to get it together, and on a larger basis.

ARANA GULCH BATTLEFRONT. These notes will be too late for Tuesday's (Sept. 27) City Council meeting but go to http://members.cruzio.com/~arana/ and get the big picture of what's going on between the City Council and City Manager Dick Wilson on one side, and the concerned people who want to protect our green spaces like Arana Gulch on the other side. After former councilman Scott Kennedy snuck in a plot to set aside 6 acres of Arana G. to be developed later, we can now see how his plan bloomed. The Council and boss Wilson want to build 15 homes on those 15 acres, despite what previous city councils have wanted.

AND SPEAKING OF LAND ISSUES... Don't forget to check out Gary Patton's Land Use Report

CALIFORNIANS TO WEAR TINY TRANSMITTER TRACKERS. Marvin Kaplan sent an email with news about how we must stop a battle to get Californians to wear tiny transmitters that will allow "Them" to track us. Read his letter here SEEMED LIKE OLD TIMES. I ran into Jennifer Brager and her old flame Don Burke at Bookshop Santa Cruz last Sunday. The short and long of it is that Jennifer is going to law school in Portland and Don's working for some high tech company up there. Jennifer and Don both were heavily involved with progressive politics in Santa Cruz and they both miss this place. Don says that Portland is not a bad place to live, and there are things happening up there. We only discussed Santa Cruz politics a little bit, I explained how I think it's never been worse here, and that developers are putting on more pressure than any time since I got here in 1970. Don reads BrattonOnline.com weekly so he had some version of the truth about Santa Cruz. He promised to subscribe to this column which would be great if more people did, because that makes some kind of difference in internet workings, which I don't quite understand yet. Don and Jennifer looked happy, and their energy is missed.

CHEAPER THAN COSTCO. Al Wasserman noted Santa Cruz authority, and radio commentator, sent an old fashioned letter, because he is "not conversant with the internet". The letter says that prescriptions from Canada are about one half of what Costco is charging!! He saw Tri-Cor, a cholesterol lowering drug, sell for $313 at Costco. He gets his Tri-Cor from Canada for $126.93. Postage is prepaid he says and all you need is your doctor's prescription, and they take credit cards. Call Canada Drugs toll free at 1-866-444-3784. You can call (but not email) Al Wasserman at 831 338-4233.

THE FILM SECTION. Santa Cruz certainly is blessed with more cinema fans per capita than any city in the world. So therefore we have more film festivals than anyplace else too. Por ejemplo...

The Earthvision Film and Video Festival One of the many films and videos being screened at Earthvision is "The Faces of Cuba"; it'll be screened on Saturday, Oct. 1, 7pm at the Rio Theater. It's an intimate montage of the soulful, diverse and fascinating faces of Cuba, offering a personal glimpse into the lives and realities of the Cuban people. It was filmed in Santiago Province, Bayamo, Trinidad, Santa Clara and Havana in 2003 and 2004. It was produced by local film maker Marigold Fine. Check out the rest of the festival at www.earthvisionfest.org

EARL JACKSON'S FREE FILMS. Earl Jackson is back from Korea and is showing ten evenings of films he's carefully selected and titled "Signs and Symptoms". It's an eclectic bunch of foreign films featuring Earl's unique comments and discussions after each screening. The films begin this Wednesday night. September 28, 7PM Baskin Auditorium 101.UCSC Campus with....
Martha (Rainer-Werner Fassbinder 1974) Leave your sunscreen at home for this heartwarming tribute to the sanctity of marriage. It stars the queen of agony, Margit Carstensten, and Peeping Tom's favorite Austrian menace, Karlheinz Boehm.
Free and open to the public.

FLIGHTPLAN. Jodie Foster retains her crown as the best actor in the business in this super-duper exciting film. The ending will make you shout "aw nuts", but go anyway, it's a well structured thriller that'll have you on the edge of your seat. You can bet it will not be shown during your next plane trip, so see it now.

CORPSE BRIDE. Tim Burton's films have so much cleverness going for them its odd when you find yourself wondering how much longer this one will last. Corpse Bride should have been either shorter or have had more of a story. This film feels stretched thin. Great voices, perfect stop motion animation, and technically better than any in its field, but still it's slow, and it lacks Burtons usual over the top brilliance.

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE MISTRESS. An excellent film, beautifully photographed and since it takes place where the Yangtze River dam will forever cover this rare scenery it's almost a documentary. It's a symbolic story of China itself facing and embracing the capitalist world, see it on the big screen in the next few days.

JUST LIKE HEAVEN. It's a San Francisco film and I still didn't see Ralph Peduto in it. Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo make a cute Hollywood couple, but not much more than cute. This film will make you miss the great and superbly clever Hollywood ghost comedies like Topper, and The Horn Blows At Midnight. You'd be bucks ahead by waiting and renting this one.

CRY WOLF. Not your usual "who's killing the kids" flick. Accents and sound levels make it hard to hear who's saying what, but the direction and acting is way above screamer film stuff. Wait and rent this one too, then you could turn up the volume or go back and play the parts you didn't get the first time.

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. Live Schreiber, the actor who directed this film, hits you over the head for the first 1/2 of this film making everything way too obvious and overplayed. Elijah Wood as the searcher was far better as Frodo and the Holocaust memories have been dealt with far more effectively in other films. Go warned.

MAH PRESENTS THE TALICH QUARTET. UCSC's Arts & Lectures is bringing the Talich Quartet here for a concert on Friday night October 14 at 8 p.m. in the UCSC recital hall. They'll be playing music by Mendelssohn, Dvorak and somebody named Jiri Gemrot. They started at the Prague University. The Museum of Art & History will present the Talich's at a lunchtime artist talk free on that same day at 12 noon. The Talich Quartet will talk and give a musical presentation. This is a fine opportunity to see and hear internationally recognized musicians up close and ask questions. Actually Giri Gemrot is a 54 year old Czech composer who works a lot with more traditional Czech composers established pieces. Call 831 429-1964 for information. For tickets to the UCSC concert call 459-2159 or go to www.artslectures.ucsc.edu

INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC CONCERT SERIES. The Music Department at UCSC is presenting another of their annual North Indian Music series. It opens this season with Rajeev Taranth playing sarod and Abhiman Kaushal on tabla. Taranth is a disciple of Ali Akbar Khan and has won awards from the Indian Government for his musical achievements. Kaushal has performed with Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussain and Lakshmi Shankar. The concert will be Saturday October 15 at 7:30 in the UCSC Recital Hall. Call 459-2159 for tickets. Or go to http://events.ucsc.edu/tickets

QUOTES. "She dresses to the left." -Patrick Murray. "My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married, and I didn't want him to." -Rita Rudner. "He kissed me as though he was trying to clear the drains." -Alida Baxter.

Deep Cover

Mail This Column to a Friend

Bruce critiques films every Friday on KZSC-FM (88.1) on The Bushwhacker Breakfast Club at 8am.