July 4th: An interview guest produced and hosted by Jane Tobias about Conchita ice cream shop in Watsonville, CA.

July 11th: Re-air of interview with Professor David Lloyd about academic freedom.

July 18, 2019: Stories of Healing from Sexual Assualt
An interview with Jan Goff LaFontaine, Jaqueline Mendoza, and Jessica Espinoza about LaFontaine’s Speaking Out Campaign against sexual violence. LaFontaine believes in creating social change, empowering women and girls, one photograph at a time. LaFontaine’s visual photography projects reflect a collaboration between the survivors themselves and the photographer and are focused on hope, healing, and transformation. The healing stories of Mendoza and Espinoza are featured in the campaign and they assist LaFontaine in gathering and supporting survivors on their healing journeys.

July 25, 2019: The Summer of Protests in Puerto Rico
A live phone interview on July 25, 2019 with Juan Carlos Davila, a documentary filmmaker, journalist and PhD student in Latin American and Latinx Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, shortly after the official resignation of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rosello following two weeks of street protests. Click HERE for a WashPo Op-Ed about the Puerto Rican demands by Dr. Fernando Tormos-Aponte.

June 6th and 13th: Re-air of interview with Nina Simon, outgoing director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

June 20th: Re-air of interview with Professor Safiya Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression.

June 27th: #Census2020 and the SCOTUS Decision on Citizenship Question
A joint interview with Paulina Moreno, the Project Director of the Thriving Immigrants Initiative and the 2020 Census Project at Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County (CAB) and her colleague and Joseph Watkins, Assistant Project Director for the 2020 Census Project at CAB. We discussed the SCOTUS decision to exclude the citizenship question to the US Census, the organizing efforts for Census 2020, and why it is important to be sure that #EveryoneCounts in Santa Cruz county and beyond.

May 2, 2019: Missing and Murdered and Indigenous Women
Dr. Rebecca Hernandez (Mexican-American and Mescalero Apache) is the Director of the American Indian Resource Center (AIRC) at UC Santa Cruz and Rennea Howell (member of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma) is an AIRC student intern. In this joint interview, they discuss the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women and their collective efforts to raise awareness on this serious issue.

May 9, 2019: Re-air of interview with Dr. Christine Shearer about Kivalina, Alaska.

May 16, 2019: Re-air of interview with Dr. Christine Shearer about Coal Swarm.

May 23, 2019: The Power of the Voice: A Voces Críticas special episode
**Please note this interview covers a sensitive topic and may not be suitable for all listeners.**
Since October 2018, KZSC and the Research Center for the Americas at UC Santa Cruz have been teaching journalism classes in Watsonville, California at the Digital NEST. This special episode is co-produced by three Watsonville High School students from the class: Nance Rodriguez, Dafne Martinez, and Casey Martinez. Their audio-video project included an important interview with Jaqueline Mendoza, a local sexual assault survivor. This interview took place on May 9, 2019 on the rooftop of the Digital NEST.

Escuchar, Compartir, Comunidad: The power of voice

May 30, 2019: Having SalviSoul
Karla Vasquez is a food justice advocate, a food historian and a proponent for healthy food accessibility in low-income communities. Karla is the founder of SalviSoul, a cookbook project documenting the stories of Salvadoran women, their recipes and Salvadoran food ways. We discuss how the innovative project started and linking food to politics.

April 4, 2019: Re-air of interview with Carol Garcia, Program Coordinator of the People of Color Sustainability Collective at UC Santa Cruz.

April 11, 2019: #TheArizona3
Sandra Soto is an Associate Professor or Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona (UofA). She discusses the charges brought against three UofA students for protesting a campus presentation on March 19, 2019 by armed Border Patrol agents. The students are known as #TheArizona3.

April 18, 2019: Living a Pre-American Life
Alberto Ledesma, an Assistant Dean for Diversity at U.C. Berkeley, was brought undocumented to Oakland, California at eight years old. He graduated U.C. Berkeley three times over and has held faculty positions at Cal State University, Monterey Bay, and U.C. Berkeley. In this interview, he discusses his book Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life (The Ohio State University Press, 2017).

April 25, 2019: Re-air of interview with award-winning author Reyna Grande.

Feb. 7, 2019: Indigenous Influence in Popular Music
Dr. T. Christopher Aplin is an independent scholar and ethnomusicologist currently working with the Fort Sill Apache Tribe to secure grant funding to preserve their recorded cultural heritage. Dr. Aplin discusses his book in progress about the music of the Apache prisoners of war taken with Geronimo in 1886 and about the indigenous influence on popular music.

Feb. 14, 2019: Re-air of interview with Dr. Barbara Sutton

Feb. 21, 2019: Re-air of interview with Dr. Ranita Ray

Feb. 28 & March 7, 2019: Creating Participatory and Community Engaged Museums
Nina Simon is the outgoing director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) and incoming CEO for Of By For All. In this interview, we discuss rebuilding of the MAH to reach an unprecedented level of financial stability, what she’s learned about her own leadership style, about realizing one’s own career potential, and about the Of By For All movement.

Due to a back injury, many Voces Críticas interviews in October and November are re-airs to give space/time to heal. Thanks for understanding.

Nov. 1, 2018  – Art, Community, and New Terrains
This interview is about the role of community collaborations in art projects. Part 1 of this interview is with Robin Treen, Special Projects Coordinator at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) and Donna Conwell, Associate Curator at the Montalvo Arts Center is about the New Terrains project organized by SJMA and the artist residency at Montalvo Arts Center. Part 2 of this interview is with Agustina Woodgate and Stephanie Sherman of RadioEE.net, a nomadic, online, translingual radio station that hosts 24-hr broadcast events about mobility and movement.

Nov. 8, 2018 – re-air of interview with author Tommy Orange (Pledge Drive week)

Nov. 15, 2018: Arizona politics and Community-Based Social Justice Movements
Dr. Michelle Téllez is an Assistant Professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. For 20 years, Dr. Téllez has been committed to exploring shared human experiences and advancing social justice. An interdisciplinary scholar trained in sociology, Chicana/o studies, community studies and education, her work seeks to uncover stories of identity, transnational community formation, gendered migration, resistance, and Chicana mothering. We discussed the changing face of Arizona politics, community-based social justice movements, and how to find joy in times of distress.

Nov. 22, 2018 – Breaking Ground, Forest Law and Indigenous Cosmologies
Alexandra Moore, PhD candidate in Visual Studies and the Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Arts and Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, studies contemporary global art with a focus on works by African and European artists that critically engage the geographies produced by colonialism. In this interview, we discussed her previous work as the Executive Director of Breaking Ground, a nonprofit that supports community-initiated development projects in Cameroon, and the Forest Law exhibit being shown at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery until Dec. 1, 2018.

Nov. 29, 2018– re-air of previous interview

Due to a back injury, many Voces Críticas interviews in Fall 2018 are re-airs to give space/time to heal. Thanks for understanding.

Oct 4th – re-air episode

Oct. 11, 2018: The Creation of a New Type of Museum
Elise Granata and Helen Aldana of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, also known as the MAH, talk about the active role a museum can have in a local community. Elise, the MAH’s Community Manager, discusses the re-structuring of the MAH’s mission and being the founder of the participatory, time­-based social experience called POWER HOUR. Elise, the MAH’s Intercultural Programs Coordinator and a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, talks about her various new collaboration efforts, including building connections to Watsonville.

Oct. 18 and 25, 2018 – re-air episodes

Dec. 6th: POC communities & Re-framing Sustainability
An interview with Carol Garcia, Program Coordinator of UCSC’s People of Color Sustainability Collective (PoCSC) about creating an inclusive sustainability movement and the necessity for having students of color in leadership roles. As the granddaughter of migrant workers, we also addressed the health issues facing farmworkers in the Salinas area.

Dec. 13th: Encouraging Creativity and Emerging Artists in Watsonville
An interview with Gabriel Medina, Assistant Program Director and Digital Arts and Technology Manager at Digital NEST (Nurturing Entrepreneurial Skills with Technology), as well as an Adjunct Professor in Digital Media at Cabrillo College about nurturing creativity and artistry in Watsonville, the pros/cons of exposing young people early to technology, and about his upbringing in Watsonville.

Dec. 20, 2018: Women’s Testimonios as Resistance in Argentina
An interview with Dr. Barbara Sutton, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department from the University at Albany and author of Surviving State Terror: Women’s Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in Argentina (New York University Press, 2018).

Dec. 27, 2018: Mobility Rules and Teenage Poverty in the United States
Dr. Ranita Ray, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas discusses her book, The Making of a Teenage Service Class: Poverty and Mobility in an American City (University of California Press, 2017). Ray’s book challenges common views that targeting “risk behaviors” among youth such as drugs, gangs, violence, and teen parenthood is key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Dr. Ray is an ethnographer specializing in women of color feminisms, children and youth, urban inequalities, and education and policing.

September 6, 2018: A re-airing of tribute episode to Honduran activist Berta Cáceres.

September 13, 2018: The Realities and Challenges Facing Santa Cruz Immigrant Families and Students
MariaElena De La Garza is currently the Executive Director of the Community Action Board (CAB) of Santa Cruz County and recipient of the 2018 UC Santa Cruz’s Tony Hill award for her work as a community leader. Paulina Moreno is the Project Director of the Thriving Immigrants Initiative a new south county CAB project coordinating legal services, policy advocacy, education and outreach, and essential services to the immigrant community. In this interview, they talk about the work of CAB, about what they see as challenges facing immigrant families and students in our county, and about this new Thriving Immigrants Initiative.

September 20, 2018: A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande
Award-winning author and UC Santa Cruz alumna Reyna Grande discusses her new memoir A Dream Called Home (2018). A Dream Called Home is her follow-up memoir to The Distance Between Us. This new memoir tells the story of her pursuit to become the first in her family to earn a college degree at UC Santa Cruz and to find her place in her new adoptive country.

September 27, 2018: Indigenous Struggles Against Extractive Capitalism
An interview with Dr. Macarena Gómez-Barris, Chair of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute about her research on the harm of extractivism on Indigenous territories in the Americas. She writes and teaches on social and cultural theory, decolonial thought, racial and extractive capitalism, social movements, queer and submerged perspectives, critical Indigenous studies, experimental film, and social / environmental transformation. She is the author of books about state violence in Chile, about indigenous struggles against extractive capitalism and more recently, about art and the pink tide in Latin America. We discussed various aspects of her research, specifically the areas focused on indigenous struggles against extractive capital.

August 2nd: The Challenges Facing LGBTQ Homeless Youth
Dr. Cindy Cruz of UC Santa Cruz’s Education Department discusses her research focused on LGBTQ street youth narratives and experiences, including homeless queer and trans-youth in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Cruz addresses how she has come to understand the survival strategies of LGBTQ homeless youth, the role of gentrification in exacerbating precarious conditions, and how the state of California needs to better address this crisis.

August 9th: No show this week.

August 16th: Spirituality and Politics
An interview with Dr. Liz Philipose about spirituality and politics. Dr. Philipose studies and teaches for transformation as a former professor of women’s studies and global politics. In this interview, Dr. Philipose discusses how the social world creates separation between us and about our internal capacity to heal and transform our everyday lives.

August 23rd: The Manafort Conviction, the Cohen Plea, and corruption in U.S. politics
Dr. Molly Talcott is an Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, Associate Vice President of the California Faculty Association (the largest higher education faculty union in the US), and the co-founder of LUCI (the Los Angeles Union Cooperative Initiative). In this conversational interview with Dr. Talcott, we discuss the most explosive news of the week, which includes the Paul Manafort conviction, the guilty plea of Michael Cohen, and the stunning refusal of the GOP to hold 45 accountable.

August 30th: Stories about Native life in urban spaces, An Interview with author Tommy Orange
In this interview with author Tommy Orange (enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma), Orange discusses his highly acclaimed debut novel There There. Orange talks about how he conceptualized his novel, his views on the limited representation of Native life in literature, and why engaging with historical memory in his book was necessary for telling a contemporary story about urban Native life.