In Gold Rush-era Sacramento, turbulent floodwaters chased early citizens to a temporary island--a prominent hill near the Sacramento and American Rivers that came to be known as Poverty Ridge. In the ensuing years, as small farms developed across the southeastern corner of the original city grid, a two-room wooden schoolhouse was erected to serve the educational needs of surrounding families and was named in honor of California's 11th governor, Newton Booth. The surrounding neighborhood came to share the school's name. Since the 1850s, Poverty Ridge and Newton Booth have been home to Gold Rush pioneers, gifted vintners and brewers, devout nuns and nurses, celebrated authors, media giants, and larger-than-life politicians, all with visions of a better life--a California life.
As Sacramento's neighborhoods grew eastward from Fifteenth Street to Thirty-first Street (later Alhambra Boulevard), the area evolved into a complex mix of housing and businesses known as Midtown. Sutter's Fort was still popular, and community groups like the Native Sons of the Golden West restored its last remnants for future generations. In 1927, the city built Memorial Auditorium, a tribute to fallen soldiers, as a large central venue that continues to serve as an important setting for graduations, concerts, and conventions. The J and K Street business corridors expanded from downtown, and identifiable neighborhoods such as Poverty Ridge, Boulevard Park, and New Era Park developed as people settled and established businesses in these growing areas. Today's Midtown supports numerous Victorian mansions and Craftsman bungalows, as well as the legacies of such employers as the California Almond Growers' Exchange, California Packing Corporation, Buffalo Brewery, Sutter Hospital, and the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
Though once scheduled for demolition, Midtown Sacramento battled back to become the city's geographic and cultural center--a beacon for offbeat artists, progressive thinkers and independent spirits. This eclectic neighborhood made history through social progress and artistic innovation. Through the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, the irreverent power of punk rock in the 1970s and '80s and the social and political consciousness of Generation X in the 1990s and beyond, Midtown always led the way. Now Sacramento historian and Midtown resident William Burg tells the story of the diverse generations of Sacramentans who shaped this trailblazing neighborhood.
Touted as progress, postwar redevelopment spawned a new age in Sacramento, California. As city planners designated areas of urban blight and directed bulldozers to make way for commercial districts and pedestrian malls, the churches, jazz clubs and family homes of the West End and Japantown were upended and residents scattered. Displaced families and businesses reestablished themselves and redefined their communities around new cultural centers. Historian William Burg weaves oral histories with previously unpublished photographs to chronicle the resurgence of Sacramento's art, music and activism in the wake of redevelopment. Celebrate the individuals and organizations that defined an era: the beatniks and Black Panthers of Oak Park, Southside Park's "League of Nations," George Raya of Lavender Heights and the Royal Chicano Air Force in Alkali Flat.
"Profound, funny ... wild and moving ... heartbreaking accounts of a lonely black childhood.... Brown sees racial oppression in national and global context; every political word she writes pounds home a lesson about commerce, money, racism, communism, you name it ... A glowing achievement.” —Los Angeles Times Elaine Brown assumed her role as the first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party with these words: “I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, Comrade?” It was August 1974. From a small Oakland-based cell, the Panthers had grown to become a revolutionary national organization, mobilizing black communities and white supporters across the country—but relentlessly targeted by the police and the FBI, and increasingly riven by violence and strife within. How Brown came to a position of power over this paramilitary, male-dominated organization, and what she did with that power, is a riveting, unsparing account of self-discovery. Brown’s story begins with growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Philadelphia and attending a predominantly white school, where she first sensed what it meant to be black, female, and poor in America. She describes her political awakening during the bohemian years of her adolescence, and her time as a foot soldier for the Panthers, who seemed to hold the promise of redemption. And she tells of her ascent into the upper echelons of Panther leadership: her tumultuous relationship with the charismatic Huey Newton, who would become her lover and her nemesis; her experience with the male power rituals that would sow the seeds of the party's demise; and the scars that she both suffered and inflicted in that era’s paradigm-shifting clashes of sex and power. Stunning, lyrical, and acute, this is the indelible testimony of a black woman’s battle to define herself.
The second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century witnessed important changes in ecology, climate and human behaviour that favoured the development of urban pests. Most alarmingly, urban planners now face the dramatic expansion of urban sprawl, in which city suburbs are growing into the natural habitats of ticks, rodents and other pests. Also, many city managers now erroneously assume that pest-borne diseases are relics of the past. All these changes make timely a new analysis of the direct and indirect effects of present-day urban pests on health. Such an analysis should lead to the development of strategies to manage them and reduce the risk of exposure. To this end, WHO invited international experts in various fields - pests, pest-related diseases and pest management - to provide evidence on which to base policies. These experts identified the public health risk posed by various pests and appropriate measures to prevent and control them. This book presents their conclusions and formulates policy options for all levels of decision-making to manage pests and pest-related diseases in the future. [Ed.]
