Editor, Daily Nexus

The Nexus missed out on a fantastic opportunity to inform returning and, particularly shamefully, new UCSB students about something important going on in their community. I’m talking about the other half of the story of the Cedarwood evictions: The struggle against them.

Upon receipt of the eviction notices, residents began organizing to fight to remain. They were soon joined by students, especially those from Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval’s ok Chicano studies class, members of El Congreso and community organizations such as People United for Economic Justice Building Leadership Through Organizing. Organizers have held three large-scale marches, nightly vigils and countless fundraisers to pay for legal defense. The movement created through this unique coming together created a community unlike any I have ever experienced in Isla Vista.

It is disgraceful that, despite the front-page coverage of the eviction (“Property Owner Attempts to Recover Local Rentals,” Daily Nexus, Sept. 29, 2006), the author neglected to mention this phenomenon. I realize that more in-depth coverage of some aspects of the counter-eviction movement was provided earlier (“I.V. Families Seek Owner, Resolution,” Daily Nexus, Sept. 21, 2006), but since it was published before fall classes began, it obviously didn’t get the exposure it might have if it had been published on Friday.

The Nexus, as the official voice of the UCSB community, has an obligation to provide us with accurate, thorough coverage of that community, especially when we are putting our education, which teaches us to be responsible for our own lives, into action. Such coverage would allow the Nexus to become, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, not only a mirror with which to reflect the positive aspects of our reality, but also a hammer with which to shape it. While apathy in the UCSB community is not solely the result of the Nexus’s minimal coverage of our movements, the lack of coverage of these movements certainly does not help to advance them.

BENJAMIN WOOD