The Independent’s 10-Year Celebrations Continue; La Quinta Starbucks Workers Strike for a Day–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Dec. 22, 2022

Indy Digest: Dec. 22, 2022

I just sent our January 2023 print edition to press, and there’s a little graphic on the cover, noting that we’re celebrating 10 years of existence here at the Independent—something regular Digest readers know already.

If you’re unfamiliar: It’s true. We have sort of a rolling series of milestones here. The first one came last October, when we hit the 10-year anniversary of our first story posted at CVIndependent.com. This month, we’re celebrating the “official” launch of the Independent online. In April, we’ll mark 10 years since our first print edition. And in October of this year, it’ll be 10 years since we started our monthly print schedule.

Part of me has a hard time believing it’s all true. A decade is a long time for any business to survive—let alone a news publication launched after the Great Recession. There were times, especially in the early days of our existence, when I didn’t think the Independent would survive a couple of years, much less 10.

But when I look back at everything that’s happened since the Independent was born … wow, it feels like we’ve been through several decades’ worth of insanity during that 10-year period.

Marriage equality came … and is, in some states, in jeopardy again. There was the Trump presidency, and the corresponding insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Roe vs. Wade was thrown out. Perhaps most significantly, there was—OK, is—the pandemic. In March, April and May of 2020, I was again afraid the Independent wouldn’t make it.

But we did (thanks in large part to you, our readers), and as 2023 arrives, the Independent is starting our second decade of existence—and we have big goals.

As you may have noticed, the local daily is dying. For the second time in recent years, local management is begging for donations and nonprofit support to bring back an employee position that was eliminated by higher-ups at Gannett, the multibillion dollar company that owns The Desert Sun. To be frank, the only logical path toward The Desert Sun’s survival involves Gannett selling the newspaper to independent ownership that’s dedicated to making sure it survives—but at the rate things are going, there won’t be much of The Desert Sun left in a few years.

That means local independent news sources like the Independent need to step up and do as much as we can to fill the gap. To that end, we’re looking into converting the Independent into a nonprofit news organization, structured so the Independent has more support and access to a broader range of funding sources—making it so our future is secure, and positioning us to grow.

We’ll keep you posted, of course, as this effort unfolds. In the meantime, thank you for your support.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The final Jan. 6 committee report just dropped as we were about to hit send. Here’s a CNN link that will be updated as details emerge.

• The unionized employees of the Starbucks at 79845 Highway 111, in La Quinta, are on a one-day strike. From a news release: “On Thursday, Dec. 22, Starbucks workers at the Jefferson and Hwy 111 store in La Quinta are striking over unfair labor practices, including unilateral changes to hours and discriminatorily denying benefit improvements that it has implemented at stores that have not yet formed a union. The workers won their union election on June 21, 2022. ‘Starbucks continues to push forward dishonest information about our union,’ said Ande Hernandez, barista at the La Quinta store. ‘Striking gives the power back to the workers and says we don’t have to accept hostile working environments or faulty equipment. We demand change!’ Starbucks workers have held more than 331 different strikes, most recently a national three day #DoubleDownsStrike at 100 stores over Starbucks unfair labor practice of closing union stores. The National Labor Relations Board has now issued over 45 official complaints encompassing over 900 alleged violations of federal labor law, making Starbucks one of the worst violators of federal labor law in modern U.S. history.” Read our story about the start of that Starbucks’ unionization effort here.

• COVID is ravaging China. Reuters reports (via NBC News): “A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a ‘tragic battle’ with COVID-19 as it expects half of the city’s 25 million people will get infected by the end of next week, while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked. After widespread protests against strict mitigation measures, China this month began dismantling its ‘zero-COVID’ regime, which had taken a great financial and psychological toll on its 1.4 billion people.”

• China’s COVID surge should be of concern to, well, everyone. Bloomberg explains why: “The tsunami of COVID-19 that’s taking hold across China is spurring concern that a dangerous new virus variant could emerge for the first time in more than a year, just as genetic sequencing to catch such a threat is dwindling. The situation in China is unique because of the path it’s followed throughout the pandemic. While almost every other part of the world has battled infections and embraced vaccinations with potent mRNA shots to varying degrees, China largely sidestepped both. The result is a population with low levels of immunity facing a wave of disease caused by the most contagious strain of the virus yet to circulate. … ‘There will certainly be more omicron subvariants developing in China in the coming days, weeks and months, but what the world must anticipate in order to recognize it early and take rapid action is a completely new variant of concern,’ said Daniel Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America and professor at Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine. ‘It could be more contagious, more deadly, or evade drugs, vaccines and detection from existing diagnostics.’”

• Related and sort of weird: Could radar be used to detect people infected with COVID-19? Maybe! Here’s a link to a paper regarding the possibility, and here’s a link to a SciShow video. Cool?

• If you’ve purchased a weighted blanket from Target in recent years, be sure to click this link from CBS News. Some details: “Target is recalling about 204,000 weighted blankets sold nationwide after the suffocation deaths of two girls in April, the retailer and U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on Thursday. A 4-year-old and 6-year-old reportedly became entrapped in the cover of the Pillowfort blanket and died due to asphyxia at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, according to a statement posted by the CPSC. Target has received four reports of children getting trapped after unzipping and entering the blanket, including the two fatalities, it stated. People should stop using the blankets immediately and contact Target for a refund. Made in China, the blankets were sold exclusively at Target stores and online from December 2018 through September 2022 for $40.”

• And finally … how big of a deal is the Jan. 6 committee’s criminal referrals in terms of a possible Trump presidential comeback? A law professor, writing for The Conversation, says they’re not that big of a deal at all: “Would an indictment—or even a felony conviction—prevent a presidential candidate from running or serving in office? The short answer is no. Here’s why: The U.S. Constitution specifies in clear recently-ish, language the qualifications required to hold the office of the presidency. In Section 1, Clause 5 of Article II, it states: ‘No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.’ These three requirements—natural-born citizenship, age and residency – are the only specifications set forth in the United States’ founding document. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has made clear that constitutionally prescribed qualifications to hold federal office may not be altered or supplemented by either the U.S. Congress or any of the states.”

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