Tag: Frank P. Barajas

Guest commentary — An Injury to One Is an Injury to All

by Community Contributor • May 14, 2026 • Comments Off

At 3 am, Wednesday, May13, 2026, in Ventura County communities, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations agents raided the homes, Gestapo style, of one former and three current VC Defensa volunteers, as well as the organization’s meeting place in downtown Oxnard.

At least twenty-armed HSI agents arrived at each place in military personnel vehicles masked with their firearms and panoplied in full body armor. The agents pounded doors, smashed windows, and battered down entrances.

With warrants, HSI agents ransacked each place and seized computers, mobile phones, and other property while the residents stood outside in the cold handcuffed. No one was arrested.

Guest contribution — A Requiem for Rudy: A Ventura County Perspective

by Community Contributor • April 3, 2026 • Comments Off

“Call Rudy. (123) 456-0911. Mary B.”

Circa 2003, I found this note in my campus mailbox at California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI). Mary B. was a family therapist, former Oxnard school board official, and an alumna, almost certainly in Chicano Studies, of San Fernando Valley State College (SFVSC) before it was renamed California State University at Northridge (CSUN).

The year before, Maria De La Luz, a colleague in the advising department at my campus, forwarded me and Lillian, a Chicana faculty camarada, a June 5, 2002, email from Dr. Rodolfo “Rudy” F. Acuña—with the subject heading California State University Channel Islands—originally sent to non-profit, private, and public Ventura County employees and managers in education, defense, healthcare, and law enforcement. Many people copied in the missive were Chicana/o Movement products of the 1960s and ’70s, a good number CSUN-Chicana/o Studies alumni like Mary B., for whom el movimiento never ended.

Guest commentary — CC Was One of Us, Fought for Us and Spoke on behalf of Us. (Oxnard Library presentation on March 29)

by Community Contributor • March 28, 2025 • Comments Off

CSU Professor Dr. Frank P. Barajas will present “Cesar Chavez’s Life and Legacy in Oxnard” from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 29 at the Oxnard Public Library, 251 So. A., St. Oxnard. Learn about the life of famed worker’s rights advocate Cesar Chavez and his connections to the Oxnard Community.

Guest commentary — 1903 JMLA Strike: A Reflection 121 Years Later

by Community Contributor • March 22, 2024 • Comments Off

Imagine your reaction if your employer slashed the wages of workers by fifty to sixty percent. Why would a business do such a thing?

This spring, 121 years-ago, Japanese and Mexican sugar beet workers experienced this injustice in 1903. Reduced to a condition of wage slavery, in response they united not only amongst themselves but also with contratistas, labor contractors, traditionally utilized by agricultural lords to divorce themselves from the costs and responsibilities that came with being employers directly.

Guest commentary — A Chicano’s Education Or How I Decided to Educate Myself on Zionism, part 1

by Community Contributor • January 26, 2024 • Comments Off

As a Chicano who lives in the historically conquered territory of the Southwest after the US attack on Mexico in 1846 and who lives in the state of California that systematically dispossessed indigenous peoples of their land and relegated them to lives in concentration camps known as reservations, I identify with the Palestinian struggle for national liberation. Hence, I refuse to abet via silence the continued catastrophe, Nakba, of ethnic cleansing against the people of Palestine perpetuated since 1948 by the United States-backed state of Israel.[i] This moral stand arose from witnessing the brazenly decontextualized propaganda of commercial network news streamed to my television since October 7, 2023. Indeed, I have yet to view corporate news functionaries addressing the fundamental causes of Zionist invasion, racial apartheid, and theft of Palestinian territories even before the mid-twentieth century that induced Hamas’ recent attack on Israelis and the taking of hostages.

Guest commentary — The Vexations of History

by Community Contributor • June 5, 2020 • Comments Off

Oxnard Police Department officers cut short the lives of Meagan Hockaday (d. 3/28/15), Alfonso Limon (d. 10/13/12), Michael Mahoney (d. 8/14/12), Robert Ramirez (d. 6/23/12), and Juan Zavala (d. 6/28/2014).

Consequently, any City of Oxnard official who empathetically condemns the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police must also memorialize their deaths. Especially Robert Ramirez, who like Floyd and Eric Garner in New York, could not breathe as the medical examiner of Ventura County determined his death a police homicide from prone restraint asphyxia—choking.

Only then can we, as a community, have an authentic conversation on police violence elsewhere.

Guest commentary: Remembrances, Race, and Role Models: The Renaming of a Middle School

by Community Contributor • January 31, 2020 • Comments Off

Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. By Frank P. Barajas / Guest contributor…

Guest commentary: Oxnard’s Civil Gang Injunctions: A Personal Inquisition

by Community Contributor • January 10, 2019 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: Professor, You’re Being Watched!?

by Community Contributor • January 12, 2017 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: History of Professors — Stories to Connect with Students, especially First Gens. Part 1

by Community Contributor • October 26, 2016 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: Murgia of the Past and Present

by Amigos805.com • July 15, 2015 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: More than student loans, they are college mortgages

by Amigos805.com • May 4, 2015 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: Debt peonage of a new sort

by Amigos805.com • January 22, 2015 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: A citizen’s view of a demonstration — More than 25

by Amigos805.com • July 23, 2014 • Comments Off

Commentary: El Concilio Family Services celebrates 25th annual gala

by Amigos805.com • May 1, 2014 • Comments Off

By Frank X. Moraga / Amigos805 El Concilio Family Services has struck it rich on its 25th silver anniversary with a wealth of deserving community leaders as it presents its “Latino Leadership Awards” gala on Saturday, May 31 at the…

El Concilio profile: Frank P. Barajas

by Amigos805.com • April 17, 2014 • Comments Off

Editor’s note: Part of a continuing series of stories profiling the award-winners of El Concilio Family Service 2014 Latino Leadership Awards. The awards gala will be held on Saturday, May 31 at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. Click here to register or to…