Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting victims: We owe them a memorial
The large teddy bear has a layer of dust, and the candles are burned out. The cut flowers are wilted. Some of the handwritten notes are smudged by the morning dew, others are faded by the late-summer sun or were distributed along the Uvas...
Garlic Festival Shooting EDITORIAL: Reclaim our public spaces
We have read about the horrific incidents around the country for years now. Locations like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Las Vegas Strip and Parkland have been etched into our collective memory and will be henceforth associated with senseless loss of life. Never...
Photographer’s Notebook from the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting: On the front lines
By Robert Eliason
After initial reports of a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, I was assigned by the Gilroy Dispatch to go to St Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy.
When I got there, there were small groups of people everywhere, huddling together. There were...
Letters: Development and politics
Not fake news
“Fake news” is the accusatory term used by Phill Laursen in his Oct. 5 Dispatch letter toward Dan Harney supporters. He goes on to say that his candidate, Carol Marques “proved" that Dan Harney had voted in favor of the 721-acre, 4,000-home...
Editorial: ‘Blessing Box’—compassion and controversy
There is a national phenomenon called Blessing Boxes that within the last year, fueled by social media, has exploded into hundreds of cities. The boxes take many shapes and sizes but most are two- to three-feet square, and offer canned goods for free. This...
Guest Opinion: Gilroy needs more compassion
In the 2017 Point in Time homeless census count conducted on Jan. 24 and 25, 5,448 homeless individuals—including veterans, families with children, former foster youth, domestic violence victims, seniors, people with disabilities, and the working poor were identified living in encampments, cars, RVs, abandoned...