Introduction to the Special Edition

You have in your hands the first issue of The Alarm! Newspaper, a Santa Cruz local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace. This issue is being released in response to the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside of Washington D.C. and in response to the outpourings of public sentiment and the disturbing racism, jingoism, warmongering and blind patriotism that we have witnessed both through the “mainstream media” and direct observation in Santa Cruz and environs.

We are pleased to be sharing this space with the Cement Boat, whose trenchant commentary will hopefully provide you with an effective foil for our occasional lapses into newspeak. Thanks, especially, to Hiya for sharing her living room with this issue’s editor.

This issue will not be representative of The Alarm! as we intend it to be once it goes into full production sometime next year. For one, we do not have the resources at our disposal which we hope to have by then. The publication of this issue will likely be rough and somewhat inconsistent because of this. Also, the nature of the situation will force the focus of this issue to diverge from that of The Alarm! of the future: what you will find will primarily be editorials, opinion editorials and scant local news relating to the September 11th attack and its fallout. In contrast, the eventual focus of The Alarm! will consist more of local news reporting and investigative journalism, with occasional rigorous analyses of current events and their historical precedents and a good deal less editorializing. This change in focus has been brought about largely because of the distance of the event from us, as well as the unreliability of what sparse information we have received. Lastly, you will find very few articles in the Spanish language. We eventually hope to have at least one third of our content in Spanish.

If you like what you read here and are interested in learning more about us, please visit our main informational page, where you will find our vision statement, some requests for help, a survey which will help us better serve the Santa Cruz community, and our contact information.

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