Debra Ann (Skillman) Bryant was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana on November 11, 1954. She passed away peacefully on September 23, 2025 at the age of 70.

Deborah is survived by her son Tito Bryant, her grandson Larry Cook, her brother L.J. Skillman (Debbie Skillman), Wesley Skillman, her sister Mary Purify-Skillman, Pam Mosby and June Skillman. She had many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Deborah grew up in Eureka and graduated from Eureka High School in 1973. She had so many friends. She loved to cook and eat with all her friends and family, especially her nephews James Spears, T.C Latimere (Audra Latimere) and Maurice Purify.

Debra is preceded in death by her beloved daughter Tina Wells, her mother, Mary Ann Kennerson, her father, Lloyd Skillman, and her brother Sam Skillman.

There will be a celebration of life on November 2, 2025 at the Eureka Women’s Club, 1531 J St., Eureka, from 2 to 4 p.m.

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PREVIOUSLY

• Tired of Hearing Only a Few Viewpoints, Arcata is Considering Contracting With Survey Company

Barely half of Arcata residents and workers think the city is headed in the right direction, according to a recent survey done by the city through the poll service FlashVote. 

302 people answered the survey, the first done since Arcata contracted with FlashVote this year. It was open to anyone who lives or works in Arcata for 48 hours last week.

51% of respondents said they thought Arcata was “generally headed in the right direction;” another 30% said they weren’t sure, and 18% said that the city was headed down the wrong track.

The outlook brightens a tad if excluding non-residents: 55% of the 218 that answered thought things were going well. 

Most respondents weren’t entirely negative. Over 80% said that “access to parks and recreational activities” and “community events, arts and culture” were Arcata’s strong points — but a scant 4% thought that the cost and availability of housing was a strength. 

Over 70% thought Arcata should focus on repairing infrastructure like pipes and roads. Prioritizing job growth and economic development was close behind. Only 15% said Arcata needed to do a better job maintaining its parks.

It’d take forever to compress and summarize all of the data into a readable article, but there are some takeaways from an anonymous final free-write section about community needs and suggestions worth sharing. 

A lot of people are concerned about parking and offer some suggestions to add more around the city (someone suggests building a parking garage near the plaza). 

Many more worry about affordable housing and how the city treats its homeless (evenly split between providing more services and cracking down). A couple called out hyperspecific community needs like opening the bathroom in Redwood Park, adding more speed humps around town, and making the plaza feel more safe. 

There’s a few, um, interesting ideas in there too. One respondent implores the city to “Bring back the Alibi!” Another wants the city to stop including links in emails; someone else suggests building an “adult playground for seniors;” there’s the requisite cohort of conspiracy theorists.

But a few took the opportunity to say thanks.

“I love Arcata, you all are doing a good job. Keep the town clean, deal with people not following the laws, deal with blight. Thank you.”

UPDATE:

• Centro del Pueblo Says Its Annual Día de los Muertos Event is Going Forward as Usual, and It’s Going to be a Jam-Packed Celebration

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Original post:

Since 2019, local volunteers with the Somos Medicina Collective have organized the Día de Muertos Festival of Altars — a free, family-friendly celebration featuring food, music, dance, face painting, and ofrendas honoring ancestors and loved ones, in keeping with traditions from across Latin America.

The 2025 edition of the event had been advertised for this coming Sunday, Nov. 2, but now organizers have announced that it’s not happening, citing fears over the targeting of their community. 

From their post announcing the event’s cancelation:

With a heavy heart, we have decided to cancel our Day of the Dead Festival of Altars celebration this year. 

In short, we feel that we cannot bring our people together safely at this time, when we are being targeted and kidnapped. 

We thank you for understanding and wish you a beautiful celebration con sus muertitos at your altares in your homes. 

Cenca Tlazokamatli / Mil Gracias 
Somos Medicina Collective

The Outpost has reached out to organizers in the hopes of learning more about what led them to this decision. We will update this post if and when we hear back. 

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Michelle Bushnell, Humboldt County’s Second District supervisor and the current chair of the Board of Supervisors, believes that her due process rights were violated during a recent county investigation into alleged misconduct on her part, and she has retained an outside attorney to fight her corner.

Reached by phone this morning, Bushnell said she doesn’t think county employees have done anything wrong; rather, she believes that the county’s established process for investigating misconduct allegations is flawed. 

“When you have a complaint filed [against you] and you don’t agree with one of the findings, there’s no process to say, ‘That’s not what happened,’” she said.

Bushnell declined to get into the details of the complaint itself, except to acknowledge that she “got upset and emotional” while on the job recently. She has hired Harland Law Firm attorney Allison Jackson — a frequent antagonist to Humboldt County’s government — to challenge the county’s process for investigating alleged violations of the Board of Supervisors Code of Conduct and Ethics.

Bushnell herself played a role in modifying that document in 2022 and 2023, following an earlier allegation against her. (She later was found to have violated the board’s code by mistreating a staff member during a Planning Department meeting.) The Board of Supervisors approved amendments to the code of conduct the following August. 

But now Bushnell and her attorney say the investigation process prescribed by the code is fundamentally unfair: On Oct. 2, Jackson had a letter hand-delivered to County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes, Interim County Counsel Scott Miles and Human Resources Director Zachary O’Hanen. The letter says, “the Boards [sic] articulated process does not contain adequate due process protections for any subject of any investigations.”

Specifically, Jackson objects to the fact that Bushnell was given only an executive summary on the outcome of the investigation into her behavior. She’s entitled to read a copy of the full report (with employee witness names and/or identifying information redacted, if necessary) so she can “evaluate the quality and veracity of witness statements,” according to Jackson.

The letter also quotes the following portion of the Board of Supervisors Code of Conduct and Ethics:

If county officials or staff become aware of any improper behavior by a Board member, they are encouraged to formally report such behavior in writing to the County Administrative Officer and Director of Human Resources. Any such report or complaint will be reviewed by a committee consisting of the County Administrative Officer, Director of Human Resources, and County Counsel (Committee). … 

This presents another problem, Jackson argues in a follow-up letter sent on Oct. 20: The county counsel shouldn’t be part of any review committee because that gives him two incompatible roles to fill, Jackson’s letter says. He’s charged with being both an advocate for his client (Bushnell, in this case) and an objective arbiter of justice. 

The letter argues that Bushnell not only has a right to hear the charges against her but also deserves “an opportunity to be heard before a decision is made by an impartial decision-maker as mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Section 7 of the California Constitution.”

To meet those constitutional due process thresholds, Jackson’s second letter says, Bushnell must be given a chance to present her side of the story, “which includes the right to call and cross-examine witnesses, present evidence, and make arguments.”

The county has now hired its own outside counsel to handle this matter: Savana M. Jefferson with Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, a big California firm that handles much of the county’s business. (Jackson’s second letter was sent to Jefferson in Sacramento.)

Bushnell reiterated during our conversation that she doesn’t believe any employees did anything wrong — not CAO Hayes nor Interim County Counsel Miles nor HR Director O’Hanen. Nor does she want to cost the county extra money. 

“It’s just about the process working better,” she said, adding that the procedures aren’t just unfair to her. “I’ve seen it with department heads [and] anyone with a complaint filed against them. … If whatever comes back to you [in a report], if you feel it isn’t accurate, there’s no way to work through that.”

Bushnell said she expects a redacted version of the employee complaint to come before the board soon, possibly for discussion at next week’s meeting. When it becomes public, she will respond to the allegations, she said. But until then she’d rather not discuss it.

“This is not comfortable for me,” she said. “And then it gets played out in the media. … That’s not comfortable either.”

The Outpost has requested a copy of the complaint and all related documents but has not yet heard back. When we asked for a comment on the situation, Public Information Specialist Cati Gallardo gave us essentially the same comment she provided to blogger John Chiv over the weekend: 

“Concerning this situation, the county has followed the processes as outlined in the Code of Conduct adopted by the Board of Supervisors. Given this is a legal matter, and in order to respect the integrity of that process, the county will not discuss this topic further with the press at this time.”

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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As in-person voting begins in California’s special election on redistricting, Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly asserted that the Trump administration could send immigration agents to polling places in an attempt to intimidate voters and depress turnout.

The governor’s warnings, while unspecific, speak to what community leaders call real, palpable fears within some Latino communities that immigration agents could show up on Election Day. And ever since the Supreme Court greenlit using racial profiling in immigration stops, even U.S. citizens are scared they could be detained simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“You’re going to likely see members of our military in and around polling booths and voting places all across this country,” Newsom warned last week during a virtual event with former President Barack Obama in support of Proposition 50. “I would say the same about ICE and Border Patrol, and I say that soberly.”

Newsom has not provided any evidence to suggest that the Department of Homeland Security will deploy immigration agents to polling sites. But he pointed to the Los Angeles campaign launch event for Prop. 50, his plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats, where federal immigration agents blocked supporters from entering the area and detained a nearby strawberry vendor.

A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in a statement that the agency “is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” but that if agents are tracking “a dangerous criminal alien” who goes near a voting site they could be arrested there. A spokesperson for Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to emailed questions.

The governor argues that the Trump administration’s indiscriminate immigration raids, military and National Guard deployments are intended to suppress Democratic voters and keep Republicans in control of Congress for the duration of Trump’s presidency.

“We know the intention of this administration — to rig next year’s midterms,” Newsom told reporters recently. “It’s absolutely predictable. It’s a script that’s been written for centuries. It’s the authoritarian playbook.”

The Trump administration’s Justice Department announced on Friday that it will deploy personnel to monitor polling sites in five counties: Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside on Election Day. Fresno, Kern and Riverside counties are majority Latino.

The poll monitors will “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law,” according to the department. The administration has not said whether the agents will be stationed at polling sites in addition to county election offices where ballots are counted.

Democrats denounced the plan.

“Deploying federal forces to ‘monitor’ elections is nothing more than an intimidation tactic meant to suppress the vote,” said Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party. “What Republicans are really afraid of is record voter participation and a clear verdict from the people of California in support of Prop 50.”

‘Alarming’ number of Latinos fear ICE at polls

The vast majority of Californians vote by mail, especially since the state adopted universal mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Just over 80% of votes cast in the 2024 presidential election were mail-in ballots.

But casting a ballot in-person on Election Day is a point of pride for many American immigrants, especially Latinos, said Yvette Martinez, executive director of the California Democratic Party.

“It’s a cultural thing,” said Martinez. “People want to show up and say, ‘I’m patriotic, here’s my civic duty. I’m here to vote, I’m here to make my voice heard. And when you quell that, it’s dangerous. And it’s actually sad.”

In a September survey of 1,200 registered Latino voters conducted by the Latino Community Foundation, a nonprofit that funds Latino advocacy, 53% said they planned to vote in person. Of those, more than half said they would vote on Election Day.

The same survey also found that two-thirds of the Latino voters surveyed said they were at least somewhat worried that ICE or Border Patrol agents could show up at polling places. The poll had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

“These are citizens of this country. And if they are concerned about immigration or any type of federal presence at in-person voting sites, that is alarming,” said Christian Arana, who leads policy strategy for the foundation.

“If people want to vote in person, it is their fundamental right,” Arana said. “I never want us to buy into the fear that you can’t participate in democracy because immigration enforcement may show up.”

Federal immigration authorities face off against protesters during an ICE raid at Ambiance Apparel in Downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. Photo by J.W. Hendricks for CalMatters

So far in the race for Prop. 50, only 9% of registered Latino voters have returned their ballots, according to the most recent data available from Political Data Inc., compared to 19% of white voters and 13% of Black voters. California pollster Ben Tulchin, who recently surveyed Latino voters about Prop. 50, said those numbers “are not unusual” since Latino voters tend to lag other ethnic and racial groups in casting ballots.

Sen. Anna Caballero, Democrat of Merced, said U.S. citizens told her they’re afraid to go outside, especially when there have been reports of ICE sightings in the region. Many of her constituents come from mixed-status families in which some family members are citizens and others aren’t. She blames the Trump administration for terrifying those families so much that they don’t want to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary.

“This idea that all you have to do is pull out your driver’s license, or pull out some kind of documentation, that’s a fantasy,” said Caballero. “U.S. citizens have been detained and taken into custody.”

A recent investigation by ProPublica found that at least 170 U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained by ICE since the second Trump administration took office, prompting intense criticism from opponents. Top Democrats on the House and Senate government oversight committees, Rep. Robert Garcia of California and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, have opened an investigation.

Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, another Merced Democrat and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said ever since the Supreme Court issued its racial profiling ruling earlier this summer, she keeps her passport in her bag at all times.

“Just because you may look like an immigrant — which I don’t even know what that really means — you know, I could also be targeted,” Soria said.

‘My voice will be heard’

Opponents of Newsom’s redistricting plan say the governor’s warnings about Election Day intimidation and interference from federal agents are exaggerated.

“People see it for what it is. It’s politics, it’s headline-grabbing,” said Hector Barajas, a spokesperson for the No on 50 campaign.

Barajas denounced Democrats for what he said was intentional disenfranchisement of nonwhite voters, since white college-educated voters are historically far more likely to turn out during off-year elections.

“This is what happens with special elections, is people don’t turn out to vote, especially Hispanics, which is a sad tragedy in itself,” Barajas said.

Martinez said Democratic Party volunteers are for the first time urging voters to return their ballots early via mail or drop-off when they go door to door and handing out pamphlets with instructions for how to report any suspicious activity near polling sites.

The party has also trained hundreds of volunteers as poll watchers who will monitor polling sites for signs of intimidation or federal interference starting the weekend before Election Day.

Arana, with the Latino Community Foundation, said he’s choosing to vote in person as an act of defiance.

“I’m seeing this as a form of a declaration that I am a Latino man in the state,” he said. “My voice will be heard on this issue, and no one is ever gonna take that right away from me.”

UPDATE, 8:30 a.m.: The Arcata Police Department says the missing juvenile has been found safe. In keeping with the Outpost’s policy on missing kids, the previous post and identifying details have been deleted.

“Why?” is the perennial question. From philosophers to theologians to conversations between children and their parents, and now to the next generation of athletes, that deeply human question is being asked.

Recently, Nike switched up their marketing from “Just Do It” to “Why Do It.” Advertisers clearly felt that there was a vibe shift in the culture. They see a realignment from risk to hesitancy among young consumers. 

In Nike’s own words about their latest ad campaign: “…the film stands as a challenge to the hesitant generation: Greatness isn’t handed out, it’s chosen—and sometimes the most important choice is to simply begin.”1

Nike’s not the only one identifying caution sociologically. From the impact of COVID to NYU professor Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, there seems to be an uptick in safetyism. This kind of ethos creates the questions the commercial asks: What if we just do it? Is it worth the risk of failure?

The ad, voiced by Tyler, the Creator, ends asking: “What if you don’t”?

I don’t mean to indict the up-and-coming generation. Every generation has its strengths and weaknesses. After all, I remember Bud Dry’s “Why Ask Why” campaign in the 1990s. That implied a dismissive who-cares-about-why approach—just drink the beer. But not only is that beer now discontinued, purpose matters.

Investors should be asking the why question too. 

Athletic greatness (or skill) doesn’t come from sitting on the sidelines. Wealth-building doesn’t either. Of course, there is risk. But it cuts both ways.

There is a cost to not investing. Since 1950, a $100 held in cash is worth less than $10, while that same single Benjamin Franklin would be worth $2,899 today if it had been invested in the stock market via the S&P 500.

Many times people come to me asking the “what” questions first.

“What should I invest in?”

Or, even worse, they call announcing what they’ve heard they should invest in. 

And they want me to give a quick yes/no answer.

A good financial advisor can’t answer that question without uncovering the why behind it.

• Is the money for your future retirement?
• Is the money for a future down payment on a house?
• Are you trying to earn income off it to pay bills?
• Will you need the money in 1 year or 20 years?
• Is this for your children’s school or your children’s inheritance?
• Why are you investing now and what are your goals? 

“I want to make money” isn’t a good enough answer.

Why precedes what in financial advice. You can’t know the what or how to get there without answering the why question first.

Why comes first because if you focus on the what first, and your investment starts to sink, you may stop investing or switch your investments at the worst possible time.

Consider 2025 year-to-date as an example. In order to be up 15% in the S&P 500, you had to endure a -19% drawdown along the way.

If you are only focused on the performance of what you are invested in, you may not make it.

If you zoom out even further, since 1990, investors have had to endure an average of -14% intra-year declines to experience a 10.5% annual return.

It’s been said, “He who has a why can deal with any what or how.” True in life. True in investing. Though not easy in either.

Why are you choosing to invest or not?

What if you don’t? 

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Brandon Stockman has been a Wealth Advisor licensed with the Series 7 and 66 since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. He has the privilege of helping manage accounts throughout the United States and works in the Fortuna office of Johnson Wealth Management. You can sign up for his weekly newsletter on investing and financial education or subscribe to his YouTube channel. Securities and advisory services offered through Prospera Financial Services, Inc. | Member FINRA, SIPC. This should not be considered tax, legal, or investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.