Idalía Lopez, a permitted street vendor impacted by a 90-day vending ban, sits next to her booth on 24th Street in the Mission District during the 31st annual Cesar Chavez Parade and Festival in San Francisco on April 13.

Melissa and her daughter Angie stand in their apartment complex in San Bernardino. Angie helps lead Melissa, who has been blind since age 30. “It’s been a struggle. But I’ve overcome a lot of challenges and obstacles in my life to really just rejoice about where I’m at today in my life and my blindness,” said Melissa.  

Jesus Bizarro, 60, looks out his living room window in Richmond on March 31. Bizarro has exhausted his savings and plans on rejoining the workforce for four more years while two of his children finish college and his youngest decides between higher education or work. Without the ability to receive social security benefits, aging immigrants have to contend with outsized uncertainty as they approach retirement age.

A trucking company warehouse is seen in flooded farmland south of Corcoran on March 22, 2023, and again, a year later on April 4, after the waters had receded. The photographer returned to the same spot to capture the dramatic difference that severe weather, alternating between drought and flooding, can have on the landscape.

Isaac, 7, comforts his mom, Arcelia Hernandez-Santiago, at their dining table in Half Moon Bay, March 26. Arcelia and her husband, Joel-Angel Hernandez, were present during a mass shooting at a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay in January 2023. The couple still work at the farm, and have since continued to heal from the tragic event. Through a local art program, the family has taken up painting and drawing which has helped them move forward with their lives. Unzeta writes ”It turns out that Arcelia and Jose, who have never painted before, are amazing artists, too. [Through this work] I learned that grief is a very human feeling, and though our sources of grief may differ, our processing can be innately connected.”

"[Through this work] I learned that grief is a very human feeling, and though our sources of grief may differ, our processing can be innately connected.” — Pablo Unzueta

See more of Pablo Unzueta’s photojournalism for El Tecolote here and keep an eye out for the forthcoming multi-part series, “The Memory of Our Skin.”

Elisa Iniguez, 69, stands outside La Puente Recreation Center after voting in La Puente on March 4.

The parking lot at BART’s Antioch station is full by 7 a.m. on March 11. On average, Contra Costa county commuters see more “extreme commutes” – those lasting longer than 60 minutes – to and from their weekly destinations than people who live in other counties in the Bay Area like Alameda, San Francisco and San Mateo.

Students from the UC Berkeley Divest Coalition pitched tents as part of a sit-in of the Sproul Hall steps on April 22, to protest Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza and demand the university end financial connections to companies with ties to Israel.

Shoes and candles are seen outside of a Berkeley Unified School District meeting at Berkeley High School, on March 6, a week after the school district received a federal complaint alleging 'severe and persistent' antisemitism across schools. Pro-Palestinian community members expressed concerns that the complaints aimed to restrict teachers’ abilities to openly teach about the conflict in Gaza. A small group of Jewish parents and children opposing the ethnic studies curriculum also spoke in front of the board. 

Students learning to weld at the Madera South High School 20-acre farm on April 2, 2024. Welding is one of thousands of career-focused courses in California high schools.