Domestic Violence in Watsonville is Representative of Many Communities Around the World

We acknowledge that the men have been asked to take action by stepping up, taking a stand and doing something to prevent this violence from continuing to happen to our girls and women. In fact, boys and men benefit from the call to end domestic violence, seeing as we are not immune and have been hurt by this very system of domination & control ourselves.

We need to deal with the root causes of domestic violence, which tie back to poverty, racism, gender, and the lack of financial independence for most girls and women, to name a few. Calling the police, or references to a shelter, are only band-aid solutions unless we are innovative in how to allocate funding towards prevention strategies for domestic violence. We face many issues in our poor, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPoC), LGBTIQ+, migrant/ first-generation communities. Our intention is never to exclude; we want to be honest in the fact that we humbly don’t know everything, yet we are open to learning the ways in which our community needs us to show up.

We have all dealt with violence and its ramifications to some extent; verbal, emotional, psychological, physical and sexual harm have crippled and torn apart our people for over 500+ years since the inception of colonization. We hope to find creative solutions to end violence in all forms in order to protect the most vulnerable in our neighborhoods / barrios.


MILPA Collective is a community based collective located in Salinas, CA that is “Cultivating Change-Makers for The Next Seven Generations” by creating opportunities for cultural healing, intergenerational leadership, and empowerment through community-driven decision making for healthier communities.