Is New City Manager Tina Friend Bringing an Anti-Homeless Agenda to Scotts Valley? 
Without public input, freshly hired City Manager Tina Friend has drafted the City of Scotts Valley's political position on Assembly Bill 516, a state bill which would amend the California vehicle code to extend the amount of time before local authorities may legally tow a vehicle parked in public, and would also prevent the sale of vehicles after they are impounded to cover towing expenses. The bill is seen as a much needed protection for low income residents in the state; having a vehicle to...
Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2019 5:39PM
ICE raids targeting migrant families slated to start Sunday in major U.S. cities 
ICE will raid family homes across the country on Sunday, June 23rd. If you witness a raid in progress or other ICE movements, document what you see. Call a legal support hotline immediately....
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:17PM
“Never Again” Means Act Now 
As the national conversation escalates around what to appropriately call the detention centers at the southern border, the humanitarian crisis continues.
Here are tangible actions the local Santa Cruz community can take to protest America's immigration policies and support relief efforts at the border....
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2019 12:28PM
90,000 Comments Submitted Opposing Plan for New Drilling and Fracking on Public Lands 
Monday, June 10 marked the end of the second and final public comment period on the Trump administration’s plan to open more than 1 million acres of public land and mineral estate across the central coast region to new oil drilling and fracking. The 45 day period, which opened with the release of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, a study of the impacts that fracking would have on in the lease plan area, was the shortest allowed by the Nat...
Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:55PM
Amah Mutsun Announce Removal of El Camino Real “Mission Bell” from UCSC Campus 
On Friday June 21 at 9:30am, representatives of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the UC Santa Cruz administration will assemble on campus with interested community members to witness the removal of the El Camino Real bell marker....
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2019 3:06PM
Pesticide Use Remains Near Record High in California, State Data Shows 
Sacramento, CA, June 13, 2019: Pesticide use in California topped two hundred million pounds for the third year in a row in 2017, according to data just released by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Included in this total are increases in use of the brain-damaging organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos, the soil fumigant chloropicrin, and the cancer-causing fungicides chlorothalonil and mancozeb. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s blockbuster herbicide Roundup,...
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 12:54PM
Santa Cruz Homeless Advocates Push Back Against Vigilante Comments 
In response to an acute period of anti-homeless vigilante comments being left on social media in Santa Cruz, homeless advocates took screen captures of the statements and displayed them for the public to see during the public comment period of the Santa Cruz City Council meeting on May 28. The violent and threatening comments were made in response to posts containing photos that identified different homeless individuals and recreational vehicles in the Facebook group "Santa Cruz Looks Like SH...
Posted: Sun Jun 9, 2019 5:59PM
Family Member Believes Man who Died in Police Custody was Denied Proper Medical Care 
On June 1, 40-year-old Kevin Allen died while in custody of the Santa Cruz Police. A SCPD press release states officers were responding to a report that a man had fallen to the ground near Water Street and River Street in Santa Cruz when they found and took Kevin Allen into custody and transported him to jail, claiming he was intoxicated. Once at the jail, medical staff there determined Allen would need to be taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead after suffering cardiac issues o...
Posted: Wed Jun 5, 2019 4:32PM
Raising Some Issues at Oral Communications 
Continued delay and inaction on providing homeless shelter and services (to say nothing of civil rights) for homeless folks was the silent part of yesterday's Santa Cruz City Council agenda. Several of us raised issues at Oral Communications...
Posted: Wed May 29, 2019 10:16AM
Sign Our Petition to Stop Oil Drilling on Mt. Diablo and Everywhere 
The federal Bureau of Land Management’s recently released “Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment and Final Environmental Impact Statement for Oil and Gas Leasing and Development” would open up public lands to oil and gas development in eleven California counties—Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Stanislaus. Approximately 725,000 acres on the Central Coast and in the Bay Area would be made available for new l...
Posted: Mon May 27, 2019 10:00AM
Join Us on the Picket Line: Janus of Santa Cruz 
200 7th Ave, Santa Cruz, CA...
Event Date: Thu May 30, 2019 2:00PM
Posted: Sat May 25, 2019 4:44PM
Santa Cruz Drug Rehabilitation Workers Take Center Stage at Film Festival 
As Santa Cruz grapples with a drug addiction crisis, frontline caregivers at the county’s largest addiction treatment provider are struggling to survive on poverty wages....
Posted: Sat May 25, 2019 4:35PM
Decision on Monarch Butterfly's Endangered Species Protection Extended to 2020 
Butterfly's Vulnerability to Climate Change Calls for Further Population Modeling...
Posted: Fri May 24, 2019 3:25PM
Fisheries Meeting Aims to Ensure Enough West Coast Salmon for Starving Orcas Lawsuit Prompts Consultation to Save Southern Resident Killer Whales...
Posted: Fri May 24, 2019 3:12PM
Inmate Dies at Rountree Rehabilitation and Re-Entry Facility in Watsonville 
According to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, 35-year-old inmate Carlos Bolanos was found dead at 5:30 am today in the Rehabilitation and Re-entry Facility located at the Rountree Lane Sheriff’s Detention Facilities in Watsonville. Carlos was in custody at the Rehabilitation and Re-Entry facility since December of 2018....
Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 8:38PM
Rallies in Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara to Oppose Trump's Oil-leasing Plan for California 
BAKERSFIELD, Calif.— Environmental and community groups joined by elected officials will hold rallies this week to blast the Trump administration’s draft plan to open more than a million acres of public land and mineral estate in central California to oil drilling and fracking. The rallies will precede each of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s public hearings in Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara....
Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 6:06PM
Despite Lawsuit, TBSC Leader Calls for Hosing Down a Sleeping Homeless Man 
Samantha Olden, a leader of the "public safety" group Take Back Santa Cruz (TBSC), recently made a comment on social media suggesting a homeless man be hosed down with water to discourage him from trespassing in the area in which he was sleeping. The comment from Olden comes just over a month after homeless residents in Santa Cruz named Take Back Santa Cruz in a federal civil rights lawsuit, which calls for TBSC to, "be enjoined from dangerous inflammatory hate speech and ordered to publicly ...
Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 2:20PM
Council Proposal Recognizes Lynching of Francisco Arias and José Chamales as 'Act of Racial Terror' 
On May 14 the Santa Cruz City Council passed a motion to request a recommendation from the Historic Preservation Commission (for return to the August 13th City Council meeting for action) for the placement of a historic plaque on Water Street Bridge recognizing the lynching of Francisco Arias and José Chamales. The men, who were Californios, Spanish speaking Mexican and Native American men, were lynched on the bridge on May 2, 1877, shortly after their arrest on murder charges. "The lynching ...
Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 12:36AM
Fascist trends in Santa Cruz Government Activists and myself using the derogatory gesture of the nazi salutes were focused on and reported in the conservative and reactionary paper, The Santa Cruz Sentinel by writer, Jessica York on May 15, 2019. As usual the focus was on the graphic gesture and not the fact that public comment and other forms of democratic participation are dwindling over the years as each mayor, now Martine Watkins takes up the mantle of repression....
Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 6:40PM
Support the Hunger Strikers at Santa Cruz County Jail 
Santa Cruz County Jail, 259 Water St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060...
Event Date: Wed May 15, 2019 10:00AM
Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 8:54AM