Santa Cruz Indymedia Community Links

Community Resources for Santa Cruz County

Animal Liberation

Anti-War and Militarism

• Monterey Bay Educators Against War: Our purpose is to make readily available the best information, analysis, reflection & artistic expression on a broad range of vital topics in national and world affairs.
• Resource Center for Nonviolence: The Resource Center for Nonviolence is a twenty-five year old peace and social justice organization dedicated to promoting the principles of nonviolent social change and enhancing the quality of life and human dignity.
• Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Santa Cruz Branch: Our branch was started in the 1960s and now has over 250 peace and freedom loving members, women and men. We are one of the largest, most active branches in U.S. WILPF.

Arts + Action

• El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers Theater): In 1965, an aspiring playwright named Luis Valdez left the S.F. Mime Troupe to join Cesar Chavez in organizing farmworkers in Delano, California. Today, El Teatro Campesino is in its 30th year as a professional theater-arts organization.
• Salt-o-the-Earth Po-ums and Cartoons: A collection of commentary on environmental and other issues at the UCSC campus by Ray Collett.
• Santa Cruz Art Conspiracy: An attempt to document the creative efforts of non-commercial, non-institutional artists in Santa Cruz, California working to blur the lines between art and life, and between the personal and the political.
• Tannery Arts Center: an affordable home for the arts in Santa Cruz County.

Drug War

Education & Student Activism

• Free Skool Santa Cruz: Free Skool Santa Cruz is a decentralized network that shares skills, information, and knowledge without the limitations of hierarchy and the sterile institutional environment of formal schooling.
• Student Environmental Center at UCSC: SEC aims to organize student involvement to collaborate with the university to find ways to implement environmentally sound practices on-campus.

Environment

• American Cetacean Society - Monterey Bay Chapter: educational, conservational, and scientific pursuits for the purpose of expanding scientific knowledge of whales, dolphins, porpoises, and related creatures.
• The Arana Gulch Watershed Alliance (AGWA): conserves, protects, restores and enhances the natural resources of the Arana Gulch Watershed.
• Bike Church: can help you get ready for a long tour or a cross-town commute. You can learn to fix flats, build and true wheels, adjust shifting and brakes... Anything you desire.
• Coastal Watershed Council: is a nonprofit organization committed to the preservation, protection and management of coastal watersheds through establishment of community-based watershed stewardship program, education and community outreach.
• Ecological Farming Association: The Ecological Farming Association is a non-profit educational organization that promotes ecologically sound agriculture.
• Ecology Action: a nonprofit environmental consultancy delivering cutting edge education services, technical assistance, and program implementation for initiatives that assist individuals, business and government to maximize environmental quality and community well being.
• Elkhorn Slough Foundation: to conserve and restore Elkhorn Slough and its watershed.
• Endangered Species of UCSC: From towering redwood forest to coastal prairie to underground caves, the University of California at Santa Cruz campus and the surrounding parks are host to a magnificent diversity of habitat, flora, and fauna. However, this diversity is fragile. Many of these plants and animals are threatened by human activities such as campus growth, recreational use and land management decisions.
• Friends of Pajaro Dunes: is a non-profit public benefit corporation for the preservation and protection of open space in the Pajaro Valley
• Friends of Santa Cruz Parks: is dedicated to promoting appreciation and stewardship of the natural and cultural heritage of our local state parks by facilitating and supporting educational programs and exhibits.
• Friends Of the Harbor Group: is a volunteer organization of recreational and commercial harbor users, as well as local harbor residents and businesses, whose purpose is to advocate and educate to the general public and government agencies the importance of keeping the Santa Cruz Harbor open, and maintaining safe, continual access to the Monterey Bay and beyond.
• Friends of the Sea Otter (FSO): is an advocacy group dedicated to actively working with state and federal agencies to maintain the current protections for sea otters as well as to increase and broaden these preservation efforts. We wish to inspire the public at large about the otters' unique behavior and habitat.
• Friends, Artists and Neighbors of Elkhorn Slough: is an association of citizens committed to preserving and enhancing the Elkhorn Slough and its watershed through public education, citizen activism and advocacy. We are dedicated to maintaining a management plan that will protect the environmental, cultural and agricultural integrity of the Slough and its surrounding watershed, while restoring, and preserving Elkhorn Slough as a legacy for future generations.
• Land Trust of Santa Cruz County: in cooperation with public and private interests, protects and manages lands of significant natural resource, agricultural, cultural and open space value.
• LRDP Resistance: UC Santa Cruz's irresponsible plans for expansion will affect the daily life of everyone in the greater Santa Cruz area.
• Marine Mammal Center: recognizes human interdependence with marine mammals and their importance as sentinels of the ocean environment, the health of which is essential for all life.
• Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project (MBS&TP): is a non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration and enhancement of the native salmon and steelhead populations of the greater Monterey Bay area.
• Ocean Conservancy: promotes healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems and opposes practices that threaten ocean life and human life.
• Otter Project: exists to promote the rapid recovery of the California sea otter, an indicator of near shore ocean health, by facilitating research and communicating research results to the general public and policy makers.
• People Power: Santa Cruz County's advocate for human-powered transportation.
• Santa Cruz Bird Club: sponsors birding walks in and around the county of Santa Cruz and meetings September through May featuring informative, illustrated talks for birders on wild birds and related topics.
• Santa Cruz Chapter of the California Native Plant Society: The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) is a statewide non-profit organization of amateurs and professionals with a common interest in California's native plants. CNPS seek to increase understanding and appreciation of California's native plants and to preserve them in their natural habitat through scientific activities, education, and conservation.
• Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History: has been bringing the delights and wonders of the natural world to Santa Cruz residents and visitors for 100 years.
• Save Our Shores: is a non-profit marine conservation organization in Santa Cruz, California. Our mission is marine conservation through policy research, education, and citizen involvement.
• Sierra Club - Ventana Chapter: From Alaska to the Adirondacks, Sierra Club members work together in their communities to prevent the destruction of national habitats and to preserve priceless wildlands.
• Watsonville Wetlands Watch: advocates for wetland issues, educates in schools and in the public arena, restores degraded habitats, preserves what remains whole, and appreciates the unique beauty and life of our valley wetlands.

Global Justice & Anti-Capitalism

Government & Elections

• Santa Cruz City Government: Santa Cruz is the county seat for the County of Santa Cruz.
• Santa Cruz County Government: The County Government Center is located at 701 Ocean Street in the City of Santa Cruz.
• U.S. Congressman Sam Farr - Representing California's 17th District. Sam Farr's district encompasses the majestic Big Sur coastline; the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary; the fertile Salinas Valley; the redwoods, mountains and beaches of Santa Cruz County, and the majestic rural landscape of San Benito County.

Health, Housing, & Public Services

• Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, Inc., (CAB): to conduct, administer, or coordinate community programs to combat poverty and the causes of poverty in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Programs shall collaborate with private and public partners to establish a continuum of services and involve low income persons in program development and advocacy.
• Homeless Garden Project: Our job is to help people learn to solve their own problems and to achieve the life, career, and educational goals they set for themselves.
• Homeless Persons Health Project (HPHP): services throughout Santa Cruz County, and the town of Pajaro, to homeless or marginally housed youth, adults, and families with children.
• Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom: HUFF is Santa Cruz's oldest and most stubbornly persistent grassroots homeless advocacy group. We make trouble for the powers that be, who perpetrate criminal human rights abuses such as the "blanket ban."
• Planned Parenthood Mar Monte: With health centers in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Seaside and Salinas, we provide a range of reproductive and general health services including birth control, pregnancy testing and options counseling, STD testing and treatment, HIV testing, breast and cervical cancer screening, abortion, pre-natal care, pediatrics and adult primary health care.
• Santa Cruz AIDS Project: Founded in 1985 by a group of dedicated volunteers with the mission of providing compassionate support for those affected by HIV/AIDS.
• Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos: To prevent and curtail violence amongst youth within Santa Cruz County by providing them with life enhancing alternatives.

Immigrant Rights

Media Activism & Independent Media

• Bratton Online: Welcome to my online column. I've been writing these opinions, critiques, attitudes and reports in Santa Cruz for 28 years.
• Community Television of Santa Cruz County: The mission of Community Television of Santa Cruz County is to strengthen the spirit of community and enrich individual lives in Santa Cruz County by fostering communication through television and other electronic media. Channels 25, 26, and 27.
• Free Radio Santa Cruz (101.3fm): FRSC is a 24/7 Direct Action, civil disobedience in defense of our Free Speech. We are keeping our air waves safe from FCC rules, regulations, and corporate domination.
• Guerilla Drive-In: Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In is an outdoor movie theatre under the stars that springs up in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is to help reclaim public space and transforming our urban environment into a joyful playground. GDI also lends support to other projects. Every other Friday. Summer series at the railroad tracks at Fair Ave. on the Westside & Winter series at the Bike Church.
• Reel Work Labor Day Film Festival: The 2005 festival is commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the founding of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
• Santa Cruz Comic News: a monthly journal of progressive editorial cartoons. Each issue features well over 100 cartoons from the nation’s leading political cartoonists. The Comic News is the granddaddy of all cartoon newspapers — established 1984.
• Santa Cruz Film Festival (SCFF): champions voices and stories that are frequently absent from mainstream cinema. SCFF has screened close to 1000 local and international independent films and presented numerous multi-disciplined art/music events, educational panels and workshops. SCFF is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit arts organization.
• Santa Cruz Progressive Email List: a moderated email forum for sharing action alerts, requests, information about events, meetings and projects, ideas and other "one-off" announcements of interest to the Santa Cruz county-wide progressive community. It is not a discussion list.

Labor & Workers

• Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO: the "union of all the unions", representing around 60 AFL-CIO labor unions on California's central coast.
• United Farm Workers: United Farm Workers of America.

LGBTI / Queer

• Queer Youth Leadership Awards: to improve the lives of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning youth by increasing the positive awareness of Queer Youth leadership, and increasing safe and welcoming environments in home, school, and community.

Police State & Prisons

Racial Justice

Womyn

• Walnut Avenue Women's Center: A variety of services for the purpose of helping women to improve their life situations. The organization is women-centered, seeking to put women's experiences at the center of our thinking.

Community Resources for Monterey County

• Peace Coalition of Monterey County: created to unite and coordinate the efforts of local organizations around issues of peace in promoting long-range policies for a peaceful world. Some of these local organizations are branches of national or international organizations. Individuals who are not affiliated with an organization are always welcome to attend PCMC-sponsored events and actions, and the PCMC Community Meeting held every other month.