Feature Archives

The third annual Festival del Nopal took place in downtown Santa Cruz on Sunday July 22. The festival featured many local food vendors using nopal, or prickly pear cactus, in a variety of cuisine such as pupusas, huraches, salad, tlayudas, baked potatoes, fries, and tacos. The event, founded and coordinated by City Councilmember Tony Madrigal, celebrates the significance of the nopal in Mexican cuisine and showcases the plant's versatility and healing properties.

At a rally on July 6th, hotel workers and labor groups called for a boycott of La Playa Carmel, and organizers have also requested a strong turnout from community members for a two-day "siege" of the hotel from 7am-7pm on July 20th and 21st. The decision to boycott the La Playa was not an easy one; it was endorsed first by the workers' union and the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, and then the California Labor Federation.

Several hundred nurses demonstrated in front of the Alta Bates Medical Center which is operated by Sutter Health on July 3rd. The Berkeley hospital was one of seven Sutter hospitals in the San Francisco Bay area where nurses held a one-day strike. The strike was organized by the California Nurses Association (CNA) . The CNA is also holding a healthcare tour across the state with free medical screenings.

On Saturday, June 23rd, the Springfield Grange in Pájaro hosted the Festival of Tamales, a benefit for the Grange and Center for Farmworker Families. The menu featured delicious sweet and savory tamales, made with GMO-free masa from El Aguila Foods, including turkey and chile verde, sweet corn, and ollalieberry pecan praline. The tamales were made by local community members using recipes from El Salvador, Mexico, Texas, and the Monterey Bay Area.

The first recorded Father's Day commemoration was in remembrance of a mining disaster that brought attention to the plight of working people and unsafe working conditions across the US, when hundreds of fathers died in a mine in West Virginia in 1908. With the holiday's origins in mind, members of the San Jose and Redwood City Occupy groups performed mic check demonstrations at branches of various corporate entities on the San Francisco Peninsula that have a record of anti-labor practices.

Hotel workers, community members, and friends gathered on June 7th for the "Carmel Hotel Workers Rising March" which was organized by Unite Here! Local 483, and focused on La Playa Hotel and the Pine Inn in Carmel. Community members have held a number of demonstrations protesting the Pine Inn's elimination of all dependents (42 people) from medical insurance coverage, as well as La Playa Hotel's refusal to commit to re-hire workers who lost their jobs when the hotel recently changed ownership.

May Day in downtown Santa Cruz this year saw a wide variety of community members coming together and rallying to honor the global struggles of the worker. On the morning of May 1st, students at UC Santa Cruz supported AFSCME local 3299 union members at the university, and then later in the day marched downtown where a group of community members, populated largely with people active with Occupy Santa Cruz, met them on Mission Street after themselves marching up Pacific Avenue.