Alex Darocy Photography

On the rain-swept evening of March 8, the Santa Cruz City Council voted 5-2 to re-affirm the city's camping ban, which outlaws sleeping in public with or without bedding, and prohibits sleeping in cars, between the hours of 11pm and 8:30am. Supporters of the "Right to Rest" had hoped the city council would remove references to the word "sleep" from the ordinance, but the majority of council members voted to keep the law exactly as it is presently written. Shortly after the vote concluded, it was business as usual for the Santa Cruz Police Department, whose officers spent the evening issuing citations and targeting homeless people sleeping downtown. SCPD officer Nicholas Kramer issues a camping citation to a man sleeping along Walnut Avenue at 6:45am on March 9, following the city council's vote to re-affirm the camping ban about eight hours earlier A large group of community members spoke to the city council in favor of amending the camping ban (sec...

Community members in support of the farmworkers who grow Driscoll's strawberries organized an informational picket outside of Whole Food Markets in Santa Cruz on February 26. Demonstrators are calling for the boycott of Driscoll's Berries and Sakuma Bros. Berries, as well as Häagen-Dazs brand ice cream. The boycott of Driscoll's has been initiated in response to the poor treatment of the farmworkers who grow the berries in San Quintín, Mexico, as well as at Sakuma Bros. Berry Farm in Burlington, Washington. Michael Gasser, a Santa Cruz based organizer in support of the boycott, has said that the primary demand is for Driscoll's to negotiate a fair contract with the workers' unions, which so far the Watsonville based company has been unwilling to do. Workers in both San Quintín and Washington are calling for an increase in workers wages and benefits, in addition to other demands. In Washington, workers are demanding that no children or youth be allowed in ...