Alex Darocy Photography

Community members in Santa Cruz commemorated Juneteenth this year with a large march from Louden Nelson Center to Santa Cruz City Hall, where speakers were heard. Reverend Deborah L. Johnson of Inner Light Ministries started off the speeches with a history of the Juneteenth holiday. Other speakers included Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

The original Mission Santa Cruz adobe and the replica mission were both spray painted during a demonstration organized on June 10 in Santa Cruz in support of the abolition of police. The phrase "Fuck Your Citizenship" was painted on the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe, and the phrase "Maldita Cruz" was spray painted on two structures. The word maldita means "damned" or "cursed" in Spanish. Additionally, the word "genocide" was painted on the state park plaque, and the mission bell located in Mission Plaza Park was removed. Mission bells were installed across the state to memorialize the California missions. The bell displayed in Mission Plaza Park was donated by the Santa Cruz Woman's Club in 1998. In 2019, local indigenous leaders lead a successful campaign to remove the mission bell at UC Santa Cruz. They stated in a news release that the California mission system was a place where their ancestors were "enslaved, whipped, raped, ...

On June 3, thousands in Santa Cruz again took to the streets in support of Black Lives Matter and justice for George Floyd. Marchers filled West Cliff Drive between the Dream Inn hotel and the Lighthouse, and people were still marching towards the Lighthouse an hour after the demonstration began.