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Watsonville
September 17, 2025

Watsonville Community Hospital Foundation – Making strides during challenging times

Not long ago, our community came together around a powerful shared belief: that everyone deserves access to healthcare.  That belief fueled the effort to save Watsonville Community Hospital and bring it under local control—a major victory.  But like many hospitals across the country, we continue to...

Demonizing immigrants threatens core values

A foundational aspect of our national identity is the widely regarded notion that the United States is a nation of immigrants.  While the country has also seen periods of restrictive immigration policies, our history is deeply intertwined with the movement of people from other nations....

Reject Georgia Acosta for Watsonville Planning Commission

Editor’s note: This letter was written to the Watsonville City Council. We are Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice (PVESJ), a local grassroots coalition that has been organizing students, teachers, and community members at PVUSD for almost two years.  In last November’s election, our group...

Reinstate Barrios Unidos at Pajaro Valley High School!

A month and a half ago, Principal Todd Wilson of Pajaro Valley High School decided against renewing a contract with Barrios Unidos, a grassroots Santa Cruz organization that has long worked with incarcerated and system-impacted people, drawing wisdom and leadership from those with lived...

What Makes Watsonville Community Hospital—and America—Great

Thirty-three years ago, while my family was preparing for a birthday party, I decided to arrive early. My mother was shopping for a cake for my sister’s second birthday in our small hometown of Cuerámaro, Guanajuato, Mexico—a rural town of at the time just...

Measure N Milestones: Transparency, Progress, and Community Impact

When voters across the Pajaro Valley Health Care District approved Measure N in March 2024, they sent a clear and powerful message: our community hospital matters. With that vote, we took another bold step toward reclaiming local control of our healthcare system and investing...

June 14: several notable historic events, Trump’s military parade

June 14 is a significant date in our country's history. On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the United States Flag Act resolution. This resolution stipulated that the official American flag should have 13 stripes, alternating between red and white, 13 stars to...

Investing in safer streets and upholding our community values

Watsonville is making meaningful investments in our streets, sidewalks, and neighborhoods this year—improvements that reflect both our infrastructure priorities and our shared commitment to safety and accessibility. We’re starting with a major reconstruction of Green Valley Road and Bridge Street, which includes replacing aging pavement...

How Farmworkers Outlawed ‘El Cortito’ 50 Years Ago

Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo
For decades in the Salinas Valley, the short-handle hoe, known as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that kept farmworkers stooped over for long hours each day. Workers were only able to stand and stretch when they reached the...

Are we in the midst of a cultural revolution?

Since the 1960s, the U.S. has become a more inclusive country. This necessarily meant that white men lost some part of their privileged positions in education, employment and entertainment. By the 2000s, in the wake of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, anti-racism books were on...
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Prep Athletes of the Week: MVC’s Boston Ashe; St. Francis’ Maya...

The Pajaronian’s Prep Athletes of the Week were selected based on their performances during the week of Sept. 8-14. Coaches and athletic directors are...