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Watsonville
September 3, 2025

Racism is a ‘WE’ issue

Jimmy Dutra
By Jimmy Dutra, former Watsonville City Councilman In 1992, some of us witnessed the ugly truth of racism for the first time. We heard the outcry over the beating of Rodney King. I was a teenage student at Watsonville High School, who believed in an...

Navigating Watsonville’s skeptics

Navigator schools
By John Flaherty, vice-chair of Navigator Schools’ Board of Directors Sharon Waller, the co-founder of Navigator public, nonprofit charter schools, grew up in Watsonville. Her grandmother worked at Ford’s Department store. She took Sharon to lunch next door at the Woolworths.  Sharon Waller is a third-generation...

Supervisor Friend hosting tele-town hall to discuss farmworker protections

Zach Friend
Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend tonight will host a tele-town hall from 6-7pm with guest Tom AmRhein to talk about the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. AmRhein, the former president of the Farm Bureau and the current chair of...

New charter school is hurting our community

Navigator Schools, which runs Watsonville Prep on the grounds of E.A. Hall Middle School—and will soon expand to Ann Soldo Elementary School—should find its own space as soon as possible. In the meantime, the organization should immediately pay back the hundreds of thousands of...

Preserving our library

I read my first novel at the age of 10. The novel was the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I checked the book out from a satellite library that was across the street from where I lived. That book is relevant today in the...

Supervisors delay decision on animal rules

santa cruz county animal rules
SANTA CRUZ—The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday tabled a motion to make changes to the county’s animal welfare rules after organizations that run animal-based events expressed concern about the rules’ effects. The new rules would, among other things, have prohibited using live...

Nonprofits, community groups celebrate farmworkers as lawmakers call for more support

watsonville farmworkers covid-19
WATSONVILLE—After working a long shift picking strawberries and greens, dozens of farmworkers and their families received the royal treatment thanks to a new program from El Pájaro Community Development Corporation. Called the Farmworker’s Family Dinner, the initiative treated 38 families—roughly 230 people—to meals from El...

City should not be taking Covid-19 funding

City should not be taking Covid-19 funding I was delighted to see that the Watsonville City Council approved “a little more than a half-million dollars of federal funding to bolster the community’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.” I was very disappointed, however, to note that of...

Serving Nuestra Ciudad

The Pajaronian
The COVID-19 crisis has without a doubt been a challenging ordeal. Our businesses are suffering, our neighbors are struggling to make ends meet and there do not seem to be many quick solutions to the problems created by this tricky, highly-infectious virus. Yet, the...

Assemblymember Rivas urges Gov. Newsom for more farmworker relief

Watsonville farmworkers
By Jazmine Juarez, Special to the Pajaronian WATSONVILLE—Assemblymember Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) is calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to take urgent steps to protect farmworkers and the food supply chain in the wake of COVID-19.  Following reports of 41 agricultural workers being diagnosed with COVID-19 in...
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Cabrillo women’s soccer catapults past Yuba | Weeklys Sports Roundup

Cabrillo College freshman Valeria Acosta was a huge contributing factor Tuesday afternoon in helping the women’s soccer team get off to a fantastic start...

A show of support on Labor Day