UC Santa Cruz climate justice forum discusses Pajaro Valley flood, encourages student action - Santa Cruz Sentinel

UC Santa Cruz climate justice forum discusses Pajaro Valley flood, encourages student action - Santa Cruz Sentinel

SANTA CRUZ — The end of 2023 is less than three months away, but one event the year is likely going to be remembered for in Santa Cruz County was the breach of the Pajaro River levee that left the community of Pajaro flooded for weeks.

The event resulted in many reactions: outcry that more had not been done to secure the embankment that had already caused several floods within the last 28 years, fears that more extreme rainfalls could lead to repeat events and also a sense of hope in the way the community rallied to help others in need.
UCSC Center for Reimagining Leadership's Ayo Banjo, who organized Wednesday's event, interacts with the students at the quarry. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Ayo Banjo, center, moderates a panel discussion with Santa Cruz Action Board CEO MariaElena de la Garza, United Way of Santa Cruz County CEO Keisha Browder, Esperanza Community Farms board member and Deputy Director at Arts Council Santa Cruz County Mireya Gomez-Contreras, and award-winning scientist Erika Zavaleta. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)
The UC Santa Cruz Quarry Amphitheater is filled for Wednesday's climate event. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Scientist Erika Zavaleta participates in Wednesday’s panel. Zavaleta is a professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at UC Santa Cruz where her research group study the drivers and consequences of changing biological diversity and the role of ecology in guiding effective conservation practice. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Ayo Banjo, center, moderates a panel discussion with Santa Cruz Action Board CEO MariaElena de la Garza, United Way of Santa Cruz County CEO Keisha Browder, Esperanza Community Farms board member and Deputy Director at Arts Council Santa Cruz County Mireya Gomez-Contreras, and award-winning scientist Erika Zavaleta. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Cellphone flashlights held by students shine bright though the darkness at the UC Santa Cruz Quarry Amphitheater on Wednesday during Climate Justice Leaders: Voices of the Pajaro Valley. The event, attended by 2,600 mostly first-year students and presented by the UCSC Center for Reimagining Leadership, included a musical performance by high school mariachi-infusion band Linea Distinguida. The event culminated with a panel discussion moderated by Ayo Banjo featuring Santa Cruz County community leaders including Santa Cruz Action Board CEO MariaElena de la Garza, United Way of Santa Cruz County CEO Keisha Browder, Esperanza Community Farms board member and Deputy Director at Arts Council Santa Cruz County Mireya Gomez-Contreras, and award-winning scientist Erika Zavaleta. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)

All of that was touched upon in a panel discussion hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Reimagining Leadership on Tuesday. More than 2,600 students, many of them freshmen for whom the event was tied into their required coursework, filled the Quarry Amphitheater to listen to a discussion from local community leaders that reflected on what happened in the Pajaro Valley in March and also stressed the importance of community involvement and taking action.

Prior to the panel, students had a multimedia experience in the amphitheater. The event began with the sounds of rain, thunder and wind, which gave way to news reports on the levee breach, aerial view of the floods in Pajaro and a mixture of photos and footage of cleanup efforts and a rally demanding federal funding for Pajaro residents.

UC Santa Cruz community archivist Rebecca Hernandez recited the Iroquois creation story which served as the event’s land acknowledgment, music was performed by humanities professor Gina Athena Ulysse and Watsonville mariachi band Linea Distinguida, and Center for Reimagining Leader Encio Ramirez-Ruiz introduced the panel.

“For change to take root and get us to our goal, solutions must be developed with and come from those directly affected,” he said. “These leaders are gathered here today, despite a system meant to keep them out. They re soaring high, flying free, spreading their wings for all of those to see.”

The panel was moderated by local organizer Ayo Banjo and consisted of MariaElena de la Garza, CEO of the Santa Cruz Community Action Board; Keisha Browder, CEO of United Way Santa Cruz; Mireya Gomez-Contreras, board member of Esperanza Community Farms in Watsonville; and ecology and evolutionary biology professor Erika Zavaleta.

“This event is about the voices of Pajaro Valley,” said Banjo. “It is about recognizing and uplifting leaders who are able to respond to a crisis immediately, who show what it means to actually lead in direct response, and our panelists today are going to be talking about these issues.”

The panelists talked about the federal government’s response to the levee breach. Gomez-Contreras said many of the impacted residents were immigrant farmworker families.

“Although we’re called essential, it’s not demonstrated,” she said. “People aren’t showing up for us. They’re extracting our labor and then brushing us off.”

Gomez-Contreras said Pajaro students were bused into other schools, and families were crowded into the emergency shelter at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds.

“I know that the families that belong to our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program at the farm moved to other cities in the Central Valley,” she said. “They can’t find jobs there, so they’re on their way back because this is their home.”

De la Garza said many evacuees were driven over to the Pajaro Valley Golf Club, and there was a communication barrier because many of those running the shelter did not speak Spanish or Indigenous languages.

“Imagine what that felt like for them,” she said.

Banjo agreed that the response was inadequate and exposed inequities in the system, citing how many impacted were left out of Federal Emergency Management Agency funding.

“They use a formula to essentially assess how valuable the property is,” he said. “If the property is not as valuable, then the resources are not gonna be as much and not gonna be as immediately. We know that this formula that disproportionately prioritizes affluent communities is going to expose these vulnerabilities within our Pajaro Valley and Indigenous communities.”

Banjo asked Browder to talk about what she witnessed in the response to the CZU Lightning Complex fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2020 compared to the levee breach. She said the response was very disproportionate.

“With CZU, there was this opportunity that — if you were insured, if your house was insured, if you had renters’ insurance, if you are a U.S. citizen — you had the opportunity to draw down dollars,” she said.

However, Browder emphasized that not everyone in the Pajaro Valley fit those qualifications.

“What we saw was systems, a formula to tell a family that lost everything ‘You don’t fit a formula,'” she said.

Browder said United Way and other organizations banded together to demand California Gov. Gavin Newsom release the funds regardless of immigration status to assist Pajaro residents. Newsom approved a $42 million grant to be allocated among farmworkers.

“While there was that disparity of systems, we were able as a community to come together and say ‘We’re going to work around that system and challenge our state to do differently,'” she said.

Banjo asked how students could get involved in the community. Zavaleta said it starts with recognizing their own experiences.

“There’s this misconception that when you come to the university, you’re supposed to be this empty vessel and you’re get filled up with academic knowledge, but it’s at least equally true that all of your lives and the whole time that you are here, you are bringing your own lived experience, your own understandings about what’s wrong and how to make it right, your own witnessing of things like the event we’re talking about today,” she said. “That is actually what makes up a university is the sum of all of that.”

De la Garza challenged students to visit the Pajaro Valley and see how residents live.

“There’s so much, but you gotta get off the hill,” she said. “I guarantee you that you will be accepted with open arms because we need you. We need you when there’s crisis, and we need you when there’s not crisis.”