Since UC Santa Cruz’s establishment in 1965, the university has served as an “anchor institution” that has stimulated local economies while heightening inequality by driving gentrification, redevelopment, housing unaffordability, intensified policing, and the displacement of working-class and ethnic communities. As the county’s largest employer, the university draws on south county workers as service labor to maintain its operations while doing little to address the crisis of unaffordability that plagues all of Santa Cruz. Education, alongside tourism, technology, weapons production, and agriculture, are the principal industries that drive the local economy while dividing populations into pockets of invisibility and hypervisibility along racial and class lines.
In line with major real estate and local political power holders, the university has played a role in creating an ongoing housing crisis and town overpopulation, exacerbating pre-existing disparities and making the town unlivable for the very workers whom these industries rely on. Study of the struggles of workers and residents reveals how inequities in public infrastructures all work to reduce economic mobility and stability.
Specifically examining the last thirty years, this project and modules explore the dissonance between community and corporate development as Santa Cruz County seeks to build itself up into another Silicon Valley. This research centers the people who materially build the wealth of this area in order to further their demands for a more livable Santa Cruz County.
Contributing Researchers: Keiko Utsumi
Exhibits:
Watsonville Cannery Closures
How liberalization of the frozen food industry changed Watsonville
Silicon Santa Cruz
Exploring the perspective of Santa Cruz as “bedroom community” in relation to Silicon Valley, effects and tensions of these proximities.
COLA FOR ALL
Interviews, experiences, and ongoing campaigns for working-class dignity in Santa Cruz.
