The Future is Peace with Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon

Monday • April 20 • 7:00 pm • Doors open 6 pm • Ticketed event
Rio Theatre • 1205 Soquel Ave • Santa Cruz • wheelchair accessible 

Book talk and audience Q&A with Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, moderated by Douglas Abrams, followed by a book signing

Two lifelong peace activists and guides to Israel/Palestine, both of whom have lost family in the conflict, take readers on a revealing life-changing journey across this holy, bloodstained land and discover the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples.

In The Future Is Peace, Sarah and Inon take readers on a transformative weeklong journey across a sacred and bloodstained land. Facing competing narratives, they explore how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred. Throughout their travels, they have been constantly asked: In the face of so much loss, how can we ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it.

Ticket price includes a book.

Tickets

Night of Ideas 2026

Friday • April 17 • 5 – 9 pm • Free
Institute of the Arts and Sciences • 100 Panetta Ave • Santa Cruz

Enlightenment, Now!

A nocturnal celebration of art, philosophy, and activism hosted by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, the 2026 Santa Cruz Night of Ideas invites us not to celebrate the Enlightenment, but to interrogate it. Long associated with democracy, progress, and universal reason, the Enlightenment’s legacy remains deeply ambivalent – coexisting with enduring forms of exclusion, colonial violence, and economic exploitation. Rather than treating the Enlightenment as a closed chapter or shared inheritance, this edition centers young local voices and civil society to ask urgent questions: whose reason matters, whose freedoms are secured, and whose futures are denied? 

Through conversations, workshops, performances, and visionary talks, Enlightenment, Now! becomes a space for lived experience and collective experimentation. Featuring contributions from local performers Crista Berryessa and Beati Quorum; Alex Olwal’s audiovisual collaborations with AL-EK; and Juan Ospina, flautist and composer with Olemano. This event will also bring together Thomas Sage Pedersen, Ronaldo V. Wilson, Gina Athena Ulysse, and many other guests. The aim is not consensus, but momentum: rethinking progress and imagining new political, ethical, and cultural possibilities under radically changed conditions.

More info and schedule here

Redistribute Wealth: Puentes Para Familias Fund at Community Bridges

Each month SURJ Santa Cruz County suggests a local organization that is doing excellent work strengthening racial and economic justice in our county. If you’re able, please consider making a donation– healthy for you, healthy for our community. Thank you!

When families in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito Counties lose a loved one to immigration detention, the crisis is immediate. Rent is due. Groceries run out. Children are left scared and uncertain.

Puentes Para Familias exists so the community can respond together.

This program began with $10,000 in seed funding from a local foundation that stepped forward in response to rising fear in our region. That early support helped Community Bridges build a trusted, rapid-response fund so that when families need help, they don’t have to wait.

When you give, your donation is put to work right away:

     • 100% of funds support families in crisis—not overhead or unrelated programs
     • Assistance is capped at $2,500 per family, ensuring help is shared fairly and reaches as many households as possible
     • Funds cover only urgent, life-stabilizing needs like rent, utilities, bond, childcare, or groceries


DONATE HERE

Visualizing Abolition Screening Series: Beyond Access 

Friday • April 10 • 5:00 pm • run time 49 minutes • Free
Institute of the Arts and Sciences • 100 Panetta Ave • Santa Cruz

Prisons deny and censor the access of those trapped inside them—to information, to intimacy, to community, to meaningful work, to nourishment of all kinds, and perhaps most cruelly, to care. This program assembles a series of five short films, including works by filmmakers incarcerated in California and others. Questioning the carceral and state-sponsored productions of disability and accessibility, these short films together reveal the courage of people working despite limitations to produce collective access for one another, described simply and beautifully by disability justice activist Leah-Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha as “revolutionary love without charity.” 

More information

No Kings 3.0

Saturday • March 28 • All Over Santa Cruz County 
Santa Cruz: San Lorenzo Park • 137 Dakota Ave • Santa Cruz  •  10am
Watsonville: Watsonville City Plaza • Noon Boulder Creek: California 9 & California 236 • 10am Scotts Valley: Mount Hermon Road & Whispering Pines Drive Ave • 11am    


No Kings 3.0 is happening SATURDAY MARCH 28 at several locations in Santa Cruz County. See below for details for each location.

Meet up with SURJ members before the Santa Cruz rally and we can go together! (Register for the pre-meetup here )

Safety Monitors Needed for No Kings

Indivisible Santa Cruz County cannot have events like the No Kings march without safety monitors.  We are looking for 100 people to sign up to be Safety Monitors for No Kings 3 on March 28th.

Safety Monitors are responsible for helping direct the flow of the march, ensuring safety at intersections and driveways, answering questions for march participants, staffing traffic barricades, and reporting issues to Lead Safety Monitors.  Training will be provided.

If you haven’t been a Safety Monitor in the past, this is a great way to participate in the event while knowing you helped make it happen!

Sign Up to be a Safety Monitor

Singing Resistance Santa Cruz

Friday • March 27 • 7:00-8:30 PM • Free • wheelchair accessible
Resource Center for Nonviolence • 612 Ocean St • Santa Cruz  

More fun and more effective than chanting! Let’s help change the narrative!

Join Heather Huston and Aileen Vance as they lead us in songs that not only speak truth to power, but also build community! Prepare for the March 28 No Kings protest by learning songs to sing in community.

This event is filling up fast! Reserve your spot today. And if you don’t make it this time, they hope to continue meeting twice a month into the future so as many people as possible know the songs and can help bring joy and community to these demonstrations.

Register Here

Digital & Personal Security Training for Community Safety

Wednesday • March 25 • 7:00 – 8:30 pm •  ONLINE
Registration required

SURJ Santa Clara County is putting on a security training for activists and demonstrators! They say:

In an era of mass surveillance, learn how to protect yourself and your allies. We’ll look at the history of surveillance against anti-racism movements. We’ll explore how risks we may be comfortable accepting for ourselves can endanger our allies and partners, and learn about best practices – both virtual and physical – to keep everyone safer.

In preparation for No Kings day, March 28, we will also review protest safety. We will learn specific steps to take to improve our digital security. You will have time and assistance to implement at least one specific digital security strategy on your own device.


Find the link to register on their website.

Cultivating Care

4th Monday of the Month • Next Meeting March 23rd • 5:30-7:30 PM • Free •
Branciforte Library • 230 Gault St. • Santa Cruz • Wheelchair accessible

Our Purpose
In the spirit of collective, interconnected liberation, the intention of Cultivating Care is to actively build anti-racist culture by understanding and dismantling white supremacy as it exists in ourselves and our culture. While we are clear that we must also work in relationship with Black and BIPOC humans to create new systems where all people are valued and thriving, this group is for being in compassionate relationship with each other to address our whiteness. This container is for all of us, wherever we are on our racial justice journey, to have courageous, vulnerable conversations that foster belonging, healing, calling in and showing up.

This space is for:

  • White people who are new to anti-racism work and want a place to begin learning responsibly
  • White people who have been engaged in this work and want to continue deepening their practice
  • People who are willing to be challenged, reflect on their impact, and take accountability for harm
  • Participants who understand that this space is about learning, not perfection
  • People who understand this is ongoing work, not a one-time learning experience

Why is this space centered on white people? Are you centering whiteness?
For decades—and longer—Black and BIPOC leaders have called on white people to “get your people”: to take responsibility for organizing within white communities and addressing racism there. Because of racism, white people often have greater access to and influence with other white people, and therefore, have a responsibility to engage their people and communities in this work. This space is one response to that call.

Is this space only for white people?
No. Everyone is welcome to attend. However, the content, focus, and structure of the group are designed primarily to support white people in their anti-racism learning and organizing. 

Register here for Cultivating Care

Cultivating Care

4th Monday of the Month • Next Meeting February 23rd • 5:30-7:30 PM • Free •
Branciforte Library • 230 Gault St. • Santa Cruz • Wheelchair accessible

Our Purpose
In the spirit of collective, interconnected liberation, the intention of Cultivating Care is to actively build anti-racist culture by understanding and dismantling white supremacy as it exists in ourselves and our culture. While we are clear that we must also work in relationship with Black and BIPOC humans to create new systems where all people are valued and thriving, this group is for being in compassionate relationship with each other to address our whiteness. This container is for all of us, wherever we are on our racial justice journey, to have courageous, vulnerable conversations that foster belonging, healing, calling in and showing up.

This space is for:

  • White people who are new to anti-racism work and want a place to begin learning responsibly
  • White people who have been engaged in this work and want to continue deepening their practice
  • People who are willing to be challenged, reflect on their impact, and take accountability for harm
  • Participants who understand that this space is about learning, not perfection
  • People who understand this is ongoing work, not a one-time learning experience

Why is this space centered on white people? Are you centering whiteness?
For decades—and longer—Black and BIPOC leaders have called on white people to “get your people”: to take responsibility for organizing within white communities and addressing racism there. Because of racism, white people often have greater access to and influence with other white people, and therefore, have a responsibility to engage their people and communities in this work. This space is one response to that call.

Is this space only for white people?
No. Everyone is welcome to attend. However, the content, focus, and structure of the group are designed primarily to support white people in their anti-racism learning and organizing. 

Register here for Cultivating Care

Community Film Screening: The Mask You Live In (Scotts Valley)

Monday • Feb 23 • Doors open 5pm • 6pm to 8:30 PM • CineLux Scotts Valley Café & Lounge

Join a free community screening of documentary The Mask You Live In (IMDB), exploring the challenges boys and young men face in staying true to themselves while navigating society’s narrow expectations of masculinity.

**PARENTAL ADVISORY: This film is recommended for ages 15+ by Common Sense Media due to strong language and mature themes.**

Expert panel discussion and Q&A to follow.
Spanish subtitles and panel interpretation available.

This event is hosted by Monarch Services and the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, in partnership with CineLux Theaters and the Watsonville Film Festival.
Schedule
5 PM – Doors Open, Community Tabling Begins
6 PM – Film Screening
7:30 PM – Discussion and Q&A

Click here for tickets