Santa Cruz Look Out, Max Chun
The first rays of sunlight illuminated the parking lot of Resurrection Catholic Church in Aptos and a thick layer of fog shrouded the area in a bluish hue as a group of about 30 organizers and advocates from the Central Coast slowly trickled in before 6 a.m.
Mary Litel Walsh, a longtime leader of a Monterey-based nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on a wide range of social and economic issues, opened up the trunk of her SUV to hand out bagels, juice, and water before the group piled into a bus — one of four buses filled with organizers leaving from Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.
The interior was decked out like a party bus, complete with tables, TV screens and a surprisingly good sound system, but their occupants weren’t headed to a celebration. They had their work cut out for them.
The organizers were joining forces with dozens of other advocates based across the state from Marin County to Los Angeles to urge California lawmakers to reject Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts to Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrants. Their trip came as time ticks on approving a state budget, which has to happen by Sunday.
Under Newsom’s proposal, announced in mid-May, Medi-Cal — the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program that serves low-income residents — would no longer allow undocumented residents 19 and older to enroll in the program. Additionally, the governor proposed that adults whose immigration status makes them ineligible for federal Medicaid should pay a $100 monthly premium starting in 2027.
The trip, organized by the Monterey-based nonprofit Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action (COPA) and the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, brought representatives from Community Bridges, Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, Unite Here Local 19 and students from UC Santa Cruz’s Everett Program for Technology and Social Change, along with advocates and faith leaders based across the state. A Lookout reporter and photographer tagged along on the trip, which offered a glimpse into the frantic final days of the state’s budget negotiations.
Quiet chatter flowed throughout the bus, while many took the opportunity to get some more sleep after an early morning ahead of a long, busy day. Rev. James Lapp of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Santa Cruz, who co-founded COPA, walked down the aisle between the seats in a beige suit jacket and pants with an off-white clerical shirt and bright, multicolored cross around his neck, introducing himself and thanking people for coming along.
No matter the sector that the advocates work in, the proposed Medi-Cal cuts raised serious alarm among all of them. Santa Cruz Community Health board member Andrew Goldenkranz called the cuts “a penny wise and a pound foolish,” and said that Medi-Cal makes up about 70% to 75% of the organization’s budget. Between 13,000 and 14,000 low-income patients rely on Santa Cruz Community Health — and Medi-Cal by extension — every year.
Steve Sacks, a semi-retired speech therapist who worked in Central Valley schools, said many of the children he has worked with “need all the help they can get.” The cuts would put those families in a deeper financial hole, he said, adding that immigrants pay billions in taxes that go toward programs like Medi-Cal: “There’s no reason for this in the richest country in the world.”
The bus stopped in Sacramento at about 9 a.m., just a block away from the capitol. The thought of a state capitol usually conjures up grand images of regal, intricate architecture, but the 10-story building known as the Swing Space where legislators’ offices sit looks more like a community college building. After meeting at a cafe a block away from the offices, the large crowd of lobbyists split off into several smaller groups, each going to attempt to meet with different elected officials.
One group of eight organizers passed through security, emptying their pockets into bins slid into an X-ray scanner and walking through a metal detector as they would at an airport. Goldenkranz, leading the group, told everyone that Gail Pellerin, 28th District assemblymember and longtime Santa Cruz County clerk, was the group’s first visit.
Pellerin took plenty of Santa Cruz with her to Sacramento. Her office has numerous artistic renditions of banana slugs, along with other Bay Area merchandise and paintings of redwoods on the wall. Wearing a sleek blue suit jacket and a white-and-black patterned shirt and accompanied by her chief of staff, Tomasa Dueñas, Pellerin greeted the lobbyists with handshakes and a warm smile as they gathered around a table in her office and shared personal anecdotes to illustrate the importance of accessible health care.
aul Haenze, a member of Santa Cruz Bible Church, told Pellerin that his sister, who lives in Texas, had a stroke in 2018. She was able to recover enough to return to work as a technical editor, but was eventually let go in 2022. She began appealing to the state for disability, but was denied, leading her to blow through a large chunk of savings and retirement funds while maxing out her credit cards.
Haenze said that while his sister was eventually able to get federal disability, the state of Texas required that she own a car worth no more than $3,000 and have no more than $5,000 to her name to qualify. Newsom’s proposal would similarly render anyone with more than $2,000 in assets ineligible for Medi-Cal.
“It makes absolutely no sense that the state of Texas would rather her be totally indigent before they help her,” she said. “So, my plea is, let’s not let California be like Texas.”
Sacks told Pellerin that 88% of the students in Fresno Unified School District are below the poverty line, and the governor’s proposal introduces only larger barriers to accessing care.
“These people, who are kids of farmworkers, basically have very little or nothing,” he said. “And 50% to 70% of farmworkers are undocumented. If we didn’t have them, what would happen to our [food]?”
Naja Steward, a third-year graduating UC Santa Cruz student in the Everett Program, connected her studies to the budget, saying that environmental health and health care are “intimately linked,” especially given the number of undocumented people who work in agriculture. She added that major projects like growing operations for native plant restoration are “screwed” without undocumented workers.
Lapp said COPA was founded after the 1995 Pajaro River flood in part to respond to the needs of affected farmworkers. He called the proposed California cuts a “slap in the face,” especially given President Donald Trump’s attempt to dehumanize immigrants: “It really seems incongruous to have our governor almost side with the president and cut these people’s very limited benefits.”
Elsewhere that day, other lobbyists shared stories of the life-changing help that Medi-Cal can offer. Claudia Reyes, an organizer with Mujeres en Acción in Monterey County, speaking in Spanish, said that a couple she knows through the organization are both farmworkers. The husband was diagnosed with a benign tumor in his back in 2017, but was unable to get proper treatment due to the family’s financial situation. He was able to get surgery in 2024, with complete coverage from Medi-Cal, she said. If they had to pay a $100 monthly premium, they could no longer afford the coverage.
“Medi-Cal is more than a medical service,” Reyes said. “It is a real hope for those who have no other option.”
Pellerin, nodding in agreement, thanked the group and told them it’s important that they traveled to the Capitol to connect with legislators. The budget that the state Assembly and Senate would be presenting would be “very different” from the governor’s proposal, she said. While she didn’t share specifics, she said that at the Democratic caucus meeting, people were “very in sync” on the priorities and human element of the budget, as well as the need to protect the state’s most vulnerable population.
It’s a tough budget year, with more likely to follow, Pellerin said. “We’re just hoping there will be a shift in our federal government’s priorities to return to helping people versus helping billionaires.”