A journalist on the job taking video of a street protest. (Photo: wellphoto, via Shutterstock)In late June, as protesters in Los Angeles took to the streets in opposition to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, journalists covering the demonstrations found themselves at the center of another issue of concern: the treatment of the press by police officers during protests.
Dermonstrators in front of the U.S. Post Office in Torrance protesting federal funding cuts. (Photo: Vince360, via Shutterstock)Vote-by-mail ballots have been sent to all registered voters in Amador County, with Solano reporting they will be mailing ballots today, while Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego counties — and maybe others – will be mailing next week. These counties are getting ahead of the Oct. 5 deadline for California counties to mail ballots. In other states, meanwhile, voting has been taking place for weeks.
Voters casting their ballots at a local precinct. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, Shutterstock)Proposition 209, the constitutional amendment intended to prevent discrimination or preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex in areas like public education and contracting, was approved by California voters a generation ago. In November, they will decide whether to get rid of it.
An image of a person using pepper spray. (Photo: Schnoeppl, via Shutterstock)Pepper spray – classified and regulated as a form of tear gas – was used routinely on thousands of California children housed in state and county juvenile detention facilities, according to a recent report by the ACLU of Southern California.
U.S Census workers transfer birth data to punched cards, ca. 1940. (Photo: Everett Historical, via Shutterstock)The once-a-decade national census is still nearly two years away but it’s already generating heated discussion. Among the myriad concerns raised so far is that this survey will be the first conducted in part online. People are also expressing alarm over the inclusion of a new citizenship question, the wording for questions on race and ethnicity and the way prisoners are counted.
Sacramento police officers preparing for protests over the shooting of Stephon Clark. (Photo: Kevin Cortopassi, Flickr Creative Commons)The recent police killing of an unarmed black Sacramento man has left protesters and local politicians demanding revisions to California’s Peace Officer’s Bill of Rights — the decades-old protocol for officers facing disciplinary investigation. But state lawmakers, despite the national attention directed at the shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark, have not introduced legislation or even made reference to the 1976 law, known as the POBR.
“He’s both popular and vulnerable,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. in an interview with the Times. “On the one hand, he’s a very skilled politician, very popular in many of the communities in the county and a known reformer and progressive. At the same time, he has tremendous flaws in managerial areas that have caused all kinds of headaches in the department.”