Students and others at a Los Angeles march targeting climate change. (Photo: Sam the Leigh, via Shuterstock)OPINION: The State Seal of Civic Education would create a shift in the collective mindset of our state’s schools toward prioritizing civic engagement education, providing guidance and resources for students to become involved in activism, and incentivizing community organizing work.
A sign at a downtown San Francisco rally urging support for the Affordable Care Act. (Photo: Kim Wilson, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has placed the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) back in the headlines because the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in November in a case, California v. Texas, that seeks to repeal it. The widely publicized prospect of eliminating health care coverage for more than 20 million Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic should be enough to give our elected leaders and the high court pause.
Tom Ammiano at a gay rights rally in 2011. (Photo: Pax Ahimsa Gethen, Wikipedia Commons)Tom Ammiano is a San Francisco icon. The first openly gay teacher in San Francisco, he served on the board of San Francisco Unified School District and in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, with future mayor, lieutenant governor and governor Gavin Newsom. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor several times and made his way to Sacramento, where he served in the Assembly from 2008 to 2014.
Homeowners watch the billowing smoke of the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Southern California. (Photo: BrittanyNY, via Shutterstock)OPINION: As currently amended —after months of compromise and negotiations— this bill would create a new Insurance Market Action Plan, or IMAP, designed to increase home insurance availability with better coverage and lower rates, and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire damage through home hardening and community mitigation. For many homeowners in high-risk areas, the FAIR Plan is currently the only option for fire insurance.
Youngsters in a kindergarten classroom, pre-pandemic.(Photo: YM.Ku Shahril, via Shutterrstock)OPINION: Faced with the enormity of an economic fallout and public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 crisis, California must manage an unprecedented budget deficit, unemployment that rivals the Great Depression, and rising poverty. With mandated school closures across our state, the response by school districts has been swift and impactful, stepping up to provide free emergency meals despite increased costs and losses of traditional sources of revenue.
Businesses in Cambria line a street usually bustling with customers, but now deserted due to the coronavirus (Photo; randy andy, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Under California’s police powers, Gov. Newsom’s gently named “Stay at Home” mandates the closure of all non-essential travel, activities and businesses. Small businesses have been inevitably forced to shutter their doors. Similarly, non-profits which account for 10% of the U.S. GDP and employ 12 million workers, are no doubt also affected.
A traumatized woman alone in her room. (Photo: ChameleonsEye, via Shutterstock)At 10 p.m., Jane Doe is sexually assaulted in Springville, a small town of 1,100 in Tulare County, forty-five miles west of Visalia, at the edge of Sequoia National Forest. After a night working through shock and trying to process what happened, Jane calls the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office, who dispatch an officer from Porterville. It is 10 a.m. The officer arrives 30 minutes later.
Workers in Bakersfield on the job during the construction
of a two-story home. (Photo: Richard Thornton, via Shutterstock)OPINION: A rare burst of spontaneous political combustion occurred earlier this year in Olympia, Washington, when hairstylists, barbers, and cosmetologists mobilized against a legislative bill that would have banned booth rentals, the practice by independent contractors of renting a chair or a station at a salon to make their living. What’s going on here, in Washington state, and in every state in the nation has been a long and continuing battle to precisely define when an independent contractor really is independent and when he or she is in truth an employee.
State Schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond at the Sacramento Press Club in September. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press) Abandoned by his father and orphaned at age 6 after the death of his mother to cancer, Tony Thurmond believes he could have easily ended up in prison. Instead, the 50-year-old Richmond resident is the new state superintendent of public education. He is the second African-American in the position after Wilson Riles, who served 1971-83.
A doctor examines a young patient at a hospital. (Photo: wavebreakmedia, via Shutterstock) OPINION: A few months ago, I turned 19 years old. Approaching the last year of my teenage years should have been exciting, but instead it was bittersweet. On my birthday, I lost access to my Medi-Cal coverage and all of the preventative health care services that it provided. I spent the days leading up to my birthday rushing to complete all of the final health check-ups I could fit in, before I lost coverage – possibly forever.