Posts Tagged: poverty

Opinion

Caregivers demand a role in fixing nursing homes

A caregiver walks with her patient down a nursing home corridor. (Photo: GagliardiPhotography, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: Numbers tell one story of COVID-19’s toll on California nursing homes: Some 9,716 nursing home residents and staff died from the virus, amounting to one in eight COVID deaths statewide. But there’s another story that can’t be told in numbers. It’s the story of what it was like to work in the pandemic’s most dangerous conditions: the stress, the fear, the heartbreak.

Opinion

Community-based organizations address health inequities  

A young girl in Oakland, a key member of a community targeted for health inequities. (Photo: Roots Community Health Center)

OPINION: Much attention has been focused on the barriers and challenges to accessing health care, highlighted by a pandemic that disproportionately harms Black, Latinx, Asian American Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities. Barriers to technology or lack of broadband impeded access to MyTurn and other scheduling tools. Barriers to transportation made it impossible or difficult for folks to access mega-sites and wait in hours long lines for the vaccine.

News

Newsom recall unlikely — but simmering

Gov. Newsom at a 2019 briefing in Sacramento. (Photo: Associated Press)

A perfect storm of events is giving Gov. Gavin Newsom political headaches, and he is yet again the subject of a recall movement that claims to have already collected more than 800,000 signatures. It marks the sixth attempt by various Republicans to oust Newsom – the other five fizzled. Few veteran political observers give this one any chance of success, either, although California politics is full of surprises.

News

Following the money — in cash

Counting the cash. (Photo: NATNN, via Shutterstock)

When Steve Swanson decided to stop accepting cash at his longtime chain of Sacramento area dry cleaning stores, it seemed to make all the sense in the world.  “Cash was such a small portion of our operation,” he says. “Some days we might have only a few dollars for a whole day.” But soon he might not have a choice.

Opinion

The 2020s are the decade of the baby boomer

An older man jogs up a desert mountain peak in California. (Photo: Sirtravelalot, via Shutterstock)

OPINION:“OK Boomer” has gained popularity as a sarcastic refrain, but if millennials and all other generations fail to take baby boomers seriously, we will all share in the consequences. The 2020s will be the decade of the baby boomer.

Opinion

Newsom’s budget: What’s in it for climate equity?

Palm trees with the smoggy L.A. skyline in the background. (Photo: J Dennis, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: Californians know that climate change is here, climate change is real, and climate change is the biggest threat to our planet’s future. Less known but recently more proven is that racist and discriminatory policies of the past, like redlining, have locked in pollution exposure among low-income communities of color and dramatically increased their climate-related risks.

Opinion

In California, a new war on poverty

Children in a stroller in downtown Los Angeles. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: It’s been a long time since the United States waged a “war on poverty.” But here in California, a new war is underway. Under the leadership of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature, our recently enacted state budget confronts our poverty crisis with unprecedented investments in healthcare, preschool, CalWORKS, earned-income tax credits, and expanded juvenile justice and foster care funding and reforms.

Opinion

Changes urged in new Consumer Privacy Act

An illustration of the concept of privacy and computer use. (Image: mstanley, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: I believe in the American Dream because I am lucky enough to be the American Dream. And I’m not alone; there are millions of business owners in California and I imagine some of them share my success story.

Opinion

An open letter to Gavin Newsom: Address California’s poverty

A pair of homeless men asking for money on a Los Angeles street corner. (Photo: Hayk_Shalunts, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: Dear Gov.-elect Newsom: California has long stood out as a state that innovates and leads. As you begin your term, we at the Western Center on Law and Poverty are ready to work with you to ensure that California lives up to its ideals — including addressing poverty and its subsequent harms.

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