News & Commentary

Sometimes the trucks arrive early. Sometimes they come with no notice at all. Sometimes, while workers from the California Department of Transportation make their way down the row of tents—seizing property and cherished belongings—people have mere minutes or seconds to grab everything they can carry before their bedding, clothes, tools, bikes, medicine, food, shelter, and other property are thrown into a Caltrans trash compactor and destroyed.

A coalition of community groups recently announced a groundbreaking partnership with Facebook and the cities of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park to address affordable housing, displacement, and economic opportunity in the region.

Almost 30 years ago, a study showed that people of color were more likely to live near incinerators.  Since then, the dangerous conditions and exposure to environmental dangers have  gotten worse. In California, CalEnviroScreen data recently demonstrated that race and environmental harms are directly correlated. Considering this, it’s alarming to think that a California agency that has the opportunity to minimize the harmful environmental exposure of pesticides to students of color, is instead suggesting weak protections. 

When she was 17 years old, Rosa* fled her home country and came to the U.S. seeking a better life. As she made her way across the border, she was raped. After she arrived in the U.S. alone, she was taken into federal custody and then placed with a Catholic organization that receives taxpayer money to provide services to young women like Rosa.

Each year, thousands of Californians are kept in jail awaiting trial simply because they can't afford to post bail.

President-elect Donald J. Trump tweeted that anyone who burns a flag should be jailed or even stripped of their U.S. citizenship. The idea that the government could use citizenship as a punishment for political speech is not simply unconstitutional, but fundamentally un-American.

On opening day of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C., I crossed the threshold with a memory deeply embedded in my psyche.