News & Commentary

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.

On January 20, President Obama will hand Donald Trump the keys to the surveillance state. What can you do to protect against government spying?

My mother was seven years old when she and her family were evacuated from the West Coast and forced to live in an Army barrack behind barbed wire in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Born in Los Angeles, she had been taught in school to be a proud and loyal American citizen, so the wholesale exclusion and relocation of her community was both terrifying and confusing. On the journey to Wyoming, the prisoners were ordered to keep their shades down when the train passed through towns; my mother thought this must be because people hated her and her community so much that they didn’t want to see their faces. She was incarcerated at Heart Mountain for three years before she and her family were permitted to return to their home in Los Angeles.