News & Commentary

Martin Luther King Jr. was a radical leader who demanded an end to racial injustice, criticized the complicity of white moderates, and advocated for a radical redistribution of political and economic power. His leadership was buttressed by the work of organizers, Black women and men, LGBTQ people

2017 was a hard year. But in a thousand ways, big and small, you showed up. You loved, you learned, you resisted — and you cleared the way for a better year in 2018.

Philip Alston, the​ United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, travels the world to investigate horrific living conditions. On a recent fact-finding trip, he found people barely surviving in vermin-infested homeless encampments, a devastating scarcity of affordable housing and municipalities that make it a crime to be homelessness, as if that could be a cure. He even spotlighted the fact that dental care was so scarce for the poor that he saw people who had lost all their teeth.

It looks like a scene out of a movie — men toting shotguns and wearing tactical gear marked "POLICE" suddenly storm into an auto repair shop in South Los Angeles, aiming their weapons at the car mechanics inside, forcing them to stand with their hands on top of cars and then handcuffing them.

California is known for being a leader in protecting the rights of LGBTQ people, women, people of color, immigrants, and members of other marginalized communities. And while we already have great laws in place, there is still much work to be done — especially now as the Trump Administration attacks the most vulnerable among us.

The LGBTQ Rights movement burst into the American public consciousness more than 50 years ago, when people living at the intersections of race, poverty, and criminalization fought back against police brutality – not only at the Stonewall Inn, but also here in California at the Black Cat Café and Compton Cafeteria. Many of those pioneering activists were women working in the sex trade, including movement mothers Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Today, LGBTQ people have made tremendous progress toward formal legal equality, but our liberation is far from complete. Police treatment of people selling sex or perceived as doing so continues to be a major problem for our community.

In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that students in public schools do not have to participate in patriotic exercises like saluting the flag or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

In April, President Trump had a message for the 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who were given permission to live in the U.S. under President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program: "The dreamers," he said, "should rest easy."

The Inland Empire region, made up of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, may be in California, but more often than not lands closer to Texas or Arizona when it comes to local immigration policies. Unlike other parts of the state, many of the region's officials often do not reflect the views and needs of the almost four million people living here. There are not many "sanctuary cities" for immigrants in the Inland Empire. In fact, some local law enforcement agencies are eager to use local resources to make it easier for the federal government to carry out deportations that harm our communities every day. That's why the passage and signing of the California Values Act (SB 54), a bill that limits local police's involvement in deportations, is a huge victory for our local communities.