News & Commentary

With a new school year comes new experiences, new choices, and new opportunities. One is the opportunity to make sure you and your friends have the information you need to help navigate the different decisions that may come up in your life. Some of the most important decisions you may face are around your reproductive and sexual health, and if you’re a young person in California, you have the rights and resources to get the health care you need.

There are some things you won’t be able to avoid when the new school year starts up. Homework. Pop quizzes. Final exams.

In this time when our federal government has ordered ICE officials to aggressively pursue undocumented folks, it’s important to remind some of our most vulnerable populations about their constitutional rights.

Historian Timothy Snyder got it exactly right in his commentary on the political situation we face today “when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of the statehouses.”

Omar Arnoldo Rivera Martinez fled to the United States from his native El Salvador to escape persecution and violence from organized gangs that use their power to extort, kidnap and kill with little consequences. He traveled thousands of miles over unforgiving terrain to seek asylum in the U.S. But what he found here was more violence and depravation – not on the streets, but in a U.S. immigration detention facility.

Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos confirmed what we have long suspected: she and President Trump are prioritizing private education at the expense of an equitable K-12 public education for all. 

Trump’s reaction to the recent London terrorist attack was not only arrogant and tasteless. It was frightening.

Imagine you just moved to Los Angeles. You can’t find a job and are temporarily homeless. And just when you think things can’t get worse, you’re arrested for blocking a sidewalk when you set up a tent to sleep. You appear at your court date and because you can’t afford a lawyer, the judge tells you to speak with a public defender.

Political action doesn’t always have to take the form of marching, holding a house party or calling your local representative. You can make a bold and necessary political statement just by buying a movie ticket.