News & Commentary

Since the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark decision affirming the constitutional right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade, we've seen states pass over one thousand restrictions that make it harder for women to have an abortion. In just the first six months of 2018, 11 states enacted 22 new medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion. A Kentucky lawmaker recently introduced a bill that bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected and about half a dozen other states are currently considering bills like it.

Dear Governor Brown, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon: Today at the United Nations, Phillip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, condemned the U.S. and the state of California in a report that details failures to protect the

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.

Driving to work every morning, I’ve watched as the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River and the 57 Freeway has mushroomed. I know its days are numbered.

The following was first published in the Voice of OC

The following was first published in the Voice of OC. 

A version of the following blog appeared in the Voice of OC

By Benny Grush

In Orange County more than 2,000 individuals are homeless on any given night. Many struggle to survive in communities that criminalize their mere existence yet provide no meaningful resources to help them move off the streets and into long-term supportive housing.