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Newsom Administration Announces $2.75 Billion Expansion of Homekey

Reporters Desk
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Newsom Administration Announces $2.75 Billion Expansion of Homekey

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Administration Sept. 9, announced the next phase of its homeless housing initiative, Homekey.

Gov. Newsom has released funds from his $2.75 billion investment to expand the program to purchase and rehabilitate buildings – including hotels, motels, vacant apartment buildings, tiny homes and other properties – and convert them into up to 14,000 more permanent, long-term housing units for people experiencing or at risk of houselessness. Homekey has made competitive grants available to local governments across the state.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development or HCD Sept. 9, is releasing the latest Notice of Funding Availability for local governments to apply for Homekey funding.

Since its launch in 2020, Homekey has been the fastest, largest, most cost-effective addition of permanent housing in California history, successfully re-engineering the strategy to create more housing for people experiencing houselessness. Local interest has been strong from the start. HCD began accepting applications for Homekey on July 22, 2020, and within a year, Homekey provided safe shelter from COVID-19 to thousands of Californians, expediently creating 6,000 affordable housing units.

The Governor earlier this year signed a historic housing and homelessness funding package as part of his California Comeback Plan, investing $12 billion to tackle houselessness overall. Of this amount, $5.8 billion – including the $2.75 billion to expand Homekey – will be used for up to 42,000 new homeless housing units and treatment beds, with housing options for those with the most acute behavioral health needs. The additional Homekey funding builds on the first phase investment of $846 million, which resulted in 94 projects in counties and tribal areas across the state that closed escrow last year.

SB 2, Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act of 2021, Approved by Legislature

Reporters Desk
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SB 2, Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act of 2021, Approved by Legislature

SACRAMENTO ­– Senate Bill 2, authored by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) and Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego), Sept. 8, was approved 28 to 9 during a final concurrence vote on the Senate Floor. Also known as the Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act of 2021, SB 2 aims to increase accountability for law enforcement officers that commit serious misconduct and illegally violate a person’s civil rights.

SB 2 creates a statewide decertification process to revoke the certification of a peace officer following the conviction of serious crimes or termination from employment due to misconduct. Additionally, SB 2 will strengthen the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act to prevent law enforcement abuses and other civil rights violations.

For example, recently, two former Torrance city police officers were charged with conspiracy and vandalism. These officers left the department last year, but without a strong decertification process they will be able to be hired by another department and continue their racist and hateful misconduct. This is simply one of numerous instances where a lack of accountability will lead to future abuses.

SB 2 is a priority of the CA Legislative Black Caucus and is sponsored by a coalition of community organizations including: Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, ACLU California Action, Anti-Police-Terror Project, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, California Families United 4 Justice, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, PolicyLink, STOP Coalition, and Youth Justice Coalition.

Hahn Releases Statement on Assembly Passage of Bruce’s Beach Bill

Reporters Desk
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Hahn Releases Statement on Assembly Passage of Bruce’s Beach Bill

MANHATTAN BEACH — Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn Sept. 8, celebrated the California State Assembly voting unanimously to pass SB 796. The legislation, sponsored by State Senator Steven Bradford, would remove state restrictions from Los Angeles County’s beachfront property once owned by Black entrepreneurs, Willa and Charles Bruce. The existing state restrictions currently limit Hahn’s ability to transfer the County property. SB 796’s passage would allow Hahn to move forward with her effort to return the property to the surviving descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce.

“I am determined to return this land to the Bruce family, but I can’t do it without this legislation,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “I have been so moved by the unanimous support that we have gotten for this effort from our State leaders. When this bill hits the Governor’s desk, I urge him to sign it and I think it would mean so much if he signed it at Bruce’s Beach.”

SB 796 must now go back to the California State Senate for a reconciliation vote by this Friday, September 10, 2021. If it passes, it then goes to Governor Newsom’s desk for his consideration and signature.

Background

In 1912, a Black couple named Willa and Charles Bruce purchased beachfront property in Manhattan Beach and built a resort that became known as Bruce’s Beach. It was one of the few places where Black residents could go to enjoy a day at the beach because so many other local beaches did not permit Black beachgoers. The Bruces and their customers were harassed and threatened by white neighbors including the KKK. Eventually, the Manhattan Beach City Council moved to seize the Bruce’s property as well as surrounding property using eminent domain in 1924, purportedly to build a park. The City of Manhattan Beach took possession of the property in 1929 and it remained vacant for decades.

The section of the seized property closest to the beach, including the lots owned by Willa and Charles Bruce, was years later transferred to the State and in 1995 transferred to Los Angeles County. The lots that the Bruces owned are now the site of the Los Angeles County Lifeguard Training Headquarters.

In April, Supervisor Hahn announced her intention to return the Bruce’s Beach property to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce and that she had asked State Senator Steven Bradford to introduce legislation (now known as SB 796) to remove state restrictions on the property and allow her to do just that.

The Newly Moderne

Melina Paris
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The Newly Moderne

The Long Beach Creative Group is presenting their first solo gallery exhibition, The Newly Moderne, featuring the paintings of Donald Tiscareno.

Tiscareno, who is 80 years old, draws inspiration from his first trip to New York City. “I was twenty years old and stressed out from college,” Tiscareno recalled. “Upon arriving, I made a beeline for the Museum of Modern Art.”

It was there he was introduced to modern American art and the abstract expressionism of the forties and fifties. This experience had a profound impact on his artistic development.

Tiscareno also studied for a year at University of California, Los Angeles with Tony Duquette. He met Francoise Gilot when she spoke at California State University, Long Beach. She had been with Picasso in the early forties when she, like Pablo, became a painter herself. These two artists encouraged and influenced him. Gilot said, “Donald, if you want to call yourself a ‘painter’, you have to paint every day.” That is what he does.

Tiscareno was an art educator in high schools, community colleges and at CSULB. During his thirty years of teaching he “moonlighted” in the field of design and eventually opened his own design studio in Belmont Shore. He purchased a furniture store, and Justina’s Restaurant on nearby Naples Island. As an interior designer, he was able to meet and design homes for people like Congressman Alan Lowenthal and Dr. Robert Gumbiner, the founder of the Long Beach Museum of Latin American Art.

Running three businesses became overwhelming; there was no time to paint! Tiscareno decided to retire and do what he loves most: stay home and paint among the company of dogs and cats. Now, he is down to only one cat and hundreds of paintings.

Donald Tiscareno’s exhibit “The Newly Moderne.”

The show will run from Sept. 12 through Oct. 17. No appointment is required.

You can also watch a video interview with Tiscareno on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/painter-donald-tiscareno

Time: 1 to 4 p.m Saturdays and Sundays

Details: https://www.facebook.com/LongBeachCreativeGroup

Venue: LBCG/Rod Briggs Gallery, located at 2221 East Broadway, Long Beach

The LBCG is an established consortium of experienced artists, educators, and art enthusiasts engaged in creating exhibit space and opportunities for artists through curated exhibits and events. Follow the group on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/longbeachcreativegroup/

“Muhammad Ali” Covers Dramatic Arc of a Man and His Country

Greggory Moore
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“Muhammad Ali” Covers Dramatic Arc of a Man and His Country

On October 2, 1980, my parents took me to the home of family friends who subscribed to OnTV so we could watch 38-year-old Muhammad Ali come out of retirement to fight heavyweight champion Larry Holmes. And like every one of the 2 billion viewers this side of Holmes’s mother, I rooted desperately for Ali as Holmes picked him apart round by round.

Why did a 12-year-old suburban White boy who didn’t really follow boxing and knew nothing about Ali’s heroic stances on race and Vietnam want so badly for him to win? It’s a testament to the spell cast by the man who went from being one of America’s most divisive figures to perhaps the most famous and beloved person on Earth.

Only five months removed from Hemingway, the most recent opus from Ken Burns & co., comes Muhammad Ali, whose life is as epic — in its own way — as Burns’s most sprawling subjects (e.g., the Civil War, the Roosevelts). And although the uninitiated couldn’t ask for a better overview on history’s most transcendent pugilist, those already familiar with him may come away feeling they’ve heard most all of it before.

“Round One” (each of the docuseries’ four parts is perhaps too quaintly identified as a round), which covers the first 21 years of Ali’s life — when he was known as Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. — supplies the least well-known biographical material, including information on Cassius Sr., a charismatic and proud Black man who was at times violently abusive to young Cassius’s mother; and on the 11 Kentucky businessmen who managed the first two years of Clay’s professional career.

Partly because of benign auspices of the latter, a group of White men who not only took good care of the young fighter’s finances but protected him from the mafia (at the time a cancer in the boxing world), Clay was disinclined to speak out on race matters. But with the rise of the Nation of Islam (for context, we get sidenote bios on Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, who would shortly become major figures in Ali’s life) watering the soil of a race conscious made so fertile in childhood by his father and various events (e.g., the murder of Emmett Till), by age 22 Clay-cum-Ali was a vociferous embodiment of Black pride almost unheard of in American history.

Covering 1964–’70, Round Two is the most joyous of the four parts, highlighting The Greatest at the height of his powers, when his combination of lightning quick feet/hands/mind/mouth made him one of the most striking individuals the world had ever seen. Shortly after claiming the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston — revealed in a short bio to be something of a “hero” (says novelist Walter Mosely) rather than the simple villain of Ali lore — Clay officially becomes Muhammad Ali and “tore the mask off White comfort,” to the point that a 1966 mainstream newspaper article labeled him “the worst influence on people since Adolf Hitler.” The schism of the American public’s love-hate relationship with Ali (he was nothing but loved abroad) came in 1967, when he refused military induction, a stand on principle that cost him his boxing license, his athletic peak, millions of dollars, and very nearly five years in prison. (Details of the trial proceedings against him reveal that, contrary to popular conception, the Supreme Court ultimately overturned his conviction not because they vindicated his sincere religious objection to the Vietnam war but because of lower-court procedural errors, including one that was the ironic result of the FBI monitoring the phone calls of Elijah Muhammad and MLK.)

At the beginning of Round Three it’s 1970, and Ali the boxer is back in action, a turn of events so terrible to some that Georgia Governor Lester Maddox called for a day mourning when Atlanta agreed to host his return match. Although by this time hatred of Ali had generally lost its edge — White America wasn’t quite as panicked about Black Power as it once had been, and public opinion had turned severely against the war — Round Three explores the dark side of Ali’s personality. Although he may not have been abusive toward women, All was nearly insatiable sexually, unfaithful in marriage (including a period when he was a bigamist) to the point of hiring prostitutes.

But it was in his treatment of Joe Frazier, his greatest rival, where Ali’s cruelty is revealed. For the sake of hype and showmanship, the low road of Ali’s public and relentless demeaning of Frazier — who was kind enough to lend Ali money while Ali was struggling financially during his boxing ban — sank all the way down to racist tropes.

But Round Four is the saddest of all. Upon the resumption of Ali’s career, with his once preternatural ring speed slowed to relatively mortal proportions, Ali “discovered he could take a punch” — a blessing and a curse, noted Ali fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco. Although in the mid ‘70s Ali is rich and almost universally adored, we see a man in his mid 30s already sliding into obvious decline, his speech patterns sluggish shadows of what they were just a few years earlier. By the post-fight press conference after the Holmes debacle, the change is painful to behold.

From here it’s mostly downhill, with a Parkinson’s diagnosis in 1985 and Ali’s withdrawal from public life. His lighting of the torch at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta is recalled here more sadly than I experienced it. Yes, it was shocking to see this most vibrant of souls as a locked-in, quivering mass, but what I remember is loving to see him after so much time, and loving to see the obvious outpouring of love for a one-time hurricane of controversy who was now a national treasure.

This, ultimately, is the story of Muhammad Ali as much as it is about the man himself. Previous material may cover specific aspects of Ali’s epic journey better than what Team Burns offers (for example, 1996’s When We Were Kings is a far more compelling document of “the Rumble in the Jungle” than the pro forma review we get here), but it’s the arc that makes this eight-hour journey. “It was striking to see this evolution not in Ali,” reflects New Yorker editor David Remnick, “but in us.”

Individuals and societies change, often in unforeseeable ways. The Louisville Lip ended his life in near silence, humble and repentant of his personal foibles. And the world had nothing but love for him. Go figure.

Muhammad Ali premieres September 19–22 at 8–10pm on PBS.

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“Closely Related Keys” Timely But Unconvincing

Greggory Moore
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“Closely Related Keys” Timely But Unconvincing
Mehrnaz Mohammadi and Sydney A. Mason. Photo by Andrew Hofstetter

For all the bad that’s come from COVID-19, there’s a sliver of a silver lining for International City Theatre. Originally slated for 2020 but pandemically postponed until now, Wendy Graf’s Closely Related Keys, whose plot involves the plight of an imperiled Iraqi translator hoping against hope that the Americans he assisted in the wake of 9/11 will not forever leave him twisting in the wind, gets an extra dose of timeliness from today’s U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Will we keep our promises, or are the friends we left behind on their own?

Unfortunately, timeliness is the best thing going for Closely Related Keys, with sloppy writing that groans under the weight of its own sententiousness and ill-considered staging.

It’s 2010, and Julia (Sydney A. Mason), a young NYC corporate lawyer, is really starting to hit her groove. She’s second-chairing her biggest case ever, and she’s got great chemistry — legally and sexually — with the first chair, Ron (Nick Molari). But then her pops (Oscar Best) drops a bombshell: Neyla (Mehrnaz Mohammadi), the half-Iraqi half-sister Julia never knew she had, is coming to America in three weeks. Oh, and did I mention Julia’s mom was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11?

Yes, I know Iraq(is) had nothing to do with 9/11. But maybe Julia doesn’t. Or maybe it’s the hijab. Or maybe she thinks all Arabs are thick as thieves. Whatever the case, she’s got a problem with her seemingly permanent houseguest. (We’re told Neyla will go to a hotel after the first night, but she never leaves and the hotel is never again mentioned.)

But is there something to Julia’s misgivings? Graf does her damnedest to make us wonder by introducing Tariq (Adrian Mohamad Tafesh), who, in a series of shadowy phone conversations, sternly exhorts Neyla to some unnamed imperative she pledges to perform: “Believe me, Tariq, this will be done.” (Cue suspenseful minor chords.)

The mystery surrounding this plot point is as inorganic as the dialog with which Graf tries to drive home her admittedly important themes (obligation, otherness, reconciliation). “Maybe [we’re] a funny kind of family,” Dad tells Julia at play’s end. “She wears head scarfs, you defend big corporations, and me, I’m somewhere in between.” Wha? Then there’s the vague lawyer talk that makes L.A. Law seem like cinema verité. “I want to take another look at [the case material],” Julia tells Ron after a successful deposition. “I’m thinking it all comes down to dates. Looks like a long weekend for us.”

Graf’s shortcomings are equaled by director Saundra McClain’s, who just doesn’t seem interested in believability. Couples who finish loud intercourse should not emerge clothed from between the sheets without taking a second to pull up their drawers. Violinists should move their fingers on the fingerboard while playing. Visitors who call from the sidewalk intercom asking to come up to a second-floor apartment should not immediately walk into the room — and if staying, should take off their overcoats and scarves.

More importantly, with rare exceptions the cast simply recite their lines at each other, with no apparent listening/hearing involved. It’s impossible to say for sure whether the casting is bad, because McClain should never have allowed them to go through rehearsals like this.

There’s no denying that Closely Related Keys, with its mediation on America’s post-9/11 involvement with the Middle East, is perhaps even more relevant today than when it debuted seven years ago — and is likely to remain so for a long time to come. But relevance does not good art make.

Closely Related Keys at International City Theatre
Times: Thurs-Sat 8:00 p.m. and Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through September 12
Cost: $49-$52
Details: (562) 436-4610, ICTLongBeach.org
Venue: Beverly O’Neill Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

Abortion: Is the Texas GOP the Dog that Caught the Car?

Thom Hartmann
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Abortion: Is the Texas GOP the Dog that Caught the Car?

https://hartmannreport.com/p/abortion-is-the-texas-gop-the-dog?

Republicans are proud of how they’re intimidating women in Texas. But could this abortion ban & its vigilantism be the tipping point that activates women & allies to take down the GOP?

Texas Republicans and five hardcore rightwing Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are quite proud of themselves right now.

“The court’s order is stunning,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissent. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

But this is a political as much as a legal and social issue, bringing to mind old clichés about counting chicks and things coming home to roost.

Ever since the Reagan election of 1980 the GOP has been the party of billionaires and big business. The problem they’ve always faced, though, is that there aren’t enough morbidly rich voters to win elections and big companies can’t vote at all.

To get around that, they’ve brought together a coalition of fervent true believers, sometimes called “single issue voters,” representing a variety of “special interests.” These include:

  • Working-class white racists (who Nixon first reached out to with his “Southern Strategy” in 1968)
  • Sexually insecure male gun and military-garb fetishists
  • Upper-middle-class and rural “anti-welfare” anti-tax white people
  • “Christian” religious freaks who want their sect running the government
  • Anti-abortion “pro-life” activists

Without all of these five groups, Republicans don’t have enough voters to take on the Democratic Party’s coalition of educated urban whites, racial minorities, gender minorities and women, Social Security/Medicare-age voters and young people.

Which raises a vital question about the Republican Party, both in Texas and across the country: will a final successful abortion ban take enough steam out of their most fervent followers that they’ll begin to lose elections in a bigger way than they are now?

Could it even turn some Republican voters — who always just gave lip-service to pro-life causes but never really thought such a Handmaid’s Tale dystopia could ever happen — against the Party?

Four of the five groups that make up the Republican voting coalition have passionate causes that will never be resolved, thus keeping them tight with the GOP:

  • The white racists are always going to be dissatisfied with anything short of a reversal of Brown v Board (1954) and a return to the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v Ferguson (1896)…and that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
  • The sexually insecure men and incels will always be vulnerable to NRA propaganda that Democrats are going to take their guns away; even 8 years of Obama expanding “gun rights” didn’t reduce their temperature.
  • Upper-middle-class white people who revel in the privilege of their income and skin color are always going to object to their tax dollars “being taken at the point of a gun” and given to the less fortunate, particularly less-fortunate minorities.
  • And the “Christian” religious freaks who want US law replaced by their Christian-Sharia interpretation of the Bible have been with western civilization since long before this continent was thoroughly colonized by Europeans (think: Crusades or Cromwell), and won’t go anywhere else any day soon.

The single-issue anti-abortion voters, however, have just gotten what they want, at least in Texas and at least for the moment. Other GOP-controlled states are looking at the Texas law and because the Supreme Court has basically set aside Roe v Wade to support this vigilante-style approach to social norm enforcement there will almost certainly be clones popping up soon.

Which may well bring us back to the slow-boil societal crisis women suffered before 1973, the year abortion was legalized and back-alley practitioners largely vanished along with foundling homes.

I’m reminded of a mystery novel I read in the 1980s or thereabouts.

In it, women are being raped all across New York City, usually multiple times, and the detectives digging into the case are mystified until they discover that each of the women was an outspoken anti-abortion crusader and the rapist had succeeded in impregnating all of them, one-after-the-other. (I just spent a half hour with duckduckgo trying to find the name of the novel — I think it was by Ed McBain or Lawrence Block — but couldn’t locate it. If you know, reply in comments below.)

In that novel, as I recall, almost all of those fictitious women not only got abortions but also dropped out of the anti-abortion movement, which was the goal of the demented rapist. The plot premise was intentionally ugly and evil, but raises the question: what happens when this abortion ban gets real for Republican voters?

How will it change the political equation when, as routinely happens, daughters of the well-off and politically active end up with an unwanted pregnancy?

What happens when one of their kids dies from a coat-hanger abortion (as happened to a girl I knew in high school in 1966)?

Or they simply know a friend or neighbor to whom that happened and, through that sudden reality-check, come to realize the brutality of such total state (and, with the Texas regime, vigilante) control over women’s bodies?

Let’s be honest here: the “right to life” movement was never about children or life.

These are the same people and politicians who want to cut food stamps, refuse to expand Medicaid, and will fight to their political death to prevent low-income women with children from getting free housing or medical care.

Hell, they’re just fine with kids dying from COVID-19 exposure at school. They’re enthusiastic about it, in fact, and are this week passing more laws to prevent school mask and vaccine mandates in an effort to prove they can be as callous and brutal as the Sociopath of Mar-a-Lago.

Children are literally dying from COVID-19 every single day across the USA, and these “pro-life” Republicans are pushing for more children to show up in crowded schools without masks or vaccines.

Their passion for “life” ends when a woman gives birth, and that’s the movement’s Achilles’ heel, along with the fact that 77% of Americans want Roe to stay in effect.

Actually banning abortion — as opposed to just talking about it every election year — could deflate a significant slice of the Republican voter base without adding to it at all. The anti-abortion crowd got what they wanted: now it’s time to put away the bullhorns and signs and go home.

Republicans have the anti-abortion crowd firmly in their camp right now, but with the issue no longer a political one will those single-issue voters just melt away over the next year or two? Or start looking at other issues, where they may disagree with the GOP?

On the other side, will it super-energize women across the nation — both in Red states and those afraid of a GOP takeover in their Blue or Purple state — to actively engage in politics in ways like we’ve seen anti-abortion folks do for the past 5 decades?

Instead of an annual “Right to Life” march on Washington, DC will there be an annual “Right to Choose” march? Will the Equal Rights Amendment finally get passed after 50+ years of GOP opposition? Will thousands more women jump into politics from school boards to statewide offices to the US Senate?

Have Republicans now begun losing one of the most fervent parts of their voter base?

While the GOP is basking in the warm glow of victory at this moment, I’m wondering if they’re like the dog that finally caught the car and is now haplessly running down the road, unable to unlock his jaws from the bumper?

Mississippi, COVID-19 and Truth

Reporters Desk
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Mississippi, COVID-19 and Truth

By Dr. Corey Wiggins

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s baseless claims about unvaccinated Black people being the bearers of COVID-19 were not surprising at all. This is yet another instance of people, and not just elected officials, using Black folks as scapegoats for the failures of the state.

Lt. Gov. Patrick responded to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Aug. 19 saying: “The biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked, over 90% of them voted for Democrats in their major cities and major counties.”

The last time we checked, these statements lack substance.

What Lt. Gov. Patrick achieved in the Thursday night interview was not to uncover the truth, but to disseminate misinformation and fan the flames in our already politically divisive country. His ill-conceived assertions reflect the unfortunate reality that people can easily, dangerously spin fiction into fact, and still garner proponents of a fallacious correlation.

Let’s set some things straight. Here in Mississippi, Texas’ neighboring COVID-19 hotspot state, the top 19 counties with the highest COVID-19 infections in the state are all primarily populated by white, unvaccinated individuals from rural areas according to data from One Voice, a leading Mississippi non-profit. For instance, Neshoba County, a county populated by about 60% of white individuals, saw an average of 271.9 new confirmed cases per day, per 100,000 residents last week — the highest average surge in cases seen in Mississippi. The evidence clearly points out that Black people do not account for the largest share of unvaccinated adults, a reality that Lt. Gov. Patrick has repeatedly failed to acknowledge.

In Texas, vaccination rates among Black people are in fact statistically lower compared to other racial and ethnic groups, with 29% currently vaccinated as of Aug, 20. However, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, Black people, who make up about 13 percent of the state’s population, hold 16 percent of the state’s cases. On the other hand, White and Hispanic Texans amount to over 80% of the population and carry about 70% of cases.

Mississippi faces similar COVID-19 challenges. Less than 40% of the state’s population are fully vaccinated. This month alone, nearly 12,000 Mississippi students have tested positive for COVID-19, and almost 30,000 students are in quarantine. Last week, about 1,000 contract health workers were sent to assist Mississippi’s fourth COVID-19 surge. But just two weeks ago, Governor Tate Reeves said on Facebook, “We are not panicking,” and, “My number one goal from day one of this pandemic has always been to protect the integrity of our health care system.” https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/state/mississippi

We are a state that has not expanded Medicaid. We are a state that has underfunded public education systems. We are a state that does not offer our colleges and universities, particularly our historically Black colleges and universities, the resources they need. We have a severely under-checked budget system that attacks poor folks and Black folks more than they do wealthy individuals. For years, the Black community has been stressing the imperative for the state to offer more public health care funding. And now, when we have very specific examples of our institution’s failures, the blame game card is conveniently dealt versus taking responsibility for past failures and trying to move forward with tangible solutions.

Coupled with the state’s ill-advised regulations of not requiring mask mandates, many states such as Mississippi and Texas’ new waves of Delta variant infections will continue to balloon if stricter legislations are not put in place to protect the lives of all residents. And, with our nation’s history of placing medical barriers for non-white individuals, our vaccination rates will not improve unless we provide vaccine equity and proper health care resources for all individuals in need.

In fact, over the past month, vaccinations among minority groups have been on the rise. More Black people are getting vaccinated, and data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the NAACP support this statement. Per the Kaiser study, between August 2 and 16, vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic individuals increased by 2.5 percent and 2.6 %, respectively. In a recent study as part of the NAACP’s COVID.KNOW MORE initiative, 70 % of Black Americans have either been fully vaccinated, or have had their first dose of a vaccine, with plans to get the second.

Additionally, of those vaccinated, 90% say they will receive the booster shot if the CDC recommends one. Yet, we continue to notice a pattern of elected officials blaming minority communities for COVID-19. These officials, and many who choose to believe these grotesque fabrications fall short in understanding that the COVID-19 virus has no specification for the type of person it infects. Regardless of race, religion, political party or socioeconomic status, the virus has no boundaries — period. What seems to be the case here is officials expanding their boundaries of lies relating to the pandemic, and presenting targets when it becomes well-suited to certain officials’ political agendas.

We must make it our common goal to fight COVID-19 together with tangible, equitable solutions. The unwise solution is to tear other communities apart and place blame on those who least deserve it. To defeat COVID-19, we must fight with facts. Because the remarks from Lt. Gov. Patrick were clearly anything but fact.

Dr. Corey Wiggins is executive director, Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP.

How to Vote in the Recall Election

Reporters Desk
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How to Vote in the Recall Election

With the recall election currently underway, here is a refresher on all the ways you can vote here in Los Angeles County.

You have until Tuesday, Sept. 14, to cast your ballot, and here are your options:

Option One – Vote By Mail

All registered voters in LA County have been sent a vote-by-mail ballot. Just fill it out and return it either…

  • In the mail (no postage required), OR
  • At one of the 400 ballot drop boxes located across the County, OR
  • At any Vote Center (see below)

If you’ve already sent in your mail-in ballot and would like to track its status, you can do that by clicking here. www.california.ballottrax.net/voter

Option Two – Vote In Person

You also have the option to cast your ballot in-person at Vote Centers across LA County. Here are the facts on those:

  • Many Vote centers are open now. The remainder will open this Saturday, Sept. 11.
  • Vote centers are open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. On Sept. 14 vote centers will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

You can vote (or drop off your mail-in ballot) at ANY Vote Center. Click below to see all Vote Centers in LA County.

https://locator.lavote.net/locations/vc?culture=en

If you are not sure if you are registered or need to check to see if your information is up to date, you can do that by clicking here. https://www.lavote.net/home/voting-elections/voter-registration/register-to-vote/register

If you have any questions about this information, please visit the LA County Registrar-Recorder’s website at LAVote.net. You can also email their office at voterinfo@rrcc.lacounty.gov with Election-related questions.

 

California Takes Action to Support Afghan Refugee Arrivals in California

Reporters Desk
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California Takes Action to Support Afghan Refugee Arrivals in California

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), took action Sept. 3, to assist Afghan arrivals settling in California.

The Governor, with support from legislative leaders, is requesting $16.7 million in general funds, which will be used to provide cash assistance and other services for newly arriving Afghans in the state.

California is taking comprehensive action to welcome its new Afghan neighbors through a statewide coordination effort as well as access to health care, public benefits and additional resources. The proposed general fund expenditure is expected to be considered during the legislative session next week.

Some Afghan arrivals will not be Special Immigration Visa holders, but rather will be paroled into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons. Due to their immigration status, humanitarian parolees are currently ineligible for some refugee benefits and services as well as many federal public assistance programs. However, humanitarian parolees are potentially eligible for state-funded CalWORKs, Medi-Cal and California’s Food Assistance Program, if they meet program eligibility requirements. Notably, as humanitarian parolees, only Afghan arrivals with children could be eligible for CalWORKs, and there is an expected gap in assistance available for Afghans under this status who are without children. The proposed temporary expansion of the state’s Trafficking and Crime Victim Assistance Program or TCVAP will ensure humanitarian parolees without children, who are ineligible for CalWORKs, are able to access important public benefits, if they are otherwise eligible.

The Newsom administration will lead in this area with further coordination, community engagement and state-funded public benefits to further available resources, including by leveraging the below efforts:

  • To facilitate an organized and coordinated effort, the state has established an interagency working group that will be co-led by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and the California Health and Human Services Agency. They will work closely with counties, resettlement agencies, community groups and philanthropic organizations, with the goal of supporting the successful integration of newly arriving Afghans, including the provision of public and privately funded services and support.
  • Depending on their immigration status, arriving Afghan individuals and families are eligible for certain public assistance programs, including those funded by the state. Click here for more information regarding public benefit eligibility.
  • The Governor proposes $16.7 million to address gaps in federal and state-funded assistance for certain Afghan arrivals through the temporary expansion of TCVAP.
  • Recent Afghan arrivals may be eligible for state and federal housing and homelessness resources. A list of state and federal homelessness resources compiled by the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council can be found here. Local coordination will help leverage these resources. Additional information regarding available resources will be added in the coming weeks.
  • $20 million in awards for the California Newcomer Education and Well-Being (CalNEW) program and $1 million in federal funding awards for the Refugee School Impact (RSI) program. The 2020-21 State Budget provided $20 million to California Department of Social Services (CDSS) for the CalNEW program. In addition, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement appropriated $1 million to implement the RSI program during Federal FY 2022. The funding is allocated to school districts in under-resourced service areas with large numbers of socioeconomically disadvantaged newcomers, undocumented immigrants, language isolated households, unaccompanied minors placements and refugee arrivals, including school districts in regions with an increase in Afghan arrivals.
  • The 2021-22 State Budget also included $105.2 million one-time general funds for rapid response to provide humanitarian support to immigrants for emergent needs, which may be available to supplement resettlement efforts and support immediate short-term needs where federal funding is unavailable.

Gov. Newsom also announced Sept. 3, an expansion of the California Dignity for Families Fund, a public-private partnership with Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, which was established to meet the needs of migrants, migrant families and unaccompanied youth and minors entering California, including individuals and families arriving from Afghanistan.

The fund has already raised $8.3 million toward its $20 million goal. The Fund’s grantmaking work, in coordination with state agencies, will support humanitarian relief, immigration legal assistance, wraparound services, mental health programs, holistic case management and more.

California is also partnering with Airbnb.org to help provide free, temporary housing across the state to Afghan arrivals. Airbnb.org has housed more than 100 Afghan arrivals across California thus far and will continue to welcome more in coordination with local refugee resettlement agencies.

Further support from the federal government will ensure successful resettlement in California and across the country.

Details: www.cdss.ca.gov/afghan-arrival-response

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