During one of my investigations early in my career, I met a Black teenager who was ticketed for sagging his pants (which was made illegal where he lived). He couldn't afford the ticket, so a judge and a prosecutor approved his arrest, and he was put in a cage.

CA’s largest corps have skyrocketing profits & are paying significantly less in taxes than they did a generation ago. Meanwhile, workers whose labor generates these record profits, are barely getting by. 🤔

More here: calbudgetcenter.org/news/a-califor… #CaLeg #CaBudget California Budget & Policy Center

Facing a shutdown, L.A. TACO🌴🌮 urgently needs your support! Can local journalism count on you to keep the stories of LA's food and culture alive? 🌮📰

Details 👇
lamag.com/news/l-a-taco-…

Pete Wilson’s California was a scary place for a lot of us and it is really instructional for the current state of the country.

LAPD using this to justify more overtime.

That’s all this is.

measles moving around LA

not cool guys

deadline.com/2024/04/l-a-co…

A first, “Hispanic or Latino” will be listed as one racial/ethnic category on forms like the census. While some advocacy groups and scholars applaud this change, others are concerned that it will dilute the data on racial differences among Latinos. nbcnews.com/news/latino/la…

For folks who want a history lesson - highly recommend Col. Gustavo Arellano’s Prop 187 podcast for the LA Times apple.co/2quVMat

When I was a kid, my dad gave me the talk: and by that I mean, he sat me down and told me the story of Prop 187. It’s hard to overstate how profoundly that law changed Latino life in California. Is the same about to happen in Texas?

For The Atlantic:

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

I wrote about the untold story of Arab Jews — and how they formed a solidarity movement with Palestinians, producing joint magazines, street protests, and a vision for peace.

You can't understand Israel-Palestine without understanding them. Please read!

vox.com/world-politics…

Smarter people than me have long discussed this. I’m not necessarily prepared to “cancel” Latinidad bc whether we agree or not it’s the “other” by which we are primarily identified). But I do think its current definition no longer serves us.
thenation.com/article/archiv…

There is a bigger discussion for me about whether “Latino” as a unifying identifier makes sense anymore. Our experiences are too wide, varied, racialized & nuanced. WHO constitutes the “Latino” voice (the 42%) in the U.S. matters. I wish there was a breakdown.

We need to face hard truths about how these biases travel from back home to the states with our grandparents & parents. Passed down to us. We need to do this work in ourselves. We have been and can be oppressed and oppressive.

In parallell to a policy response is reckoning with how deeply racist, classist, & xenophobic the Latinè community can be. We’re not a monolith. That 42% is a wake up call that we’re not doing enough to confront & address this in our narratives, policies, work etc..

There have been lots of takes and in my house, cursing, at seeing these numbers. Race and ethnicity are not a political orientation. And if the project of creating a multiracial/multicultural democracy is to happen, we will have to convince and organize our community.

I have one more gift membership available. First come, first serve. All I need is your name and email!

A classic California scene.

I was a longtime administrator/editor/writer at Knock LA who helped build the newsroom.

For anyone curious about my personal experience at the pub, why I left in 2023, or has questions about how the newsroom operated and its relationship to GGLA, hit me at (323) 917-2039

Horrific that Google will hide California news stories from some of its users to put pressure on state lawmakers not to pass a bill that would require it to pay journalists whose content it’s been profiting from for free for decades. latimes.com/entertainment-… via Wendy Lee