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Migrant Students Work in Fields During COVID School Closures | CalMatters
Migrant Students Work in Fields During COVID School Closures | CalMatters
Sisters Maria and Jennifer Salvador start their days before the sun. The Southern California teenagers report to work at an Oxnard strawberry farm with one goal: To harvest as many bright red strawberries as they can. Each 20-pound box of stemless strawberries they collect brings in $3. In the evenings when school was still in session, albeit remotely – and after chores at home were done — Maria and Jennifer turned to their school work. The two relied primarily on their father’s cell phone bec
14 Aug, 2020
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8 min read
Want to Vote By Mail? Anti-Corruption Group Launches Resource to Counter Disinformation and Confusion
Want to Vote By Mail? Anti-Corruption Group Launches Resource to Counter Disinformation and Confusion
FLORENCE, MASS. - Elections officials in the US are expecting a surge in absentee votes in the 2020 election as the US continues to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. To provide voters with the resources they need to request and send a ballot by mail, the national anti-corruption group RepresentUs launched a new toolkit to dispel disinformation and confusion ahead of November. The interactive online tool, which launched Thursday, provides the information voters need in every state to vote absent
13 Aug, 2020
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2 min read
Today’s Grapes of Wrath Descendants: The Insecure Future is Now
Today’s Grapes of Wrath Descendants: The Insecure Future is Now
This is an independent opinion. Want to respond? Write your own commentary! Email hoa@ivn.us. John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and film by the same name, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is considered one of the greatest American films of all time for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl and Depression-driven migrants came to the west seeking work but were blocked by California’s National Guardsmen. The Los Angeles Police Department call
13 Aug, 2020
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4 min read
Nonpartisan Reformers Are Ready for Another Historic Year
Nonpartisan Reformers Are Ready for Another Historic Year
With under 3 months until election day, enthusiasm for nonpartisan election reform has hit monumental levels. NANR members are on track to make 2020 another historic year for reform. That’s why NANR is partnering with Open Primaries to present the second NANR Spotlight of the year! Mark your calendars for September 9 at 2pm ET for a virtual conversation with leaders on the front-lines of election reform -- from Alaska to Florida. The NANR Spotlight is our opportunity to educate legislators, jo
13 Aug, 2020
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5 min read
What California Knows About Kamala Harris
What California Knows About Kamala Harris
More than any other vice presidential contender in a generation, Kamala Harris’ biography is singularly Californian. Born and bussed to school in Berkeley, tested by San Francisco’s cut-throat municipal politics and propelled onto the national stage as the state’s top law enforcement officer and then its first female senator of color, Harris’ approach to politics and policymaking were honed here. Although most Americans are now focusing on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s ticket p
12 Aug, 2020
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17 min read
Should the State Investigate Local Police Shootings? California Rethinks its Resistance
Should the State Investigate Local Police Shootings? California Rethinks its Resistance
If officers shot and killed Sean Monterrosa in Connecticut or New York — instead of in Vallejo, California — a state agency would investigate the June 2 incident, when a police officer reportedly mistook a hammer in the 22-year-old Latino man’s sweatshirt for a gun and fired shots through the windshield of his police vehicle. If officers shot and killed Michael Thomas in Georgia — instead of in Lancaster, California — a grand jury could investigate a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy’s claim
11 Aug, 2020
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13 min read
Side Hustles, Liquidating 401(k)s: Here’s How Jobless Californians Are Getting by Without the Extra $600
Side Hustles, Liquidating 401(k)s: Here’s How Jobless Californians Are Getting by Without the Extra $600
Since the federal weekly $600 boost expired last month, unemployed Californians have been living on impossibly low budgets — and expect to do so in the coming months even if President Trump’s weekend executive order helps break a partisan impasse in Congress. That’s because even if the federal unemployment stimulus gets extended, the state Employment Development Department estimates it could take the agency’s antiquated system as much as 20 weeks to deliver the payments. Overnight, the maximum
11 Aug, 2020
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7 min read
Being in Bensonhurst: Remembrance. Resistance. Reality.
Being in Bensonhurst: Remembrance. Resistance. Reality.
I. The marches in Bensonhurst are a distant memory for me. They were 30 years ago. I don’t recall many of the specifics, the details. We rode on busses to the Slave Theatre in Brooklyn and congregated there before heading to the site of the march, but most of it is a blur. Still, I do remember the feeling, the tension of being on those streets, of being part of a crowd of protesters who had come to lay down markers: The injustice stops here. As Yusuf Hawkins’ father, Moses Stewart, said plai
11 Aug, 2020
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9 min read
The 18th-Century Reason Biden's VP Pick Should Be a Night Owl
The 18th-Century Reason Biden's VP Pick Should Be a Night Owl
If Joe Biden were to ask the framers of the constitution what qualities he should look for in a running mate, they might single out one in particular: a love of lucubration.  It literally means working by candlelight. This “nocturnal study,” as Samuel Johnson called it, was an important part of the political lingo of the 1780s and might just be one of the best measures of one’s fitness for executive office. Lucubration matters because, despite their many moral blind spots, the framers did have
06 Aug, 2020
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3 min read
The Way We Conduct Primaries is a Problem, and These Campaigns Aim to Fix It
The Way We Conduct Primaries is a Problem, and These Campaigns Aim to Fix It
There is growing consensus among pro-voter reformers that when we discuss comprehensive solutions to provide voters with better elections, primary election reform has to be a part of the conversation. As it stands, millions of voters nationwide have no meaningful voice in the elections process because taxpayer-funded partisan primary elections are designed to explicitly give an advantage to the two dominant political parties and their members. Most elections are safe for one party or the oth
04 Aug, 2020
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5 min read