Blog

From The California Endowment, June 2020 Pain. Grief. Rage. Outrage. Frustration. Hurt. Ironically, at around the time that George Floyd pleaded for air while a police officer’s knee was lodged into his neck, our Board of Directors was scheduled to have visited the Equal Justice Museum and the Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama – a trip postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Lynching exhibit was thoughtfully constructed as a powerful reminder of America’s terrible past and history of...

By Ashley A. Smith, EdSource, June 12, 2020 More than half of Cerritos College’s 22,000 students are either homeless or struggle to pay their rent and other housing utilities. That fact was the driving reason why the college, located in Norwalk, south of Los Angeles, opened the state’s first housing project for community college students facing housing insecurity. College officials held the grand opening of the housing development Thursday. “The homeless crisis in LA is pretty big,” said...

With the new coronavirus, COVID-19, engulfing the world, Gwyneth Paltrow decided to go to a health expert when she was asked to be on the cover of SHAPE magazine’s July/August cover . Rather than focusing on her own life, Paltrow interviewed Dr. Nadine Burke Harris , the first surgeon general of California, about the state of health today. Their conversation happened in April — before George Floyd's death in police custody led to mass protests over racial injustice across the country, and...

By Michael Burke, EdSource, June 11, 2020 A movement to reform California public school policing and drastically rethink school safety is quickly gaining momentum amid nationwide protests against police brutality following the killing of George Floyd. In Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, administrators and school boards are under pressure from community groups who are renewing demands for police-free schools and calling on districts to instead hire more counselors and other...

By Heather Harris, Public Policy Institute of California, June 12, 2020 The COVID-19 crisis triggered an eight-week moratorium on prison admissions that helped reduce California’s prison population to a level not seen for more than 25 years. On May 26—as demonstrations decrying police violence and systemic racial inequality spread across the nation—California resumed admitting prison inmates. Resuming admissions without also accelerating prison releases could reverse the latest reductions in...

By Joaquin Palomino, San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2020 Phelicia Jones was devastated five years ago as she watched a video of five police officers shooting a young black man more than 20 times in San Francisco’s Bayview district after he refused to drop a knife. The 2015 killing of Mario Woods sparked protests across the Bay Area and reforms within the Police Department. Jones and others hoped to see real shifts in police conduct in San Francisco, but by at least one important measure,...

Like many of you, I have experienced the events of the past weeks with a profound sense of anguish. My heart goes out to the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. My heart breaks at the incomprehensible number who have been harmed by racist violence and by the inaction that has allowed those harms to take place. As a doctor and a policymaker, I often hear the question “what it is about black and brown people” that makes us more vulnerable to the virus? That question...

June 4, 2020, David M. Studdert, LL.B., Sc.D., Yifan Zhang, Ph.D., Sonja A. Swanson, Sc.D., Lea Prince, Ph.D., Jonathan A. Rodden, Ph.D., Erin E. Holsinger, M.D., Matthew J. Spittal, Ph.D., Garen J. Wintemute, M.D., M.P.H., and Matthew Miller, M.D., Sc.D. For New England Journal of Medicine 2020. Abstract BACKGROUND Research has consistently identified firearm availability as a risk factor for suicide. However, existing studies are relatively small in scale, estimates vary widely, and no...

By Nichole Nixon, June 3, 2020, capradio. Protesters are calling for police reform and systemic change in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minnesota police. But what would ‘systemic change’ look like? California’s black lawmakers have a list of bills they want to pass in 2020. At a live-streamed press conference Tuesday, the California Black Legislative Caucus addressed days of protests, violence and peaceful demonstrations around the country. “We’re here because for 400 years, African...

By Rachel Sheier, California Healthline, June 11, 2020 A small band of volunteers started the Marin City Health and Wellness Center nearly two decades ago with a doctor and a retired social worker making house calls in public housing high-rises. It grew into a beloved community resource and a grassroots experiment in African American health care. “It was truly a one-stop shop,” said Ebony McKinley, a lifelong resident of this tightknit, historically black enclave several miles north of the...

The ACEs Connection Cooperative of Communities launches today. We want to continue to contribute to the ACEs movement for as long as it takes to create a worldwide healing-centered culture based on ACEs science. We want that to take hold in this world in the same way electricity has — we only notice it if it isn’t there. First, a clarification: Nothing on ACEsConnection.com changes! Membership remains free! Everything our current 300+ communities use stays free, and remains free for new ones.

By Matt Levin, Cal Matters, June 9, 2020 Salvador Bradford takes pride in keeping his studio apartment relatively tidy. He needs to. The converted hotel room he calls home has around 250-square feet of space to fit a bathroom, stove-top, and mini-fridge. But there is space enough for the trappings of home: a shelf full of Star Wars and Star Trek DVDs, a small self-described “shrine” to Jesus Christ, to whom Bradford credits his past five years of sobriety. He’s lived in the room at what was...