During his time on death row in California, before he was found innocent and exonerated, Shujaa Graham said he was beaten and spent nearly entire days in a small cell at the facility formerly known as San Quentin State Prison. Even when he was let out in the yard, he could only look up at the sky through the cage that stretched over the roof. He remembered men around him, some of whom were also…
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Campaigners behind the one-time 5% billionaires wealth tax in California are calling out what they describe as trickery and deception by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on Friday released a proposal for a national billionaire’s income tax even as he actively opposes the effort to tax the wealth of billionaires in the state that he and his party currently control. “Newsom does not want to…
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California voters are in the thick of a high-stakes governor’s race, in which single-payer health care, an issue that was once central to state politics, has been pushed to the sidelines. Of the top five candidates, only one unequivocally supports a health care model that would finally put California on par with the rest of the industrialized world. Billionaire Tom Steyer…
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For two years, I walked the lower yard track at San Quentin State Prison, watching construction crews tear down an old furniture factory to build a $239 million Scandinavian-styled learning center. They have now removed the fence blocking the incarcerated population’s view of the new facility. Last week marked the opening of the building, only for incarcerated people who have designated…
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing criticism for saying in a recent interview that he “reveres” Israel, just weeks after he labeled it as an apartheid state. “I revere the state of Israel. I’m proud to support the state of Israel,” Newsom said in an interview with Politico released on Tuesday, when asked whether he considers himself a Zionist. Newsom said that he is opposed to…
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Former schoolteacher Theo Henderson had been unhoused for six years when he launched the “We the Unhoused” podcast in 2019 from a park in Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Henderson became unhoused in 2013 when he was evicted after losing his job and falling into medical debt due to spiraling costs related to his diabetes. When he began documenting his experiences and those of his unhoused neighbors…
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