The cleanup is the largest environmental clean-up in state history. California has already allocated more than $750 million in taxpayer funding for cleanup and remediation efforts, soil testing, and community outreach. But the state and the federal government need to do more.
Category: Opinion
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Stop displacement, we need to keep Angelenos housed
Racial banishment and racialized policing keep unhoused people, renters, low-income people, and communities of color constantly susceptible to displacement. Racialized policing experienced by many Black and Latinx Angelenos is used to regulate property by criminalizing community members.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Seven things to know about bilingual education
Bilingual education benefits both English only students and students who speak another language only. Multiple studies have shown the benefit of immersion to heritage language speakers. Spanish speaking children who enter into Spanish DLI programs have better outcomes than their peers
Posted inOpinion
COLUMN: Stop the Latinx bans
There is no single word that can define the entire diverse community of people of Latin American origin. We have to respect the right to choose for us to decide what we want to be called. If some people want to use the “o” the “a” the “x” or the “e,” we should let them.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: We need more Latinas in political leadership
Latinas represented in politics
Posted inOpinion
EDITORIAL: Police kill Black and Brown people at higher rates
People of color, who make up around 40% of the U.S. population, comprise more than 60% of all people killed by or who died in the custody of the police. By comparison, whites, who constitute more than 60% of the population, comprise less than 40% of all deaths over the 2014-2021 period, according to The Raza Database Project
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Could California have two U.S. Latino/a/x senators?
Politicians are eyeing the senate seat of Dianne Feinstein. Could California see two Latinos in the U.S. Senate? One name floating around is former Los Angeles congressman and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. While he hasn’t commented about it – and wouldn’t as a sitting Cabinet secretary anyway – Becerra is on a hypothetical short list that includes former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, among others.
Posted inOpinion
EDITORIAL: Ban assault weapons
Gun violence may seem like an insurmountable problem. But there are ways to make guns less accessible and also to restrict access to assault weapons.
On Jan. 23, right after the Monterey Park shooting, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced two bills to ban assault weapons.
Posted inOpinion
COLUMN: Brown pride is not racist
Expressing Brown pride is not racist. What these youth demonstrated is pride in their culture and in themselves. It’s no different than a student who wears green, or an Irish flag, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
Posted inOpinion
COLUMN: Don’t ban the term Latinx or the culture
The new governor of Alabama, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has banned the word Latinx in state government business. Republican governors, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, are waging a cultural and political war against immigrants and people of color.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: The Importance of Raza Representation on the Big Screen
In the case of Hollywood movies, for too long — past and present — Latinas/os (in general) and Chicanas/os or Mexican Americans (in particular) have been mostly invisible and marginalized.
Posted inOpinion
EDITORIAL: FBI fails to collect all the hate crimes data
While Los Angeles County is a model for data collection on hate crimes, there is no excuse for law enforcement across the state and the nation to fail to report the data to the FBI.