California home care workers and consumers won a major victory when an agreement was reached to limit proposed cuts to service hours in the In-Home Supportive Services program for fiscal year 2014. Yet home care workers in California – and across the nation – still await another critical decision that will affect their paychecks and their dignity: whether a federal labor law will continue to exclude home care workers from minimum wage and overtime protections.
State prison reforms are supposed to reduce dangerously overcrowded prison populations and help to alleviate the state’s fiscal crisis. But trial courts in San Mateo are feeling the squeeze of the fiscal crisis and the reforms on the county.
Imagine being unable to do the things you love to do, like playing sports, writing, or holding hands with someone you love. For most of us, that seems unimaginable, but for those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) it’s a painful reality. That’s because RA systematically attacks the body joint by joint causing inflammation so bad, it’s often tough to even walk.
Tucked between two traffic-choked freeways, the southeast corner of Santa Ana is among the least healthy places to live in California. The neighborhood’s air is dirtied with diesel emissions and other pollutants. Nearby businesses release an unusually large amount of chemicals. The community has more hazardous waste clean-up sites than almost anyplace in the state. And its groundwater is threatened by contaminants leaking from underground storage tanks. A few miles away, along the Newport Coast, it’s a different story. Traffic is relatively light, and the air is clean. There are no industrial chemicals to speak of, little hazardous waste exposure and no clean-up sites.
Advocates for Native American survivors of intimate violence cheered when they won the right to prosecute non-Indian assailants in tribal court. That change came with a provision in the Violence Against Women Act earlier this year. On at least one slice of California sovereign tribal land, the change also means defendants will have to engage with a very different criminal justice system – one that is based on restorative justice.
Native American women are physically abused, raped and stalked more than women of any other racial group in the nation. A new provision in the Violence Against Women Act, passed in February, allows Native American courts to prosecute non-Native offenders for the first time since the 1970s. While most expect the provision to help address violence against Native women, particularly in Western states, it also poses challenges for California’s tribal courts, which work with far fewer resources than county courts.
As city planners consider lifting a five-year-old ban on new fast-food vendors in South Los Angeles, urban gardening activists say it’s especially important to promote healthy eating habits by planting publicly available produce gardens on front lawns and city parkways.