The pickup truck pulled up alongside us, and the white guy inside, maybe in his 30s, waved his fist at us. Menacing. Intimidating. Gloating. Then he...
The elephant in the room at the presidential debates was climate change. According to a piece in Slate, this year the candidates spent a total of...
When Cesar Chavez led a band of farm workers on their historic 300-mile march from Delano to Sacramento half a century ago, they prominently displayed banners...
In early September, a year and a half after having been pepper-sprayed by a Santa Monica police officer, a man was awarded $1.1 million by a...
In Santa Monica a group of residents – frustrated by traffic and angry at developers – has placed a no-growth measure on the local ballot. It...
Here at the end of President Obama’s final term in office, we seem to be having the national conversation about race that he called for at...
Everybody knows that sunflowers turn their heads toward the sun. But until now no one knew whether the movement simply followed the sun's arc, or whether...
Several years ago when my wife Susan and I traveled across Ireland by local bus, we headed toward a national cultural site a few miles beyond...
As long as I can remember, there’s been an argument over policing in the black community. Do police patrol more intensely because the crime rate is...
Activists wanting to solve the crisis of human-caused climate change face a serious dilemma. The threat appears neither close enough to get our sustained attention, nor...
Of all industrialized countries in the world, we’re the only one that doesn’t guarantee full-time employees a paid break.
I recently spoke to the leader of the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West, which represents Los Angeles janitors, about some startling information I had...
The shortage of affordable rental housing can be traced directly to the 1980s when the federal government sharply curtailed domestic spending.
A few weeks ago, I found myself with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Before me almost a thousand janitors wearing deep...
Most high school science teachers across the country now teach climate change, but about a third explain it away as a natural phenomenon. Another third tell...
While the media distract us with the shinier attractions of the presidential-candidate road shows, the dirty work of politics continues in the shadows. I do not...
Twenty years ago a small group of Los Angeles faith leaders – both clergy and lay people – sat around a table in a church library...
Last month my wife Susan and I drove to Phoenix to visit family. We had never spent much time there, and my relatives wanted us to...
Americans don’t like inequality. We like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country where the top is not out of reach and the bottom doesn’t...
As this country hurtles into a New Year, I am grateful for the stop sign at Martin Luther King Jr.’s national holiday. It offers time for...