Ceremonies honoring the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began over the past weekend and culminate today. Below are three California cities that will feature extensive events.
One phrase describes how many people feel about this next chapter of the American experiment in self-rule: We fear the worst.
President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t yet sworn his oath of office, but his announced policies have already thrown a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting into pandemonium. BY LEIGHTON WOODHOUSE
Immigrant families feel fear. Children cry in school. Racial incidents increase across the country. Corporate stocks tumble following one man’s tweets. Every White House cabinet nomination becomes an occasion for dire speculation.
For those who missed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada exhibit, you can still experience his extraordinary art born of the Watts riots at the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum, in the town of Joshua Tree.
Co-published by The Nation
A video by Jennifer Dworkin explores an innovative program for Santa Barbara’s homeless.
We have a favorite place to camp at Joshua Tree where, this time, across the road from this spot, a guy drove a spiffy pickup truck and pulled a tiny trailer. Both he and his wife attend an evangelical mega-church near their Inland Empire home, He believed in human-caused climate change, she did not.
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 roared on, leaving us in the wake of his muffler. BY REV. JIM CONN
Thirty miles south of Bismarck, North Dakota, where eroded buttes rise from grassland and corn fields, the Oceti Sakowin camp appears along the winding girth of the Missouri River. Here, a story of protection, protest and cultural conflict unfolds against the desolate prairie.
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 of the Virgin de Guadalupe throughout the line. Why? Because that image held symbolic weight far beyond any other the group could carry.
Eight months after Kisha Michael, 31, and Marquintan Sandlin, 32, were shot to death in their car, there are still no answers to why Inglewood police killed them outside a Manchester Boulevard 7-11 store sometime before 4 a.m., February 21.
Of the 17 propositions on this year’s California ballot, few are as divisive as the issue of capital punishment. There are actually two separate initiatives targeting the death penalty: Proposition 62, which would abolish the death penalty, and Proposition 66, which would speed up executions.
Tom Hayden was the leader of a generation that disdained leaders. A thinker who could articulate the agonies of young dissenters to the larger world in plain English and a life-long activist who believed that Americans could move our country towards increased justice and fairness.
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 court, plus attorney fees, to be paid by the city. He was apparently singled out by police for being in a park after curfew, while other residents, who weren’t black, continued to charge their electric cars – as he recharged his car. The scars will stay with him and his family for life.
After Ava DuVernay burst into the mainstream as director of the acclaimed 2014 film Selma, she did not earn an Academy Award nomination for Direction, despite the film earning a Best Picture nod. Whatever doubts anybody might have had about her skill as a director should now be put to rest after her stunning new documentary 13th, now streaming on Netflix.
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 would force nearly all new projects higher than 32 feet to a citywide vote. The backers of Measure LV say that it’s buildings of all kinds – whether they house people or create jobs – that bring choking traffic.
Bars and Measures, Idris Goodwin’s moving drama, directed with a sure hand by Weyni Mengesha, can be appreciated on several levels. To begin with, it’s a political work, a disturbing tale involving the questionable prosecution of an American Muslim for abetting a terrorist organization.
Renters across the country are having an increasingly difficult time keeping a roof over their heads, with Californians who search for affordable housing finding the task a particularly challenging one.
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 the beginning of his candidacy in 2008.
How do you get the best quality health care in the University of California’s renowned public medical system? At UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center it’s a gold-colored wallet card with a personalized number to call. When flashed from a gurney in the ER (or at a club to impress friends), the card means one thing: The patient in question is a VIP.