[Photo: Reparations bill author and CA Assembly member Shirley Weber (D-San Diego)]
According to latimes.com, California Governor Gavin Newsom today signed Assembly Bill 3121, which makes the Golden State the first in the U.S. to formally adopt a law to study and develop proposals for potential reparations to descendants of enslaved people and those impacted by slavery.
Newsom said the new law, authored by CA Assembly memberShirley Weber (D-San Diego), and the bipartisan support for its passage are proving “a paradigm that we hope will be resonant all across the United States.”
In a year of national protests against racial injustice, state lawmakers approved Assembly Bill 3121 to force the state to begin to confront its racist history and systemic disparities that persist today.
Although California entered the Union as a “free state” in 1850, slavery continued there after the state Constitution outlawed it the previous year. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.
The new law creates a task force to recommend appropriate remedies to the state Legislature and determine who should be eligible to receive compensation, which advocates hope will become a model in a country where movements to make amends for centuries of slavery have failed to gain traction at the federal level.
“California has come to terms with many of its issues, but it has yet to come to terms with its role in slavery,” said Weber. “We’re talking about really addressing the issues of justice and fairness in this country that we have to address.”
California Hall of Fame Inductees Maya Angelou, Rupaul
Author Maya Angelou and performer/television series host RuPaul are among the inductees for the 2019 class of California Hall of Fame, according to sfgate.com.
California’s governor Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom announced the inductees on Wednesday.
The class includes civil rights leader James M. Lawson Jr., actor and comedian George Lopez, soccer player and two-time World Cup champion Brandi Chastain, skateboarder and entrepreneur Tony Hawk, chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck, astrophysicist France A. Córdova, author Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,and winemaker Helen M. Turley.
The class will be inducted during a ceremony on December 10. The California Hall of Fame started in 2006 and inductees are selected each year by the governor and first partner.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Crown Act (aka CA Senate Bill No. 188) into law, making it illegal to enforce dress code or grooming policies against hairstyles such as afros, braids, twists, and locks.
To quote CNN’s article:
Los Angeles Democrat Sen. Holly Mitchell, who introduced the bill earlier this year, said the law is about “inclusion, pride and choice.” “This law protects the right of Black Californians to choose to wear their hair in its natural form, without pressure to conform to Eurocentric norms,” Mitchell said in a statement Wednesday. “I am so excited to see the culture change that will ensue from the law.”
Newsom said the law was “long-overdue” but many Americans only became aware of the issue last December when a referee at a wrestling tournament in New Jersey ordered a black high school wrestler to cut off his dreadlocks or forfeit his match.
The student had to choose whether “to lose an athletic competition or lose his identity,” Newsom said.
“That’s played out in workplaces, it’s played out in schools — not just in athletic competitions and settings — every single day all across America in ways that are subtle, in ways overt,” Newsom said during a bill-signing ceremony.
The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2020, addresses policies against natural hair that are unfair toward women and people of color, the governor’s office said. “Workplace dress code and grooming policies that prohibit natural hair, including afros, braids, twists, and locks, have a disparate impact on black individuals as these policies are more likely to deter black applicants and burden or punish black employees than any other group,” according to the law.
Mitchell said that until recently an image search for “unprofessional hairstyles” only showed black women with natural hair, braids or twists. “I believe that any law, policy or practice that sanctions a job description that immediately excludes me from a profession — not because of my capacity or my capabilities or my experience but because of my hairstyle choice — is long overdue for reform,” said Mitchell, who observed that she wears her hair in a natural style.
Mitchell said that similar state and federal laws protect against discrimination due to religious hairstyles and head coverings.
Below are highlights from the text of the Crown Act:
A sign advertises a bail bonds company outside San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. After SB 10 takes effect in October 2019, these signs will be a thing of the past in California. (Alex Emslie/KQED)
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a landmark bill today to overhaul the state’s money-bail system, replacing it with one that grants judges greater power to decide who should remain incarcerated ahead of trial.
The two-year effort fulfills a pledge made by Brown last year when he stalled negotiations over the ambitious legislation, saying he would continue to work with lawmakers and the state’s top Supreme Court justice on the right approach to change the system. The new law puts California at the forefront of a national push to stop courts from imposing a heavy financial burden on defendants before they have faced a jury.
“Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly,” he said in a statement.
Senate Bill 10 would virtually eliminate the payment of money as a condition of release. Under last-minute changes, judges would have greater power to decide which people are a danger to the community and should be held without any possibility of release in a practice known as “preventive detention.”
Top state officials, judges, probation officers and other proponents of the efforts lauded the new law. Co-authors Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) and Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Alameda) called it a transformative day for criminal justice, and a shift away from a pretrial system based on wealth to one focused on public safety.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who helped craft the legislation through the formation of a judicial task force that spent a year studying the issue, described a three-branch solution to address a money-bail system that “was outdated, unsafe and unfair.”
“A person’s checking account balance should never determine how they are treated under the law,” Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
But the historic passage of the bill has been bittersweet for lawmakers, as opponents — including some of the bill’s most ardent former supporters — argued the final version of the legislation would allow judges to incarcerate more people based on subjective criteria, and did not include enough oversight over risk-assessment tools found to be biased against communities of color.
“No one should be in jail because they are too poor to afford bail, but neither should they be torn apart from their family because of unjust preventative detention,” said a statement from American Civil Liberties Union directors Abdi Soltani in Northern California, Hector Villagra in Southern California and Norma Chávez Peterson, representing San Diego and Imperial counties.
California’s bail system has long been ripe for reform, both Democrats and Republicans agreed. Under the current system, bail is set according to a list of fixed fees that depend on the gravity of the crime and often vary widely by county.
Offenders are required to post the amount upfront, or pay a 10% fee — like a down payment — to a bond company before they are released on bail. Those who can’t afford the fee can remain incarcerated up to an additional 48 hours, or longer on weekends or holidays, before they are formally charged and arraigned.
California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will announce Tuesday that she is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer, according to a Harris advisor.
“She’s not testing the waters. She’s charting the course. She’s in with both feet,” said the source who requested anonymity while discussing Harris’ plans.
The move comes as California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that he would not run for the seat, averting an ugly battle between two Democrats who share many of the same supporters, have national profiles, are both from the Bay Area and are popular with the liberal wing of the party.
Harris, 50, who is in her second term as attorney general, previously served as the district attorney of San Francisco. She is the first candidate to officially declare. Boxer announced last week that she would not seek reelection in 2016, setting off a scramble among Democrats who have not seen an open U.S. Senate seat since 1992.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer are seriously considering bids, as are several members of Congress. article by Seema Mehta via latimes.com
