Derrick Bedford spent his youth shuttling into and out of juvenile hall on drug charges. Now he runs a program that helps change the lives of troubled youth who are genuinely interested in change. He works in the same jail where he was once locked up.
Fresno youth are documenting the conditions in their neighborhoods with photos and essays as part of the PhotoVoices project sponsored by New America Media.
A coalition of community groups in Sacramento has proposed a ballot measure that would levy a $29 parcel tax on each piece of property in the city and use the money collected to pay for jobs programs and education for Sacramento’s youth. The Youth Jobs and Opportunity Act was born after a failed attempt to place a sales tax increase on the ballot in 2008. But unlike that measure, this one is not a sales tax hike and has no money earmarked for law enforcement.
The city of Richmond is close to adopting a new way of planning for the city’s future, adding a “health and wellness” element to its general plan that will force developers to address new concerns when they design neighborhoods or other projects. The city believes it would be the first in the nation with such a comprehensive requirement.
One year after receiving $6 million in federal funds to help stem the foreclosure crisis, the city of Santa Ana has spent half of that money and provided housing for only five families while helping two borrowers. Five other homes are in escrow. Adam Elmahrek of Voice of OC has the story.
Cuts in public transit across the state have made it tougher for transit-dependent Californians to get to work. In San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood, many residents now find themselves commuting several hours a day to get back and forth from their jobs.
Sitting before a panel of legislators, a Santa Cruz area farmer recently compared the potential fate of California’s strawberry industry to the current state of American automakers. He argued that if agriculture doesn’t innovate, it faces a bumpy road ahead. And, he argued, that the decisions of regulators today will create the roadmap for the future of farming. It’s no easy task–the direction of the state’s agriculture system is at stake. One set of choices sets us down the road of producing food that continues to poison humans and contaminate our soil, water and air; the other turns a corner to widespread adoption of methods that, though they are more sophisticated and foreign to most conventional growers, produce safe and healthy food for all.
If someone handed Governor Schwarzenegger a check for a billion dollars, you probably wouldn’t expect him to tear it up or send it to Washington, D.C. to give to other states. But that’s exactly what he has proposed doing in his FY 2010/11 budget. And his budget would toss a million children’s reliable health care overboard at the same time.
California enters 2010 in extraordinary fiscal circumstances, with a significant structural budget deficit that continues to require spending reductions in all areas of state government. At the same time, caseloads in our state’s biggest health and human services programs have grown dramatically in recent years, a reflection of both policy decisions to support the state’s safety net as well as the more recent dramatic economic downturn.
Fresno youth are capturing their neighborhoods in photos and writing short essays describing what they see. We’ll be featuring several of these photo essays in this space.