Social Equity

Protesters throughout the U.S. marched this week after a Kentucky grand jury determined it would not bring charges against Louisville officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and health care worker.

Taylor is just one of many Black Americans who have been shot by police officers in recent months, prompting protesters to demand for racial justice and police reform and accountability.

Diana Marrone felt alone and out of options.

The single mother of a 5-year-old kindergartener had struggled to balance her full-time job while guiding her daughter’s remote learning. Marrone’s mother would ordinarily assist with childcare, but coronavirus exposure concerns ruled that out. Still, Marrone balked at the idea of sitting her daughter, Sienna, out for a year, worried she would fall behind academically and resent school.

A stinging report issued by California’s state auditor today slams the University of California for a culture of privileging wealth and access over merit in its admissions process, galvanizing concern that talented low-income students and students of color are displaced by less qualified but better connected students.

Bankers Hill resident Rebecca Mitsingas lives just 5 miles away from her mother, Suzanne Papp, yet she misses her. She went from seeing her 77-year-old mother daily to rarely now because of the coronavirus. 

“Typically, I would see her almost every day,” Mitsingas said. “We would do dinner together at least once a week. Since COVID, it’s been hard because I miss her even though she lives close by.”

This is Part One of a two-part series on racism and the education system. Part Two will be published on Monday, Sept. 28.

The education system is “particularly effective at reproducing racial inequality” and is one of the best examples of structural racism in our society, said author Robin DiAngelo, in a recent talk presented by San Diego’s National Conflict Resolution Center. 

Three weeks into the 2020-2021 school year and San Diego families are settling into their new routines. Aug. 31 was the first day of online classes for the San Diego Unified School District when thousands of students started their days in front of district-issued Chromebooks. Typed greetings now replace traditional attendance and students across grade levels are tethered to screens for about three hours a day with breaks. 

Before he was hospitalized with COVID-19, before his roommates kicked him out of their shared apartment because of his illness, before he found himself unhoused for the first time in his life, Francisco Tzul noticed people at his downtown Los Angeles garment factory start to cough. In a few days, they would disappear.

Tzul, 56, is an undocumented worker in the city’s massive garment industry, one that relies on men and women like him to produce shirts, blouses and skirts for major fashion brands so they can be sold at a premium for being made in America.

Paradise Hill resident Alicia Muhammad says said she loves chatting with her son every other day, but at 33 cents-per-minute — she can’t talk very long. Her son, Reginald Harmon, is incarcerated at the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa where inmates must pay to use the phone.

In a time of ecological, political and social crises, it isn’t easy to command attention. Yet, occasionally, a simple image can cut through the noise. Last week, a photo of two children outside a Taco Bell captured this disgraceful moment in California history.

Progressive Democrats were fighting an uphill battle as they pushed for a new law allowing more Californians to take time off from work to care for a baby or sick family member. With business groups lobbying hard against it, the proposal had split Democrats and, as Monday’s conclusion of the legislative year drew closer, appeared at risk of failure.