Over the past six months, online commerce has exploded, as more and more brick and mortar businesses turn to online venues to sell their goods and services in a safe, socially distanced way. As consumers shift their purchasing power online, businesses will embrace a new normal with online commerce which...
California Farming Country Buckles Under COVID-19. Will Pandemic Make or Break the Valley?
By Dale Kalser, Manuela Tobias, and Tony Bizjak She was afraid of catching the coronavirus – so fearful, in fact, that she switched jobs to pack tomatoes for an employer who seemed to be taking the right precautions. But Maria Claudia Garcia got sick anyway. A farmworker from Venezuela living in the San...
Analysis: Will California Really Change Policing?
It’s crunch month for California legislators who promised sweeping reforms in response to the police killing of George Floyd and the protests his death unleashed. Yet some social justice advocates doubt that politicians’ stomachs for change are as strong as their rhetoric: A Senate bill to excommunicate corrupt or misbehaving...
Investigation: COVID Rips Through Motel Rooms of Guest Workers Who Pick Nation’s Produce
By Jackie Botts and Kate Cimini Beto V. heard the ambulance pull up to the Colonial Motel where he was quarantined by his employer, police sirens close behind. That was his first clue a fellow farmworker had died of COVID-19. Beto, who used a shortened version of his name for...
Mandate Diversity? California Bill Would Ban All-White Corporate Boards
All-white corporate boards would be prohibited in California under a bill in the Legislature that follows in the footsteps of a controversial law that mandated women in corporate boardrooms. More than 600 publicly held companies with California headquarters would be required to have at least one person of color serving on their...
Latinos Must Have Proportionate Representation on Citizens Redistricting Commission
By Luis A. Alejo and Richard G. Polanco, Special to CalMatters Over the past 25 years, California has made great strides to be more inclusive and to better ensure more equitable political representation at all levels of government. However, as former and current chairs of the California Latino Legislative Caucus, we were...
From Internet Rights to ‘Streeteries,’ How Pandemic Is Changing Working From Home
Coronavirus has reshaped how Californians live, learn and work in uneven ways. The pandemic has exposed the state’s long-standing digital divide with a significant share of low-income and rural households lacking reliable internet access. And even though employers have quickly adapted to remote work, the opportunity to work from home...
How COVID Is Deepening California’s Income Inequality in 5 Charts
The decade dawned on a California that was both “the richest and poorest” state in the nation, in the words of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Wages for the top 10% of California’s earners had grown three times as fast as those of the bottom 10% of earners since 1980 — all as the...
The Hidden Toll of California’s Black Exodus
In a quiet corner of Elk Grove, where the maze of subdivisions and shopping centers gives way to open fields, Sharie Wilson has spent the last three years building her dream home. It’s nothing like the neighborhood where she grew up in South Central L.A. But in this Sacramento suburb,...
Without a Trace: This California County Has Stopped Contact Tracing as Coronavirus Surges
A month ago, everyone in Merced County infected with the coronavirus got a call from county officials, asking questions about whom they’d come in contact with. It’s a tracing process that experts say is critical to stopping the spread of the highly infectious disease. Now, facing a five-fold increase in...