Fighting & Working for Democracy

Five years ago, the Camp Fire disrupted lives, followed quickly by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving students in Paradise with few options to connect with others outside of the internet.

Five years ago, the Camp Fire killed 85 people and leveled Paradise, Concow and parts of Magalia. Three years ago, PG&E created the Fire Victim Trust to pay out settlements to survivors—but some say they’ve lost hope they’ll ever get their full payments.

Internationally acclaimed activist and women’s rights warrior Angela Davis was in Sacramento speaking on solutions for ending domestic violence in the Black community.

Sacramento voters living in districts 2, 4, 6 and 8 will weigh in on who represents their area on the city’s law-making body. Candidates who receive more than 50% of the vote in their races would win outright.

Assembly Bill 1096, taking effect Jan. 1, will let community colleges in the state provide courses in non-English languages, regardless if a student is also taking ESL. Previously, a student had to sign up for the latter to qualify for the former.

Longtime Rep. Barbara Lee trails fellow representative Katie Porter and former Rep. Adam Schiff in their race for U.S. Senate. Lee still expressed determination to not seek a 14th term in the House, saying she’s running for Senate.

California’s community colleges are seeing enrollment gains for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Older students—those over 50—are some of the first to return.

More than 1.5 million acres of forest have been burned or scarred in California. Climbers go high in trees to grab pine cones that could help in reforestation.

The Elmore Desert Ranch gets 22.5 billion gallons of water from the Colorado River, almost as much as is cleared for Scottsdale, Ariz. And that’s just a fraction of the 386.5 billion gallons from the river going to 19 other families in Imperial Valley.

A photographer captured a Stable Aurora Red, or SAR arc light display, on Nov. 5 in California. These displays are generally imperceptible to the human eye.

A new report by the UCLA Labor Center finds that young workers in California face a variety of challenges. These include pay barely above minimum wage, discrimination, and high rents.

Young people are stuck earning low wages, working long hours—often while going to school—and often without benefits or work protections. Their hardships may hamper the state’s economy for years to come, researchers say.

A statue of Miwok elder William J. Franklin has been installed on California State Capitol grounds. The monument replaces a statue of Father Junípero Serra, which protestors toppled in 2020.

An evaluation of 34 adult prisons in California by the Office of the Inspector General found that 11 provided inadequate medical care and 23 provided adequate care. None were deemed proficient, the top designation.

In a study published in Nature Sustainability, scientists assessed the potential for wide-scale synthetic production of dietary fats. The raw materials are the same as those used by plants: hydrogen in water and carbon dioxide in the air.

A shrubby Palmer oak tree in Riverside County is around 13,000 years old, making it California’s oldest tree and one of the longest-lived organisms on earth. Some people are concerned that a proposed development could threaten the tree.