Big fight brewing over California ballot measure to reduce single-use plastics
SUSANNE RUST, LA Times: “On any given afternoon, the garbage cans in San Jose’s Westfield Oakridge Mall food court overflow with plastic spoons, forks, soft drink cups and takeout food containers. Paper frozen yogurt containers are mashed in with plastic boba tea cups and soda bottles.
The same can be seen across California — piles of single-use plastics that can’t easily be recycled, pollute roadsides and waterways and add to the garbage that clogs landfills.
In November, Californians may get a chance to shrink that waste. An initiative designed to reduce single-use plastics and polystyrene food containers will be on the ballot, a move by environmentalists to bypass the Legislature, where such measures have repeatedly failed in the face of industry lobbying.”
Who fired guns in Sacramento mass shooting? New documents detail gunfight, minute by minute
SAM STANTON, SacBee: “At 1:57:02 a.m. April 3, surveillance cameras at 10th and K streets caught a crowd of 70 to 80 people gathering on the northeast corner of the intersection.
Eight seconds later, the crowd began to run. Some drove away in cars. A hot dog vendor ran away from their cart. But Smiley Martin, his brother Dandrae and Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi stayed.
They stood near Sharif Jewelers as a man dressed in black and standing next to Smiley Martin pointed north toward two other men: Mtula Payton and DeVazia Turner.”
3 people killed in Sacramento shooting had ties to gangs, prosecutors say
LA Times, HANNAH WILEY: "Three people who were killed in the April 3 downtown Sacramento shootout that left six dead and a dozen others injured were associated with gangs and involved in a conflict that preceded the deadly incident, Sacramento County prosecutors allege.
A court filing reviewed by the Sacramento Bee details new information on the timeline of events leading up to the early morning shooting, when an estimated five suspects opened fire down the street from the state Capitol as nightclubs emptied about 2 a.m.
Prosecutors said three men killed that night — Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, Devazia Turner and Sergio Harris — were linked to gangs, and that tensn was brewing between two rival groups in the minutes before the shooting, the Bee reported Saturday."
Sacramento’s homeless measure a statewide template?
SETH SANDRONSKY, Capitol Weekly: “Three days after a deadly mass shooting downtown, the Sacramento City Council voted 7-2 to place a homeless measure on the November ballot. If voters approve the Emergency Homeless Shelter and Enforcement Act of 2022, could it be a statewide template?
We turn to Daniel Conway. He helms the Sacramentans for Safe and Clean Streets and Parks coalition, and is a policy advisor to the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights. The latter brought litigation in federal court two years ago against the city and county of LA “to compel them to address their homeless crisis, systematically, humanely and at scale,” he told Capitol Weekly.
“Sacramento’s homeless ballot initiative is an iteration of the LA lawsuit,” said Conway. “The point is not to punish the unhoused but to hold local leaders and systems accountable.”
California churches celebrate first full, in-person Easter gatherings since COVID pandemic
MICHAEL McGOUGH and ALEXANDRA YOO-HENDRICKS, SacBee: “Before coronavirus, roughly 3,300 people would attend Midtown Church in Sacramento any given weekend. The church offered six services a week.
But last Easter, in the throes of COVID-19, the church had less than a third of its parishioners on-site, co-pastor Efrem Smith said. A majority participated in online worship through video livestreams.
Today, out of the pall of the pandemic, they find their way back”
Crime upstages progressive priorities in Los Angeles mayor's race
ALEXANDEAR NIEVES and LARA KORTE: “Frustrations over crime and homelessness are setting the tone in the race to become Los Angeles’ next mayor, pushing progressive candidates like Rep. Karen Bass to set their liberal priorities aside — and bolstering the chances of a billionaire centrist in California’s most sprawling and diverse metropolis.
Public safety is proving to be a potent platform for Rick Caruso, a developer and former Republican who has spent $9 million on ads vowing to crack down on criminals and corruption in City Hall ahead of the June 7 top-two primary. A new poll has Caruso neck and neck with Bass, a household name and early favorite, suggesting a likely run-off between the two in November.
As Democrats across the nation brace for bruising fights at the polls, law and order is dominating the political discourse — and deep blue Los Angeles is no exception. Bass, a former community organizer who has represented the city for nearly two decades in both Sacramento and Washington, has responded to the public angst with promises to put hundreds more officers on patrol. Her homelessness platform calls for law enforcement to back up outreach workers and assails “open air drug trafficking or the violence that takes place in broad daylight or hidden behind tents.”
COVID death rates globally seen dropping to 2-year low point, but there’s a caveat
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "As the world climbs its way out of two years of coronavirus pain, one measure offering hope is that the global rate of COVID deaths appears to be at a level not seen since the early pandemic days of March 2020, the COVID-19 data monitoring site Our World in Data indicates.
Although based on available official death tallies that are widely seen as undercounts, the overall trendline nonetheless shows that the number of people losing their lives to COVID is heading in a positive direction — “something to celebrate,†in the words of Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, who recently tweeted Our World in Data’s chart showing the steep drop-off in global deaths since February.
The data show a rate of 0.38 deaths per 1 million people worldwide as of April 15, a low last reached on March 29, 2020. The peak came on Jan. 26, 2021, at 1.88 deaths per 1 million. The numbers are based on tallies from Johns Hopkins University researchers who track the global reporting. The World Health Organization has said reported totals represtent a vast undercount. In trying to pin it down more precisely, according to a New York Times account, the global agency has found that about 15 million people died by the end of 2021, which is 9 million more than previously estimated."
Success of Gavin Newsom’s plan to tackle severe mental illness could hinge on California’s housing efforts
The Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "State Sen. Susan Eggman called 911 on her way to the Capitol earlier this month because a person was standing in the road pouring water on their head in the middle of the turn lane. It’s something the Democrat said she sees a lot on her drive between her home in Stockton and her job in Sacramento: people with mental illness so severe they can’t keep themselves safe.
Right now, calling the police is the only option many people have to try to get help for someone struggling with severe mental illness. As a result, many land in emergency rooms and jails and don’t get the care they need, Eggman said. A proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom that Eggman is shepherding through the Legislature would create a new avenue to help them.
The plan would create a system called Care Court that would allow for family, community members, probation officers and others to refer people for services if they have schizophrenia or another mental illness. People could also be brought into the system if they are suspected of a crime or about to be released from an involuntary hold at a psychiatric facility."
Phil Trounstine: A reminiscence
MICHAEL SICILIA, Capitol Weekly: “The sudden passing of my old boss, Phil Trounstine, at age 72 earlier this week, hit me hard. Phil hired me in 1999 from the press corps to be one of his deputies in the administration of Gov. Gray Davis, where he served as communications director.
That leap from journalism to government communicator changed the trajectory of my career, but it was the two years I got to spend working closely with “Uncle Phil” as we affectionately called him, that really defined an era and helped shape me, personally and professionally.
Much has been written about Phil’s great skill, humor and instincts as a political reporter — all true. But he also cared very deeply about the people in his circle, and he assembled a team of very talented people in the Gray Davis communications shop, opening his home to them and making them feel like family.”
A U.S. agency is advertising a target dummy that resembles a Black man. An Oakland artist wants that to stop
The Chronicle, JUSTIN PHILLIPS: "After watching footage of insurrectionists carrying Confederate flags into the U.S. Capitol last year and erecting a gallows on the grounds outside, Tracy Brown started thinking about buying a gun for her protection.
The Black Oakland artist and activist took a few firearm safety courses and was researching guns online when she stumbled onto a troubling realization: Video after video showed people shooting a target dummy that, to her, had the facial features of a man of African descent: wide-set nose, large lips.
Not only that, but the 20-pound rubber figure, from a California company called Kistabra Inc., was being sold for $90.99 through a federal government website to other federal, state and local agencies, including the U.S. military and police departments.”
