Author: Special to San José Spotlight

This week Apple announced it is donating 9 million protective masks to the US COVID-19 relief efforts. Facebook offered 720,000 masks and Tesla another 250,000.  A March 25 headline read, “This weekend saw a flurry in Silicon Valley CEOs promising heir companies would donate masks to health care workers.” This is wonderful news; we applaud...

Take a moment to think back on your childhood. Did you ever have to worry about moving from place to place? Was there ever a moment when you did not have a room with a bed to sleep in every night? Could you count on breakfast, lunch and dinner at the table every day? For...

So far, 2020 has been a rough year for the creative sector. From the ongoing repercussions of a well-intentioned, but poorly informed policy meant to protect workers (AB 5) to the cancellations of events that support hundreds of local artists due to COVID-19, our community life is reeling. At the School of Arts & Culture...

On Tuesday, San Jose took a large step toward environmental sustainability when my colleagues on the City Council voted to include my recent proposal for attracting a Polypropylene Plastic Purification & Recycling Plant (PRP) to San Jose on the list of approved city priorities for the coming six months. I am especially grateful to my...

I hope Evergreen voters will re-elect Sylvia Arenas. I’ve found that District 8 residents and families can count on her at City Hall. Your choice will help shape the direction of our city. She is focused on the needs of families and neighborhoods. I’ve been impressed by Sylvia. She provides a strongly needed moral voice...

With the March elections on the horizon, City Council candidates are working hard to solicit votes by appealing to the chronic issues facing the residents of San Jose. Appropriately, a key talking point across the various districts is homelessness, which intensifies with each passing year. However, candidates continue to whitewash the root causes of homelessness....

It is time we step up for our young people in foster care. We can no longer stand for small ideas and hope for incremental progress. It isn’t working, and our youth is falling farther and farther behind their non-foster peers. In true Silicon Valley fashion, we need to set big goals and shoot for...

Santa Clara County is home to 1.94 million residents, in which 412,000 are kids and teenagers ranging from the ages of 5-24. This group of residents makes up 21% of our county’s population and are heavily dependent on public transportation for many reasons. One of the most obvious reasons for teen dependency on public transportation...

Despite my five-year effort to educate the public and lobby the county Board of Supervisors to implement Laura’s Law, with the support of my colleagues on the San Jose City Council, county leaders failed to move this law forward on Jan. 28. Laura’s Law is a temporary, court-supervised, involuntary conservatorship law that would help some...

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. What’s that sound? The sound of time being wasted by Mayor Sam Liccardo and five of his colleagues in cracking down on human trafficking and wage theft in the construction industry. The fact that San Jose construction workers are exploited and victimized by wage theft perpetrated by unscrupulous low-road...