Last year we called workers essential. This year let’s treat them like they are. The pandemic has made clear what we’ve known for a long time: the most important jobs in our society aren’t the billionaire investors and corporate executives. Rather, we rely most on the people whose labor keeps our society running: the farmworkers,...

Alone in their homes, elders are valiantly trying to protect themselves and others against the virus. In doing so, they are at enhanced risk from another threat — scammers sneaking into our grandparents’ isolated lives through the phone, the mail or the internet. Across the nation, elders lose billions of dollars annually to fraud. Since...

The presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20 imbued in me a feeling almost like a purge—a weight off the shoulders, the shrugging off of a cross to bear, the removal of a screwdriver in the eyeball. Aside from the obvious significance of the ceremony, and the blessed absence of shrillness that accompanied it, I was...

Any crackpot, Third World dictator could have told President Trump the military was needed for a successful coup d’état. Looking back, Trump’s administration removed the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s courageous Capt. Brett Crozier for standing up for his COVID-19 ravaged crew. Trump incessantly and crudely, criticized war hero and distinguished statesman John McCain even while the...

Dear Community and San José Unified School District Board of Trustees, The San José Unified Equity Coalition—a culturally diverse collection of district parents, students, educators and concerned community members—formed in June 2020 in response to the police and vigilante killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We are advocating to remove police from...

Eight years ago, I worked for U.S. District Court judge Susan Richard Nelson in St. Paul, Minnesota. My first project involved a procedural issue, in which the judge had to decide whether to grant a motion to move a case to Wisconsin. One of the most persuasive arguments for Judge Nelson was the fact that...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 92 years old this Friday, January 15th. Much has changed in these United States since he was so violently taken from us in 1968, but much remains the same. And while all Americans should be proud of the gains made toward racial justice since the late 1960s,...

Over the last four years, we have witnessed grotesque scenes of children torn from the arms of their mothers and fathers at the border or the last breaths of the children who died while in the custody of those who caged them. Over the last four years, we have witnessed the pleas and tears of...

Almost every time I call my Dad, it is to talk about insurance. We spend so much of our free time figuring our insurance plans, finding out what health clinics take our insurance, calculating costs, and of course, planning who will pay for what medical bills. When we moved to America, we did not foresee...

Americans want government intervention with homelessness. So why hasn’t there been any? As the  COVID-19 pandemic worsens and we welcome a new administration, homelessness hasn’t seemed to be a priority, or even a concern, for many politicians. This could be because homelessness has often been treated with antipathy. Many Americans feel uncomfortable when talking about it...