As the coronavirus crisis has upended the lives of people across the nation, Santa Clara County seeks to protect the most sacred right of every American: Voting. That means the county could move to voting entirely by mail in the November election. The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday adopted a plan authored by Supervisor Cindy...
California lends out 500 ventilators as Santa Clara County seeks more
South Bay residents got seemingly contradicting accounts Monday from local and state officials about how stocked California’s ventilator cache is in the face of COVID-19, a potentially deadly respiratory illness that is spreading across the state. Santa Clara County officials stood outside Valley Medical Center in San Jose on Monday afternoon to plead for ventilator donations that...
San Jose looks to increase emergency housing, discuss budget cuts due to COVID-19
With more than 1,200 COVID-19 positive cases countywide and counting, San Jose leaders are scrambling to stop the spread to homeless people and vulnerable residents living in shelters, encampments and overcrowded homes by building emergency housing. The City Council on Tuesday will discuss a proposal to allocate more than $17 million to build modular homes...
Coronavirus: San Jose lawmakers propose suspending rent
Cities across California are passing a slew of laws delaying rent and banning evictions for families who cannot pay during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, but some lawmakers say the patchwork of bills don’t go far enough to protect renters. As unemployment rates across the country surge to all-time highs, San Jose Councilmembers Magdalena Carrasco and Raul...
South Bay Asian Americans report attacks, harassment amid coronavirus pandemic
The viral posts documenting attacks or harassment targeting Asian Americans amid the novel coronavirus pandemic are not isolated incidents, nor is the South Bay excluded from it, academic researchers and law enforcement say. While these incidents have been shown in everyday interactions ranging from grocery stores and tenant disputes, researchers say the racism has been...
San José Spotlight wins four California Journalism Awards
San José Spotlight has won four California Journalism Awards in an annual competition sponsored by the California News Publishers Association. “I’m very proud of our talented team and the fact that we placed in the top five in four categories in our first year of operation,” said Ramona Giwargis, San José Spotlight’s co-founder and editor....
San Jose activists call on Supreme Court to delay DACA decision amid COVID-19 pandemic
San Jose activists on Friday called on the U.S. Supreme Court to delay a ruling on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program amid the novel coronavirus outbreak. During a livestream hosted by immigrant rights group SIREN, Executive Director Maricela Gutiérrez led the call to salvage the Obama-era program through a Zoom call, which...
Silicon Valley leaders to host a telethon for coronavirus assistance fund
In a massive effort to replenish a COVID-19 financial assistance fund, a slew of South Bay elected, nonprofit and business leaders will host a telethon Saturday to raise funds to help low-income residents pay rent and other basic necessities. The telethon will be hosted by NBC Bay Area and Telemundo 48. The widespread call for...
San Jose: Lawsuit over violent Donald Trump rally settled
When they were ushered outside a campaign rally, supporters of then-candidate Donald Trump didn’t expect the rally to erupt into violence. They expected their police department to protect them. But they said that’s not what happened. And now four years later, the lawsuit, filed in July 2016, was quietly settled last week. The 20 plaintiffs...
Prop. 13 reform backers submit signatures for revised measure in November
Backers of the “split roll” property tax measure on Thursday submitted almost 2 million signatures — nearly twice the number required — to qualify a revised version of the initiative for the November ballot. Schools and Community First, a coalition of education, labor and philanthropic organizations, announced submitting 1.74 million signatures, far above the 997,139 signatures needed by...