This is all well and good. But it’s going to be extraordinarily hard to simply build one’s way out of a crisis that ties in with so many other social inequities: the decades-long push to mass incarceration in California, followed by decisions in recent years to lower the prison population without investing in housing, job training, and, above all, mental health services for those coming out of prison. (As I noted last week, surveys show that 70 percent of the state’s on-the-streets homeless have spent some time behind bars, and many of those individuals are suffering from serious mental illness.) The 1960s-era decisions to close most of the state’s in-patient mental hospitals left California without anywhere near the community mental health service infrastructure necessary to treat those in need. A spiraling opioid epidemic an epidemic of despair, if ever there was one that, in 2020, resulted in more San Franciscans dying of overdoses than of Covid-19.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg was not asked to release a public statement on the flareup of violence between Israel and Hamas. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to do so.
So the mayor issued a release on May 18 expressing his strong connection to the Jewish state, as well as his disgust with some of the recent actions of the Netanyahu administration. The headline read, “I do not recognize the Israel I love.”
The essay won Steinberg praise from some fellow progressives but “mixed reactions,” he said, from the Jewish community.
A former local chair of the Sacramento Jewish Community Relations Council, whose wife is a Reform cantor, Steinberg is a self-described “proud Jew” representing a strongly Democratic city that chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump by more than 50 percentage points in nearly every precinct. As mayor, currently in his fifth year in office, he has supported policies to benefit undocumented immigrants and was a vocal critic of the previous president, p
SACRAMENTO (KUSI) – California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly plans to meet with mental health leaders to push the Legislature to pass youth mental and behavioral health programs with Gov. Newsom’s May Revision.
Dr. Ghaly plans to stress the issue with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health Dr. Tom Insel, and youth mental health advocate and student Sara Faraj.
The pandemic has had devastating effects on children and youth, Dr. Ghaly said, adding that without action, untreated anxiety, depression, psychosis, and new substance use disorders will continue to grow.
They will be urging more attention to be given to prevention and early intervention services, increasing the number of behavioral health professionals, supplying more crisis services and multiplying acute care services and beds.
Hundreds gather at Unity Against Hate rally at California State Capitol Chelsea Shannon, Staff, ABC10
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Hundreds of people gathered in Sacramento and Davis and 18 cities in the U.S. plus Canada and Australia to the Unity Against Hate rally on May 15.
The organizers for the International Unity Against Hate Rally invited people of all backgrounds to stand up against hate towards the people who identify as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
At the California State Capitol, hundreds gathered to listen to community leaders talk about the change needed and celebrate the Asian American and Pacific Islander community through chanting, music and dancing.