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First 5 California Statement on Chauvin Trial Verdict
April 21, 2021 GMT
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BUSINESS WIRE) Apr 21, 2021
Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday for the murder and manslaughter of George Floyd. This verdict brings accountability, and we acknowledge that more must be done to achieve racial justice for our community and society. It does not bring George Floyd back. It does not make his daughter and loved ones whole, and it does not negate the fact that Black communities still continue to live in fear.
Michael Tubbs losing his Stockton mayoral reelection bid didn’t make anyone’s 2020 top 10 tragedies list. The year was far too brutal for a political wunderkind’s early career hiccup to register as anything more than a pause. Tubbs, 30, became the youngest mayor in the country of a city with more than 100,000 residents (Stockton has around 313,000) when he was elected in 2016, the same night Donald Trump won the presidency. Tubbs remembers it well, “I was thinking, ‘Wow, Stockton got it right.’” Tubbs instituted some of the most progressive and innovative civic initiatives in the country, recasting Stockton as a community that took pride in a new problem-solving sensibility.
The importance of housing stability in improving health outcomes is well understood, but the pandemic increased the visibility of the connection. The looming crisis is so urgent that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took the unprecedented step of issuing an order temporarily halting residential evictions for nonpayment of rent until January 1, 2021, as a measure to help stem the spread of COVID-19.
In these extraordinary times, two California San Jose and Stockton are working to help renters, owners, and people without permanent shelter deal with the pandemic’s outcomes.
“We generally adhere to the typical ‘Ps’ of housing production, preservation, prevention, and protection,” said Max Vargas, senior policy advisor to former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs. “But during the pandemic, protection became our top order.”
DeVos Is on Her Way Out, But Public Education Is Still Very Much Under Attack
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing at the U.S. Department of Education July 8, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
When a Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election became certain, supporters of public education gleefully took to social media to say good riddance to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. DeVos came into office with an agenda to further the privatization of public education by expanding charter schools and by encouraging families to opt out of public schools by any means possible. During her tenure, she effectively used her bully pulpit to cheer on efforts by Republican state lawmakers to expand various forms of voucher programs that give parents public money to homeschool their children or send them to private schools. She awarded many of the nation’s largest charter school chains with millions in f