Category: Features

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

What To Know About the CDC’s Baseless New Guidance on Autism

The rewriting of a page on the CDC’s website to assert the false claim that vaccines may cause autism sparked a torrent of anger and anguish from doctors, scientists, and parents who say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wrecking the credibility of an agency they’ve long relied on for unbiased scientific evidence.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

Do You Know About California’s Vehicle Safety and Disaster Mortgage Assistance Programs? Get Details

On Nov. 20, the Office of Community Partnerships and Strategic Communications (OCPSC) hosted an online forum with ethnic media outlets across the state to highlight two statewide programs that benefit all Californians: the CalAssist Mortgage Fund, which provides disaster-related mortgage relief, and Check to Protect, a vehicle-safety campaign led by the National Safety Council and supported by the California New Motor Vehicle Board.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

A Revolutionary Voice Falls Silent, but Questions About His Conviction Grow Louder

H. Rap Brown did not wait for permission to define himself. Long before federal agents called him a menace and politicians wrote laws in his name, he was a young man from Baton Rouge who believed the country needed an honest confrontation with its own history. Long before he died at 82 in a federal medical facility in North Carolina, he had already become Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a name he adopted after turning to Islam inside Attica.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

Her First Years, My Everything

facebooktwitterinstagram Pamela shared her story with ZERO TO THREE’s Believe In Babies national storytelling campaign. She reflected on the joy and growth of her daughter Ainsley while underscoring

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

COMMENTARY: Generation Z is the Battleground

Nine years ago, millennials reached a major milestone. Based on population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2016 was the year millennials officially surpassed baby boomers in becoming America’s largest living generation. Born between 1981 and 1996, the millennial generation includes anyone aged 29 to 44 in 2025. While Gen Z is now the second largest generation, by nat

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

California’s Oldest AME Church Celebrates Historic 175th Anniversary

The overflowing pride, spiritual joy and sense of community was tangible at the oldest African American church in California, St. Andrews African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.). On Nov. 15-16. the congregation celebrated its 175th anniversary with a special church service and a “living museum” event in Sacramento.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

The Legacy of Slavery Still Breathes—And This Book Refuses to Let It Sleep

A year after its release, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Overcoming the 500-Year Legacy stands not only as a record of history but as a warning to the present. When Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and this writer published their searing exploration of slavery’s enduring impact, they were documenting centuries of pain and resistance. Today, under the Trump administration, the book feels like a mirror held up to an America slipping backward into the shadows it once pretended to escape.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

Operation Feed California Kicks Off to Support Families Hit by CalFresh Delays

Amid a crowd of thousands waiting for groceries at a San Diego food distribution site on Nov. 2, Josh Fryday, Director of the Governor’s Office of Service and Community Engagement (GO-Serve), stood alongside California Service Corps members to launch Operation Feed California, a statewide effort to help the 5.5 million Californians struggling with delayed SNAP benefits during the ongoing federal government shutdown.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

The Blue Flood: America Finds Its Voice Again

By 8:30 p.m. on election night, the story was unmistakable. America had spoken, not with a whisper but with a roar that swept from Richmond to Atlanta, from Newark to New York City. The message was clear. The nation had seen enough of the cruelty, chaos, and conspiracies that marked the Trump years. What followed was not a trickle of blue, but a flood.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

Gov. Newsom Signs Law Rewriting the Rules on K-8 Reading Instruction

California is set to overhaul how it teaches reading to K-8 students after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB)1454, a landmark reform authored by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and supported by the NAACP California-Hawaii State Conference

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

Halfway to Chains: What’s Already Been Enforced Under Project 2025

They said it would never happen here. Yet here we are. Forty-eight percent of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s fascist playbook for dismantling American democracy, has already been put into motion. Nearly half of this regime’s roadmap to erase civil rights, gut public programs, and reimpose racial hierarchy has been realized, with Black America once again standing at the edge of the abyss.

Bakersfield
Stefi Mar

California’s Proposition 50: A Quiet Rebellion Against the Rigged Game

In a political season defined by distrust, Californians did something rare on Tuesday night. They stood up for democracy. Proposition 50, approved by a wide margin, was more than a ballot measure. It was a statement of intent. Voters sent a message that when the system begins to fracture, citizens still have the power to restore it.