Magdalena Cerda Baez, policy advocate at Environmental Health Coalition, at a closed battery recycling factory in Tijuana that drew complaints of environmental contamination. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters
Good morning, Inequality Insights readers. I’m CalMatters reporter Alejandra Reyes-Velarde.
In March last year residents in a Tecate, Mexico community were disturbed by an awful smell lingering in the air — like rotting garbage or ammonia.
One woman locked her children and pets inside their home, trying to keep the smell out. Children and teachers at a local preschool got sick, including such symptoms as vomiting, diarrhea and headaches.
The smell was coming from a recycling plant in town, the Recicladora Temarry de Mexico.
There US companies and even some government agencies have been shipping toxic waste to avoid California’s environmental regulations, according to an investigative story by CalMatters reporters Robert Lewis and Wendy Fry.
YEAR-END DRIVE Our nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom depends on member support. Please become a member today, every donation is critical to protect this journalism on essential inequality issues. Double your donation →
Tesla has sent flammable liquids, Sherwin-Williams has sent paint waste and the U.S. Navy has sent solvents that can cause dizziness, nausea and respiratory failure to the Tecate plant.
Companies find it easier and less expensive to ship their waste across the border, exporting the toxic hazard risks and harming Mexican residents in the process.
“The whole world knows how things function in Mexico,” said Maria Magdalena Cerda Baez, of the Environmental Health Coalition. “How can you be so rich and commit these crimes against people’s health and future?”
Some California regulators say there’s nothing they can do. They can’t seal the borders or cite companies outside the state, and they don’t have authority to regulate interstate or foreign trade.
“That’s a typical government bureaucracy approach. The lazy, I don’t give a damn approach,” said David Eng, retired Los Angeles County prosecutor who has gone after pollution issues in Tijuana.
Minority wealth. Black wealth rose 61% between 2019 and 2022, the Sacramento Observer reports, mostly thanks to rising home ownership and home equity. Even so, according to the Federal Reserve’s report, a typical Black families’ wealth at $44,900 was 15% of a typical white family’s wealth at $285,000, while Latino families’ wealth was 20% of white wealth at $61,600 and Asian families’ wealth was double
a white family’s wealth at $536,000.
Unclaimed losses. Los Angeles County last week held its annual burial ceremony for people who died and whose bodies remain unclaimed. This year there were 1,937 of the unclaimed, many of them homeless, an LA Times reporter said in a video.
Marie at her home in Culver City on Sept. 29, 2023. Marie lived at Community’s Child after leaving a domestic violence relationship and battling past addictions. She now owns her home and has built a new life for herself and her children. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters
Violence shelter cuts. Advocates expect 30% to 40% cuts in federal funding for domestic violence services in 2024, which would affect about 17,000 California households who get services and more than 13,000 people who go to domestic violence shelters a year, CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang reports.
East Coast reparations. The state of New York will join California and the city of Evanston, Illinois in creating a reparations commission to examine the institution of slavery, which was fully abolished in New York by 1827, and its ongoing impact on Black residents today. California’s reparations task force produced a massive report with dozens of recommendations. Evanston’s efforts so far have directed $1.5 million to restorative housing, mortgage assistance and construction or remodeling projects for descendants of enslaved people.
Departing rich. In recent years thousands more high-earning, well-educated workers have left California than have moved in, a new study shows. The LA Times reports that’s a reversal of prior trends, portending further struggles for a state already facing a $68 billion budget shortfall.
Advertisement
State pay rises. Hundreds of California state employees will get raises in January and a check for back pay because those raises were effective as of last July 1, the Sacramento Bee reports. After months of bargaining, labor actions and eight arrests, members of SEIU Local 1000 can expect at least 3% more pay each of the next three years, plus other salary adjustments for certain job classifications and pay levels.x
No strings attached. If you give a homeless Los Angeles resident $750 a month, no strings attached, many of them will spend it wisely, a new study found. Business Insider reports recipients of a 6-month-old “basic income” program spent, on average, nearly 20% of the money on housing, 12.7% on transportation, 11.5% on clothing, 6.2% on healthcare and 13.6% on expenses that weren’t classified.
Lesser health care. Black Californians with disabilities are significantly more likely than those without disabilities to report negative health care experiences, the Health Care Foundation of California reported last week. About 51% said their symptoms were not taken seriously, 44% said they were prescribed medicine they didn't need and 40% said a provider didn’t believe what they said — all much higher percentages than
among the nondisabled Black survey respondents.
Unused visas. With restrictions and a perennial backlog it can take years, sometimes decades, for foreign visa applicants to get the OK to live in the United States. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus is asking the Biden administration to open hundreds of thousands of visa slots that have gone unfilled over the last 30 years and expand family reunification parole, which lets visa applicants live here while waiting for the backlog to clear, the LAist writes.
Thanks for following our work on the California Divide team. While you’re here, please tell us what kinds of stories you'd love to read.
Email inequalityinsights@calmatters.org or just hit reply to this email.
Thanks for reading. Inequality Insights is off for the holidays. You’ll hear from us again in January.
The California Divide Team
California Divide is a statewide media collaboration to raise awareness and engagement about poverty and income inequality through in-depth, local storytelling and community outreach. The project is based at CalMatters in Sacramento with a team of reporters deployed at news organizations throughout California.
