California
‘As Goes California, Goes The Rest Of The Country,’ Except On Black Reparations
Through a series of films in the 1990s, from Boyz n the Hood to Menace II Society and Friday, the perception of Black Los Angeles became ingrained in the minds of people of all backgrounds across the nation. Palm trees and hood politics became synonymous with the neighborhoods. But in a rarity, the films also showed entire communities in a large American city where Black families owned homes for generations.
Today, nearly every majority-Black haven in the city brought to the big screen, like Watts, Compton, Inglewood, and Exposition Park, looks different. These areas across South Los Angeles, which was once 80% Black and home to upwards of 75% of all the Black folks in the city, have since become more than two-thirds Latino. In all, the city’s share of Black residents has dropped from nearly 20% to less than 8%.
It wasn’t by chance, residents and researchers say. “Black People are keenly aware,” said Khansa Jones-Muhammad, an LA resident who often goes by Friday Jones. “There’s a sense of feeling that people are being moved out. Black people know when we are being abused.”
On Tuesday, the city of Los Angeles released a policy report outlining why reparations should be enacted and funded for Black Angelenos.
The report, which took roughly three years to complete and included the surveying of Black Angelenos, found a series of policy decisions — aided by the housing crash of the mid-2000s, the rising cost of living, and the war on drugs — have made life untenable for many Black residents. The report explicitly named policy decisions like redlining, building highways through Black neighborhoods, unequal placement of hospitals, a 1996 law that eliminated the city’s ability to combat discriminatory hiring practices, and several policies around policing and incarceration that specifically hurt Black Angelenos.
Read More: Why the LA City Council Scandal Is About More Than Racist Slurs
A report with specific policy recommendations is expected later this year, although the city has already compiled an analytic report on how to fund the venture. It will come a year after similar assessments were released by the city of San Francisco and a California statewide policy task force. Currently, 14 reparation-based bills born from the statewide task force sit in the California legislature.
California has put forth the nation’s strongest reparations plans, with Los Angeles and San Francisco following suit. But California is not alone in implementing policies that have stunted Black life outcomes. How it proceeds could be a model for the rest of the country.
At a reparations event earlier this month, Cheryl Tawede Grills, the director of Loyola Marymount University’s community-based Psychology Applied Research Center, posed a simple question: “Where in the U.S. are outcomes for Black residents equal to their white neighbors? Think about it.”
“The answer is nowhere,” she said.
In California, Black activists, residents, and policy advocates argue that reparations are an electoral issue that can make or break Black participation in the voting process. Yet, despite a nationwide conversation around reparations in the aftermath of 2020, they believe national leaders have abandoned the fight because they don’t see the issue as a legitimate electoral priority.
“There’s a history of reparations in the United States. It’s just Black people have been excluded from that,” explained Rashawn Ray, a reparations scholar and director of the University of Maryland’s Social Justice Alliance. “It feels like Democrats think that by focusing on reparations, it will be political suicide for the party.”
He noted that many past champions of Black reparations are no longer in power or alive, such as former U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr., Karen Bass (now LA’s mayor), and Sheila Jackson Lee.
But the national movement, he said, is “here and momentum has built up.” The various examples of California-based commissions have crafted a blueprint for making the local case for reparations nationwide, he added.
In California, a statewide survey released earlier this month found that more than 90% of Black residents say a politician’s support of reparations or lack thereof will dictate their likelihood of voting for them.
Are reparations “political suicide”?
Following the murder of George Floyd, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called for a federal examination of enacting Black reparations through a formal study. Yet despite this, policy around reparations has failed to advance this election season.
While a bill outlining the creation of a Black reparations commission and study has sat idle in Congress since 1989, the Biden administration failed to use executive orders to propel the movement.
Outside the Democratic National Convention last week, activists wearing bright orange shirts with the text “Reparations Now! We are far past 40 acres and a mule” called on Black Americans to withhold their vote without serious commitments from the Harris-Walz campaign. The campaign has not outlined a plan to conduct a formal study.
“Nothing happened after Biden was given all the tools to make something happen, and so now here he is stepping down, and Kamala Harris is the party nominee, and we have valid questions for her,” explained Jones-Muhammad, who is vice chair of Los Angeles’ reparations committee.
“We know that as goes California, goes the rest of the country, and we are at a historical moment where we can set the tone for what repair looks like,” explained Kevin Cosney, cofounder of the California Black Power Network. New York is the only state to join California at the state level in advancing task forces, reports, and legislative priorities around reparations.
The question that remains, he said, is: How can national policymakers and candidates “leverage and take the opportunity of reparations, interest, and motivation from Black Californians.”
California vs. America
A bill requiring a newly formed state agency, the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency, to implement some of the 115 policy recommendations by the state’s task force is being deliberated in California’s Senate. The bills currently in the legislature would do things like establish a fund for “community-driven solutions to decrease community violence” in Black communities, eliminate barriers for formerly incarcerated people to obtain business licenses, and craft a formal apology from the governor’s office for “human rights violations” against African slaves and their ancestors.
Read More: California’s Reparations Plan Exposes Deep Divides in Black Communities
Still, at the state’s current pace of closing the racial equity gap, it would take over 248 years until a Black child would have the same average life outcomes as a white one, according to a recent report by the University of California, Los Angeles. Experts say this slow progress underscores the urgent need for immediate and effective policy changes.
A 2020 statewide poll found that most state residents support at least some reparations-based policy shifts. As expected, the survey also found that Black and younger Californians supported reparations more than their counterparts of other races and ages. Still, while much of the state supports more structural elements of reparations, more than half oppose direct payouts for Black residents.
Still, last year, San Francisco abruptly axed its reparations office, effectively ending any legislative work around it.
Some activists and researchers have said the overwhelming concentration of Black people experiencing homelessness in the state and nationwide is the “strongest case for reparations.” Los Angeles’ reparations report found that about 60% of Black residents report being impacted by environmental injustices. The report also found that over 75% of Black residents say the city policies and law enforcement practices negatively impact them.
Read More: The Quiet Toll of Oil Drilling on Black Los Angeles
But not everyone is sold on the likelihood of reparations. Brooke Floyd, the co-director of the Jackson People’s Assembly, a social justice organization in Mississippi, said the federal government is unlikely to pass reparations for slavery because it means federal agencies, like the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency, would also be forced to acknowledge their modern-day failures in protecting Black people.
“These are whole communities that have been, over time, divested from and disinvested in, and these have led to things like lack of investment in education, health care, and housing with crippling effects over time,” said Floyd, a prominent activist around Jackson’s water crisis.
“When you have this happen, have these long-term ramifications for whole races of people, acknowledging it and providing reparations is going to open a whole can of worms. I don’t think the federal government wants to do that because it shows these things are all linked together.”
The post ‘As Goes California, Goes The Rest Of The Country,’ Except On Black Reparations appeared first on Capital B News.
Margaux Mirkin, the 70-year-old heiress whose father founded Budget Rent a Car, was the apparent victim of a home invasion on Thursday in which she was assaulted and strangled, according to police.
Officers arrived at her Hollywood Hills home in Los Angeles and learned that the attackers had left the woman inside the residence after allegedly smashing her jaw and choking her.
Property records obtained by NBC4 confirmed Mirkin owns the residence.
Although the full extent of the theft remains unclear, police said the suspects stole cash and jewelry from the home. Neighbors said some of the jewelry belonged to the woman’s late husband, who died in a house fire two years ago.
After the incident, Kristen Stavola, executive director of We Are Laurel Canyon, spoke to NBC4.
“She’s pretty shaken up, as anyone would be after being assaulted in your home and watching your valuables get stolen and driven away,” Stavola said.
An individual who did not want to be identified said the street is “dark” and a “dead-end street.”
“Not many people are on it, so of course it’s like the perfect street for a break-in,” the neighbor said.
NBC4 reported that the robbers dropped a bag containing a large amount of jewelry while leaving the home. When a neighbor saw them and shined a flashlight in their direction, they took off.
The police department’s robbery-homicide division is now managing the investigation.
Nevada — known for its vast deserts and audacious gamblers — is luring Californians away from the Golden State at a higher rate than any other.
The Silver State leeched a net 81 Californians per 10,000 residents each year from California between 2016 and 2025, as California undergoes a mass exodus of residents leaving, according to a report.
The report, titled “Priced Out: RELOCATION AMIDST CALIFORNIA’S AFFORDABILITY CRISIS,” was released on March 31 by the nonpartisan California Policy Lab.
Californians move to Nevada at a higher rate than even Texas, the report notes.
“Nevada is the standout,” the report says. “News reports often mention Texas, but that is misleading. The most accurate measure of popularity adjusts for state population and shows a clear pattern: proximity reigns. Californians most often leave for nearby states, and California also welcomes new residents from neighboring states most frequently.”
Nevada is a much cheaper state for U.S. residents to live in than California. It has no state income tax, unlike California, and housing prices, along with gas prices, are also lower. California’s average regular gas price was $5.88 on Friday while Nevada’s was $4.99, an 89-cent difference.
Evan White, a co-author of the study, says the Californians are leaving for more affordable states.
“The price tag has gone up on the California Dream, and many families are leaving the state for more affordable places,” White, the Executive Director of the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, said. “The difference these moves make is stark. Their destination neighborhoods are half as expensive and they end up much more likely to own a home within just a few years.”
The report shows that out-of-state movers pay an average of $672 less per month on housing costs, and home prices are 48% lower. Former California residents are about 48% more likely to own a home in their new state.
Higher-income Californians are also leaving at increasingly higher rates, the report said. The share of higher-income Californians leaving has increased from 34% to 40% since the pandemic.
“Our report shows that people who leave California are increasingly leaving from higher-income neighborhoods,” co-author Dr. Brett Fischer, Researcher at the California Policy Lab, said. “These movers are, on average, in a weaker financial position than their neighbors, and may be moving to attain the quality of life they see their neighbors enjoying but they cannot afford.”
From 2010 to 2024, nearly 10 million people left California. The state is considered one of the most expensive states in the nation.
Idaho, Oregon, and Arizona are the next largest net recipients of Californians on a per-capita basis, the report says.
California
Fuel shortages from the Iran war have spread to Europe, but the pain is hitting California and the West Coast as well—and help is years away | Fortune
Europe is facing more widespread fuel shortages heading into the summer as the war in the Middle East drags on, but shortfalls—especially for jet fuel—will soon spread to California and the broader West Coast as the global energy supply shock ripples across the world.
While the U.S. leads the world in crude oil production, California is not able to enjoy the bounty as much as the rest of the country. The Golden State—the fourth-largest economy in the world—essentially operates as an island sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean on one side and mountainous terrain on the other. That makes it difficult and expensive to build oil and fuel pipelines. A tougher regulatory environment and heightened fuel standards have also made the state’s refineries less economical over the years.
The bottom line is California must import a lot of its oil, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from Asia—a region that is itself currently struggling with shortages because of its reliance on Middle Eastern supplies.
And, in something of a perfect storm of unfortunate timing, the Iran war coincides with the recent shuttering of the Phillips 66 Los Angeles refinery and the April closure of Valero Energy’s Benicia refinery near San Francisco. The two complexes combined for nearly 20% of California’s oil-refining capacity. Valero also is weighing the future of its Wilmington refinery near Los Angeles.
“It’s real terrible timing for California to see the loss of two refineries at a time when Asia is struggling with oil supplies of its own,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
“If we don’t have some concrete [peace] deal here in the next three weeks, then I’m really nervous for the West Coast this summer in terms of jet fuel,” De Haan told Fortune. “That’s not going to be great for California’s economy.”
Norse Atlantic Airways announced this week the cancelation of all its summer flights from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Delta Air Lines is canceling a handful of U.S. flights for now from Detroit to New York. Air Canada cut some flights to New York. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in his April 22 earnings call that United is raising fares up to 20% and proactively canceling flights at off-peak times and days. And struggling Spirit Airlines—pushed over the cliff by the spike in fuel prices—may need a federal bailout to survive.
The biggest headline in Europe this week was German airliner Lufthansa axing 20,000 flights through October.
“It’s not so much gasoline supply on the West Coast that I’d be worried about yet, but it’s jet fuel out of LAX, San Francisco, Seattle, and then it’s diesel,” De Haan said, arguing that nationwide reductions, especially of new flight routes, are likely in order to conserve fuel. “I would look for a lot of route cancellations potentially this summer.”
Refineries primarily churn out gasoline to meet passenger vehicle demand, so supply shortages of refined products typically hit jet fuel first and then diesel. Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, and Alaska all stand to be among the most impacted as well.
Plans for new fuel and refined products pipelines into California are underway, including from Phillips 66, but the earliest those would come online is 2029.
The California Energy Commission told Fortune that jet fuel stocks remain adequate and within historic norms, although supplies are admittedly tight. For West Coast travelers, the near-term risks are sustained higher prices and airline schedule adjustments—not the physical shortfalls that Europe is facing.
But would that remain the case in June if the Strait of Hormuz energy chokepoint is still blocked? “Our analysis is thorough and ongoing, but we can’t provide a definitive answer on that kind of forecasting,” the CEC said.
One partially saving grace is the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily waive the 106-year-old Jones Act, which requires cargo ships moving between U.S. ports to be U.S. built, flagged, and manned, reducing the number of vessels available to move crude oil and refined products between domestic ports.
The waiver allowing more ships, for instance, to move fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast through the Panama Canal and up to California to help alleviate shortfalls. The CEC confirmed the waiver is bringing incremental supply to the state.
Looking ahead for relief
While the White House previously touted the Jones Act waiver as a move to lessen the spikes in fuel prices—that impact is minimal—the bigger difference it’s making is the eased logistical movement of supplies to needier domestic areas.
A White House official said California and Alaska count among the biggest beneficiaries of jet fuel deliveries from the Jones Act waiver. And the 60-day waiver could be extended.
Otherwise, California must compete internationally for more expensive and increasingly scarce fuel imports from Asia. The state leans on South Korea, Singapore, Japan, India, and the Middle East for more of its oil and fuel.
“The risk is California has to compete on price to get those barrels, and what’s an already expensive market becomes really expensive,” said oil forecaster Dan Pickering, founder of Pickering Energy Partners consulting and research firm.
While the rest of the country is worried about fuel prices and not physical shortages, California is a “different animal,” Pickering said, “The risk in California is both its price and its availability. And, because availability is tough, the price goes up even more.”
Already, California’s gasoline prices are 45% above the national average. The national average on April 23 for a gallon of regular unleaded was $4.03, while it’s a U.S.-leading $5.85 in California. And there’s a $2 gap between diesel prices in California compared to the national average, $7.49 per gallon versus $5.47.
Despite the geographical and regulatory challenges of building new fuel pipelines to California, several projects have popped up to help fill the gaps left by the refinery closures.
Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan plan to build the Western Gateway Pipeline System from Texas to Phoenix and southern California. Pipeline developers ONEOK and HF Sinclair are both weighing competing projects.
But the Western Gateway project isn’t slated for completion until 2029, so bridging that gap will prove to be the challenge, De Haan said.
“It’s great news for California because they’ll have better-connected markets,” De Haan said. “California will be a little bit less of a petro island.”
Kinder Morgan CEO Kim Dang said on the company’s earnings call this week that the war in the Middle East highlights the need for the project.
“California has to import some of its supply, and that makes it subject to the variability in global markets,” Dang said. “Instead of bringing in a fair amount of product over the water, they’ll now be bringing in supply from Texas and from the eastern United States. The other thing it does is it serves the Phoenix market, which is also right now reliant on the California refining capacity.
“I think it’s a great solution for California and for Arizona to be able to access domestic supply, as opposed to having to be reliant on the international market,” Dang added.
In the immediacy though, Pickering fears the world is still “dangerously complacent” about the war and the greatest energy supply shock in history. Oil and fuel shortages are almost guaranteed at least through the end of this year, and Pickering doesn’t see a peace deal occurring overnight.
“If they don’t [make a deal], in a month or two, the problems that we’re seeing in Asia are going to be everywhere,” Pickering said. And, if June is when shortages really kick in, well, “June is a day closer every day.”
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