Protesters calling for more affordable state interrupt Senate
It was not business as usual in the state Capitol Monday, as protesters calling for anti-poverty measures and a more affordable California interrupted a floor session of the state Senate.
Members of the California Poor People’s Campaign have been rallying outside the Capitol building weekly for the last month. The most recent protest marked the 50th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign and March, which was organized by Martin Luther King Jr.
“Nothing feels progressive about the way California is run from the top,” Kait Ziegler, co-chair of the California Poor People’s Campaign, told the Sacramento Bee. “So we’re coming from the bottom to mobilize and say we aren’t going to be silent anymore.”
Chief among the concerns of the campaign were the issues of housing, homelessness and workers’ rights. Citing that “8 million Californians pay half or more of their income for rent,” the group demanded the establishment of a “human right to housing.” Additionally, they argue the state should invest more in affordable and low-income housing, as well as rent control and more protections for renters and tenants.
When taking into account the cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country. By the normal metric, the Golden State comes in 35th.
The Campaign also called for a homeless bill of rights, which, among other things, would safeguard the right of people to sleep in legally parked cars and sleep in public areas. The group also endorsed several bills that would divert some of California’s budget surplus toward affordable housing.
Finally, the group reiterated demands for measures to protect workers’ rights. These measures include Assembly Bill 2946, which would extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting wage theft and AB2293 and SB1412, which would reduce barriers to employment for those with certain prior convictions.
The Poor People’s Campaign expects to be back in action Monday.
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To be specific about the poverty rate:
California’s real (“supplemental”) 2016 poverty rate (the new census bureau standard adjusted for the COL) is easily the worst in the nation at 20.4%. We are 46.5% higher than the average for the other 49 states. Texas is 14.7%. CA poverty rate is 38.8% higher than Texas.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-261.pdf
Table A-5 on page 27
We already have people sleeping in cars, crappy motorhomes, and in the woods just outside and all over or cities and rural towns. Their garbage stacks up, their sewage washes into our streams and rivers and their dysfunction and theivery spills into our once beautiful safe neighborhoods. Sacramento has already done a great job of enabling and protecting drug addiction by calling them all “Homeless”. I do not doubt that this was cooked up for the media to justify more piss poor legislation. You want to know what California needs? How about more personal responsibility and a swift kick when your behaving badly. You cant even get law enforcement involved anymore because Sacramento has tied their hands behind their backs. And yes, if it moves, tax it! Thats driving people to run, not walk, right the heck out of the once golden state.
You couldn’t be more correct there is nothing this state hasn’t figured out how to tax or put a fee on.
Examples: $800 a year to become an LLC
Workman comp almost impossible to get and if you can get can you afford it
$750 / yr License fee for a half ton truck
Gas almost a dollar a gallon more than remaining lower 47
To name a few
And of course we have the train from nowhere to nowhere