The UCLA California Policy Lab (CPL) recently released a new Data Point focused on the “Lost Wages Assistance” program that started on September 7th in California. After Congress couldn’t come to an agreement about a second stimulus plan, the President put forth this program. CPL’s research team found that about 192,000 California workers will not qualify to receive the $300 benefit, because they do not already receive at least $100 in unemployment insurance benefits. The vast majority (82.5%) of people who will be ineligible to receive the $300 benefit are adults over the age of 20. Over 60% of ineligible claimants are female and over 57% have a high school degree or less.

UCLA Director of the California Policy Lab, Dr. Till von Wachter, told The Sacramento Bee, “While the program will be a temporary boost for unemployed Californians, it’s a 50% reduction from the $600 that unemployed Californians were previously receiving.”

 

 

To read the “Data Point,” click HERE.

To read CPL’s latest policy briefs on this issue, click HERE.

In 2019, the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) collected Policy Briefs on the theme “Confronting the Carceral State, Reimagining Justice.” The call for submissions was developed by CSW Director Grace Hong and the Black Feminism Initiative Director Sarah Haley. The review committee included Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law), Amy Ritterbusch (UCLA Department of Social Welfare, Luskin School of Public Affairs), Stephanie Davidson (UCLA School of Law), and Dylan Rodríguez (UC Riverside Department of Media and Cultural Studies).

Six briefs were collected from UC graduate students and system-impacted individuals:

Editor: Katja Antoine, Program and Research Developer, CSW

To download the complete set of policy briefs, click HERE.

To learn more about CSW’s policy briefs, click HERE.

LA Social Science presents its first “Summer Take-Over” featuring Dr. Sarah Haley and Dr. Grace Hong who joined the e-forum for an in-depth discussion about abolition and feminism.

Interview Chapters:

1:50 – Abolition as a concept and its importance to feminism

7:08 – What feminism teaches us about care

11:13 – The concept of home and domesticity is important to a discussion of the carceral state

17:45 – The work of women of color in feminism and some of the questions posed about life or death and relationality

27:12 – Why the U.S. expanded prison systems in the 70’s into the 80’s

32:22 – Contributions of Black Feminism on the carceral state

36:56 – Going back to the meaning of abolition

Dr. Sarah Haley is an Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Gender Studies and Advisory Committee Chair and Director of the UCLA Black Feminism Initiative with the Center for the Study of Women (CSW). Dr. Grace Hong is a Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and the Department of Asian American Studies, and Director of the Center for the Study of Women (CSW).

By Sophia L. Ángeles, Graduate Student Researcher; Janna Shadduck-Hernández, Project Director, UCLA Labor Center; and Saba Waheed, Research Director, UCLA Labor Center

This past June, the UCLA Labor Center, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Community College District Dolores Huerta Labor Institute and California State University, Long Beach, published two studies examining workers and learners—college students who also work—and their unique educational and work experiences. We employed a methodology that was student-driven, engaging more than 450 undergraduate students to collect 869 surveys and conduct 75 interviews with UCLA, California Community College, and California State University workers and learners across Los Angeles County. Our hope is that these findings will provide information for colleges, employers, and policymakers to improve conditions for workers and learners.

Two-thirds of workers and learners work every single term of their undergraduate careers—the new normal for many students pursuing higher education. A majority work in low-wage jobs in the service industry. Forced to work as many hours as possible to make ends meet, two-thirds miss at least one educational opportunity because of work duties. Juggling work and school leads many to forgo internship and work-study opportunities in their fields of study that could improve opportunities in their future careers. Their situation is so stressful and overwhelming that 40% of workers and learners have considered withdrawing from school.

Graphic: Eunice Ho

Iris López, a recent UCLA Labor Studies graduate, explains the predicaments workers and learners face in their struggle to attend school and keep up with living expenses:

“My biggest concern has always been my ability to finance my education. My mother is a single parent who works in the fields. I feel guilty asking for help because I know she is struggling herself. Education should not cost us our ability to eat or cause concern over how we’re going to pay the next few units.”

 

Graphic: Eunice Ho

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated conditions for workers and learners, as half were laid off, terminated, or furloughed in April and May. As schools moved to minimize the spread of COVID-19, one quarter of workers and learners were forced to make housing changes, such as moving back in with family or vacating student housing. The housing situation has further impacted learners who must attend classes remotely while managing home responsibilities, like caring for younger siblings or family members who have fallen ill.

Graphic: Eunice Ho

What can be done?

Current trends point to increasing tuition and living expenses for college students, making it likely that more will have to work to offset those financial burdens.

Addressing the needs of workers and learners requires investing in California’s education system to achieve the following:

  • Support learners as workers by ensuring a living wage, accommodating work schedules, and supporting students’ workplace organizing efforts.
  • Strengthen career and educational pathways by making career resources more accessible, supporting paid internships that advance career goals, and increasing opportunities for networking and mentorship.
  • Support workers as learners by making college affordable or free and expanding work-study opportunities.
  • Provide holistic support by increasing access to mental health services and addressing food and housing insecurity.

 

Report: Unseen Costs: The Experiences of Workers and Learners in Los Angeles County (click to download)

Brief: A Survey of Los Angeles Workers and Learners During COVID-19 (click to download)

 

Sophia L. Ángeles is a graduate student researcher with the UCLA Labor Center’s Worker and Learner project and a UCLA PhD candidate. Her research focuses on the intersection of immigration and language to examine newcomer youths’ educational experiences and their K–16 trajectories.

Janna Shadduck-Hernández, Ed.D., is a project director at the UCLA Labor Center and teaches for UCLA Labor Studies and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Her research and teaching focus on developing culturally relevant, participatory educational models with first- and second-generation university students, community members, and youth, with a focus on the organizing efforts of low-wage workers to combat labor and workplace violations.

Saba Waheed is research director at the UCLA Labor Center. She has over fifteen years of research experience developing projects with strong community participation. With her team at the Labor Center, she coordinated the first ever study of domestic work employers, launched a study of young people in the service economy, and conducted research on the taxi, garment, nail salon, construction, and restaurant industries.

UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI) and the Alianza for Youth Justice have released a new “Call to Action” report titled “The Latinx DATA GAP in the Youth Justice System.” This report shows that inconsistent data collection methods complicate race and ethnicity tracking across different stages in the youth justice system.

“As our country undertakes a long overdue reckoning on race and justice, it is critical that Latinos be included in the conversation,” said Sonja Diaz, Founding Director of the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative and one of the report’s co-authors. “Far too often we are overlooked, but to effectively address inequities in the justice system, especially the egregious disparities facing Black Americans, policymakers and advocates need accurate data on Latinx youth. This new report details the challenges of collecting data on system-impacted youth and offers a way forward so that leaders can craft viable solutions based on facts as we reopen our economy and transform failed systems.”

Findings:

1. Today, Latinx youth represent 25%, or about 8.3 million, of the total U.S. youth population between ages 10-17.

2. State agencies involved in the criminal justice system collect data that identifies Latinx youth inconsistently if at all, creating an incomplete picture of Latinx ethnic data.

3. States report racial/ethnic data inconsistently across the 3 points of contact: arrests, detention, and probation.

  • 42% of states did not report racial or ethnic data for arrests
  • 30% of states did not report racial and ethnic data for detention
  • 52% of states did not have racial or ethnic data for probation

To read the full report, click HERE.

To learn more about UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, visit: https://latino.ucla.edu/

MicroOne/Adobe Stock

UCLA Professors Akihiro Nishi and Michael Irwin and colleagues co-authored a paper that was published in Nature‘s Scientific Reports titled, “Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism,” on April 16, 2020. Dr. Nishi and Dr. Irwin are affiliated with the Bedari Kindness Institute within the UCLA Division of Social Sciences. The paper finds that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. The abstract is included below and the full paper can be found HERE.

Abstract

Clinical evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. However, less was known about whether mindfulness meditation might alter pro-social behavior. Here we examined whether mindfulness meditation activates human altruism, a component of social cooperation. Using a simple donation game, which is a real-world version of the Dictator’s Game, we randomly assigned 326 subjects to a mindfulness meditation online session or control and measured their willingness to donate a portion of their payment for participation as a charitable donation. Subjects who underwent the meditation treatment donated at a 2.61 times higher rate than the control (p = 0.005), after controlling for socio-demographics. We also found a larger treatment effect of meditation among those who did not go to college (p < 0.001) and those who were under 25 years of age (p < 0.001), with both subject groups contributing virtually nothing in the control condition. Our results imply high context modularity of human altruism and the development of intervention approaches including mindfulness meditation to increase social cooperation, especially among subjects with low baseline willingness to contribute.

For the newly launched magazine, NOEMA, Dr. Safiya Noble wrote an essay that calls out the titans of technology, and challenges us all to look at the societal needs of this pivotal moment. As calls for abolition and racial justice echo from coast to coast, Dr. Noble informs us how “Big Tech is implicated in displacing high-quality knowledge institutions–newsrooms, libraries, schools, and universities–by destabilizing funding through tax evasion, actively eroding the public goods we need to flourish.” She also writes:

“We need new paradigms, not more new tech. We need fair and equitable implementations of public policy that bolster our collective good. We need to center the most vulnerable among us–the working poor and the disabled, those who live under racial and religious tyranny, the discriminated against and the oppressed. We need to house people and provide health, employment, creative arts, and educational resources. We need to close the intersectional racial wealth gap.”

Dr. Noble is an Associate Professor in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, and a faculty advisor to the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute.

To read the complete essay, “The Loss Of Public Goods To Big Tech,” click HERE.

LA Social Science spoke with Dr. Tomer Begaz, Professor of Emergency Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and Director of Undergraduate Medical Education at UCLA-Olive View Medical Center, about his recent “Golden Apple” teaching award, how to keep safe from COVID-19 as our state starts to reopen, and when individuals should visit the Emergency Department.

Interview Chapters:

0:00 – Intro

01:00 – About being a Golden Apple Award winner

02:28 – An album or book that’s gotten you through the pandemic?

05:11 – Why did you choose to work at LA County UCLA Olive View Medical Center?

07:00 – Impact of Corona virus on different communities

10:08 – What should we be thinking about as we open up during the pandemic?

12:53 – When should I go into the emergency room?

17:41 – Alternative ways to see a doctor

18:15 – Closing

 

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UCLA’s Luskin Center for History and Policy has published a report, “All is Not Well in the Golden State: The Scourge of White Nationalism in Southern California,” that examines white nationalism’s history, ideology, and present-day operations, and provides some recommendations for confronting the dangers it poses. An amazing group of undergraduates were overseen by Ph.D. candidate Sarah Johnson, and Professor David N. Myers, director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy.

This report examines the history, ideological pillars, use of the internet, and maps how white nationalism is being implemented. The report concludes with three policy suggestions that include increasing education and training, and providing media literacy training to parents and teachers. It also provides a ratings scale intended as a tool for teachers, parents, and others to identify stages in the absorption of white nationalist ideas:

  1. Accidental Absorption
  2. Edgy Transgression
  3. Political Provocation
  4. Overt Hate
  5. Physical Violence

All of these tools are recommended to help stop the spread of white nationalist activity.

To read the Executive Summary, click HERE.

To read the full report, click HERE.

To listen to undergraduate co-authors, Grace Johnston-Glick, Gavin Quan, and James Nee, discuss the report on the UCLA LCHP “Then & Now” podcast, click HERE.

UCLA Associate Professor Chris Zepeda-Millán demonstrates most Americans would support immigrant child detainees being released and having access to medical care. Dr. Zepeda-Millán’s data illustrates that the current administration’s immigration policies regarding child detainees are not supported by public opinion. He further notes this can be a bipartisan issue elected officials can rally around in order to provide humanity and aid to child detainees.

Interview Chapters:

0:00 – Intro

0:46 – How has Covid-19 impacted incarcerated populations and immigrant detention centers?

4:41 – What does your data reveal in terms of public support for treating and releasing child detainees? Implications?

7:23 – If there is an overwhelming amount of support to protect and release child detainees why is the current administration choosing not to?

To learn more about Dr. Chris Zepeda-Millán‘s forthcoming book, Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era (under contract with Cambridge University Press) with Sophia Jordán Wallace (University of Washington), check out a recent brief by the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative (LPPI) that draws on portions of the book. Titled “COVID-19 & Migrant Child Detainees: Releasing & Treating Children in Detention” (May 2020), the brief provides evidence of public support for releasing child detainees during the coronavirus pandemic, noting the poll took place before COVID-19 began. It also provides “straightforward, bipartisan, and implementable” policy recommendations. To read the full brief, click HERE.

 

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