C e l e b r a t i n g 2 7 Ye a r s o f Service in Inglewood, Airport area Communities
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May 20-26 2021 VOL. 36, No. 20
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“‘Inglewood Clothing Store’...” See Page 4
In Drought, Don’t Take Water for Granted Thirty-nine, homeless with 10 kids A pandemic casualty, woman prays for miracle
By Gloria D. Gray, Chairwoman, Metropolitan Water District Board of Directors
HOPING FOR A MIRACLE: This Riverside County family of a mother and 10 children have been homeless since November 2020. Their plight is one that many have already suffered. By Kenneth Miller, Publisher
Starting at the teen age of 16, Tabitha Modzelewski got married, a job and begin birthing children. She and her husband, whose name is withheld because he’s incarcerated and unable to comment for this story, are symbols of the American dream and nightmare. A doting couple, in love and committed to paving a good life for their family and all was going well until drugs and the pandemic came along to ruin it all. The family would propagate to eventually reach 11 stretching both Modzelewski and her husband to work and babysit in alternating shifts. “There were a couple of times that we needed assistance, but for the most part if I was working, he would stay and care for the children and vice versa,” she explained to Inglewood Today. As she somberly reminisced about the good old days, Modzelewski turns to her infant son of which there are two of them, and lifts the car seat to Continued on page 8
We have one agency, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, that imports water for all of us. Metropolitan invests in local projects, supports conservation programs for all of us and plans for our uncertain future. And in partnership with literally hundreds of local water agencies, together we keep our water reliable. As the chair of Metropolitan, this is both an honor and a tremendous responsibility. And now, we are in a drought, the result of a dry year in 2020 followed by a historically dry one so far in 2021. Droughts are common in California and they are a test. They test the capability of our water system. They test our individual ability to conserve more. They test how we serve and plan
for challenges as a region, with broad needs to support our economy, our environment and our way of life. The good news is that, thanks to our regional planning and your continued conservation, this summer may not feel like a challenge to us as water users. Metropolitan has ample supplies in reserves. But this drought is an immediate challenge to others. Already Governor Newsom declared drought emergencies in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. There is also going to be tremendous hardship in the Central Valley, as farmers who grow our food simply have less water to farm. There is less water behind Hoover Dam, as the Colorado River faces the likelihood of its first-ever shortage declaration next year based on the long-term drought in that watershed. We do not know when this drought
will be over. We in Southern California are not expected to face mandates to lower water use this summer, but we should take this as a challenge to see how we can be even more respectful of, and more efficient in, our use of water. Conservation is now a California way of life, an ethic that was advanced successfully in the last drought cycle. The daily wise use of water, year in and year out, creates tremendous benefits. Now in this drought, take the moment as an opportunity to rethink all your uses of water. If you use water more wisely, it benefits everyone. It helps our economy. It helps the environment. We are in this together.
New Racial Justice Bureau at Cal DOJ Will Support State’s Reparations Task Force Tanu Henry | California Black Media
Last week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he has created a new bureau within the Department of Justice (DOJ) dedicated to fighting discrimination and investigating hate crimes. Bonta said the new Bureau of Racial Justice, which will be housed under the Civil Rights Enforcement Section, will also support the California task
force that the state has charged with studying the impact of slavery and Jim Crow and coming up with reparations recommendations for Blacks in California and around the country. In September last year, Gov. Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 3121 into law. The legislation, introduced by Continued on page 8
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