Located near Hayward in Alameda County, Russell City was once home to mostly Black, Latino and poor white families boxed out of other Bay Area neighborhoods by redlining and the cost of living. But in the 1960s, after the county refused to extend water and sewer service to Russell City, it declared it a “blight,” and used eminent domain laws to bul…

This week, our series on Californians and resilience continues with Oakland comedian Jackie Keliiaa. She’s a stand-up, writer, actor, and producer whose work not only reflects on her everyday life, but also her Native heritage. She’s been featured on Comedy Central, Team Coco, Netflix and IllumiNative's list of 25 Native American Comedians to Follo…

This week, we’re bringing you an excerpt of the KQED podcast Close All Tabs, which features stories about how digital culture shapes our lives. Their new occasional series, OGs of Tech, looks beyond the billionaires to spotlight the often-overlooked innovators who helped build the digital world we live in today. One of these OGs is Felidoro Cueva, …

This Labor Day weekend, we’re bringing you some of our favorite stories from the California Report Magazine archive. You may have seen these viral stories on your social media feeds: a frightened shelter dog bonding with their foster; a good samaritan helping a street vendor by buying all their merchandise; an artist drawing a portrait of a strange…

The Independent Journalist Covering Immigration Raids In Her Own Community Earlier this summer, 17-year-old Kevin Robles was in his friend's car driving through their neighborhood in Oceanside when he noticed vehicles with tinted windows and nearby, masked men taking someone out of a red car. He started live streaming on Instagram and it went viral…

How a Pasadena Church is Helping One Senior Through Wildfire Recovery It’s been more than seven months since the Eaton Fire tore across Altadena, just east of Los Angeles. Rebuilding homes and neighborhoods could take years – a daunting timeline, especially for seniors. Local advocates worry that many elders within Altadena’s historic Black communi…

Recently, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at fundamentally changing how the country addresses homelessness. The order promises to crack down on street homelessness across the country, in part by institutionalizing people with mental illness. Here in California, Governor Gavin Newsom has criticized Trump’s recent order, while at the …

It’s been nearly seven months since the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, killing 30 people and hollowing out a once vibrant community. For many survivors, the fire has impacted their mental health, as many try to navigate rebuilding their homes and their lives. Reporter Steven Cuevas lives in Altadena, and he’s been talking to therapists who are f…

Luis Rodriguez credits reading and writing for keeping him resilient his whole life. He’s best known for his 1993 memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., which chronicles how he joined a gang at age 11, found himself homeless and using heroin, and wound up in the juvenile justice system. He went on to write 17 books of poetry, ficti…

In May, the Golden State Valkyries kicked off their inaugural season. Even though they just started playing games in front of Bay Area fans, the team is said to be valued at $500 million dollars, the most of any franchise in the WNBA. And the team just had their first player named to the All-Star team: Forward Kayla Thornton was named as a reserve.…

You can hear elements of hip-hop, R&B and even jazz in Tokimonsta’s intricate drum loops, synths and bass lines. On her latest album, Eternal Reverie, the Grammy-nominated producer found inspiration in a Brazilian record, and created music tinged with the memories of a close friend. For our series on California composers, Reporter Clare Wiley bring…

Summer is the heart of the baseball season. But recently the country’s oldest professional sport has been going through some changes. It’s not just the moves to speed up the pace of play. These days, along with training in the weight room or the bullpen, players are also spending time with their team’s sports psychologist. KQED’s health corresponde…

88-Year-Old Audio Engineer Sandy Stone Survived Transphobic Backlash and Made History Audio engineer Sandy Stone got her start working alongside Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills & Nash. When she joined the California lesbian music label Olivia Records, some feminists wanted to kick her, and all trans women, out of women’s spaces. …

In California, music and winemaking seem to go together. Visit any of the state’s countless wineries and you can hear all kinds of music, from jazz and folk, to classical and Americana. But one artist on the Central Coast takes that connection especially seriously: he spent years making an album full of sounds from a vineyard. Reporter Benjamin Pur…

Meet the Woman Reuniting Eaton Fire Survivors With Lost Treasures The fierce Santa Ana winds that whipped the Palisades and Eaton fires into deadly infernos also spared precious things you’d think would have been the first to burn: old family photos, children’s art work, postcards, even pages of old sheet music. Those things sometimes blew across n…

In the 1960s and early 1970s, California was at the forefront of movements for racial justice, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and protests against the Vietnam War. But at the same time an anti-tax revolution began to take shape, led by an unlikely political figure: Howard Jarvis. This week, as we mark the 47th anniversary of the passage of Proposition 1…

A Ford Factory Changed Milpitas, Then It Bacame a Mall The Great Mall of Milpitas, in Santa Clara County, wasn't always a mall; it used to be a massive Ford auto factory. The San Jose Assembly Plant opened in 1955, after relocating from Ford's outdated Richmond location. The new factory put Milpitas on the map, transforming a sleepy agricultural to…

Sitars and Symphonies: LA Composer Reena Esmail Fuses Indian Ragas with Western Rhythms We continue our California composers series with Reena Esmail. Her childhood in Los Angeles had two soundtracks: the Western classical music her parents loved, and the old, scratchy Bollywood tapes her paternal grandparents would play over and over. Those multic…

In Rising Voices of El Cerrito's Young Poets, a Message About Resilience As our series about Californians and resilience continues, we hear from El Cerrito’s poet laureate, Tess Taylor, and students at Harding Elementary School. They wrote about what resilience means to them for a recently published anthology called “Gardening in the Public Flowerf…

An Historic Altadena Church, Lost to the Eaton Fire, Begins the Long Journey to Resurrection The Eaton Fire reached deep into the sanctuaries of Altadena’s faith community. It lost over a dozen places of worship: Baptist, Episcopalian, Jewish, Methodist, Muslim, and Evangelical Christian. There’s a lot of talk now about how and when people can rebu…

This week marks 33 years since four police officers were acquitted in the brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. That verdict exploded into days of rioting and unrest across the city. It also ignited a national conversation about police brutality, as well as race and inequality in the criminal justice system. This week we're featuring an epi…

J-Sei Home Closes After 30 Years, Leaving Bay Area Japanese Seniors in Need The 1960s and 70s were a pivotal time for community activism – with the civil rights and anti-war movements, the Black Panther Party, and student protests that established ethnic studies programs on college campuses. That activism led to a decades-old critical lifeline for …

California has grand plans to turn a stretch of abandoned railroad tracks into 300 miles of walking and biking trails, connecting the rolling hills of Marin County with the redwood forests near Eureka in Northern Humboldt. If completed, the Great Redwood Trail could become the longest rail-trail in the nation. But some Indigenous communities and ot…

It’s been a few months since wildfires devastated Los Angeles, and some people are just now starting the long process of repairing and rebuilding their homes. But mixed into the soot and ash can be some hidden dangers, including lead, asbestos, arsenic and lithium. These toxic materials were used to build those homes and got blown across LA. Scient…

For more than 80 years, the Zorthian Ranch – nestled among the oak trees and steep canyons of Altadena – has been a home for artists, musicians and creatives seeking a different way of life. At this working ranch, people also tend animals and live close to the land, often growing their own food and generating their own energy. But it was almost com…