contra costa

Nearly two hundred undocumented immigrants facing deportation for violating federal immigration laws were detained at West County Detention Center in Richmond, awaiting hearings to decide their fates. As of late last week, ICE had transferred all of those detainees to other sites, many of them out of state.

Listen to Google’s Sergey Brin, or Uber’s Travis Kalanick, and you might think we’ll wake up tomorrow in a world where no one needs to drive. But we’re not there yet.

When most of us talk on the phone we don’t think much about the cost—it’s pennies. If we don’t like a phone company or can’t afford a plan, it’s pretty easy to ditch the one we have and get a new one. Talk is cheap, for most of us. But for the 80,000 people in California’s county jails, a phone call can cost more than $1 a minute.

Last night’s fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond put city residents in a state of panic. The fire sent up a huge plume of black smoke, stopping traffic, closing bridges, and shutting down BART stations.

The large-scale chemical fire still has local residents concerned for their health and safety. Many say they heard about the fire late, and that the multi-lingual phone system that is supposed to alert the diverse communities of Richmond in case of a disaster didn’t work.