The Brief

Reyna Grande was 9 years old when she came to this country from the mountainous Mexican state of Guerrero in 1985.

She came from Iguala, a town that would become infamous in 2014 after 43 teachers’ college students were taken by armed men and never seen again.

Grande’s parents emigrated before her, hoping to give their children a life without the poverty they’d endured.

“We were afraid that our parents would forget about us, that they would not come back,” she told LAist. “It was a childhood full of fears.”

Today, Grande is an established author who’s published several award-winning books, including novels and memoirs. She has also co-edited a collection of poetry, prose, and artwork about what it’s like to live as an undocumented person in the United States.

Soon, she’ll publish an essay collection, tentatively titled Writing Home, about immigration, motherhood, and the craft of writing.

But none of this came easy. In fact, it wasn’t even part of her plans, which would be upended in ways big and small, until she enrolled at Pasadena City College.

English, books, and band 

Grande and her siblings didn’t see their father for eight years. When he first moved away, he worked in California’s Central Valley, harvesting crops and sleeping in an abandoned car to save as much as possible. His goal was to build his family a home.

With the help of a coyote, Grande and her siblings joined their father in the United States. They settled with him and their new stepmother in Highland Park, before the neighborhood gentrified.

Grande became a fifth grade ESL student at Aldama Elementary School, an experience that clawed at her sense of worth.

Her classmates looked like her and had Spanish surnames. But they spoke English fluently, “and sometimes they were the ones making fun of me and my siblings, making fun of our ‘wetback’ accent,” she said.

Grande learned to play the alto sax at Luther Burbank Junior High School, where she also read voraciously and won a short-story contest. At Franklin High School, she joined the marching band and proudly donned a navy blue and gold uniform at parades, football games, and pep rallies. Her father, who was forced to quit school when he was 9, demanded academic excellence. Grande kept good grades. And when she was admitted to UC Irvine, she celebrated with her family.

But there were a lot of conflicts at home. Both of her older siblings had started college and quit, and her sister had just left the house without their father’s consent. Ultimately, he didn’t let Grande go to UCI.

Grande was still underage when she graduated from high school. All she knew was that she wanted to keep studying.

Reveling in campus life

Grande enrolled at Pasadena City College. And for the next two and a half years, she fully immersed herself on campus.

She prioritized her general education courses, but also made room in her schedule for drawing and painting. She worked as a tutor, wrote for the school paper, signed up for swimming lessons, played the alto sax in the marching band, and represented her college at the annual Pasadena Rose Parade.

Grande also loved to write. For her, it was a kind of therapy, a tool that helped her sift through what was going on at home. Her father drank heavily and was often abusive. He beat her and her stepmother.

Grande kept a journal and filled hundreds and hundreds of blank pages. Still, she didn’t envision a career in writing.

“I never thought, ‘Oh, I'm gonna grow up to be a professional writer,’” she said. “Part of that was because, all through my experience in school, I hadn't been exposed to any authors who look like me.”

That changed in the summer of 1994. Grande enrolled in Dr. Diana Savas’ English class, and she introduced her to a host of Latina and Latin American authors: Helena María Viramontes. Sandra Cisneros. Isabel Allende. Julia Alvarez. Laura Esquivel.

She would often tell Grande a variation of this refrain: “If Alvarez, Cisneros, and Viramontes can publish their stories, so can you.”

“Little by little, she convinced me that I had the talent, that I had stories that mattered,” said Grande. “Thanks to her, my relationship to writing changed.”

Savas was surprised that, in a city like L.A., “which was predominantly Latino and Mexican,” Grande “had never read a book by a Latina or Latino author.”

“That just absolutely boggled my mind,” she told LAist.

“I just wanted her to know about them,” Savas added. “Part of that was that they were Latino, Latina writers. But they were also just wonderful writers.”

A new home

Savas also supported Grande through an especially challenging moment. One evening, her father beat her stepmother so severely that she had to go to the hospital. Then, the police came to their home.

“They arrested him right in front of me,” said Grande. “I watched the cops take him away. And then, the next day, I still had to go to class, turn in my homework, pay attention.”

She moved in with her estranged mother and slept on the floor of her tiny apartment. Grande used public transportation to get around, and it now took her three hours to get home from Pasadena. She had a class that ended at 7 p.m. One night, a group of men followed her home. Grande ran all the way to the apartment. When she told her mother about what happened, she suggested dropping the class.

“I felt so helpless and hopeless,” said Grande. “I needed to talk to someone.”

She went to Savas’ office hours, hoping for some advice. Savas listened carefully. Then, she offered her a room in her home.

Savas lived across the street from campus. And aside from being convenient, the professor’s home made Grande feel safe. At her father’s house, she’d grown accustomed to being holed up in her bedroom, lest she run across him in a moment of ire. In The Distance Between Us, one of Grande’s memoirs, she describes how different it was to live with Savas:

“I'm really grateful,” said Grande. “She didn't have to do that.”

Savas doesn’t think she did anything remarkable. She offered Grande a place to stay, she told LAist, out of “basic human decency.”

When it came time for Grande to transfer to a four-year university, Savas also provided support. Together, they researched schools with strong creative writing programs. Savas also proofread her personal statements and encouraged her to apply for scholarships.

Today, nearly 30 years later, Savas thinks Grande gives her “too much credit.”

She confirmed that she helped Grande with the transfer process, but she underscored that Grande was “very industrious.”

“She was always finding scholarships here and there and everywhere,” Savas told LAist.

When the acceptance letters arrived, Grande had to choose between UCLA or UC Santa Cruz. Savas encouraged her to explore someplace new.

Grande took her advice and moved up north. She fell in love with the redwood forest, made new friends, and gained independence. Soon after, she became the first in her family to earn a college degree. When she graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz, her father, mother, siblings, and extended family were in the audience.

Savas was there too.

“I think we all need somebody to tell us ‘Yes,’” she said. “Most of us hear: ‘No, that's impossible. No, don't do that. No, that's the wrong career.’ I think that's the message most students get ... My role was to say: ‘Yes, you can do this, you should do this.’”

Author Reyna Grande with her former English professor, Diana Savas, at a scholarship dinner in 1996.

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Courtesy of Reyna Grande

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Grande credits her community college experience with transforming the trajectory of her life.

“I have so much love for [Pasadena City College],” she said. “It was there that I started to take the steps I needed to become the person I am now.”

She’s returned to the campus repeatedly, including in 2008 to deliver a commencement speech, and in 2012 as the college’s first writer-in-residence.

Grande has also lectured at other colleges and universities and will soon be a visiting faculty member at Randolph College in Virginia. These experiences have given her a chance to see how higher ed institutions across the country are working to help meet students’ basic needs.

“I believe there is more awareness now than when I was a student, of how students may be suffering from housing or food insecurity,” she told LAist via email. “I know some colleges even run a food pantry where students can come and grab what they need. But community colleges could provide more support in terms of emergency housing. When I visit colleges, sometimes I hear stories of students living in their cars, for example, because they have nowhere else to go."

She added that more counseling would help students with their mental health: "All these things would help students have a better chance of succeeding.”

'Maybe I’m not really a writer'

Grande completed her first novel, Across a Hundred Mountains, in the early 2000s. At the time, she was back in Los Angeles, working as a teacher at Edison Middle School. She was also a single mother with a little boy. At night, she’d stay up late writing, hunched over her kitchen table.

“I don't even know how I managed to find the energy to work on that novel,” she said. “But I had this desperation of making sure that my dream didn't die.”

When the book was published in 2006, a friend called her to say he saw it at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena.

Grande got in her car and drove over to see it. She found her book on display and snapped a photo. Part of her couldn’t believe her eyes.

Writing a second novel was even harder, she said.

“I kept thinking, ‘What's my agent gonna think about this book? What’s my editor gonna think about this book? What are the readers gonna think about it? What are the book critics gonna say?’ I had all these voices in my head.”

“Maybe I’m not really a writer,” she thought. “Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe the first book was a fluke.”

Today, she knows it wasn’t.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

It’s Thursday night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown, and the place is packed with about 300 people chatting under sparkling disco lights. Haystacks, wooden guitars and retro beer signs decorate the space. In the center, a metal stool holds a Mac laptop, and a big screen displays a visual sales presentation, or pitch deck. A beaming young woman steps to the mic and begins her slideshow pitch. But she’s not selling anything. She’s trying to get someone in the audience to date her friend.

This is Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles, one of LA’s hottest dating events, where singles looking for a match rely on a good friend with great slideshow skills as their wingman.

The goal is to connect people to dates in real life, but the unique concept also allows singles to see their friends say nice things about them in creative ways, Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles organizer Jackson Wise told The LA Local.

“I get to see best friends kind of hype each other up and talk about their friends’ characteristics and sometimes that’s not always spoken,” Wise said. He added that he often notices the friend being pitched sitting in the audience and getting teary-eyed from all the encouragement.

Wise began the LA offshoot of Pitch-A-Friend nearly two years ago. The original event began in Philadelphia. After spending several years struggling in LA’s notoriously difficult dating scene, Wise scrolled past the Instagram account for a Philly-hosted event of Pitch-A-Friend. “I reached out to them, and they said I should start it in Los Angeles,” Wise recalled.

He said his LA offshoot was not very successful early on, drawing small crowds. But he kept at it, relying on social media and word of mouth to grow the event, which now draws crowds in the hundreds.

Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles leader Jackson Wise opens the night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown.

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Cristabell Fierros

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The LA Local

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What is Pitch-A-Friend?

The concept is simple: Instead of single people promoting themselves on a dating app, their friends do it for them, live, in front of a room full of strangers. Each presenter gets four to five minutes and a slide deck, usually made in Canva or Google Slides, to show off a single friend’s best qualities, quirks and what they’re looking for. Singles in the crowd who like what they see can find that person afterward, in the room or through the Hooked Up app.

The LA Local got a front-row seat to an LGBTQ+ singles event at Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles. Here’s how it went down.

Half an hour before presentations, Wise made sure all participating friends were signed up. He checked that their five-minute Canva or Google Slides decks were good to go. Soon after, he energized the crowd with lively announcements like: “At the end of every presentation, I get, ‘Hey, I didn’t meet anybody.’ My first question is, ‘Did you talk to anybody?’ It’s usually no.”

Then he encouraged everyone to scan the QR code for the Hooked Up app or to break out of their circles, mingle and help their friends connect. He introduced stickers to help direct singles on queer night: green for women or friends, red for men and white for both or nonbinary.

Among the crowd was Elektra Armenta. “We don’t really get many mixers or dating events for queer folks in LA. So, I was really excited to be here, to experience all of us,” Armenta said.

The first presenter used colorful and playful multimedia slides to hype up her 23-year-old gay male roommate as someone who is intelligent, supportive and attentive and, above all, has a gift for listening.

Next, two young women took to the stage to introduce their accomplished friend, a 35-year-old retired three-time Olympian now thriving in tech at LA28. “Lauren is looking for something serious,” one of them declared. Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Yeah, we don’t play.”

As the night went on, each presenter was greeted with cheers and applause for their creativity, thoroughness and appreciation of their friends’ achievements. More importantly, singles were finding potential matches.

“Getting to know people through their friends is actually a really special experience,” first-time attendee Brex Garay told The LA Local. “It’s been really impressive to see people’s creative sides on pitching their friends.”

Jacaranda. Jacaranda. Jacaranda. We love those purple canopies across Los Angeles.

But have you seen the Chinese flame tree — sporting happy yellow blooms that brighten everything around them in the fall, before giving way to pink or reddish capsules that are reminiscent of paper lanterns?

“The genus for that group of plants is Koelreuteria,” said Donald Hodel, a landscape horticulture adviser with UC Cooperative Extension, part of the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Two species of the tree flower this time of the year. Hodel said that despite their varied origins, they’re almost visually indistinguishable. Koelreuteria bipinnata is from China, and Koelreuteria elegans is from Taiwan.

The golden yellow phase of the Chinese flame tree.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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Pinkish, reddish capsules of seeds emerge after the yellow flowers.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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The genus, according to the UC Cooperative Extension, was introduced to the United States in 1763 — most likely by an arboretum or botanical garden, Hodel said. From there, they entered the nursery trade.

They are popular trees in greater Los Angeles — and can be found in El Sereno, Long Beach and Culver City — with a couple of knocks against them.

“They aren't water hogs by any means; [but] they can't really be considered drought-tolerant,” Hodel explained.

Close-up of a capsule from the Chinese flower tree.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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And they sprout easily if their seeds find a water source. “Which means you have to take them out, 'cause eventually they'll get too big,” he said.

No tree is perfect — he stressed — not even SoCal’s beloved jacaranda.

“If I could only have one or the other, I'd probably pick a Koelreuteria,” he said. “It's a good-looking tree.”

The post appeared first on LA Local.

Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.

Shh. There’s a secret comedy show happening in there where a comic is revealing secret techniques to make babies fart.

Don’t Tell Comedy shows like this one at Boardroom Brewery in El Segundo last month are happening all around Los Angeles County. They are stand-up shows where the crowd is only given venue clues ahead of time and only told where to be just hours before. The sites vary from parking lots, furniture stores, wine shops and other unconventional settings for stand-up comedy.

How to find a secret comedy show

• The first step is fairly simple. Visit the Don’t Tell Comedy website and look for a show in a city you don’t mind driving to.
• You’re going to have to buy tickets without knowing anything about the show. That means you won’t know who is performing or where the show is being held.
• The morning of the event, you will receive a text message or email with the address to the secret location.

What a typical show looks like

Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.

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Don Perez

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The LA Local

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Boardroom Brewery bartender Rick Mathiesen told The LA Local that the night started with folks “getting out of their Ubers with confused looks on their faces.” They were trying to figure out if they got the right place, especially when the beach town bar rolled down its see-through hangar door.

The secret comedy show organization started in 2017 with backyard and living room pop-up shows. It has expanded its clandestine comedy format to more than 200 cities, including areas across LA such as downtown, Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Pasadena.

Griffin James, the emcee of the night and a local producer for Don’t Tell Comedy, was seen putting 80 chairs away by himself — hey, legendary comic Sam Kinison got his start as The Comedy Store’s doorman.

The 26-year-old Griffin said the gigs are still as competitive as landing a stage at The Laugh Factory, where he’s performed. There’s an added benefit for the audience: There is no mandatory two-drink minimum, which makes it more affordable than a night at a traditional comedy club.

Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.

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Don Perez

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The LA Local

)

Most comics at Don’t Tell Comedy shows are up-and-coming locals, but a few big names like Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser and Michael Che have appeared.

Jenna Lewanda told The LA Local that she and her boyfriend, Manny Aguilar, decided to take a trip from their West Hollywood home to the mystery spot in El Segundo. Their usual haunts for live comedy are the Hollywood Improv and a friend’s show, Hambone Comedy.

Lewanda received a message at 9 a.m. that Saturday with the location details. She looked it up and committed the odd curved building to memory. She was happy that night’s headliner was a famous stand-up: Brad Williams. 

Williams — a comedian with dwarfism who has two Showtime specials and a Netflix stand-up episode under his belt — closed out the seven-comic show that night.

He got a lot of laughs recalling a camping incident where a park ranger told him to “get big” when confronted by a bear. The 4-foot-4-inch Williams’ response: “How?”

With less than three weeks until Election Day, outside groups are pouring millions of dollars into two types of state legislative races: purple districts featuring a Democrat and a Republican, and safely Democratic districts featuring Democrats of different ideological stripes.

Political action committees backed by politically powerful groups such as unions and business have spent over $100 million on California legislative races so far this election cycle, eclipsing 2024 spending. Groups can spend unlimited amounts on “independent expenditures” to boost or oppose a candidate, providing they don’t coordinate with the campaign.

Since they came on the scene in January, two new tech-backed groups have dominated spending in legislative races. Grow California, funded by cryptocurrency investor Chris Larsen and venture capitalist Tim Draper as a “counterforce” to union spending, has spent more than $20 million this cycle. California Leads, funded by Meta and Google, has spent close to $14 million this year to support candidates who are focused on “real-world solutions rather than ideological fights.”

Legislative Action PAC, which Republican strategists founded in 2025 at the request of Republican lawmakers amid frustration with the official state Republican Party, is also spending for the first time this cycle. It aims to help Republicans hold seats they flipped in 2024, and its major funders include Google, AT&T and oil and gas companies. The PAC and its offshoots, Legislative Action Victory PAC and Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC, have spent at least $6 million to support Republican candidates since April.

A CalMatters analysis of spending since the June 2 primary found that these are the nine most expensive competitive general election contests in the Legislature. Total spending in each race includes campaign spending from the primary through Sept. 19, the most recent reporting period, and independent expenditures from the primary through Oct. 13.

$5.6 million: David Penaloza (D) v. Jessie Lopez (D) – Assembly District 68

The priciest race so far is between two millennial Democrats who both serve on the Santa Ana City Council in Orange County. Lopez is the more progressive of the two: She helped pass a rent control ordinance in 2021 and faced a recall attempt by the local police union after she voted to create a police oversight commission in 2022. Tech money is flowing to help her opponent: In recent weeks, California Leads has spent $1.4 million and Grow California has spent $1.3 million on ads supporting Penaloza.

Several powerful unions, including those representing public employees, nurses and California State University faculty, have spent a combined $1.4 million on ads supporting Lopez and attacking Penaloza.

$5 million: John Erickson (D) v. Brian Goldsmith (D) – Senate District 24

In the battle to succeed Sen. Ben Allen, Brian Goldsmith, an entrepreneur and former senior adviser for the pro-Israel advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel, faces John Erickson, a West Hollywood city councilmember. The coastal Los Angeles district includes Malibu and Santa Monica. The two candidates are sharply divided on renter protections. Erickson supports repealing both the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and the Ellis Act, which limit local rent control and allow landlords to evict tenants to leave the rental business. That’s likely driving the influx of money supporting Goldsmith from the California Apartment Association, which has spent $450,000 on independent ads attacking Erickson. The California Realtors Association is the main funder of a PAC that’s spent over $600,000 backing Goldsmith.

Criminal justice reform advocates and organized labor, including the carpenters and school employees association, have bankrolled ads supporting Erickson.

$4.7 million: Greg Wallis (R) v. Leila Namvar (D) – Assembly District 47

Republican Assemblymember Greg Wallis is again fighting hard to retain his seat representing a purple district that includes both deep-blue Palm Springs and Cathedral City as well as conservative suburbs around Redlands and Yucaipa. Wallis has a significant fundraising advantage over his opponent, Democrat Leila Namvar, a former local labor leader and city planner. His campaign has outspent hers 6-to-1 and independent expenditures supporting him are more than 5-to-1. A moderate with a pro-business record, Wallis has been a favorite of California Leads, which has spent $1.1 million supporting him. A PAC funded by oil and gas companies has spent about $450,000. Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC spent about the same.

Amid the flood of outside spending, the Democratic Party has backed Namvar. Since mid-September, the party and its county committees have given her committee about $1.8 million.

$4.6 million: Sara Hernandez (D) v. Sarah Rascón (D)  – Senate District 26

Two Democrats are vying to replace departing progressive Sen. María Elena Durazo in this deep blue Los Angeles-based district. Sara Hernandez, a community college trustee, faces Sarah Rascón, a planning commissioner for East Los Angeles. Grow California and California Leads are backing Hernandez to the tune of about $3 million, even though her campaign website says she will “fight for strict rules with real enforcement” on Big Tech profits. Cardrooms near this district, including Hawaiian Gardens Casino and Commerce Casino, which are in a perennial battle with tribal casinos over gaming rights, have spent about $500,000 on independent ads supporting Hernandez.

Rascón, whose top priorities include advancing environmental and social justice, has rejected corporate money. Her campaign had spent about $34,000 as of mid-September, and the Working Families Party and California Environmental Voters have spent over $100,000 on ads supporting her.

$3.8 million: Eric Lucan (D) v. Jackie Elward (D) – Assembly District 12

This seat, which encompasses all of Marin County and some of Sonoma County, is another target of Grow California. The group has spent about $1.8 million on ads supporting Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan. Lucan’s positions are more moderate than those of progressive Rohnert Park Councilmember Jackie Elward, who said in a KQED questionnaire that she supports moratoriums on “all things AI,” including data centers, and that “protecting workers is the priority.”

Elward’s support comes chiefly from the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, Consumer Attorneys of California and SEIU California State Council, which have spent over $1 million to support her race.

$3.2 million: Jeff Gonzalez (R) v. Ida Obeso-Martinez (D) – Assembly District 36

Outside groups have spent $2.7 million to back Republican Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMattersTraditionally Democratic, this Latino-majority district along the California-Mexico border voted for Trump by 1.3 percentage points in 2024. The same year, Republican Jeff Gonzalez flipped it. Democrat Ida Obeso-Martinez, a nurse practitioner and Imperial County councilmember, is now challenging him to take it back. Oil and gas companies, a California Chamber of Commerce PAC and Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC are among the outside groups that have spent $2.7 million on mailers, polling, and TV and digital ads supporting Gonzalez and attacking Obeso-Martinez.

No outside groups have spent on behalf of Obeso-Martinez, but the California Democratic Party and its central committees recently gave Obeso-Martinez over $1.5 million for the final weeks of the race.

$2.8 million: Josh Hoover (R) v. Amy Slavensky (D) – Assembly District 7

Incumbent Republican Josh Hoover faces Democrat Amy Slavensky, a retired teacher and superintendent, in this competitive Sacramento-area district, which shifted rightward after redistricting in 2022. Hoover’s allies, including business groups, cardrooms, and the Legislative Action PAC, have spent at least $2.3 million, chiefly on digital ads and mailers supporting him and opposing Slavensky.

No independent groups have spent to support Slavensky, but Democrats have contributed close to $1 million to Slavensky since mid-September.

$2.6 million: Leticia Castillo (R) v. Clarissa Cervantes (D) – Assembly District 58

Assemblymember Leticia Castillo at her desk during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 23, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMattersRepublican Assemblymember Leticia Castillo flipped this Latino-majority seat in Riverside County in 2024, defeating Democrat challenger Clarissa Cervantes by 596 votes. This year is a close rematch. Cervantes, a Riverside city councilmember whose sister is Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, received 54.5% of the vote compared to Castillo’s 45.5% in the June primary. In a rare move, Cervantes has outspent the incumbent Castillo in the general election. Much of her spending — close to $1 million — has been from her campaign account, compared to Castillo’s $80,000.

Legislative Action Victory PAC has spent about $650,000 on ads attacking Cervantes, and a coalition of unions spent about $530,000 supporting her. Both parties have been pouring in money to their respective candidates in the last few weeks.

$2.6 million: Guillermo Gonzalez (R) v. Melissa Hurtado (D) – Senate District 16

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Melissa Hurtado won this district by 13 votes in 2022 even as Gov. Gavin Newsom lost it by more than 10 percentage points, making her the only Democrat to represent a state Senate district that President Donald Trump won in 2024. She faces a challenge from Republican Guillermo Gonzalez, a small business owner and former aide to Rep. David Valadao. Legislative Action PAC has spent over $1.7 million supporting Gonzalez and opposing Hurtado.

The Democratic Party and various county central committees have donated $4.8 million to Hurtado’s campaign war chest this election cycle, allowing her to spend close to $1 million between the primary and mid-September’s filing deadline.

For the record: This story was corrected to reflect that Clarissa Cervantes received 54.5% of the vote in her June primary contest against Leticia Castillo.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.