By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

The 2024 State of Black California Tour stop in Oakland has been rescheduled from Sept. 28 to Dec. 13, at the Oakland Museum of California. Registration for the event is closed after reaching maximum capacity, according to CBBF’s website.

Registration for the Oct. 5 tour stop in Moreno Valley is closed as well. Al Sharpton will be a guest speaker at that event.

The series, co-hosted by the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), has made stops in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Fresno, and Sacramento.

The State of Black California series creates space for Black Californians to engage the public and policymakers on the issues that impact the Black community. It will also provide conversations about the status of reparations legislation.

The CBFF is a five-year, $100 million measure to ensure that Black power-building and movement-based organizations have the sustainable investments and effective resources needed to remove systemic and institutional racism. CBFF was the benefactor of $3.5 million in state funds last year, distributed to various Black networks in the state.

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By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Last week, U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped to secure the nomination of Judge Michelle Williams Court as Judge for the Central District of California with a vote of 49-44.

In her new role, Court became the third Black woman and fifth in the court’s history to serve as an Article III Judge in the state’s Central District.

Since 2012, Court worked for the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County.

In 2023, she was a supervising judge in the court’s civil division. Before being a judge, she worked as an attorney, then later became the vice president and general counsel at Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm specializing in human rights and poverty justice.

Court dedicated her career as a lawyer to civil rights and social development. She led and contributed to several projects at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California. The judge earned her Juris Doctor in 1993 from the Loyola Law School at the Loyola Marymount University, and she received her bachelor’s in 1988 from Pomona College.

“The Central District of California serves roughly seventeen million people, making it the largest federal district by population in the entire United States.  The judges who serve these Californians are currently facing an unprecedented number of filings, making the need to fill the court’s vacancies all that more urgent. It is commonly said that ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’ and at this moment the people of California’s Central District are indeed being denied justice as a direct result of these judicial vacancies,” said Butler in her statement on the Senate Floor urging her colleagues to approve Court’s nomination.

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Butler also praised Court’s commitment to justice and track record of serving the state of California.

“Her nomination is an important step towards building trust in our legal system by ensuring that our federal courts reflect and represent the diversity of the people it serves,” he said regarding Judge Court’s career serving in the state’s justice system.

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By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Gov. Gavin Newsom, California lawmakers and some newspaper publishers last week finalized a $172 million deal with tech giant Google to support local news outlets and artificial intelligence innovation.

This deal, the first of its kind in the nation, aims to invest in local journalism statewide over the next five years. However, the initiative is different from a bill proposed by two legislators, news publishers and media employee unions requiring tech giants Google and Meta to split a percentage of ad revenue generated from news stories with publishers and media outlets. Under this new deal, Google will commit $55 million over five years into a new fund administered by the University of California, Berkeley to distribute to local newsrooms. In this partnership, the State is expected to provide $70 over five years toward this initiative. Google also has to pay a lump sum of $10 million annually toward existing grant programs that fund local newsrooms.

The State Legislature and the governor will have to approve the state funds each year. Google has agreed to invest an additional $12.5 million each year in an artificial intelligence program. However, labor advocates are concerned about the threat of job losses as a result of AI being used in newsrooms.

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Julie Makinen, board chairperson of the California News Publishers Association, acknowledged that the deal is a sign of progress.

“This is a first step toward what we hope will become a comprehensive program to sustain local news in the long term, and we will push to see it grow in future years,” said Makinen.

However, the deal is “not what we had hoped for when set out, but it is a start and it will begin to provide some help to newsrooms across the state,” she said.

Regina Brown Wilson, Executive Director of California Black Media, said the deal is a commendable first step that beats the alternative: litigation, legislation or Google walking from the deal altogether or getting nothing.

“This kind of public-private partnership is unprecedented. California is leading the way by investing in protecting the press and sustaining quality journalism in our state,” said Brown Wilson. “This fund will help news outlets adapt to a changing landscape and provide some relief. This is especially true for ethnic and community media journalists who have strong connections to their communities.”

Although the state partnered with media outlets and publishers to secure the multi-year deal, unions advocating for media workers argued that the news companies and lawmakers were settling for too little.

Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) proposed a bill earlier this year that aimed to hold tech companies accountable for money they made off news articles. But big tech companies pushed back on bills that tried to force them to share profits with media companies.

McGuire continues to back efforts that require tech companies to pay media outlets to help save jobs in the news industry. He argued that this new deal, “lacks sufficient funding for newspapers and local media, and doesn’t fully address the inequities facing the industry.”

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