Voters in November will decide whether Anaheim Resort-area companies that receive city subsidies should be required to pay their employees $18 an hour by 2022, after a split Anaheim City Council voted 4-3 Tuesday to place a union-backed initiative on the November general election ballot.

Council members Kris Murray, Lucille Kring and Stephen Faessel voted no, saying they want to ask for an economic impact report before placing the item on the ballot.

If approved by voters, the initiative would require any company within the Anaheim Resort district receiving a city subsidy – and potentially businesses with contractual relationships with those companies – to pay at least $18 an hour by 2022, with the minimum wage increasing each year after that based on cost of living increases.

A coalition of worker unions supporting the ballot measure gathered more than 21,000 signatures in less than three weeks for the initiative, with the county Registrar of Voters confirming at least 13,185 of those signatures are registered voters in Anaheim, the qualifying threshold to appear on the ballot. Verification of signatures stopped once that threshold was reached.

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On the morning that Jose Azurdia died, an officer at the Adelanto Detention Facility in California told a nurse Mr. Azurdia was ill and vomiting. The nurse told him “she did not want to see Azurdia because she did not want to get sick.” This began a series of unconscionable delays in getting Mr. Azurdia care for what turned out to be a fatal heart attack.

Thongchay Saengsiri suffered from the symptoms of congestive heart failure for most of the 15 months he was detained at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Lousiana, including fainting, swelling, anemia, coughing, and shortness of breath. Instead of properly diagnosing and treating these classic symptoms, a nurse recommended he increase his fluid intake, which likely increased his risk of heart failure.

Rafael Barcenas Padilla died from bronchopneumonia after a delay in transferring him to the hospital from the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, where nurses recorded his dangerous low oxygen levels over the course of three days that should have prompted immediate hospitalization. 

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“What was scary about that place was the men were right there,” says one formerly homeless woman. “They were on one side and we were on the other, where we were sleeping. People hallucinated and some sleep-walked.”

For the 31 percent of the homeless population who are women,
staying in a shelter can be terrifying .

Why don’t the homeless just go to a shelter?

It’s an easy question to ask when you see people sleeping on sidewalks. The short answer — if you are one of the 53,000 homeless in Los Angeles County and 5,000 in Orange County — is that sometimes you can’t.

Sometimes the mesh of private and public efforts that make up the current shelter system is too daunting. Sometimes a shelter can’t admit you because they have too few beds. Or maybe they won’t admit you because of requirements that you can’t or won’t meet — you may not be allowed to bring your pet, or you may have to sleep separately from your partner, or you may have to join a 12-step program.

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Santa Ana City Council members abruptly canceled their effort to re-draw district boundaries, instead relying on a lawsuit by a civil rights group that seeks to require the city to switch to district-based elections and re-draw existing lines.

The lawsuit, by the group Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Los Angeles, alleges the city’s at-large election system disenfranchises Asian-American voters in the city’s west end, and violates the California Voting Rights Act. It was filed April 25 in Orange County Superior Court.

“Because of the racially polarized voting in Santa Ana elections, the City’s at-large method electoral system has prevented Asian American voters from electing their candidates of choice and influencing the outcome of City elections,” the lawsuit states.

The California Voting Rights Act, it adds, “was enacted to remedy precisely this kind of dilution and abridgment of rights of racial minority groups.”

The suit seeks a court order banning the city from holding any more at-large elections for City Council members, and requiring the city to adopt “fairly constituted districts that do not dilute or abridge Asian American voting strength or otherwise discriminate against Asian Americans.”

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If you believe the storylines on shows like the The Real Housewives of Orange County, which just got renewed for thirteenth season, a typical conflict in the “OC” involves how to choose the right party favors for a candle company’s launch party or how best to parent an infant on an Iceland vacation.

Politically, too, pundits still refer to Orange County largely as a hotbed of wealth, frivolity, and die-hard conservatism.

But for the growing majority of the people who actually live here, these descriptions disregard both the community’s shifting demographics and our social diversity. As the county heads toward several key political moments in the spring and fall, communities of color need to mobilize to show the country who we truly are.

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ANAHEIM, California — Low-wage workers are being priced out of Orange County, the posh suburbs south of Los Angeles. That’s especially true in the city of Anaheim, and its largest employer: Disney. The unions representing Disney’s lowest-paid workers have banded with other unions in Anaheim to put a measure on the ballot: a new minimum wage for the hotel and restaurant workers at the city's largest resorts that would pay $15 per hour by 2019, and gradually increase to $18 per hour by 2022. (California’s minimum wage is set to increase to $15 per hour in 2021.) Raises thereafter would be at least 2 percent per year. The push for a ballot measure has drawn the ire of the city, and Disney itself. The company is co-funding the group pushing against the measure, with the subtle name No To The Anaheim Job Killer Initiative. Anaheim Chamber of Commerce President Todd Ament said the measure, if enacted, would drive off future investment and kill two luxury hotel project planned for Anaheim. Disney workers say they can’t live in Anaheim — or most places in Orange County — while earning less than $15 per hour.

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Disneyland Resort housekeepers, security guards and food workers marched on Anaheim city hall this morning to celebrate another victory in the fight for a living wage. They brought with them eight boxes filled with roughly 22,000 signatures from registered voters in the city. For weeks, canvassers knocked on doors soliciting support for putting a $15 minimum wage increase for subsidized companies in the Anaheim resort on the November ballot.

“When we first filed the initiative less than a month ago, we were confident that the Anaheim residents would be with us,” said Ada Briceño, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, at the press conference. “Today is May Day, International Workers Day, and what a better way to celebrate the working people of Anaheim than this?” 

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Sanctuary cities and counties have measurably lower crime rates and stronger economies than their non-sanctuary counterparts. But Orange County’s Board of Supervisors doesn’t care about keeping us safe, keeping us employed, or keeping our public budgets balanced. Last Tuesday, they voted 4-0 in favor of joining a Trump Administration lawsuit against the California Values Act, a state law that prevents law enforcement from working with immigrations and customs enforcement (ICE), with exceptions made for situations concerning undocumented immigrants who are felons.

As reported on PBS NewsHour: Away from the tourist attractions of Anaheim, California, housing is a daily challenge for minimum-wage workers who play a vital role in the region’s booming economy. Even for those who work full-time, garages, spare bedrooms, motel rooms, cars and tents have become shelters of necessity in an area with some of the highest housing costs in the country. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.