Op-Eds

by Senator Dave Cortese
Every year, students, teachers, school administrators, as well as local education advocates across our community, fill up a handful of school buses and head to our state’s capitol to share their ideas and concerns about California’s public education system with members of our Legislature. Read the full column here




by Senator Dave Cortese, Joanne Scheer, and Yolanda Ledesma

An average of 130 people per year — one person every three days — are sentenced to die in our state prisons for a crime they did not commit. “I wasn’t supposed to be here at all in the world today,” says Tammy Cooper Garvin, a former resident of Santa Clara County who was criminalized for surviving human trafficking and charged as an unwilling accomplice for a crime she did not commit.




By Senator Dave Cortese & Shimica Gaskins, Executive Director of the Children’s Defense Fund, California. 

The debate over survival checks is front and center as millions of families face an uncertain financial future. While short-term relief for the duration of the pandemic is certainly necessary, the debate over stimulus checks has opened the door to a long overdue conversation about guaranteed basic income.