Proposed City Program Guarantees Income for Transgender Residents

ASouthern California city is moving forward with plans for monthly payments as high as $900 to transgender and nonbinary residents to help them overcome discrimination.

The Palm Springs City Council on Thursday unanimously voted to allocate $200,000 from two local nonprofits for the initial legwork to provide the payments to members of the marginalized demographic living in the city. The city’s move comes as California is implementing a guaranteed income plan, and as Republican-led states have sought to restrict the rights of transgender people.

The money will go to Palm Springs-based Queer Works and DAP Health to work out details of the first-of-its-kind pilot guaranteed income program.

Jacob Rostovsky, Queer Works executive director, told Newsweek he expects the program to be similar to other guaranteed income pilot programs launched in other U.S. cities. He said other cities that have experimented with guaranteed income on average have given 150 people monthly payments of $600 to $900.

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7 Things That Used to Be “Crazy Conspiracy Theories” Until 2020 Happened

Remember back in the old days of, say, 2019, when anyone who talked about microchip implants, Americans being forced to show travel papers, and re-education camps was thought to be a crazy conspiracy theorist? And then 2020 rolled around and voila! It turns out those conspiracy theories weren’t so “crazy” after all.

And I’m not just talking about the government releasing info about UFOs.

We’re living in a time when someone will attempt to beat the crap out of you, burn your house down, or even kill you if you voted for the “wrong” presidential candidate. We’re being subjected to curfews, our movement is restricted, and our businesses have been forcibly shut down. One day, people will look back on this as the year that everything changed – or depending on how Americans respond to the mandates – the year we finally said enough.

Here are seven things that were considered crazy conspiracy theories…until now, when they’re becoming far too real.

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San Francisco Will Pay Artists $1,000 a Month in Universal Basic Income

San Francisco will become the latest city to experiment with a universal basic income (UBI). Sort of.

In an effort to assist the city’s struggling arts community in bouncing back from the pandemic, Mayor London Breed announced last week that she’d be rolling out a cash transfer program for artists.

Under the mayor’s plan, 130 artists in the city will receive a $1,000 monthly cash stipend for a period of six months starting early next year.  It’s one of several arts-themed policies sourced from the city’s Economic Recovery Task Force final report released last Thursday, which also includes funding for “artists to paint murals with a public health theme on boarded-up businesses and deploy performance artists to promote COVID-safe behaviors in high foot traffic areas.”

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