By Post Staff

Staff, patients’ families, and supporters held a rally recently at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland to protest the hospital’s decision to relocate specialized treatment clinics to San Francisco.

Protesters said the move is creating barriers for patients to access care and raised concerns over whether the hospital was appropriately using funds partially designated for pediatric services.

In response, hospital officials say they are concentrating resources for highly specialized procedures so patients can receive the highest quality of care.

One of the speakers at the rally, Paola Portillo, a social worker, said the hospital started transferring the clinics a year ago when UCSF Health integrated with the Children’s Hospital Oakland, located at 747 52nd St. in North Oakland.

According to Portillo, patients who need bone marrow treatments and interventional radiology are forced to travel to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, which can be dangerous, she said.

“Children who go through a bone marrow transplant are immunocompromised, meaning that their immune system has been wiped out,” and having to take public transport to San Francisco exposes patients to the risk of getting a dangerous infection, she said.

UCSF spokesperson Kristen Bole says the move improves the hospital’s quality of care, giving bone marrow treatment (BMT) as an example.

“Inpatient BMT is a highly complex service where patient volume, specialized infrastructure, faculty coverage and 24/7 support are essential,” she said in a statement. “Concentrating non-gene therapy inpatient BMT care at Mission Bay allows us to provide the safest and most sustainable model for patients and families.”

Hospital officials also emphasized that moving care was not a one-way street. Beginning this month, patients admitted for rehabilitative treatment have been directed to the children’s hospital in Oakland, Bole said.

Speakers at the rally also claimed UCSF has not been transparent about how it has allocated funding from 2020’s Measure C, a measure that created a half-percent sales tax that partially funded pediatric health care at the children’s hospital.

“The community fought so hard for Measure C because every child deserves access to lifesaving, pediatric, high-quality care right here in Oakland,” said Agnes Cho, a policy advisor speaking on behalf of Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas. “The funding should go towards strengthening care for children right here in Oakland.”

Protesters also said UCSF’s $3.3 billion endowment has been misused. Last October, the University Professional & Technical Employees union published a report on the University of California’s spending, which highlighted projects such as the $4.3 billion UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights.

“What I have a problem with is saying the kids from the East Bay have to go to San Francisco to get care, so that UC can build a fancy hospital for its richest patients in San Francisco,” said union President Dan Russell.

The UCSF spokesperson said UCSF has been investing in its Oakland campus, explaining that upgrades that are expected to be completed in 2030 at a cost of $1.6 billion.

“Oakland is central to our pediatric health system, and we are making the largest investment in the campus’ history,” the spokeswoman said. “We do not make investments of this scale in a campus, workforce or community we plan to leave behind.”

This article includes coverage from Bay City News Service and media releases.

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By Emil Amok Guillermo

I came to Winnipeg to perform my one-man show, 69, Emil Amok: Anchorman—The News Made Me Do It.

I didn’t expect to leave with another lesson about America.

It came over dim sum.

After the show, Shirley—a Chinese Canadian—and her friend Chris, a Sri Lankan-Mauritian Canadian—insisted on taking me to a restaurant in Winnipeg’s Chinatown.

A Filipino American. A Chinese Canadian. A Sri Lankan-Mauritian Canadian.

The United Nations, if it served dumplings.

Then Shirley told me about her father.

He arrived from China at 14 years old, speaking no English. The school put him in second grade just to learn the language. Once he caught up, they skipped him to ninth grade.

Two years later, he was working.

He opened a restaurant.

It burned down.

He opened another.

Eventually he bought a café in rural Manitoba serving chop suey, burgers, steaks and fries.

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The Good Way Café became the place everybody gathered. Rock and roll played from the jukebox until midnight.

Her father, Arthur Mar, built a business, employed people and became part of his community.

Sound familiar?

It should.

It’s the same immigrant story Americans love to celebrate.

Until politics gets involved.

Because before Arthur Mar could build anything, Canada made him pay a $500 Chinese head tax—a fortune in the 1920s.

When that didn’t keep enough Chinese out, Canada passed its own Chinese Exclusion Act.

Different country.

Same racism.

Canada has spent decades admitting what it did.

The Trump administration wants America to do the opposite.

The White House recently released a report criticizing the Smithsonian for supposedly promoting “anti-White activism” and other ideological sins.

Buried inside is something even more troubling.

The report argues Americans shouldn’t think of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 primarily as a racist law.

Instead, we’re told it was about national security.

Funny how those two words have always been available whenever politicians want to discriminate against somebody.

Black Americans have heard that song before.

Slave patrols became public safety.

Jim Crow became states’ rights.

Mass incarceration became law and order.

Same melody.

Different verse.

History has a way of putting racism in a respectable suit.

When politicians begin sanitizing one chapter of history, they’re coming after the whole book.

Communities of color don’t have identical histories.

But we recognize familiar tactics.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, commentator and comic monologist. He performs “69, Emil Amok: Anchorman—The News Made Me Do It” at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, July 16–26.

Get Tix: https://www.winnipegfringe.com/performer-detail.aspx?kw=Emil+Amok+Productions

Follow him at YouTube.com/@emilamok1.

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By Tanya Dennis

The National Probate Reform Coalition (NPRC) has announced that Bernard ‘Bernie’ Black, a nationally respected legal scholar, will meet with California Assistant Attorney General Eleanor Blume on July 27 to discuss the urgent need for guardianship, conservatorship, and probate reform.

The meeting marks another important step in NPRC’s effort to encourage California’s governor and attorney general to take a leadership role in addressing systemic abuse, financial exploitation, and the lack of meaningful oversight within probate and guardianship courts.

Black has been a professor of law and finance at Northwestern University and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law since 2010. Before joining Northwestern, he served on the faculties of Stanford University, Columbia University, and the University of Texas at Austin, earning international recognition as one of America’s foremost empirical legal scholars.

Despite his legal expertise, Black says neither his knowledge nor his professional reputation protected his family from what he describes as a deeply flawed guardianship system.

Following the death of his mother in 2012, Black’s sister, Joanne, who had lived with schizophrenia for more than 35 years, became the beneficiary of approximately two-thirds of their mother’s $4 million estate through a special needs trust established to provide for her lifetime care.

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Seeking to preserve his mother’s estate plan and protect Joanne’s eligibility for public benefits, Black petitioned the Denver Probate Court for a temporary conservatorship and requested judicial approval for actions necessary to preserve assets. According to Black, the case initially appeared to proceed appropriately. Both the court-appointed counsel and a guardian ad litem supported his proposed conservatorship plan.

Black says the case later took a dramatically different turn.

According to Black, court-appointed professionals used family disagreements to seize control of the family trusts. What followed was 12 years of litigation and 96 probate court decisions, resulting in millions of dollars in professional fees.

Black says repeated settlement proposals intended to preserve assets for his sister’s benefit were rejected. He also strongly disputes adverse findings made by the probate court against him, his wife, and his son, arguing the court lacked jurisdiction over members of his family. Appeals were unsuccessful, reinforcing his concern that probate courts exercise extraordinary discretion with insufficient oversight.

Joanne Black passed away on Aug. 14, 2025. Black contends that millions of dollars that should have benefited his sister and preserved his family’s legacy have instead been consumed by litigation and administrative expenses. He continues to fight efforts to deplete the remaining family trusts.

“My sister has died, yet the Denver Probate Court and the guardianship professionals are still pursuing what is left of our family’s money,” Black said. “I’m talking millions of dollars.”

Black believes his family’s experience demonstrates that even experienced attorneys can become overwhelmed by a probate system that often lacks transparency and accountability.

Joining Black at the July 27 meeting will be Rick Black, founder of the Center for Estate Administration Reform (CEAR), who will present his organization’s proposed Victims’ Bill of Rights for individuals and families involved in probate and guardianship proceedings.

Together with the NPRC, they will urge the Attorney General’s Office to investigate fraud, financial exploitation, and predatory practices while aggressively enforcing existing laws that protect elders, disabled adults, and vulnerable families.

NPRC asserts California’s Attorney General, as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, has both the authority and responsibility to investigate fraud, public corruption, and financial exploitation occurring within probate courts.

The Coalition also hopes California will lead a national initiative by working with attorneys general across the country to develop coordinated enforcement strategies and meaningful reforms that restore integrity, transparency, and accountability to probate courts nationwide.

Bernard Black’s experience echoes hundreds of similar stories documented by probate reform advocates throughout the nation. His message to the Attorney General is both simple and sobering:

“If this can happen to one of America’s most respected law professors, it can happen to anyone.”

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