It was a long way from the elegant ballroom of downtown Los Angeles’ Bonaventure Hotel back to his Aunt Senovia’s tin-roofed shotgun shack in rural Alabama. But somehow Georgia Congressman John Lewis, the iconic civil rights leader whose life began in the segregated Jim Crow South, was able to pull it all together for one thousand-plus people at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Breakfast, hosted by the L.A. County Federation of Labor.
Speaking before a giant photo of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where he was beaten unconscious in the aborted 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, Lewis displayed the speaking and preaching skills he said he developed at age 14 from practicing in front of the chickens who were his responsibility on the family farm. “It seemed like more of those chickens listened to me then, than members of Congress do today,” he quipped.
Lewis’ father was a sharecropper and a cotton picker until 1944,
As we celebrate his birthday, it is easy to forget that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a democratic socialist.
In 1964, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, he observed that the United States could learn much from Scandinavian “democratic socialism.” He often talked about the need to confront “class issues,” which he described as “the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.”
In 1966 King confided to his staff:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.
» Read more about: Martin Luther King Jr. on the Haves and Have-nots »
Love. Joy. Peace. That’s the message of the season. From carols to holiday cards to street signs, even shopping mall windows. These words hover next to the pervasive images encouraging us to buy, but somehow they persist despite the maze of mercantile messages, because they are the deep longings of human beings.
“No justice, no peace!” is what workers and activists often chant on picket lines. It turns out that without climate justice, we will also have no world peace. A recent Los Angeles Times story on El Niño and its potential “long-distance” or “teleconnected” effects quoted researchers arguing that “it doubles the risk of war in much of the Third World.”
Our military accounts for 80 percent of all the fossil fuels consumed by the U.S. government.
Peace activists have long identified war and the preparations for it as a major source of human-caused climate change.
Ron Miller, the head of the Los Angeles Building Trades Council, says that it is a “ritual” for trades workers to drive around Los Angeles surveying the jobs they have worked on.
Virtually every person I’ve talked to who is currently building the Wilshire Grand Center tower in downtown Los Angeles plans to bring their friends and family members to the building once it is finished. Electrician Anthony Sotelo wants to book his mother into the Wilshire Grand’s hotel for at least one night so he can switch on the lights that he wired to make sure they turn on.
“You take pride in your work by showing your family what you have built,” he says.
One of the delights of completion is the possibility of taking material and psychological pleasure in what you have created, the ability to tell a full story that reveals the daily successes as well as the discords of a difficult project.
» Read more about: L.A. Construction Site: The Satisfactions of Completion »
“There is more fear right now in the local Muslim community than after 9/11 because of the proximity of the recent violent attack in San Bernardino and the xenophobia present in U.S. political culture,” Shakeel Syed told an interfaith gathering attended by about 100 people last Sunday. Syed is executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. He added that law-abiding, peaceful Muslims living in the Los Angeles-area are feeling paranoid.
To provide comfort and information for the local Muslim community, the Shura Council and the King Fahad Mosque of Culver City organized the event. Most of the crowd were first generation Muslim immigrants from South Asia, the Far East, West and North Africa, and the Middle East, and overwhelmingly male. The others present represented local Christian congregations, human rights activists and neighbors, all wanting to express solidarity with the Muslim community.
Shura Council Director: “Shame on us if we expect our rights to come to us on a platter.” » Read more about: Tolerance and Solidarity at Culver City Mosque Gathering »
The most wonderful thing about hearing Gloria Steinem speak recently at the Getty House was meeting the two high school students sitting in front of me. These young Latinas had just formed a feminism club at Montebello High, and its first meeting was a big success. The goal of the club, they told me, is to “explore what feminism means to other students and to educate ourselves.” The two were here to get a boost of ideas and inspiration from Steinem — and were they excited.
Over 100 high school students, overwhelmingly female and from a wide diversity of backgrounds, came to hear Steinem and to submit questions to which she responded. It felt like Feminism 101 and seemed to be exactly what the young women came for.
Amy Wakeland, who prefers to be identified as the First Lady of Los Angeles, and her husband, Mayor Eric Garcetti,
Old people often shake their heads and mutter about “the younger generation.” Or they’ll say to one another, “It’s not the way it used to be,” with a solemn look of dismay as if the world was “going to hell in a hand basket.” That’s the problem when an elder like me writes about human-caused climate change: I come close to being a cliché.
Perhaps such sentiments come from nostalgia for a time earlier in one’s life, an era viewed as simpler, slower and more familiar. Friends occasionally email me photo collections that supposedly represent a decade such as the 1950s without a single photo of anyone of color. It’s as if no one other than white people lived in this country. On the other hand, since most filmgoers are younger than my cohort, and if the top 10 grossing movies of a typical week are any indication, most people attending movies today choose deeply dystopian films about the violent end of civilization as we know it.
Like many states in the “tough on crime” era, Minnesota is struggling to reduce overcrowding in its prisons and jails. For now, the state’s government is paying counties to house over 500 incarcerated people that its prisons can’t hold. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the notorious private prison operator, says they have a long-term solution for Minnesota.
But Minnesotans, backed by the criminal justice reform movement sweeping the country, are responding with “No thanks!”
CCA wants to reopen the shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, MN, and lease space to the state. They deny they’re lobbying in Minnesota, but a politically connected lobbying firm, Goff Public Affairs, is pushing state officials to reopen the prison. That would be a costly mistake for both moral and economic reasons.
The company has a long rap sheet of cutting corners for the sake of profit,
It’s just after dusk on a recent Friday in Los Angeles and already the streets of Los Feliz Village are bumper-to-bumper with the inflow of weekend diners, cocktail loungers and movie- and theatergoers along its main drag, Vermont Avenue.
Apart from being a nightlife hub, the neighborhood boasts highly rated public schools, a very good public library, a still-thriving bookstore and even a good sidewalk newsstand. And they’re all within leisurely walking distance from the single-family Craftsmans, California bungalows and modestly scaled courtyard apartment buildings that line its shaded streets.
Within a stone’s throw of Vermont are is a somewhat nondescript postwar courtyard complex at 1655 Rodney Drive. Though a bit weathered and overgrown on the outside, inside its dozen rent-controlled units are spacious and neatly kept. Its longtime, largely middle-aged gay residents pay around $800 to $1100 a month.
In a city notorious for its atomized sprawl,
» Read more about: Los Feliz Tenants Fight Evictions With Protest Parties »
California’s senior population is expected to increase by 64 percent in the next two decades, and most will be financially unprepared for retirement. This is according to a report from researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley. Their study, Aging California’s Retirement Crisis: State and Local Indicators, was commissioned by California Retirement Security for All and projects population expansions among seniors to be felt most in the Los Angeles and Central Valley regions, with economically vulnerable Latinos, African-Americans, women and renters accounting for an increasing share.
“Our study clearly shows a mounting retirement crisis in California, and with the threat of poverty in the senior years falling hardest on people of color, workers in low-wage jobs, women, and immigrants,” said the report’s editor, Dr. Nari Rhee of the Retirement Security Program at U.C. Berkeley.
The report was introduced today at a Sacramento conference called “Build Tomorrow’s California: New Visions for Retirement Security,” attended by community advocates,
» Read more about: Uncertain Times Ahead for California's Aging »
A few weeks ago I went to a conference in Miami on infrastructure private-public partnerships, or “P3s.” We’ve written plenty about the pitfalls of P3s that don’t have strong public protections. I learned at the conference that Miami has big plans. We’re paying close attention and helping local advocates ensure that these plans to rebuild Miami serve taxpayers, workers and families, not just private investors.
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez spoke at the conference and made it clear that his vision includes privatizing essential public goods. “It used to be Miami-Dade County wanted to operate everything,” Gimenez said. “I don’t want to operate anything.” He talked about tapping the private sector to finance, build and operate a new transit line and courthouse. A P3 for a new water treatment plant is already underway.
Miami is growing fast and has real infrastructure needs.
» Read more about: Miami: Public Interests or Privatized Development? »
In his speech to Congress, Pope Francis praised Dorothy Day — along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Merton — as one of four “representatives of the American people” whom he admired.
Pope Francis was probably the first pope to mention Day’s name in public. It is unlikely that anyone else who addressed Congress in the past had uttered her name.
No doubt most members of Congress — and most Americans watching the speech on television or listening on the radio — had never heard of her. Many of them would have had to Google her on their iPhones and tablets. Some of them — like House Speaker John Boehner, the arch-conservative who invited Pope Francis to speak to Congress — might not have been pleased with what they discovered.
Day (1897-1980) founded the Catholic Worker movement on the principles of militant pacifism, radical economic redistribution,
It’s that time of year when I look for my name on the list of MacArthur Fellows, and not finding it once again resolve to keep working and wait until next time. But truly, perusing such a list is as humbling as it is inspiring.
From puppeteers and choreographers to novelists, set designers, economists, chemists, sociologists, journalists, educators, environmentalists and community leaders, the MacArthurs each year offer a who’s who of the best and the brightest, making us feel optimistic about the capabilities of the human mind and spirit.
“These 24 delightfully diverse MacArthur Fellows,” as MacArthur President Julia Stasch states, “are shedding light and making progress on critical issues, pushing the boundaries of their fields, and improving our world in imaginative, unexpected ways.”
And what’s especially unique about the MacArthur Genius grant, as stated on the foundation’s website, is that “the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment,
» Read more about: Geniuses Among Us – the MacArthur Foundation Class of 2015 »
History may record the August 2014 sale of the Villa Carlotta in Hollywood’s Franklin Village neighborhood as the moment in time when the legendary ‘Grande Dame’ became a statistic.
The 1926 apartment building was famously a stop along the path through Hollywood for numerous actors, musicians and other artists, but it has also been a home to those like eighty-three year old Sam Fuller, who lived there for 40 years. He and many other long-term residents who had hoped to live at the Carlotta for the rest of their lives received eviction notices just before Christmas last year.
“We were [being evicted and then] atomic-bombed—Ellis-Acted,” said Sylvie Shain, one of the few remaining residents, referring to a 1985 state law that allows landlords to evict tenants from their rent-controlled units if they are changed to non-rental use.
The Villa’s new owners, CGI Strategies, are attempting to use the Ellis Act to convert the 50-unit rent-controlled complex into a luxury hotel for extended stay tenants.
» Read more about: Villa Carlotta’s Tenant Warriors Fight to Save Homes and History »
He’s been a pope of many firsts already. The first to invite Catholics to forgive women who have had abortions, and the first to refrain from judging gay people to cite just two that have made headlines. But he’s also arguably the first pope to press hard against not just the reality of poverty, but the culpability of the economic system that is in large part driving it. He’s vocal about immigration. It’s as if Pope Francis is the first pope who is actually listening, and that makes him relevant in a way his predecessors simply were not.
He’s also about to be the first pope to ever speak before Congress. We can only hope they’ll listen. Since nearly a third of them are Catholics, I think many of them will. In fact, there are more Catholics in Washington these days than ever. Six of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholics,
» Read more about: The Listener: Pope Francis Sets a Different Course »
As major climate legislation that would dramatically increase our investment in renewable energy approaches the Governor’s desk, this is a critical time to be thinking about low-income communities, including South Los Angeles, for whom the benefits of renewable energy investment have been largely out of reach.
The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), in partnership with my organization, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE), recently conducted an analysis of the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s most established renewable energy program, the Solar Incentives Program (SIP). We found that this residential rooftop solar initiative has left South L.A. behind, along with Wilmington, Boyle Heights, Pacoima and other communities.
This program offers incentives for residents who buy and install their own rooftop solar energy systems from private solar companies. In the past 15 years, LADWP has invested more than $115 million of ratepayer funds to support the development of residential rooftop solar.
» Read more about: Realizing the Promise of Solar for South Los Angeles »
Thanks to the determined efforts of tenant activists and area residents, real estate developer Matthew Jacobs’ plan to demolish eight affordable housing units in the Fairfax District and replace them with “luxury” living accommodations has been put on hold—for now. Jacobs (who recently resigned from his chairman post at the California Housing Finance Agency), his business partner Guy Penini and their company, Bulldog LLC, had already begun demolition of the rent-controlled bungalow structures located at 750-756 N. Edinburgh Avenue (where they used the Ellis Act to evict eight families), when the city abruptly halted their tear-down undertaking.
Tenant activist Steve Luftman, who lives in another Jacobs-owned building that was also slated for the wrecking ball, is involved in the Edinburgh preservation project — just as he was for the building that he lives in. Luftman’s Flores Street apartment complex was designed by noted architect Mendel Meyer,
» Read more about: Historic, Affordable Bungalows Saved from Wrecking Ball »
Vivian Thorp was 28 years old when she ripped a ligament in her knee lifting heavy freight at Walmart in Vallejo, California. Until then, she’d liked her job and was good at it. “I was always strong and agile, and I had the skills for a physical job,” she says. “I helped set up that store.” But when the injury laid her up, she found herself adrift in the job market. “I wasn’t skilled for anything else other than waitressing or shipping and receiving,” she says. “I got really deeply depressed.”
Her life began to unravel. A bank repossessed the rental she was living in. The father of her baby daughter Jasmine, born in 1994, left Thorp and returned to England. In 1997, four years after the accident, Walmart finally paid her $20,000 for medical expenses and lost income, but more than half of it went to pay back workers’ compensation.
» Read more about: California's Worst Law — And What's Behind the Repeal Movement »
We hear so much about “big government” burdening “job creators” with excessive “red tape” and “bureaucracy,” but that rhetoric isn’t new. Even in the decades after the New Deal, when workers had more power than they do today, and the government was seen as society’s protector, private profit too often conflicted with the public interest.
Take the sleeping drug thalidomide, which caused thousands of infant deaths and birth deformities across Europe in the early 1960s. Before being linked to those defects, the drug reached the desk of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, a medical officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Kelsey saw something odd in the drug trials performed by the pharmaceutical company that manufactured thalidomide, and requested more tests. The company, with profits at stake, bullied her to approve the drug, even threatening a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, evidence from Europe began to pour in that thalidomide was toxic if taken during pregnancy.
» Read more about: How Dr. Frances Kelsey's 'Red Tape' Saved Thousands of Infants »
The nation’s largest county government is poised to move forward Tuesday with a plan that critics say could roll back innovative public health programs and compromise everything from infectious disease containment to the prevention of smoking, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases.
On August 11, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote on a proposed consolidation of three health agencies — the Department of Health Services (DHS), the Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Department of Mental Health (DMH). The plan has the backing of liberal supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sheila Kuehl, as well as their conservative colleague Mike Antonovich — all of whom argue that it will improve care but are opposed by an array of public health and mental health advocates.
“This consolidation has the potential to cripple public health,” said a high-ranking official with DPH, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
