......... NEWS
of the Day - October 5, 2009
on
some LACP issues of interest ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NEWS
of the Day
- October 5, 2009
on
some issues of interest to the community policing and neighborhood
activist
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following group of articles from local
newspapers and other sources constitutes but a small percentage
of the information available to the community policing and neighborhood
activist public. It is by no means meant to cover every possible
issue of interest, nor is it meant to convey any particular
point of view ...
We present this simply as a convenience to our readership ...
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From LA Times
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Several shootings overnight in Los Angeles leave one dead, police say
October 4, 2009 | 12:09 pm
A rash of shootings occurred overnight in South Los Angeles, leaving one man dead, Los Angeles Police Officer Gregory Baek said.
An 18-year-old man was in stable condition after being shot Saturday about 10:30 p.m. near Wilmington Avenue and East 97th Street. He was shot in the left shoulder and right leg and was taken to a hospital.
About 15 minutes later, a 20-year-old man was shot and injured. The victim was in his vehicle in the 10400 block of South Broadway when four suspects in a silver sedan drove by and shot him in the forehead. He was transported to a hospital, where he remains in stable condition.
About 11:40 p.m. Saturday, two suspects shot a man in his 20s in the 200 block of East 69th Street. The victim was struck in the upper torso and is hospitalized in critical condition.
A 24-year-old man was fatally shot about 1:40 this morning while attending a party in the 2000 block of East 103rd Street. The victim was in critical condition when he was taken to a hospital, where he later died. Detectives believe the shooting was gang-related.
About the same time, another man was shot behind the ear while leaving a party near Hoover Street and West 123rd Street. The victim, whose age was unknown, drove himself to a hospital, where he is in stable condition.
Baek called the number of shootings in the area unusual. “Normally we have one or two on Saturday night,” he said. “Luckily only one victim died.”
6 people wounded in gang-related shooting in Highland Park, police say
October 4, 2009 | 10:58 am
Six people are in stable condition today after suffering gunshot wounds in a gang-related shooting in Highland Park, police said.
The victims were shot Saturday about 9:40 p.m. after two suspects in a car opened fire on a house party near Figueroa Street and Avenue 55, Los Angeles Police Officer Gregory Baek said. At least one of the victims was female.
Some of the victims are members of the Dogtown gang, and police believe the shooters may be connected to the Avenues gang, Baek said.
Man, 33, shot to death in gang-related attack, police say
October 4, 2009 | 10:32 am
A 33-year-old man was killed Saturday in a gang-related shooting in East Hollywood, police said.
The body of Saul Ayala was found in the 4500 block of Clinton Street about 11:30 p.m. after Los Angeles police officers responded to a call of shots fired in the neighborhood, said Officer Gregory Baek.
Two unidentified suspects were seen fleeing the scene.
Ayala was a known gang member, Baek said. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the neck, Baek said.
Basketball opened Kai Chen's eyes to civil liberties. Now a U.S. citizen, he focuses on anti-communist protest.
By Ching-Ching Ni
October 5, 2009
For years Kai Chen enjoyed the good life of a professional basketball player in China, playing on the national team and traveling around the world.
But he was never happy representing a government that he said tore his family apart and was responsible for millions of deaths in his country. So after Chen married U.S. foreign exchange student Susan Gruenegerg in 1981, the couple moved to the United States to start a new life together.
Chen eventually earned a degree in political science from UCLA and has since become a passionate anticommunist crusader. His main target: the legacy of Mao Tse-tung, leader of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until his death in 1976.
Last week, Chen led a group of demonstrators at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda in calling for the removal of a bronze statue of Mao, part of a permanent World Leaders exhibit featuring 10 former heads of state and government.
"I'm grateful to Nixon. Without Nixon opening China, how could I have met my wife?" said Chen, 56, who has written a book about his life under communist rule that details how his family were victims of purges. "But Mao has nothing to do with freedom and people's happiness and everything to do with tyranny, power and atrocity."
As part of his campaign, Chen has called for the removal of Mao posters at restaurants and other establishments around Los Angeles and has set up a website to promote his cause. He also ran a 10-city marathon to protest the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But some of Chen's friends are concerned that he has taken his crusade too far. They say his views of China are stuck in the past and do not reflect recent changes there and how the country continues to transform itself into a 21st century global power.
"As an old friend and teacher, I think he has gone a little out on a limb," said Richard Baum, director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. "I don't feel comfortable endorsing these rather extreme ideas and gimmicks."
But fellow activists said they found Chen's outspokenness refreshing.
"Most people who support human rights and democracy see him as great," said Ann Lau, chairwoman of the Los Angeles Visual Artist Guild, a nonprofit group supporting free speech. "We certainly need more people like him."
Saved by the ball
When he was 7, Chen's parents were branded counter-revolutionaries and exiled to Liuhe, a small town in northern China. He stayed behind in Beijing with three older brothers and an ailing grandmother.
By the time Chen was 16 he had reached his full height of 6 feet 7. But he saw no future beyond joining his parents in exile, which he eventually did.
Basketball saved him.
The tallest of three brothers, Chen was recruited by a local grain depot wanting to start its own team. Soon the three were the talk of the town.
They didn't know it at the time, but the success of Ping-Pong diplomacy in introducing China to the outside world in the early 1970s had inspired the government to do the same with basketball. Recruiters were scouring the country looking for potential players for the national team.
Chen was the only one of his brothers chosen and was sent to a training camp in Beijing.
But officials determined that he could not be trusted to represent the country abroad because of his family's history, and he was ordered back to Liuhe. Chen ran away but was caught and placed in solitary confinement.
Once he returned home, Chen enlisted in the army in Shenyang, near North Korea, because he knew it had its own basketball team. In the military, he dug ditches and built dams in freezing weather while enduring near-starvation.
A serious illness and the death of a friend convinced Chen that basketball was his best hope for a better life. "My goal was to get back on the national team," Chen said. "This goal was not for basketball. It was for freedom" to choose his own fate.
He approached his training with new determination and soon became one of his team's best players.
During an exhibition match in Shenyang, the elite August First national military team saw the talented young forward in action. "They saw me and said, 'We've got to get this guy,' " Chen said.
It was 1973. Nixon had made his historic trip to China. Mao was near death.
With the August First team, Chen traveled outside the country for the first time. During a trip to Mexico City, Chen met members of a U.S. team.
"I immediately felt a kinship with the Americans," he said. "They were free. They didn't have fear in their eyes. They just spoke their minds. That was tremendously attractive to me."
In 1978, Chen joined the Chinese national team and traveled to the U.S. on a five-city tour that included Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where team members visited the White House. After that, Chen was ready to quit.
"I no longer wanted to be a tool," he said.
Back to school
Back in China, his next goal was to get an education, so he enrolled in school. That's how he met Gruenegerg, who spoke Chinese and played on the Beijing University basketball team. Soon they were married and moved to the U.S.
Chen's mother and father eventually immigrated to the this country too. The last time Chen went back to China was to visit his brother in 1989.
During that trip, thousands of protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to call for democratic reforms. The demonstration ended in a deadly crackdown.
The experience cemented Chen's views of his country. "I am not going back to China again until the communist government is gone," he said.
Soon afterward he applied for U.S. citizenship. "I am happy here," he said. "In China, I was dying on the inside."
Asked about the economic and social changes China has undergone in recent years, Chen said the country had no choice. "China had to open the door to the outside world for the regime to survive," he said. "They did not do this for the people."
But Philip Young, 48, former president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, said that although he agrees that Mao is a controversial figure, China cannot remain a prisoner of its past.
"China just celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, and it just so happens this is the 30th anniversary of my arrival in America," he said. "I was able to look back and compare the changes between now and then. Ideologies put aside, China is completely different now. Whether you call it communism, capitalism, market economy, these are political terms. The fact of the matter is, China has changed and for the better."
At least 261 have been arrested this year trying to cross near Tucson. Illegal Chinese immigrants can be big money for smugglers.
By Sebastian Rotella
October 5, 2009
Reporting from Nogales, Ariz.
Amid an overall drop in arrests of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S-Mexico border, an intriguing anomaly has cast a new light on human smuggling: Authorities report an almost tenfold spike in the number of Chinese people caught in the southern Arizona desert, the busiest smuggling corridor on the international line.
The Border Patrol in the Tucson sector has arrested at least 261 Chinese border-crossers this year, compared with an annual average of 32 during the last four years, officials said.
"They are the main [non-Mexicans] we catch," said field operations supervisor Juventino Pacheco of the patrol's international liaison unit in Nogales. "Lately we have been catching more Chinese than Central Americans."
When agents find Chinese migrants -- hiding in gulches, perhaps, or huddled in smugglers' vehicles -- they often request help from Dean Delap, the sector's only Mandarin-speaking agent. He taught and studied in China, but had not expected that to prove valuable in Nogales.
"Some are cooperative," Delap said. "Some are scared. They've just been arrested, they are in a new place. I put them at ease."
Chinese remain a small fraction of the overall number processed at the Nogales station -- which guards 31 miles abutting Nogales, Mexico.
The Tucson sector, where the Nogales station is located, recorded about 226,000 apprehensions this year. That is a 24% decline from the last fiscal year -- reflecting the impact of both the U.S. economic crisis and tougher border enforcement, officials said.
The great majority of those arrested were Mexicans. Chinese belong to a category known in the Border Patrol as OTMs: other than Mexicans. And they are big business for smuggling gangs that increasingly have overlapped with Mexico's violent drug mafias.
Highest fees
Mexicans typically pay smugglers about $1,500 for help crossing the sun-seared landscape, which is as dangerous as it is majestic. The fees for Central Americans and South Americans often reach $6,000. A group of Haitians, intercepted a few years ago in Tucson after three nights spent hiking in circles in a canyon, had coughed up $10,000; another $10,000 was to have been paid upon arrival in the Chicago area.
The Chinese -- nearly all of them from Fujian province -- pay the most. They often have to work off debts of $30,000 to $70,000 over several years as indentured servants in the sweatshops and kitchens of New York and other cities.
Sophisticated Asian mafias organize intricate journeys to the U.S. A typical route leads from Beijing to Rome to Caracas, Venezuela, to Mexico City to the border, according to Matthew Allen, chief agent of the Phoenix office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"It's much more elaborate" than smuggling Latin Americans, Allen said. "Waiting in hotel rooms, calls on cellphones, code words. . . . The trend [in increased arrests] stands out as apprehensions are going down overall."
But the uptick in arrests of Chinese does not necessarily reflect a major influx from that country, officials said. Statistical barometers are imperfect.
High-priced smugglers are better at dodging defenses, so it's hard to assess the correlation between arrests, crossing rates and the number who succeed in illegally immigrating.
Nothing new
Chinese smuggling made headlines at its peak in the early 1990s, when flotillas carrying would-be immigrants swarmed the coasts of Southern California, Mexico and Central America.
Ten people died in June 1993 when the ship Golden Venture ran aground in New York carrying 286 immigrants, more than the total captured this year at the Arizona border.
A crackdown at sea and tighter political asylum rules reduced the flow.
Today, Asian smugglers favor air routes, exploiting favorable visa policies for Chinese travelers in countries including Ecuador, Honduras and Venezuela, which are hubs for their travel to Mexico, officials said.
U.S. investigators have gathered intelligence about thousands of Chinese who have settled temporarily in Ecuador with the intention of sneaking into the United States, according to a high-ranking federal official who requested anonymity when discussing the international surveillance.
"The smugglers are attuned to nuances in South American visa policies, and will adapt," Allen said.
The number of Chinese apprehended along the Southwest boundary fluctuates. Borderwide arrests hit 2,060 in the 2006 fiscal year, dipped to near 700 during the next two years, and then rose to 1,221 as of August, according to the Border Patrol.
The patrol's McAllen sector in south Texas, a high-volume corridor for non-Mexicans because of its relative proximity to Central America, led all sectors with at least 667 arrests of Chinese by August, officials say.
But proportionally, the Tucson area experienced the most dramatic surge.
One reason for that, officials said: the convergence of drugs and illegal immigrants in the Sonora-Arizona area. The dominant drug mafia in the region, the Sinaloa cartel, "saw an opportunity to get into Chinese smuggling," said Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante.
The evolving alliance between traffickers of drugs and of immigrants -- once separate specialties -- is complex. According to investigators, drug lords use their firepower to control turf and tax others for the use of border corridors, known in Spanish as plazas , charging $50,000 to $100,000 a week.
"The drug trafficking organizations in the plazas control who smuggles, what they smuggle, where they smuggle," Allen said.
Overlapping fields
At times, when drug mafias are at war or when moving drug loads is difficult, muscling in on the human smuggling racket brings easy profit and less risk, Pacheco said.
And whereas violent retaliation is common among drug traffickers after a big bust, it's less so among smugglers whose immigrants are caught.
"Losing Chinese, you lose money but not an investment upfront," Pacheco said. "They don't buy the Chinese, they charge them."
Nonetheless, Allen said, "the drug and alien smuggling groups are still separate entities. Once human smugglers make it into the U.S. with their loads, there is not coordination."
Chinese immigrants intercepted by the Border Patrol have often spent months on the road.
"Some speak a few words of Spanish," Delap said. "Most of them communicate with hand gestures and body language."
Delap, who majored in political science and minored in Chinese at Brigham Young University, taught English in Yunnan and Xinjiang provinces eight years ago. He has been with the Border Patrol two years.
He sees the chance to use his knowledge of Chinese language and culture as one humanitarian aspect of the Border Patrol, which frequently rescues immigrants from the desert.
Although his conversations with Chinese immigrants focus on basic information, it is clear that his presence is reassuring.
"A lot of times at the end of the shift when I have to go, they realize that and a lot of questions come flooding out: Where are they going, when will they be leaving the detention facility, what will happen," he said. "I explain the best I can."
The bomber managed to evade tight security at the World Food Program compound in Islamabad. There is no immediate claim of responsibility.
Associated Press
4:45 AM PDT, October 5, 2009
ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber disguised as a security officer struck the lobby of the U.N. food agency's Pakistan headquarters today, killing five people a day after the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban vowed fresh assaults, authorities and witnesses said.
The blast raises questions as to how the bomber managed to evade tight security at the heavily fortified World Food Program compound in the capital, Islamabad. It could also hamper the work of WFP and other aid agencies assisting Pakistanis displaced by army offensives against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their strongholds close to the Afghan border.
Hours after the attack, the world body said it was closing its offices in Pakistan temporarily.
"This is a heinous crime committed against those who have been working tirelessly to assist the poor and vulnerable on the front lines of hunger and other human suffering in Pakistan," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Geneva. He said the U.N. would continue, however, providing humanitarian assistance to the Pakistani people.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing. Militants have carried out scores of suicide attacks in Pakistan over the last 21/2 years, several of them targeting foreigners and their interests. Under U.S. pressure, Pakistani security forces have recently had some success combating the extremists.
The blast today shattered windows in the lobby of the compound in an upscale residential area of Islamabad and left victims lying on the ground in pools of blood, witnesses said. The office is close to a home belonging to President Asif Ali Zardari.
"There was a huge bang, and something hit me. I fell on the floor bleeding," said Adam Motiwala, an information officer at the U.N. agency who was hospitalized with injuries to his head, leg and ribs.
Medical officials at two hospitals said five people had been killed in the attack, including an Iraqi working for the agency. Two of those killed were Pakistani women. Several others were injured, two of them critically, the WFP said in a statement.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the attacker was wearing the uniform of a paramilitary police officer and asked a guard if he could go inside the building to use the bathroom. He was carrying around 18 pounds of explosives.
Police official Bin Yamin said the attacker, who was in his 20s, detonated his explosives in the lobby. It was unclear how he made it that far. Typically, visitors to U.N. buildings in Islamabad are screened and patted down for weapons and explosives in secure chambers some distance from the entrance.
U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson condemned the targeting of aid workers as an attack against Pakistani society.
"Such cruel acts expose the true nature of the terrorists' agenda," she said.
The bombing was the first such attack in Islamabad since June, when two police where killed. Another blast in June on a luxury hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed two U.N. staffers and injured others.
Malik said today's bombing proved the militants were growing desperate in response to recent government offensives against the groups.
"These terrorists, they are injured snakes," he said.
On Sunday, Hakimullah Mehsud, the new leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, met with reporters in the country's tribal areas for the first time since winning control of the militants. His appearance, flanked by other Taliban commanders in a show of unity, ended speculation that he was killed in a leadership battle within the militant group sparked by the August slaying of his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, in a missile strike.
"We all are sitting before you which proves all the news about myself ... was totally baseless and false," he said.
Mehsud spoke to a small group of reporters as he sat on a blanket on the ground in the shade of a tree, flanked by guards carrying heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
He spoke on condition his comments not be published until the reporters left the area out of concern their use of satellite phones to file the story could lead Pakistani forces to him.
Mehsud vowed to strike back at Pakistan and the U.S. for the increasing number of drone attacks in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
Unmanned drones have carried out more than 70 missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan over the last year in a covert program, killing several top militant commanders along with sympathizers and civilians. The Pakistani government publicly protests the attacks but is widely believed to sanction them and provide intelligence for at least some.
Pakistan has largely beaten back a Taliban insurgency in the northwestern Swat Valley in recent months and intelligence officials say the country is preparing a major offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban in their stronghold in South Waziristan.
Mehsud said his forces were ready for such an attack.
American officials have said they are considering a strategy of intensified drone attacks combined with the deployment of special operations forces against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets on the Pakistani side of the border -- part of an alternative to sending more troops to Afghanistan in what is an increasingly unpopular war.
As part of the offensive against the Taliban leadership, Mehsud's brother, Kalimullah, was killed last month. Analysts say the group is struggling to regroup from the attacks on its leaders.
With Oct. 25 nuclear plant inspection, Iran backs away from confrontation, official says
The nation is moving away from challenging the West to 'transparency,' says the head of the U.N.'s nuclear enforcement agency.
By Jeffrey Fleishman and Ramin Mostaghim
October 5, 2009
Reporting from Cairo and Tehran
Saying Iran appeared to be moving away from confrontation with the West, the head of the United Nations nuclear enforcement agency announced Sunday that Tehran had agreed to a date this month for international inspectors to visit what until recently had been a covert underground uranium-enrichment plant.
The decision to open the plant to outside scrutiny on Oct. 25 was a concession by Tehran to defuse Western criticism over the intent and scope of Iran's nuclear program. In a meeting with world powers last week, Iranian negotiators agreed in principle to grant the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the facility, which President Obama has criticized as a "direct challenge" to global nonproliferation.
"I see that we are shifting gears from confrontation into transparency and cooperation," said Mohamed Elbaradei, director of the IAEA, who arrived in Tehran on Saturday for talks in what he characterized as a critical moment.
"I hope and trust Iran will be helpful with our inspectors," he said, "so it is possible for us to be able to assess our verification of the facility as early as possible."
In Washington, national security advisor James Jones noted during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" program, "The fact that Iran came to the table and seemingly showed some degree of cooperation, I think, is a good thing."
"But this is not going to be an open-ended process," he warned. "We, the world community, want to be satisfied within a short period of time."
ElBaradei spoke at a news conference with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's nuclear program. Their appearance together came after a week of public condemnations and closed-door diplomacy over the Fordu uranium-enrichment plant being built beneath the mountains nearly the holy city Qom. The U.N. says Iran violated international law by not notifying the IAEA when construction started more than three years ago.
"It is important for us to send our inspectors to assure ourselves that this facility is for peaceful purposes," ElBaradei said. "Iran should have informed us the day they have decided to construct the facility."
Iran's contention was that disclosure of the Fordu plant was not required until at least six months before nuclear materials were moved into the facility, which is expected to house 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium. The discrepancy centers on a change in transparency guidelines that U.N. officials say Iran has ignored.
The U.S., France and Britain have charged that Iran kept the plant a secret in order to deceive inspectors of its goal to build nuclear weapons. Iran claims its nuclear program is designed to generate energy for civilian purposes.
Tehran has repeatedly misled inspectors and brushed aside U.N. orders that it stop enriching uranium. Elbaradei said, however, that there is "no concrete proof" Iran has an ongoing weapons program.
"There are allegations that Iran has conducted weaponization studies," he said. "These are issues that we are still looking into."
Negotiations with ElBaradei played into the months-long conflict between the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the opposition movement led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi and other reformers. The opposition, which seeks closer relations with the West, supports the country's nuclear program but blames the government for mismanagement and needlessly drawing threats of new sanctions from Washington and Europe.
The Ahmadinejad camp was faced with the dilemma of opening the plant to inspectors to ease international pressure while not appearing to weaken years of defiance by relenting to Western demands. Satirical attacks from anti-government websites and journalists arose immediately after the agreement with the IAEA was announced. A reformist website allied with Mousavi lampooned the decision as the "jubilation of the nuclear caving in" by the Ahamadinejad government.
Salehi, who has accused the U.N. of trying to derail Iran's nuclear aspirations, wanted to move quickly beyond the inspector issue: "As far as safeguards are concerned, Iran's nuclear issue has been fully resolved," the nuclear official said at the news conference. "We hope that the country's nuclear case would return to its normal course."
Ali Larijani, the conservative speaker of the Iranian parliament, was harsher in his rhetoric. Iran's Press TV quoted him of condemning the West for seeking to "dominate and demand. . . . Their hypercritical claims against Iran's enrichment work have proven to be nothing but lame excuses. They obviously want to make further demands on the country's nuclear issue."
Running parallel to negotiations over the Fordu plant are talks set for Oct. 19 between the U.S., Russia, France and Iran around a proposal for Tehran to ship uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched up to 20% and then returned to Iran. Such a deal would ease Western fears over Iran's enrichment capabilities while providing Tehran with nuclear materials that can be used for medical and other civilian purposes. An atomic weapon requires at least 90% enrichment.
"We will have a meeting to discuss the technical details and hopefully we will hammer out an agreement as early as possible," said Elbaradei.
An external threat is almost always a cure for national disunity.
Gregory Rodriguez
October 5, 2009
Where is Osama bin Laden when we need him? Don't get me wrong; in no way do I wish death and destruction on our country. But as I listen to the increasingly vitriolic and even seditious rhetoric coming from the political right, I can't help thinking that we need a threatening external enemy to help us cohere as a nation -- a more looming threat than the almost vanished Al Qaeda leader or even his recently arrested alleged minion from Denver.
Oh please, don't be so shocked. From time immemorial, collections of people have leveraged the fear of an enemy to keep their clans, groups and, later, nations from coming undone. Sallust, the Roman historian, believed that metus hostilis , the fear of enemies, promoted social unity, and that its absence fostered internal discord. (He thought the destruction of Carthage, Rome's longtime rival, created a vacuum that led to internal strife and contributed to the decline of Rome.)
It's not pretty, but it's true. Both individual and collective identities are forged as much by declaring what and who you're against as what and who you are for. Although we certainly don't wish for violence on the group we identify with, there are times when we can acknowledge the social value of circling the wagons. In a 1963 essay, novelist Philip Roth wrote that, for Jews, "the cry 'Watch out for the goyim!' at times seems more the expression of an unconscious wish than of a warning: Oh that they were out there, so that we could come together here!" Likewise, historian and political scientist Clinton Rossiter once wrote, "There is nothing like an enemy, or simply a neighbor seen as unpleasantly different in political values and social arrangements, to speed a nation along the course of self-identification or put it back on course whenever it strays."
And boy, have we ever strayed. Think back to 9/11 and how extraordinarily unified the United States was for that moment. In predictable fashion, the vast majority of Americans rallied around President George W. Bush.
It was a noticeable change. Before 9/11, the country was deeply polarized (though not as deeply as we are now), and, as important, we were in the midst of an existential crisis. The fall of the Soviet Union had sent policy wonks grasping for new ways to view the world and politicians casting about for new enemies. So geared were we to see ourselves in contra- distinction with the U.S.S.R., we had to wonder who we were without it. As John Updike's character, Rabbit Angstrom, exclaimed, "Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?"
Of course, our national identity is also internally driven by a belief in the ideals of democracy, liberty, equality and individualism. These are the elements of an American creed that generations of immigrants have adopted and assimilated, and generations of the native-born have revered. But as Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington contended, their loftiness notwithstanding, "these principles are a fragile basis for national unity."
Compared with other modern nations whose identities are rooted in ethnicity or history, ours is decidedly more ephemeral and difficult to grasp. Throughout our history, crises -- particularly wars -- have played a crucial role in making this country's disparate parts cohere. During World War II, shared patriotism and "one for all, all for one" bravura made many groups -- including Chinese Americans and Mexican Americans -- feel like more integral parts of America. It was during WWII (in the military) that African Americans first saw the beginnings of integration, a process that only gained momentum in the postwar years.
But, of course, WWII and other wars also made enemies out of the U.S. citizens who had ethnic or other links with the people with whom we were at war. The most egregious example of that was the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. And that points to the problem of relying on enemies for national cohesion. It's messy.
While the Cold War helped focus our national interests in domestic as well as foreign affairs (the 1956 federal legislation that led to the construction of a modern national highway system was called the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act), anti-communism also ate at us internally. More recently, Huntington's search for an external enemy to unify us led him to try to identify Latin American immigrants as evil culprits (they threatened "to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures and two languages"). He didn't think the loose-knit and hidden nature of Al Qaeda, our real enemy, was vast enough to make us huddle together and make common cause.
With 9/11 less than a decade past, we've returned to our corners to fight it out among ourselves with a vengeance. (About that, at least, Huntington was right.) Despite the fact that we have dangerous global enemies, the members of the disgruntled right seem content to find their primary enemies domestically. Though angry political dissent is an American tradition, the vitriol is reaching new levels. Last week, a columnist for a conservative website fantasized happily about a coup d'etat toppling President Obama.
In the meantime, we all but ignored Bin Laden's most recent tape, and attention to the arrest and indictment of Afghan Denverite Najibullah Zazi on WMD conspiracy charges has been surprisingly low-key. Such blase responses to our true enemies set us up for self-destruction, until we once again find out the hard way that we're all Americans. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez5-2009oct05,0,4492419,print.column
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Editorial
L.A.'s reefer madness
The City Council's lackadaisical approach to medical marijuana has resulted in clinics sprouting like, well, weeds.
October 5, 2009
This is Los Angeles, where laws that seem sensible on the first quick reading turn out to be studded with exceptions or are enforced sporadically. Consider billboards. The city's porous legal barriers encourage rogue sign companies to ignore the law and then to sue when they are challenged. They often win -- because the laws were so clumsily drafted or applied as to be deemed void by the courts.
As it is with billboards, so it threatens to become with medical (ahem) marijuana and the city's attempt at a regulatory scheme to accommodate Proposition 215, the "compassionate use" act that voters adopted in 1996. The City Council called a moratorium on new clinics and denied every request for "hardship" exemptions -- yet it failed to block many of those rejected applicants from opening anyway. Hundreds of storefronts now sell the drug, adding to the impression that, in Los Angeles, the initiative is a cover for virtual legalization. Present your physician-approved card and you can buy the stuff to treat a bad day at the office.
Let's be clear: Virtual legalization is not and should not be the city's goal. There is a nationwide debate to be had over fully legalizing marijuana, but neither Proposition 215 nor city regulation of clinics is the proper vehicle for that discussion. The council should be -- and finally seems to be -- working to allow legitimate medical patients to treat their illnesses without turning the city into a new Amsterdam.
City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is recommending a very cautious approach, with outright sales banned in favor of patient cooperatives. That comes as a jolt not just to recreational users but to patients who finally have safe and convenient access to pain relief and treatment. With the drug now so widely available, it would be hard to return to the days of cannabis clubs.
But Trutanich also points out that the marijuana being sold all over the city could (and he says in at least two test cases did) contain dangerous levels of pesticides and other contaminants, and that clinics may well get their stash from the same cartels that have wreaked so much havoc -- and violence -- in Mexico. It may not be the city's role to regulate the product or its importation, but what's the value of "compassionate use" for medical purposes if the product actually is poisonous and if clinics, rather than providing safety, are supplied by criminals?
Even if his advice to disallow sales is too draconian, Trutanich makes some valid points. It may be too late for Los Angeles to move slowly on medical marijuana, because hundreds of clinics are now operating. But it's not too late to move wisely, and with the safety and health of patients and other residents at the top of the agenda.
Making an example of American Apparel Throwing American Apparel's undocumented workers out on the street only replaces one problem with another.
October 5, 2009
American Apparel is in the process of firing all of its undocumented workers, under pressure from the Department of Homeland Security -- a move that will cause as much real harm to Los Angeles as it will imaginary good. Taking away as many as 1,800 jobs that pay $10 to $12 an hour plus benefits will probably drive those workers into an underground economy or into sweatshops, maybe into crime, maybe homelessness. They and their children will be more susceptible to poverty and hunger and more likely to require public assistance.
There are those who believe that Los Angeles will benefit because those jobs will now go to American citizens. Certainly that is possible. Joblessness in California is at 12.2%, a 70-year high and far past the national average of 9.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And between August 2008 and August of this year, Los Angeles lost more jobs than any other U.S. city. Citizens of every race and ethnicity, desperate for employment, are now frequenting day- labor sites in downtown L.A. and Hollywood, according to the Wall Street Journal; some have turned to farm work and labor in the fields. But even if American Apparel replaces its lost workers with U.S. citizens, it's just a shell game; one problem is solved while another is created.
President Obama vowed to redirect immigration enforcement away from the workplace actions of the Bush administration -- which often involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers storming in and rounding up employees -- and to put the pressure on employers instead. And he has kept that promise. However, it would make more sense for the government to use its strained resources to nab abusive employers -- it is a sure bet that not too far from the American Apparel building downtown, where the company provided decent wages, reasonable benefits and even a masseuse to rub tired shoulders, workers are toiling in sweatshops.
Unlike some who call for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, as we do, we also believe in enforcement -- in the workplace, at the border and where appropriate. Without it, the problem of illegal immigration is unsolvable. But we're troubled by the idea of enforcement without a comprehensive immigration policy -- a guest-worker program and regulations tailored to the country's labor needs as well as access to citizenship.
American Apparel, which could lose as much as a fourth of its workforce, is only one of hundreds of companies across the country whose hiring records are being audited by ICE. But without comprehensive immigration reform, it's hard to see what good will come of throwing undocumented workers out of their jobs.
Sending children to prison for life Our laws make allowances for juveniles' immaturity; judges should too.
By Bernard E. Harcourt
October 5, 2009
This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in two cases, Sullivan vs. Florida and Graham vs. Florida, that will decide whether it's cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a 13-year-old or a 17-year-old to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The court should follow its prior reasoning in Roper vs. Simmons, a 2005 ruling that held the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional, and similarly draw a bright line at 18 years of age for imposing life sentences without parole.
The extreme rarity with which sentences of life in prison without parole are imposed on juveniles -- particularly younger juveniles -- shows that this punishment is out of step with American values and society. In the United States, only Joe Sullivan in Florida is serving a life-without-parole sentence for a non-homicide offense, committed at 13. That qualifies as "unusual" under any definition of the word.
The other case on this issue to be heard this term, also from Florida, involves a conviction for armed burglary, again not a homicide. Yet Terrance Graham, who was 17 at the time, was given the maximum sentence that a juvenile convicted for murder would receive.
To be sure, we might not always seek legal guidance abroad. But in this case, the international comparisons are telling. No country other than the United States incarcerates children for life without parole. We were the lone "no" vote against the 2006 U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on all nations to abolish such life sentences. Somalia is the only other nation that has not ratified Article 37 of the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child, prohibiting juvenile life-without-parole sentences.
The tough-on-crime rhetoric of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" is entirely inappropriate in the case of children. Children's brains, bodies and personalities are still in the process of growing and changing. And many experts in neuroscience and psychology believe that the same changeability that makes young people vulnerable to negative influences and peer pressure also makes them good candidates for reform and rehabilitation.
In all other areas, we recognize their vulnerabilities. Because of the relative immaturity and irresponsibility of minors, every state in the nation restricts them from voting, serving on juries, purchasing alcohol or marrying without parental consent. States further restrict young adolescents from activities that require more mature judgment, such as driving and consenting to sexual activity. In fact, the state of Florida, where Sullivan and Graham are incarcerated for life, does not even permit adolescents to get their ears pierced without parental consent.
So why should minors be treated like adults when it comes to sentencing?
Ironically, the same laws that are intended to protect children from exploitation and their own immature judgment -- including restrictions on driving, working and leaving school grounds -- prevent young teens from escaping an abusive parent, a violent household or a crime-ridden neighborhood. As the Supreme Court observed in the 2005 Roper decision, "juveniles have a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for failing to escape negative influences in their whole environment."
Juvenile offenders should be given the opportunity to have their sentences reviewed later in life. Parole authorities are equipped to determine whether adolescents have served a significant portion of their sentences, have been rehabilitated and pose no threat to others, and to decide whether they deserve the chance to complete their sentences in the community. As is true with adult offenders, juvenile offenders do not have a right to parole release; they should, however, have the right to be considered for that opportunity.
Under the best of circumstances, criminal sentencing is susceptible to mistakes. The better option is to sentence serious juvenile offenders to life sentences with the possibility of parole, and provide the hope that will encourage them to continue their education and take advantage of programs in prison to rehabilitate and reform themselves. It is cruel and unusual to pass a final judgment on a person whose character and identity are still forming.
Bernard E. Harcourt, a professor of law and of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of "Language of the Gun: Youth, Crime, and Public Policy."
POLICE: New offices are dazzling, but they lack the memories of famous headquarters.
By Kevin Modesti, Staff Writer
Updated: 10/05/2009 01:09:05 AM PDT
Parker Center, headquarters for the Los Angeles Police Department, Thursday, October 1, 2009. Workers are in the process of moving the LAPD headquarters from Parker center to a new building nearby. (Hans Gutknecht/LA Daily News)
When the Los Angeles police move out of their downtown headquarters, the challenges are different from when you move out of an old house or office building.
For one thing, you probably don't worry that you'll lose homicide evidence and case records, allowing murderers to go free.
That's one practical concern for the L.A. Police Department, which is in the middle of switching its operations hub from 54-year-old Parker Center to a modern police administration building a couple of downtown blocks to the west.
On a recent morning, Lt. Gregg Strenk stood next to his well-worn desk in the Robbery-Homicide Division and gestured toward one of the wooden wall cabinets that hold the detectives' live-case files.
Strenk said he's anxious about what could happen in the short time a moving company will have possession of that cabinet and its irreplaceable contents.
"(The day it's moved), I'm going to be here," Strenk said. "I may not be carrying it or pushing it, but I'll be watching it."
Strenk likened himself to a family wondering how to get its heirloom china from one house to another in one piece.
"Do you let the movers take it, or do you handle it yourself?" he said.
The old Parker Center - so named in 1966 after Chief William H. Parker died of a heart attack - has been the LAPD's base since 1955 and is familiar to viewers of countless police dramas real and fictional. In need of seismic retrofitting, the building is expected to eventually be demolished.
The new $437 million headquarters - as yet unnamed - is beautifully landscaped and comes technologically complete with Wi-Fi.
LAPD staffers who have toured their new working home have said with mixed emotion that it reminds them of a corporate office.
The LAPD, anticipating an Oct. 24 grand opening for the new building at 100 Spring St., has been packing up the old cop shop at 100 North Los Angeles St., a process that began in July and will continue into next year.
Some departments have already moved, such as the Records and Identification Divison, whose office on the second floor of Parker Center has been stripped bare. Outmoded telephones lie on the linoleum tile floor.
Some departments won't move for a while, among them Robbery-Homicide, which isn't going anywhere until December. Detectives keep working out of their musty old room, their attitudes still hardboiled but maybe a bit wistful right now.
From top to bottom of the 10-story current headquarters, department veterans express mixed emotions about leaving behind their dumpy (but homey) digs for a dazzling (but unfamiliar) workplace with space for about 2,300 employees.
"The new building is so much bigger, nicer and cleaner," said Sgt. Kelly Arnett of the Public Information Office.
"(But) we're going to miss the cockroaches," said Officer April Harding of the Media Relations Section. And, they said, no longer will there be the scent of unburned confiscated marijana that sometimes wafts up from the downstairs evidence room after a productive weekend for the narcotics squad.
First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell noted that a lot of L.A. history revolved around Parker Center.
"The famous and the infamous," McDonnell said.
On the hallway walls outside the administrative offices, there are bare hooks where photos from cases like the Manson murders hung until recently. In newly barren investigative offices, a visitor sees old electric fans, 13-inch TV sets with antennas and manual typewriters. In a stack of equipment is an in/out box with trays labeled "Charged" and "Dead."
One imagines what, say, a veteran detective might find when he pulls open a neglected drawer and empties its contents into one of the bright-orange moving crates. So far, no reports that any gumshoe has pulled a paper bag out of the back of a drawer and exclaimed, "Here's that Black Dahlia evidence we could never find!"
The real back-of-the-drawer finds are more like what you find when you pack up for a move.
"The number of paper clips is unbelievable," Arnett said.
McDonnell, a 28-year veteran of the force, said the experience of moving is bittersweet.
"We've looked forward to the day when we'd be moving out of Parker Center and into the new building," McDonnell said. "It wasn't until we started moving and we saw how empty it is, that we saw how many memories are leaving that building."
Rick Orlov is a Daily News staff writer. His Tipoffs column appears Mondays. Contact him at rick.orlov@dailynews.com or at 213-978-0390. For a daily political fix, go to the Sausage Factory at www.insidesocal.com/politics
Updated: 10/05/2009 01:15:47 AM PDT
This is wonk week for neighborhood council activists, with a pair of big forums scheduled to address local issues.
Next weekend, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will hold his annual budget day with the Congress of Neighborhood Councils where he and city officials will lay out the city's budget problems and survey the Neighborhood Council leaders on their priorities.
But this past week, an upstart group of activists from the neighborhood councils got together at Los Angeles City College to deal with the hot-button issues circulating among them in what they called the Neighborhood Council Action Summit.
These include proposals to cut City Council salaries in half, create a ratepayer advocate in the Department of Water and Power, support a bicycle rider bill of rights and address issues involving medical marijuana.
Greg Nelson, the former head of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment who has remained active in the movement, is one of the organizers of the summit. He has a Web page for information at: ncactionsummit.wetpaint.com.
"We tried to get the city to consider some of these issues, but they already had their agenda set," Nelson said. "And we wanted to demonstrate there is a much better way of doing the Congress of Neighborhood Councils in a way that doesn't cost huge amounts.
"This came about when I was talking with about a dozen people, who wanted to have some real action."
At the same time, Nelson acknowledged he was not sure what will happen out of the daylong meeting.
Some networking will occur as proponents of one proposal or another seek support from the group, hoping they will return to their neighborhood councils to get them on board.
Nelson said he also hopes that those participating will try to raise some of the topics at next week's session to try to get more attention from the mayor and city officials.
Several San Fernando Valley organizations are joining forces to make sure the Valley is not forgotten when it comes to federal stimulus money.
The Valley Economic Alliance, Pierce College and the West Side Occupational Training Center have formed a collaborative to make sure some of the money makes its way to the Valley as the allocations are being made.
They hired Laurette Healey, a former deputy state controller who has been active in Valley politics for the past several years, to coordinate their efforts.
Kenn Phillips, vice president of work force initiatives for the Economic Alliance, said it is hoped the joint effort will focus on job training for renewable energy programs.
Healey said the stimulus money can provide an opportunity for college students as well as those who have been laid off in the construction or entertainment industries to train for new careers.
"My efforts will be to work with government agencies and venture capitalists to obtain the funding for job training and regional economic development," Healey said.
As expected, Attorney General Jerry Brown last week opened his exploratory committee to run for governor in 2010 so he can begin raising money to be competitive.
Also, as expected, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom - who has announced his candidacy - took the opportunity to challenge Brown to a series of 11 debates before the June primary election.
Brown's campaign responded politely to the offer, but declined to engage, saying Brown still has not formally declared for the office and he was concentrating on his job.
Steve Glazer, senior advisor to Brown, said it is too early to talk about debates.
"The primary is eight months away," Galzer said. "There will be plenty of time for politics and debates."
Speaking of elections, there is some new competition in the race for the 12th City Council District race in 2011.
Winnetka businesswoman Armineh Chelebian has taken out papers allowing her to raise funds and challenge Mitch Englander for the seat. Englander is chief of staff to Councilman Greig Smith, who has said he will not seek a third term.
Chelebian said she is serious about the race.
"Let the games begin," she said.
A Republican, Chelebian has run unsuccessfully for several offices in recent years, including Valley city council in the 2002 secession election, Los Angeles City Council in 2003 and state Assembly in 2006 and 2008.
MOVIES: Councilman to outline 17 initiatives to fight runaway production.
By Bob Strauss, Staff Writer
Updated: 10/05/2009 01:20:29 AM PDT
Watching the just-opened feature "Zombieland" and its prominent scenes of Los Angeles, the average moviegoer wouldn't think there was any problem with runaway production in Hollywood.
Consider, then, that just one day was spent filming on Hollywood Boulevard while the other scenes were filmed during a 40-day shoot - in Georgia.
Such is the predicament facing officials in Los Angeles, who are grappling with how to make filmmaking more lucrative for producers and more attractive to their own constituents.
In a report scheduled to be presented this week, City Councilman Richard Alarc n will outline 17 initiatives he hopes will pump the brakes on runaway production.
"I'm trying to be surgical about it," said Alarc n, who chairs the council's Jobs and Business Development Committee. "I'm being very honest (with producers): We're not going to be able to solve all of your problems in one fell swoop, but we've got to set the tone.
"That means, No. 1, that filming in L.A. is a priority for this city, and we're demonstrating that by looking at each of your concerns and trying to remedy them as quickly as possible. And No. 2, we have to increase the cultural awareness of the value of filming in Los Angeles. And we need to develop a marketing scheme."
At a Sept. 22 hearing, film professionals complained to the council committee about everything from a shortage of parking for crew members to high fees for shooting at and around local businesses.
Last week, residents of the West Adams District met to complain that productions in their neighborhood were disrupting their own access, parking and lives in general.
Alarc n hopes to enlist FilmL.A., the independent shooting-permit clearinghouse for the city, as well as one staffer in each council district office to reach out to producers and convince businesspeople and residents of the importance of keeping film work in Hollywood.
During the committee hearing, economist Jack Kyser of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. pointed out that 6,000 local filming jobs will be lost this year due to runaway production.
The reason, filmmakers say, are the tax incentives and greater overall cooperation found in other states.
"They have a 30 percent tax incentive," "Zombieland" director Ruben Fleischer said of the welcome his project received in Georgia.
"I'm not a math major, but add in 30 percent and we couldn't have made this movie with anywhere near the production value out here ... This movie would have cost twice as much if we'd done it in L.A.
"We got that amusement park for nothing, we got a giant mansion for nothing," Fleischer added. "Georgia would shut down full highways for us and let us take them over. Such collaboration. The extras were all really enthusiastic and weren't under union contracts. There were a lot of significant advantages."
While California inaugurated its first-ever production tax incentives in July, the $100 million-a-year program applies only to a narrow range of qualifying projects.
At the same time, however, legislatures in recession-racked states like Michigan are rethinking the broad scope of their own filming incentives.
Cash-strapped Los Angeles can't offer producers much in the way of rebates, though Alarc n has asked the Office of Finance to report on the impacts of a sales tax refund for filming purchases when at least 75 percent of the shooting is done in L.A.
Additionally, the councilman has asked the Business Tax Advisory Committee to evaluate giving tax credits to businesses that allow filming on their properties and private parking companies that offer productions a "reasonable rate."
"Some things, we just can't do," Alarc n admitted. "I mean, we have no control of the freeway systems. But within our power, we want to be able to demonstrate that we're willing to move."
Outreach to the Department of Water and Power, the Department of Transportation and other local agencies is also on the agenda. Lists of city properties, especially vacant ones, that can be used for filming are being drawn up as well.
As for convincing residents that neighborhood filming is good for them, well, it'll be easier in some districts than others.
"We shoot `Sons of Anarchy' in the Sunland-Tujunga, Pacoima and North Hollywood areas, and we're having a great experience," Jim Fox, an executive with 20th Century Fox Television, told the committee. "We're bringing money into the local economy, and those residents and business owners are happy to get that kind of activity."
But Sharp added that filming a pilot for a legal drama set in downtown L.A. proved so costly and difficult, the series will be shot in Dallas.
"I think we can go a long way to educate the public that these occasional inconveniences provide thousands of jobs," Sharp said of location filming. "They contribute to the economic well-being of this city."
But Councilman Bernard Parks said local businesses and residents don't seem to reap the benefits of film shoots in the South Los Angeles district he represents.
"When you take over a community for several weeks or whatever, the community should at least have something to point at and say people see an overall benefit, instead of it just was converged on, people were inconvenienced, there was a handful of people that benefited and most of them left," he said.
Alarc n, whose 7th District encompasses the Valley area that Sharp praised, acknowledged that some parts of the city are oversaturated with filming while others have none.
Balancing that out, while increasing the overall number of shoots in L.A., is among the many things he wants to do to make the center of the world's entertainment industry as film-friendly as it should be.
"With 17 recommendations when I've only been chair for a month, it's clear that I'm trying to send a message," Alarc n said. "That's that I get it, that we want to make this a priority of the committee and I believe that the Council wants to make it a priority.
SEIU LOCAL 721 REPORTS: 'OUR MEMBERS GET LOUD AND ANGRY'
Written by Dan Mariscal, SEIU Local 721
Sunday, 04 October 2009
A Local 721 meeting of LA City members was held today, 10-03-2009 at 9:00 A.M. at the Local Union Hall at 500 S. Virgil Ave. The standing-room-only crowd consisted of employees of various departments of the City and various MOU's represented by Local 721.
The meeting started off fairly orderly and began with a power point presentation, by Julie Butcher, of select interpretations of the Coalition efforts to deal with the City's budget shortfall. However, once the subject of furloughs was raised, the meeting began to descend into a series of shouting matches. Some serious inconsistencies began to emerge regarding the potential legal remedies.
It was asserted, by Ms. Butcher, that once the Letter of Agreement (LOA) had been ratified, the layoff of any employee covered by the Coalition, would be litigated and treated as an “international incident”.
The members asked, “If your going to litigate something, why not litigate the violation of the 2007-2012 contract?” Ms. Butcher, did not address that question directly, but instead insisted that there was language against layoffs and furloughs, although the language of the LOA does not specifically state this. She stated that it was better to deal with it this way than wage a years battle that could be lost.
A member stated that his co-workers would not support the 3.5 hours off per pay period and that amounted to furloughs. Ms. Butcher replied “call it what you want”, that's how we avoided the 50% holiday give back.
Another member stated that our co-workers should not have to pay for the Mayor and City Council's irresponsible management of the City's finances. It was asserted by staff that we'd still have to address the shortfall, regardless of who's at fault.
Mr. Schoonover stated that there is a “structural problem” with the City's budget and that we'd have to sacrifice to address this problem. Another member pointed out that the “structural problem” amounts to fiscal alcoholism, and that you can't cure alcoholism with more alcohol.
Another employee implored the members to think about the families that could face the loss of their homes if the LOA was not ratified, reminding them of the plan to layoff 900 employees. However, it was pointed out by more members that they cannot be made out to look like the villain; The union was not laying off anyone. The villain is the Mayor, because he reneged on the proposal that was ratified by the members in late June of 2009.
The question was also asked as to why, on Sept. 15, 2009 the City needed $63M more for their support of the ERIP, yet on Sept. 18, 2009 the Local offered the city $78M to be funneled into the General Fund?
The reply was that the City would not accept anything less than $78M due to the declining revenue of the City's budget. That the priority had been to prevent the loss of jobs.
The issue then focused on the fact that there were loopholes to the avoidance of layoffs or furloughs that involved an exception if the City incurred an unexpected loss of $100M. It was pointed out that the proposed LOA was void of any specific language prohibiting layoffs.
Members pointed out that the layoffs had merely been re-packaged.
Another item in the LOA had to do with the proposal to prohibit cash payouts for overtime, that overtime would be paid with accumulated time off, only. Sanitation workers did not receive this very well, because they only get 5 holidays off and have to work the rest of the holidays. The would be losing a disproportionate amount of cash. You simply can't pay your mortgage with accumulated time-off.
Traffic Officers stated that they get overtime by working special events, and that few would want to work overtime if they could not be paid cash.
For many employees, overtime would be the only way to make up for the lost furlough hours or days. The ratification of the LOA would essentially shut the door on them.
The meeting ended with a pledge, by 721 leadership, to visit the worksites and “intensify” the efforts to “inform” the members about the consequences of failing to ratify the LOA.
Judging from the loud and angry membership participation, it will be a hard sell. The members, at the meeting, appeared angry enough to stand and fight.
Written by Anthony Asadullah Samad, LA Progressive
Sunday, 04 October 2009
Very few of us were surprised to read a recent Los Angeles Time s article in how Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks put the FBI on County Supervisor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, the person who defeated (and demoralized) him the same night America elected its first black President. Ridley-Thomas' landslide was bigger than Obama's. Some say it was worse than the whipping the late 2nd District Supervisor, Kenny Hahn, put on retired judge and former 8th district councilman, Billy Mills.
The old-timers remember that one and they talk about it like Louis-Schmeling, Clay-Liston, Foreman-Frazier. Well, on this election night, Howard Cosell would have been shouting from his broadcast booth, “Down goes Parks, Down goes Parks, Down goes Parks.” The support out there for Parks was basically Westside Republicans (and of course, the L.A. Sentinel — you knew I couldn't miss that opportunity). And he took about the same kind of whuppin' the national Republicans did.
The “Parks effect,” caused by his non-rehiring as police chief and being an aggrieved grandfather, had worn off. The polish was off this boot, and enough people had run up against this arrogant, defiant (some might even say deviant) cop turned “pretend” politician, that he had about as much of a chance of being County Supervisor as I did—and I wasn't on the ballot. Everybody knew how Parks got on the City Council, but few knew why he got on the council until it evidenced itself a year later when it became obvious that it was a total revenge against former Mayor James Hahn. Parks needed the council seat to launch a faux mayoral bid—not to win, but to draw enough black support to cause Hahn to lose.
And that's exactly how it played out. Parks is doing to Ridley-Thomas what he did to Willie Williams, the FIRST African American Chief of Police that was brought in over Parks — what he did to Jim Hahn, whose beef with Parks ran back to the days when Hahn was City Attorney and paying out record police abuse settlements that then assistant chief Parks defended, dissing Hahn every step of the way — and what he did to the very district he purportedly represents when he sunk projects that had either Ridley-Thomas' or Mayor Hahn's fingerprints on them. Parks' whole essence, in his latter-day public life has been about sowing the seeds of revenge. But this is a new low.
The master of the “story plant” (a carryover from his police training), Parks suggested in his election night “sour loser” comments after his supervisor seat defeat, a classless display of refusing to concede and baseless allegations, that we hadn't heard the last of this. We thought he was just delusional after taking the thumpin' he took. He couldn't even believe he lost like that. There certainly had to be some foul play afoot. Naw, the true sentiment of the people finally played out. Not everybody was in love with Mark, though clearly many were, but they damn sure had no love for Bernie. It wasn't uncommon to hear people say they made a mistake in voting for the “po'lice.” And it was more a knock on Parks than the cops, because they remember what kind of cop Parks was.
A Darrell Gates cop that often defended the indefensible for the sake of “blue,” Parks blind ambition always put the community's interest behind his own. And his revenge plays were legendary. You have never seen a former cop that couldn't pull a single major police endorsement, from anywhere. All the big ones endorsed Ridley-Thomas. When the people who worked with you 30 plus years won't endorse, the community certainly should have that tune in our heads, “God is trying to tell you something, right now, Right Now, RIGHT NOW!!! All you Colored Purple folks know what I'm talking about. But for some reason, we missed it. Missed it BIGTIME.
When Parks took over Leimert Park after succeeding Ridley-Thomas in the councilmatic eighth district, the area was thriving and poised to do some major economic development with a newly approved business improvement district (BID). The first thing Parks did was dismantle the CDC, started by Ridley-Thomas, that got the BID approved and was funding for it to be funded so it could run the BID. When Parks gave the BID contract to a competing non-profit, the CDC folded. Then Parks dismantled a $5 million dollar development to bring a three story office with a roof top garden restaurant and opportunity for reduced rents office space for the Leimert Park merchants on a lot at 43rd and Degnan.
The city owns the land, the developers were the CDC and the major investor, who was set to move his television and radio studios to tape his show, “Live from Leimert Park”. The city was in, the financing was in, the merchants were in — all the community needed was for their councilman to advance the development through city council. Because Parks saw this as “Hahn's deal” and “Ridley-Thomas' CDC sweetheart deal,” Parks refused to carry the deal, even though the community would have benefited greatly. The investor, tired of waiting, pulled out and the deal fell apart. Parks' revenge played out on the community, but he had a great replacement for the multi-million dollar deal…a farmers market. Lowest use benefit for the highest valued vacant land in the area. Genius. While trying to make a comeback, Leimert Park is still just a shell of its former self. The community never got over it, and still hasn't.
So when the community went with Ridley-Thomas, Parks went to the feds and the newspapers. The L.A. Times , always willing to get in the middle of a good community fight, took it and ran with it. The feds are sniffin' around for something that is not there, but on a “police tip” they're obligated to investigate it. So, here we are again, the community being compromised with revenge as the primary motivation. When it comes to Parks and righting his failed ambitions, wrong after wrong seems to make it right for him. Or at least even. And where does that leave us, the community? In the middle of a frustrated career cop's revenge play.
