Author: David Hunter

Coronavirus and Relief

• Though there are ongoing issues in California’s vaccine distribution, Governor Gavin Newsom surprisingly announced on Monday that the state will immediately lift its stay-at-home order — a decision that appears to have been communicated first to the California Restaurant Association. Soon thereafter, LA County announced it will “align” with the state, and Mayor Garcetti announced that the city will “align” with the county. Following up, County Board of Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer updated City Council on the state of the county’s vaccine programs, among other things, and Councilmember Nithya Raman summarized that report on Twitter.

• The California State Legislature reached an agreement to extend the state’s eviction moratorium until June 30. The moratorium protects tenants who pay 25% of their rent. The bill also contains a plan as to how to use the $2.6 billion the state will receive from the federal government for rent relief. This money will be disbursed to landlords to cover 80% of their pandemic-related unpaid rents, in exchange for their forgiving the other 20% and agreeing not to evict any tenants who are behind. However, landlords will be able to decline this money.

• CalMatters explains estimates that Californians are over a billion dollars behind on water payments — a number twice as much as the estimate for the state’s total unpaid rent.

Criminal Justice Reform

• California Attorney General Xavier Becerra will soon leave his position to join the Biden administration. But first he has launched a civil rights investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The investigation will determine if there is a “pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing” within the department. A similar investigation in Kern County led, after several years, to their Sheriff’s Department agreeing to a list of reforms.

• On Tuesday, the County Board of Supervisors heard the results of their requested report on what legal options they had to remove Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva from office. The results are summarized here. The board took no further actions.

Labor

• The United Farm Workers’ December lawsuit against the Department of Labor contesting their proposed regulation changes for H-2A workers has been resolved, with an injunction granted. Following the Department of Labor’s last-minute set of H-2A farmworker regulation changes during the final days of the Trump administration, the Biden administration has withdrawn many of these pending rule changes — including those affecting H-2A workers.

• The crewmembers of an independent film were forced to file unpaid wage claims covering five weeks of prep after what is being called a COVID-19 “scare” drove away the project’s financier.

City Politics

• A motion directing the Los Angeles City Administrator to find 45 million dollars in the budget so the city can purchase Hillside Villa Apartments, for use as affordable housing, has passed unanimously through the housing committee.

• The city’s Jobs Committee voted to advance a motion that would require large supermarket chains to pay their frontline workers hazard pay. Long Beach, a step ahead of Los Angeles, passed a similar ordinance last week and now faces a lawsuit from the California Grocers Association.

• Though it had been speculated that former councilmember Mitchell Englander could face no jail time for his role in municipal corruption, this week he was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison.

Coronavirus and Relief

• The California State Legislature is once again playing chicken with the state eviction moratorium, which ends on January 31. It is expected that the legislature will extend the deadline in some fashion but it is still unclear what shape that will take. The LA Times discusses how the rent relief funds that were part of December’s stimulus bill can be applied for (still unclear), and how they will be disbursed (direct payments to landlords).

• Some councilmembers in the city of West Covina have proposed that the city form its own department of health, independent from Los Angeles County, as a way for the city to make their own health regulations and safety decisions that would weigh the interests of business more heavily.

Housing Justice

• Yesterday, the City Planning Commission’s Equity Day listening session offered a chance for residents to participate in presentations and extensive public comment, which focused largely on how development in this city has failed to conserve communities and community resources, in South LA and other neighborhoods, and how these needs can be met in the future. The event was live-tweeted here.

• The Pasadena Star checks in with Pasadena’s new mayor in the aftermath of another failed appeal of the state’s affordable housing requirements. California cities have repeatedly pushed back against the municipal affordable housing benchmarks in the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment. At the moment, however, the state only requires that each municipality be legally prepared to hit its benchmarks — not that the housing ever actually be built.

• This week the LA City Council asked for a report back in 30 days on the feasibility of turning the LA Convention Center into an emergency shelter for unhoused Angelenos. Skepticism over whether this is an adequate or safe response to the city’s housing crisis is expressed here.

Labor

• KNOCK.LA has continued reporting on the aftermath of Prop 22, this time focusing on the ways labor is fighting back: pushing for federal legislation, filing lawsuits in the state, and organizing on the ground. The same topics were also discussed this week on Ground Game LA’s Twitch, at 12:53. (Also featured in this video is Daniel Lee, the Culver City councilmember and DSA member who is running in a special election to fill Holly Mitchell’s seat in the State Senate.)

• Workers at Donut Friend, in Highland Park, were recently fired in retaliation for attempting to organize a union. You can follow Donut Friends United on Instagram to learn how to support their efforts.

• Though it may end up largely a symbolic gesture, the Screen Actors Guild is considering expelling former President Trump for his role in inciting the January 6 Capitol riot.

Criminal Justice Reform

• Sixty-five current and former elected prosecutors filed a brief supporting Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón in the civil case brought by the Los Angeles County prosecutors’ union. The union is suing to reverse several less-punitive policies Gascón put into place when he took office, which some prosecutors claim are “unfair” to be asked to follow (because it is their preference not to).

Coronavirus and Relief

• Following CDC COVID-19 vaccine guidelines, Governor Newsom has simplified the access tier system in California and announced that the vaccine will now be made available to everyone over 65. However, Los Angeles County still does not have enough doses for its healthcare workers and will not be able to make the vaccine available to seniors until February — unless you live in Long Beach, which has its own separate health department that isn’t facing these shortages.

• LA County will discontinue the use of Curative’s COVID-19 tests, after a report issued by the FDA last week warned that the test is associated with a high rate of false negatives.

State and City Governance

• Governor Newsom released his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year last Friday. It reflects the fact that revenues for 2020 were 20% higher than were expected in June, largely due to the resiliency of the stock market. “Folks at the top are doing pretty damn well,” said Newsom. Read a more in-depth breakdown here.

• Los Angeles City Council is back in session (and now using the gallery view so online viewers can see every councilmember at once). Committee assignments have also been released. On Twitter, Councilmember Nithya Raman has broken down the committee process’s role in how motions become laws.

• From the LA Podcast blog: transcripts of conversations used as evidence in the corruption case against former Councilmember Mitchell Englander were released this week, and they remove any lingering doubt that current Councilmember John Lee, the former Englander aide who was elected to fill his former boss’s seat this March, was complicit in that corruption.

Labor

• A coalition of Los Angeles city employee unions have negotiated a deal that would prevent any layoffs or furloughs for at least six months. The results of the elections in Georgia, giving Democrats functional control over the US Senate, make it more likely that the federal government will step in to make up the budget shortfalls in municipalities.

• An in-depth article in Capital and Main surveys worker complaints made to Cal/OSHA about inadequate workplace protection from COVID-19. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer noted this week that worksite infection rates have more than quadrupled as general infection rates have soared.

• Workers in film production have been deemed “essential workers” — but the industry is wisely not pursuing priority for its employees in the vaccination pipeline.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• The LMU Law School has officially released their study “Fifty Years of ‘Deputy Gangs’ in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.” Among other things, the study notes a correlation: deputies at sheriff’s stations with active gangs are more likely to use their guns. The Sheriff Department’s official response so far has been to disparage the report. The full report is here. (An amazing nationwide database of all civilian deaths caused by police has been posted here.)

• Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy appears to be one of the many law enforcement officers from around the country who participated in the riots at the Capitol building last week.

• A $25 million cut to the Los Angeles School Police Department was approved this summer by the LAUSD Board of Education. The discussion as to how to implement those cuts has again been delayed, at the request of activist groups who still don’t feel that they have enough voice in the process. It had previously been delayed until this week’s meeting of the board for the same reason, and has not yet been rescheduled.

Coronavirus and Relief

• The FDA has cautioned that the COVID-19 test provided by Curative, a self-administered oral swab, is far more prone to false negative results than the nasal swab tests administered under the guidance of a healthcare professional, and should only be used to test symptomatic patients. Curative processes thousands of tests per day in Los Angeles, including all of the tests given at Dodger Stadium.

• The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors returned this week, and voted to extend the county’s soon-to-expire eviction moratorium by another thirty days. Public comment hammered the ridiculousness of expecting tenants to be able to pay a year’s worth of back-rent after the moratorium is lifted, as the current law mandates, and demanded that the board move to cancel rent entirely.

State Politics

• Governor Newsom, as expected, appointed California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to Kamala Harris’s vacated Senate seat, while Assemblymember Shirley Weber was appointed to replace Padilla.

• The California State Legislature disappointingly failed to pass meaningful police reform legislation last year. CalMatters runs down some of the state laws that did pass, and which went into effect on January 1.

Labor

• Reported in KNOCK.LA: Vons and Albertsons have fired all of their non-unionized delivery drivers and will replace them with “independent contractors,” in the wake of the passage of Prop 22.

• As infection rates in Southern California soar to unprecedented levels, SAG-AFTRA has recommended that on-set commercial production be paused.

Criminal Justice Reform

• Ground Game LA hosted an excellent roundtable of public defenders and civil rights advocates to discuss the criminal justice system reforms implemented by incoming District Attorney George Gascón, which touches (at 40:44) on how to support those efforts amid pushback from supporters of the current, punitive, model.

Housing Justice

• Nithya Raman was sworn in as a councilmember this week! At her first session, she introduced two motions addressing services for the unhoused. The first directs the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to focus on more proactive outreach methods. The second calls for work to begin developing a new drop-in site in her district, where unhoused Angelenos can receive walk-in services such as showers, medical care, or help finding housing. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Times op-ed places Nithya Raman’s upcoming battles in the context of decades of LA NIMBYism.

• Community activist group Downtown Crenshaw Rising have reported that the latest attempt from outside developers to purchase and redevelop the Crenshaw Mall has failed, following sustained community pressure. “This is a tremendous Black community victory and testament to the power of the people,” reads a public statement from DCR chair Niki Okuk.

• The Hillside Villa Tenants Association met yesterday to demand, alongside housing activists, that the city follow through on plans to use eminent domain to purchase Hillside Villa, using unspent federal funding from the CARES Act.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Reported in KNOCK.LA: A recent Loyola Marymount University study shows strong local support for defunding the police, even as many Angelenos do not report a profound dissatisfaction with the job the LAPD is currently doing. According to the study, 57% of Black participants explicitly support proposals to “defund the police,” while overall support for “proposals to redirect money” received 62% support.

• Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva finally made an appearance before the Civilian Oversight Commission after a year of failing to appear, even in the face of subpoenas. At the meeting, Villanueva and the commission discussed deputy gangs: Villanueva asserted they are largely a thing of the past, but commissioner Robert Bonner countered that the Banditos, a gang that operates within the jurisdiction of the East LA Station, has continued to ink new members.

• Witness LA has rounded up some of the criminal justice bills that have been introduced in this session of the state legislature. Some of these are refreshed versions of bills that were inspired — during the last legislative session — by the demands for justice made during the George Floyd uprising, but which notably failed to advance after pushback from police unions.

• At this week’s meeting of the LAUSD school board, the discussion of how to reimplement the $25 million defunding of the school police budget that the board voted for last June was scheduled to begin. That has now been delayed until January 12, following demands from activist groups to have more upfront involvement in the process.

Climate

• The South Coast Air Quality Management District Governing Board, whose elections received substantial coverage this month, adopted two Community Emissions Reduction Plans last week, effective in Southeast Los Angeles and Eastern Coachella Valley. This is in line with the recently passed AB 617, which requires that high-priority regions be annually selected for the development and implementation of community air monitoring systems.

DSA-LA Elections

• DSA-LA elections are coming up soon! Voting will be open from December 13 to December 20. Get to know the candidates for steering committee, branch coordinators, and all other offices at the candidate forum tomorrow, Saturday the 12th, from 3:30pm to 5:30pm. And in the meantime please check out candidate statements here.

Criminal Justice Reform

• George Gascón was sworn in as Los Angeles County district attorney on Monday. His office immediately implemented major changes. These include an end to the use of “gang enhancements” to add years to criminal sentences based on a defendant’s alleged gang affiliations. Gascón also announced that his office will end cash bail, will never seek the death penalty, and will be proactive in releasing current prisoners who become eligible under the new guidelines.

• Gascón’s office has also immediately dismissed the charges against Emanuel Padilla, a protester who was arrested on charges of “wrecking a train” in the aftermath of an action in Compton demanding justice for Andres Guardado. The first deputy prosecutor tasked with carrying out the dismissal refused to do so: Gascón’s reforms have met with some initial internal resistance over the first week of his term.

• On Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast, Terrance Stewart discusses how policies approved by cities and police departments over the last three decades have created a housing nightmare for people of color. Stewart, who holds a master’s degree from UC Riverside, discusses the struggle his family has faced to find housing because of his arrest almost a decade ago.

• LAPD officer, “Cop-Infuencer” and unabashed Trump supporter Toni McBride — who in April of this year shot and killed Daniel Hernandez — is now attempting to sell branded merchandise on a website that promotes police violence. In doing so, has she violated LAPD policy?

• An article in Knock.LA chews over the election results for all the criminal justice propositions that were on the ballot this year in California.

Election Fallout

• President-Elect Joe Biden has nominated California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be secretary of health and human services. This would mean that Governor Newsom may soon be choosing the successors for both Becerra and Kamala Harris. (And perhaps Dianne Feinstein as well.)

• The California State Legislature returned to session this week, after November elections returned Democratic party supermajorities to both the Assembly and Senate. California’s current eviction moratorium expires January 31.

Climate

• L.A. Taco spoke about climate issues facing southeast Los Angeles with Elizabeth Alcantar, the 26-year-old mayor of Cudahy, who this week ran for a seat on the highly influential governor’s board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (but lost a close race).

• Related, L.A. Taco, in cooperation with Capital & Main, ran a summary of the events that led up to the environmental disaster at the Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon. The issue drew national attention after the decision was made by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to let Exide off the hook for damages. The piece recontextualizes the event as resulting from decades of negligent oversight from California state government.

City Politics

• A new budget report issued by Los Angeles City Administrative Officer Richard Llewellyn Jr. recommends the layoffs of nearly 1,900 city employees — with more than half being police officers. If approved, the LAPD would operate with the lowest number of officers since the mid 1990s. And it could even result in the closure of police stations. The layoffs are an attempt to close a budget gap that is expected to reach $675 million by June.

• LA City Councilmember Kevin de León has laid out a plan to turn vacant CalTrans-owned homes in El Sereno’s 710 corridor into affordable housing — with current El Sereno residents to get priority as renters. Reclaim and Rebuild Our Community, an El Sereno–based neighborhood group, occupied 20 of these homes last month before being forcibly removed by the California Highway Patrol.

Coronavirus Relief

• In response to rising COVID-19 numbers, new stay-at-home orders have been issued by the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and the state of California.

• The patchwork of laws protecting tenants from being evicted during the pandemic is falling apart, with the federal eviction ban set to expire on December 31. Meanwhile, new research, which compares the outcomes in states that have already resumed eviction proceedings with those that haven’t, finds that evictions have already been responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of COVID-19 and thousands of unnecessary deaths.

• Meanwhile, Mayor Garcetti has co-authored a proposal that tries to address this crisis by immediately returning all tenants’ security deposits as one-time payments. In exchange, tenants will be required to make monthly payments to purchase an insurance policy to protect their landlords. See Twitter for early commentary.

Housing Justice

• Last week, Councilmember Gil Cedillo proposed purchasing the Hillside Villa Apartments to maintain it as affordable housing for the tenants who live there. An essay in KNOCK.LA examines the low cost of that purchase relative to other city expenditures.

• Also in KNOCK.LA is a nice piece of media criticism examining the dehumanizing language regularly used on local TV news to refer to Los Angeles’ housing-insecure and unhoused residents.

Labor

• In early November, the Department of Labor established a new regulation to freeze farmworkers’ wages under the H-2A agricultural guest worker program for the next two years. This past Monday, the United Farm Workers filed a lawsuit in a California federal court to challenge this decision. The arbitrary and punitive measure to freeze workers’ wages will only cause harm to those who are already the most economically vulnerable.

• Ed Asner is the lead plaintiff among ten actors who are suing the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan after new restrictions excluded them from receiving health benefits.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• At the coroner’s inquest into the police killing of Andres Guardado, both deputies involved in the shooting and both sheriff’s detectives investigating the killing refused to cooperate, instead asserting their Fifth Amendment rights. As the purpose of the inquest is only to establish cause of death, the judge was uncertain if the Fifth Amendment applies.

• Following outcry over sheriff’s deputies covering their names with duct tape at a protest this week, Sheriff Villanueva has gone on record flagrantly sanctioning this behavior. Deputies will now only be required to to display their badge numbers.

Housing Justice

• A group of housing reclaimers who were occupying vacant, publicly-owned homes in the Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno were forcibly evicted by California Highway Patrol officers the night before the Thanksgiving holiday. The homes were acquired by Caltrans as the planned site of a highway extension that never materialized, and stood empty for years before recently being reclaimed by housing insecure families. At a press conference earlier in the day, Reclaim and Rebuild our Community addressed Governor Newsom, asking that the evictions be called off so that families could remain safely at home during the pandemic. Their press release is here. A rapidly mobilized response, organized in part by Street Watch LA, Ktown for All, and DSA-LA, drew many activists who were successful in partially disrupting the evictions and documenting the militarized enforcement of the eviction notice by CHP. Nonetheless, all of the RROC reclaimers have now been evicted, while Caltrans is still preventing 170 vacant homes in this corridor from being available for use. Governor Newsom, who has the power to have this housing released into a public trust, has yet to reply.

• As announced, Los Angeles City Council did not and will not vote on the proposed amendment to the municipal code that imposed blanket bans on “sitting and sleeping” in many public spaces. Instead, councilmembers had an open discussion about issues related to the unhoused. The City Council discussed their slow progress in increasing the supply of affordable housing, as well as their perceived need to increase encampment sweeps so that, in the future, communities will be more willing to allow supportive facilities and affordable housing to be built in their neighborhoods. Council President Nury Martinez then sent the motion back to the Homelessness and Poverty Committee for further discussion, with the explicit goal of returning a revised amendment.

• Councilmember Gil Cedillo has proposed that the city purchase the Hillside Villa Apartments. The apartment complex was in a 30-year covenant with the city to provide affordable housing. Upon the covenant’s expiration last year, the building’s owner sought to impose massive rent increases that would force many tenants out of their homes.

Police Divestment

• Amid widespread anxiety over potential furloughs within the city government as well as calls for reductions to police budgets, the LAPD’s proposed new budget increases its operating budget by $100 million.

Election Fallout

• A week of protests outside Mayor Garcetti’s house have been organized by Black Lives Matter – Los Angeles, using the hashtag #blockgarcetti, with the intention of voicing the objections of Angelenos to the mayor being given a position in the incoming Biden administration.

Housing Justice

• As announced by council president Nury Martinez Friday, the council will not vote on the municipal code amendment that would ban “sitting, sleeping, or lying down” within 500 feet of a shelter or supportive services facility, further criminalizing homelessness. Public backlash to the amendment took the form of public comments at the Homelessness and Poverty Committee meeting, and protests held outside the homes of councilmembers. Originally scheduled for a hearing in October, the vote was postponed to November 24 before apparently being cancelled entirely. Public resistance seems to have been instrumental in preventing council from implementing a brutal law that several councilmembers wanted. In announcing this move on Twitter, Martinez said that instead of voting on this ordinance, council will “continue to discuss homelessness on our city streets and work towards solving our unhoused crisis.”

• L.A. Taco updates the efforts of the community group Downtown Crenshaw to purchase Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. The shopping center was earlier to be sold to CIM Group, outside developers who planned to redevelop the mall as “creative office space.” They stepped aside following community opposition. Since then, Downtown Crenshaw has continued trying to purchase the site, to maintain community control over the neighborhood landmark, and to make sure that plans to repurpose the site include affordable housing. However, after the latest round of bidding, the mall is scheduled to be sold to a second outside developer.

• Reporting in the LA Times uncovers how “crime-free housing policies,” designed to encourage evictions of tenants who have had encounters with law enforcement, and developed in concert with police departments in municipalities across California, are thinly veiled attempts to discriminate against Black and Latinx renters.

Coronavirus Relief

• Though Covid infection rates are rising, several economic relief programs instituted at the beginning of quarantine are due to expire this month.

Election Results

• Following the narrow defeat of Proposition 15, which DSA-LA endorsed, Capital & Main provides a brief analysis of the campaign.

• Incoming District Attorney George Gascón has announced his transition team and, on Twitter, one journalist covering criminal justice in Los Angeles sees promising signs that Gascón will pursue criminal justice reform.

Post-election Roundup

• Black Lives Matter Los Angeles led the opposition to Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey, both in the streets and at the ballot box, and this committed opposition was instrumental in her electoral defeat last Tuesday by George Gascón. This Monday, in a meeting organized by BLM-LA, Gascón met with family members of people shot by police. Though many celebrated Gascón’s victory, most recognized the need for continued vigilance in activist oversight of the office, even under a new, more progressive administration. Melina Abdullah, a founder of BLM-LA, said to Gascón, “This is a great first step, but we also want to make it very clear that we plan to hold you accountable.”

• In national media this week, a rash of articles deal with the potential fallout from the passage of California’s Proposition 22, which strips worker protections from Lyft and Uber drivers, as well as other workers in the gig economy. Lyft and Uber CEOs are feeling exuberant after their victory, and have spoken of taking the law “nationwide.”

• The advocacy of the Re-Imagine LA coalition was successful in passing Measure J, a county-wide measure that mandates 10% of the general fund be set aside for alternatives to incarceration. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took the next step toward implementation.

• The board also voted 3–2 in favor of exploring options to remove Sheriff Alex Villanueva from office, in response to Villanueva’s unceasing onslaught of deeply antisocial behavior. “Options” include impeachment, altering the state constitution or county charter, or simply limiting the duties of the office legislatively. Meanwhile, a similar proposal within the Los Angeles Democratic Party, which would officially call for Villanueva’s resignation, fell short of the 60% approval threshold. Instead, the party issued a strongly worded request that the sheriff try harder.

• The LA Times envisions the possibilities for a second stimulus bill under a Biden administration, with Republicans still plausibly retaining control of the Senate. Meanwhile, CalMatters examines the debilitated state of California’s unemployment protection program.

• More post-election speculation, as a treat: LAist tries to imagine what it might mean for the state to have a vice president emerge from California politics. Others make predictions for whom Governor Newsom will appoint to fill Harris’ Senate seat.

• DSA-LA congratulates Nithya Raman on her incredible campaign victory! Here’s an account, from a voice within her campaign, of why Raman was able to succeed in a city in which incumbent councilmembers are extremely difficult to unseat. It also presents a great diagnosis of the dire state of Los Angeles news media, and the emerging alternatives.

• Speaking of emerging alternative media, here is an article that ran in KNOCK.LA that asks what’s next after the election.