Month: June 2020

Local News

• Union del Barrio, with support from Black Lives Matter, organized a protest in Gardena with the family of Andres Guardado, an 18-year-old Latinx man killed by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies on June 18. The sheriff’s deputies were not wearing body cameras and reportedly seized security camera footage before obtaining a warrant. The protesters marched from the location of the shooting to the Compton sheriff’s station. At a press conference on Saturday, the LASD claimed that none of the six to seven cameras they took had memory cards, and that they do not have any footage.

• State lawmakers reached an agreement with Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday that found workarounds to avoid some of the deep cuts Newsom had called for in schools and social service spending.

• Councilmember Jose Huizar has been arrested for violating the RICO act. The full affidavit, detailing bribes Huizar took from real estate developers, is here. A Los Angeles Times editorial makes the case that this corruption results almost inevitably from the amount of money the Los Angeles City Council takes from developers in campaign contributions.

• Following an 11-hour meeting, the LAUSD school board voted on Board member Monica Garcia’s motion to defund the Los Angeles School Police Department. Black Lives Matter-LA held a demonstration outside the meeting in support of Garcia’s motion. However, the motion failed by a vote of 4–2, with one abstention. Three of the board members appeared staunchly opposed to the newly vocal opposition to the school police, including George McKenna, whose own proposed bill “reaffirming the role of LASPD in ensuring safe, peaceful, and respectful engagements on our campuses” was repeatedly praised by the numerous police officers who spoke during public comment. The fourth “no” vote came from Jackie Goldberg, who attempted to craft a compromise motion that would place some restrictions on police behavior, and that was later amended to include a $20 million budget cut. This motion, and McKenna’s, also failed. Ultimately, the four members of the board who supported school police reform, and among them held the votes to pass a motion, could not come together.

• By comparison, Oakland’s school board voted unanimously this week to eliminate the district’s police department via a resolution named in memory of George Floyd. San Francisco’s school board also voted unanimously to void its memorandum of understanding with local police and to ask teachers to refrain from calling police for minor incidents.

• The Los Angeles City Council passed a motion carving out $100 million of Los Angeles’ federal aid to establish a tenant relief fund. The fund would make rental payments to landlords on behalf of tenants who could demonstrate financial hardship due to an economic or health impact from COVID-19. The fund is expected to last through October.

• The City Administrative Office has found and itemized $139 million in cuts to the LAPD budget, and that budget has passed out of committee. This number is short of the $150 million in cuts that were initially proposed by the mayor, which was already orders of magnitude less than the 90% cut called for in The People’s Budget. Despite the council’s warm reception for People’s Budget LA at a special meeting last week, the two sides remain far apart in their immediate goals. One caller into public comment said the smaller cuts feel “more like showmanship than a commitment to real change.”

• The Metro board is beginning the process to overhaul transit policing. The Alliance for Community Transit flooded the public comments in support of the strongest proposal, and the board passed four motions that include a mandate for Metro to review ways to revise transit police’s use-of-force policy and to find ways to reallocate resources to homeless services. A new advisory committee will also be created to implement alternatives to armed police for nonviolent matters including unhoused outreach, while a motion filed by Councilman Mike Bonin mandates revisions to Metro’s mutual aid agreement to prevent LAPD from using Metro buses for transporting detained protesters as they did at the onset of police brutality protests a month ago. But Metro is still a long way from any budget cuts, as its $130-million-per-year contract with LAPD does not expire until 2022.

• LA County has only secured enough hotel rooms through Project Roomkey for about 4,000 of the estimated 15,000 unhoused residents in the county who are considered medically vulnerable to COVID-19. Meanwhile, LAHSA has proposed an $800 million, three-year program to permanently rehouse these 15,000 through a “combination of bridge housing, rental subsidies and rehousing services.” But the source of this funding is unclear and could require diverting funds from other housing projects. 

• California is not on target to meet its goal to reduce carbon emissions by 40%  by 2030. The state, led by EPA Secretary Jared Blumenfeld, is now reevaluating it’s cornerstone strategy to fight climate change: The cap and trade program, a system that sets an overall cap on greenhouse gas emissions each year but offers flexibility in how companies achieve it by allowing them to buy and sell pollution credits in auctions. 

• On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board voted unanimously to adopt a landmark rule that will require the majority of trucks sold in California to be zero-emission by 2035, putting California at the forefront of US climate policy.  California’s Air Resources Board hopes the new measure will improve local air quality, rein in greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the state’s dependence on oil. Oil companies and the farming industry opposed the measure, calling it “unrealistic, expensive and an example of regulatory overreach.” 

• Fifty farm workers in the central city of Wasco, CA, have gone on strike for better sanitation measures for the more than 400 workers at Primex Farms. The company has confirmed that there are 31 employees who have tested positive for coronavirus, but has dismissed the concerns of striking workers and stated that they have revamped safety measures. One employee mentioned that just a few days ago, the company was previously selling cloth masks back to employees for $8 each. This comes among repeated concerns for farm laborers around the country since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. Farm workers are still one of the lowest paid occupations in the country, and President Trump has signaled interest in lowering pay standards during the pandemic. 

• Los Angeles County now has the most coronavirus cases in the US as California has seen a 69% surge in cases in two days and a record number of people were hospitalized last weekend. Latinx residents, who make up a large proportion of frontline workers in the state, account for 57% of all cases despite being only 39% of the population. There are currently no plans to slow or reverse the state’s reopening.

• Despite the surge in coronavirus cases, many LA County residents are struggling to get testing appointments. Officials said the shortfall is due to reducing the number of testing sites and appointment slots, and the county will now open an additional 12 testing sites on Monday.

Elections

• In the last two decades, police unions in Los Angeles have spent at least $64.8 millionon payments to city council members and state legislators, as well as lobbying costs to influence law enforcement policy and thwart pushes for reform. Police unions from all around California have also poured over $2 million into helping Jackie Lacey, a staunch ally of police, in her district attorney race.

• Relatives of Alex Flores and Daniel Hernandez, who were killed by LAPD officers in late 2019 and April 2020, led a protest outside Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s home on Saturday to demand that she charge the LAPD officers who shot them. Amidst these protests, Representative Adam Schiff’s rescinded his endorsement of Lacey, while, Lacey’s challenger George Gascon won an endorsement from Senator Elizabeth Warren.

LOCAL NEWS

CW: Racist Violence

• People’s Budget LA presented its proposed alternate budget of the city’s General Fund to a group of city council members. The People’s Budget, which reimagines community safety and reduces the LAPD’s share of the budget from 54% to 5%, was presented by a coalition of activists led by Black Lives Matter-LA and other groups. The development process of the budget incorporated several weeks worth of surveys asking Los Angelenos for their spending priorities. The presentation, unprecedented given the council’s previous resistance and apathy to activist demands, would not have occurred without the sense of urgency generated by weeks of protests in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. After the presentation, councilmembers vowed to adopt the budget in some capacity. Despite the strong rhetorical commitment from several councilmembers, as of yet, the mayor’s proposed $150 million dollar cut to the police budget represents only a fraction of the cuts proposed in The People’s Budget. The entire presentation can be watched here.

• Community members gathered in Palmdale to mourn and demand justice for Robert Fuller, a 24-year-old Black man whose body was found hanging from a tree near the City Hall. Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger requested an independent investigation by Attorney General Xavier Becerra, after an outcry from family and community members when authorities first announced the cause of death as suicide. The FBI has also announced it is examining Fuller’s case, as well as the death of another Black man, Malcolm Harsch, who was found hanging from a tree in Victorville a week earlier, in another case where local authorities said there was no evidence of foul play. Robert Fuller’s half brother, Terron Boone, was killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies on Wednesday in Rosamond.

• Councilmembers Herb Wesson and Nury Martinez put forth a motion calling for the development of “an unarmed model of crisis response…that would divert non-violent calls for service away from LAPD to the appropriate non-law enforcement agencies.” The motion specifically mentions the CAHOOTS program in Oregon, which is emerging as a touchstone in similar discussions in cities around the country, as a model. “If it’s what it appears to be, it’s absolutely a step in the right direction,” said Black Lives Matter-LA co-founder Melina Abdullah.

• Two weeks after the Minneapolis school board terminated its contract with police, hundreds of students, parents and teachers gathered at LAUSD headquarters to demand that LA’s school board do the same. The protest called for LAUSD’s $70 million police contract to be diverted to programs that can help Black students, like counseling and mental health services.

• Thousands marched in the streets of Hollywood and West Hollywood in the All Black Lives Matter March to denounce racism and support LGBTQ+ lives. The march was organized by a newly formed group, Black LGBTQ+ Activists for Change, after the original organizers from LA Pride faced criticism for seeking a permit for the march from the LAPD.
   
• A statue of Christopher Columbus asking Queen Isabella to support his 1492 voyage to the Americas will be removed from California’s Capitol rotunda. It has not been announced what will replace it.

• Following intensifying opposition from community activists, CIM has abandoned its plans to buy the Crenshaw Mall and repurpose it as “creative” office space.

• An LA Times investigation found that despite anti-eviction rules in place during the pandemic, landlords are using illegal tactics such as illegal lockouts and utility shutouts to force tenants out of their homes, with the majority of recorded instances taking place in Black and Latinx neighborhoods.

• AB 3121, State Assemblymember Shirley Weber’s bill calling for a task force to study potential mechanisms for reparations, passed in the California Assembly on a 61–12 vote. It now heads into the State Senate.

• The Supreme Court has allowed California’s Sanctuary Law to be upheld. This means that law enforcement will not cooperate with aggressive deportation forces. This comes after two different defeats for the Trump administration: the rulings on LGBT discrimination in workplace and the ruling upholding DACA.

• Detainees in San Diego’s Otay Mesa have started a hunger strike in order to draw attention to the now 27 positive cases of coronavirus. Detainees were made to sign English-language waivers in order to receive face masks. Detainees who objected have reported being denied medical treatment, pepper-sprayed and placed in solitary confinement in retaliation. In addition, guards have purposely tried to disconnect detainees from communication with outside groups such as Otay Mesa Resistance.

• Two more incarcerated men at Chino prison have died after testing positive for COVID-19, bringing the total death toll to 15. The number of cases at San Quentin has tripled in the last two weeks, spurring family members, attorneys and advocates to call for urgent action to fast-track release of prisoners.

• Two far-right extremists have been charged in the killing of a federal security officer in Oakland on May 29. The two men appear to be part of the “boogaloo” movement, which aims to foment a second Civil War through violent insurrection.  Members commonly wear Hawaiian shirts underneath their ballistic vests when they attend rallies and protests. The men used a George Floyd protest as a cover to carry out the premeditated killing. One of the men was a sergeant in an elite Air Force security unit and is also being charged for the killing of a sheriff’s deputy during a shootout when police tried to arrest him.

• Pacific Gas & Electric is preparing for life after Chapter 11 after a Bankruptcy Court judge filed a written decision Wednesday saying he would approve PG&E’s reorganization plan. This decision comes a day after the monopoly utility entered guilty pleas for 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter stemming from the devastating November 2018 wildfires in Northern California that were caused by the company’s equipment. While PG&E CEO Bill Johnson promised his company would emerge from bankruptcy “reimagined,” skeptics say it’s unclear there’s anything fundamentally different about the utility, which over the last decade has caused a deadly pipeline explosion, deadly fires and days-long power shut-offs affecting millions of people. This marks PG&E’s second bankruptcy in two decades.

ELECTIONS

• A Los Angeles county report determined that malfunctions in the electronic tablets used to check in voters at polling locations caused the hours-long waits during the primary election on March 3. The report found that the county’s new voting machines also had malfunctions, but that the primary issue stemmed from inadequate planning, testing and programming of the electronic poll books and a lack of paper backup for voter lists.

• The California State Legislature passed a bill to strengthen Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to mail ballots to all eligible voters in the November general election, enshrining the mandate as a statute. The legislation will provide a stronger legal footing for Newsom’s executive order, which has come under attack from multiple Republican-led lawsuits.

LOCAL NEWS

• Monday’s meeting of the LA City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee did not take up the motion that would follow through on Mayor Garcetti’s recent pledge to redirect $250 million to social services with up to $150 million coming from the LAPD budget, as the motion’s authors requested until the committee’s next meeting on June 15 to continue with drafting. An extended public comment session received hundreds of calls, with the vast majority forcefully demanding a new budget in line with the People’s Budget LA, which lowers the LAPD’s share of the city’s General Fund from 54% to 5%, while reimagining a city where most police duties are reassigned to other agencies. Leaders from the Service Employees International Union, United Teachers Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy also called on Mayor Garcetti to cut at least $250 million from the LAPD budget.

• Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles have called for the elimination of the Los Angeles School Police Department and to redirect its $70 million budget toward mental health services. An ACLU report on over-policing in California schools can be read here.

• The LAPD is restricting its use of carotid restraints, which restrict or block blood flow to the brain. Meanwhile, legislation has been introduced at the state legislature to make carotid restraints illegal.

• LAPD officer Frank Hernandez has been charged with assault for the beating of an unhoused man in Boyle Heights in April that was caught on video. Hernandez has been an officer for over 20 years and has been involved in three on-duty shootings.

• In April the California Judicial Council, which makes rules for the California court system, had instituted a statewide policy of $0 cash bail for misdemeanors as an emergency coronavirus order to alleviate crowding in county jails. On Monday a 17–2 council vote rescinded that policy. The policy had not led to a rise in crime, but the council’s position appears to be that the crisis has passed and the status quo should return. In November, California will vote on SB-10, which would eliminate cash bail permanently.

• As the state’s prison system returns to its pre-COVID functionality and once again accepts transfers from county jails, a coronavirus outbreak in Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Riverside County has spread to over 1,000 inmates.

• The Aliso Canyon gas storage field, the site of the worst gas leak in US history, which sickened nearby residents and spewed heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere, is ramping up its operations. In 2015, 8000 families were forced to leave their homes after the leak caused a rotten-egg smell to blanket the area and they began experiencing headaches, nosebleeds and nausea. During his campaign for governor, Gavin Newsom claimed he was committed to shutting down the facility, but he has not followed through. Newsom has also reneged on his promise to hire more oil and gas regulators in his recent budget, and in April allowed approval of a dozen fracking permits in Kern County. 

• California’s freight and oil industries are attempting to delay two proposed regulations that would limit diesel exhaust throughout the state, using the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to request sweeping regulatory relief. Activists and clean-air advocates point out that the health risks of living with polluted air are now even greater due to the links between COVID-19 severity and pre-existing respiratory conditions, especially for communities of color living near freight transportation hubs. 

• The largest landlord organization in Southern California is suing the city of Los Angeles to remove eviction protections put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The suit claims that landlords’ constitutional rights are being violated because the 5th Amendment prevents the government from taking property without compensation. Property law experts have said that local governments do have the power to temporarily ban evictions during emergencies.

• The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released a count of unhoused people that concluded in January prior to the pandemic, showing a 13% increase in LA County and a 14% increase in the city of Los Angeles. Black people are ten times more likely than white people to become unhoused, with Black people making up 34% of the unhoused population, but only 8% of the overall population of the county. Activists decried the pervasive systemic racism and failures of institutional leadership causing the housing crisis, and called attention to the coming onslaught of evictions that will hit Black and Latinx communities hardest when the California Judicial Council lifts the temporary moratorium on evictions imposed in April. 

• Farmworkers who live in conditions where social distancing is all but impossible fear they will contract the coronavirus and spread it to their families. In agricultural centers such as Salinas Valley and Monterey County, many families live in cramped conditions due to the lack of affordable housing. In guest worker housing built by labor contractors, each dormitory can have as many as 24 people sleeping head-to-toe. 

• Multiple Tesla workers have gotten coronavirus after Elon Musk’s decision to defy lockdown orders and reopen the company’s main production facility in Fremont. Despite an agreement by Tesla to adhere to strict social distancing measures, a worker said there was “no social distancing at all when clocking in/out [because] people are…in a hurry to go home or get back to their work station,” adding “it’s like nothing but with a mask on.” 

• Today LA County is allowing the reopening of gyms; museums; professional sports arenas without live audiences; music, television, and film productions; hotels for leisure travel; and more. Despite increasing coronavirus cases and deaths, county health officials cited stabilized hospitalizations as a reason for continuing with reopening.

LOCAL NEWS

• Ongoing uprisings demanding justice for George Floyd, the defunding of the police, and accountability for police killings have continued throughout Los Angeles; Black Lives Matter-LA has led actions at the home of Mayor Eric Garcetti and the office of District  Attorney Jackie Lacey. Activism against police violence has created unprecedented support for demands to defund the police. As a result of continuous pressure by activists and ongoing protests and organizing, City Council President Nury Martinez has introduced a motion calling for up to $150 million in cuts to the LAPD to be redistributed to communities of color, and Mayor Garcetti has announced reallocation of $250 millionfrom the city budget to health and education in the Black community and other communities of color. The People’s Budget LA coalition released a statement declaring victory but called for further cuts, with Melina Abdullah, a leader of Black Lives Matter-LA stating that “they need to go much further. $150 million looks big, until you realize it still leaves the LAPD with 51% of the city’s unrestricted revenues. That’s not at all acceptable.” The LAPD budget was previously $1.8 billion, which accounted for 53.8% of the unrestricted general fund of the city, and Mayor Eric Garcetti had previously proposed to increase the budget by 7% overall, which included generous raises and bonuses for officers. The LA City Council normally reviews and approves the mayor’s budget each year, but allowed it to go into effect without a vote this past Monday. It takes effect on July 1 and is currently open to amendment.

• Black Lives Matter – LA filed a class action lawsuit on Friday against the LAPD, alleging that the LAPD unlawfully detained over 2600 people engaged in peaceful protest and engaged in excessive force and improper conditions of confinement.

• Members of the California State Legislature’s Black and Latino caucuses introduced legislation that would make “carotid” neck holds illegal; Governor Gavin Newsom also announced his support for the restriction and for new use-of-force standards for protests.

• In an unprecedented move, LA Metro shut down the entire bus and rail transit system in response to this week’s protests, stranding protesters as well as essential workers. Metro also allowed its buses to be used to transport prisoners who had been arrested, 
  which several other city’s transit departments had declined to do.

• Centro Legal de la Raza announced a hunger strike at the Mesa Verde ICE processing facility in Bakersfield, part of ongoing protests by detainees against unsafe conditions that increase risk of exposure to COVID-19. 

• All government-run coronavirus testing sites in the city and county of Los Angeles have reopened as of Friday, after about half of the 36 sites were closed last week. Mayor Garcetti’s decision to close the sites made it more difficult to track and trace infections at a moment when city officials have expressed concern that large demonstrations could increase transmission of the virus. 

• Countywide curfews have been lifted following a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Black Lives Matter – LA challenging their legality. The full brief and a statement from the ACLU can be read here. Cities within the county still have the authority to set their own curfews.

ELECTIONS

• Janeese Lewis George,endorsed by and a member of the Metro DC chapter of DSA, decisively won election to city council in Washington, DC. Lewis George ran on a host of progressive policies such as expanding housing affordability, getting money out of politics, providing higher paying jobs, enacting criminal justice reform, and defunding the police to spend money on social services.

• Nikil Saval endorsed by and a member of the Philadelphia chapter of DSA, also endorsed by the national DSA, unseated the incumbent in Pennsylvania’s 1st State Senate district.

• All current national DSA endorsements for 2020 can be found here.