Month: July 2022

Thorn 119

State Politics

• The current state legislative session will close on August 11, leaving the fate of several bills with a dwindling window of time to be passed. Streetsblog Cal urged support for AB 2438, which aligns transportation policy with climate goals. A reader brought our attention to AB 2632, which significantly regulates the use of solitary confinement in California prisons. Both bills have passed the Assembly but need to be passed in the state Senate by the deadline.

Healthcare

• A Los Angeles County indoor mask mandate, scheduled to go into effect today, has instead been paused. The county has been in a “high” state of community transmission for two weeks, triggering a mandate according to the CDC’s revised guidelines. The County Board of Health has pointed to a recent decline in hospital infection rates to explain the reversal.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• A town hall was convened on Zoom to address widespread concerns about the LAPD shooting of Jermaine Petit, who was unarmed and was shot in the back. LAPD representatives were unable to coherently answer community questions about the incident and abruptly ended the Zoom. Petit has inexplicably been charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon. Knock LA has been covering.

• On Monday, Sheriff Alex Villanueva was again scheduled to testify before the Civilian Oversight Commission about deputy gangs. He once more canceled his appearance at the last minute, this time refusing to comply with his subpoena until a list of formal demands were met, including the right to cross-examine witnesses.

Housing Rights

• With a crowd of protesters outside Los Angeles City Hall to denounce the City Council’s proposed expansion of 41.18 anti sit/lie/sleep zones, the vote was continued until August 2.

• Council also discussed the Declaration of Local Emergency, which is currently one of the only things preventing a flood of evictions in Los Angeles, and which must be extended monthly. The council voted to extend for another month, but Counclimember Bob Blumenfeld pulled the item for discussion and spoke ominously about the need for an “exit strategy” for “mom and pop housing providers.”

Labor

• Frequently, newspapers devoting disproportionate attention to property crimes are asked why they don’t report on wage theft committed by employers. This week, CalMatters did some reporting on wage theft.

Transportation

• LAPD shutdowns and councilmembers bickering over graffiti: agony over the new Sixth Street Bridge continued to deepen and intensify this week. L.A. Taco recaps from a community perspective.

Environmental Justice

• Reuters published an investigation focused on the radioactive contamination from Santa Susana Field Lab just outside LA, but also broadly surveying the way corporations such as Boeing are granted “conservation easements,” which critics see as a tool for companies to limit their toxic waste cleanup responsibility.

• The LA Times interviewed Max Gomberg, who this month resigned in protest from the California State Water Resources Control Board over Governor Newsom’s inaction in combating the state’s worsening drought.

Issue No. 118

City Politics

• CD 10 is once again without representation in city council, as a judge has reinstated a temporary injunction preventing Herb Wesson from serving as interim replacement for former council member Mark Ridley-Thomas, who faces corruption charges. Plaintiffs in CD 10 allege that Wesson is specifically ineligible to serve as he is a termed-out city council member.

Healthcare

• Los Angeles County is slowly expanding the availability of its store of monkeypox vaccine, though eligibility is still narrowly restricted.

Housing Rights

• The Los Angeles City Council will vote next Wednesday on whether to make every school and daycare center in the city an automatic 41.18 anti-sit/lie/sleep zone. The original 41.18 revisions represented a drastic curtailment of the freedom of movement for unhoused people; nevertheless, while they provided a mechanism for implementing exclusionary area around schools, it requires some outreach to any unhoused people who will be affected, and cannot be implemented preemptively. The Kenneth Mejia campaign has a map which visualizes the scope of the 41.18 expansion. Toolkit for contacting your councilmember here, from the Services Not Sweeps coalition.

• The Guardian spoke to residents living in an encampment in the extreme heat of the Mojave Desert, many of whom were displaced by aggressive anti-encampment measures in the nearby city of Lancaster.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• In San Bernardino, police officers shot a 23-year-old Black man in the back, killing him. Security camera footage appears to show two officers driving an unmarked car pulling over, and one officer opening fire within seconds of exiting the vehicle, hitting Robert Adams as he attempts to flee. Family members of the victim are calling for murder charges to be filed against the officer.

• In Leimert Park, LAPD officers shot a man in the back — he was later revealed to have been unarmed. A piece of scrap metal from inside a car door was recovered from the scene. An LAPD press report has claimed that the victim had “pointed” it at the officers, but police have not released any bodycam footage. It was the 20th LAPD shooting of the year.

Transportation

• When the 6th Street Bridge reopened earlier this month, pedestrian and cyclist activists were disappointed by its poorly protected bicycle lanes and general “freeway vibes.” This week an accident sent cars crashing into both bike lanes. Curbed surveys the missed opportunities, which may not be too late to correct.

Environmental Justice

• Yet another mountain lion has been killed on the 101 Freeway, the deadliest freeway for the species. The death of P-89, who was 2 years old, came just one day before the National Park Service marked the 20-year anniversary of its study focused on the endangered local population of big cats. (Meet them all here.)

• The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has proposed rules to restrict four closely related neonicotinoid chemicals, which are highly potent pesticides that harm bees, birds, and other creatures.

Thorn West: Issue No. 117

City Politics

• DSA-LA Convention is this Saturday! All members in good standing can attend and help select organizational priorities for the upcoming year from a list of proposals. RSVP here!

• Mayoral candidate Karen Bass had endorsed Faisal Gill for city attorney. Today, her opponent, Rick Caruso, called a press conference to denounce this endorsement on the basis of Gill’s proposal to steer misdemeanor offenders into diversionary programs. Bass immediately withdrew her endorsement of Gill and adopted Caruso’s position. Gill’s response here.

Housing Rights

• The Mayfair Hotel, one of the remaining participants in Project Roomkey, is exiting the program on July 15. One of Project Roomkey’s goals was to transition participants into permanent housing, but few if any of the formerly unhoused people being evicted from the Mayfair have been given that option. Statement from LACan; statements from displaced Mayfair residents.

Labor

• In a letter to workers, Starbucks announced that it would be closing 16 stores nationwide, including six in Los Angeles, confusingly citing concerns over worker safety. A statement from Starbucks Workers United PDX associates the closures with retaliation against unionization efforts at Starbucks stores. Two of the closed stores had successfully unionized. More from the Guardian.

• This week, food and beverage workers at Dodger Stadium, represented by Unite Here Local 11, voted 99% in favor of a strike in advance of this weekend’s All-Star Game. Since that authorization, contract negotiations have progressed and are further enough along that workers have agreed not to strike this weekend.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• A county charter amendment giving the County Board of Supervisors the power to remove the sheriff has been approved by the board and is on course for the November ballot. It would still leave in place the larger issue, a 1980 state law that requires that all county sheriffs have law enforcement officer experience. A proposed law to change this has quietly died in the state legislature.

• A random 5% sample of signatures on the petition to recall District Attorney George Gascon met the minimum threshold necessary for a full vetting of all signatures. The roughly 78% validation rate in the sample would not quite be enough to get the petition on the ballot.

Environmental Justice

• A city council ordinance would see Los Angeles joining other cities in no longer issuing permits for new gas stations nor allowing existing sites to add fuel pumps.

• At least 30 oil wells belonging to five different companies were found to have been leaking gas in recent weeks, according to the Geologic Energy Management Division of the California Department of Conservation (CalGEM). The state agency did not disclose data from their readings, but initial reports of the leak said some wells were releasing methane at a concentration of 50,000 parts per million — a level that can be explosive, environmental groups say. 

• Los Angeles’ water use in June 2022 was down compared to June 2021. While this is the second month in a row this has been true, experts say this progress is too slow, and “much more needs to be done to help people understand the severity of the drought.” The LA Times has built a tracker that allows the public to explore the amount of water usage in their district.

Thorn West: Issue No. 116

Coronavirus and Relief

• Los Angeles County is projected to cross the threshold of 10 COVID-related hospitalizations per 100,000 citizens by the end of next week. Seven days at that level of infection would, theoretically, trigger an indoor mask mandate. These thresholds were revised by the CDC in February to only trigger upon hospitalization rate, rather than case rate, and so the mask mandate is now being used as more of a last resort than a preventive measure.

City Politics

• DSA-LA is in the news, as part of the LA Times’ election roundup in “a city where progressive Democrats and, in some races, Democratic Socialists made trailblazing gains in down-ballot contests.” 

• As a mayoral candidate, Gina Viola did not compromise her progressive values, and her primary success may have exceeded the expectations of some. Will Rep. Karen Bass, who has run a conservative campaign so far, be willing or able to earn their support in the general election? The LA Times speculates.

• A protest outside (recently converted Republican) mayoral candidate Rick Caruso’s mansion in Brentwood aimed to draw attention to his past support of many anti-abortion politicians, as well as his role covering up abuse at USC.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• 717,000 signatures were submitted in the effort to recall District Attorney George Gascón. An 80% signature validation rate would be needed in order for the recall to qualify for the ballot — a plausible, but challenging, threshold to meet in the context of the several other recent right-wing tries at reversing elections. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has appointed Brooke Jenkins, a prosecutor who quit her job to support the recall of Chesa Boudin, as interim district attorney.

• On Tuesday, the County Board of Supervisors will vote to place on the November ballot a charter amendment empowering the board to remove the Los Angeles County sheriff with a 4/5 vote. The amendment is supported by Check the Sheriff LA, which has championed the idea from the beginning, as well as ACLU SoCal and many other advocacy groups. Tuesday’s agenda here.

• Knock LA analyzes the slow implementation of Measure J, the ballot measure approved in 2020 that requires 10% of the county budget be dedicated to alternatives to incarceration.

Labor

• A ballot measure that would raise the minimum wage in California to $18 an hour by 2026 failed to gather enough signatures in time to make the ballot in 2022, but appears to have qualified for 2024.

• Music supervisors, who curate and negotiate licenses for all the previously recorded music in movies and television, have one of the only non-unionized jobs in the entertainment industry. Yet after 75% of their guild signed union cards to become part of IATSE, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers refuses to recognize them. Via DSA-LA Hollywood Labor, their efforts to be recognized continue, and they are gathering signatures on a petition showing public support.

Environmental Justice

• ​​LAist reports on the July 4 fireworks, which will likely result in the worst air quality LA will see all year.

• The unprecedented drought in the Southwest could lead to prolonged crop failures and a crumbling of social norms, the LA Times reports. Aridification, defined as the process of prolonged, severe droughts, could lead to the abandonment of thriving cities.

Thorn West: Issue No. 115

State Politics

• An amendment to the California State Constitution explicitly protecting the “fundamental right to choose to have an abortion” was approved by the state legislature this week and will appear on the ballot this November, after receiving two-thirds approval in both chambers of the legislature this week. Full text here.

• Last Friday saw the passage of AB 1666, which prohibits state courts from cooperating with out-of-state civil suits against anyone who receives or provides abortion-related care.

• This week the state legislature also approved the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. This includes a $100 million funding package to support abortion access across the state, including $40 million to cover costs, including in-state travel, for those who could use assistance. However, this funding is only for Californians; it cannot be accessed by the large number of patients likely to travel to California from states where abortion has become illegal.

• The state budget also resolved a long-standing conflict over how to provide inflation relief: qualifying Californians will receive payments of $200 and up, depending on income and family status. The checks will not be tied to car ownership, and will not be accompanied by a suspension of the gas tax, as had been proposed.

• The budget also contained the first released funding numbers for CARE Court, a proposed bill racing through the legislature that would give the state the draconian ability to compel medical treatment for unhoused people with mental health disabilities and even to force people into state-run conservatorships. The New York Times had additional coverage this week. Opposition letter to the legislature from Disability Rights California here.

City Politics

• Two weeks after the race was decided, Gil Cedillo has finally conceded in the CD1 council race. His concession did not congratulate or acknowledge Eunisses Hernandez, his opponent and partner in the democratic process, in any way. Cedillo has been absent from council meetings for the past two weeks.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Despite vague efforts to curb LAPD violence against protestors following the George Floyd protests, DTLA-area protests in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade were marked by numerous police assaults against both protestors and press. According to LA Taco reporter Lexis-Olivier Ray “[f]rom my perspective, it was one of the most violent protests I’ve ever covered.” ACLU-SoCal gathered much of the disturbing footage, and in a letter to Chief of Police Michel Moore suggested that LAPD behavior resembled “targeted retaliation.”

• The City of West Hollywood voted 3-2 to defund and divert $1.6 million from its contract with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department toward its Security Ambassadors program. This statement from JusticeLA celebrates the decision as an historic step in the right direction.

Housing Rights

• California’s eviction moratorium expired today. While this means that some stronger tenant protections in Los Angeles County are now triggered, in the past week both the City Council and County Board of Supervisors have requested reports suggesting they are considering a meaningful curtailment of local eviction protections. Keep LA Housed has a little more information on what might happen and how to make your voice heard.

Transportation

• Healthy Streets LA has led the effort to place a measure on this November’s ballot compelling the city to implement its own Mobility Plan. In response to that action, city council has been considering a similar ordinance that could potentially obviate the need for a public ballot measure. That process took a step forward this week, with a unanimous vote in favor of drafting the ordinance.

Labor

• SEIU-UHW, a California union for healthcare workers, had also successfully gathered signatures for a citywide public ballot measure raising the minimum wage for health care workers in the city to $25 an hour. Instead, this week, city council voted to pass the measure directly.

• Similarly, the council voted to approve the Hotel Worker Protection Initiative, which Unite Here Local 11 had gathered signatures for. The measure prevents hotels from forgoing daily room cleanings to cut labor costs, and mandates that hotel workers be supplied with panic buttons to protect them from guests. The council’s approval, once again, obviates the need for a public vote.