The Thorn West

Local News

• An independent autopsy requested by the family of Andres Guardado has found that the 18-year-old was shot five times in the back by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. The sheriff’s department had previously placed a “security hold” on the report from the LA County coroner’s office; however, today the coroner’s office released the document, which also determined that the cause of death was five fatal gunshot wounds in the back.

• The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to take the next step in shutting down Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. The jail, which is run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, has long been criticized for its inhumane conditions. Its closure — without plans for a replacement facility — was framed by the board as representing a “reduced reliance on incarceration.”

• The families of Sean Monterrosa and Erik Salgado have joined in protesting against police brutality in Sacramento. Monterrosa and Salgado were murdered by police in the Bay Area earlier this month, within four days of each other. California’s attorney general has refused to investigate Monterrosa’s murder by the police despite a recommendation from the Soleno district attorney.

• In the trade unions of the film production industry, there is a growing sentiment in favor of expelling police unions from labor partnerships. Rank-and-file members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Screen Actors Guild have been leading the charge.

• Of the 18 million calls to the LAPD logged over the past decade, only 1.4 million — or 8% — were for violent crimes. Nearly half of those calls were officer-initiated calls for perceived violations like traffic stops, which are disproportionately called on Black and Latinx drivers and pedestrians.

• Coronavirus tests, once available to all who requested them in Los Angeles. But testing sites are now being overwhelmed by the number of requests in the county. As the infection rate rises, tests at many facilities are being restricted to those who are feeling symptoms; requests now must be made days in advance. City council candidate Nithya Raman has criticized Mayor Eric Garcetti and city leadership for abandoning the cautious approach they took at the start of the pandemic and for rushing too quickly into reopening businesses.

• The Emergency Renters Relief Program will start taking applications on July 13. The program sets aside $103 million — mostly from federal stimulus funds — to cover up to $1,000 a month per household, in the form of direct payments to landlords. Applicants must meet eligibility requirements and demonstrate an economic or health impact from COVID-19. As council president Nury Martinez acknowledged, “demand will be high,” and the current model of tenant relief will require billions more in federal aid. The deadline to apply is July 17.

• The Los Angeles teachers union is advocating that school campuses remain closed for the upcoming fall semester and that distance learning continue. This is not in line with the current position of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said that schools should be available for in-person learning “to the greatest extent possible.” Meanwhile, the burdens that distance learning places on working families are explored here and elsewhere.

• California legislators will not return to the capitol next week, due to concerns over coronavirus. Several staffers and lawmakers have tested positive.

• Farm workers are continuing to protest in light of employees testing positive for coronavirus. According to United Farm Workers, 78 farm laborers employed by Primex Farms in Wasco, CA, have been infected with the Coronavirus. Primex released a statement acknowledging positive cases and closed their work location for about two weeks. Primex Farms has not confirmed whether workers would be paid for hours lost during the shutdown.

• Lawmakers joined activists in a press conference outside of San Quentin State Prison to urge Gov. Newsom to release thousands of incarcerated people from state prisons as coronavirus continues to surge throughout the prison system. Prison transfers have exacerbated the spread of the virus, with a current total of 31 deaths in California state prisons.

• The University of California will join Harvard and MIT in suing the Trump administration over its ruling forcing international students to attend in-person classes in order to remain in the country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced this week that failure to attend in-person classes could result in removal proceedings.

• Gov. Newsom’s oil and gas regulatory agency approved 12 new permits this week for fracking in Kern County, which already suffers from some of the poorest air quality in the nation. Newsom has additionally approved drilling permits for more than 1,400 new oil and gas wells. “Approving these permits is especially dangerous now,” Hollin Kretzmann from the Center for Biological Diversity pointed out, as “multiple studies have shown air pollution increases our vulnerability to coronavirus.”

• Experts are warning of an above-normal “significant large fire” potential for California. Fires are likely to create even greater risks for contracting COVD-19, due to air pollution. Meanwhile, incarcerated firefighting crews in 12 out of 43 of the state’s prison fire camps are in lockdown due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus through the prison system. The state of California relies on 2,200 incarcerated people to work on fire crews, for wages ranging from $2 to $5 per day plus $1 per hour.

• The California Transit Association has started a lobbying and ad campaign requesting $3 billion in funding relief from the state for local transit authorities. The CTA warns that such a bailout is necessary to avoid permanent cuts in bus services, particularly in vulnerable communities.

• Plans to construct a high-speed electric rail line between Las Vegas and California took another step forward. CalTrans has formally leased right of way adjacent to Interstate 15 to XpressWest, in accordance with plans to build a 170-mile electric passenger rail system running between the Las Vegas Strip and San Bernardino County. While the western terminus of the line is located 90 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, other construction projects may eventually link it to Union Station.

Local News

• Congress’ first-ever committee dedicated exclusively to climate change released a 538-page action plan Tuesday, stating that California and other US states face “an existential threat” from climate change and require robust government response. The report calls for 12 pillars of action, including reducing carbon pollution, making communities more resilient to the impacts of climate change and building a more equitable energy economy. Specific targets include bringing the US to net zero emissions by 2050 and delivering $8 trillion in health and climate benefits. Locally, it calls for the creation of “clean energy” jobs, a field in which more than 100,000 workers in California have been laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic, and recommends timely action on several California-introduced climate bills, including the Wildfire Defense Act and the West Coast Ocean Protection Act.

• Fossil fuel and utility companies are attempting to use COVID-19 to request delays in regulations. On Monday, state oil and gas regulator CalGEM blocked Southern California Gas Co.’s effort to delay required safety testing at the company’s Aliso Canyon storage field, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and associated stay-at-home orders. The Aliso field was the site of a record-setting gas leak that spewed more than 100,000 tons of heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere and sickened residents of the nearby Porter Ranch neighborhood. 

• The state of California has passed a budget that attempts to address the economic impact of the continuing COVID-19 crisis. While school funding remains level with last year, many payments are being delayed, with local districts having to plug the gaps in the interim. Restrictions on drawing from the state’s welfare assistance program are being eased. Additional funds have been earmarked for converting hotels into housing for the unhoused ($550 million to purchase and renovate, another $50 million to counties for operation), and reducing business tax breaks is a component in reducing the budget shortfall. Newsom’s campaign promises of a single-payer healthcare system, walked back even before the current crisis, have been essentially abandoned despite a Democratic supermajority in the state government.

• The Los Angeles City Council has now passed a budget which cuts $150 million from the Police Department budget. The newest draft of the budget structures most of the cuts as reductions to overtime pay. Meanwhile, several councilmembers have introduced a proposal to consider replacing the LAPD with Department of Transportation workers for the enforcement of traffic laws.

• The Los Angeles Board of Education voted 4–3 in favor of a 35% reduction to the budget of the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD). Following a week of sustained pressure from activists groups, including Black Lives Matter-LA and LA Students Deserve, board members compromised by folding elements of the motions proposed last week into an amendment to this year’s budget. The amendment cuts the LASPD budget by $25 million, restricts officers from wearing uniforms and limits them to the perimeters of school campuses. A task force convened by Superintendent Austin Beutner, thought after last week’s impasse to be taking over the issue of police reform, will now play catch-up in studying how best to implement the board’s decision. The commander of the LASPD resigned the following the day.

• As protests continue against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s killing of Andres Guardado, the Los Angeles Times has sued the department for withholding public records related to deputy misconduct in violation of the recently passed California Public Records Act. The suit comes as the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training has refused to publish information on the surveillance technology it uses, citing copyright laws. Andres Guardado’s family is also demanding that the results of his autopsy be released.

• Citing cost, California is halting its plans to expand COVID-19 testing into rural towns and urban neighborhoods — right as cases and hospitalizations surge in the state.

• Black and Latinx Angelenos have double the mortality rate from coronavirus as white residents. In addition to disproportionately working in low-wage front-line jobs at higher risk of exposure to the virus, Black and Latinx residents face health challenges caused by structural racism, limited access to healthcare, and chronic stress.

• Asian American Californians have reported over 800 incidents of racist verbal abuse, shunning and physical assaults since the beginning of the pandemic.

• In the same week that construction crews at SoFi Stadium finished raising a 2,200-ton video screen over the field, nearby residents are organizing to prevent landlords from pushing them out with escalating rent. The Lennox-Inglewood Tenants Union has accused landlords of renovating empty units near the Rams and Chargers’ new stadium to attract new tenants while disregarding units — held by long-standing tenants of color — that have fallen into disrepair. “The big capitalists saw Inglewood, and they saw money signs,” said one organizer. “It was always the plan to get long-time tenants out, Black and brown, poor and low-income tenants out, and get a different demographic with a different income bracket in here.”

• Members of the Kumeyaay Nation, which spans both sides of the California–Mexico border, physically blocked construction of the border wall on Monday. Community members are protecting ancestral lands from desecration and are demanding an immediate halt to construction of the wall on Kumeyaay land.

• More than 900 coronavirus cases have been diagnosed in the last two weeks alone at San Quentin state prison, bringing the total number of cases to over 1,100 infected out of the 3,700 people being held at the prison. The new outbreak began after a transfer of 121 inmates from the California Institute for Men in Chino, a prison with an existing coronavirus outbreak. The transfer has been denounced by public health officials.

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.

LOCAL NEWS

• Black Lives Matter – LA organized and led a protest in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, joining continuing protests in cities across the nation to demand justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and demanding accountability for 601 people killed by police in LA County. Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Greg Chauvin on Monday, while on the ground handcuffed and pleading that he could not breathe. Taylor was murdered in her home by police officers in Louisville in March. The Los Angeles protesters successfully blocked the 101 Freeway, where a police car drove violently through a crowd of protesters, and gathered outside of District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s office. Black Lives Matter – LA further called on LA City Council President Nury Martinez to convene a special city council meeting to reject Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposal to spend 54% of the city’s general fund on the LAPD, and instead adopt the People’s Budget, which has been developed with input from more than 20,000 residents and activists, to defund police and provide funding for services that help and strengthen Los Angeles communities.  A full statement from DSA-LA on the murder of George Floyd can be read here, and the national statement from DSA can be read here. DSA-LA demands an end to the mass murder of Black and Brown people at the hands of U.S. law enforcement, and DSA-LA will fight alongside Black Lives Matter-LA and other BIPOC-led groups to dismantle the systems that uphold capitalism and white supremacy, which include police, prisons and detention centers.

• On Thursday, regulators at the California Public Utilities commission voted to approve PG&E’s reorganization plan to exit bankruptcy. The approval came despite widespread community outcry and public comment mobilized by DSA and other groups, and opposition from over 200 local elected officials. DSA will continue to organize to fight for energy democracy and to turn PG&E into a public and worker owned utility.

• Activists are continuing car protests to draw attention to the COVID-19 outbreak and unsafe conditions at the Otay Mesa and Adelanto ICE detention centers, and to demand that detainees be released. Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia was the first ICE detainee to die in US custody, but many other detained immigrants fear he will not be the last. He died in San Diego’s Otay Mesa, which has the largest coronavirus outbreak of any immigration detention center. He had lived in the US for over 40 years. Some of those detained with him notified medical staff many times, but Carlos was merely instructed to fill out multiple “sick cards,” and given ibuprofen. Immigrants are being held on civil offenses, not criminal, meaning they could be released at almost any time. Although 91 detainees have been released as part of the court order, many fear for the lives of those that remain. 

• Big Oil has lost its appeal to stop California cities and counties from taking it to court to seek damages for the impact of climate change. The lawsuits target Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell as being responsible and seek to make them pay for damages from climate change as well as for infrastructure to prevent future impact.

• A former close aide to Councilmember Jose Huizar pled guilty to criminal racketeering, the fourth such plea deal stemming from an ongoing federal corruption probe into City Hall “pay to play” real estate deals. Council President Nury Martinez and Mayor Garcetti have now both asked Huizar to resign. The plea agreement can be read here; as part of the agreement, evidence emerged that Huizar had used a bribe from a Chinese billionaire to privately settle a sexual harassment suit brought by a former staff member.

• A new citywide program will move $100 million of federal relief into a fund designed to help “qualifying” Los Angeles renters keep up with their rent during COVID-19. In announcing the program, LA City Council President Nury Martinez acknowledged that the housing department would likely be overwhelmed by demand. The program is designed to cover renters by making payments directly to their landlords.

• The County Board of Supervisors met on Wednesday. A debate as to whether to seek a variance that would allow cities within the county to reopen piecemeal, as each individually hits recovery benchmarks, split the board 2–2 and was moved to a closed session. Opponents argued that the piecemeal approach would disadvantage the communities of color that have been hit hardest by COVID-19.

• Many of the cities within LA County with the highest infection rates neighbor the city of Vernon, where there have been outbreaks at numerous industrial plants. The city has only a few hundred legal residents — most of Vernon’s thousands of workers live nearby.

• Coronavirus infection rates in LA County jails are nearly 60% in some locations. More than 1000 inmates out of 13,000 have tested positive and over 5000 are currently under quarantine.

• Anti-lockdown protests are being attended by extremist groups such as the Proud Boys (designated by the FBI as having ties to white nationalism), and by armed militias that advocate for civil war. Brian Levin, a professor of criminal justice who studies extremism, says that their intermingling with other participants, who have a wide variety of concerns, is concerning because the extremists can recruit as well as create an environment that is a “petri dish for conspiracy theories and bad information, as well as aggressiveness.” Many of the anti-lockdown protests are funded by wealthy conservative groups, including the family of Secretary of Education Betsy Devos.

• Los Angeles County is reopening despite still being the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in California. All retail stores are now allowed to have in-store shopping at 50% capacity; personal care services such as barbershops and salons can reopen; restaurants can resume dine-in services; faith-based services can resume at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower; flea markets, swap meets and drive-in movie theaters can open; and public protests can also take place at 25% of a location’s capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower. Social distancing and the requirement to wear face masks remain in place.

ELECTIONS

• California now faces a second suit to prevent the move to a vote-by-mail November election. The new suit, brought by the Republican Party, is in addition to the suit filed previously by a conservative group and Repulican Darrell Issa. President Trump has repeatedly undermined confidence in the democratic process by attacking the use of mail-in ballots as “rigged,” and is falsely claiming that California is distributing ballots to noncitizens and that people will send in hundreds of thousands of fake ballots.

LOCAL NEWS

• People’s Budget LA, a coalition of activist groups including DSA-LA’s Street Watch, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, and Ktown for All, mobilized opposition to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposed budget cuts and flooded social media and public comments periods in an outcry over proposed spending on LAPD at the expense of social services. On Thursday the City Council declined to approve the budget and referred the budget to committee for further discussion, meeting the activists’ demands for more time for public input. The coalition will now pressure the City Council to pass a People’s Budget, centering human services and defunding the LAPD. Currently, police funding takes up over half of LA’s budget. DSA-LA member and endorsed LA City Council candidate Nithya Raman pointed out that “all of the proposed cuts to services total $230 million. LAPD officer pay is simultaneously being increased by $144 million. If officers were to receive the same pay they did last year, we could be saved from two-thirds of the cuts.”

• Health officials announced on Wednesday that LA has reached an important milestone in the fight against coronavirus, with the transmission rate now slightly below 1, meaning that on average every person with COVID-19 infects less than one other person. Simulations show that if this transmission rate is maintained then just 9% of Angelenos will have contracted the virus by December. However, even a slight uptick in the transmission rate — to 1.5 — could result in nearly half the city becoming infected by December. For this reason, county health officials continue to stress the importance of residents abiding by social distancing guidelines even as the city’s lockdown begins to ease.

• The University of California announced that it has fully divested from all fossil fuels, becoming the nation’s largest educational institution to do so and capping a 5-year effort to move the public research university’s $126 billion portfolio into more environmentally sustainable investments. The movement against fossil fuels has bloomed to encompass more than 1,100 faith, educational, government, corporate and nonprofit institutions, with $14 trillion in assets, in the last decade. Among them, more than 50 universities have committed to full or partial divestment.

• After a federal judge ordered LA County to carry out a “humane relocation” of unhoused residents underneath the city’s freeways, local officials have submitted preliminary plans that include a rapid expansion of safe parking sites and pallet shelters, as well as safe campsites based on a pilot program implemented by the West Los Angeles VA. The judge’s order requires that all unhoused residents living under overpasses must be offered an alternate space in a shelter with access to health and hygiene services before police can order them to leave, and that this offer must be given with advance notice. 

• Gov. Newsom’s Project Roomkey, a plan to house thousands of unhoused Californians in hotel rooms across the state, is rolling out far slower than anticipated. Only half of the 15,000 rooms leased for the project have been filled. 

• School support staff, teachers, and superintendents are warning that the school budget cuts proposed by Gov. Newsom could threaten the ability of schools statewide to reopen safely. 

• A 74-year-old man committed suicide in the Mesa Verde detention center in Bakersfield. Choung Won Ahn had expressed concerns over contracting COVID-19 due to his many pre-existing health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart problems. 

• The Guardian has published a deep look at six prisons in California where the failure to implement basic protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has preceded “rapidly escalating outbreaks,” with some fearing worse to come.

• “A restaurant worker without papers has to work twice as hard. You have to constantly say: ‘I’ll do it.’ The day someone is out sick, you have to cover. You can’t get sick. You can’t call out. It’s a hard road to walk,” says Oscar, who now is out of work. Being undocumented, he is not eligible for unemployment or a stimulus check. Undocumented workers account for 10% of the US labor force, and there are about a million undocumented workers in the food and beverage industry. With the government failiing to provide relief to the undocumented community, many groups including DSA-LA are engaging in solidarity campaigns and mutual aid to address the dire circumstances of undocumented Californians. In April, California announced a $125 million relief fund specifically for undocumented workers, however during this week’s rollout, it met a fate similar to that of other COVID-19 relief funds, with its administration being rapidly overwhelmed by a deluge of claims, and most predicting the fund to be fully drawn down very quickly.

• A full timeline of Elon Musk’s erratic behavior on Twitter can be found here, preceding his decision to restart production at Tesla’s plant in Fremont on May 9, flouting shelter-in-place orders. Tesla’s HR department told employees on Wednesday that operations were returning to normal and their attendance policy was resuming as of this week at both their Fremont assembly plant and their Sparks, NV, battery factory. Musk and Tesla dropped a suit filed against Alameda County, and Musk said he would move Tesla’s headquarters out of California and threatened to move manufacturing and future projects away as well. 

ELECTIONS

• Judicial Watch (a conservative activist group) and Republican congressional candidate and former member of Congress Darrell Issa filed a legal challenge to block Governor Newsom’s executive order to direct state elections officials to mail a ballot to every voter and conduct an all-mail November election. Newsom’s order would make California the first state to move to an all-mail election in response to the pandemic; the Republican National Committee also said it was weighing legal options in response.

Local News

A federal court judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans to pump more water into the Central Valley, after the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency and half a dozen environmental groups filed two lawsuits against the administration, arguing that the plan would cause irreparable harm to species protected by state and federal law.Democrats in the California State Senate introduced a series of proposals to address the economic impact of COVID-19. The proposals include a plan to allow qualified renters 10 years to repay missed rent payments directly to the state, while the state would compensate landlords through tax credits that could be sold for cash. A second bill focuses on allowing debt forbearance and postponement, allowing homeowners to request forbearance on mortgage payments for a year and allowing borrowers of auto loans, payday loans and other forms of debt options to postpone payment with increased consumer protections. Senate Democrats are also developing an economic stabilization plan in which individual and corporate taxpayers could prepay a decade’s worth of income taxes at a slight discount in order to provide the state with immediate funding for short-term economic relief programs. Governor Newsom announced the state is facing a projected $54.3 billion deficit, has called for cuts to public school spending and government services and has requested federal assistance to prevent billions in further budget cuts. The deficit is attributable to a collapse in state tax revenue, the costs of COVID-19 response and the growing numbers of residents signing up for health and social services due to economic hardship. Newsom is proposing a 10% pay cut to state employees as part of a plan to reduce spending, and union leaders from SEIU Local 1000 are planning to offer and negotiate an alternative plan. The deadline for legislators to pass an operating budget is June 15.  California is struggling to drive down its coronavirus cases and has not seen a sustained decline in deaths over the past month even as it takes steps toward reopening. This may be the result of two factors: 1) Essential workers are being put at increased risk — a study in the San Francisco area found that 90% of cases are coming from those who must leave their homes to work; and 2) People are experiencing stay-at-home fatigue, with some flouting social distancing to return to beaches and other crowded places. AB-3121, the “Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” has passed out of the California Assembly Judiciary Committee with an 8–3 vote in favor. The vote broke along party lines. It will next be voted on by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.An ICE employee working at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, which is privately owned and operated by GEO Group, has tested positive for COVID-19. This comes as reports that 943 of the 1,788 detainees tested nationally for coronavirus have returned positive results. The first death of an ICE detainee from COVID-19 occured at San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center last week. Activists from the LEAP coalition, a citywide coalition of environmental justice and frontline health and housing groups, are calling on Mayor Garcetti to restore $800,000 in funding, and to guarantee full funding, for the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office and the Climate Emergency Commission in the 2020-21 budget. In 2019, the coalition partnered with the Mayor and the City Council to approve these structures to facilitate a just transition toward a fossil-free economy, however the funds were not included in Mayor Garcetti’s latest budget, released in April. The City Council has until June 30 to approve the budget.Pressure is mounting in the probe into corruption at Los Angeles City Hall, with a real estate consultant pleading guilty to a racketeering charge and agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Documents make clear that the investigation is into City Councilman Jose Huizar, who is alleged to have accepted cash bribes and other enticements in exchange for helping secure approval for a major development project.This week the LAPD released body-camera footage of one of its officers, Frank Hernandez, violently beating a homeless Boyle Heights man. The release, which occurred after a third-party cell phone video had gone public, led to an outcry. Hernandez’s lawyer claimed that the man had punched Hernandez in the chest, but the bodycam footage does not support this. Hernandez has been involved in three prior on-duty shootings in his career. Los Angeles public schools will start classes on August 18 regardless of whether their campuses reopen. Many details remain to be worked out for reopening, such as class sizing and scheduling to meet social distancing guidelines, as well as the issue of whether masks would need to be worn by students and teachers — which the district does not have the resources to provide. This planning is taking place as Governor Gavin Newsom just announced major funding cuts that could lead to teacher and staff layoffs.  Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that all Angelenos will be required to wear masks when outside, with the exception of small children and those with certain disabilities. This announcement came as Los Angeles began to open up some businesses for curbside pickup and beaches for active recreation. Officials continued to caution that reopening will be a slow process and extended the stay-at-home order indefinitely on Tuesday.

Elections

Democrat Christy Smith conceded defeat to Republican Mike Garcia in the race to fill the seat vacated by Katie Hill in California’s 25th congressional district. Hill had picked up the seat as part of 2018’s “Blue Wave” of Democrats; it will now flip back to red. Donald Trump was an active booster of Garcia’s campaign, making characteristically unfounded charges of electioneering after the Democrats succeeded in opening an extra voter station to serve the city of Lancaster. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton endorsed Smith. Smith and Garcia will face each other again in November, when they will be running for a full congressional term.

Local News

After renewed national outcry, a white father and son in Georgia have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man. Arbery was jogging in his neighborhood when he was confronted and killed in what Arbery’s father and others have called a modern-day lynching. A newly released video shows Gregory McMichael and his son Travis waiting with guns in a pickup truck blocking the road when Arbery approached, and they immediately attacked him as he tried to avoid them. The shooting occurred on February 23, but no charges were initially brought, with the first assigned prosecutor recusing herself due to McMichael being a former employee of her office. The second prosecutor also recused himself, after a month on the case, due to a complaint by Arbery’s family that his son worked in the prosecutor’s office where McMichael used to work. Prior to his recusal, the second prosecutor sent a letter to the police department saying there was insufficient probable cause for an arrest. The killing of Arbery occurred just three days prior to the eighth anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. The US food supply system has been upended by the Coronavirus as huge shifts have resulted in a massive increase in food bank use at the same time that produce rots in fields and meat processing plants close. The existing system that linked farmers, meat processors, truckers, food distributors, restaurants, grocers and food banks collapsed when restaurants were forced to close, which sharply decreased overall demand. Now grocers are passing on less food as they struggle to keep pace with bulk purchases by customers; other sources, such as leftover food from movie productions, have also vanished. The result is desperation, with food distribution points that give directly to hungry Californians seeing their supplies exhausted minutes after opening.

Local News

Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, a detainee in San Diego, became the first to die of COVID-19 while in ICE custody. His death occurred just one day after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a US District judge’s ruling to decrease the population at California’s Adelanto ICE processing facility, one of the largest immigrant detention facilities in the country, to a level that would allow the remaining detainees to maintain a social distance of six feet from one another. Eduardo Robles-Holguin became the sixth inmate to die from COVID-19 at Terminal Island prison in San Pedro, and family members of inmates took to the streets outside the prison to demand justice and safety for incarcerated people. Terminal Island is the location with the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in the federal prison system, with 620 inmates and 15 staff members infected as of May 5. Video footage of an LAPD officer brutally and repeatedly punching a man during an arrest in late April in Boyle Heights has sparked widespread outrage and condemnation, and activists are calling on District Attorney Jackie Lacey to prosecute the officer. The LAPD announced they would conduct an internal review after the video footage spread online this week. The officer has been involved in three prior on-duty shootings. DSA-LA’s Street Watch coalition organized with unhoused activist Davon Brown to seize a hotel room in the DTLA Ritz-Carlton and demand that Mayor Garcetti follow through and commandeer empty hotel rooms to provide safe shelter for the unhoused during the pandemic. The Ritz-Carlton gets $270M in taxpayer subsidies and yet at least 900 rooms remain empty. The LA City Council has so far voted only to publicly identify hotels that have refused to take part in Project Roomkey, a joint effort by the state, county and city to shelter the county’s unhoused in vacant hotel rooms. The program, which is restricted to only the elderly and “medically vulnerable,” aims to find rooms for 15,000 of the county’s estimated 60,000 unhoused. But as of yet, rooms have been found for only 1,800, the program is voluntary, and some hotels have resisted participating.Meanwhile, outside of Los Angeles, several hotels that have willfully participated in Project Roomkey have faced pushback from neighbors and from their own municipal governments. Judges permitted Los Angeles County to issue restraining orders against the cities of Bell Garden and Norwalk, both of which had attempted to prevent hotels from taking part in the program. In Covina, protesters chanting “not in my neighborhood” and “safety first” were ultimately successful in convincing a local hotel owner to back out. Rent strikes are spreading in Los Angeles and across the country as economic desperation compounded by the pandemic further worsens the housing crisis and radicalizes tenants. Membership in the LA Tenants Union has more than doubled since the start of the crisis, and most of their now 8000 members participated in a citywide rent strike on May 1. These strikes are estimated to be the largest since the 1930s. According to one estimate, the federal government could expand existing housing subsidy programs to cover all qualified low-income renters and those newly eligible due to the pandemic for just $100 billion a year, a mere fraction of the trillions handed out by Congress to large corporations in the series of bailout bills passed already. The LA City Council unanimously passed a measure that will allow tenants to sue landlords who violate the city’s eviction rules for those affected by COVID-19. The measure allows judgments of $10,000–$15,000 to tenants of these “unscrupulous” landlords. Tenants will still be required to pay back all missed rent within a year of the end of the emergency. Council President Nury Martinez presented this measure as the last word on rent relief from the city. “While we have done everything that we can, neither the mayor [nor] the Los Angeles City Council has the legal authority or the financial ability to do more,” she asserted in a speech following Mayor Garcetti’s signing of the bill into law. Frustrations continue to grow as many more file for unemployment. California’s Employment Development Department says it has processed 3.5 million claims since mid-March. 2.7 million claims have been filed in the last month, and the state has decided to waive certification requirements until further notice. This comes as news breaks today that US unemployment has reached 14.7% and that 20.5 million jobs were lost in April alone. Businesses in LA County such as “car dealers and other types of brick-and-mortar stores — including florists and those that sell toys, music, books, clothing and sporting goods” are reopening today with curbside pickup. Officials caution that this is not a return to normal, as LA County accounts for over half of the COVID-19 deaths in California.

Elections

Ahead of the May 12 special election to replace Katie Hill in Congressional District 25, Democrats argued that black voters are being disenfranchised by the unbalanced placement of voter centers. “Lancaster is the single most diverse part of the district, and yet the nearest voting center is nine miles away,” said LA County Democratic Party Chair Mark J. Gonzalez.