The Thorn West

State Politics

• September 30 was the deadline for Governor Newsom to sign or veto much of the legislation passed during the most recent session. Among the bills Newsom vetoed was AB 3216, which would protect California workers in the hospitality industry who lost their jobs during COVID, compelling employers to rehire the workers they fired instead of using the opportunity to hire workers with less seniority at lower salaries. In explaining his veto, Newsom parroted the objections of business interests who insisted the requirements were too onerous. A similar worker-protection bill successfully passed in Los Angeles in April.

• CalMatters provides more details on the bills Newsom signed and the bills he vetoed.

Education

• In September, LA Metro announced they were moving forward on the environmental review public comment period for a proposed widening of the 605/5 freeway. Metro has now backtracked, delaying public comment after criticism. Downey political candidate Alexandria Contreras pointed out that this proposed project would result in the demolition of entire POC neighborhoods.

• Investing in Place has teamed up with ACT-LA and other community organizations to address Metro’s service cuts to bus routes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Metro cut approximately 20% of bus service due to the impact of the pandemic — a decrease of 1.4 million revenue service hours. They plan to keep those cuts in place until June 30, 2021. Advocates and community members criticize this plan, citing long wait times, overcrowded buses and unreliable service.

Housing Justice

• The Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved a plan for the county to purchase eight motels to serve as interim and permanent supportive housing, using funding from a grant from the state’s Project Homekey program, as well as CARES Act funding.

Education

• LAUSD’s Board of Education further discussed how to implement the $25 million defunding of the Los Angeles School Police Department passed this June, and how the money could instead be spent.

• The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a waiver process that will allow some schools to hold in-person classes for students in kindergarten through second grade. The waiver process is intended to give priority to schools serving higher percentages of students from low-income families. In other parts of the state, these waivers have overwhelmingly gone to private schools.

Climate

• An ongoing state investigation into SoCalGas has now revealed details as to how the utility, working with Imprenta Communications Group, leveraged local politicians across the county into advocating more lax emission standards for trucks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Elections

• Some polling numbers are in on many of California’s ballot measures. Prop 22, a measure financed by Uber and Lyft, and designed to exempt ride-sharing apps from complying with labor protections, is moderately favored to win.

• Check out DSA-LA’s 2020 Voter Guide!

Transit

• Despite widespread opposition, Mayor Garcetti and the rest of the LA Metro Board (with the exception of Mike Bonin) voted to slash the Metro budget by 20%, citing decreased ridership impacting revenue — even though federal CARES Act funding earmarked for maintaining transportation during COVID has held net revenue losses at only 2%. The cuts are primarily to bus service and will impact low-income riders of color the hardest just as ridership is beginning to increase.

Housing Justice

• Plaintiffs, including KTown for All, have won a legal motion, and now the City of Los Angeles will be held in contempt of court for violating an April injunction preventing the city from seizing “bulky items” belonging to the unhoused. A San Pedro sweep defied this injunction and posted outdated signs claiming that bulky items could still be seized.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Black Lives Matter Los Angeles has been organizing protests outside of city hall every Wednesday for months. Hundreds joined this week, as thousands around the nation protested the lack of criminal charges brought against the Louisville police officers who killed Breonna Taylor.

• TW violent footage: An article on StreetsBlog LA explains how footage of the police shooting of Dijon Kizzee contradicts the claim from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department that Kizzee was pointing a gun at the deputies that shot and killed him.

Coronavirus Relief

• The California unemployment department has paused logging any new claims for unemployment benefits until October 5 and has announced that they will take that time to implement a new system that will speed up processing times. A recent report found a backlog of over a million pending claims that will take until January 2021 to resolve, even with this pause.

Climate

• Last week, as record-breaking wildfires received national attention, Governor Newsom promised action on climate protection. This week, Newsom has issued an executive order banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. See here for a detailed analysis of how the order would be implemented and all the ways it falls short.

Elections

• An LA Times reporter live-tweeted the Sherman Oaks CD4 Candidate Forum, featuring incumbent Councilmember David Ryu and DSA-endorsed challenger Nithya Raman. Ryu was asked again if he is simply “Nithya lite.”

Transit

• Councilmember Paul Koretz has effectively killed Uplift Melrose, a plan to invest in making Melrose Avenue friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists. Uplift Melrose enjoyed support from local businesses and neighborhood councils, but was opposed by LAPD on the pretext that fewer traffic lanes would reduce response times — a concern not shared by many fire departments. LAPD has previously killed bike lanes in other parts of the city for similar reasons, for example at the request of NIMBY group Fix the City, which argues the city is “stealing” lanes from drivers.

Housing Justice

• Project Roomkey fell short of its goal of placing 15,000 of the most vulnerable unhoused people in vacant hotel rooms for the duration of the pandemic. Despite paying full price for rooms, the program was only able to find beds for 4,100 people. During a discussion about Project Roomkey at last week’s council meeting, Councilmembers Mike Bonin and Marqueece Harris-Dawson requested a report on the justifications supplied by hotels that declined to participate. That report was released this week, and it revealed that several hotels held out because of an open bias against the unhoused. It’s the second time in two weeks that city programs have been exposed as naively relying on the “reasonableness” of landlords and businesses; these interests’ most valuable assets are their class privileges, and they won’t reliably sell them at cost.

• LA Magazine published a story recognizing the successful efforts last week of community activists to draw attention to and push back against the illegal displacement of an unhoused encampment by the South Robertson Neighborhood Council.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• On Sunday, KPCC reporter Josie Huang was covering the interaction between sheriff’s deputies and a small group of protesters. While she was recording an arrest the deputies shoved Huang to the ground and arrested her. The Sheriff’s department issued a statement claiming she never identified herself as a reporter. This was later blatantly contradicted by video evidence in which she is heard shouting “I’m with KPCC” and is seen wearing her press badge.

• At Thursday’s meeting of the Los Angeles County Civilian Oversight Committee, which oversees the sheriff’s department, Commissioner Robert Bonner — known as a conservative member of the committee — shockingly called on Sheriff Alex Villanueva to resign. This follows the false report of the Huang arrest, as well as other recent incidents that have destroyed the sheriff’s relationship with the public and his ability to work with other elements of government. The call was immediately echoed by two of the five county supervisors. “He really is a rogue sheriff,” said Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.

Local Politics

• An article in L.A. Taco checks in on the Los Angeles District Attorney race between George Gascón and Jackie Lacey. The candidates met on a zoom call this week, where Lacey was grilled about contributions from police unions and her failure to prosecute a single LAPD officer for a police shooting.

• Mayors of five Los Angeles County cities that have legalized card room casinos met to lobby the city to allow outdoor gambling. The boundaries of many of the cities in the county have been drawn up to separate residential communities from the nearby industrial tax base. Some of these cities rely on card rooms for up to 50% of their tax revenue.

Climate

• Surveying the devastation of the historic, ongoing wildfires, Gov. Gavin Newsom broke with President Trump and acknowledged the scientific reality of climate change, calling it a “climate damn emergency.” But we are far past the point of debate. Scientists estimate that the fires in California this year have burned enough forest to emit about 90 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, some 30 million tons more than the total CO2 emissions from providing power to the entire state. The climate emergency is here. We are living through it. What matters now is action. Newsom said that he had directed two of his top environmental officials to review the state’s current climate strategies “and accelerate all of them, across the board,” but climate activists remain skeptical. As the COVID-19 pandemic has raged, critics have charged that Newsom has squandered an opportunity to move faster on reducing emissions, and has even slowed down or backtracked on climate action. Most recently, Newsom defended the state water board’s decision to extend the shutdown deadline for four gas-fired power plants that were supposed to close this year.

Housing Justice

• In June Los Angeles passed the Emergency Renters Assistance Subsidy Program, establishing a fund to help tenants struggling to make rent during the pandemic. Instead of providing assistance to tenants, the program was designed to make payments directly to their landlords. However, the program required that landlords agree to some terms — such as pausing evictions during the pandemic — in exchange for the money. Now, tenants in the program have reported that their landlords are refusing to take the subsidy — echoing outcomes in similar programs nationwide — leaving tenants in the lurch.

• Members of the South Robertson Neighborhood Council (SORO NC) raised $3,650 through a GoFundMe with the explicit intention of illegally displacing unhoused people under the Cattaraugus underpass in West LA. On Sunday, they removed the belongings of unhoused residents and put down boulders in their place. Volunteers from Ktown for All, Street Watch LA, and Los Angeles Community Action Network successfully drew public attention to the incident, directing Angelenos to call into the SORO NC meeting’s public comment, as well as provoking a response from South Robertson’s Councilmember Herb Wesson. By the end of the week the boulders had been removed.

• Following some debate over funding levels, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to approve $97,000,000 in funding for the “Rapid Re-Housing” program, to be administered by LA Homeless Services Authority.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• For several days, protesters demanding justice for Dijon Kizzee staged peaceful demonstrations outside the South LA Sheriff’s Station. But the conflict escalated over Labor Day weekend, when sheriff’s deputies fired projectiles and chemical irritants into the crowd, injuring several. No justification has been provided by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for the escalation, and activists present report that it was unprovoked. Over the following few days of protests, deputies began making arrests, with 35 arrests made as of Tuesday.

• In a bizarre and upsetting press conference staged by County Sheriff Alex Villanueva in response to the Dijon Kizzee protests, a series of speakers supposedly representing the South LA community — including someone with ties to white supremacists — addressed “outside” protesters to insist that they were not welcome. Spokespeople for Kizzee’s family pushed back on Instagram, insisting that all peaceful protesters were welcome no matter where they were from.

• The open existence of gangs within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has become a national story. Zak Cheney-Rice writes, “The particular incentive structure that governs gangs like the Executioners may be eye-catching in its boldness. But it also typifies policing in places where they do not proliferate so literally.”

Labor

• AB5, a law passed last year in California, mandated that many “independent contractors” be reclassified as full- or part-time employees. Now, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law AB2257, which creates exemptions for several professions, including journalists and musicians.

Climate

• AB 2147, which removes some of the barriers that incarcerated firefighters face in becoming professional firefighters after they are released, was also signed into law this afternoon.

State Legislature

• The California State Legislature adjourned for the year leaving many people hanging. A resumption of the $600-a-week unemployment benefits was one among many relief proposals that never materialized. Calmatters asks, what’s next?

• A day before the expiration of the state’s eviction moratorium, the California legislature passed compromised legislation that extends bare-bones protections through January 31. Under AB 3088, signed on into law on Monday, tenants cannot be evicted for any rent missed between March 1 and September 1, and are protected through February 2021 provided they pay 25% of their rent and file a statement that they were financially impacted by COVID-19. Per Governor Newsom, AB 3088 still offers stronger protections than the surprising federal eviction moratorium issued by the CDC on Tuesday, so the CDC order would have no effect in the state.

• Despite majority approval in polls, millions in the streets and a Democratic supermajority, the California State Legislature only passed incremental police reform while shooting down more ambitious legislation. Using the Sept. 1 deadline and aggressive lobbying to control legislators overwhelmed by multiple crises, police unions were successful in preventing SB 731, a bill that would have created a process to decertify violent cops, from ever reaching a vote. A bill that would require officers to intervene when their colleagues used excessive force, and one that would open up more police records to the public, were also beaten back.

• In the middle of a housing crisis, SB 1120 would allow most single-family homes to be converted into duplexes. It was likely to have passed, but inexplicably was introduced to the Assembly too late by Speaker Anthony Rendon and its vote will be delayed until the next legislative session.

• AB 3121, which will establish a task force to make recommendations for what form reparations should take in the state of California, was passed, and now heads to the governor to sign.

City Politics

• Furloughs for over 15,000 city workers are coming after the Los Angeles city council voted to declare a fiscal emergency. The furloughs will require city workers to take 18 unpaid days off, amounting to a 7% pay cut. Councilmember Mike Bonin proposed an amendment that would have city negotiators first meet with the L.A. Police Protective League, to try and negotiate a delay in their scheduled raises and bonuses, potentially allowing the city to stave off the furloughs. His motion failed 9-3, with Nithya Raman’s opponent, David Ryu, not even showing up for the vote.

• Los Angeles schools will now be able to reopen for a limited number of special ed and ESL students, though it will still be up to local districts whether or not they want to take advantage of this new policy.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• A gang of Sheriff’s Deputies called The Executioners has long been reported as operating within the Compton Sheriff’s station. Now, a whistleblower within the department has testified that Miguel Vega, the Compton deputy who shot and killed Andres Guardado, was an Executioners prospect.

• Protesters involved in three demonstrations over the past month have filed a federal civil rights suit against Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villenueva and the County of Los Angeles for the use of “indiscriminate and unreasonable force” in the treatment of protesters, withholding access to water, keeping protesters detained in unventilated spaces without masks, and other tactics “designed to punish protesters.” Complaint here.

• A photo-essay in L.A. Taco documents the “all hands on deck” demonstration demanding justice for Dijon Kizzee, who was killed by sheriff’s deputies this week in South Los Angeles.

Climate

• The Los Angeles Times reviews the findings of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education’s recently-released 636-page report on policies the state might employ in order to integrate economic and workforce development into major climate policies and programs and help achieve California’s major climate goals. “But don’t call it a “green jobs” report.”

Elections

• In response to public outrage many curtailments of the postal service planned by the Trump administration have since been abandoned. California’s attorney general will now seek the immediate reversal of all changes the administration had already put in place.

• The labor-backed, statewide campaign to win passage of Proposition 15 in November stepped-up on Wednesday with the launch of the official campaign. The Schools and Communities First coalition dropped two TV ads (‘Collar‘ and ‘What Matters Most‘) to mark the beginning of a campaign that is expected to be bitterly opposed by some of the most reactionary sections of capital in California. To overcome these forces and galvanize a broader, anti-austerity movement in California, DSA’s ‘Yes on 15’ campaign also announced their next steps in the fight to win the $12 billion a year for public schools and local services that Prop. 15 would generate. On Labor Day at 11:00 am DSA-LA and unionists will be meeting at Burbank USD and then driving onto Walt Disney Company HQ to demand the passage of Prop. 15 and a just recovery for workers – join here!

Black Lives Matter

• Reporting by Yahoo News recounts the intense two days that led to a wildcat strike in the NBA. The action was initiated by the Milwaukee Bucks in response to the police killing of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, and then led by players on the Lakers and Clippers.

• What do the owners of basketball teams have to do with protesting police violence? Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s organization, the Ballmer Group, has provided $750,000 to the LAPD’s community safety partnership (CSP). This is the type of police program Mayor Garcetti touts as “reform,” but which #Defund activists decry as responding to over-policing with more policing. To understand how CSP is just another way police tighten control over communities, watch this People’s City Council video. If you question whether many professional athletes would bother to draw these distinctions, the official demands of the Baltimore Ravens, released yesterday, may be worth your time.

• Just hours after the NBA meeting, BLM protesters were kettled by LAPD in the 3rd St. tunnel after the police declared that their makeshift shields were illegal weapons. Meanwhile, the city of Beverly Hills has taken the extraordinary step of filing misdemeanor charges against 25 protesters for “curfew violations” related to a peaceful protest on June 26.

• In a process accelerated by protests held in response to the recent killing of Anthony McClain by Pasadena police, Pasadena City Council passed legislation to create a Police Commission that will attempt to provide law enforcement oversight. An editorial written by the president of NAACP Pasadena considers what this legislation accomplishes, and some of the steps it fails to take.

• An editorial in the Sacramento Bee, widely circulated on Twitter, runs down all the common-sense police reforms the Democratic-controlled state legislature is failing or has failed to pass. Reporting in the LA Times observes the power police unions have to water down reform legislation.

Housing Justice

• In April a federal judge ordered the city of LA to suspend the confiscation of “bulky items” belonging to the unhoused, ruling that the summary destruction of property likely violated due process. The latest round of CARE+ sweeps around “bridge” housing violated that order. Now, attorneys representing Koreatown-based advocacy group Ktown For All, have asked the city to be held in contempt, and for fines of $45,000 to be imposed.

• Tweets from the Services Not Sweeps coalition recount the successful interruption of a morning sweep in Hollywood by a blockade of protesters. The coalition moved the unhoused residents impacted by the sweep into a hotel for two nights, challenging Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles Homeless Services Director Heidi Marston, and Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell. “If we can do it, why can’t [they]?”

• Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “A Bridge Home” program has not met goals in moving program participants into permanent housing. A survey of three PATH bridge housing shelters found that after over a year in operation, only 24% of program exits were into permanent housing.

Transit

• The High Desert Corridor freeway was envisioned as an 8-to-10-lane freeway, until Climate Resolve and others won a legal settlement that forced Caltrans to shelve the project. The Metro Planning and Programming Committee has approved diverting some of that funding to high-speed rail — specifically, the development of a 54-mile intercity rail service between Palmdale and Apple Valley, site of the future western terminus of the XpressWest project (connecting Las Vegas with Southern California).

• This week The Metro Board of Directors will consider awarding key contracts for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor Project — a proposed above-ground rail or subway system between the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles International Airport. This is the first time Metro has tried this kind of public-private partnership on a large scale.

Coronavirus Response

• The California Judicial Council’s statewide eviction moratorium is set to expire on September 1. The state’s legislative branch, though controlled by Democratic supermajorities in both houses, has been unable to move forward on meaningful legislation to address tenant relief in the fall.

• At this week’s meeting of Metro’s Operations, Safety, and Customer Experience Committee a planned vote on whether to cut bus service hours by 20% was cut for time. The item was postponed to next Thursday. The advocacy group Streets For All is encouraging those who oppose a cut to bus service to attend that meeting and give public comment.

• There has been some positive news on the COVID-19 front: active hospitalizations in Los Angeles County have dropped below 1,400 and health officials say that there has finally been a decline in the infection rate among Black and Latinx residents, though they are still higher than that of white residents. Should this trend continue, officials say that LAUSD schools could begin the process of reopening, though school board member Jackie Goldberg has stressed the importance of having a testing and tracing program in place across the district before any applications are considered.

Labor

• In the wake of last week’s California court decision classifying Uber and Lyft drivers as employees rather than “independent contractors,” as well as those companies’ resulting threats to shut down operations in the state, an appeals court has given the companies until early September to determine how to comply with the order. In the interim, the hundreds of thousands of employees of the companies will continue to be classified as contractors, even as both companies continue to fight against the order.

Climate

• California is scrambling to keep up with 367 new fires that have broken out over the past week, and the state is running out of resources. Firefighting crews are depleted due to the coronavirus outbreak, which hit California prisons hard. The state depends on its inmates, who are paid $1/hour, to fight fires. Twelve firefighter camps have been forced into quarantine, and only half of the authorized “inmate crews” are available. Right now, about 6,900 firefighters are deployed. Gov. Newsom is planning to hire 858 additional seasonal firefighters through October, and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is seeking to bring in hundreds more from out of state, which will require heightened safety precautions.

• Rising seas are threatening California’s shoreline, farmers, and also areas once considered less vulnerable to flooding — like Marin City, a predominantly Black and working-class community.  California scientists and urban planners say that lawmakers “cannot afford to defer all preparation” until after the state recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, and predict that the sea could rise more than 6 inches in just the next decade.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• From Garcetti to Hertzberg to Lacey, protesting in front of city officials’ houses has become common in SoCal in 2020. Less common is when those officials actually open their doors and respond. Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek did just that when BLM protesters gathered at his house in the name of Anthony McClain, who was killed by Pasadena police this week. The mayor promised them that he would bring a proposal to the city council on Monday for a police oversight commission. That proposal has been criticized by officials and activists alike, who say it does not go far enough.

• Councilmember Herb Wesson has called for an investigation into the “swatting” hoax that sent armed police officers to Black Lives Matter – Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah’s house last week. Abdullah described what happened to The Nation.

Elections

• ICYMI: Here is a finalized list of all the propositions that will appear on California ballots statewide this November.

• The Trump administration has backed away from many of its more egregious curtailments of the United States Post Service, but it’s unclear if the related multi-state lawsuit against the administration, joined by California, will continue. Testifying before Congress today, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said that the mail sorting machines removed under his leadership will not be reinstalled.

Local Politics

• The state Democratic Party is divided between those who want to fund pandemic relief and other social services with taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and those like Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg, whose stimulus package relies on funding from “complex financial mechanisms and vouchers” and hypothetical federal loans from the Trump administration.

• In the aftermath of corruption probes that have implicated two sitting councilmembers in pay-to-play real estate deals, the City Council voted to initiate the process of establishing an Office of Anti-Corruption and Transparency, and to establish an inspector general for land use and development.

• Los Angeles will soon begin its redistricting process, which happens every ten years. An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times explains how the past decade’s corruption within the City Council is linked to the redistricting that occurred ten years ago. Activist pressure has resulted in what should be a more transparent process this time around.

Labor

• A landmark ruling from the California Superior Court compels Uber and Lyft to reclassify their drivers from independent contractors to employees. This will entitle California drivers to health insurance, worker’s comp, and other benefits. Uber and Lyft have already initiated a capital strike in response, threatening a shut down of operations in California if the ruling isn’t somehow reversed. Proposition 22 — a November ballot measure funded in large part by Uber, Lyft and Door Dash — would change the law to allow the companies to continue treating their gig-worker employees as independent contractors.

Climate

• Environmental activists are regrouping after AB 345 — which would require a mandatory setback distance between fossil fuel production operations and homes, schools or hospitals — failed 5–4 in a contentious committee vote last week. The lack of such environmental protections in California means the state lags behind states such as Texas and North Dakota; while the majority of people living in close proximity to drilling are Black, Brown, or Indigenous.

• The sec­ond largest teach­ers’ union in the coun­try passed a res­o­lu­tion in sup­port of the Green New Deal this July. In These Times checked in with the AFL-CIO to spell out what obstacles remain to this support spreading to the broader labor movement, where job security is a concern.

• At a recent hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, testimony from Drew Shindell, Nicholas professor of earth science at Duke University (and a lead author on both recent IPCC reports), revealed that the increase in hospitalizations and premature death that would result from Trump’s rollbacks of Obama’s fuel economy standards and Clean Power Plan are up to twice as large as previously estimated.

• The Trump administration is not alone in ignoring science in service of capital. City Council District 4 candidate Nithya Raman called out the Los Angeles City Council for voting 12–1 in favor of relaxing pollution-reduction requirements at the Port of LA for China Shipping despite opposition from the NRDC and the California Air Resources Board.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• At a dystopian press conference, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department attempted to rationalize the killing of Andres Guardado by sheriff’s deputies… by noting that the location of the shooting had previously been the scene of unrelated violent crime. A department spokesperson theorized that the deputies who killed Guardado were “probably drawn to that location in being proactive.” A lawyer for the Guardado family called out this narrative as “nothing more than an attempt to justify the killing of this young man.”

• At a press conference earlier this week, Compton Mayor Aja Brown called on the state’s attorney general to investigate allegations of excessive force and discriminatory policing at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Compton station: “We demand the same treatment that deputies provide to the residents of Malibu, Rancho Palos Verdes and other affluent communities.” The deputies who killed Andres Guardado worked in the Compton station.

Housing Justice

• On July 29 the City Council voted in favor of resuming sweeps of unhoused encampments around “bridge housing” shelters, a process that had been suspended as a result of the pandemic. Mitch O’Farrell voted in favor of sweeps, but insisted that they be referred to as “deep cleans,” as the approach would be “very very compassionate” and take care to focus on cleaning without displacing anyone. Monitors from Street Watch LA observed a scheduled sweep in O’Farrell’s district, which their coverage demonstrates was undertaken without proper notification. Unhoused residents who did not happen to be around during the sweep had their tents destroyed.

• Relatedly, a detailed article on michaelkohlhaas.org demonstrates, using many internal emails from within Los Angeles’ municipal government, how these sweeps get initiated, commonly without any checks or balances.

Coronavirus: Resurgence and Response

• Time is running out in both Sacramento and Washington, DC, to save tenant and unemployment protections. Talks between top Democrats and Republicans are going nowhere, and California legislative leaders are asking the state judicial board to extend their eviction ban through September 5 to give them time to pass legislation to protect millions of tenants.

• The recent resurgence of coronavirus in Los Angeles County has hit especially hard in the predominantly Latinx hub cities of Southeast LA, driven by the “huge blind spot” in pandemic response that failed to protect workers.

• Los Angeles County has resumed the enforcement of evictions, following similar actions in Orange and San Bernardino counties. A planned round of lockouts will be enforced by the sheriff’s department, with the “currently highlighted” eviction orders limited to those that predated the shelter-in-place order. “How do they expect people to shelter in place if they have no place to shelter?” asked tenants’ rights activist Elena Popp.

• Los Angeles County has not met thresholds set by the California Department of Public Health that would allow schools to apply to reopen. A waiver process was being developed that would allow certain schools to reopen if they demonstrated a broad base of community and labor stakeholder support, but it can only be put into effect if the number of coronavirus cases in the county drops below 200 per 100,000. It’s still at 355.

Labor

• After a yearlong standoff and collective action, the Writers Guild of America has reached an agreement with ICM Partners that will make ICM the second of the “Big 4” talent agencies to end the predatory, but long-standing, industry practice of negotiating packaging fees.

• A new LA Times report shows that Cal/OSHA, the safety board meant to protect the state’s workers, hasn’t even been able to protect its own employees. Anonymous staffers say the organization is not providing testing or other COVID safety measures in its offices, and depleted ranks have left Cal/OSHA without a bilingual inspector or enough staff to do in-person inspections.

Climate

• Despite demands from environmental groups and frontline activists, the California Senate Committee on Natural Resources voted 5–4 against passing AB 345, a bill that would require the CA Natural Resources Agency to adopt an environmental justice program and require buffer zones between oil wells and at-risk areas like schools and homes. Public comment preceding the bill’s hearing was flooded by callers who work in the oil and energy industries. The bill will be reconsidered for a final vote on August 12.

Elections

• Black Lives Matter-LA will now have the chance to take their case directly to voters, as the County Board of Supervisors approved 4–1 to add the Reimagine LA Initiative to the November ballot. The initiative would permanently shift 10% of the county’s unrestricted funding — approximately $1 billion — away from law enforcement and toward programs like community counseling, mental health services, youth development programs, and affordable housing.

• The husband of Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey will face assault charges related to his pointing a gun at Black Lives Matter activists in March.

• Ground Game LA  organized a discussion among four leftist candidates for office in Los Angeles County: Godfrey Santos Plata and Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, running for state assembly seats, and Nithya Raman and Konstantine Anthony, running for city council seats in Los Angeles and Burbank.

Housing Rights

• Despite objections from activists and community members, the Los Angeles City Council voted 10–4 to resume sweeps of the “Special Enforcement and Cleaning Zones” created around shelters associated with Mayor Eric Garcetti’s A Bridge Home program. The Bureau of Sanitation had ceased these operations in March due to the pandemic and the recommendation of public health officials that unhoused people be allowed to remain in place.

• Kristy Lovich, a Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority supervisor who has pushed in recent weeks for the homeless agency to sever ties with law enforcement, was fired for undisclosed reasons this week. Lovich has spoken out against LAHSA’s reliance on police to do enforcement sweeps, accusing the agency and city council of reneging on a promise last fall to allow service workers (instead of police) to take the lead on interactions with unhoused Angelenos.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Mayor Eric Garcetti joined with other city officials to announce the expansion of the Community Safety Partnership, a unit of the police that focuses on building relationships between law enforcement and the communities they police. Though conceived as a reply to protests against police violence, the move is opposed by many activists. “We absolutely want the things that were raised — tutoring, field trips, recreation programs. I’m a mom, I want those things. But those services cannot and should not be offered by police,” said BLM-LA co-founder Melina Abdullah.

• Protesters from various organizations, including BLM-LA, gathered in Westwood on Sunday to show solidarity with activists in Portland. This comes after recent reports from Portland of brutal crackdowns and the removal of protesters by federal agents in unmarked vans.

• ICE’s “Citizen’s Training” program has been flooded with false applications. The program, which offers “scenario-based” training to civilians, has been criticized as an “armed vigilante” group. Organizations such as Never Again encouraged people to flood the database in order to delay the project, even reaching out to K-pop fans. The first Citizen’s Academy was offered during the Obama administration.

• A veteran LAPD SWAT sergeant has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the department, claiming that leaders of the SWAT division “glamorize the use of lethal force, and direct the promotions of officers who share the same values while maligning the reputations of officers who do not.”

• Three LAPD officers have been charged with falsifying records and obstructing justice, as evidence surfaced that they falsely portrayed people as gang members or associates on field interview cards. Field interviews of gang members are used as a measure of productivity for officers, which can incentivize false reports; over 20 more officers are still under investigation. District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced this week that her office would review hundreds of cases involving the three charged officers.

• Unite Here Local 11, which represents Cristobal Guardado — the father of Andres Guardado, the eighteen-year-old whom the sheriff’s department shot and killed on June 18 — has called for the resignation of Sheriff Alex Villanueva. The letter, signed by 60 organizations including BLM-LA and the American Civil Liberties Union, declares, “You have dramatically exacerbated [the department’s] problems by undermining basic mechanisms of accountability and civilian oversight at every turn. This historic moment demands that you recognize when it is time for you to go — and the time is now.”

• This pressure on Sheriff Villanueva mounts as his attitude toward LA County’s Board of Supervisors has grown increasingly toxic and strange.

Climate

• As climate activists call for a total phaseout of fossil fuels, SoCalGas is being investigated by the Public Advocates Office to determine whether the utility has used ratepayer dollars to support pro-gas advocacy and lobbying. In response to questions from the consumer watchdog, SoCalGas has acknowledged lobbying government officials for policies that would result in more natural-gas-fueled vehicles and has also acknowledged charging its customers for some of that lobbying.

Labor

• By a margin of 97%, childcare workers for low-income families on public assistance voted to join Child Care Providers United, a union formed in a partnership of SEIU and AFSCME. These workers, mostly women of color, are heavily reliant on state aid, and many effectively make less than minimum wage.

Elections

• An article published in the Los Angeles Times recontextualizes Councilmember David Ryu’s recent rebranding as a “progressive fighter” as a likely reaction to the challenge he is facing to his left from campaign rival Nithya Raman.