The Thorn West

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.

Happy May Day!

Happy May Day to all the comrades in struggle today! DSA-LA’s Political Education Committee shares this short pamphlet of assorted May Day histories, memories, and songs compiled as both a celebration of our radical tradition and as a call to commit (and recommit) to our collective fight for an ambitious and emancipatory political horizon. As Martha Foley says in these pages, “We are not alone! There are others, many, many others and we triumph!” Solidarity forever!

Local News

California is facing a record low turnout in 2020’s census. With conventional canvassing and door knocking impossible, advocates worry about undercounts in vulnerable communities. You can take the census online here. On April 28th, International Workers Memorial Day, Trump used the Defense Production Act to compel meat processors across the country to stay open, or reopen, despite the plants being the site of some of the highest rates of COVID-19 transmission nationwide. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union reported the same day that at least 20 meat processing plant workers had died and 5000 had been hospitalized or were showing symptoms of the virus. In addition to forcing these plants to stay open at the expense of workers’ lives, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Labor Department are vowing that the federal government will defend employers against worker lawsuits over workplace exposures during the pandemic. The move comes at a time when some state governments are also signaling to workers that they will lose continuing unemployment benefits if they decline to return to their workplace out of concern for their health and safety. Immigrant detainees at ICE detention centers continue to report being on hunger strike for their release and for protections against COVID-19 as the number of confirmed cases among detainees and employees grows daily. Incarcerated immigrants at Otay Mesa, site of the largest outbreak of any detention center nationwide, report that ICE is massively underreporting cases in detention. ICE has tested only 705 out of 30–40,000 detainees as of this week, with 60% of those tested coming back positive. Thus far, 70% of federal prison inmates tested have been positive for COVID-19. A federal judge this week upheld Trump’s recent executive order that uses nativist arguments of “protecting American workers” during the pandemic to bar green cards for many for a period of 60 days or more. Administration officials have indicated to supporters in private calls that the order is a preview of more long-term restrictions to immigration. According to the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning council, more than 1,100 physical and verbal attacks against Asian Americans have been documented since late March across 46 states, with women more likely to be targeted than men. Activists in California are calling on county supervisors to denounce discrimination and hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, the FBI issued an intelligence report warning of an increase in hate crimes “based on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations.” Echoing historical xenophobic and racist tropes used against Asian Americans and communities of color, President Trump, other politicians, and media figures have repeatedly used the phrase “China virus” to refer to the pandemic rather than the terms “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” used by public health officials. Incidents can be reported to Stop AAPI Hate here. Some law enforcement agencies are publicly pushing back against the Judicial Council’s April 6 emergency bail schedule, which lowers bail for low-level crimes to $0 statewide in an effort to reduce crowding in jails and combat the spread of COVID-19. “These misguided judges and the professional apologists for criminals saw an opportunity to utilize COVID-19 to advance their dangerous views on incarceration,” said the head of the San Jose police union. In November, California will vote on SB-10, which will eliminate cash bail permanently and replace it with a risk-based system. A Northern California police officer is under investigation after a viral video of the officer punching a 14-year-old African American boy while pinning him to the ground was released by the boy’s family, creating nationwide outrage. Tanya Faison, founder of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, noted that this was the third encounter in the past year in the Sacramento area that involved police officers over-policing children of color. In June, Sacramento police officers put a spit hood on a 12-year-old boy, and in July, three 13-year-old boys were held at gunpoint by a Sacramento police officer, Faison said. This week the California Labor Secretary has created a separate portal for the Pandemic Assistance Program. Self-employed and gig workers can now apply for $600 a week and receive compensation for any wages lost or diminished since March 29. Many are still struggling to access the original EDD Unemployment website, and although the state has planned to hire more staff, 43% of those who have already applied are waiting to receive benefits. Conservative groups have filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom, after Newsom’s announcement on April 15 that the state would allocate $75 million in aid for undocumented immigrants as part of a plan to provide $125 million in aid for those without legal status. The plan, allocating $500 per adult, would be financed partly by NGOs. This does not cover even basic necessities in Los Angeles, where the average rent alone is $2,375 for a one-bedroom apartment. Governor Gavin Newsom detailed four stages for California to begin loosening stay-at-home orders. The first phase, which we are currently in, involves the state increasing its testing, contact tracing, stores of personal protective equipment, and hospital surge capacity, while also having essential workplaces make physical and workflow adaptations and encouraging behavioral changes by individuals. Hitting benchmarks here will enable Phase 2, which allows for lower-risk sectors to gradually reopen with modifications that maintain social distancing guidelines, including some retail stores, manufacturing sites, offices where telecommuting is not possible and some public spaces like parks and trails. This phase will also require wage replacement, to allow sick workers to remain at home. Phase 3 will allow for the reopening of higher-risk workplaces, while Phase 4 will mark the end of stay-at-home orders and permit the reopening of the highest-risk events, like large-scale concerts, conventions and live-audience sports. To achieve Phase 4 will require coronavirus therapeutics to be in place. Beginning May 4, LA City Council will resume weekly meetings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Elections

The California Attorney General’s office is reviewing whether Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s husband should be charged with a crime. David Lacey pointed a gun at Black Lives Matter activists outside the Lacey home on March 2, prior to the primary election. Jackie Lacey is in a runoff election with challenger George Gascon; primary election results at the precinct level are now mapped here.

DSA-LA ORGANIZING PROFILES:

STREETWATCH VICTORY!

What is Streetwatch? Streetwatch began in 2017 as a project of the DSA-LA Housing & Homelessness (H&H) committee, inspired by and trained by the amazing organizers in the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), who began their “Community Watch” program in 2006, and won several lawsuits against the city. Streetwatch member Jed Parriott, who is also a member of LA CAN, noticed that those lawsuits ended in settlements that only applied to Skid Row, and realized there was a need for a similar program that gathered evidence of the city’s harmful practices throughout LA. The Streetwatch group quickly grew into a big part of the work of the H&H committee. Streetwatch teams are now active in Echo Park, Hollywood, Westside, SF Valley, Koreatown and Downtown LA, with a newly formed South Bay team in progress. Streetwatch co-founded a citywide coalition that calls for Services Not Sweeps, which has now inspired the similar Solutions Not Sweeps in San Francisco and works closely with Ktown for All.A Major Legal Victory Streetwatch was there when Janet Garcia, a housecleaner, had all her work supplies thrown away by the city as she was using a nearby restroom, and has seen the city do this countless times. Janet Garcia and seven other unhoused people in different locations agreed to sue the City of LA. Members of LA CAN, Streetwatch, Ktown for All and lawyers at Legal Aid Foundation offered to negotiate with the city, and spent eight months trying to come to an agreement out of court. The city refused to offer meaningful concessions and the negotiations failed, so lawyers at Legal Aid filed the lawsuit, which challenges the city’s municipal code 56.11, one part of which allows the city to immediately trash anything they consider a “bulky item.” People living through these dehumanizing sweeps get no warning and no clear instructions on what is and is not bulky. The court ruled on April 13 that this part of the city code is likely unconstitutional, so the City of LA must immediately stop enforcing it. The lawsuit continues against other aspects of LAMC 56.11, but this is a huge victory for Janet Garcia and everyone else who has had their rights violated because they cannot afford a roof over their heads. DSA-LA was instrumental in the work that allowed this lawsuit to go forward; without Streetwatch we would not have had the leverage to get this result. In 2019, LA CAN presented DSA-LA with a “Freedom Now” award. We are proud of our work to bring together housed and unhoused people across the city, fighting against capitalism together — which continues with our #NoVacancyCA campaign!

LOCAL NEWS

Hundreds of immigrant detainees report being on hunger strike to demand protections against COVID-19 at three ICE detention facilities in California — Adelanto, Mesa Verde and Otay Mesa. At Otay Mesa, site of the second-worst outbreak in ICE detention, 42 detainees and eight ICE employees have been confirmed positive for the virus as of April 22; ICE has confirmed 287 detainees and 35 employees in their facilities testing positive nationwide. Detainees at Otay Mesa report that employees of the private prison company Core Civic, which runs the facility, attempted to force them to sign a release form — written only in English — in exchange for a single surgical mask that they are expected to use for a period of 15 days. Those who refused to sign and protested were pepper sprayed. Detainees at other ICE facilities nationwide have described similar abuse as they have advocated for themselves in light of the risks of the pandemic. On April 20, a federal judge ordered ICE to review the custody of every at-risk person in detention nationwide and consider their release, saying that the government’s failure to protect them from the risks of COVID-19 “likely exhibited callous indifference to [their] safety and wellbeing.”  144 people incarcerated by the state of California have tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 22, as have 97 Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation employees. The first confirmed death of an incarcerated person in a California state prison came Sunday in San Bernardino County. Meanwhile, Lompoc, CA, is the site of the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in a federal prison in the US; 69 incarcerated people and 25 employees have tested positive there. Research suggests that mass incarceration will be a major driver of COVID-19 infection rates and fatalities. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country on earth and also leads the world in COVID-19 cases. An epidemiological study released in collaboration with the ACLU this week finds that models projecting 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States have failed to account for mass incarceration as a vector of infection, and estimates that an additional 100,000 people could die unless drastic decarceration is undertaken.  A coalition of more than 50 Black Los Angeles–based community leaders issued 55 immediate and long-term demands in light of COVID-19 and rates of Black death, stating that “Interlocking economic, political, and social injustices collide with long-standing patterns of medical racism to make COVID-19 a Black issue that demands a response specific to the needs of the Black community” and highlighting that “Black people are dying at two-three times our population share from COVID-19. In Los Angeles County, the rate of Black death is twice our population share, with Black people constituting 9% of the County population, but 17% of the COVID-19 deaths. With nearly 900,000 Black residents in the County and 403,000 Black residents in the City (the eighth-highest number of any city in the United States), what happens in Los Angeles has serious national implications. While several initiatives have been launched nationally, state-wide and locally, none speak to the particular needs of the Black community.”  The coronavirus pandemic continues to place a spotlight on the devastating impact of air pollution on the human body, with severe cases of COVID-19 being linked to high air pollution. Scientists have recently detected coronavirus on particles of air pollution, and are investigating if this may increase the distance that the virus can travel. Even before the pandemic, air pollution was considered the largest environmental risk factor for disease in the US. Communities of color are particularly impacted by pollution due to higher rates of pollution and decades-long disparities in healthcare systems. The result is that African-American children are “500 times more likely to die from asthma than white children, and have a 250 percent higher hospitalization rate for the condition.” In Wisconsin, African-Americans are just 6% of the population but account for half of the COVID-19 deaths, and “in New York City, Hispanic people represent 29 percent of the population, and 34 percent of the city’s deaths — the largest percentage by race.” The impact of pollution goes far beyond being associated with severe cases of COVID-19. Studies have indicated links between high pollution and long-term health impacts such as increased likelihood of developing high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and negative impacts on fetal birth weight.  At Wednesday’s Los Angeles City Council meeting, a bid to blanket ban all evictions for the duration of the Coronavirus emergency failed, by a vote of 6–7. A measure already passed in March banned evictions of tenants who had been impacted by the pandemic, but Councilmember Mike Bonin, one of the sponsors of the blanket ban, echoed objections that the earlier law forced tenants to demonstrate loss of income, and allowed unscrupulous landlords to strong-arm tenants unsure of their rights. The city attorney, again present at council in an emergency capacity, reiterated concerns that a blanket ban would exceed the city’s authority and open the city to lawsuits. These concerns were cited by the measure’s opponents, including Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, who called the process a “charade” and specifically chastised the legal advocacy group Public Counsel — which had released analysis arguing the city indeed had the legal authority to enforce an eviction moratorium — for offering “false hope.” The legality of such a measure remains in dispute. Councilmember Gil Cedillo reassured the council that the knowledge that the City of Los Angeles would not be going much farther than it had to protect renters would bring people “peace.” The City Council passed a measure voicing support for combined relief for renters and property owners at the state and federal level, and moved over a million dollars into a fund that would provide assistance to renters. A similar fund established in Santa Clara quickly ran through 11 million dollars in March. A study found that people “experiencing homelessness are twice as likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and two to three times more likely to die than the general population.” Getting into a shelter may not help, as outbreaks are developing in some — and a new UC Berkeley study shows “high-density congregate settings” to be unsafe even if operators follow social distancing guidelines. A better solution is to use single-occupancy hotel rooms, but, as of Tuesday, LA County has leased just 2500 and fewer than 750 are occupied, vastly below the city’s 60,000 homeless residents. Efforts to expand the use of hotels is being met with resistance from local residents. A drive-through protest of stay-at-home orders was held by right-wing group “Operation Gridlock” in Downtown Los Angeles, but was sparsely attended. The Los Angeles Times plans to stop publishing three community newspapers: the Glendale News-Press, Burbank Leader and La Cañada Valley Sun. “The three titles, while journalistically sound, are operating at significant losses,” the paper explained in a note to readers.

ELECTIONS

DSA-LA member and city council candidate Nithya Raman — an urban planner who has focused on urban poverty, housing and homelessness and is endorsed by DSA-LA in the ongoing race for City Council District 4 — published an op-ed criticizing the City Council for cracking down on unlicensed street vendors, writing that “in an environment of near-universal desperation like this one, getting relief requires a loud voice to make your needs heard. Unfortunately, those who need the most help right now are often people we’ve forced into the shadows all along. The faces of LA’s shadow food economy are its street vendors. There are about 50,000 street vendors operating in Los Angeles, 10,000 of whom sell food. Many are undocumented. Many are refugees, whose families came here fleeing violence in Central America. Many are seniors. 80 percent are women of color…Los Angeles has never done right by its vendors. This crisis was an opportunity to make up for decades of cruelty — to give neighborhood vendors the opportunity to serve food safely and legally, and help fill the gaps left by dried-up supply chains and shuttered restaurants. Instead, the city has done the opposite. We’ve failed them again.”

LOCAL NEWS

• The coronavirus pandemic is having a devastating and disproportionate impact on black communities, and black pastors and activists representing communities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia are decrying disproportionately high death rates among African-Americans and demanding immediate action, including data on COVID-19 deaths by race and access to treatment. “Blacks often live in communities with less access to high-quality, affordable healthcare. This limits testing and treatment which results in more severe cases and deaths,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. Due to persistent systemic racism, black communities are more likely to suffer from pre-existing conditions and unequal access to healthcare, black workers are more likely to hold jobs deemed essential and black people are disproportionately incarcerated in a prison system that is unsanitary and makes social distancing impossible. Environmental racism is also contributing to deaths, with polluted low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles being especially impacted. A week after the California Department of Public Health began collecting statewide data on how COVID-19 infections and deaths break down by race, the partial data released has shown that African-Americans, who make up 6% of the state’s population, currently account for 7% of infections and 11% of the 750 deaths, with a hospitalization and ICU rate 2.5x higher than those of white Californians. This disparate impact is also reflected in health data from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in which black people suffered the highest rates of severe illness and death. On April 14 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer to provide a breakdown of county data within 14 days, including an analysis of testing and COVID-19 fatalities by race, ethnicity and age group.
• Both Mayor Garcetti and Governor Newsom rolled out frameworks this week that will be used to determine when businesses and public spaces will be allowed to reopen. Both plans call for a stronger, more widespread system for testing and isolating coronavirus cases as well as strengthening hospital infrastructure to deal with future surges in infections. However, there is still no timeframe on when the lockdown may be eased or when businesses and public spaces will be able to reopen; we will all have to adjust to a new normal. LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer says that retail stores, which will be the first to reopen, will have to put a limit on how many are in the store at any one time. Museums and cultural centers will likely have to do the same, and concerts and sporting events may not return until sometime next year. Talk of reopening might be very premature, as The Atlantic reports that growth of COVID-19 testing, critical to reopening the country, has stalled in the past two weeks.
• Three weeks after the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was signed into law, Americans have begun to receive their $1200 payments. About 60 million checks have already gone out to those who filed their 2018 or 2019 tax returns with direct-deposit information. A second round, in approximately one week, will reach Social Security recipients who did not file tax returns but provided direct-deposit information in other forms. A third round in the first week of May will cover those who are receiving the money by check.
• After an ongoing outcry from activists and residents for more relief for renters, a plan to give Los Angeles renters $1000 a month for three months was approved unanimously by the LA County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. Under the plan, the county will use federal assistance money received in the recent stimulus, coupled with private funding, to provide rent aid to households that will not need to be paid back. Meanwhile California renters including sick, elderly and pregnantresidents continue to face evictions from landlords, highlighting the need for greater protections for renters and gaps in existing protections.
• The LA mayor’s office created a program that randomly awards a prepaid debit card of up to $1500 to residents, but the application website crashed after a crush of 56,000 applications on the first day. To be eligible for what’s being called the Angeleno card, residents’ income must have been below the federal poverty line before the stay-at-home order was issued last month or they must have fallen into “deeper hardship” with their income reduced by at least 50%. Eligible applicants will be placed in a lottery. On Tuesday, after the application web page melted down and phone lines crashed, Garcetti told desperate residents not to “worry if you’ve not gotten through because there are two more days still.”
• Amid reports from food banks of massive increases in usage, crops are being left to rot and thousands of gallons of raw milk dumped, while lines and demand at Southern California food banks are at historic levels. There has been a 49% increase in food distributed by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which serves about 600 agencies across the region. Without the demand from restaurants, farmers say there is not a market for the produce and food banks cannot cover the cost of the labor needed to harvest it.
• Scientists have concluded that man-made global warming is responsible for at least half of a historic drought hitting California and western states that is turning into one of the deepest megadroughts in 1200 years. UCLA scientist Daniel Swain highlighted the significance of the results, saying it provides evidence “that human-caused climate change transformed what might have otherwise been a moderate long-term drought into a severe event comparable to the ‘megadroughts’ of centuries past.”

ELECTIONS

• As Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, focus turned to the question of whether the candidate would receive “full-throated” endorsements from leftist politicians. Senator Bernie Sanders, as he did in 2016, endorsed his former rival for the nomination in a joint video. In a series of interviews, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez made clear that she “will be supporting the Democratic nominee in November,” while challenging him to move to the left on several issues, and becoming one of the first high-profile politicians to speak openly about the sexual assault allegations against the candidate. Meanwhile, the DSA explicitly announced that they would not endorse Biden, alongside several local chapters of DSA, and YDSA.

LOCAL NEWS

• Governor Gavin Newsom announced that 2.3 million unemployment claims have been processed in the last four weeks. Many newly unemployed workers are struggling to access benefits as phone lines are overwhelmed during the daily four-hour window provided by the Employment Development Department. In response, state lawmakers have called to extend the hours. Other weaknesses in the system have also been exposed: California’s unemployment benefits have not kept up with inflation, and limited reserves mean that the state will likely have to borrow from the federal government to pay out the massive increase in claims. Starting Sunday, weekly benefits will increase by $600, funded by the federal stimulus relief package. However, the state has not yet been able to develop a mechanism for distributing benefits to the newly expanded pool of workers eligible for unemployment, which includes people who are self-employed, temporary workers, part-time workers, freelancers, contract workers, and gig economy workers.
• With coronavirus spreading at a San Diego detention center, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency says it will review cases for release nationwide. This may be too little too late for some high-risk detainees who have been placed in close proximity to other potentially infected detainees due to an ICE practice known as “cohorting.” If one detainee in a unit tests positive for the virus, then all of the other detainees in that same unit become “cohorts” and are isolated together, which means that someone could avoid being infected by the initial positive carrier only to be placed together with others who are potentially contagious for two weeks. Then if another cohort tests positive, the clock is reset and the detainees must weather another 14-day period. Detainees say the practice of cohorting is particularly anxiety-inducing for those with conditions that make them susceptible to severe COVID-19 symptoms.
• California officials are looking at some measures to ease overcrowded prisons as more prison officials test positive for coronavirus. These potentially include 6-month early release for thousands of inmates, setting bail at zero for misdemeanor and lower-level felony offenses, and the expansion of video and phone use to ensure defendants are not held in custody without timely hearings.
• While the Bay Area has prohibited almost all residential and commercial construction, most of California is continuing with construction projects amid the pandemic, with Governor Gavin Newsom saying that a wide ban like in the state of New York is not necessary. Robbie Hunter, the head of the Building and Construction Trades Council of California, which represents 460,000 workers and 60,000 apprentices, backed Newsom, saying “We are used to serious training for different scenarios — and we have applied everything we’ve got on this.” Despite their assurances, at least one worker has tested positive at the construction site for the SoFi Stadium, the future home of the NFL’s Chargers and Rams, and another is suspected positive. One worker said “If our safety was the most important thing, they wouldn’t have us out here,” while another said “Everyone is a little nervous, but we need the money.”
• “President Newsom” was briefly trending on Twitter this week, following an interview with Rachel Maddow in which the governor announced that California had procured a monthly supply of 200 million N95 respiratory and surgical masks through negotiations with “a consortium of nonprofits.” Newsom later announced that California was able to loan 500 ventilators to states that were desperately undersupplied due to COVID-19. This led to some controversy within the state, where some counties are still concerned about their lack of ventilators on hand during a week when California anticipates a potential surge of cases. “It did catch us off guard,” said Kevin Jeffries, Riverside County’s district supervisor. “Our request [for ventilators] through the state and feds have not been filled and our attempt to purchase them on the market has not been successful.”
• After arriving on March 27, the Mercy, a massive floating hospital “carrying 1,000 beds, a crew of 800, 12 operating rooms, labs, pharmacy, and radiological equipment,” has treated just 31 patients, none of whom are COVID-19 patients. According to its captain, this is by design, with the ship currently testing the system in place so that it can act as a release valve for local area hospitals should they begin to see a surge in coronavirus cases. If necessary, the ship may shift to treating only coronavirus patients.
• As programs that provided home health aides and other services have been forced to close by the COVID-19 pandemic, many families have had to start caring for severely disabled loved ones on their own. Caretakers for people with developmental disabilities are not specifically included in Newsom’s 14-page order enumerating who is and isn’t an essential worker. Students with disabilities— especially those in minority communities — have struggled similarly with a loss of their safety nets as an effect of district-wide school closures.
• Local officials are beginning a crackdown on those who violate the state’s stay-at-home order, with Los Angeles arresting and fining individuals and filing criminal charges against businesses that refuse to close. Amid worries that cases may begin to surge in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said that the city’s ability to manage the surge will depend on residents adhering to guidelines. The maximum penalty for a violation is a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.
• A nonprofit named Shared Harvest — founded by doctors Nana Afoh-Manin, Joanne Moreau, and Briana DeCuir — launched a pop-up coronavirus testing site in Culver City last week to serve uninsured and underinsured residents of Los Angeles. Despite the high costs of testing, they plan to expand the service. “The only way we are going to make sure that no individuals are left behind is to get into the community, meet them where they are, and provide the services they need so that we can stop this virus,” said CEO Afoh-Manin.
• Coronavirus may exacerbate existing problems in the housing market in California, further driving up the cost of affordable housing, which in some counties has already reached the eye-popping sticker price of $1.1 million per unit. With over a million California residents recently having lost their jobs, the current 1.3 million shortfall in affordable housing units is likely to get even worse. Meanwhile, cities face a potentially devastating loss of tax revenue, which will leave them with even less money to finance affordable housing.
• April 1, for many, was the first time their rent was due since COVID-19 cost them their employment, leading to uncertainty for many who will struggle to afford their rent. This week a patchwork of efforts at the state and local level sought to address this. At the April 7 meeting of the Los Angeles City Council, Councilmember Mike Bonin put forth a motion that would reclassify rent as “consumer debt,” which would mean that unpaid rent, though it would still need to be repaid, could no longer lead to an eviction. The motion will be considered at a later meeting. At the county level, supervisors Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis proposed an emergency rent-assistance program for up to $1,000 a month for three months to renters affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The strongest protection for tenants happened at the state level, as the Judicial Council adopted an emergency court rule that effectively — though not literally — prevents all evictions until 90 days after the governor lifts the state of emergency. None of these measures offer rent forgiveness, and all would leave tenants responsible for repaying back rent at some later date when they will again be vulnerable to eviction. Meanwhile, landlords are finding various ways of strong-arming and deceiving tenants into paying rent.
• In an effort dubbed Project Roomkey, Los Angeles County officials will work with the state government and Federal Emergency Management Agency to utilize currently vacant hotel and motel rooms to house some of the county’s unhoused residents. Officials say that 1,340 beds will be available by next week. Their goal is to eventually reach 15,000, which would help just a quarter of the city’s 60,000 homeless, many of whom are considered highly vulnerable to the coronavirus. This effort is in conjunction with the city converting recreation centers into emergency shelters, with 563 beds installed at 13 locations so far.
• A federal judge excoriated Los Angeles officials after he found that over 80% of handwashing stations in Skid Row were without water, leaving its vulnerable population without one of the key defenses to contracting coronavirus. In response, Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to have the stations refilled daily. The Legal Aid Foundation has further argued that the 410 handwashing stations around Los Angeles are inadequate for meeting the public health crisis. Food supplies for the unhoused are also being jeopardized due to hoarding and the economic downturn, as staples become hard to get and food pantry operations are disrupted.
• California has issued its first fracking permits since July 2019, a move Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog criticized, saying, “With the entire state shut down and kids out of school, what purpose could approving these fracking permits have now other than to do a solid for the oil industry when no one is watching.”

ELECTIONS

• Senator Bernie Sanders has suspended his presidential campaign, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee and President Donald Trump’s general election opponent. While falling short of the nomination, Sanders had a transformative effect on national politics, raising vast sums of money exclusively through small-dollar donors and dramatically shifting the policy debate toward previously unthinkable initiatives such as Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, and free public college and student debt forgiveness. Biden, in an attempt to win over the Sanders coalition, has recently announced proposals such as lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 and means-tested student debt forgiveness.

LOCAL NEWS

• The coronavirus crisis has put strain and increased scrutiny on California’s prisons and jails, as an inmate and four employees at Los Angeles County jails have tested positive. Inmates at Men’s Central Jail say that hygiene supplies have run out and many inmates have resorted to using bed sheets as toilet paper. In response, 3,500 California inmates have been released statewide in an effort to decrease the prison population, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved an order for the County Public Health Department to review conditions in the prisons, with plans to release more inmates. Last week, roughly 10% of Los Angeles County’s inmate population was released. 
  
• Tracking of positive tests in each Los Angeles neighborhood reflects that the highest number of positive tests are in Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills, while South Los Angeles has noticeably fewer positives. Wealthy neighborhoods are getting better access to testing; clinics in poorer neighborhoods like Saint John’s Well Child and Family Center are only getting dozens of tests for a patient pool of thousands. Los Angeles is suffering from the same shortfall in coronavirus testing capability that is hampering efforts to combat the pandemic across the U.S. Major problems include testing sites lacking basic materials such as swabs and many hospitals having to send their tests offsite, which can cause days-long delays of results. The delay renders the data “relatively useless” to officials, because it means the data cannot be used to trace an infected person’s contacts to stop the spread. Los Angeles County’s coronavirus testing coordinator said the “failure was federal, state and local. We all failed.”
  
• Measures taken by California Governor Gavin Newsom to protect renters are so weak that even the L.A. Times Editorial Board has called his executive order “flimsy,” saying the so-called moratorium on evictions is really just a delay. Evictions can still be initiated now due to non-payment and then enforced after May 31. Furthermore, the onus is placed on renters to prove in writing that their non-payment is related to COVID-19, which could be particularly difficult for undocumented workers or micro-entrepreneurs, such as street vendors, who do not have traditional proof of income. All missed rent also must be repaid in full. Newsom has the power to prevent all evictions, but is choosing not to.
  
• In a marathon 11-hour City Council online Zoom meeting last Friday, the Los Angeles City Council passed a round of emergency measures intended to add protections for renters and workers at large businesses struggling during the pandemic. The city now requires businesses with over 500 employees to provide 80 hours of paid leave that workers can use to recover from COVID-19 or to care for their family. This category of employers had been exempted from the federal coronavirus sick leave bill signed into law on March 18. The council also passed a watered-down motion that expands the length of time renters can pay back rent that goes unpaid during the coronavirus outbreak — from the six months originally proposed by Mayor Eric Garcetti to a year. It should be noted that eight of the 15 councilmembers are disclosed rental property owners, some of whom even still voted to strengthen protections for renters. The eviction moratorium failed by one vote, with Paul Krekorian and Curren D. Price Jr. recusing themselves. Price owns more properties than any other councilmember, with 13 units. The moratorium as it stands now would put a halt to all evictions and late fees for tenants that are impacted by COVID-19, until the emergency declaration is lifted, including commercial tenants.
  
• L.A. Times beat reporters David Zahniser and Emily Alpert Reyes have outlined the wide-reaching extent of the federal investigation that brought the downfall of former councilmember Mitchell Englander. Englander admitting last week to having taken envelopes full of cash in casino bathrooms is merely the latest cartoonish example of public grift. Englander was accompanied by current councilmember John Lee on the trip where the cash was handed over, though Lee claims innocence. Councilmember Jose Huizar had his home raided by the FBI in 2018 in connection to a political fundraiser.
  
• Militancy is rising among California’s tenants as they are pushed to the brink of survival by the coronavirus crisis. While advocacy coalitions such as Healthy LA (which includes DSA-LA and other partners) are pushing elected officials to do more with policies such as rent freezes and rent forgiveness, people are taking matters into their own hands with rent strikes and the Reclaiming Our Homes movement. For answers to common questions about what to do if a tenant cannot pay rent or receives an eviction notice due to coronavirus, see here.
  
• Public transit routes are being reduced or suspended throughout Southern California due to coronavirus, and the Beverly Hills City Council and Metro are moving to speed up construction on the Purple Line subway extension during the lull in congestion. Metro has also expanded its Mobility on Demand program to cover trips to grocery stores, pharmacies, and medical facilities. 
  
• Power plant operator AES Corp. has finalized an agreement to sell 51 acres of Redondo Beach waterfront property to real estate developer Leo Pustilnikov, including a commitment to shut down the gas-fired power plant on the site by 2023. Redondo Beach officials and activists are pushing to shutter the plant this year, after years of debate over the fate of the power plant. State policy has mandated that coastal power plants either close or stop the destructive process of using ocean water for cooling, and AES Corp. had been scheduled to shut down the plant by the end of 2020. However, the California Public Utilities Commission proposed extending the closure deadline for four coastal power plants in November of 2019. Local officials are pressing the State Water Resources Control Board to reject the extension, with Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand commenting that “[the plant] emits tons of fine particulate emissions, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and greenhouse gases every year it operates…there are 21,000 people living within one mile of the power plant.” Meeting the state’s target of 100% clean electricity by 2045 would likely require a total or near-total phaseout of gas. 

ELECTIONS

• Certified election results from the March 3 primary were released on March 27. Nithya Raman, who is a member of and endorsed by DSA-LA, will advance to a runoff with incumbent David Ryu for the Los Angeles City Council’s Fourth District; DSA-LA member and school board incumbent Jackie Goldberg was victorious with 58% of the vote in L.A. Unified District 5; and Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey will compete in a runoff against former San Francisco D.A. George Gascon.