The Thorn West

Housing Justice

• Nithya Raman was sworn in as a councilmember this week! At her first session, she introduced two motions addressing services for the unhoused. The first directs the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to focus on more proactive outreach methods. The second calls for work to begin developing a new drop-in site in her district, where unhoused Angelenos can receive walk-in services such as showers, medical care, or help finding housing. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Times op-ed places Nithya Raman’s upcoming battles in the context of decades of LA NIMBYism.

• Community activist group Downtown Crenshaw Rising have reported that the latest attempt from outside developers to purchase and redevelop the Crenshaw Mall has failed, following sustained community pressure. “This is a tremendous Black community victory and testament to the power of the people,” reads a public statement from DCR chair Niki Okuk.

• The Hillside Villa Tenants Association met yesterday to demand, alongside housing activists, that the city follow through on plans to use eminent domain to purchase Hillside Villa, using unspent federal funding from the CARES Act.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Reported in KNOCK.LA: A recent Loyola Marymount University study shows strong local support for defunding the police, even as many Angelenos do not report a profound dissatisfaction with the job the LAPD is currently doing. According to the study, 57% of Black participants explicitly support proposals to “defund the police,” while overall support for “proposals to redirect money” received 62% support.

• Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva finally made an appearance before the Civilian Oversight Commission after a year of failing to appear, even in the face of subpoenas. At the meeting, Villanueva and the commission discussed deputy gangs: Villanueva asserted they are largely a thing of the past, but commissioner Robert Bonner countered that the Banditos, a gang that operates within the jurisdiction of the East LA Station, has continued to ink new members.

• Witness LA has rounded up some of the criminal justice bills that have been introduced in this session of the state legislature. Some of these are refreshed versions of bills that were inspired — during the last legislative session — by the demands for justice made during the George Floyd uprising, but which notably failed to advance after pushback from police unions.

• At this week’s meeting of the LAUSD school board, the discussion of how to reimplement the $25 million defunding of the school police budget that the board voted for last June was scheduled to begin. That has now been delayed until January 12, following demands from activist groups to have more upfront involvement in the process.

Climate

• The South Coast Air Quality Management District Governing Board, whose elections received substantial coverage this month, adopted two Community Emissions Reduction Plans last week, effective in Southeast Los Angeles and Eastern Coachella Valley. This is in line with the recently passed AB 617, which requires that high-priority regions be annually selected for the development and implementation of community air monitoring systems.

DSA-LA Elections

• DSA-LA elections are coming up soon! Voting will be open from December 13 to December 20. Get to know the candidates for steering committee, branch coordinators, and all other offices at the candidate forum tomorrow, Saturday the 12th, from 3:30pm to 5:30pm. And in the meantime please check out candidate statements here.

Criminal Justice Reform

• George Gascón was sworn in as Los Angeles County district attorney on Monday. His office immediately implemented major changes. These include an end to the use of “gang enhancements” to add years to criminal sentences based on a defendant’s alleged gang affiliations. Gascón also announced that his office will end cash bail, will never seek the death penalty, and will be proactive in releasing current prisoners who become eligible under the new guidelines.

• Gascón’s office has also immediately dismissed the charges against Emanuel Padilla, a protester who was arrested on charges of “wrecking a train” in the aftermath of an action in Compton demanding justice for Andres Guardado. The first deputy prosecutor tasked with carrying out the dismissal refused to do so: Gascón’s reforms have met with some initial internal resistance over the first week of his term.

• On Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast, Terrance Stewart discusses how policies approved by cities and police departments over the last three decades have created a housing nightmare for people of color. Stewart, who holds a master’s degree from UC Riverside, discusses the struggle his family has faced to find housing because of his arrest almost a decade ago.

• LAPD officer, “Cop-Infuencer” and unabashed Trump supporter Toni McBride — who in April of this year shot and killed Daniel Hernandez — is now attempting to sell branded merchandise on a website that promotes police violence. In doing so, has she violated LAPD policy?

• An article in Knock.LA chews over the election results for all the criminal justice propositions that were on the ballot this year in California.

Election Fallout

• President-Elect Joe Biden has nominated California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be secretary of health and human services. This would mean that Governor Newsom may soon be choosing the successors for both Becerra and Kamala Harris. (And perhaps Dianne Feinstein as well.)

• The California State Legislature returned to session this week, after November elections returned Democratic party supermajorities to both the Assembly and Senate. California’s current eviction moratorium expires January 31.

Climate

• L.A. Taco spoke about climate issues facing southeast Los Angeles with Elizabeth Alcantar, the 26-year-old mayor of Cudahy, who this week ran for a seat on the highly influential governor’s board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (but lost a close race).

• Related, L.A. Taco, in cooperation with Capital & Main, ran a summary of the events that led up to the environmental disaster at the Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon. The issue drew national attention after the decision was made by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to let Exide off the hook for damages. The piece recontextualizes the event as resulting from decades of negligent oversight from California state government.

City Politics

• A new budget report issued by Los Angeles City Administrative Officer Richard Llewellyn Jr. recommends the layoffs of nearly 1,900 city employees — with more than half being police officers. If approved, the LAPD would operate with the lowest number of officers since the mid 1990s. And it could even result in the closure of police stations. The layoffs are an attempt to close a budget gap that is expected to reach $675 million by June.

• LA City Councilmember Kevin de León has laid out a plan to turn vacant CalTrans-owned homes in El Sereno’s 710 corridor into affordable housing — with current El Sereno residents to get priority as renters. Reclaim and Rebuild Our Community, an El Sereno–based neighborhood group, occupied 20 of these homes last month before being forcibly removed by the California Highway Patrol.

Coronavirus Relief

• In response to rising COVID-19 numbers, new stay-at-home orders have been issued by the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and the state of California.

• The patchwork of laws protecting tenants from being evicted during the pandemic is falling apart, with the federal eviction ban set to expire on December 31. Meanwhile, new research, which compares the outcomes in states that have already resumed eviction proceedings with those that haven’t, finds that evictions have already been responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of COVID-19 and thousands of unnecessary deaths.

• Meanwhile, Mayor Garcetti has co-authored a proposal that tries to address this crisis by immediately returning all tenants’ security deposits as one-time payments. In exchange, tenants will be required to make monthly payments to purchase an insurance policy to protect their landlords. See Twitter for early commentary.

Housing Justice

• Last week, Councilmember Gil Cedillo proposed purchasing the Hillside Villa Apartments to maintain it as affordable housing for the tenants who live there. An essay in KNOCK.LA examines the low cost of that purchase relative to other city expenditures.

• Also in KNOCK.LA is a nice piece of media criticism examining the dehumanizing language regularly used on local TV news to refer to Los Angeles’ housing-insecure and unhoused residents.

Labor

• In early November, the Department of Labor established a new regulation to freeze farmworkers’ wages under the H-2A agricultural guest worker program for the next two years. This past Monday, the United Farm Workers filed a lawsuit in a California federal court to challenge this decision. The arbitrary and punitive measure to freeze workers’ wages will only cause harm to those who are already the most economically vulnerable.

• Ed Asner is the lead plaintiff among ten actors who are suing the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan after new restrictions excluded them from receiving health benefits.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• At the coroner’s inquest into the police killing of Andres Guardado, both deputies involved in the shooting and both sheriff’s detectives investigating the killing refused to cooperate, instead asserting their Fifth Amendment rights. As the purpose of the inquest is only to establish cause of death, the judge was uncertain if the Fifth Amendment applies.

• Following outcry over sheriff’s deputies covering their names with duct tape at a protest this week, Sheriff Villanueva has gone on record flagrantly sanctioning this behavior. Deputies will now only be required to to display their badge numbers.

Housing Justice

• A group of housing reclaimers who were occupying vacant, publicly-owned homes in the Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno were forcibly evicted by California Highway Patrol officers the night before the Thanksgiving holiday. The homes were acquired by Caltrans as the planned site of a highway extension that never materialized, and stood empty for years before recently being reclaimed by housing insecure families. At a press conference earlier in the day, Reclaim and Rebuild our Community addressed Governor Newsom, asking that the evictions be called off so that families could remain safely at home during the pandemic. Their press release is here. A rapidly mobilized response, organized in part by Street Watch LA, Ktown for All, and DSA-LA, drew many activists who were successful in partially disrupting the evictions and documenting the militarized enforcement of the eviction notice by CHP. Nonetheless, all of the RROC reclaimers have now been evicted, while Caltrans is still preventing 170 vacant homes in this corridor from being available for use. Governor Newsom, who has the power to have this housing released into a public trust, has yet to reply.

• As announced, Los Angeles City Council did not and will not vote on the proposed amendment to the municipal code that imposed blanket bans on “sitting and sleeping” in many public spaces. Instead, councilmembers had an open discussion about issues related to the unhoused. The City Council discussed their slow progress in increasing the supply of affordable housing, as well as their perceived need to increase encampment sweeps so that, in the future, communities will be more willing to allow supportive facilities and affordable housing to be built in their neighborhoods. Council President Nury Martinez then sent the motion back to the Homelessness and Poverty Committee for further discussion, with the explicit goal of returning a revised amendment.

• Councilmember Gil Cedillo has proposed that the city purchase the Hillside Villa Apartments. The apartment complex was in a 30-year covenant with the city to provide affordable housing. Upon the covenant’s expiration last year, the building’s owner sought to impose massive rent increases that would force many tenants out of their homes.

Police Divestment

• Amid widespread anxiety over potential furloughs within the city government as well as calls for reductions to police budgets, the LAPD’s proposed new budget increases its operating budget by $100 million.

Election Fallout

• A week of protests outside Mayor Garcetti’s house have been organized by Black Lives Matter – Los Angeles, using the hashtag #blockgarcetti, with the intention of voicing the objections of Angelenos to the mayor being given a position in the incoming Biden administration.

Housing Justice

• As announced by council president Nury Martinez Friday, the council will not vote on the municipal code amendment that would ban “sitting, sleeping, or lying down” within 500 feet of a shelter or supportive services facility, further criminalizing homelessness. Public backlash to the amendment took the form of public comments at the Homelessness and Poverty Committee meeting, and protests held outside the homes of councilmembers. Originally scheduled for a hearing in October, the vote was postponed to November 24 before apparently being cancelled entirely. Public resistance seems to have been instrumental in preventing council from implementing a brutal law that several councilmembers wanted. In announcing this move on Twitter, Martinez said that instead of voting on this ordinance, council will “continue to discuss homelessness on our city streets and work towards solving our unhoused crisis.”

• L.A. Taco updates the efforts of the community group Downtown Crenshaw to purchase Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. The shopping center was earlier to be sold to CIM Group, outside developers who planned to redevelop the mall as “creative office space.” They stepped aside following community opposition. Since then, Downtown Crenshaw has continued trying to purchase the site, to maintain community control over the neighborhood landmark, and to make sure that plans to repurpose the site include affordable housing. However, after the latest round of bidding, the mall is scheduled to be sold to a second outside developer.

• Reporting in the LA Times uncovers how “crime-free housing policies,” designed to encourage evictions of tenants who have had encounters with law enforcement, and developed in concert with police departments in municipalities across California, are thinly veiled attempts to discriminate against Black and Latinx renters.

Coronavirus Relief

• Though Covid infection rates are rising, several economic relief programs instituted at the beginning of quarantine are due to expire this month.

Election Results

• Following the narrow defeat of Proposition 15, which DSA-LA endorsed, Capital & Main provides a brief analysis of the campaign.

• Incoming District Attorney George Gascón has announced his transition team and, on Twitter, one journalist covering criminal justice in Los Angeles sees promising signs that Gascón will pursue criminal justice reform.

Post-election Roundup

• Black Lives Matter Los Angeles led the opposition to Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey, both in the streets and at the ballot box, and this committed opposition was instrumental in her electoral defeat last Tuesday by George Gascón. This Monday, in a meeting organized by BLM-LA, Gascón met with family members of people shot by police. Though many celebrated Gascón’s victory, most recognized the need for continued vigilance in activist oversight of the office, even under a new, more progressive administration. Melina Abdullah, a founder of BLM-LA, said to Gascón, “This is a great first step, but we also want to make it very clear that we plan to hold you accountable.”

• In national media this week, a rash of articles deal with the potential fallout from the passage of California’s Proposition 22, which strips worker protections from Lyft and Uber drivers, as well as other workers in the gig economy. Lyft and Uber CEOs are feeling exuberant after their victory, and have spoken of taking the law “nationwide.”

• The advocacy of the Re-Imagine LA coalition was successful in passing Measure J, a county-wide measure that mandates 10% of the general fund be set aside for alternatives to incarceration. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took the next step toward implementation.

• The board also voted 3–2 in favor of exploring options to remove Sheriff Alex Villanueva from office, in response to Villanueva’s unceasing onslaught of deeply antisocial behavior. “Options” include impeachment, altering the state constitution or county charter, or simply limiting the duties of the office legislatively. Meanwhile, a similar proposal within the Los Angeles Democratic Party, which would officially call for Villanueva’s resignation, fell short of the 60% approval threshold. Instead, the party issued a strongly worded request that the sheriff try harder.

• The LA Times envisions the possibilities for a second stimulus bill under a Biden administration, with Republicans still plausibly retaining control of the Senate. Meanwhile, CalMatters examines the debilitated state of California’s unemployment protection program.

• More post-election speculation, as a treat: LAist tries to imagine what it might mean for the state to have a vice president emerge from California politics. Others make predictions for whom Governor Newsom will appoint to fill Harris’ Senate seat.

• DSA-LA congratulates Nithya Raman on her incredible campaign victory! Here’s an account, from a voice within her campaign, of why Raman was able to succeed in a city in which incumbent councilmembers are extremely difficult to unseat. It also presents a great diagnosis of the dire state of Los Angeles news media, and the emerging alternatives.

• Speaking of emerging alternative media, here is an article that ran in KNOCK.LA that asks what’s next after the election.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Los Angeles County Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sheila Kuehl have written a motion requesting a report on options to impeach or remove Sheriff Alex Villanueva. The Los Angeles Times explores what it considers the narrow, but not nonexistent, range of options, considering that county sheriff is an elected, not appointed, position. The motion will be heard by the board on November 10. Villanueva is up for reelection in 2022.

• As Angelenos across the city took to the streets to celebrate the Dodgers’ World Series win on Tuesday night, the LAPD and LASD ordered crowds to disperse in downtown LA, Echo Park, and East LA. The police used violent dispersal methods, including tackling and beating an LA Taco journalist with batons, and firing foam projectiles into crowds.

Housing Justice

• LA City Council spent hours debating Joe Buscaino’s motion to implement draconian “anti-camping” measures that would effectively criminalize being unhoused in Los Angeles. Thankfully, the vote was delayed until November 24 once it became clear that the motion would not pass. A substitute motion authored by Mike Bonin radically reframed the issue, reprioritizing increasing the number of shelter beds and improving the way they are allocated. Because of the delayed vote, this motion was also not heard.

• In March, families and individuals in need of shelter moved into several vacant homes owned by Caltrans. In the process of this occupation, they started Reclaiming Our Homes, which is supported by DSA. Now, as part of the City of LA’s transitional housing program, many will move into these homes legally. See their press release here.

Coronavirus and Relief Measures

• Los Angeles budget analysts released a report on Friday projecting a much greater pandemic-related shortfall in city revenue than had earlier been anticipated, with a potential outcome that the city’s reserve fund will be fully depleted. This has reignited the conversation over what cuts to services, or furloughs of city employees, will be implemented if the federal government doesn’t step in with relief.

Elections

• Remember that you have DSA’s 2020 Voter Guide to check out if you have yet to cast your vote in Los Angeles County. Also, you can still cast a ballot in California even if you missed the voter registration deadline.

Climate

• Southeast Los Angeles residents marched in downtown LA on Monday evening to protest the bankruptcy court decision that will now allow Exide Technologies to walk away from their lead-contaminated Vernon plant. The decision leaves it up to the state of California and its residents to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up decades of toxic contaminants deposited by Exide into neighborhoods surrounding the facility. The protest, organized by East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, highlighted the primarily Latino working-class communities that continue to be impacted by the toxic emission of lead and arsenic from the now shuttered Exide plant. “Why is it OK for us to live in poison?” asked protester and East LA resident Guadalupe Valdovinos. “To me, that’s an imminent threat. But we just don’t matter. We’re collateral damage.” Protesters left bags of lead-contaminated dirt from the front yards of Southeast Los Angeles homes on the steps of the federal courthouse. State and local officials have since criticized the ruling, while the Department of Toxic Substances Control is appealing the court’s decision.

Transit

• Widespread public outcry has now successfully delayed a plan to demolish hundreds of homes in Downey to widen the 605 freeway.

Housing Justice

• Councilmember Joe Buscaino continues to escalate the criminalization of the unhoused. This week he requested the city attorney draft an ordinance to ban “sitting, sleeping, or lying” within 500 feet of a freeway overpass or within 500 feet of a facility offering supportive services to the unhoused.

Education

• Los Angeles County recently implemented a waiver system that will allow some schools to partially reopen if they clear certain hurdles. Though the program was supposed to prioritize schools that serve low-income students, the first four schools to receive a waiver are private schools.

Elections

• Uber and Lyft have threatened to withdraw their services from California if forced to comply with AB5 and treat their workforce as employees instead of independent contractors. A stay was granted as they appealed an injunction forcing them to obey the law. This appeal has been rejected. However, the injunction doesn’t take effect for 30 days, and in the meantime Proposition 22, if it passes on election day, will specifically exempt them from compliance.

• DSA-LA made the news this week as Councilmember David Ryu attempted to make the organization’s support of his challenger, Nithya Raman, a political football in the homestretch of the council race in district 4.

Housing Justice

• Curbed (now a part of New York Magazine) interviewed Theo Henderson, an unhoused resident of Los Angeles who, through his podcast We the Unhoused, has become a powerful voice for his community. “It’s really hard to open [people’s] eyes to something they have intentionally hardened themselves against, and that’s what Theo does” says fellow unhoused activist Halcyon Selfmade.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• On Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Civilian Oversight Commission formalized its demand for Sheriff Alex Villanueva to resign, arguing that “Sheriff Villanueva enables a culture within the Sheriff’s Department of deputy impunity, disregards the constitutional rights of Los Angeles County residents, disdains other elected officials and disrespects the will of voters who support robust civilian oversight.” The commission can voice collective demands and increase public pressure, but has no legal authority to force Villanueva out of office.

Climate

• Yesterday, public comment was scathing at the bankruptcy hearing that would allow Exide Technologies to walk away from one of the worst environmental disasters in California history — which took place in the industrial city of Vernon. Dozens of callers, many of them citizens of the predominantly Latinx residential communities that neighbor Vernon, queued up to blast the decision. “We will be asked to live in our contaminated homes forever and to suffer for generations,” said one caller. “What gives you the right to let them walk away financially?” Nevertheless, today the bankruptcy settlement was approved.

Local Politics

• Newly elected Councilmember Kevin de León was sworn into office this week, two months early. He takes the seat formerly held by José Huizar, who is now facing corruption charges that compelled him to vacate his seat. As a state senator, de León represented the city of Vernon and was instrumental in protecting the scandal-plagued city from disincorporation.

• Governor Newsom’s May budget called for billions of dollars in cuts to services, but also included plans to reverse those cuts if federal aid came through before October 15. Here’s where California stands now that we know that, in the near term, federal aid is not coming.

Elections

• An interview conducted by The Guardian with both George Gascón and Jackie Lacey is extremely useful in clarifying important distinctions (as well as similarities) between the two candidates for Los Angeles district attorney.

• Proposition 21 would allow counties and cities in California to implement rent control in certain circumstances, easing restrictions put in place by the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995. In this debate hosted by KPFA, Rene Moya, housing advocate and campaign director for Proposition 21, makes the case for #yeson21.

Coronavirus Relief

• A furlough of Los Angeles city workers passed in September would have required 15,000 employees take one unpaid day off every two weeks, amounting to 10% pay cuts. A new agreement reached between Mayor Garcetti and several public employee unions increases the number of workers affected, but reduces the number of days off to only one between now and January 2021.

• After a two-week pause, Californians are once again able to apply for unemployment benefits. It is unclear how successfully the Employment Development Department used the designed pause to address its stated goals of accelerating the clearance of a massive backlog of claims.

Transit

• The city of Downey has released a statement opposing Metro’s current plan to widen the 605 freeway, which would require the demolition of hundreds of homes within the city.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Last Friday, the Ad Hoc Committee on Police Reform met to discuss preliminary steps in developing a plan to divert certain 911 calls away from police and toward specialists in nonviolent crisis management. Pending a vote before the full council, the city will now undertake a search for nonprofit partners who can help them launch such a program.

• A report from the Los Angeles County Inspector General accuses Sheriff Alex Villanueva of maintaining a “code of silence” around the Banditos, a gang of deputies alleged to be operating within the East LA sheriff’s station.

Climate

• In the small city of Vernon, just southeast of LA and entirely zoned for industrial use, an Exide battery-recycling plant has been a major polluter, contaminating surrounding neighborhoods with toxic lead dust. Now, a bankruptcy deal brokered under the Trump Department of Justice may let Exide off the hook for tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs.

Elections

• Don’t just take our word for it! Here are more progressive voter guides from KNOCK.LA and LAnd Magazine, (and both go deep on DSA-endorsed candidates Fatima Iqbal-Zubair and Nithya Raman).

• Also in KNOCK.LA: an explanation of why so many activist groups advocate voting No on Prop 25. Though SB-10, which 25 would uphold, would end cash bail in the state, the alternative system the bill proposes is worse, only increasing the leverage of a carceral criminal justice system.