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Letters to the Editor

Reporters Desk
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Letters to the Editor

 

RE: Rep. Robert Garcia asserts that “he’s done playing nice.”

Since when have Democrats ever played nice?

Democrat John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves and ending the Civil War.

Democrat FDR weaponized the IRS against political enemies and built up the Alphabet Soup agencies to pay off political cronies.

Democrat Barack Obama rammed through Obamacare, which the vast majority of Americans never wanted, then lied about his Election 2012 Republican opponent Mitt Romney, saying that he was a high school bully who abused a dog. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed no regrets about such lies, retorting: “Well, he lost the election, didn’t he?”

How about the years of the Russia, Russia, Russian collusion hoax, which tied up President Trump’s first term for two years?

How about the false charges against President Trump regarding classified documents, or the trumped-up (pun intended) charges against him for not reporting financial transactions to Stormy Daniels? Or the fraudulent “rape” liability claims from Jean Carroll?

Or how about the assassination attempt on President Trump’s life at the Butler, PA, rally?

Or the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah?

Democrats and progressives have long embraced violence as a legitimate political means.

I know that Random Lengths News is going to cry about the “Insurrection” of January 6th. There are plenty of videos proving that the vast majority of people in the US Capitol entered peacefully. Yet Democrats dishonestly demagogued it for four years.

Perhaps Garcia should try being nice for a change!

Arthur Schaper

Torrance

Dear Arthur Schaper

I suppose two can play this game. But at least mine will be factual.

Republican President Richard Nixon used federal agencies to target political opponents, maintained an enemies list and presided over the Watergate scandal, forcing his resignation.

Republican Ronald Reagan’s administration was caught secretly selling arms to Iran and illegally funding the Contra war in Nicaragua, bypassing Congress and undermining democratic oversight.

Republican George W. Bush led the nation into the Iraq War based on claims about weapons of mass destruction that were never found, costing thousands of American lives and trillions of taxpayer dollars.

How about the years of questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship, despite overwhelming evidence he was born in Hawaii? Or the repeated claims that climate change was a hoax despite decades of scientific consensus?

And then there was the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. More than 60 court cases failed to prove widespread voter fraud, yet millions were told the election had been stolen. The campaign culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, an unprecedented attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

The Unfinished Revolution–Revisiting the Promise of ‘We the People’

Terelle Jerricks
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The Unfinished Revolution–Revisiting the Promise of ‘We the People’ 

When the 13 American colonies separated from British rule to become sovereign states free from allegiance to the British Crown, they did so by asserting that all people are created equal and endowed with fundamental rights, including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those colonies argued that the primary purpose of government is to protect those unalienable rights and that legitimate political power is derived only from the consent of the governed. The Declaration of Independence outlined the idea that if a government becomes destructive to those ends, the people have the right to alter or abolish it and institute a new government.

That is why the observances of Memorial Day, Juneteenth and Independence Day are so significant. Independence Day celebrates the aspirational part of the American story, while Memorial Day serves as a reminder of the blood that was shed to preserve and expand that freedom in the generations that followed.

Today, Americans no longer receive information solely through 24-hour television news cycles. We live amid a constant stream of information delivered through phones, computers and social media, whether accurate, misleading or false.

Last week, the nation watched as former President Barack Obama opened his presidential library during the same news cycle that included reports of a 1-year-old child killed following a shoplifting call involving the alleged theft of diapers from a Walmart. The incident was one of several recent examples that renewed debate over how Black children are treated within the justice system.

Meanwhile, reports continued of American citizens confronting federal authorities in defense of immigrant neighbors in communities from Minneapolis to St. Paul, Minnesota. Federal prosecutors recently unsealed indictments against 15 Minnesota activists connected to anti-ICE protests that are evolving into active, nonviolent resistance in the face of increasing violence by the federal government.

Before Memorial Day, the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais significantly weakened one of the Voting Rights Act’s most important protections against racial vote dilution, opening the floodgates for Southern states seeking to eliminate similar majority-minority districts to maximize Republican political power at the expense of Black voting strength.

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Obama reminded audiences how radical the concept of self-government was in 1776.

He noted that much of human history had been defined by conquest, rigid social hierarchies and inherited privilege — a world in which power, wealth and status flowed through lineage and the many were ruled by the few.

Obama highlighted the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that all people are created equal and possess unalienable rights, rejecting monarchy and inherited privilege in favor of citizenship and self-government. While acknowledging the founders’ profound failures, including slavery and restrictions on voting rights, he argued that the Constitution and Bill of Rights established a framework through which future generations could expand freedom and inclusion.

Through centuries of activism, protest, civic engagement and moral advocacy, Americans from diverse backgrounds worked to make the nation’s democratic ideals more inclusive, extending the promise of “We the People” to all citizens.

Eddie Glaude Jr. File Photo E1782419250648
Eddie Glaude Jr., historian and author of America U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. File photo.

Last month, Princeton University professor and historian Eddie Glaude Jr. released America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. In recent weeks, he has discussed the book in several media appearances, including an interview with PBS NewsHour anchor Geoff Bennett.

Glaude opens the book with the statement, “I do not love America,” a deliberate challenge to conventional notions of patriotism. He argues that the phrase rejects the tendency to treat the nation as an object of unquestioned devotion, distinguishes his perspective from that of writer James Baldwin and reflects the personal wounds caused by racism.

Glaude recounts a childhood experience in Mississippi in which a neighbor’s father used a racial slur against him, an event that revealed how society viewed him while his family simultaneously affirmed his dignity and worth. Given such experiences, he questions why Black Americans should be expected to express unconditional love for the country.

When asked whether criticism can be an act of patriotism, Glaude said he seeks to move beyond idealized narratives and focus instead on loving people rather than abstract national symbols. He contends that appeals to patriotism often obscure difficult truths about the nation’s history.

A central theme of the book is what Glaude calls America’s “double consciousness.” Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept describing the divided experience of Black Americans, Glaude argues that the deeper contradiction lies within the nation itself. America simultaneously imagines itself as a champion of freedom and as a society historically shaped by white supremacy. According to Glaude, this unresolved conflict has existed since the nation’s founding and continues to drive recurring political and social struggles.

He points to parallels between the 1920s and the present day, noting that the era often celebrated as the Roaring Twenties was also marked by the political influence of the Ku Klux Klan and restrictive immigration policies. Glaude argues that contemporary debates over immigration, voting rights and national identity echo many of those earlier tensions.

“So Du Bois, in 1903, wrote ‘The Souls of Black Folk,’ and he says that Black people see themselves through the eyes of those who despise them. We are American and African, and it is in this doubleness that we experience the world,” Glaude said. “I think the double consciousness Du Bois describes is actually a consequence of the double consciousness of the nation. America imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, and you can’t hold those two commitments together without contradiction. That contradiction has existed since the founding, and it continues to shape the cycles we navigate today.”

Discussing immigration and voting rights, Glaude pointed to two transformative laws of the mid-20th century: the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 overturned the Immigration Act of 1924, which established national quotas and reflected the influence of nativist politics of the era,” Glaude said. “In 1926, during the nation’s 150th anniversary celebration, the Ku Klux Klan held its annual convention in conjunction with festivities marking the anniversary.”

When asked what Americans should do to address these challenges, Glaude resisted offering a simple policy prescription. He argued that the nation often follows a predictable cycle in which expressions of sympathy after racial injustice are followed by symbolic gestures rather than structural change and demands for justice are eventually met with backlash.

Invoking Frederick Douglass’ distinction between charity and justice, Glaude maintains that meaningful progress requires confronting a fundamental choice. The nation, he argues, cannot simultaneously claim to be both a beacon of freedom and a racially exclusive republic. Americans must decide which vision will define the country’s future.

Random Happening: Built on Water Excavates Layered Strata of Memory, Place, and Visionary Futures at AGCC June 27

Reporters Desk
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Random Happening: Built on Water Excavates Layered Strata of Memory, Place, and Visionary Futures at AGCC June 27

 

Random Happening

Built on Water Excavates Layered Strata of Memory, Place, and Visionary Futures at AGCC June 27

Angels Gate Cultural Center or AGCC announces a new contemporary exhibition: Built on Water, opening June 27. Built on Water maps the human forces that have shaped — and continue to reshape — the economy and ecology of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The group exhibition opens with a free public reception at AGCC.

Built on Water is a contemporary art exhibition presenting past, present, and future visions of the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, featuring Los Angeles-based artists Flora Kao, Kaya & Blank, Jennifer Gunlock, Hilary Norcliffe, and Katie E. Stubblefield. Built on Water is curated by AGCC’s director of exhibitions, Cecelia Caro.

Angels Gate Cultural Center is a resonant vantage point from which to examine the ports’ industrial present and layered histories beneath. Monumental stacks of containers, towering cranes, and endless lines of cargo ships compress a dense network of global commerce into an abstract grid of steel, color, and mechanized movement. The region’s layered story holds present-day parallels: the forced internment of Japanese Americans from the Terminal Island fishing village also echoes the erasure of the original Gabrieleño Tongva peoples. The ports are machines for transpacific exchange, yet their industrial reach has permanently altered the ecology of the natural coastline and the marine life once sustained. Built on Water examines the ports’ layered industrial landscape in order to postulate a visionary future — where memories surface, nature reclaims, and humanity progresses in harmony with the natural world.

Flora Kao’s work in Built on Water excavates layered histories beneath the port, exploring meaning through place and memory. Kao’s evocative installation of cyanotype and rubbing, 100 Views of Fish Harbor, Terminal Island, investigates the historic significance of San Pedro for Southern California’s Japanese-American community.

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Flora Kao,100 Views of Fish Harbor. Photo courtesy of AGCC.

Artist duo Kaya & Blank focus on the intersections between infrastructure, ecology, and systems of power. In their body of work, Intermodal, the monumental scale of port operations loop and distort global commerce into an abstract environment of steel and color, underscoring the enmeshed relationship we have to global exchange.

Looking forward to a visionary future, Future Port is a collaboration between Jennifer Gunlock, Katie Stubblefield, and Hilary Norcliffe, who create an immersive installation that imagines a reclaimed coastal marine environment. Katie Stubblefield’s ocean floor landscape is made up of second hand wedding dresses and pearl producing mollusks — Mother Nature creates a hybrid filtration system that regenerates despite environmental upheaval. The installation is juxtaposed with overlaid video collage by Jennifer Gunlock. Jennifer Gunlock’s projected video works convey the collision between the coastline and built infrastructure. Fragments of human detritus freely flow through the frame of crashing tides, emphasizing the present-day inseparable relationship between our natural environment and man-made intrusions. Hilary Norcliffe’s Alpha Frequency installation envisions a radically optimistic future of ocean-attuned shipping and port systems. Norcliffe’s shimmering fish-like forms channel the alpha frequency — the brain’s state of calm, grounded consciousness. Together, these works imagine the conditions under which regeneration is possible and global exchange operates in harmony with the natural world.

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“Built on Water ” Port of Los Angeles, photo courtesy of AGCC.

 

Built on Water will be on view in the gallery June 27 through Aug.15, with free public visiting hours Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Time: 2 to 4 p.m., June 27

Cost: Free

Details: RSVP, builtonwater.eventbrite.com

Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S Gaffey St, San Pedro

Can You Hit the Pause Button?―Former Courthouse Parcel Becomes Battleground Over San Pedro’s Next Chapter

Reporters Desk
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Can You Hit the Pause Button?―Former Courthouse Parcel Becomes Battleground Over San Pedro’s Next Chapter

By Devonte Barr, Columnist

“Can you hit the pause button?”

Elise Swanson, president of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce and a former trustee of Port of Los Angeles High School, stood before a packed community meeting at the school last week with a pointed question for administrators.

“This is not about the high school. It’s not about educators. It’s not about the students,” Swanson said. “This is about process.”

At issue: the future of a 2.3-acre former Los Angeles County courthouse property in downtown San Pedro—and whether it should become an expanded campus for POLAHS or remain available for commercial development.

The property returned to county control at the end of 2025 after a private developer failed to secure financing for a proposed mixed-use project.

Now, competing visions have emerged for one of downtown’s most visible publicly owned parcels.

POLAHS currently serves around 900 students—the maximum its authorization from LAUSD allows. The school can’t grow enrollment, but administrators say existing programs are bursting at the seams.

Principal Tim Dikdan walked attendees through the school’s constraints: career technical education programs operating under tents on the blacktop; only 12 welding pods when demand exists for 24; no dedicated gym; and theater classes held in a multipurpose room.

“We have students that are banging on doors in order to get into welding and construction,” Dikdan said. “We just can’t house them because we don’t have the space.”

The school’s Career Technical Education programs serve about 275 students—29% of enrollment. Marine transportation, welding, and construction classes currently operate in temporary structures. Basketball and volleyball teams use Peck Park because the school has no gym.

Around 70% of students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. The graduation rate is 94%.

The proposed expansion would include a skilled trades building, a CIF-regulation gym with theater space, a dance studio, and an amphitheater that could host community events like farmers’ markets and concerts on weekends.

School officials emphasized community access: evening and weekend availability for workforce training, partnerships with local organizations, and integration with downtown events like First Thursdays.

Robert Janest, who has lived in San Pedro for 48 years, argued the project would address youth isolation by connecting young people to career opportunities.

“I see this particular workforce development center as being a wonderful pipeline for employment,” Janest said. “This will give them, not a job, but a career beginning.”

Swanson, speaking as Chamber president and a longtime advocate for downtown redevelopment, questioned the process.

“Many of us have worked for over 30 years on the redevelopment of downtown San Pedro, our historic core and our arts and cultural district,” she said.

Swanson noted the courthouse site could support tourism, retail, and arts venues—opportunities that align with decades of downtown redevelopment efforts. She asked whether the county would bring in an economist to study “highest and best use” of the property and consider multiple proposals—rather than what she called “sole sourcing a premium piece of property.”

“This was designed as an urban campus,” Swanson said of POLAHS. “This was not ever thought about, that we were expanding towards the historic core on 6th Street.”

She emphasized she wasn’t opposing school expansion itself, but wanted a broader evaluation of sites and economic impact.

School board members responded that they’ve explored expansion for seven years, reviewing multiple downtown locations, warehouses, and port properties before determining the courthouse site best met their needs for walkability, appropriate zoning, and program requirements.

Jennifer Lamarque, representing Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office, explained at a recent neighborhood council meeting that the California Surplus Land Act—amended in 2021—limits the county’s options.

The law requires the property to either remain in public use by transferring to another public agency or prioritize affordable housing development.

That provision, Lamarque said, “does complicate” proposals for hotel or commercial development that some community stakeholders have discussed.

Supervisor Hahn’s office said it will continue collecting public input before determining the property’s future. For now, the courthouse site remains vacant as residents, educators, business leaders, and public officials debate what should come next.

Follow the Aroma―Wah Gwaan’s Jerk Chicken Is Worth the Stop

Reporters Desk
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Follow the Aroma―Wah Gwaan’s Jerk Chicken Is Worth the Stop

By Richard Mason, Columnist

“Wah Gwaan” is Jamaican “what’s happening”, the cheery greeting for all who enter the bright and fragrant restaurant at Sepulveda Street and Pacific Avenue. This new spot brings flavorful Jamaican cuisine to San Pedro. Deandrea Jones and her beautiful smile have brought the Jamaican spirit of hospitality to the neighborhood, and the wonderful aroma of jerk chicken grilling over charcoal is tough to resist. Add subtle Bob Marley tunes in the background to set the vibes.

Deandrea hales from Jamaica, and after college in upstate New York, she and her mother settled in the San Fernando Valley. San Pedro Wah Gwaan is a branch of the original restaurant on Crenshaw Boulevard in Leimert Park.

The legendary jerk chicken is grilling outside, filling the street with splendid smells. Tender and juicy and spiced with an excellent blended spice rub, the chicken is then dipped in a sauce that must not be missed. This “secret sauce” is spicy and a bit hot, just lovely with the chicken or jerked pork. Served along with an authentic dish of rice and peas (a blend of rice and red beans), the plate also included a stir-fried cabbage and mixed vegetable dish, just the right contrast to the spicy meats.

Jamaican curry goat is “Delicious! Just the right amount of heat,” declared a local connoisseur. A favorite of the Islands, goat is not always available, but well worth the wait. Curry is a seasoning mix usually associated with Indian cuisine. But India’s shared colonial history with Jamaica allowed curry to have uniquely Caribbean flavor,mild and savory, full of flavor. Fried chicken is available on the weekends, crispy and brown, with a Jamaican twist. For a rich gravy, the ox tail is long-simmered, enhanced with spices, smooth, but not hot. Seafood is cooked to order, with a choice of salmon or red snapper, prepared with a brown sauce, or escovich (cold cooked with an acid like vinegar or lemon), steamed, or shrimp with jerk seasoning, or curry, or fried.

Patties are a Jamaican concept, a satisfying snack for on the go. A patty made of beef, chicken, jerk chicken, or veggies is coated with a crunchy outside and fried until hot and crisp. A festival is a type of fried fritter made with cornmeal.

Wah Gwaan has an interesting assortment of soft drinks and sodas. Most amazing was a pineapple juice and ginger drink, strong on the ginger, but a perfect complement to the spice and heat of the cuisine.

Wah Gwaan Jamaican Kitchen

246 N.Pacific Avenue

424-482-3089

Never On the Sidelines―Adele Bertei’s No New York Restores Women to the Center of a Cultural Revolution

Melina Paris
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Never On the Sidelines―Adele Bertei’s No New York Restores Women to the Center of a Cultural Revolution

During a recent interview, fearless storyteller Adele Bertei told Random Lengths News, “There’s never been an artistic movement in history where there were so many women involved.”

The queer cultural icon was speaking specifically about the radical No Wave music, art and experimental film scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s in downtown Manhattan.

“If you think about the Beats, or the 1920s Paris artists and writers, or the 1890s in France, there were all these very important artistic movements that kind of shifted the needle, culturally, but the women were pretty much absent,” Bertei said (or often relegated to the sidelines). “There might be one or two … whereas in New York at that moment, there were just as many women creating work as there were men, and it was also very cross-genre.”

This Saturday, on June 27, Bertei will be discussing her memoir, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene, at The Den San Pedro. The discussion will be moderated by acclaimed music journalist Evelyn McDonnell.

No New York reveals the untold story of the boundary-pushing women who made No Wave possible: Nan Goldin capturing flash-lit portraits of gender fluidity, Barbara Kruger deconstructing media, Kiki Smith exploring the body’s mysteries, and Lizzie Borden challenging cinema itself.

Adele Bertei Photo By KiKi Smith Png
Adele Bertei photo by KiKi Smith

Bertei, known for her bold creativity, has shaped underground culture for decades. She moved to New York in 1977 and became a pivotal figure in the No Wave movement. An original member of the Contortions, included on the seminal No New York album produced by Brian Eno, Bertei also starred in underground films, including Born In Flames by Lizzie Borden; opened for writers like William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Kathy Acker; and toured with The Bloods — America’s first openly queer all-girl band.

“The importance of this book [is] crucial,” said Bertei.

Bertei wrote No New York because she did not want the history of the women who were so influential and creative and such trailblazers during that moment in time and geography to disappear.

Women were making films, writing and reading poetry, and were band members in a cross collaborative atmosphere. It also was different from punk rock as punk was about music, the artist noted. While the scene today has not manifested such a group of artists, working cross collaboratively, in one specific geographic spot, Bertei sees many more women producing work, being courageous about it and outspoken. She posited it’s happening as a backlash to all of the restrictions this country has been hit with recently, politically.

“Through the global connectivity we can have a community that’s far, far more rhizomatic and connected across boundaries than what it was back then,” Bertei said.

No New York is for anyone interested in cultural artistic movements that were more on the revolutionary side, Bertei explained. And it’s for young women who might glean some inspiration from what women artists were doing back then.

The book features 55 rarely seen photos from Bertei’s collection and other artists like Nan Goldin and Richard Prince. It also includes profiles and stories about figures like Lydia Lunch, Lizzie Borden, Pat Place, and Kathy Acker.

“It’s for music lovers, art lovers and, in some ways, it’s also a cautionary tale,” she said.

As a young artist, Bertei recalled thinking that you had to experience the dark side in order to make great art, in terms of doing drugs and frequenting those types of places. That’s not true, she said. Many people she knew in that scene died young because of drug addiction and “bad lifestyles.”

“You do not have to go to those extremes to make art, but you do need to be able to be brave and allow your vulnerabilities to direct what you want to express and not be afraid of what other people might think,” Bertei said. “That’s artistic death. As an artist, you have to be brave enough to be singular in your work and not play to the crowd. That is something that No Wave artists did back then.”

No New York delves into artistic and sexual experimentation, the collision of punk and art, and the transition from the underground to the mainstream music industry. The book amplifies what Bertei noted is largely missing in today’s music scene, a lot of innovation or passion.

“There are people, like ROSALÍA who’s absolutely brilliant and is taking aspects of mysticism and different cultures and putting them into her work in a very theatrical, very passionate way that I don’t see a lot of young artists doing,” Bertei said.

Bertei hopes that people would want to take risks more.

“Perhaps people can be inspired by the fact that human connection is so important to collaboration and art, you need to be with other people, be inspired by other people, and work with other people,” she said.

In No New York, Bertei discusses being Brian Eno’s assistant. Recently, he was giving a talk where he discussed the idea of genius; he came up with a concept that he calls “scenius.”

Eno said, “[Famous] artists lived and drew from a very, very active flourishing cultural scene. And they were only one of the elements in that scene. All these people that were called genius actually sat in the middle of something that I call ‘scenius.’ So, just as genius is the creative intelligence of an individual, scenius is the creative intelligence of a community.”

Bertei said this idea is just as important to art as the specific person who might evolve from it.

Bertei said what astonishes her about young artists today is that with a cell phone, they can make movies and distribute them on YouTube, or there’s a myriad of ways to get work out there and make films for little to no money on a phone.

“Instead of using the phone as an active participant in making art, people are being passively addicted to it,” she said. “Hypnotized by the scroll and Instagram … where they could be using it as an instrument of artistic liberation. It’s there. And it’s just like when we made Born in Flames which became a feminist classic. Lizzie Borden made that film on a shoestring. She would get extra loose ends from the film schools. Whenever she could get a little bit of film … we [might] not shoot for two months … but [we’d] jump in the car and go. It was very guerilla, very DIY.”

The artists never thought that that film would one day be on Criterion or showing in film festivals or universities all over the world, Bertei said, but they took that risk together.

The memoir recenters the narrative on the fearless women who defined the movement, challenging traditional histories. Bertei said women back then were breaking paradigms about what they could say and what their gendered expectations were telling them they couldn’t say.

“There was bravery in terms of what we were coming out with, like, Born in Flames,” she said. “Jenny Holzer’s work, Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, Lizzy Mercier, all these women were saying things that had never been heard before from women artists.”

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Adele Bertei photo by Monica Orozco

We are in a very sensorial moment, Bertei said, because of cancel culture, the judgment of everyone and everybody sniping at each other; people and women are scared to talk about how they really feel.

“There are the brave ones but I think there’s been this cultural push — on the left too — to watch what you say, or don’t say the wrong thing,” she said. “ … Language is being policed in a very upsetting way right now.”

She noted it was also a very sensorial moment in the 1970s to the early ’80s.

“When Reagan came into power in the ’80s, that’s when the scene started to dissipate,” she said. “A lot of things started to happen in the early ’80s that crushed us. It was AIDS, it was the influx of heroin into our neighborhood. They did the same thing to Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, flooded Harlem with heroin, suddenly it was on every corner. That happened to downtown New York too.

“The only way we’re ever going to accomplish an equitable society is by getting together, LGBTQ people with Black people, with Latino and LatinX people. We all have to come together and stop seeing ourselves as these satellites.”

Join the discussion at The Den San Pedro
Time: 3 to 5 p.m., June 27
Cost: Free
Details: https://www.thedensanpedro.com
Venue: The Den, 1126 W. 37th St., San Pedro

Hydrogen Fluoride Refinery Suit Gets First Hearing In Federal Court―Just One Battle in a Longer War

Paul Rosenberg
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Hydrogen Fluoride Refinery Suit Gets First Hearing In Federal Court―Just One Battle in a Longer War

A lawsuit to force strict regulation, if not elimination, of hydrogen fluoride (HF) in oil refineries got its first hearing at the federal courthouse in downtown LA on June 10. HF has the potential to form lethal toxic acid clouds if released in an accident, such as nearly happened 11 years ago as a result of an explosion at the Torrance Refinery. In that case, a 40-ton piece of debris landed on the scaffolding surrounding an HF tank, coming within five feet of puncturing the tank itself, and releasing a toxic cloud that could have killed or injured thousands of nearby residents.

Citing that case as just one example, the suit filed last July argues that “current refinery use of HF… presents unreasonable risks of injury to health and the environment,” and seeks to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “to eliminate those risks through prompt rulemaking,” as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The suit was brought by the Clean Air Council (CAC), Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), after the EPA rejected their 2025 petition to address refinery HF’s needless risks.

The June 10 hearing, before Judge Michael Fitzgerald, was on EPA’s motion to dismiss the suit primarily on the grounds that people living near such refineries lack “standing” to bring the case in federal court. In their April 10 response, NRDC lawyers argued that standing required three elements: “a plaintiff must have an injury in fact that is (1) actual or imminent, (2) traceable to the defendant’s actions, and (3) redressable by the court” and that all three were present: “Plaintiffs’ members face credible threats of harm from refinery-related HF use and transportation. Their injury is traceable to EPA’s continued refusal to act, and redressable by a court order requiring EPA to start a Section 6(a) rulemaking to address the unreasonable risks posed by refinery-related HF use and transportation.”

While EPA had argued that people living near such refineries don’t face threats “that are actual or imminent and not speculative” or “conjectural,” NRDC argued “These threats are not ‘conjectural’ or ‘generalized anxieties’… Rather, all the conditions needed for harm to occur exist here and now,” and that “Living within an identified threat zone is one factor that makes Plaintiffs’ members’ risk of harm ‘credible’ rather than ‘conjectural.’”

At one point, NRDC argued that “Harm to Plaintiffs’ members does not rely on speculative what-ifs” by spelling out what speculative what-ifs actually look like:

If plaintiffs’ members lived hundreds of miles from any HF-using refinery or transportation route, or if they asserted only that they might one day move near a refinery that may use HF, or if they averred fears that a state-of-the-art refinery with a pristine safety record might someday start using HF, the standing analysis would be different. The inquiry would also be different if HF were a stable substance that remained in more containable liquid form when released, or if it were only mildly toxic over a long period of exposure. But reality is the opposite.

NRDC also argued that EPA fundamentally mischaracterized the law, and its public duty: “Congress included Section 21 in TSCA to guard against its ‘lax administration’ in cases just like this one. … TSCA does not allow EPA to sit back and wait for refinery-related HF use to cause further serious harm. EPA must act to protect health and the environment by issuing a Section 6(a) rule sufficient to eliminate the unreasonable risks Plaintiffs have described.”

“The emphasis here is really on preventing injury and harm to the environment before it happens,” NRDC senior attorney Margaret Hsieh told Random Lengths News after the hearing. “We don’t want to wait for there to be a mass casualty event in which people get hurt and say, ‘Oh, now we have evidence that we need to do something to regulate.’

“The point is that there’s enough information out there that establishes that we do have this risk, we have a concrete, we have an imminent risk. We have enough information to take action under the statute to eliminate that risk before people get hurt. And I think that’s a real emphasis in Tosca [TSCA]. It’s there in the legislative history, the idea that we should be doing things before the consequences the adverse consequences happen.”

EPA basically ignored the proactive purpose here because it’s “definitely not favorable to them, so it’s not something that they want to emphasize,” Hsieh said. “They just want to emphasize, ‘Oh, we haven’t seen something bad happened yet, and therefore we don’t have enough evidence that it’s going to happen.’

“But I think that’s not true,” she said. “It’s actually the case, and I think the plaintiffs have shown to a pretty detailed extent, there’s been a really extensive history of incidents and near incidents involving hydrogen fluoride.

“For example, if you just look at the Torrance refinery, there’s been about 15 releases, if you look at the Wilmington refinery there’s been about six releases. And we have about 40 or so refineries across the country where there has been this history of both specifically HF-related releases and also more general safety incidents.”

Finally, although EPA cited multiple cases in which standing arguments prevailed, NRDC argued that they all differed from this case in significant ways. In contrast, in the hearing itself, NRDC attorney Vivian Wang began by citing a very recent case that’s almost identical.

“Your Honor, Eng v. EPA resolves the question of standing here,” Wang said. “The Ninth Circuit just a couple of months ago found that Dr. Eng had standing because asserted deficiencies in operating practices could, in the conditional, could conceivably threaten residents within several miles of the HF using refinery in Wilmington. We have members who are concerned about that very facility and others like it. And, indeed, Dr. Eng himself is a member of plaintiff NRDC.”

The Eng case “is directly on point because it deals with facts that are very, very similar and we don’t think that that case can be distinguished in any meaningful way,” Hsieh said.

In a preliminary ruling issued before the hearing, the judge “was inclined to grant the motions to dismiss, but to give plaintiffs a leave to amend their complaint,” Hsieh said.

The ruling is non-public, but the judge explained his reasoning at the start of the hearing, and it was framed in very general terms, “that there are and must be limits to the uses to which lawsuits are put,” and that the principle of standing “serves the purpose of keeping the judiciary within its bounds.” Whether he still holds to that line of reasoning in light of the Eng case and other arguments presented orally remains to be seen.

A ruling could be issued any day, up to as long as two months from now, Hsieh said. But even if he does rule in favor of the EPA, the judge himself said at the end of the hearing that he would allow the suit to be amended and refiled. So whatever the outcome, it’s just one battle in a longer war.

 

Charter Reform Massacre: City Council Butchers Most Ambitious Changes

Paul Rosenberg
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Charter Reform Massacre: City Council Butchers Most Ambitious Changes

 

Democracy, accountability and modernization proposals mostly neglected, but long-term planning improvements survive

For the first time since 1999, Los Angeles is in the process of reforming its charter, but many of the biggest reforms people have been calling for won’t appear on the ballot for voters to decide on this November. What’s more, there’s a distressing pattern to what’s moving forward and what’s not.

The Charter Reform Commission organized its proposals into four main themes, each with six or seven highlighted proposals. But only one theme’s most significant proposals survived the city council vote on June 17: the one titled “Improve Long-Term Planning and Service Delivery,” which saw five of six proposals survive, four of them closely inter-related.

In contrast, none of the commission proposals to “Strengthen Democratic Voice and Representation” were approved, including the proposal to expand the size of city council, arguably the most significant proposal that helped drive the creation of the Charter Reform Commission in the first place. Only one proposal to “Modernize Government Structure for a City of 4 Million” survived: requiring charter reform every ten years, which is already required by the city ordinance that created the current charter reform process. And although three proposals to “Rebuild Trust Through Accountability” survived, two were relatively narrow, while the entire process significantly eroded trust by virtue of how so many reforms were neglected.

“Unfortunately, nearly four years after we started this process some of the biggest and most heavily anticipated changes are now going to be punted to another committee,” City councilwoman and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman said in a social media video.

Ranked choice voting and council expansion were both deferred, saying ‘further study required,’ “But there was time to study it,” Raman noted. “A full commission was created two years ago to do exactly that. But Mayor Bass sat on her appointments for nearly a year [11 months]. One publication [Politico] called her ‘the most conspicuous logjam in the whole process.’ The commission lost almost a year of work, raced to finish, and now the council says the work feels rushed. Of course it was. That was by design. This is how the status quo protects itself. You don’t have to vote against reform. You just slow it down until the clock runs out.”

Council Expansion Put Off

Such criticism from a candidate challenging an incumbent mayor might be expected, but Raman was simply echoing the sentiments of countless individual Angelenos and organizations involved in the process, which saw a wide variety of democracy-enhancing ideas put forward beyond those recommended to the council. LA Forward is one such organization, part of the broader Fair Rep LA coalition, and their deputy director Godfrey Plata largely echoed Raman’s assessments, while also highlighting key proposals that survived.

“I wonder how the commissioners feel about all the time they spent wading through reforms, only a few of which are making it to ballot,” Plata told Random Lengths News.

“City council expansion is the thing that is most frustrating to folks,” he noted. “I have heard conversations exploring like, ‘Is it time to go the petition route for a ballot initiative here?’ Certainly that would be very costly, but it is something that means that much to people, in terms of being able to feel represented,” he said. “People are thinking that seriously about spending their time collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures to do it.”

The rejected proposal would only have expanded the city council from 15 to 25 seats, still half the size of the city councils of New York and Chicago — a reflection of how relatively modest the reforms actually are.

In addition, Plata noted, “Ranked choice voting was in the same conversation, although perhaps a newer idea than city council expansion and there are very organized advocates around that.” While it may be a newer idea here, ranked choice voting was first implemented in San Francisco a generation ago, in 2004, and was recently adopted by Redondo Beach in 2024.

There was one objection to expanding the council, raised by city council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson, that seems worth considering — that a larger city council would result in a more powerful mayor. Plata offered two responses. First, he said, “I wonder what the public cares about that,” as opposed to council members. And as for them, his second point was, “Part of our argument for trying to get expansion on the ballot immediately this November was to build a longer runway to figure out all the implications. And the power dynamic implication is one where checks and balances can be built and implemented.”

Non-Citizen Voting

There was one proposal to strengthen democracy that did pass — to empower the city to allow non-citizen residents to vote in city and school board elections. But that proposal came from councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, rather than the Charter Commission, though Plata noted that it had been discussed before, so, “It didn’t come completely out of nowhere.”

The charter measure wouldn’t automatically allow non-citizens to vote, it would simply enable the city council to pass an ordinance to do so. The details could be worked out over time.

“Residential voting has been passed in other jurisdictions, like I believe San Francisco Unified School District passed it a couple of years ago,” Plata noted. In fact, 19 local jurisdictions allow it, according to the Vermont League of Women Voters. And that’s nothing compared to our past history. As noted in the book, Democracy For All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States:

“[A]liens” voted in local, state, and even national elections in as many as forty states and federal territories from the founding of the United States until 1926, and noncitizen immigrants held public office such as alderman and coroner.

Other democracy-strengthening proposals that were dropped included:

  • Lower voting age to 16 for city and Los Angeles Unified School District elections;
  • Reduce ballot access barriers so more candidates can run;
  • Strengthen neighborhood council advisory powers.

Rebuilding Trust Through Accountability

Accountability reforms that were put off included giving the Ethics Commission independent legal counsel and a protected budget, clarifying suspension process and compensation rules for council members, and requiring special elections when vacancies leave more than one year remaining, while the proposal to establish an Inspector General to investigate corruption was set aside completely.

The one major accountability reform that passed was to give the city council the power to set Los Angeles Police Department policy — even as three other LAPD reforms were put off, including one allowing the police chief to fire officers for harmful misconduct.

“Council member [Euniss] Hernandez mentioned in some of her remarks on Wednesday that last year in the face of the ICE raids building up, the council passed 22 motions, 22! in an attempt to keep the public safe. And zero of them actually made it through the Board of of Police Commissioners, which is currently the unelected body tasked with legislating LAPD policy,” Plata explained. “That’s a problem when the folks that we’ve elected, advocating to and were accountable to us literally do not have the power to do the thing that we need. And the folks who do have the power are unelected.”

Council President Harris-Dawson and Councilman John Lee vocally opposed this. Both expressed fears of returning to the 1990s, when Harris-Dawson noted that how police treated residents changed dramatically, depending on which council district you were in. In the rules committee, Lee even went so far as to claim, “It’s a much better department. It’s a department that is extremely progressive,” a claim that hardly squares with its behavior during ICE’s occupation last year.

Plata pushed back in several ways. First of all, it’s not a reversion to how things were in the 1990s. “It doesn’t take away any of the powers of the Board of Police Commissioners, they still exist as an appointed body” that’s primarily responsible for LAPD policy. While it does give the city council the power to set LAPD policy as well, “It doesn’t create any sort of incentive to do so,” he said. “It’s a high bar, you still have to get eight of the 15 votes, currently, you have the committee structure to refer things to, things get stuck all the time to sit there for years.”

What’s more, Plata noted, “How we think about policing is different now than it was in the ’90s. We have all evolved. … I think it’s good to revisit something that perhaps didn’t work in the past, so long as we also continue to use it responsibly.”

Finally, he noted that the question was raised, “Does this make the LAPPL [police union] more likely to weigh in on city council races,” if council members had power over LAPD policy? “But we also know that the LAPPL plays [a role in elections] now, even without that power,” he pointed out.

As if to underscore Plata’s last point, the LAPPL sent a letter to the city council on June 17, criticizing it for failing to “meet and confer” with them, as required under their labor contract. But not only were they notified of charter proposals multiple times, without responding, the proposal that was passed doesn’t impact labor negotiations. In fact, it specifically prohibits the city council from micromanaging.

Modernization Delayed?

Only one of seven proposals to “Modernize Government Structure for a City of 4 Million” survived: requiring charter reform every 10 years, which is already required by the same city ordinance that created this charter reform process. The rest were either delayed or sidelined.

For LA Forward, the most striking failure had to do with restructuring the city attorney’s office, “Currently our city attorney’s office is tasked with a lot more than peer cities task ​​​​​​​their city attorney with, and it is an elected position as well,” Plata said. The attorney prosecutes misdemeanors, represents the city in litigation, and provides counsel to the city council, as well as departments. The latter is particularly concerning, Plata noted “There are bound to be potential political differences between whoever the city attorney is and the body that legislates.” The attorney is risk averse, concerned with limiting the city’s liability, and thus likely to advise against bold policy changes, while the city council is elected precisely to make such changes when conditions warrant it, and the people who elect them demand it.

The Charter Commission proposed bifurcating the office, with an elected prosecutor and an appointed city attorney, but for the reasons just stated, LA Forward argued for trifucating the office, creating a separate body to advise city council, as other peer cities do, as well as the state legislature. But the chief legislative analyst said it required “further study,” and no action was taken, though there’s still a chance that such a body could be created via a city ordinance.

The fact that decennial charter reform will be voted on — even though it’s already a city ordinance — is perhaps not as positive as might first appear, given how flawed the process has turned out to be in practice. So much was left undone, 10 years seems far too long to wait, and both the mayor and the council served to block the majority of proposals. “The commission was advisory and we are disappointed that with the things that were all passed, only a few of them are making it to ballot,” Plata said, while other things not part of the process will be on the ballot. So, even more than how often, “what will the rules be … feels like the even more important question.”

Where Reforms Advanced

The council approved adopting a five-year capital improvement program, without which, “LA responds to crises rather than preventing them,” as the commission explained in its final report. It also approved a director of public qorks with authority to coordinate infrastructure delivery across departments, and a two-year budget cycle to allow for less rushed, more thoughtful budgeting. This trio of reforms would work together to significantly improve the city’s infrastructure spending, an example of how multiple well-conceived reforms can work together synergistically to significantly improve how the city works, even though not all the reforms in this theme were adopted. In contrast, while some proposals from other themes were also adopted, no such synergies were created.

“We’re really excited about the CIP,” as well as the two other reforms, Plata said. “This is a very technical set of reforms that will pay off for the people,” he said, though “it’s hard for that to be really visible to the voters sometimes.”

That’s not the case for another proposal — to double minimum park funding — that vividly illustrated the disconnect between LA residents and city hall. It was easily the most broadly supported reform proposal, especially during hearings before the rules committee and then the full council.

And it’s not just a matter of public sentiment: In the wake of the Great Recession, LA’s investment in its parks has suffered so much that it has declined from #34 on the Trust for Public Land’s national “ParkScore” rankings in 2013 to 49th place in 2020, 88th place in 2024, and 93rd place today.

But council members’ concern about the lack of a dedicated funding source produced strong resistance, and Budget Committee Chair Kay Yaroslavsky advanced a substitute proposal to increase funding half as much, with a four-year phase-in in the rules committee the week before the city council vote, which most park advocates denounced as inadequate. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez refused to give up, and managed to garner majority support for doubling park funding with a more gradual 10-year phase-in.

The concern with lack of dedicated funding for parks stood in stark contrast to the council’s historical willingness to spend lavishly on police, including overtime and lawsuits, which totaled $436 million since 2020. A reform proposal to shift some of that cost to individual officers via an insurance system was derailed by the chief legislative analyst.

The Big Picture

“Folks have been watching this reform process have noticed that the council has passed the ballot reforms that have given them more power, or clarified some of their power, but not a lot of things that check the power,” Plata said, summing up. “There were a series of possible reforms around what to do in cases of misconduct, for example, and those have been tabled. Even the idea of council expansion … like what happens if we expand this, it changes our power … things that changed their power were not things that they passed forward.”

In the Charter Commission’s final report, it said, “Los Angeles did not arrive at Charter reform because of one bad headline or one bad politician. It got here because many Angelenos came to believe that City Hall had become too hard to trust, too hard to follow, and too easy for insiders to work.”

Unfortunately, the city council’s rejection of most of the proposed reforms has only reinforced that belief. The question now is how people respond — and initial signs, such as public comments at the June 17 meeting, point to an even deeper determination to produce significant change.

The Dismantling of Justice

Reporters Desk
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The Dismantling of Justice

What America Loses When We Fire Immigration Judges without Cause

By Mimi Tsankov, Former President, National Association of Immigration Judges

I spent nearly two decades as an immigration judge, serving on the bench in New York, Los Angeles, Colorado, and on details to Laredo, Texas and Tacoma, Washington. I also served as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges for four years. I considered that work the honor of a lifetime. Over the past year, however, I have watched as more than 200 of my former colleagues have been fired, forced out, or pushed to resign.

This leadership approach is fundamentally changing the court system. Twelve immigration courts have lost more than half their judges. Two courts now have no judges at all. The San Francisco courthouse, once one of the busiest in the country, went from 21 judges to two before closing entirely, leaving approximately 120,000 cases pending in legal limbo. At the same time, federal habeas petitions in immigration detention cases reportedly rose from roughly 200 in 2024 to more than 9,000 in January 2026.

These numbers tell a story of a court system under extraordinary strain and raise important questions about whether it can continue to fulfill its most basic mission: providing fair and impartial hearings under the law.

During my years on the bench, immigration judges were repeatedly assured that judicial independence remained a central principle of the court system. Yet many judges simultaneously experienced growing pressure from ballooning dockets, increasingly demanding performance expectations, and directives emphasizing speed and efficiency. Over time, the gap between those assurances and the realities many judges faced became increasingly difficult to ignore.

Then came the firings. Many of the judges who lost their positions received no meaningful explanation. No finding of misconduct. No determination that they had failed to perform their duties. No clear justification beyond broad references to executive authority under Article II of the Constitution.

For someone who spent a career respecting the rule of law and the integrity of public institutions, that is deeply troubling. Judges are expected to explain their decisions. Every ruling must be supported by facts, law and reasoned analysis. Yet experienced judges who devoted years of service to the federal government were removed without receiving the same basic explanation they routinely provided to others.

The manner of these removals raises broader concerns about public confidence in the system itself. How can immigrants have faith in the fairness of their proceedings when judges are removed without transparency or accountability? Judicial independence cannot be maintained through statements and memoranda alone. It depends on whether judges can decide cases based on the law and facts without fear that their careers will be affected.

The consequences extend well beyond the judges who have left the bench. Judges on non-detained dockets are reportedly being scheduled for up to 100 master calendar hearings in a single day, in addition to individual hearings that require careful review of evidence, testimony and legal arguments. The workload being placed on many judges today would challenge even the most experienced jurists.

At the same time, newer judges enter the system under significant pressure. Many have relocated their families, left private practice and committed themselves to public service. They are stepping into a system where workloads are heavy, expectations are high and the institutional environment is in flux. That reality inevitably affects how the courts are perceived by those who appear before them.

That concern extends beyond the individuals involved. Courts depend on public trust. If litigants begin to believe that judges face pressure to reach preferred outcomes rather than independent conclusions based on the law and the facts, confidence in the fairness of the system inevitably suffers.

Immigration law is extraordinarily complex. Relief is not always warranted, but neither is removal. Every case requires careful analysis of evidence, credibility and legal standards. The legitimacy of the system depends upon judges having the independence to make those determinations without fear or favor.

At its core, this debate is about due process. The phrase can sound abstract, but in a courtroom due process often comes down to practical decisions that affect real people. Should someone be given additional time to secure legal representation or obtain evidence necessary to support a claim for relief? Should a hearing proceed when fairness requires delay?

Those decisions require judgment, discretion and independence. They cannot be reduced to quotas, deadlines, or administrative efficiency.

The immigration court system is under tremendous strain, but this is not a moment to abandon it. America still needs immigration judges. We need talented, experienced and ethical people willing to take on one of the most difficult responsibilities in public service. We need judges who understand the pressures of the job and remain committed to providing full and fair hearings despite those pressures.

Judges are not accustomed to drawing attention to themselves. We are trained to let our decisions speak for themselves and to preserve public confidence in the courts by remaining above political debates. But there are moments when silence carries its own consequences.

That belief has led many members of the legal community, myself included, to participate in efforts such as Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to defending judicial independence and the rule of law. These conversations matter because the public cannot protect institutions it does not understand.

No judge can solve every problem within a system. But every judge can approach each case with fairness, impartiality and fidelity to the law, and ensure that every person who appears before them receives the hearing the law promises. That is the immigration court system worth fighting for.

New Royal Role Expands Gatlin’s Push for Africa–Los Angeles Trade Ties

Terelle Jerricks
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New Royal Role Expands Gatlin’s Push for Africa–Los Angeles Trade Ties

On June 15, civic leader Joe Gatlin, who serves as the Harbor Area commissioner on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, announced that he had been appointed king and named royal ambassador for Pan-African cooperation, investments and partnerships by Queen Pamela Angwech Judith of the Lutto Royal Kingdom, which is based in northern Uganda.

The appointment entrusts Gatlin with a global mandate to advance Africa’s development through international collaboration. According to the proclamation, the appointment reflects the kingdom’s commitment to fostering strategic partnerships that promote economic growth, innovation, trade and investment across the African continent.

Operating from California while serving worldwide, Gatlin is tasked with representing the Lutto Royal Kingdom in efforts to strengthen ties between Africa and the international community. His responsibilities include cultivating relationships with investors, philanthropic organizations, corporate leaders, academic institutions, development agencies, innovation networks and logistics partners, including the Port of Los Angeles. Through those connections, he is expected to help mobilize resources, encourage sustainable development and expand Africa’s access to global markets.

The proclamation states that Africa’s future depends on cooperation, transformative investment and shared prosperity. By establishing the ambassadorial role, the Lutto Royal Kingdom seeks to position Africa as a leading destination for enterprise and innovation while creating opportunities for future generations.

The appointment comes two years after Gatlin organized a visit by a royal delegation from Nigeria’s Delta region to the Port of Los Angeles.

The delegation, led by Ogiame Atuwatse III, the olu of Warri, along with leaders from the African Diaspora Foundation and Aivlys LLC, met with Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka. Seroka said the discussions focused on trade relationships and friendship.

Gatlin, CEO of Gatlin Enterprises and chairman of the U.S. section of the African Diaspora Foundation, played a key role in connecting the port director with the Nigerian royal delegation. During a harbor tour, Gatlin discussed the potential for expanded trade relationships between Nigeria and the Los Angeles Harbor region.

At the time, Gatlin said increased trade would benefit both Africa and the local economy.

“The imports from the continent will mean more job opportunities for our community. It’ll bring millions to our port,” Gatlin said. “One of the reasons I’m so excited about this is that it will help our entire community.”

Today, Gatlin said his work includes engagement with more than 50 kingdoms across 11 African countries.

Gatlin has long envisioned growth in waterfront employment as trade links between Los Angeles and Africa expand.

“Every union on the waterfront will increase its membership, sometimes even doubling its membership,” Gatlin said. “I want to make sure our people are ready for that, that they’re trained for that. They should go to school to become welders or learn whatever skills are needed. This is going to have a huge impact on our community.”

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