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Overnight Closures of Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro

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Overnight Closures of Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro

 

Caltrans (District 7) will implement overnight closures of eastbound State Route 47 (SR-47) at Vincent Thomas Bridge between Harbor Boulevard and Ferry Street beginning June 14. Closures will occur nightly from 10:15 p.m. to 6:45 a.m., Sunday night through Friday morning.

Additionally, the eastbound SR-47 on-ramps at Gaffey Street and Channel Street, and the southbound Interstate 110 (I-110) to eastbound SR-47 connector, will be closed during the overnight lane closures. Construction activities include installing an under-deck shield and a work platform that will provide crews access to the bridge deck from multiple locations in advance of the full bridge closure scheduled for November 1, 2026.

Beginning June 21, overnight closures will alternate between the eastbound and westbound directions throughout summer 2026, with only one direction fully closed at a time. Daytime construction activities will not require bridge closures.

During the eastbound overnight closures, traffic will be detoured via Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Route 103 to Route 47. (See map below)

This work is part of the Vincent Thomas Bridge Deck Replacement Project. A critical infrastructure project totaling $752.8 million, the deck replacement will require partial and full closures of the bridge over the next two years. More information is available at theproject website. Skanska-CEC Joint Venture is the general contractor for the project.

Due to weather or operational factors, the schedule is subject to change, including dates and times, the number of closures, and other details. Motorists should expect delays when utilizing the Vincent Thomas Bridge and use Caltrans Quickmap to review current traffic conditions before traveling. Caltrans reminds drivers to exercise increased caution near the closure and Slow for the Cone Zone.

Bridge Route Png

Key Charter Reform Proposals In Danger of Being Axed

Paul Rosenberg
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Key Charter Reform Proposals In Danger of Being Axed

Democracy vs. Bureaucracy: The Devil’s In The Details

By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

Key charter reform proposals—including city council expansion and police accountability reforms—are in danger of being abandoned following the June 10 release of a report by LA’s Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso. In response, LA Forward’s Deputy Director, Godfrey Plata, posted an Instagram appeal for people to email councilmembers to restore those key reforms, before the City Council votes on them next Tuesday and Wednesday.

But they weren’t the only reforms put off by the CLA report. Altogether, the CLA recommended 11 reforms for the November ballot, 22 for further study, and 24 for “note and file.” While some of the recommendations against placing reforms on the ballot may make sense—charter reform may not be needed for some, while others truly may need more time to get right—police accountability and a suite of democracy-enhancing reforms are long overdue, and should not be withheld from the voters in November.

To better understand what’s happening, Random Lengths spoke with Plata about the endangered reforms, and why they need to move forward now. Regarding police accountability, he prefaced his remarks by noting, “The police department is the most funded department in the entire city, and takes up a lot of our energy and capacity in any of our governing,” and “they also have weapons,” so there’s a lot of interest in improving accountability.

Two proposals are LA Forward’s top concerns, Plata said, “One, ensuring that LAPD honors all ordinances passed through city Council processes, and then two, allowing the chief of police to remove officers with repeated histories of harm. We think of these are common sense.” In fact, most folks probably think they’re already law.

“Most voters when they vote for city council members believe that those city council members have legislative power around all things related to the city,” Plata said, but “right now because of the way our charter is written. LAPD does not have to follow ordinances that are passed through normal city council processes.” The best that a council majority of 8 or more can do is passing a policy recommendation. It’s up to the appointed board of police commissioners to actually set policy. The proposed charter change wouldn’t alter things dramatically, as with the Harbor Department, the existing commissioner would retain primary responsibility, but the city council could make policy if needed. “Simply by enabling them to make policy for LAPD does not mean they will use that tool, does not mean that everything that comes to city council will become policy. We think that this is still a high bar,” with a majority needed to pass, and committee processes to go through before that. “So LAPD honoring ordinances we think is just a simple clarification related to the powers of the city council.”

Similarly, the police chief’s inability to fire officers with repeated histories of harm “is something that really throws off voters,” Plata said. “We see on the news all the time instances of police brutality and sometimes internally police harassment amongst each other as well. And right now the chief of police, who was in charge of the department does not have the power to release folks who have a repeated pattern of repeated history of harm or misconduct.” Most Angelenos would not expect to keep their jobs if they acted similarly, nor would other city employees. As it stands, the worst that might happen is reassignment to a desk job, still collecting a paycheck from taxpayers.

There are two other police reforms LA Forward backs, although one needs more work. The other is “the honoring of the First Amendment, that the chief of police is able to support its police department to be able to honor all the things under the First Amendment including right to assembly right to speech, etc., including journalists,” which again is something folks might already assume is the case, despite repeated violations over the years.

What needs more work is “a police reform around creating liability insurance,” to help address the problem of “paying inordinate amounts of our taxpayer money toward liabilities,” when victims of police violence or rights violations sue the police department. “We believe that there is a world of solutions to explore” about how to change things, such as making individual officers responsible via individual insurance. But, “The commission proposes a really specific reform,” and the math doesn’t seem to work out. At the same time, city council has been working to explore similar approaches, and “We think there’s promise there,” which could be ready “by the next budget cycle in 2027,” which wouldn’t require any charter change.

As for council expansion, “we have the highest ratio of residents to representatives in the nation,” Plata said. The number of districts hasn’t changed since 1925, when LA’s population was 600,000, compared to about 4 million today, and council expansion has been discussed for years, so the need for further discussion seems far-fetched. The County Board of Supervisors is already scheduled to expand to 9 when redistricting occurs in 2032, and “if we choose to expand now in 2026…. we would give ourselves a runway of time to be able to implement this really well by 2032,” he explained. The longer we delay, the more rushed, and possibly more careless the process will be. It’s really just that simple.

Other democracy-enhancing proposals have also been needlessly sidelined by the CLA report, despite the fact that other jurisdictions have already adopted them. Ranked choice voting is one: San Francisco has had it for two decades, while New York City has just adopted it. LA Forward hasn’t taken a position on it, “but certainly there is popularity in the idea of it amongst different community members who are interested in democracy reforms,” Plata said.

On the other hand, LA Forward has taken positions on two other reforms: allowing non-citizens to vote in city and schoolboard elections and lowering the voting age to 16 for those elections as well. Both proposals are only to change the charter so that the city council can make these changes, if a majority votes for them, which is why delay makes little sense. It’s not a rush to decide anything, only to make it possible to decide sometime in the future.

But the logic for the proposals is strong.

“What we know is true is that there are many folks served by LAUSD. In particular, and by the city regardless of citizen status. People are impacted. People’s children go to schools served by LAUSD. And right now they don’t currently have a say as to the nature of the point of view of the board district member representing their schools and students. They don’t have a say.”

The idea isn’t new. For most of US history non-citizens have been allowed to vote in local elections in some jurisdictions, following the same basic logic.

Similarly, the voting age was lowered to 18 during the Vietnam War, and other countries hav lowered their voting ages even further since. In America, we have a problem getting young people to care about politics. Letting them vote at 16 on issues directly affecting them would help make our democracy healthier for all.

There are other democracy reforms that LA Forward hasn’t taken a position on—a trio of reforms to strengthen neighborhood council’s ability to do outreach and advocacy, and changes to ballot access requirements by extending filing deadlines & lowering signature thresholds. But these are supported by groups and individuals that LA Forward has worked with.

It seems troubling that so many democracy-strenghtening proposals were nixed by the CLA report, so I asked Plata what he thought might explain it.

“Who knows what is really happening,” he said, but “there’s two theories that have come to my attention.” The first “is we’ve created a rushed process,” not in the commision’s work, but in the time afterwards. “The rules committee has has had only a month to work through 60+ reforms,” and the committee members have asked the CLA to report back on a large number of questions. “A month is not enough time for the CLA to be able to produce great rigorous reporting on 60+ reforms….So it’s not completely surprising” that the CLA would say “More study is needed. Of course they would want more time to produce all of the reports that they’ve been asked to do. So as a function of time, it seems that they are telling their truth, the CLA would love the opportunity to provide further study,” even though “what we would argue for things like expansion, is we have actually been taking a look at this concept for decades.” There’s also been workshops, discussions, reports and polling all showing the desire for expansion. More study is needed to get the details right, which is why it should be voted on now, to provide the long runway for getting everything in order.

But, “On police accountability reforms, we aren’t actually sure why we would need further study on the ability of a councul to create law that the LAPD would have to follow. That is simply a decision to make. We don’t know why we need more time for the chief of police to study how the chief of police would uphold the First Amendment in how they guide the police department. We have had centuries of constitutional study on the First Amendment and what it means. We don’t think we need more time for that.”

Another reform that’s been put on hold is restructuring the City Attorney. But in this case, LA Forward is cautiously optimistic. The most fundamental concern is that when the attorney is

providing legislative counsel to the city Council and city departments, as well as taking on lawsuits, “Those things become politicized when we have an elected city attorney.” A prime concern is that “they are bound to have conflicting views and interests,” In particular, “Given their responsibilities for defending the city against lawsuits, pf course, the city attorney is likely to be far more risk-averse.” and will tend to advise against councilmembers creating new law and policies, which their constitutuents may have elected them to do. The charter proposal to bifrucate the office would address this proble, but there’s now a more modest idea “to create an office of legislative counsel to handle the drafting of legislation for our city council that is currently assigned to the city attorney’s office, removing that piece of the puzzle,” but leaving everyting else as is for now. “We think that this is a viable first stop toward rethinking the entire city attorney’s office,” Plata said. “We know that there cities like New York, Chicago, Seattle that I found it useful to have this type of set up as well for their city councils. It kind of similar to what our state legislature has as well.”

One final stalled reform I asked about was doubling the budget for parks—a proposal that probably had the most varied and widespread support in public comments to the Rules Committee. “This is one of the reforms that we didn’t take up and go deeply into,” Plata said. But there seems to be a division in the city council between some “that are more hesitant to do any sort of ballot box budgeting” as they call it, and other that “are interested in the doubling of of parks funding.”

In contrast to all the above, two significant budget planning reforms backed by LA Forward were recommended for the ballot: shifting from an annual budget cycle to a two-year cycle, with provisions to ensure public comment at various points in the process, and adopting a Capital Investment Program on a five year cycle effective immediately. “These two things in tandem, we think, will begin to hopefully help us make use of our taxpayer money in a much more responsible way,’ Plata said. “That’s great and we think representation and police were accountability are still two things that we can do will alongside those things.”

Editor’s note: If you want to support LA Forward’s effort to put police accountability and council expansion on the ballot, the letters they have drafted can be found here:

tinyurl.com/SaveExpansion

tinyurl.com/CRpolice

The Dismantling of Justice: What America Loses When We Fire Immigration Judges without Cause

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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.

Obituary Olga Heidi Barragan October 26, 1966 -April 27, 2026

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Obituary Olga Heidi Barragan October 26, 1966 -April 27, 2026

 

Olga Heidi Barragan, loving wife, daughter and mother, left this Earth on April 27, 2026.

Olga, “Heidi” was born on October 26, 1966 to her parents, Maria and Salvador Robledo. Heidi lived 59 beautiful years and was surrounded with love by those she cherished most in her final moments.

Heidi’s passion for life and the special love she gave will be carried on forever by her husband, Larry, son, Brandon, and daughter, Chelsea and fur baby, Sophie.

Heidi’s heartfelt devotion to the arts left a lasting imprint on the students and children she worked with at the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Music School and A Place Called Home in South Central Los Angeles. Heidi and her husband, Larry are the original founders of the Klassics for Kids Car Show at Calas Park in Carson, California which benefits children’s sports and art programs.

Heidi’s 15 plus years of contribution towards the labor movement and organizations such as the Maritime Trades Department Southern California Ports Council, The Los Angeles/ Long Beach Harbor Labor Coalition Labor Day Parade, will forever leave a positive impact on the members, families, and community she served.

Heidi, your special warmth, devotion, and love as a wife, mother, daughter and friend will forever be missed and cherished by everyone you touched. Your light continues to shine bright even after your spirit has gone.

Memorial service was held Saturday, June 6 at Green Hills Memorial Park Chapel 27501 S. Western Ave, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275.

To send flowers or plant a memorial tree in memory, please visit our flower store.

Obituary: Kent Wong Helped Reimagine Labor’s Future—and Inspired a Generation to Build It

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Obituary: Kent Wong Helped Reimagine Labor’s Future—and Inspired a Generation to Build It

 

By Gregory Mantsios

As was his way, Kent Wong was abundantly generous when he spoke about the characteristics and accomplishments of kindred spirits. He was like that with me. He saw strengths in me that I didn’t see in myself. I once joked, “I want you, my dear friend, to write my obituary.” Kent, six years younger than me, passed away on October 8, 2025. He was sixty-nine years old.

While he was known for his warmth, laughter, and expansive generosity toward friends and comrades, he was also a sharp critic—especially of the rich and powerful and those complicit with them. He devoted his life to advancing the interests of the disenfranchised, and his efforts and influence extended across movements, generations, and continents.

Kent Wong was a towering figure in labor education. He served as Director of the UCLA Labor Center for more than three decades. There, he taught courses on labor and social justice; authored and edited works on immigrant rights and nonviolent social movements; and built pioneering programs that empowered immigrant workers, nurtured young leaders, and fostered international solidarity. Under his leadership, the UCLA Labor Center became a national model for labor education and movement building.

Through his advocacy, Kent led the effort to secure state legislative funding for a state-wide network of centers in the University of California system that are now dedicated to labor research, education, and advocacy. He also played a critical role in establishing the United Association for Labor Education (UALE), a national organization that brings together academic and union-based labor educators, and in galvanizing it to reflect the values, diversity, activism, and democratic spirit that stand as a lasting testament to his life’s work.

As an organizer, Kent helped forge labor–community coalitions that placed immigrant workers at the heart of the labor movement and helped transform the political landscape of Los Angeles. A bridge-builder and strategist, he viewed coalition work as both an organizing method and a moral imperative. Through his leadership at the UCLA Labor Center, he advanced campaigns among car wash workers, day laborers, garment workers, and domestic workers, trained new organizers, and gave public legitimacy to their struggle for dignity and rights.

New Labor Forum readers knew Kent as a founding member of the journal’s Editorial Board and a frequent contributor to its pages. From its inception, he helped shape the journal’s identity, pushing us to serve as a bridge between academics and activists on the ground. He championed authors and themes that were unpopular in the mainstream labor movement at the time: the centrality of immigrant workers, the necessity of confronting racism within the labor movement, and the urgency of breaking with the AFL-CIO’s lingering legacy of Cold War nationalism—long before it became acceptable to do so.

Kent saw immigrant workers not as participants but as the new vanguard—the moral and organizational heart of labor’s renewal. Through essays like “Don’t Miss the Bus” (2004) and “The 2006 Immigrant Uprising” (2007), he examined how Latino and Asian workers—janitors, housekeepers, garment, and home care workers—revitalized unions and recast labor’s struggle as a fight for civil and human rights. In his New Labor Forum interviews with figures such as John Wilhelm and Dolores Huerta, he invited leaders to imagine how immigrant organizing could reset labor’s moral compass and expand solidarity across borders.

Equally bold were his writings on international labor. From “Blaming It All on China” (2004) to “Worker to Worker, Union to Union” (2022), he challenged Cold War assumptions within the AFL-CIO and rejected the scapegoating of foreign workers for the ravages of globalization. He argued that inequality stemmed not from China, Vietnam, or Mexico but from the unchecked power of multinational corporations—and that labor’s future depended on international collaboration, not isolation.

Kent organized a dozen or more delegations of labor leaders and educators to foreign countries, most of them to China and Vietnam to meet with Chinese (ACFTU) and Vietnamese (VGCL) unions. These exchanges opened rare channels of dialogue between workers across continents. They examined shared challenges posed by globalization, corporate power, and changing labor laws, while fostering mutual learning about organizing strategies and worker education. For Kent, these delegations embodied international solidarity in practice: not symbolic gestures, but direct relationships that redefined labor internationalism as a strategic collaboration among workers across borders.

With his writing and his worker-to-worker, union-to-union exchanges, Kent reframed solidarity as a strategy: direct cooperation among workers and unions capable of confronting global capital. He pointed to tangible results—coordination between dockworkers in Los Angeles and Shanghai, joint organizing around Walmart, and project-labor agreements with Chinese firms that yielded union contracts and good jobs in Los Angeles. Through such work, he made internationalism tangible—a global instrument of worker power.

At the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU), Kent was a treasured colleague and collaborator. In addition to his work on our journal, he was a frequent panelist at our public programs, providing valuable insight and a global perspective. Kent Wong played a key role in SLU’s Advancing Labor Relations (ALR) Project, which built partnerships with labor educators and labor organizations in China and Vietnam. Through faculty and student exchanges, curriculum development, and translation of teaching materials, the project fostered cross-national collaboration to expand labor education and promote worker participation in civil society. Kent’s knowledge, experience, and diplomatic skills were central to our effort.

Taken together, Kent Wong’s life and work constitute a remarkable legacy of vision and integrity. He built bridges—between labor and the academy, between immigrant and native-born workers, between nations long divided by ideology. He challenged labor to live up to its ideals, to confront its racism and nationalism, and to imagine solidarity as something larger than any single movement or country. And he did so not as an abstract theorist but as a tireless organizer, educator, and friend.

To those of us who were fortunate enough to know him, Kent embodied the best of what the labor movement can be: principled, joyful, fearless, and profoundly committed to a better and more just world. Kent’s loss is so deeply painful to so many of us. His generosity, grace, courage, and intellect will be missed. Yet his legacy lives on in the countless people he taught, mentored, and inspired. We honor him best by continuing the work he began—building movements grounded in dignity, solidarity, and hope.

Gregory Mantsios is the founding Dean of the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

The Farmer’s Table: Pasta Carota

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The Farmer’s Table: Pasta Carota

 

By Ari LeVaux, Columnist

Some of my favorite recipes come from vegetable farmers. These dishes tend to be veggie-forward, local and seasonal. They usually come together quickly and can satisfy the voracious bellies of hard-working, hungry crews. In winter, when not much is in season, farmy dishes will be geared toward preserved or stored ingredients in the freezer, pantry or root cellar.

Carrot pasta is always in season, because fresh, local carrots are always available year-round, either in the ground or in storage. But this recipe seems to shine especially bright during the dark days of winter, when the seasonal pickings are slim.

Farm cooks pass around recipes like heirloom seeds, with each kitchen acting like a pristine habitat in which a recipe can evolve. My friend Josh learned today’s carrot pasta recipe from our friend Luci in a very short phone conversation, and immediately went his merry way with it. Luci had learned it from her sister’s ex-husband, Ernesto, who had learned it from his mom in Milan. Josh immediately changed the recipe to fit his own personality and circumstances.

He has no prep cook, but a full cleanup crew. These circumstances allow him to tornado through the kitchen, and let others deal with the consequences. Luci, meanwhile, is more of a clean-as-you-go type, and her method affords ample time to do so. If she needs a chopper, she’ll rope anyone within shouting range — which is quite a large area given her sizable lung capacity. By that time, Josh, all by his lonesome with a podcast playing, will have already grated a load of carrots in a Cuisinart.

Carrot pasta — or Pasta Carota, as they would say in Milan — is like dinner and dessert in every bite. It delivers a creamy aromatic sweetness inside a savory sauce that is rich but light. The richness comes from a glorious redundancy of fatty ingredients, including olive oil, milk, cream, and butter. Simmering together these luscious lipids dissolves the cheese. And the lightness comes from the puffy carrot paste, which delivers faint whiffs of summertime. This sauce is the heart of this dish, and the stovetop braised carrots are the heart of the sauce. The braising takes a while, but once you have a stash of braised carrots on hand, it’s nothing to whip up a carrot sauce and cook up a quick batch of pasta carota on the spot.

Pasta Carota

The meat and anchovy paste are optional, but the parsley at the end less so. It isn’t just a splash of green garnish. Parsley is a cousin to carrot, and the two flavors interact ethereally.

Big noodles like rigatoni are best for carrying this decadent sauce, fills the tubular cavities and makes the noodles taste like savory cream-stuffed cannoli.

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 pounds peeled carrots

½ cup olive oil

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon of thyme or Italian seasonings

a few pinches of ground nutmeg

4 large cloves garlic, pressed, minced or crushed

6 ounces grated Parmesan

1/2-1 cup heavy cream

red pepper flakes, to taste

Optional: one teaspoon anchovy paste

1/2 cup mayo or vegenaise

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon salt

Meat option: 1 pound ground Italian sausage

1 pound rigatoni

1/2 bunch parsley, chopped

Step 1 – The carrots

Cut the carrots into coins. Add them to a heavy bottomed pan with the olive oil, and cook on low for about an hour, covered with a heavy lid. Stir occasionally to scrape the bottom and check the moisture content. Carrots release water as they cook, and they will simmer gently in the bubbling mix of olive oil and water. When the moisture inevitably runs out, add the milk and a cup of water. Bring to a boil on medium heat, and simmer for another hour on low.

Add the cheese, butter, mayo, pepper flakes, thyme, nutmeg, half of the garlic, and anchovy paste if using, and let the sauce simmer with the lid on, stirring every 20 minutes or so. If it starts to get stiff, add another cup of water and keep simmering until the cheese dissolves.

Finally, add the cream. Season with salt and black pepper and mix it — but not too much, according to Luci’s husband. “When the carrot coins have almost turned into a paste, at the very end, you add the cream. It’s like when you add milk to hot cereal but don’t totally mix it. The oil is floating on the cream, and the cream isn’t integrated.” His voice trailed off.

I have nibbled upon those unmixed, creamed, falling-apart carrot coins myself, I share his enchantment. However there is no doubt that the sauce coats the noodles better if you liquify it first with an immersion blender.

Josh is usually more pressed for time, and consequently has a quicker version of the sauce. He grates the carrots, which allows them to cook in about 45 minutes. Prepare as above, under a heavy lid, with a mix of milk and water to prevent the pan from drying out, and adding cheese, garlic, butter, mayo, spices, anchovy paste, and cream, salt and pepper to finish it off.

Step 2 — The meat option

Cook the ground Italian sausage in a pan until browned. Set aside.

Step 3 — La pasta

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the noodles. Drain and toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil and the other half of the minced garlic. In a large bowl, mix together the noodles, sauce, parsley and meat. Serve.

ALERT: Public Meeting, June 18 on Proposed Use of San Pedro’s Demolished Courthouse Lot on 6th Street

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ALERT: Public Meeting, June 18 on Proposed Use of San Pedro’s Demolished Courthouse Lot on 6th Street

 

The Port of LA High School or POLAHS, a charter school, would like to expand and the county has proposed allowing POLAHS to build a new gymnasium and other additions to the school on the courthouse site.

This meeting will be an oppotunity for the community to engage in a public process before permanent decisions are made regarding this property. The courthouse site will shape the future of downtown San Pedro. Such a significant decision requires broad public engagement, transparent economic analysis, and careful consideration of multiple development alternatives.

Requests:

A formal public outreach and community engagement process regarding the courthouse site

Independent economic impact and feasibility studies for alternative uses, including hospitality and mixed-use development

Public hearings with downtown stakeholders, residents, and business owners

Transparency regarding all negotiations, proposals, and redevelopment considerations related to the property

San Pedro has a rare opportunity to think boldly about its future. This site presents the possibility to be developed in a way that maximizes community benefit, economic vitality, and public accessibility for businesses, residents, and future generations.

Time: 5 p.m., June 18

Venue: POLAHS, Multi Purpose Room, 250 W 5th St, San Pedro

LA Fails To Respond To Trump DHS Threat To Close LAX to International Travel

Paul Rosenberg
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LA Fails To Respond To Trump DHS Threat To Close LAX to International Travel

In late May, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin renewed threats to pull federal customs officers from airports in so-called “sanctuary cities,” which could halt international travel through LAX — nearly 65,000 passengers per day. While Mayor Karen Bass dismissed the threatened action just weeks ahead of the World Cup, she said nothing about the more long-term threat. Despite repeated inquiries by Random Lengths, the city appears to have no plans to prevent or respond to the threat, despite already defending its sanctuary city ordinance in court for nearly a year.

The initial focus was on Newark — where detainees at the private Delaney Hall facility were on a hunger and labor strike, and community protests were mounting — and on the World Cup games, whose final is scheduled a stones throw from Newark’s airport. But the actual threat is far broader.

“Listen, these sanctuary cities where the local radical left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either,” Mullin said in a Fox News interview, adding that the Trump administration was “drawing up plans” to do just that.

Trump’s “Justice Department” had published a target list of sanctuary jurisdictions last August, which covers major airports in New York, Newark, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Philadelphia.

Mullin’s threat drew warnings it “would cause immediate and lasting harm” from the U.S. Travel Association, while a broader coalition of travel industry organizations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that “International aviation networks are highly interconnected, and operational changes at a small number of gateway airports will quickly ripple across the country, negatively impacting travelers, cargo shipments, supply chains, and the communities that depend on those connections.”

While many might suppose that such a clear warning from the business community would be sufficient, the enormous costs of Trump’s illegal tariffs clearly shows it’s not. What’s more, in February, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission called the Chamber of Commerce “a left-wing, open borders supporting activist group.” These are signs that the Trump administration is crossing the line other fascist regimes have crossed when they no longer feel the need to placate the traditional conservative business interests who helped them gain power. But the cost to America could be staggering.

Stopping all international flights at the 18 airports serving identified sanctuary cities would cost the economy more than $70 billion and impact 68 million international passengers per year, according to the U.S. Travel Association. The dollar figure may be low. LAX alone generates almost $40 billion, according to 2012 data on its website, adjusted for inflation. But, as with Trump’s tariffs and city-targeting ICE raids, the concern is less about permanent impacts than with strategic disruptions — shutting down international flights for a few days or weeks in order to coerce cities to stop protecting immigrant communities.

The city’s seeming lack of response to this threat is puzzling, to say the least, given that it’s vigorously fighting to defend its sanctuary city policy in court. On June 30 last year, the Trump administration sued the city, mayor and city council, contending that sanctuary laws are illegal, and expressly designed to “obstruct the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe.”

The suit, typically, was framed in terms of Trump’s personal grievance: it argued that then-candidate Donald J. Trump campaigned and won the presidential election in 2024 “on a platform of deporting the millions of illegal immigrants the previous administration permitted, through its open borders policy, to enter the country unlawfully.

“Days after President Trump won the Nov. 5, 2024 election, the Los Angeles City Council, wishing to thwart the will of the American people regarding deportations, began the process of codifying into law its sanctuary city policies.”

But there’s no evidence whatsoever that Trump is carrying out “the will of the American people regarding deportations.” His general campaign promise to deport “the worst of the worst” was sharply at odds with the reality of mass deportations, where 70% have no criminal record at all, and most of the rest are either minor, years old, or both. In Newark, it’s even more stark: 90% have no criminal record, according to a New York Times investigation. The nationwide anti-ICE push-back, and polling support dropping into the 30s are prima facie evidence that Trump is ignoring the will of the American people.

But, of course, that’s not a legal argument. In response, on Aug. 31 last year, LA filed a motion to dismiss, relying primarily on the fact that the city’s policy mirrors California state law, which the first Trump Administration unsuccessfully challenged in a case (United States v. California) that it lost in the Ninth Circuit in 2019.

After a weak opposition brief failed to even discuss that case, LA followed up on Sept. 18, stating, “The Motion established that the Ordinance at issue mirrors a California state law known as the Values Act, which was upheld as constitutional by the Ninth Circuit in an opinion rejecting many of the very same challenges raised in this case. … The Opposition utterly ignores the contrary rulings in California, pressing the same arguments that were rejected by the Ninth Circuit.”

While a ruling has not yet been made, the Trump administration seems doomed to fail, which helps explain why they would turn to extreme economic coercion to gain what they can’t win in court. It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that LA seems to have given no thought to what it will do in that case.

Letters to the Editor: Community Town Hall Rears Ugliness, Wildlife Care, and “60 Minutes” Stood for Professionalism Against Chaos

Reporters Desk
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Letters to the Editor: Community Town Hall Rears Ugliness, Wildlife Care, and “60 Minutes” Stood for Professionalism Against Chaos

The Ugly San Pedran

Attending the recent Peck Park Town Hall–regarding the establishment of a substantial, supportive recovery center on Western Avenue–I saw the Ugly San Pedran rear his self-imprisoned head in all its fear. From the standing-room-only back of our hall, he shouted out his violence to context and righteously denied belonging to any neighborhood outside his own narrow vision of what may constitute a neighbor. He also did violence to that wee little voice inside of him that does still understand: We belong to the greater society that creates our neighborhood, and sustains it.

Erik Kongshaug

Point Fermin

 

Please Don’t Feed the Ducks

Today I walked into the post office at Weymouth corners. On my return home I (stopped) at Averill Park with the ducks. Those waddlers appeared at my feet. I told them hello, I can’t feed you.

Ten minutes later a mother with a toddler starts unloading a plethora of chips all all across the path for the ducks.

I’m not afraid of squirrels or ducks. Just stop feeding them.

P.S. Did you know Englishmen brought squirrels across the Atlantic ocean because they missed them in Vespucci America.

P.S.S. There’s always bird flu and plague.

Mark A. Nelson

San Pedro

 

Scott Pelley released a statement on his firing. Powerful.

New statement sent to CBS News staff from

Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

Echoes in Steel and Paint: Karena Massengill’s Reverberations

Melina Paris
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Echoes in Steel and Paint: Karena Massengill’s Reverberations

 

Prolific artist Karena Massengill loves to work with metal and fire. In her exhibition Reverberations at the Palos Verdes Art Center, every one of her 43 artworks on view showcases the raw sculptural materials of fire and metal.

Massengill describes her process beginning from a drawing on watercolor paper.

“I ‘draw’ in steel using the drawing as a pattern upon which I subsequently weld the sculpture, and witness the controlled destruction of the image, using a spray bottle to prevent too much burn damage. The burned drawing becomes a reverberant reincarnation of the steel to use as a painting canvas to further explore the concept in color or monochromatically. When shown together, they tell a story of evolution, spiritual discovery and self-reflection.”

She calls this process a spark of the infinite. Walking through the Palos Verdes Art Center galleries, there is a sense of a language that exists in Massengill’s work. Between her constant use of raw and recycled materials, her deep love of nature and wildlife, and her travels to Africa and Asia, Massengill’s works, in a “vocabulary of lines and steel,” ask the viewer to contemplate how we as humans affect the earth.

The artist recurrently underscores the fact that “the people least responsible for climate change are suffering the most with their lifestyle and culture forced to change in order to survive.”

Massengill’s works offer accolades and respect to their unique and very special relationships with nature.

Reverberations features several works that are singular sculptures without the ‘Echo.’ One of these, Repeated Reverberation, presents vivid, fiery color on a form evocative of a reconfigured, abstract French horn. A quarter note form on its left side denotes music, as does one small curve of red steel as the edge of a stylized bell that extends off a dynamic red-yellow semi-ellipse, at its top right. Another red-yellow curve features a biomorphic abstraction of five appendages reaching toward the bottom outer curve of the sculpture, while a green ladder at the top, which recalls expanding musical scales, leads to the focal point of this horn’s bell, creating a continuum of visual musicality.

A pair of works titled Shinto Today and Yesterday and Shinto Today and Yesterday Echo represent Shintoism. The Japanese religion, dating from the early 8th century, focused on living in harmony with nature, ritual purity, and showing gratitude. Massengill describes these two pieces as meaningful because of the indigenous spirituality Shintoism represents, but also both the old and new architecture of Japan, which the artist said is like a work of art. The sculpture is made from stainless and mild steel and oils; the ‘Echo’ features charcoal and acrylic on Arches paper. The works are representational of abstracted Shinto Shrines with torii gates, forked roofs and sweeping curved canopies. Iridescent magenta and red fill the borders of the sculpture, while the ‘Echo’ background is awash in burnt red. Together these are a pair of majestic works.

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Karena Massengill, Shinto Today and Yesterday, and Shinto Today Charcoal and acrylic on Arches Paper and Yesterday Echo, Stainless and mild steel, oils,

Ode to César Pelli (stainless, galvanized, and mild steel) and its ‘Echo’ (charcoal and acrylic on Arches paper) are both striking pieces. The pair give reference to, likely, at least, two of the famed Argentinian and American architect Pelli’s buildings; the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, and the Wells Fargo Center, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

At first look, the sculpture’s clean, steel lines on the left resemble the shape of a wing on top, and a conical form below. Pelli has said, “the forms are an expression of bamboos growing from the ground, reaching for the clouds and swaying in the wind …” Massengill’s gestural lines in steel replicate the structure’s form exactly. At the center and to the right could be a nod to the Minneapolis bank edifice, highlighted in two sets of rectangular ‘skyscrapers’ featuring the stepped-setbacks of Pelli’s 774-foot modernized Art Deco building.

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Ode to César Pelli (stainless, galvanized, and mild steel) and its ‘Echo’ (charcoal and acrylic on Arches paper) Photo courtesy of PVAC

The ‘Echo’ departs from the modern shiny steel towards a surreal scene awash in shadowy charcoal and prominent burn marks that surprisingly highlight the museum’s glass rooftop in sepia-toned shadows and light — a fascinating contrast. Both works contain a decorative element. In steel, individual pieces of the metal curve into each other as they form another funnel shape, upward toward the rectangular structures. In charcoal, the same funnel is cast in foliage-like dark green, representing fluid dynamic shapes found in nature in a nod to Pelli, who wrote, “Buildings, with their changing needs and their attachment to site, are more like living trees than inert blocks of stone.”

Front and center in this show is a sculpture entitled Peace, fabricated mild steels, oils, from 2007. The work, placed on the center wall, faces the viewer as they enter the upstairs gallery. Gazing at it initially, the form with soft, enveloping curves holds attention as one, looking through its multi-colored, vertical form, tries to discern what they are looking at — and soon reading — a word, a simple word that could be the main concept of Massengill’s oeuvre, peace. This creative sculpture in orange, green, yellow, and a bit of deep red reveals clean curving lines; the ‘e’ mirrors a smiling profile as, ironically, an actual sculpted face peers out from behind the same letter. Massengill’s characters parallel the bold, expressive gesture of graffiti wildstyle.

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Massengill’s “Peace,” fabricated mild steels, oils. Photo courtesy of PVAC

“Peace.” It’s in Massengill’s diligent message when she speaks about her work, it’s in her actions as she cares for our environment, and in her activism. It’s what she shares in her art, whether painting, welding, or sculpting.

Together, in this one setting, Reverbations allows one to read Massengill’s vocabulary through themes of evolution, discovery, and reflection, and its visual manifestation in a multitude of evocative expressions, on view at PVAC through July 2.

Time: 1 to 3 p.m., artist talk, June 20. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday thru Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday

Cost: Free

Details: pvartcenter.org

Venue: Palos Verdes Art Center, 5504 Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes

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