On Aug. 14, the California State Assembly voted 47-0 to pass Senate bill 297, which is designed to make it easier for street vendors to operate in the state. Next, the bill will go to the Senate for a recurrence vote, and then to the governor for his signature.
“It’s going to make a huge impact, because the Department of Public Health has made it close to impossible,” said activist Edin Amorado. “They had only approved a tamale cart, which is super expensive to begin with. And they don’t even have an agreement as far as how they can make it legal for a corn-man to have his cart approved. So, this is definitely going to update and streamline the retail food code.”
California state Sen. Len Gonzales held a rally on the steps of the state capital building the morning before the vote, urging the Assembly to pass the bill.
“What we want to do is ensure that we are doing away with the outdated and harmful barriers that impede vendors from continuing to do what they do every day, which is feed our community,” Gonzalez said. “And supporting the wonderful food vendors means supporting a racially diverse community, as I mentioned. California can provide greater support to microentrepreneurs by eliminating the criminal penalties and instead building more trust in our communities.”
Brandon Payette, a staff attorney from Public Counsel, said that the state should welcome vendors into the formal economy, instead of treating them like a nuisance. He said that a panel of vendor experts has guided the content and strategy of the bill.
“This panel of vendor experts has been meeting weekly for months, examining California’s laws from top-to-bottom,” Payette said.
Payette said the bill will recognize street vendors with their own category in the state’s food laws.
“For the first time, California will enact a set of food laws that sidewalk vendors were included in the process of writing,” Payette said. “Laws that contemplate vendors means laws whose goals is to bring vendors in, not to keep them out.”
Alicia Olmedo, a street vendor who has sold food for 40 years, was recently told it is illegal to operate in Southgate. She tried to get her permit from the health department, and was sent to different offices, never getting enough information to help her.
Olmedo said she has witnessed other vendors being harassed, and has seen the police and health department throw away vendors’ food when they don’t have permits. She has since been displaced from selling in Southgate, as she was told by the police to leave.
Marcel Douglas, a Jamaican street food vendor from Los Angeles, said she loves serving food, but the difficulty in securing a permit takes a toll on her, and makes her want to stop.
“The pressure to obtain this is astronomical,” Douglas said. “I’m doing an event next week, and for me to do that event I have to obtain a one-day pass. It’s $184. And each time I do an event, it’s $184.”
She said if she does an event that lasts several days, she can spend half of what she is making on just the health permits.
“If this bill is passed, that will take me out of financial hardship, and will help me to grow my business,” Douglas said.
Assemblyman Isaac Bryan said that while street vending is no longer criminalized (it was decriminalized in 2020), there are a bunch of bureaucratic barriers that make it harder for vendors to survive.
Amorado said this law will also keep vendors safer than they were previously.
“There’s a lot of street vendors who sell in dangerous streets because they are pretty much not being harassed by DPH or police,” Amorado said. “They’ll be able to basically choose safer places to sell.”
Amorado pointed out that a bill that was introduced in the Senate in February that would further criminalize street vending, Senate bill 1290, had died.
“I was confused, because it seemed like it was an oxymoron when it passed the Senate, that a good bill that would benefit street vendors passed, but also a bad one that would criminalize them even more,” Amorado said.
Douglas said the bill would have a lasting impact on vendors and their families.
“The support we have been getting for SB 972 will provide economic growth for families to build generational wealth,” Douglas said.
Andy Harris was a young skateboarding photographer when he first showed up at this newspaper, snapping pictures and getting his college degree. Many years later, he’s employed full-time on the docks, as a steady gear-man at Pasha Terminal, married with two kids, and now the OG of the San Pedro Skatepark Association.
On Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, just short of the 20th anniversary of when he and his comrades, Bob “Yamo” Yamasaki, Gabe Solis, Robbie O’Connell and April Jones kicked off this idea with no money or a clue about how to accomplish it, the Channel Street Skatepark opened. It had resounding support from a very diverse cross-section of supporters, young, old, boys and girls of all colors as the park was officially pronounced “legal.”
What follows is the brief accounting of the struggle to open this DIY project by Harris who had the fortune, skill and guts to pull off this project and in the process earn the respect of all who were pulled into his orbit.
— James P. Allen, Publisher
Speech by Andy Harris, CEO of the San Pedro Skatepark Association at the opening of the Channel Street Skatepark Aug. 21
Skateboarders, community members, and Channel Street locals, welcome to the Channel Street Skatepark, legal for the first time in its 20-year existence.
This has been a long and winding road to get us from our humble beginnings, building concrete bumps and quarter pipes out of bag-mix concrete and chicken wire bought at the local Home Depot, to what you see here today: A thriving community of skateboarders and artists turning this former lot of illegally dumped trash and vagrancy into a place for physical activity and creativity.
Back in 2002, when we first started messing around down here, we had no aspirations of building an 8,000 square foot skatepark on land that wasn’t ours. We simply wanted a spot to skate, out of the sun, and where we wouldn’t get kicked out. Sure, we’d been to Burnside up in Portland (The holy grail of DIY skateparks) and we’d seen the beginnings of Washington Street down in San Diego. So, yeah … we had some ideas of what was possible, but look, with Harbor Division LAPD a few blocks away, we figured it was [only] a matter of time before our little spot got squashed.
In fact, it almost did! In 2003, right after we had graduated from bag-mix to ordering full trucks of ready-mix, we were visited by a bunch of city and port departments, and right while we were trying to finish 10 yards of concrete! It did not look good for our little spot that day, but a phone call was made and Caroline Brady from the office of then Councilwoman Janice Hahn came out and somehow convinced the various departments to back off and let us be. I still think to this day that that woman has magical powers.
Soon after, a fence was put up between us and the railroad, and we were off to the races. By 2004, we had formed the San Pedro Skatepark Association, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity, and soon after received our first grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation.
The years from 2004 to 2013 were a flurry of building, fundraising and skateboarding. We watched kids grow up down here, going from little groms who couldn’t drop into absolute rippers who could skate anything. At the same time, the San Pedro community watched us grow as well, and the skatepark became an accepted part of town. While there are countless DIY parks in the world these days, I truly believe it is the make-up of this Pedro town that helped this particular park survive. Channel Street and this effort does not happen in Torrance or PV. This town is pretty tight-knit. We’re a union town with a long history of doing things our own way. In that respect, Channel Street is very Pedro.
As you may know, however, the next several years were a darker period in our history. The park was closed in 2014 due to a freeway widening project that involved overhead construction. We were told by the port (which owned the land) and Caltrans that we’d be back in business in about a year. This, of course, did not happen. Instead, we found ourselves mired in a sea of bureaucratic red tape that only a port and a city like LA can produce.
But the council office, now under the leadership of Joe Buscaino, had our back. The port made it clear that they didn’t want to be in the skatepark business, but they were also willing to part with the property. Thus began the long process of transferring the land within departments of the City of LA. Without the help of some key people affiliated with council district 15 in navigating the Planning Department and LA Department of Building and Safety, we as an organization would have been lost and the skatepark’s existence put in jeopardy.
Skaters gather at the Channel Street Skatepark, which had its grand opening on Aug. 21. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala
So, here we are, seven long ass years later with COVID mixed in there for good measure. We’ve completed our tasks, cleared the hurdles and as I said before, we are legal and we are open!
So now we gotta get into some thank yous and there are a lot of them:
To my family and all the families with loved ones who have worked down here for all these years, thank you for putting up with us! Lots of long hours on the weekends and after-work sessions paid off. We love you!
To the Channel Street Familia! There are too many to name here, but I’m talking about all the people who’ve spent hours down here cleaning, maintaining, building and skating the park. This has been a collective effort, and every one of you is part of the reason we are here today.
Now to mention a few soldiers…
Transitions. The best little Pedro skate shop that’s not in Pedro! Bud and Keisha, you’ve supported all of us for years, decades actually. Your generosity is truly appreciated.
Yamo, Bill Sargeant and Gabe … you guys had your hands in a lot of this concrete behind us. We’ve worked, skated, designed shit, laughed and argued for decades. We thank you for your dedication, craftsmanship and friendship.
April Jones, straight outta Burnside. April came out of nowhere with a plan to make a film about the struggles of the SPSA to get the park permitted. A couple of years later, she’s a member of our board of directors. She’s proven herself to be a true hessian who can get shit done. April has made the last couple years of getting this place legal much easier. Thank you for the organization; the drive; the willingness to wear many hats.
Big Rob, Robbie O’Connell. It’s been you and me since day one, OG! Many have come and gone and some leave and return, but me and this dude have stuck to this since October of 2002. Twenty years later and we’re still friends! I speak for everyone when I say thank you for your sarcasm, your frontside rocks, and all the amazing pieces of this park that you designed in your head and made a reality.
And the thank-yous continue!
Around 2019, Vans contacted us and asked about the status of the skatepark. Since Ronnie is a Vans rider, they had heard about our struggles to re-open and they wanted to help. This phone call from Chopper Dave led to Vans becoming a major financial backer of the SPSA, allowing us to pay for necessary permits from the city, repairs to the park, and all of the steel for the new guard railings that line the decks of the bowls. Thank you to Steve Van Doren, Chris Nieratko, and Chopper not only for the fundage, but for your friendship and guidance over the years.
To Spohn Ranch Skateparks: Vans paid for the steel, but you got us the guys to fabricate and install all those guard rails, a task bigger than any other over the last year. Kaleb, Kevin and Charlie, you guys grinded, cut, and welded for months! Thank you for seeing the beauty in this project. You are part of the family now.
A few months back, Dickies hit us up. They wanted to help the effort out too. So we got together, crunched some numbers, and figured out our operating costs for a year. That includes things like trash service, porta potty rentals, liability insurance, and overall maintenance of the park. JoeFace and Dickies came through on the fundage. It’s fitting that a company known for work pants helped us with some “nuts and bolts” kind of funding.
Matt Timmers, Jeff Browning, and Sean Marisich, architects and structural engineers. Thanks for the plans!
Going way back, thank you to DVS for the 100 yards of concrete you donated through a family member’s concrete company. Thank you to Daewon and Gabe Clement for helping make this happen. We built the entire sunny side with that mud!
To the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council: Thank you for your never ending support and for the art grant you gave us! This site is only going to get better and better.
Amazon, Starbucks have been successful at keeping unions at bay. Labor leaders Chris Smalls and Tyler Keeling change the equation
There’s no doubt that the labor leaders who are succeeding in organizing in places where labor has struggled to gain a foothold in recent decades (i.e. Starbucks and Amazon) are different from legacy labor unions. They aren’t like Richard Trumkas, a third-generation labor leader, whose political pedigree included United Mine Workers of America president John L. Lewis. Or ILWU icon, Harry Bridges, who drew his early inspiration from his time as a merchant seaman, and his uncle Renton Bridges, a Labor Party activist and shipmate who was a member of the Wobblies and participated in the 1917 general strike in Australia. Or even Dave Arian, past president of the ILWU Local 13 and later president of the ILWU International. Arian is similar to Trumka in that his labor pedigree included Harry Bridges.
Recently, Random Lengths News had the opportunity to interview the lynchpin of this past year’s most surprising labor victories, which include the Amazon Labor Union’s president Chris Smalls and Starbucks Lakewood store union organizer Tyler Keeling. What is telling about both of these young men is that neither of them grew up in a particularly union family nor did they learn the history of union struggles from school. What they are doing is a basic Do It Yourself struggle brought on by the necessity of the times.
Chris Smalls. Illustration by Noel Tinsman-Kongshaug
Amazon v. Chris Smalls
Chris Smalls grew up in a single-parent household with his brother in Hackensack, New Jersey. The plight of the working masses in a capitalist society was far from his mind as he spent his time playing basketball and football, writing rap songs with his friends, and dreaming of becoming a hip-hop artist. Smalls’ mother worked as an administrator at a hospital, and according to a report in a Time magazine article, she had once been part of SEIU 1199. He told Time that the union made so little difference in their lives that she “forgot that she was even a part of the rank-and-file at one point.”
He added that she hadn’t remembered organizing for a contract. “A co-worker reminded her.”
Smalls gave hip-hop a shot as a career, but when his ex-wife got pregnant with twins, he set aside his music dreams in favor of a more stable income. After stints at Amazon facilities in New Jersey and Connecticut, Smalls was hired at JFK8 in 2018. He worked as a process assistant, overseeing customer items being picked to be packed and shipped. Smalls said he was happy working for Amazon and was hungry to move up in the company.
He said the career route from a process assistant to a salaried manager took two years. Smalls recounted applying to become a manager more than 50 times.
“Unfortunately, it took me four and a half years to realize that two interviews [out of those 50 applications] were unacceptable,” he said.
“Especially when I opened up three buildings and trained hundreds of their employees,” Smalls said. “There’s no way that I shouldn’t have been a manager from the qualifications that I had, so it was easy for me to fight and stand up when the time came.”
Tyler Keeling. Illustration by Noel Tinsman-Kongshaug
Keeling and the Coffee Giant
Keeling grew up in the town of Apple Valley about two hours northeast of Los Angeles. For context, he grew up in deep poverty. Apple Valley is a place that the rest of California has forgotten about with few jobs and no industries. Many left towns like Apple Valley during the Great Depression in search of jobs in the big cities and never came back, a few others remained.
Historically it had been a thoroughfare for Indigenous peoples such as the Shoshonean, Paiute, Vanyume, Chemehuevi, Serrano and later the Mojave peoples who were attracted to the water and vegetation around the Mojave River. Spanish missionaries arrived and set up missions to evangelize the Indigenous people, while cowboys and Mormons rustled cattle or searched for a place they could be left alone to practice their faith.
Keeling said work wasn’t really a thing in his family because there was no viable opportunity for a consistent income. His dad worked as an independent laborer shoeing horses and his mom worked whatever minimum wage jobs she could get for however long she could keep them.
“There was not some rich deep history connected to labor. I come from a very underserved area, very deep in poverty. I come from a place where you live and die,” Keeling said. “I got out because I was lucky I had a couch to crash on after I graduated high school. So I got out of town as fast as I could.
“But that was not conducive to a successful life in a lot of ways. I, very much, am somebody who got lucky to get out and then ended up where I am now organizing stores and stuff like that,” Keeling said.
Through Starbucks, Keeling said he went back to school for software engineering because that’s a job where he can make a decent income.
“I’m a Starbucks worker. I’m working for poverty wages. I don’t have some sort of social safety net,” Keeling said. “My mom’s dead and my dad’s out of my life and my grandparents are gone. Like, I have no social safety net whatsoever.”
Keeling has worked at Starbucks since 2016 and he went back to school in a last-ditch effort to find a rope out of poverty.
“It’s been hell. This is the first time … organizing my store with my co-workers, with my community, with the people I love that I see every day … That was my first real step out of poverty because I’m fighting for a union job now.”
The Challenge for Gen Z
The nature of work is fundamentally different from generations past. But if there’s a moment in labor history to which today is akin, it would be the proto-labor movement that sprung up shortly after the Industrial revolution in the 19th century.
Despite technological advances and corporations tinkering with work culture to eliminate the need for unions, the labor relationships and working conditions have changed little. The tinkering is noticeable in the terms these corporations use to refer to their workers. Walmart calls them “associates.” Starbucks calls them “partners.” Amazon refers to them as “team members.” And they do it all to obscure the dividing line between employer and employee.
These corporations have formed work cultures around core principles that are designed to make everyone feel they have an equal stake in the success of the corporation, but they don’t. More importantly, corporations hope to make employees feel as if they are able to expect some equitable compensation or reward for their contribution, whether it’s physical or intellectual or both. The end game, of course, is the corporation hopes to anticipate the worker’s every need and desire so that a worker would not need to seek a union to bargain on their behalf. And for a while, the Walmarts, the Amazons, and the Starbucks of the world have been successful. Until now.
In a twist of fate, workers are using the company’s own core principles to organize and push back. Smalls noted that Amazon has 14 leadership principles they preach … at least to management.
“They have it all over their warehouses,” Smalls said.
His favorite one was 13: “Have a backbone, disagree, and commit.”
“They didn’t like that one, but it was their principle and I used it often,” Smalls said. “I used it before organizing the union, I used it as I was moving up in the company, working in the company. So, for me disagreeing with how they treated us during COVID was one step, and having a backbone and committing to getting to a place where there would be some results that was going to benefit us, that’s the commitment side. Unfortunately, they fired me.”
Smalls said that despite its principles and efforts in tinkering with its culture of work, Amazon has always been disconnected from its workers and always been disconnected from the community.
“We prove that theory once we won our election [in Staten Island],” Smalls said.
Amazon spent $4.3 million opposing the union effort, thinking they were going to win. Smalls suggested that Amazon executives were even celebratory in their overconfidence. Amazon’s confidence wasn’t misplaced. Of the eight applications for union representation filed with the National Labor Relations Board, five of those filings were closed when the majority of workers voted against joining a union.
Over the past year, Starbucks workers have filed 346 applications for union representation. Two-hundred and sixty-six of those applications were closed when the majority of those workers voted against representation.
Keeling noted that Starbucks has always valued and had a focus and a mission on maintaining the “third place,” which is defined as that place that is not work or home, but is still a place at which you belong.
“So coffee shops, in the context of Starbucks … has very much made itself a place for people to be and there’s this intention to be a place where people in the community can come and just be that isn’t home or work,” Keeling said. Historically in England, anyone of any social class could frequent the coffeehouses, and so they became associated with equality and republicanism. This is the idea behind most American coffee houses today.
Keeling said that he feels as if he’s been baked into the process because there’s such an idea around the idea of community in Starbucks’ mission and values, regardless of the capitalist intent to profit off of it. It’s that sense of community that a lot of people have always admired about Starbucks.
“I guess there has always been the idea of making sure that your entire community can see and build off that effort,” Keeling said. “Like creating a high tide to raise all ships … the fight is about making the work better and that’s going to then reflect around the community and make it work better for everybody.”
However, today’s young labor leaders are facing an environment that’s more akin to the start of the Industrial Revolution as opposed to the period when labor had reached the apex of its strength from World War II to the 1960s.
With Amazon’s dedication to automating every facet of its operations, like others in the goods movement industry, the lesson learned is that workers are still needed. Shippers industry-wide have been looking to minimize labor costs via automation while blunting the impact of unions on their bottom lines.
Industry leaders thought that by tinkering with their work cultures, by initially providing higher wages, opportunities for advancement, and opportunities for ownership (option to purchase stocks) they could exclude labor unions from the company’s relationship with its employees.
Leaders such as Smalls, Keeling and a growing number of others are showing otherwise.
In July Random Lengths News reported on the Economic Roundtable report, “Someone Else’s Ocean,” which critically examined the long-term neglect of the broad public interest in deference to the interests of shipping companies and foreign manufacturers. “The ports are public property, and legally their obligation is to provide benefits for residents of California,” the report’s co-author Daniel Flaming told us at the time. One facet of their report was recommendations to help support increased exports, promote high-wage manufacturing both locally and throughout the state and the U.S. more broadly. In late August, we re-interviewed Flaming, specifically focused on this aspect of their concerns.
“The biggest issue is how we see the ports, do we see the ports as a conveyor belt or the control tower?” Flaming began. “My argument is right now they function substantially as a conveyor belt. Whatever gets unloaded they moved through onto a truck and a railcar and get it out of there, or vice versa on an empty container.”
But there’s another way they can be seen: “Ports are transportation networks, they’re at the base of the web of national surface transportation assets.” Another such network is pipeline systems, which highlight another way of thinking: “If you’re transporting natural gas or petroleum or water you have pumping stations, you have valves, you can move stuff this way you can move stuff that way, you can turn it off. You control volumes. And the ports likewise have a set of levers or valves at their disposal they can regulate or give preference in terms of speed, in terms of costs of things moving in and out.”
Ports are also revenue-generating departments that can acquire land, build infrastructure, etc. “So I think it begins with whether you see the ports as passive entities or agents with the capability to act in local and national interests,” Flaming said. “Our argument is it’s time to wake up, smell the coffee and become more actively engaged in what moves through rather than just moving things through. So, certainly the fee structure for exports versus imports, or empty containers versus loaded containers — those would be the most obvious,” he said.
As an example, Flaming pointed to the Economic Roundtable’s experience working with the City of Long Beach after the collapse of aerospace. “At that point in time 54% of Long Beach businesses said they wished they were located somewhere else, and the city sent out people to meet individually with businesses and find out what they could do to be helpful.” The ports could act similarly, “as agents of a stronger national economy,” for example, in technologies tied into climate change.
“California’s clean-air rules and clean-air goals have spawned a series of technologies in industries that in many cases have gone abroad,” Flaming said. But that needn’t continue. “We’re cutting edge now, the state of California, in requiring electric vehicles, or pure hydrogen vehicles, but vehicles with zero emissions,” he said. “We see it at the state-level as being in our interest to make these things, not just acquire them … The state through grants, through tax structure, through state-level land-use regulation, state-level infrastructure regulation could be an active agent in supporting those industries just like the port could be.”
In short, it’s not the ports alone, but the ports as active partners that Flaming envisions, along with other governmental entities. At the state legislative level, “Taxes and land-use regulation are probably the biggest issues,” Flaming said. “What we found in the past, was a lot of times growing businesses were not able to get additional land to expand. And so supporting expedited rezoning requests and also site acquisition and site location for growing manufacturing industries — particularly sites that are in proximity to the transportation infrastructure, typically the ports would be ideal — would be valuable both at the state and local level.”
Doing this right, without repeating past mistakes of running roughshod over low-income and minority communities’ basic health and well-being will require sensitive collaboration, but can be done better with a coherent over-all vision.
“We certainly should be incentivizing these high-value manufacturing activities, which we can do through our tax code. These industries which have provided family-supporting jobs for blue-collar workers are declining pathetically, tragically in the state and we should be reversing those trends,” he said. “It’s not just longshore jobs that support a family, it ought to be a growing manufacturing sector, trucking jobs… The state ought to be pro-active in supporting the growth of living wage jobs.”
While a lot of people could benefit, there isn’t necessarily a comprehensive organization of political will and political action to bring the need change. Or is there?
“Well, I think it’s a prolabor state. California is one of the strongest pro-labor states there is,” Flaming said. “Government in general tends to be pretty laissez-faire about any kind of industrial policy,” though “the federal government mandate around clean energy is a change of direction, but we need a bit more courage at the state and local level,” he said.
It’s wise not to micromanage, picking specific winners and losers, “But if you look at broad sectors and broad issues, and say ‘this is in our vital interest. It’s in our vital interest to have good blue-collar jobs in clean energy, for example, it’s vital for the state. And so the state will be an agent to act on behalf of facilitating growth of industries that provide these jobs,” then “It’s particularly effective to do it at an industry level, rather than a business level.”
In short, “If it’s a collection of 100 businesses in an industry or 1,000, you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. You’re putting your eggs in 1,000 baskets. You get the industry to grow, not the particular squeaky wheel business that happens to come knocking on your door.”
Another historical example the Economic Roundtable was engaged with was “the national work around defense conversion after the collapse of aerospace,” Flaming recalled. “That was a time when we saw these enormous manufacturing facilities just dispersed to the four winds, things that been filled with billions of dollars in defense subsidies, very sophisticated manufacturing facilities.”
What happened then was a very mixed bag. “A few of them adapted completely on their own, like Hughes electronics which spun off Dish TV, satellite TV and commercial satellite activity,” Flaming said. “But more of that could’ve happened with judicious public sector support. For example, aerospace products that had commercial applications around aircraft, like ceramic brake and advanced engine systems for aircraft that had the potential for commercialization. We identified some of those and there was never any pick up on the public sector side. So, you don’t want to leave the money on the stump and run. You don’t want to be dumb.” Again, that shouldn’t mean picking individual winners and losers.
“A lot of this is recognizing strengths and building on them. In the manufacturing sector, moving goods is a big deal. These high-value manufactured products, many of them are heavy, you move them by truck, you move them by ship. And recognizing strengths in these industries —looking at what is growing and looking at what was high-value jobs and looking at what aligns with national priorities, and building on those things, you can be both judicious and proactive in supporting industries that have a national and state interest.”
There are potentials not just involving clean, renewable energy, but also in climate change adaptations.
“Climate change is having a lot of impacts. We have a lot of biomass in the state that is material for these horrific wildfires that are simply uncontrollable. There are biochar technologies where you create heat out of biomass with minimum carbon release and you generate electricity with that heat and use the biochar for agriculture. So, in terms of reducing the fuel load on the floors of our forests, that would be a possibility,” he said.
In addition, “We have a lot to do around water — water reclamation, water repurposing. Waters a scarce commodity,” he went on to say. “So there is a lot of manufacturing required to create these new systems. For example, filtration systems — filtration systems, either seawater or wastewater from homes and businesses so it can be reused.”
Wrapping up, Flaming said, “I think the biggest thing is the mindset. Government agencies are always a challenge to walk and chew gum at the same time, to do two things rather than just one thing. And so ports do have a responsibility to move goods, but they also have a responsibility to act proactively for their communities, for the public that owns them …We’ve got to engage in complexity. We have to both move goods efficiently and we have to pay attention to prioritizing how we do that.”
In short, “I think that’s a mindset that requires a new set of skills to think about industries that can be export strong, and to engage them, and talk with them and make judicious decisions about how to be intelligently supportive, and value the change in the economy that we need to move towards in the future, as well as this immediate task of moving a container off the ship today.”
Some San Pedro residents are trying to get rid of the billboard at the end of the 110 freeway.
At the Aug. 14 meeting of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council, the board voted 10-0, asking that representatives of Council District 15 provide a statement in writing that the city will not renew the lease on the billboard. The contract ends on Dec. 22, said Javier Gonzalez-Camarillo, chair of the board’s Planning & Land Use Committee.
“I think this is a great idea,” said board member Regina Lumbruno at the meeting. “Some of that stuff on there is straight-up embarrassing. Especially coming into San Pedro, and that’s the first thing you see.”
Since a new council member will be replacing Councilman Joe Buscaino at the end of the year, Gonzalez-Camarillo said his committee wants to get something in writing before he leaves office. Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council board member Bob Gelfand suggested that Gonzalez-Camarillo should talk to the two candidates currently running to replace Buscaino, and Gonzalez-Camarillo agreed.
“Do it before the next city council, because ugly billboards, like many things, usually mean a lot of money moved towards politicians, new or old, and that’s why we’ve had this eyesore ever since I was just a little boy arriving in Pedro,” said San Pedro resident Bill Roberson.
Roberson said he saw it when he first came to San Pedro in 1968.
Matthew Quiocho, vice president of the board, said he had spoken with CD15 representatives last year, which was when he first heard when the lease was expiring.
“But, as we all know, politicians can be rather fickle,” Quiocho said. “Just because they say that they are going to remove it doesn’t mean they are going to, doesn’t mean they have the money, the work crew, the resources actually lined up.”
Gonzalez-Camarillo said he spoke with CD15 representatives after the meeting, and they are aware of the board’s request.
“They said there’s no intention of extending the contract or renewing,” Gonzalez-Camarillo said.
Representatives from Buscaino did not respond to requests for comment.
Gonzalez-Camarillo said the billboard is on city property, which is why CD15 is in charge of the lease.
John Munn, a representative of San Pedro Real Estate Company, represented the previous owner of the land, who sold it to the city in 2016. However, Regency Outdoor Advertising, the company that has the lease on the billboard, had a contract with a five-year option to renew. The city inherited this contract, which is why the city could not take it down before. Munn said the city receives part of the revenue from the sign, but only a small amount compared to what the Regency receives. No matter how much the profit is from renting the sign, the city merely receives a fee.
CD15 candidates Danielle Sandoval and Tim McOsker also did not respond to requests for comment.
The basketball court at Angeles Gate Park, where the city has proposed a Kobe Bryant memorial. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala
City Proposes Memorial Basketball Court to Kobe and Gianna Bryant
On Aug. 15, Deanna Dedmon of the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks gave a presentation at the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council about a proposed Kobe and Gianna Bryant memorial basketball court at Angels Gate Park. Kobe and Gianna died in a helicopter crash in 2020. A nonprofit in their memory, the Mamba Mamacita Sports Foundation, came to the city with the idea of the memorial.
Dedmon said the idea was in its initial stages, and she merely wanted to get board members’ opinions. It will turn the basketball court purple and gold, and put Kobe and Gianna’s numbers, 24 and 2, on both sides of the court. The court’s surface, which is currently concrete, would be changed to a polyurethane plastic. In addition, the department will change the backboards, so that they have the department’s new logo, and the logo for Mamba Mamacita Sports Foundation.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” said San Pedro resident Celia Gonzales. “But that’s already a popular, very popular area with very, very limited parking, and this would of course be very attractive to a lot more people.”
Gonzales asked if the city will add more parking. As the project was in its draft stage, Dedmon did not have an answer.
Board member Richard Watson expressed approval of the project, both the facilities upgrade and the memorial aspect.
“I would encourage Mamba Mamacita and the parks to consider some off-court amenities, perhaps a bench or two, some shade cover,” Watson said. “People out there, playing basketball, in a hot day, would enjoy a chance to rotate in and out and have a little shade. I don’t think there’s any such thing up there now.”
Board member Bob Gelfand expressed concerns with the idea, referring to the sexual assault allegations against Kobe from 2003.
“Not everybody worships at the shrine of Kobe Bryant,” Gelfand said. “There is a pretty serious misconduct argument in his past. There was a pretty salacious trial, as I recall. And I’m wondering if the city wants to become involved in ancestor worship in this particular way.”
He also brought up the serenity of the area, which is right next to the Korean Friendship bell, and asked if the court’s new surface would be quieter or louder. Dedmon said she does not know.
Board member Noel Gould said he would reach out to the Coastal Commission to see if it would allow the logos for the foundation and the department on the backboards, as the commission bans advertising in the coastal zone.
“It’s possible they may have an objection to it,” Gould said. “Or they may be A-OK with it. But because it’s in the coastal zone, it’s going to be important to get their input and take what they say to heart.”
The Los Angeles / Long Beach Harbor Labor Coalition presents the largest Labor Day event in the western half of the United States, Sept. 5, at Wilmington’s Banning Park. The labor solidarity parade will march on the streets featuring dozens of unions, labor organizations, and schools.
The 43rd annual Labor Day Parade arrives following a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Union members, supporters, and their families are all expected and the public is invited to the parade and rally from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
There will be plenty of free food and soft drinks, live music from the one of the most legendary and longest running bands in the South Bay, The Topics.
While politicians are welcome to show up, they are not allowed to make political speeches or pass out campaign literature. This is Labor’s Day, the one day of the year where only labor issues are addressed.
The Harbor Labor Coalition, the parade’s originator and organizing sponsor, was brought together by one struggle in 1979, involving the Inland Boatman’s Union (IBU) fending off an attempt to impose an inferior Florida-based contract onto the Los Angeles Harbor Area workers, and was consolidated the next year in support of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) in the midst of a bitter strike. IBU coordinator David O’Day and Treasurer Robert Forrester were able to organize ten unions in support of their dispute, including David Arian who had just joined the ILWU Local 13’s executive board.
What makes this parade unusual is that during the period of the late 1970s, Labor Day parades were gradually being replaced with picnics throughout the country. Detroit, long the site of some of the biggest Labor Day parades, ended the tradition by the 1980s. The Harbor Labor Coalition, not to be dissuaded, would be the vehicle by which a Labor Day parade, once held long ago in San Pedro, would be brought back to life in Wilmington, California. Though a conservative act, it was wholly in keeping with that go-their-way-attitude of so many of the unions in the harbors, whether from the ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach.
The Carter administration was intransigent in its approach to squelching problems within the economy of the late 1970s. President Jimmy Carter did this through a price-wage combination, which focused primarily on forcing down wages.
This infuriated the AFL-CIO’s President Gearge Meany and sparked a war of words through the media and a standoff at the bargaining table. The test came with OCAW’s new contract negotiations, and later with the Teamsters contract under its then-president, Frank Fitzsimmons. The Carter administration was able to claim victory in its confrontation with Big Labor during the Teamster contract negotiations.
When I first arrived in San Pedro, the local chamber of commerce celebrated the demolition of old Beacon Street with a federally-funded urban renewal project and the town came out and celebrated with a street party. It would be decades before the “urban renewal” dream would come to fruition and it still hasn’t fixed the economic decline. Since that time there have been three major attempts to resurrect, reconstruct and replace and/or preserve what was once a thriving hub of commerce and jobs. What is left is fundamentally connected to the goods movement industry and slowly many of those jobs are being threatened by automation.
Back before the Vincent Thomas Bridge was built to connect San Pedro to Terminal Island, a small army of tuna cannery workers trudged daily up and down Sixth Street on their way to the ferry building at the foot of the street, as that was the only way to conveniently get to the Starkist Cannery. Before World War II, it was also the way that the Terminal Island kids got to San Pedro High School before their families were shipped off to the internment camps.
The history of the once thriving commerce on Sixth and Seventh streets and Pacific Avenue is still embedded in the terrazzo entrances of some of the old stores. Some of the old store names of this era remain in a few of the historic buildings, but most of it is lost with only a few pictures of the boom years stored in the archives.
It wouldn’t be until the early 2000s that there was any serious effort to protect the historic facades of San Pedro and then the creation of historic preservation zones, one for the business district and the other residential — Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. There are some 20 HPOZs in the city of Los Angeles since the passage of the Mills Act in 1972 — a policy change that coincided with the demolition of Beacon Street. The Mills Act legislation grants participating cities and counties the authority to enter into contracts with owners of qualified historic properties who actively participate in the rehabilitation, restoration, preservation, and maintenance of their historic properties. A list of districts and resources can be found at the LA City Planning website at https://tinyurl.com/LA-HPOZ-RLn.
However, the idea of LA actually having a “planning department’ is kind of an oxymoron as there are plans for every part of this city, sometimes two or three overlapping ones, but if you’ve lived here for any length of time you probably don’t have a clue unless you pulled a building or conditional use permit to open a certain kind of business. As our friends down at the Channel Street Skatepark learned the hard way, the city is awash in bureaucracy that makes it nearly impossible to plan anything creative unless you have an army of consultants, lawyers, lobbyists and engineers.
The fact of the matter is that Los Angeles doesn’t really have “a plan.” It has hundreds of plans, thousands of studies, and departments and bureaus each with their own rules and regulations. It’s enough to make your head spin. But how else are we to run a city of 4 million you might ask? Well the best solution is to have a local office for every department of the city in each of the districts’ city halls. In other words, decentralize the power structure.
Even though the city is divided into 15 districts of about the same population, there are common traits shared between all of the neighborhoods — particularly those neighborhoods with housing stock that was built during the boom years between the great wars. Most of their old business districts are of the same vintage as the stock in San Pedro and they have all suffered some of the same socio-economic problems that came with the loss of good middle class jobs and rising property prices. People who are old enough or lucky enough to have purchased property 20, 30 or 50 years ago are now millionaires on paper. Not that it would do a lot of good for them. Where are they going to go…Texas?… Idaho?
The saving grace in the San Pedro Bay communities is the prevalence of union jobs either at the ports or in city government. Yet only 46% of people in LA own their own homes, and in the Harbor Area I believe it is less, which is below the national average.
So, getting back to my main point about historic preservation and the current inebriated rush to tear down the old and build more housing, while losing sight of the jobs being eliminated by automation, what will Los Angeles become if it can’t retain good middle-class jobs and continues to build rental apartments with the aesthetic of Soviet worker housing? The unique neighborhoods of Los Angeles will lose their character, the community fabric will tear and there will be a growing disparity between the haves that own property and those who don’t. Rental housing has become a commodity driven by hedge fund investments, that’s unaffordable, and real estate ownership for the common person is declining as a path to the American Dream.
We’ve already seen the beginnings of this rupture following the battle over homelessness at Echo Park and Venice Beach and the uprising at City Hall over the anti-camping ordinance.
It kind of all comes down to answering the question, to whom does this city belong… the billionaires and corporations or the workers? The November election in LA will be pivotal in settling this question. The choice couldn’t be clearer — the billionaire Rick Caruso or the one-time community organizer Rep. Karen Bass.
The last guy who told us he was a billionaire as he ran for political office will soon end up in jail. Bass will likely come out ahead in the end, but can she or anyone else actually make the bureaucracy of Los Angeles work for the people? That remains to be seen as the corruption of corporate money at the city council seems to speak louder than all the votes of the citizens, no matter what neighborhood you live in.
The ghosts of old Beacon Street may come back to haunt us in ways we have yet to understand.
The Holocaust is Germany’s national shame. For the United States, it’s slavery (and more, but let’s not get into that here). For South Africa, it’s Apartheid, the cultural, political, and violent oppression of the Black majority by White minority rule that finally ended in 1994 with the dominance of the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela’s presidential victory in the country’s first free, fair election.
Not surprisingly, Afrikaner artists of conscience born into the Apartheid system that provided them with explicitly codified White privilege have often used their art to wrestle with the sins of their White brethren and to consider how to reconcile their post-Apartheid world.
In Valley Song, Athol Fugard takes dead aim at the issue by stripping it to bare bones. For his entire life Abraam (Michael A. Shepperd) has lived and worked a few acres on a White-owned estate. Now a widower in his mid 70s, he lives with his granddaughter Veronica (Belle Guillory), who yearns to leave the shabby confines of her valley home to pursue a singing career in Johannesburg. Meanwhile, the death of the landowner leaves Abraam at the mercy of the estate’s next buyer, most likely an aging White author (also played by Shepperd) who at least seems like a decent fellow.
The metaphors in Valley Song are simple (the valley is the old South Africa, Johannesburg is the dream of the new), as are the characters (The Author is a stand-in for Fugard himself, right down to the omniscience his character could not otherwise possibly have) and conflicts (Veronica wants to move forward and yet not hurt Abraam; The Author and Abraam are tempted to maintain the status quo despite knowing it’s a devil’s bargain). Perhaps it’s this simplicity that makes Valley Song’s 100 minutes feel too long. Perhaps it’s Fugard’s inefficiency, his tendency to keep hammering after the nail’s driven flush.
Several other things don’t quite work here. Supposedly Veronica is 17, but Guillory plays her — and Fugard writes her — about four years younger, which undermines the credibility of her desire to go her own way. Director caryn desai’s blocking is stilted — particularly problematic when you’ve got only two characters, inherently static situations, and no visual effects whatsoever — and the actors’ responses to each other in the show I saw opening weekend weren’t always in sync. The show’s strongest aspect is how competently Shepperd demarcates Abraam from The Author. It’s not just that the characters have different words and accents, but Shepperd fully shifts his bearing between one and the other.
While Athol Fugard may not be able deliver the sort of nuanced, knotty post-Apartheid Afrikaner meditation we find in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Valley Song does provide a little something to think on. Unfortunately, International City Theatre haven’t found a way to overcome the play’s inherent limitations.
Valley Song at International City Theatre Times: Thurs-Sat 8:00 p.m. and Sun 2:00 p.m. The show runs through Sept. 11. Cost:$49-$52 Details: (562) 436-4610 ICTLongBeach.org Venue: Beverly O’Neill Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach
Eligible Long Beach residents can now get vaccinated against monkeypox or MPX at the Long Beach City College clinic without an appointment. Over the past weeks, the city has worked to expand eligibility and access to vaccines to protect residents and the community — especially LGBTQ+ people and others at high risk.
Vaccines are available through Long Beach Health Department — with or without an appointment — at the LBCC Pacific Coast Campus clinic on the corner of Orange Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway:
Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.
Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The Long Beach Health Department still recommends that eligible people make an appointment, but it’s not mandatory. Due to limited vaccine supply, non-appointments are offered on a first-come, first-served basis while supply lasts. You can make an appointment here.
For full eligibility requirements and more information on MPX, please visit LB Health Department website here.
WASHINGTON (September 1, 2022) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or EPA Sept. 1, awarded $3.5 million to an ongoing program that will support projects to protect and restore the nation’s estuaries — those rich, productive coastal habitats where freshwater rivers and streams meet tidal areas. The funds were the second such award from EPA to Restore America’s Estuaries or RAE, which manages the competitive National Estuary Program or NEP Watersheds Grant Program.
EPA anticipates that projects funded through the competitive grant program will apply new or innovative approaches and technologies to treat, remove or prevent pollution before it enters estuaries; build sustained local capacity to protect and restore coastal watersheds; and bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change. Awarded project funding may range from $200,000 to $500,000.
A total of $18 million may be provided through this partnership over six years, subject to availability of appropriations, EPA funding priorities, and satisfactory progress in carrying out the program.
