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Leftovers for Neighborhood Cats

Lyn Jensen
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Leftovers for Neighborhood Cats
Kinky, the Author’s Visitor. Photo courtesy of Lyn Jensen

When I moved into my mother’s house, I immediately discovered it came with a frequent visitor: a neighborhood tomcat who sported motley tuxedo markings, and whose tail was so kinky it resembled a corkscrew. So. I called him Kinky.

Normally I wouldn’t mind a cat hanging out in my yard, but Kinky wasn’t compatible with my cats. He hassled my female, Faith, who hissed and swatted at him frequently. My senior male, Ben, was too old to defend his territory from the interloper. I couldn’t eat lunch in my backyard because I couldn’t keep the visitor’s nose out of my burger long enough to take a bite myself. Morning and night he was digging his big claws into my kitchen screen door, giving me a pitiful “feed me” look. If he had a home anywhere else, he obviously wasn’t spending time there, and he always acted hungry.

I was already fighting multiple challenges with managing my mother’s estate. A pesky cat was one challenge too many. I contacted the county animal shelter but was told they didn’t pick up stray cats. Rescue groups weren’t willing to do the work either. I wasn’t sure how friendly the nuisance was, so I was reluctant to handle him myself. I’d have to shoulder the burden of buying or renting a cat trap, trapping the visitor, and taking him to a shelter or rescue group, where the main focus appeared to be on “trap, neuter, release.” I was concerned someone may have already trapped, neutered and released the interloper back into his territory — my backyard.

One day I was scraping Ben and Faith’s leftover food into the trash when I looked through the sliding glass kitchen door and saw the visitor giving me his pitiful “feed me” look. Not feeding him wasn’t discouraging him, so I started feeding him my cats’ leftovers. There weren’t any leftovers after he ate.

Then came a day when I was working in my backyard. My north-side neighbors’ son peeked over the fence and said, “Our cat’s on your porch!”

So that was where the interloper belonged, even if he did act like my backyard was his home. I learned their cat was afraid of their large noisy dog, which explained why he spent so much time in my yard. I also learned his real name, although I still call him Kinky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eating Good in the Neighborhood. Photo courtesy of Lyn Jensen

My senior cat Ben’s now gone, but I often find three neighborhood cats in my backyard, waiting for Faith’s leftovers. Besides Kinky, there’s my south-side neighbor’s Maltese, Falcon (“the Maltese Falcon”) and a timid motley-tuxedo tom whose home remains a mystery. He has a brotherly resemblance to Kinky and a mark like a mustache, so I call him Spike, after Snoopy’s weird mustache-wearing bro in Peanuts. If Faith’s eaten all her food, I give my visitors some dry food or cat treats. I never have to throw away any cat food and the neighborhood cats have a hangout.

Meet the Ellises

Terelle Jerricks
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Meet the Ellises

Crystal and Lee Ellis of the Carson-based South Bay Talent Group are exemplars of creatives choosing not wait for a record label or the Hollywood elite to recognize their talent. They are the vanguards of creatives who already understood the assignment before film and television mogul Tyler Perry issued parting advice to dreamers after accepting the Chairman Prize of the NAACP Image Awards two years ago: “There are people whose lives are tied into your dream. Own your stuff, own your business, own your way.”

The Ellises South Bay Talent Group produce films for streaming platforms such as Tubi, Prime video, Youtube, Hoopla and have four films slated for release in 2022.

Crystal and Lee met when Crystal produced her first film in 2005, Slumber Party. After putting out several films in quick succession, with Lee starring in a number of them, Crystal and Lee fell in love, got married and started a family. They went on hiatus for a decade, shifting their attention to raising their two children.

Crystal and Lee formed a new LLC as a married couple in 2017 after a couple of business partners they had started out with had decided to leave the entertainment business altogether.

We’ve been working with the same core team since we started fifteen years ago,” Crystal explained. A 2003 alumnus of Cal State Dominguez with a degree in media production, Crystal explained that one of her sound-production teachers challenged her and her classmates to buy a prosumer camera (a hybrid of a consumer and professional camera, as the name implies).

“So I bought my first prosumer camera and shot my first feature film,” Crystal said. “From there I thought this was kind of cool. We would come up with a story, We envisioned it. We [her and her team] pooled our resources together, then we go out there and shot it.”

Crystal’s vision for South Bay Talent Group was for it to feel like the experience she had making her first film — working with the same core talent team, with all of them growing and helping each other succeed in their own right and get to the next level.

“It’s very competitive for actors to get those big gigs,” Crystal noted. “And so we kind of give them a platform and an opportunity.”

Crystal said that there are a lot of talented people in the South Bay who are steadily knocking on Hollywood’s door, but noted that nobody’s answering. She called South Bay Talent Group a second avenue for actors working with them. However, Crystal was clear that she and her husband weren’t just doing this to lift up other artists.

“We’re building our own bridge as well,” she said. “As a screenwriter, ultimately my goal is to be part of the WGA (Writers Guild of America) and be part of the PGA (Producers Guild of America) and I’m creating my own path to do so.”

When Crystal and Lee started in 2003, it was different. The couple noted that there weren’t as many platforms then as there are today.

“Our first movie (Slumber Party) wasn’t at Blockbuster. [It] was actually on Netflix when Netflix first hit the scene between 2006 and 2008,” Crystal said. “It was an ultra low budget, independent, urban film on Netflix.”

We’re talking about the days when Netflix’s primary business model was shipping DVDs to people’s homes.

“A lot of people used to get their stuff seen that way,” Crystal explained. “It’s a little bit harder to get on Netflix now for super ultra low budget, urban films.”

But the Ellises can still say their work was on Netflix, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

“Today, it’s a little bit easier now,” Crystal said. “There are so many streaming platforms that you can get on. And people can take advantage of that now. They don’t have to have the super fancy cameras so they can essentially shoot from anywhere, and it’s a little easier to get distribution and you can self distribute if you want.”

Indeed, South Bay Talent Group films will be available on streaming platforms including, Prime Video, Crackle, Tubi, Roku, Pluto, IMDb Tv, Redbox, Youtube, Vudu and more.

A lot of the couple’s catalog are urban or romantic comedies and that was mainly because they were easier to shoot. However, one of the new films to be released in 2022 is a drama centered on lowrider culture called Shine Kings.

“You know, we’re not pigeon-holed into just one specific genre but we want to tell the stories that relate to urban audiences,” Crystal said.

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The Other Half
Crystal writes the screenplays for all the films, while her husband comes up with ideas and concepts for many of the projects. He actually met Crystal on the set of her first film, in which she starred. But filmmaking isn’t the extent of his talents.

Lee is also a self-taught chef who was invited onto Gordon Ramsay’s Christmas Special in 2009. He had since started Burn With Your Boy catering and Burn With Your Boy hot sauce. He started off just cooking for family and friends until he started receiving phone calls for larger engagements.

“I would help my wife and cook for family and friends,” Lee said. “Then some of my buddies were calling, ‘Hey man, how much would it cost for you to just cook a little special dinner for me and my wife.’ And it just grew from there.”

Then Lee started making beef jerky, but there were so many different regulations that he started to make jerky only for his buddies.

“I like smoking meats, but I specialize in American soul food and barbecue,” Lee said. “I started making beef jerky, but there were so many different regulations. So I make jerky for my buddies.”

Then his wife, said, “You should just make hot sauce.”

He saw recipes on how to make hot sauce and grew confident that he would do it too while adding his special magic into the mix.

Out of that bit of inspiration from his wife and his love of food and cooking, Lee created Burn With Your Boy hot sauce and opened Burn With Your Boy catering.

Lee said he plans to get a truck and brick-and-mortar restaurant one day. He’d like to open up a spot in Mid-City Los Angeles or Carson.

“You come to the restaurant and read the script and have a burger, have some wings on a stick, and just bring that whole L.A. culture,” Lee said. “I want you to walk out of there feeling good and full.”

Lee has a couple of comfort foods he specializes in, such as stuffed pasta, which includes turkey or ground beef with sauteed vegetables, sometimes topped with cottage cheese, and garlic.

The other comfort food is entirely dedicated to showing off his Burn With Your Boy hot sauce: potato tacos.

The hot sauce has a flavor that doesn’t burn your face off. Lee also prepares healthy dishes, an assortment of salads and non-meat alternatives.

Movies to Watch
A quick perusal of Crystal and Lee’s IMDb pages reflects the hiatus. They went back to shooting films in 2020. In a year’s time, they completed four films — the fourth one was delivered a week before Thanksgiving. The pandemic didn’t slow this couple down at all as they shot as often as they could while observing all CDC guidelines.

Hanging on to Love (comedy)
The film protagonist, Jewel, cannot catch a break in anything from the clothing design business to finding love. Coming to streaming platforms on Jan. 11, 2022.

Trip Slip (comedy)
Three homeboys plead with their wives to let them have one night out to celebrate what they consider an achievement–the completion of paying child support. Coming to streaming platforms in 2022.

Cheddy Ace (comedy)
Always down on his luck, Cheddy Ace has 24 hours to repay a hood loan to a few gangsters or pay the ultimate price. Reluctantly, his nephews fall for his sob story and go on a scavenger hunt to help him come up with the money. Coming to streaming platforms in 2022.

Shine Kings (drama)
Two rival car clubs battle it out for the top prize in the most recognized car show on the west coast. When the leader of one club thinks that he was set up by the girl he fell in love with, all bets are off. Coming to streaming platforms in 2022.

Details: southbaytalentgroup.com/ •burnwithyourboy.com/

Cultural Erasure

James Preston Allen
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Cultural Erasure

From Beacon Street to Star-Kist

It would seem like we are once again in a rush into an uncertain future. Whether it’s the housing shortage, the homeless crisis or the supply chain calamity. Suddenly everyone wants to tear down something just to fix what’s been broken for decades.

The current notice that came from the Port of Los Angeles on Nov. 4 reads, “Recirculated Draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration for the Star-Kist Cannery Facility Project at 1050 Ways Street on Terminal Island. The proposed Project involves demolition of the former Star-Kist cannery facilities on an approximately 14-acre site on Terminal Island at the Port of Los Angeles.” When you get through the port-speak challenge, what you discover is that they want to erase the last remaining vestige of one of the historic industries of this community — the Star-Kist tuna cannery.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before with the urban renewal project that destroyed old Beacon Street back in the 1970s. And even though it was done with the best of intentions, it is now looked upon as one of this town’s biggest mistakes. People still mourn “old Beacon Street,” but at the time there were just a few who saw the potential of saving it.

For the following four decades, Harbor Area community leaders have been scratching their heads trying to bring back the “glory days” of a vibrant local economy with at least three different iterations of revitalization under various names and entities. Yet all of them have missed the core ingredient to success — bringing back the 30,000 harbor related jobs lost to the free trade policies of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton era. Yes, lifting tariffs on trade with China and passing NAFTA all resulted in exporting manufacturing jobs and importing economic decline at home.

Many of our current social and economic problems are a direct result of these misguided policies. Currently, people are focused on inflation not realizing that the shipping monopolies that are clogging the supply chain are one of the main causes of rising prices. For instance, a single container shipped from China to Los Angeles a couple years ago once cost only $1,200; it now costs as much as $20,000 to $30,000. Some have gone so far as to call these foreign owned companies “pirates.” And this comes with the recent report from the port that while container counts are the highest they’ve ever been, exports have dropped to nearly 12% of the total cargo handled. They now export more empty containers than full ones.

This imbalance of trade is currently being addressed, finally, in the U.S. Congress with the Ocean Shipping Reform Act co-authored by Rep. John Garmendi and Rep. Dusty Johnson.

This rare bipartisan legislation of 2021 (H.R.4996), would:

  • Establish reciprocal trade to promote U.S. exports as part of the Federal Maritime Commission’s (FMC) mission.
  • Require ocean carriers to adhere to minimum service standards that meet the public interest, reflecting best practices in the global shipping industry.
  • Require ocean carriers or marine terminal operators to certify that any late fees — known in maritime parlance as “detention and demurrage” charges — comply with federal regulations or face penalties.
  • Shift burden of proof regarding the reasonableness of “detention or demurrage” charges from the invoiced party to the ocean carrier.
  • Prohibit ocean carriers from declining opportunities for U.S. exports unreasonably, as determined by the FMC in new required federal rulemaking.
  • Require ocean common carriers to report to the FMC each calendar quarter on total import/export tonnage and twenty-foot equivalent units (loaded/empty) per vessel that makes port in the United States.

What, you may ask, does all of this have to do with preserving the aging Star-Kist Tuna cannery or preserving any of the many historic structures in the port or in town? It’s the potential for creating new jobs. With the port hell-bent on making room for more containers they lose sight, without even issuing a Request For Proposals, as to who just might need a facility like this for domestic manufacture and export. The difference being that Star-Kist reimagined for canning any product would employ thousands and a chassis repair or parking lot for containers less than a hundred.

And yet this doesn’t even go to the real issue of erasure of culture and history, which is at the root of the race into the unknown future. Think of the memories, if not the 200 jobs lost with the demolition of Ports O’ Call restaurant. What about the DiCarlo bakery being replaced by a generic Target store? Think of what will be lost with the demolition of Dancing Waters nightclub or the edifice of the old La Rue’s pharmacy. What’s being erased and with what is being replaced? It’s more than an economic equation. It’s about what makes a place culturally unique, with its own history, memories and narratives of what went before.

Don’t talk to me about nostalgia in a place so close to Los Angeles that tears down everything of the past while searching to reinvent itself for the future. This is the “modernist” moral of Los Angeles that everything can be judged by current land values or ROI (return on investment) calculations. However, I object to the idea that everything can be whittled down to an economic equation. Yes, there are some things more important than money. And seeing as how the Port of Los Angeles is having one of its most profitable years ever, we should take a moment to stop and consider Star-Kist and what it actually means to this harbor community. And whether there aren’t some higher and better uses for it other than demolition.

Historic Star-Kist Cannery Threatened

James Preston Allen
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Historic Star-Kist Cannery Threatened

Port eyes demolition as a solution to short-term crises

Terelle Jerricks contributed to this article

The grand old Star-Kist Cannery, an iconic presence on the Los Angeles waterfront nearly 40 years after it was closed, has been targeted for demolition by the Los Angeles Harbor Department last month.

The facility’s origins can be traced to 1918 when it was founded as the French Sardine Company by Yugoslavian immigrant Martin J. Bogdanovich and other prominent San Pedro families.

The facility, renamed Star-Kist Tuna Cannery in 1952 and was the main plant, held the distinction of being the single-largest cannery in the world at the time. Star-Kist was the largest of several major tuna canneries, including Chicken of the Sea, which operated on Terminal Island for many decades and revolutionized seafood consumption through the introduction of canned tuna. There remain three tuna canning companies that were once American-owned that still dominate the industry today, all three are foreign-owned with headquarters in the United States.

As of the 2017 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s report imports of canned tuna were 141,480 tons, up 8,882 tons (6.7%) from 2016. The value of canned tuna imports also increased by $108.9 million (20.8%) from 2016.

Star-Kist closed its facilities on Terminal Island in 1984, and moved its operations overseas, but the buildings continued to represent a significant link to Los Angeles’ once-mighty tuna industry.

The Star-Kist Main Plant is also significant for its design by John K. Minasian, a prominent engineer and designer who worked on projects at Cape Canaveral and Edwards Air Force Base and served as the chief engineer of the iconic Space Needle, which opened at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

When it was completed, the Star-Kist Main Plant was the single-largest example of tilt-up construction built by private industry on the West Coast. Giving this industrial facility further distinction is the unusual level of architectural detailing on the harbor-facing façade, which was viewed primarily by fishermen in the harbor and employees entering the building.

Most of the Main Plant remains standing and remains a significant example of a cannery facility at the Port of Los Angeles. And yet canned tuna is still a major commodity that is imported. Canning facilities for the big three companies have shifted away from the West Coast. They’ve moved, in some cases, to territories like Puerto Rico and American Samoa, where wages are lower but, because they’re still technically on U.S. soil, there aren’t any import tariffs. Those big three brands themselves have changed ownership again and again over the years, with companies like Pillsbury, Heinz, and Ralston Purina all dipping their toes in the tuna business. These days, the big American tuna companies aren’t American.

About 25% of the world’s tuna processing is done in Thailand.

Although the ultimate future use of the site is unknown, in the immediate future it could be used for cargo support, which can be anything between container or chassis storage to chassis repair and maintenance, since these types of uses are already allowed in this location under the applicable zoning and the Port Master Plan. However, the POLA isn’t even considering issuing an RFP to see what other uses the facility might be used for, or even the possibility of bringing back a tuna cannery.

As a result, the Mitigated Negative Declaration will also consider the impacts from the development and operations of a chassis repair and maintenance depot in order to analyze the impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, in case of future development of the site. The 30-day review period ended on Dec. 16 but has now been extended into January.

Threatened historic resources make up only 3% of Terminal Island’s total acreage, yet the island reflects a great deal of history:

  • It housed a vibrant Japanese-American community of nearly 3,000 residents, who were the first in the nation to be forcibly removed from their homes and interned during World War II.
  • It played a crucial role in both world wars as a major shipbuilding center, setting world records for speedy delivery to support the war effort.
  • It launched a worldwide tuna canning industry that made tuna fish a staple of American households and fostered LA’s growth as a major industrial hub.
  • At the height of production, as many as 10,000 workers of all nationalities made their living working in this plant that supported families all over the Harbor Area.

San Pedro residents and many others with ties to the old cannery expressed alarm and dismay at the port’s plans, while others suggested alternative plans.

Rudy Vanderhider offered a description of what remains of the Star-Kist cannery on Terminal Island in a Facebook post:

  • Plant 1 or the pet food side is gone a few years now. Plant 4 is still there largely. Not much that anyone would recognize. The main entrance facade is recognizable, the rest is just rusting industrial stuff. A great history and employment for thousands, mostly immigrant moms like mine.
  • During the Reagan administration as globalization was gaining traction, the tariff on imported canned products was dropped and that was it. The canneries and fleets had to move offshore to compete. Then the naval shipyard under Clinton. From any hill in San Pedro you looked out on thousands of good largely Union jobs. We were just one town in America, just imagine all the others that sank or died on the trickle-down lie.

Truly the decade of the 1980s was crushing for the greater LA Harbor Area. By the end of 1990 ,because of globalization, this area lost some 30,000 blue-collar jobs according to one report from that era. And those jobs just never returned.

Emil Erdelez said this:

The Main Plant is Historical to the community and its history needs to be preserved. It means so much to many. It is the history of this community and is a historical landmark. LA needs to stop destroying the history of San Pedro for their own financial gain and giving nothing back to San Pedro. If it was not for San Pedro there would be no Los Angeles.

And yet it is not just the cultural history of the last tuna cannery that is at stake, what is not being considered is what might be done to create more jobs for the export economy.

Lindsey Cota said the following:

‘… for short term use and unknown potential long term use,’ tells me someone wants to use the lot and doesn’t have a long-term plan after they demolish a historical building that is part of the fabric of San Pedro. Seems about par for the course with developers here. There is a growing sentiment amongst the San Pedro community that sees this as a short term solution that ignores the possible long term benefits.

Anthony Misetich, former honorary mayor of San Pedro, wrote to the Port of LA opposing this move:

Numerous individuals and organizations including the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council, the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Dalmatian American Club of San Pedro all advocate for the preservation of the facility.

Since the plant was [once] used in tuna canning, it can be repurposed for canning any type of food products. Another RFP (nationwide) should be released in 2022 targeting those companies in the food industry, especially in California’s central valley to gauge their interest. Since the facility is located in the middle of export facilities, I am sure that a suitable suitor for the facility can be found, in line with the goals outlined in the Port’s Master Plan.

The matter will come back to the Board of Harbor Commissioner in January and public comments are sure to rise up in opposition. Only time will tell if the port is more concerned about the present supply chain crisis or the future of job creation and exports.

James Preston Allen is the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council Port Committee chair.

Splitting Up San Pedro

Hunter Chase
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Splitting Up San Pedro

Redistricting Commission could divide San Pedro along Assembly lines

The 2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission is proposing separating San Pedro between two Assembly districts, according to the Dec. 8 draft of the commission’s map. However, the commission is proposing unifying San Pedro in one congressional district, according to the Dec. 13 draft of the commission’s map. For the past ten years, it has been split between two congressional districts, said Dan Dixon, board member of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council.

The commission had kept the entirety of San Pedro in the same Assembly district until Dec. 3, said Shannon Ross, president of the San Pedro Democratic Club.

“The line for the Assembly districts runs up Western Avenue to 19th Street, over 19th Street to Gaffey, and then north on Gaffey,” Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council President Doug Epperhart said. “It essentially puts all of northwest into an Assembly district with Torrance and I believe Redondo Beach. The rest of San Pedro, most of coastal and I think pretty much all of central, would then go into an Assembly district with Wilmington and on up to Harbor Gateway and Compton.

The Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council held an emergency meeting on Dec. 6 to pass a motion 14-0 to oppose splitting San Pedro between Assembly, Congressional and Senate districts. Ross called the meeting after attending the commission’s meetings and noticing the changes on Dec. 3. She also put out a petition stating the same thing, which has gathered 388 signatures as of press time.

“I felt like it was urgent, that we … take a position and make a comment to ensure that all of San Pedro was in one Assembly district,” Ross said. “We get better representation, clearly, if we’re together, and we have one Assembly member. We’re stronger, and [have] larger voting numbers.”

The Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council also passed a motion 12-2, with two abstentions, urging that San Pedro be in only one district. Board members Craig Goldfarb and Cynthia Gonyea opposed the motion, John DiMeglio and Tom Norman abstained.

The ILWU Southern California District Council released a press release opposing the splitting San Pedro between Assembly districts.

“As a critical part of the local economy we should not have our political and community interests divided up for the political power of the few,” wrote Floyd E. Bryan, president of the ILWU Southern California District Council. “We have our own issues being a port community including air pollution, traffic, noise and light pollution from the shipping industry that surrounds our community. We deserve a singular voice, not one or two, each following their own agenda.”

San Pedro resident Pat Nave argued that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and used San Pedro being previously split between congressional districts as an example.

“We felt diminished initially,” Nave said. “This turned out, I think, to be a boon to us actually, because we’ve had two congressional offices to go to. And I think that the elected representatives, when they hear San Pedro, they don’t really differentiate between where you live. … It actually gives us more power to be represented by more than one member.”

Greg Ellis, board member of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, said that this was a problem for coastal San Pedro in particular.

“Looking at the most recent version of the Assembly district maps, which used Western Avenue as a boundary between the two proposed assembly districts, could end up having a really disproportionate effect on coastal San Pedro,” Ellis said. “Because it really cuts our neighborhood in half, or at least close to in half.”

Board member Noel Gould suggested this could be an attempt at some form of gerrymandering.

“Our Assembly member, Patrick O’Donnell, really listened to our community and opposed SB 9 and SB 10, which are these attempts by the state legislature to allow eight units of market rate [housing] on single family lots that are existing now,” Gould said. “We have people in our local government here who are attempting to … massively up-zone San Pedro as much as possible and to market rate rather than affordable, and by chopping San Pedro up that would reduce the influence [of] that particular Assembly member who actually listened to our community.”

Under the new redistricting, half of San Pedro would be under Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, and the other half would be under Assemblyman Mike Gipson, Ross said.

Ross said that there are only a couple of people from San Pedro participating in the commission’s redistricting meetings. The meetings are held almost every day, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., though they can get out much later.

“It’s daunting, and they’re during the day,” Ross said. “So, I know that it’s difficult for folks in our community. I feel like it’s purposely made difficult.”

Ross argued it would be easy for the commission to change it back.

“The area isn’t insanely big, so it doesn’t make a huge difference on the map boundary in regards to putting us back together,” Ross said. “So I think if we come in really strong right now, I’ve been making phone calls all day to have people … call in and email in, and I’m hoping that we make a big enough impact today for them to kind of put us back together.”

In addition, Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council’s motion urges the Los Angeles County Redistricting Commission to not split up San Pedro over supervisorial district boundaries.

“That’s a separate commission,” Epperhart said. “It urges the same thing, that San Pedro be kept whole, because they are now considering three maps that would again, take our current supervisor, Janice Hahn, and move her into a district that is almost entirely out of San Pedro. So pretty much all of coastal would end up with a different county supervisor.”

Carson Shake-Up Following Swearing-in Day

Terelle Jerricks
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Carson Shake-Up Following Swearing-in Day

Update: This story was updated to correct an incorrect subhead.

On Dec. 9, Carson’s city council fired Human Resources and Risk Management Director Faye Moseley and placed on administrative leave City Manager Sharon Landers during a special meeting launched by the new council majority of Mayor Pro Tem Jim Dear, Councilwoman Arlene Rojas and Councilman Jawane Hilton.

These actions were taken two days after-newly elected City Clerk Myla Rahman resigned from office before she was sworn into office. Officially, it’s not clear if the three events are related, but with Carson being Carson, it wouldn’t be surprising if it is.

Rahman has not publicly provided a reason for her resignation, and there’s significant doubt she will.

Moseley’s firing came a week after she and her husband Clifton were successfully sued by the National Sales Network for embezzlement of funds from the nonprofit’s Los Angeles chapter. The National Sales Network is a nonprofit membership organization whose objective is to meet the professional needs of sales professionals.

Random Lengths News emailed City Manager Landers about Rahman and whether the 21-month long lawsuit against Moseley would impact Moseley’s job. Landers replied:
Hi Terelle! There is no press release and Myla offered no reason for her resignation.

I believe your facts on Mrs. Moseley are not correct but that is not for me to speak to. I can say that the resignation by City Clerk Rahman in no way affects Mrs. Moseley’s position.

Her reply was sent at 3:19 p.m., a couple of hours before the City Council’s special meeting.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based organization sued the couple following a financial audit of its Los Angeles chapter. According to the audit, the Moseleys wrote checks to themselves personally or used the company debit card on at least 80 occasions without explanation or supporting documentation.

The Moseleys were allegedly given more than seven months to produce documentation for the expenditures and that to date, had failed to account for them.

According to the court documents, the debits and withdrawals from the NSN LA Chapter’s accounts appeared to have been applied to gas, groceries, hotel stays, limousine rentals and other expenditures.

This isn’t the first time Mrs. Moseley has been called to account over funny accounting practices. Last year, 2 Urban Girls reported on Moseley’s questionable travel reimbursement requests related to recruiting for the post of principal administrative analyst.

On City Manager Sharon Landers

City clerk candidate runner-up Falea’Ana Meni believes neither Landers nor Moseley should have been hired, due to their lack of public sector experience. Meni spoke further about Landers.

“It was apparent from the very beginning that she didn’t have what the city needed,” Meni said. “Nor does she have the skill sets to help our city and you know this mess that we’ve been dealing with over the last several years.”

Meni blames the incumbent members of the city council for the mess. Meni explained that one of the reasons the council didn’t act sooner was because of the optics of firing the city’s first female city manager after making such a big deal over it.

Meni explained that the city council’s approval of Lander’s reorganization plan in which the H.R. Director reports directly to her instead of reporting to the assistant city manager, was a red flag.

“But the H.R. Director had no public sector experience, so that even caused other issues,” Meni explained.

Meni went on to note that same issues exist with Carson’s Director of Public Works, Eliza Whitman.

“You don’t even have to take my word for it. Listen to the last environmental commission meeting I participated in,” Meni said. “It was obvious that the commission needed assistance with the Brown Act and how to conduct the meeting. Not once did the director ever speak up to help guide the Commissioners.”

Meni said she had to call a point of order so many times that she lost track.

City Council candidate runner up- Dr. Sharma Henderson noted that there had been a lot of employee complaints and described Lander’s leadership style as authoritarian.

“There’s been a lot of mismanagement,” Henderson explained. “The employees have been very unhappy and a lot of them have left. Because of that and other issues, people in the business community and employees wanted her gone.”

Henderson said It was her understanding that part of what allowed Dear to secure the support of the employees union and many in the business community was that Arlene Rojas would be the third vote to get rid of Landers. Henderson also noted that Landers and Moseley were aligned with Mayor Lula Davis Holmes.

“Now the hypocrisy is Jim [Dear] could have aligned with Albert and Juwane [When Albert Robles was still mayor] to get rid of Landers,” Henderson explained. “But obviously he didn’t. But he was able to use Landers as leverage to get the employee vote.”

Henderson went on to describe Lander’s performance as city manager as horrible and her leadership as atrocious.

“I feel that city employees’ morale is at the lowest it has ever been in they city’s history,” Henderson said. “Then it got worse during the pandemic.”

City clerk candidate runner-up Falea’Ana Meni explained in an interview with Random Lengths News that typically the city conducts the council meeting alongside the swearing-in ceremony at the community center.

“I didn’t know if they opted not to do it or what. I had no idea,” Meni said.

When asked about Moseley and the National Sales Network lawsuit, Meni wasn’t particularly surprised.

“I have a really big issue [with Moseley] personally,” Meni said. “I know in my dealings with her as a former employee there have been many times I have brought up to upper management about the lack of integrity in her interactions. This all derives from the fact that she has no public sector experience at all.”

Former Mayor Albert Robles weighed in on the current tumult in the city.

“Most cities … to get politics and favoritism out of the hiring and firing process, they go to a civil service commission, which gives the employees protection,” Robles explained. “Employees go through the civil service process where they are evaluated before they’re hired. If there’s any discipline against them, it goes through this independent civil service commission.

Robles noted when he first joined the city council as a council member, he witnessed both Jim Dear and Lula Davis-Holmes insert themselves into employee matters, either after a perceived slight if an employee didn’t do as they asked, or defending employees close to them despite demonstrating incompetence.

“If an employee is being incompetent then they should be disciplined and fired,” Robles said. “But because they’re a friend of the mayor, whether it’s the mayor pro tem or any council member, employees come to the council members and cry and ask them for help and the council members insert themselves. Carson is not going to get to the next level of development, the next level of maturity and sophistication, and kill the petty politics.”

An example that best illustrates Robles’ point was during the failed recall effort against him and subsequent recall effort against Dear in 2015. In late June of that year, several city employees accused Dear of being abusive toward them, which resulted in administrative charges being lodged against him. At the time, Dear was accused of relying on temporary help on the recall election of Robles to the exclusion of available full-time staff members in his office.

Random Lengths News reported at the time that though Dear pushed to make them full-time staff in the clerk’s office, the city manager fired them instead. In a subsequent report at the time, one of the more troubling assertions in the investigation concerned the hiring and firing of Monette Gavino.

An independent investigator appointed to investigate the claims against Dear described Gavino as Dear’s “girlfriend,” and that Dear “manipulated” staff into hiring her, despite questions about her right to work legally, and that he then “mistreated” her “in front of staff.” Random Lengths News reported there were no details of the alleged “mistreatment.”

Observers of city politics have wondered aloud if Rahman saw Landers’ placement on administrative leave was just one step away from firing her from her post. Robles noted that the council can’t let Landers go 90 days before or after an election.

So what’s going to happen next?

No one officially seems to know at the moment. The city council could very well appoint the runner-up from this past election like City Clerk candidate Monette Gavino, who lost by only a couple hundred votes, the same way the city council appointed Donesia Gause-Aldana to the post when Helen Kawagoe left ten years ago.

Gavino didn’t make many public appearances during the past race for city clerk, but support from Mayor Pro Tem Jim Dear and financial support that got her signs out in the streets powered her candidacy forward, despite a well-timed October surprise questioning her methods by which she attained her citizenship.

Courage In Service of Others

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Courage In Service of Others

Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov share the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

Full text of Maria Ressa’s speech at Nobel Peace Prize awarding, Dec. 10

Your majesties, your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, your excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you, a representative of every journalist around the world who is forced to sacrifice so much to hold the line, to stay true to our values and mission: to bring you the truth and hold power to account. I remember the brutal dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, my friend, Luz Mely Reyes in Venezuela, Roman Protasevich in Belarus (whose plane was literally hijacked so he could be arrested), Jimmy Lai languishing in a Hong Kong prison, Sonny Swe, who after getting out of more than seven years in jail, started another news group and now is forced to flee Myanmar. And in my own country, 23-year-old Frenchie Mae Cumpio, still in prison after nearly two years, and just 36 hours ago, the news that my former colleague, Jess Malabanan, was killed with a bullet to his head.

There are so many to thank for keeping us safer and working. The #HoldTheLine Coalition of more than 80 global groups defending press freedom and the human rights groups that help us shine the light. There are costs for you as well: more lawyers have been killed than journalists in the Philippines – at least 63 compared to the 22 journalists murdered after President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. Since then, Karapatan, a member of our #CourageON human rights coalition, has had 16 people killed, and Senator Leila de Lima, because she demanded accountability, is serving her fifth year in jail. Or ABS-CBN, our largest broadcaster, a newsroom that I once led, which, last year, lost its franchise to operate.

I helped create a startup, Rappler, turning 10 years old in January – we’re getting old – our attempt to put together two sides of the same coin that shows everything wrong with our world today: the absence of law and democratic vision for the 21st century. That coin represents our information ecosystem, which determines everything else about our world. Journalists – that’s one side – the old gatekeepers. The other is technology, with its god-like power, the new gatekeepers. It has allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us, pitting us against each other, bringing out our fears, anger, hate, and setting the stage for the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world.

Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that’s coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritized by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us. Well, that just means we have to work harder. In order to be the good, we have to believe there is good in the world.

I have been a journalist for more than 35 years: I’ve worked in conflict zones and war zones in Asia, reported on hundreds of disasters, and while I have seen so much bad, I have also documented so much good, when people who have nothing offer you what they have. Part of how we at Rappler have survived the last five years of government attacks is because of the kindness of strangers, and the reason they help – despite the danger – is because they want to, with little expectation of anything in return. This is the best of who we are, the part of our humanity that makes miracles happen. This is what we lose in a world of fear and violence.

You’ve heard that the last time a working journalist was given this award was in 1936, awarded in 1935. He was supposed to come and get it in 1936; Carl von Ossietzky never made it to Oslo because he languished in a Nazi concentration camp. So, we’re here, hopefully a little bit ahead, because we are both here!

By giving this to journalists today – thank you – the Nobel committee is signaling a similar historical moment, another existential point for democracy. Dmitry and I are lucky because we can speak to you now (Yay for court approvals)! But there are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity. The accelerant is technology, when creative destruction takes new meaning.

You’ve heard from David [Beasley]: we are standing on the rubble of the world that was, and we must have the foresight and courage to imagine what might happen if we don’t act now, and instead, please, create the world as it should be – more compassionate, more equal, more sustainable.

To do that, please ask yourself the same question we at Rappler had to confront five years ago: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?

I’ll tell you how I lived my way into the answer in three points: first, my context and how these attacks shaped me; second, by the problem we all face; and finally, finding the solution – because we must!

In less than two years, the Philippine government filed 10 arrest warrants against me. I’ve had to post bail 10 times just to do my job. Last year, I and a former colleague were convicted of cyber libel for a story we published eight years earlier, at a time the law we allegedly violated didn’t even exist. All told, the charges I face could send me to jail for about 100 years.

But the more I was attacked for my journalism, the more resolute I became. I had firsthand evidence of abuse of power. What was meant to intimidate me and Rappler only strengthened us.

At the core of journalism is a code of honor. And mine is layered on different worlds – from how I grew up, the golden rule, what’s right and wrong; from college, and the honor code I learned there; and my time as a reporter, and the code of standards and ethics I learned and helped write. Add to that the Filipino idea of utang na loob – literally the debt from within – at its best, a system of paying it forward.

Truth and ethical honor intersected like an arrow into this moment where hate, lies, and divisiveness thrive. As only the 18th woman to receive this prize, I need to tell you how gendered disinformation is a new threat and is taking a significant toll on the mental health and physical safety of women, girls, trans, and LGBTQ+ people all around the world. Women journalists are at the epicenter of risk. This pandemic of misogyny and hatred needs to be tackled now. Even there, though, we can find strength. After all, you don’t really know who you really are until you’re forced to fight for it.

Now let me pull out so we’re clear about the problem we all face and how we got here.

The attacks against us in Rappler began five years ago when we demanded an end to impunity on two fronts: Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Today, it has only gotten worse – and Silicon Valley’s sins came home to roost in the United States on January 6 with mob violence on Capitol Hill.

What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media.

Online violence is real world violence.

Social media is a deadly game for power and money, what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism, extracting our private lives for outsized corporate gain. Our personal experiences sucked into a database, organized by AI, then sold to the highest bidder. Highly profitable micro-targeting operations are engineered to structurally undermine human will. I’ve repeatedly called it a behavior modification system in which we are all Pavlov’s dogs, experimented on in real time with disastrous consequences in countries like mine, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, and so many more. These destructive corporations have siphoned money away from news organizations and now they pose a foundational threat to markets and elections.

Facebook is the world’s largest distributor of news, and yet studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts.

These American companies controlling our global information ecosystem are biased against facts, biased against journalists. They are, by design, dividing us and radicalizing us.

I’ve said this repeatedly over the last five years: without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with the existential problems of our times: climate, coronavirus, now, the battle for truth.

When I was first arrested in 2019, the officer said, “Ma’am, trabaho lang po (Ma’am, I’m only doing my job).” Then he lowered his voice to almost a whisper as he read my Miranda rights. He was really uncomfortable, and I almost felt sorry for him. Except he was arresting me because I’m a journalist!

This officer was a tool of power – and an example of how a good man can turn evil – and how great atrocities happen. Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil when describing men who carried out the orders of Hitler, how career-oriented bureaucrats can act without conscience because they justify what they’re doing because they’re only following orders.

This is how a nation – and a world – loses its soul.

You have to know what values you are fighting for, you have to draw the lines early, but if you haven’t done so, please, do it now – where this side you’re good, this side, you’re evil. Some governments may be lost causes, and if you’re working in tech, I’m talking to you.

How can you have election integrity if you don’t have integrity of facts?

That’s the problem facing countries with elections next year: among them, Brazil, Hungary, France, the United States, and my Philippines – where we are at a do or die moment with presidential elections on May 9. Thirty-five years after the People Power Revolt ousted Ferdinand Marcos and forced his family into exile, his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is the front-runner for president, and he has built an extensive disinformation network on social media, which Rappler exposed in 2019. It’s literally changing history in front of our eyes.

To show how disinformation is both a local and global problem, take the Chinese information operations taken down by Facebook in September 2020, a year ago: it was creating fake accounts using AI generated photos for the US elections, polishing the image of the Marcoses in the Philippines, campaigning for the daughter of President Duterte, and attacking me and Rappler.

So what are we gonna do?

An invisible atom bomb has exploded in our information ecosystem, and the world must act as it did after Hiroshima. Like that time, we need to create new institutions, like the United Nations, and new codes stating our values, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to prevent humanity from doing its worse. It’s an arms race in the information ecosystem. To stop that requires a multilateral approach that all of us must be part of. It begins by restoring facts.

We need information ecosystems that live and die by facts. We do this by shifting social priorities to rebuild journalism for the 21st century while regulating and outlawing the surveillance economics that profit from hate and lies.

We need to help independent journalism survive, first by giving greater protection to journalists and standing up against states which target journalists. Then we need to address the collapse of the advertising model for journalism. This is part of the reason that I agreed to co-chair the International Fund for Public Interest Media, which is trying to raise money from overseas development assistance funds. Right now, while journalists are under attack on every front, only 0.3% of ODA funds is spent on journalism. If we nudge that to just 1%, we can raise $1 billion a year for news organizations. That will be crucial for the global south.

Journalists must embrace technology. That’s why, with the help of Google News Initiative, Rappler rolled out a new platform two weeks ago designed to build communities of action. It won’t be as viral as what the tech platforms built, but the north star is not profit alone. It is facts, truth, and trust.

Now for legislation. Thanks to the EU for taking leadership with its Democracy Action Plan. For the US, reform or revoke Section 230, the law that treats social media platforms like utilities. It’s not a comprehensive solution, but it gets the ball rolling. Because these platforms put their thumbs on the scale of distribution. So while the public debate is here, down here on content moderation downstream, the real sleight of hand happens further upstream, where algorithms of amplification, algorithms of distribution have been programmed by humans with coded bias. Their editorial agenda is profit-driven, carried out by machines at scale. The impact is global, with cheap armies on social media rolling back democracy, tearing it down in at least 81 countries around the world. That impunity must stop.

Democracy has become a woman-to-woman, man-to-man defense of our values. We’re at a sliding door moment, where we can continue down the path we’re on and descend further into fascism or we can choose to fight for a better world.

To do that, please, ask yourself: What are YOU willing to sacrifice for the truth?

I didn’t know if I was going to be here today. Every day, I live with the real threat of spending the rest of my life in jail because I’m a journalist. When I go home, I have no idea what the future holds, but it’s worth the risk.

The destruction has happened. Now it’s time to build – to create the world we want.

So please, with me, just close your eyes for just a moment, and imagine the world as it should be. A world of peace, trust, and empathy, bringing out the best that we can be.

Open your eyes. Now go, we have to make it happen. Please, let’s hold the line together. Thank you

Counterfeit Alerts – Counterfeits Await Amazon, Walmart And eBay Holiday Shoppers

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Counterfeit Alerts – Counterfeits Await Amazon, Walmart And eBay Holiday Shoppers

LOS ANGELES — Buyer beware. Holiday shoppers expect their online shopping experience will provide authentic and safe products — but that confidence is misplaced. Amazon, Walmart and eBay are flooded with counterfeit, replica, and fraudulent products. Consumers who shop online websites are unaware of their exposure to dangerous products, fraud, and scams.

Walmart and Amazon are both direct retailers of counterfeits, fraudulent, and replica items, in addition to enabling and facilitating third parties to sell an inexhaustible supply of fakes. eBay is not a direct seller of merchandise, but its website has morphed from a garage sale of private party merchandise to hosting third-party sellers who can list just about anything they want, including counterfeit, fake and replica products.

Decades ago, counterfeiting was about selling fakes on the street corner. The explosion of e-commerce and platforms including Walmart, Amazon, Newegg, Wish, and eBay has channeled counterfeit and dangerous products directly into consumers’ homes. There are big profits with little consequence to the e-commerce giants who skirt liability, leaving consumers spending good money on bad products.

How big is the problem?

The Counterfeit Report, a global award-winning consumer advocate and industry watchdog, found and removed listings for over 400 million counterfeits on Walmart, eBay, Amazon, Wish, Newegg, DHgate, and Alibaba — only a tiny fraction of fake goods destined for or reaching consumers. Amazon and Walmart often ignore brand-owner complaints, and sellers may relist when listings are removed. 500,000 brands are fighting fakes on Amazon, an alarming revelation of the enormity of Amazon’s counterfeit problem.

  • Numerous press and investigative reports document Amazon, eBay and Walmart’s pattern of selling banned, unsafe, counterfeit, mislabeled or stolen products. Some include the AmazonBasics brand or the deceptive “Amazon’s Choice” endorsement.
  • The protections offered retail store shoppers are not available for online shoppers. For years, websites have abused Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, claiming they have no liability for the counterfeit or defective products they sell, even when the items injure or kill consumers. Amazon removes negative product feedback and reviews, and manipulates listing content, adding to the consumer deception. Amazon offers its patently false and illusory claim, “Products offered for sale on Amazon must be authentic. The sale of counterfeit products is strictly prohibited,” when challenged with complaints of counterfeit items.
  • An undercover investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) of counterfeit consumer goods on e-commerce websites, including Walmart (WMT), Amazon (AMZN), Newegg, and eBay (EBAY) found that about 50% of the items they purchased were counterfeit.

Counterfeiting is now the largest criminal enterprise in the world and is forecast to grow to $4.5 trillion and cost 5.4 million net job losses in 2022. U.S. Customs Assistant Area Port Director, Hans Leiterman, says, “We see 57 million parcels between November and January. We consider it our holiday peak season.” The items are very often counterfeit commodities.

Everyone knows selling counterfeits is illegal, yet through huge legal loopholes and virtually immune to prosecution, IP laws and safety standards, the e-commerce giants continue to enable and facilitate criminal activity with impunity. The consequence is a rigged e-commerce system that is crushing U.S. companies and retailers, destroying U.S. jobs and duping consumers.

Consumers would be better served to shop at local retailers or online with the major authorized retailers offering consumers competitive purchase options for authentic products.

Congressman Lowenthal Retires

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Congressman Lowenthal Retires

After serving nearly 30 years in public office and the last eight in the United States House of Representatives, Congressman Alan Lowenthal announced his well-deserved retirement earlier Dec. 16.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said since 2013 Lowenthal has represented Long Beach with distinction in Washington D.C. and has also served in the California State Senate, State Assembly, and on the Long Beach City Council.

Congressman Lowenthal has made Long Beach and this nation stronger.

Education drew Congressman Lowenthal to Long Beach, having earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University, Congressman Lowenthal moved to Long Beach in 1969 where he taught Community Psychology at California State University, Long Beach until 1998. Since then, he has served Long Beach in nearly every way.

After working as a community activist for a number of years, Congressman Lowenthal ran for the Long Beach City Council in 1992 as one of the city’s first truly progressive elected officials—setting the stage for the incredible progress Long Beach has made to become one of the most vibrant, diverse and inclusive places in the country. He served as a City Councilmember for six years before being elected to State office. He continued his leadership in Sacramento, first serving three terms as a State Assemblymember and then two terms as a State Senator.

While in the State Legislature, Congressman Lowenthal used his experience as an educator to positively impact schools and champion the needs of the Long Beach community. Through his leadership, he put students and their families first and was instrumental in championing the College Promise Partnership Act to help K-12 students better transition to college. He also secured the passage of the Student Success Act—both of which have expanded access to education and increased graduation rates for students across our community and across the state of California.

In Congress, he has served on the House Natural Resources Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He is the ranking member of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and has also served on the Federal Lands; Highways and Transit; Water Resources and Environment; and the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation subcommittees.

Congressman Lowenthal’s impact has extended nationwide and has influenced policy to improve our infrastructure and ensure everyone has access to a clean environment. He has taken a leading role on groundbreaking climate change legislation since becoming elected to federal office and has been co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Safe Climate Caucus since 2015.

“Congressman Lowenthal has been a true leader in the Long Beach community and I can’t thank him enough for his decades of service to the people of Long Beach,” Garcia said.

“Personally, I am grateful for Congressman Lowenthal’s friendship, mentorship, and commitment to Long Beach. I wish him all the best as he looks ahead and I hope you’ll join me in honoring his work by taking care of the city he has helped us build.”

 

 

 

San Pedro Train Engineer Pleads Guilty to Intentionally Derailing Locomotive

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San Pedro Train Engineer Pleads Guilty to Intentionally Derailing Locomotive

A train engineer at the Port of Los Angeles pleaded guilty Dec. 16, to a federal criminal charge for running a locomotive at full speed off the end of railroad tracks near a United States Navy hospital ship that was deployed to provide medical relief during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eduardo Moreno, 45, of San Pedro, pleaded guilty to one count of committing a terrorist attack and other violence against railroad carriers and mass transportation systems.

Moreno’s plea agreement stated, on March 31, 2020, Moreno drove a train at high speed, did not slow down near the end of the railroad track, and intentionally derailed the train off the tracks near the United States Naval Ship Mercy – a hospital ship then docked in the Port of Los Angeles.

No one was injured in the incident, and the Mercy was not harmed or damaged, according to court documents. The incident resulted in the train leaking a substantial amount of fuel, which required clean up by fire and other hazardous materials personnel.

Moreno admitted in his plea agreement that he caused approximately $700,000 in damages because of the derailment.

In his first interview with the Los Angeles Port Police, Moreno acknowledged that he “did it,” saying that he was suspicious of the Mercy and believed it had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover, according to an affidavit filed with a criminal complaint in this case. Moreno stated that he acted alone and had not pre-planned the attempted attack. While admitting to intentionally derailing and crashing the train, he said he knew it would bring media attention and “people could see for themselves,” referring to the Mercy, according to the affidavit.

In a second interview with FBI agents, Moreno stated that “he did it out of the desire to ‘wake people up,’” according to the affidavit. “Moreno stated that he thought that the Mercy was suspicious and did not believe ‘the ship is what they say it’s for.’”

United States District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez has scheduled a March 11, 2022 sentencing hearing, at which time Moreno will face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Port of Los Angeles Police investigated this matter.

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