LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda L. Solis, Supervisor to the First District, Jan. 19, signed an Executive Order directing the County’s Department of Public Health to make COVID-19 vaccinations appointments available to residents 65 years of age and older beginning on January 21, 2021.
COVID vaccine registration is now open for LA County residents aged 65 and older
Los Angeles County residents who are 65 years old and older can now register for COVID-19 vaccination appointments.
Residents in this high-priority age group should visit,www.publichealth.lacounty.gov-vaccinate-la-county to schedule their appointments, which begins Jan.20. Residents who don’t have computer access may call 833-540-0473 between 8 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. for assistance with reservations.
Below is chair Solis’ statement.
“Over the past several weeks, the County of Los Angeles has administered the vaccine to frontline healthcare workers, so that they can stay safe while doing the important work of saving lives, and residents and staff in skilled nursing facilities, and long-term care facilities.
The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been an enormous undertaking, especially during an unprecedented surge where cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to skyrocket.
However, if we are to ever get out of this dark winter, it is critical that we make headway vaccinating people 65 years of age and older as soon as possible – in line with Governor Gavin Newsom’s recommendations.
That is why I signed an Executive Order today directing the County’s Department of Public Health to make COVID-19 vaccinations appointments available to residents 65 years of age and older, beginning on January 21, 2021 – this is to allow for public health officials to adequately prepare for the rollout of the vaccine to this population.
Pursuant to this order, I expect the Department of Public Health to release information immediately so that our vulnerable residents can get the protection they deserve.” To view the Executive Order, click here.
Los Angeles County is updating the LA River Master Plan, a comprehensive approach covering all 51 miles of the LA River. The effort was launched to update the original 1996 Master Plan, synthesizing more recent ideas for portions of the River and bringing a comprehensive vision to the transformation of the LA River.
As part of this effort, the County of Los Angeles, through the Department of Public Works is the Lead Agency and is preparing a Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) to evaluate any potential impacts on the environment pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act.
SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom Jan. 18, formally submitted the appointment of Alex Padilla to become California’s first Latino U.S. Senator and the nomination of Assemblymember Dr. Shirley Weber to become the state’s first African American Secretary of State. The announcement comes as Kamala Harris formally resigned her position as U.S. Senator this morning as she prepares to make history by becoming the first African American and woman to become Vice President of the United States when she is inaugurated alongside President-elect Joe Biden Wednesday.
Alex Padilla also formally resigned this morning as Secretary of State, making James Schwab, current Chief Deputy Secretary of State, the Acting Secretary of State in California in accordance with state law.
The Governor this morning formally submitted a letter to Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon nominating Dr. Shirley Weber to fill the Secretary of State vacancy. The Legislature will have 90 days to vote on Dr. Weber’s confirmation.
At inauguration time, journalist I. F. Stone wrote, incoming presidents “make us the dupes of our hopes.” That insight is worth pondering as Joe Biden ascends to the presidency. After four years of the real-life Trump nightmare, hope is overdue — but it’s hazardous.
Stone astutely warned against taking heart from the lofty words that President Richard Nixon had just deployed in his inaugural address on January 20, 1969. With the Vietnam War raging, Stone pointed out: “It’s easier to make war when you talk peace.”
That’s true of military war. And class war.
In 2021, class war is the elephant — and the donkey — in the national living room. Rhetoric aside, present-day Republican politicians are shameless warriors for wealthy privilege and undemocratic power that afflicts the non-rich. Democratic Party leaders aren’t nearly as bad, but that’s an extremely low bar; relatively few are truly champions of the working class, while most routinely run interference for corporate America, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.
Rarely illuminated with clarity by corporate media, class war rages 24/7/365 in the real world. Every day and night, countless people are suffering and dying. Needlessly. From lack of social equity. From the absence of economic justice. From the greed and elite prerogatives cemented into the structures of politics and a wide range of institutions. From oligarchy that has gotten so extreme that three people in the United States (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) now possess more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population.
Yes, there are some encouraging signs about where the Biden presidency is headed. The intertwined economic crisis and horrific pandemic — combined with growing grassroots progressive pressure on the Democratic Party— have already caused Biden to move leftward on a range of crucial matters. The climate emergency and festering racial injustice also require responses. We can expect important steps via presidential executive orders before the end of this month.
At the same time, if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, we should not expect Biden to be a deserter from the class war that he has helped to wage, from the top down, throughout his political career — including via NAFTA, welfare “reform,” the bankruptcy bill and financial-sector deregulation.
How far Biden can be pushed in better directions will depend on how well progressives and others who want humanistic change can organize. In effect, most of mass media will encourage us merely to hope — plaintively and passively— holding onto the sort of optimism that has long been silly putty in the hands of presidents and their strategists.
Hope is a human need, and recent Democratic presidents have been whizzes at catering to it. Bill Clinton marketed himself as “the man from Hope” (the name of his first hometown). Barack Obama authored the bestseller “The Audacity of Hope” that appeared two years before he won the White House. But projecting our hopes onto carefully scripted Rorschach oratory, on Inauguration Day or any day, is usually a surrender to images over realities.
The standard Democratic Party storyline is now telling us that greatness will be in reach for the Biden administration if only Republican obstacles can be overcome. Yet what has led to so much upheaval in recent years is mostly grounded in class war. And the positive aspects of Biden’s initiatives should not delude progressives into assuming that Biden is some kind of a class-war ally. For the most part, he has been the opposite.
“Progressives are not going to get anything from the new administration unless they are willing to publicly pressure the new administration,” David Sirota and Andrew Perez wrote days ago. “That means progressive lawmakers are going to have to be willing to fight and it means progressive advocacy groups in Washington are going to have to be willing to prioritize results rather than White House access.”
The kind of access that progressives need most of all is access to our own capacities to realistically organize and gain power. It’s a constant need — hidden in plain sight, all too often camouflaged by easier hopes.
More than being a time of hope — or fatalism — the inauguration of President Joe Biden should be a time of skeptical realism and determination.
The best way to not become disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place. And the best way to win economic and social justice is to keep organizing and keep pushing. What can happen during the Biden presidency is up for grabs.
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Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
Grand Vision Foundation realizes a milestone with the help of community.
January 2021 marks a huge milestone in the San Pedro Arts and Culture District: The Warner Grand Theatre celebrates its 90th anniversary.
For nearly a century and through different iterations and owners, the 1931 art deco movie palace has evolved into a thriving community performing arts center. The Grand Vision Foundation, the nonprofit team behind the 1,500 seat theater is dedicated to keeping it thriving for the community for years to come. But that takes the help of many hands and so far, while it’s been challenging, it’s working.
The Warner Grand Theater is now undergoing much needed renovations. Grand Vision’s executive director Liz Schindler Johnson and the Grand Annex, artistic director Taran Schindler spoke about their hopes for the renovations and the theater’s future.
“We’re very hopeful that the city will stay on schedule to begin the renovations in January 2022,” Liz said. “But the city is in a fiscal crisis now so we’re cautiously optimistic.”
“The project is two-fold,” Taran said. “The renovation is driven by the City of Los Angeles and then there is the Love The Lobby campaign.”
They explained, the city has secured almost $10 million to do a major restoration of the theater. — not a complete restoration — that would cost $30 million.
It may sound like a huge amount of money,” Liz said. “But when the renovations start the money won’t go as far as one would think because it’s a public building with many public financing requirements.
Taran pointed to the second part of the renovations, which involves two campaigns. Love the Lobby is a smaller scale project but a very visible one, based in community support. The campaign debuted in 2018 during Grand Vision’s event, Gathering For The Grand when the fundraiser was kicked off by a $50,000 gift from Councilman Joe Buscaino’s office. Grand Vision worked to match that figure through fundraising and Save Your Seat, a continuing program in which patrons could adopt a seat. It was initiated in 2004 to refurbish the theater’s dilapidated condition and responded to improvements most frequently asked for by the community. Individuals were able to adopt a seat, a few seats or even an entire row for a loved one or themselves. Through this effort and other support, the foundation raised almost $1 million.
“We wanted to continue this enthusiasm by getting not just community involvement,” Taran said. “But as a community stamp on the theater so there could be more of a sense of ownership for the community.”
Love The Lobby funds will go to both functional and aesthetic improvements like revealing the ceiling artwork that was covered over in beige paint in the early to mid-1980s.
Taran shareda“quite off the wall” quote from a circus 1931 press release just before the theater opened. It attempts to describe what the ceiling artwork meant:
“The main foyer has a ceiling beam composition further advancing the Italian influence. Each of the beams is highly detailed with decorative ornaments, richly applied by hand. Each beam has been individually decorated by skilled artists of the highest type of craftsmanship. As a unit the beams have an independent allegorical theme depicting the theatrical arts from their inception to the ultimate in the show business today.”
“The only way we will ever know if this is true, is to raise the remaining $150,000 and reveal the historic designs,” Taran said.
Standing on the historic theaters staircase, Liz Schindler Johnson shows her pride for Warner Grand Theater.
Indeed, with the mystery of what the designs are and perhaps their meaning, Liz believes that’s what propels her on her continued fascination and desire to fix up and improve the theater.
“We hope to revive the theater,” Liz said. “And what’s nice about this program is that it is not going to be subject to whether the city is in a fiscal crisis or not.
Grand Vision Foundation’s efforts have helped remind the community of what it has and it has responded. In these COVID times, the sisters have noticed a renewed enthusiasm for centralized community projects.
Grand Vision recently completed a street banner campaign, with five different designs to brighten up the downtown streets. Individuals and businesses purchased banners to be displayed on street lamps throughout the central San Pedro district and a little beyond, celebrating the Warner Grand’s 90th anniversary. The banners will go up any day and they anticipate doing another phase, lasting through most of 2021.”
“At a time when we can’t even go out to restaurants,” Liz said. “It will make it less bleak looking and more attractive to come to the downtown area and see these beautiful banners and remind people that we have this wonderful resource. We just have to be patient and we’ll get it all back.
“We’re going through so much now … we need things to keep our spirits up. When people drive by and see the banners … I hope people will realize how nice it is that there is a theater here that is a galvanizing feature of our community.”
Taran noted the theater has had its ups and downs, When it was purchased in 1996 by the city it was with the expressed purpose of it being used as a community theater, to be community accessible.
“Since then it’s become a given that if you’re a school kid in this community that you will visit the public theater at least twice, “ Taran said. “Whether it’s from going to see The Nutcracker, or going to see an LA Opera performance, or it’s the Read The Book See The Movie program, whatever it is — and two generations ago, that was not the case.
“It’s a living place that’s accessible to the community, to producers, like Lee Sweet, who can keep the rental fees flexible and fair,” Taran said. “So, you can have Folklorico Dance Company and you can have Nederlander. It’s everybody.”
When Buscaino took office, Liz recalled he wanted to figure out how to get the theater going and get people in there.
“He had the opportunity to meet … concert producers in LA,” she said. “He introduced [them] to The Warner Grand to get them interested in doing a show, or possibly more there.”
In order to get the funds from the city for the renovation it had to be proven no private entity would come in and do the renovation themselves. Taran noted nobody was interested because it was an overwhelmingly expensive project that would start from the ground up, being a historical building. The councilman had to demonstrate there were no other options which gave him better leverage to acquire the funds.
“It’s taken a long time,” Liz said. “But patience does win out if there is good advocacy. Having him as an advocate was the only way we could ever get this kind of money from the city. It required this level of determination from the council office.”
It’s no secret that the live concert business is basically dead. It’s a struggle for operations both large and small. But the executive director said she has no fear that the theater will ever be taken away from the community.
“We will remain a community theater, a community art center, a movie house,” Liz said. “With a better facility we will attract a concert promoter who will put on well known acts. Promoters don’t want to run a theater, they want to put on shows with well known acts and make money.
The Grand Vision Foundation was invited to participate in the discussions with Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department and is helping out Los Angeles’ Bureau of Engineering. Liz said they have been very inclusive with this process.
“With the Warner Grand as a feasible theater this is attainable,” Liz said. “So this is what we have to do.”
“It has to be a turnkey operation,” Taran said “Economic revitalization was always the purpose.”
“It is a shame that in the world we live in that it’s not okay to just say we need our theater restored and made completely whole because theater itself is important,” Liz said. “Theater brings people together, it teaches us about our own humanity, it gives us community pride to see young people on the stage”
It’s true government is concerned with economic development. But Liz posited, people attend theater and usually buy more than a ticket, they buy dinner. … It’s a huge economic multiplier.
“We can’t just say children should learn music because music creates joy and it gives them confidence,” she added. “You have to say that music is important because it helps people with their academics. That’s true too. It’s too bad that the arts can’t be funded and appreciated for their own sake.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, which claimed more than 336,000 lives in the United States in 2020, has significantly affected life expectancy, USC and Princeton researchers have found.
The researchers project that, due to the pandemic deaths last year, life expectancy at birth for Americans will shorten by 1.13 years to 77.48 years, according to their study published Jan 14, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That is the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in at least 40 years.
The declines in life expectancy are likely even starker among Black and Latino communities. For Blacks, the researchers project their life expectancy would shorten by 2.10 years to 72.78 years, and for Latinos, by 3.05 years to 78.77 years.
Whites are also impacted, but their projected decline is much smaller — 0.68 years — to a life expectancy of 77.84 years.
Overall, the gap in life expectancy between Blacks and whites is projected to widen by 40%, from 3.6 to more than 5 years — further evidence of the disease’s disparate impact on minority populations.
COVID-19 appears to have eliminated many of the gains made in closing the Black-white life expectancy gap since 2006. Latinos, who have consistently experienced lower mortality than whites — a phenomenon known as the “Latino paradox” — would see their more than three-year survival advantage over whites reduced to less than one year.
“The huge decline in life expectancy for Latinos is especially shocking given that Latinos have lower rates than the white and Black populations of most chronic conditions that are risk factors for COVID-19,” said study co-author Noreen Goldman, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Demography and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. “The generally good health of Latinos prior to the pandemic, which should have protected them from COVID-19, has laid bare the risks associated with social and economic disadvantage.”
The study’s authors estimated life expectancy at birth and at age 65 for 2020 for the total U.S. population and by race and ethnicity. They used four scenarios of deaths — one in which the COVID-19 pandemic had not occurred and three others that include COVID-19 mortality projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research center at the University of Washington.
“The bigger reductions in life expectancy for the Black and Latino populations result in part from a disproportionate number of deaths at younger ages for these groups,” Goldman said. “These findings underscore the need for protective behaviors and programs to reduce potential viral exposure among younger individuals who may not perceive themselves to be at high risk.”
Life expectancy as an indicator of population health
Of the analyzed deaths for which race and ethnicity have been reported to the National Center for Health Statistics, 21% were Black and 22% Latino. Black and Latino Americans have experienced a disproportionate burden of coronavirus infections and deaths, reflecting persistent structural inequalities that heighten risk of exposure to and death from COVID-19.
The researchers say life expectancy is an important indicator of a population’s health and an informative tool for examining the impact of COVID-19 on survival.
In the decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, annual improvements in U.S. life expectancy had been small but overall life expectancy had rarely declined. An exception was the annual reduction of 0.1 year for three consecutive years — 2015, 2016, and 2017 — which were attributed in part to increases in so-called “deaths of despair” among middle-aged whites related to drug overdoses, including opioids, as well as alcohol-related liver disease and suicide.
The projected pandemic-related drop in life expectancy is about 10 times as large as the declines seen in recent years.
The last major pandemic to significantly reduce life expectancy in a short period of time was the 1918 influenza pandemic, which research indicates reduced life expectancy by an extraordinary 7-12 years.
“While the arrival of effective vaccines is hopeful, the U.S. is currently experiencing more daily COVID-19 deaths than at any other point in the pandemic,” Andrasfay said. “Because of that, and because we expect there will be long-term health and economic effects that may result in worse mortality for many years to come, we expect there will be lingering effects on life expectancy in 2021.”
“That said,” she added, “no cohort may ever experience a reduction in life expectancy of the magnitude attributed to COVID-19 in 2020.”
The study authors say they are now studying occupational exposures to COVID-19 by race and ethnicity to further comprehend its disproportionate impact.
SAN PEDRO —The nation’s busiest container port moved 9.2 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units or TEUs in 2020, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka announced at the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association’s sixth annual State of the Port of Los Angeles – a virtual event this year. A late-year surge of pandemic-induced consumer spending helped boost volumes to near 2019 levels, making 2020 the fourth highest-volume year in the Port’s history.
“Our container business in 2020 was the most erratic we have ever seen, with volumes plunging nearly 19% in the first five months of the year, followed by an unprecedented second-half surge,” Seroka said. “Our ILWU longshore workforce did a great job adapting to the huge swings in volume, as did port truckers and everyone else involved in moving cargo through our port. In a year of great difficulty, we are extremely grateful for the tenacity and resolve of all of our partners.”
“Los Angeles is one of the world’s great centers of trade and commerce, and that’s because of our port,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who delivered a pre-taped video message during the event. “Our success is a credit to the cargo owners who place their trust in us, and to the tireless efforts of our longshore workers, our terminal operators, our truck drivers, and all the essential workers across the supply chain who keep our economy moving even in the toughest of times.”
The port’s third- and fourth-quarter 2020 cargo volumes increased 50% over the first half of the year, with the port handling a remarkable 94% more traffic the week before Christmas than the same week in 2019. The port completed the year down approximately 1.5% compared to 2019 cargo volumes.
During his speech, Seroka laid out the port’s priorities for 2021, including job creation, cargo growth, infrastructure investment, accelerating zero emission technology development and deployment, and continued development of a thriving waterfront community. He reiterated the port’s focus on supply chain efficiency and optimization, calling for nationwide port data connectivity that could provide enhanced visibility, efficiency and choice for cargo owners, as well as a more stable supply chain.
“If we want America to improve as a leader in global trade, we need nationwide port data connectivity with agreed-upon data standards and an open architecture system that provides interconnectivity between major U.S. ports, service providers and the freight they move,” said Seroka.
In his call for further supply chain digitization, Seroka announced the development of The Control Tower, the newest in a series of Port Optimizer™ cloud-based data solutions. The Control Tower, developed in collaboration with Wabtec, will provide new levels of metrics and data including real-time port level views of turn times, truck capacity management information and detailed velocity metrics.
Drayage improvement incentives announced
Seroka noted several challenges faced by the port in 2020 amidst the pandemic, including drayage truck inefficiencies caused by container volume surges. Drayage trucks currently handle about three-quarters of all import and export containers moving through the port. In response, Seroka announced a new Truck Turn-Time and Dual-Transaction Incentive Program. Starting in February, the program will financially reward terminal operators who move containerized cargo faster and more efficiently through their terminals.
Crisis Response
The State of the port address highlighted several port achievements during 2020, including its leadership of Logistics Victory Los Angeles or LoVLA, which was formed to support procurement of Personal Protective Equipment or PPE for the City’s stockpile and distribution to frontline workers during the COVID-19 health crisis. To date, the effort has provided more than 4.6 million units of PPE and other supplies to three dozen area hospitals and more than 150 skilled nursing facilities throughout the region.
Infrastructure Investment
Despite the pandemic, Seroka noted the progress on $473 million in port capital projects, which include eight major terminal, rail and roadway improvements. The port also moved forward on its goal of zero-emission terminal equipment by 2030 and a zero-emissions drayage fleet by 2035. It currently has 16 demonstration projects underway involving the testing of 134 pieces of advanced equipment, including 78 zero-emissions trucks.
The port remains committed to the development of the LA Waterfront, with Seroka adding that the port broke ground on the nine-acre, $71 million Wilmington Waterfront Promenade, the $33 million San Pedro Town Square at Harbor Boulevard and Sixth Street and the nearly mile-long walkway along the Main Channel. This will lead to the $150 million West Harbor commercial retail and entertainment center, scheduled to break ground this year with a Phase 1 opening in late 2022.
Los Angeles City Councilman, or “Mr. Los Angeles,” Tom LaBonge may in part be remembered for his efforts to help the elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo. In spring 2006, amid pleas to free the elephants, the city council voted to keep the world’s largest animals at the zoo. in a new exhibit, which included grasslands and waterfalls.
“We have three elephants at the zoo… Right now we have to make it better for them, safer for them,” said Councilman Tom LaBonge.
Los Angeles Councilman Tom LaBonge died Jan. 7, 2021 at the age of 67. A graduate of John Marshall High School, LaBonge received his bachelor’s degree in sociology from California State University, Los Angeles.
He was a member of the Los Angeles City Council representing the 4th district, serving from 2001 to 2015. LaBonge won a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of long-time council member John Ferraro. The district included a wide diversity of incomes and neighborhoods. During his time in office, he was the chairman of the Arts, Parks, Health and Aging committee, vice chairman of the Transportation Committee and the Ad Hoc River Committee, and member of the Trade, Commerce & Tourism Committee, and the Ad Hoc on Recovering Energy, Natural Resources & Economic Benefit from Waste for L.A. (RENEW LA) in the city of Los Angeles. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
Prior to serving as councilman, LaBonge was director of Community Relations at the Department of Water and Power, special assistant to Mayor Richard Riordan, and chief deputy to council president John Ferraro. LaBonge was a lifelong advocate for Griffith Park, one of the largest urban parks in the nation, which fell in his old council district.
He married graphic designer and illustrator Brigid Manning LaBonge in 1988. Prior to his death, LaBonge resided in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles with his wife and their two children, Mary-Cate and Charles.
Mayor Garcetti And Council President Nury Martinez On The Passing Of Tom LaBonge
“Our hearts are heavy with the passing of former Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge. In a city of 4 million Angelenos, Tom LaBonge was Mr. Los Angeles. He was a true public servant who was never afraid to roll up his sleeves or pull a City worker over if a constituent needed help or a street needed servicing at a moment’s notice. He knew every mascot of every high school in Los Angeles for a reason – so he could engage people and talk to them about their lives. As a councilmember, he took care of his constituents and was a champion of one of L.A.’s greatest treasures, Griffith Park. Tom LaBonge loved Los Angeles and Los Angeles loved him right back. To quote Tom, he is forever an angel in the City of Angels. May God bless him, his wife, Brigid, and the entire LaBonge family.” — Mayor Eric Garcetti and Council President Nury Martinez
Janice Hahn On The DeathOf Tom LaBonge
“I am still trying to process the loss of my friend Tom LaBonge on Thursday night. The ten years we spent together on the City Council were the best political years of my life.
I directed that the L.A. Memorial Coliseum torch be lit on Friday until sundown in honor of his life.
Nobody loved this city more than Tom and I don’t know if anyone ever will. He was and will always be Mr. Los Angeles.
For his seventh State of the City event, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia stuck with tradition as much as possible. As always, he spoke at the Terrace Theatre (although this time sans audience) after a bunch of kids recited the Pledge of Allegiance (this time prerecorded). And as always, Musical Theatre West opened the show. This year’s song choice, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, is one they’ve done before — a perfect set-up for Garcia’s main theme: Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me….
While optimism and the presumption of a better future are standard issue for Garcia’s annual address, from his relatively brief remarks one might wonder especially this year whether he’s taking too much for granted. Even his introduction by Long Beach Health Officer Anissa Davis contained a snatch of dubious optimism: “We are at the tail end of what has been a very trying time.” While it’s possible Davis was referring to the Trump presidency, it was a strange statement to hear from the city’s chief health officer in the midst of record highs for COVID-19 infection and death, with hospitals (as Garcia would note minutes later) near or at capacity and an end nowhere in sight.
But although Garcia has never been much for publicly acknowledging the negative in any but the vaguest terms, even he was compelled to open his 25-minute speech (probably his shortest State of the City ever) by acknowledging the challenge of the present.
“This is a pivotal moment for our city and country,” he said, “one of those rare times that can define us as a people. […] Few moments in our history have required so much of us.”
Garcia knows whereof he speaks, having lost both his mother and stepfather to COVID-19, two of nearly 500 such deaths to date in Long Beach.
“Sadly, we will see many more losses in the weeks and months ahead,” he lamented. “[… But] here is the thing about loss: it is painful, but it can make you stronger. I have never felt more determined or more confident leading the city through this crisis.”
Calling Long Beach “a national model” for COVID testing (over 550,000 so far — a big number for a city with a population of 467,000 and far higher than the national average) and vaccination (over 13,000), Garcia announced that next week police officers, grocery and food distribution workers, and persons aged 75+ will begin receiving vaccinations, with the Long Beach Convention Center temporarily converted into a vaccine distribution center. Teachers and persons 65+ will be added to the list the following week.
Garcia also promoted the forthcoming launch of VaxLB, “a new online portal where you can enter your e-mail and information [and the City will] alert you when it is your turn to get vaccinated. […] This will streamline our process and give folks peace of mind to know they are in our vaccination system. Nothing like this has been done before, not here, not anywhere” — an exaggerated claim, to say the least, as numerous cities and counties across the country already have online vaccination scheduling up and running.
In discussing the pandemic’s “heartbreaking and devastating” economic impact (“It is out of respect for life and caring for people in our community that we made tough but necessary decisions” because “as a city, we follow the science and listen to the experts”), Garcia stated that he is working with the incoming Biden administration “on a massive relief bill that would directly benefit cities like Long Beach. I am very optimistic that in the weeks ahead that Congress will adopt a recovery package that could include tens of millions [of dollars] directly for our city.”
Garcia also noted that next week the city council is slated to “adopt a Hero’s [sic] Pay Initiative to make sure grocers and workers at large supermarket chains are paying our hardworking grocers an additional four dollars an hour during this health crisis”; and that he has asked the council “to set aside at least $10 million for restaurants, gymnasiums, and personal services, which could be increased, and tens of millions more to directly assist other small businesses across our city.”
Most curious omission of the night? Despite stepping up to the podium wearing a mask, Garcia did not utter the word “mask” even once, let alone encourage his constituents to do their part to minimize the spread or brook the topic of seriously enforcing the city/county’s mask mandate.
Moving on to other topics, Garcia touched upon the civil outcry on the streets of Long Beach in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police last May, affirming that “Black lives matter […] to the city, and they matter to me. […] We must acknowledge that structural racism exists in all of our institutions — in policing, in education, in the workplace, and in healthcare.” As evidence that Long Beach is doing just that, he pointed to the City’s Racial Equity & Reconciliation Initiative, which he said “outlines over 100 initiatives and goals to take on structural racism and promote equity.”
While Garcia briefly mentioned the need for “important reforms within our police department,” he said literally nothing about exactly what needs reforming, merely stating that such reform is “already on its way,” touting “declines in officer involved shootings, citizen complaints, and use of force incidents.”
Garcia spent far more time on “the housing and homelessness crisis, [which] has only grown worse due to COVID-19 […] and a stunning lack of action by the federal government.” Among the measures Garcia hopes will ameliorate homelessness in Long Beach — which rose 7% in 2020 — are the acquisition of three motel properties for conversion into housing units (part of California’s Project Homekey) and a recently passed “inclusionary housing ordinance that will require every new development built in the city to include affordable units.” He also proposed “a $15 million tenant assistance program [to] help renters get caught up on their rents and avert mass evictions across our city.”
“Directly link[ing]” housing insecurity “and the spread of disease […] to our climate crisis,” Garcia declared that Long Beach “must end our dependence on oil and move away from funding key critical services with that revenue”; and claimed the City’s recently approved Climate Action and Adaptation Plan “is one of the most rigorous and ambitious municipal climate plans in the country and will serve for our city as a blueprint to address the major impacts of climate change in Long Beach.”
Despite closing with a condemnation of last week’s assault on the Capitol — “an attempted coup on our democracy and a direct attack on our country and our values” — there was no getting out from under the shadow of COVID-19. But while noting that “this health crisis isn’t over” and labelling the disease “the single biggest threat to life our city,” he declared — as he does every year — that “the state of the city is strong” and “Long Beach will remain the best city in the world.”
But after 2020 and in light of the murky present, even Long Beach’s most prominent ray of sunshine was compelled to make a gloomy admission: “But it will never be the same.”
Baby Lhiann Lacambacal with her grandparents Reginaldo and Gloria, and Arturo Rodriguez, an organizer at the Larry Itliong Resource Center. The Lacambacals live in housing built as part of the Self-Help movement. (David Bacon)
In California’s agricultural heartland, farmworkers are fighting back against expensive rents, substandard housing, and economic disenfranchisement.
Support for this reporting came from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Poplar, Calif.-In the Covid era, poverty in California’s rural agricultural counties has become deadly. California now has over 2.7 million coronavirus cases. While Los Angeles, with its huge population, has the largest number of cases with over 920,000, the highest infection rates actually are to be found in less-populous counties with large farmworker populations. Imperial County, right across the border from Mexicali, Mexico, and Kings County, just south of Fresno, both have well over 10,000 cases per every 100,000 residents. California is the richest state in the United States, so it’s easy to forget that its rural poverty and substandard farmworker housing have contributed to the surge in Covid-19 cases here.
Tulare County, a large county in California’s southern San Joaquin Valley, was a tourist destination in better times-it’s home to the towering forests of the Sequoia National Park. But Tulare is also a working county-it was here that the United Farm Workers was born out of the 1965 grape strike, and it remains one of the most important agricultural regions in the state and the country. Tulare, with a population of about 466,000, has 34,479 Covid-19 cases, and 406 people have died. That gives it infection and death rates more than twice those of urban San Francisco or Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County.
Erika carries her ladder from the row of trees she’s just finished picking, to the next row in Poplar. The ladder weighs about 30 pounds. Most women farmworkers normally wear some kind of face covering, usually a bandanna, while working in the fields. The bandanna protects against the sun and breathing dust, and even against sexual harassment. Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis bandannas have become a protection against spreading Covid-19 as well. (David Bacon)
Maria Madrigal picks persimmons in a field near Poplar, in the San Joaquin Valley, in a crew of Mexican immigrants. (David Bacon)
Covid rates follow income. Family annual income in San Francisco and Santa Clara is more than twice that of Tulare. Over 32,000 the county’s residents are farmworkers, and farmworker families survive on less than half of what most US families earn.
In Tulare, poverty forces people to live closer together to share rent and living costs, making social distancing difficult. People here go to work because they have no cushion of savings-a day without pay can be difficult; a week could be ruinous. Traveling to and from the fields in crowded cars or buses also places workers in close proximity. “Getting better housing has become a survival need at a time when existing conditions make the threat of the virus much much worse,” Mari Perez, an organizer with the Larry Itliong Resource Center in Poplar, a farmworker community in Tulare County, told me.
Abandoned housing for farmworkers outside of Poplar. (David Bacon)
A farmworker family’s home in Campo California, outside of Poplar. Campo California is a colonia, or an unincorporated community outside of the city limits of the closest city, Porterville. Most colonias, whose residents are low income farmworkers, and mostly immigrants, have problems getting public services from water to sewer connections. (David Bacon)
Justin lives with his mother in an encampment on the Tule River levee near Porterville. The riverbed is often dry, since a dam was built further upstream to create Lake Success. People with no other place to live have built a string of encampments along the levee downstream. (David Bacon)
But the fight to improve housing conditions didn’t begin with the pandemic-in fact, better living conditions has been at the center of the struggle for rural emancipation here since the days of the grape strike. One of the most important tools for getting better housing, born in the civil rights upsurge among the valley’s farmworkers, was a concept called Self-Help Housing.
It started with the idea that even people with low income could build and own homes. If farmworkers contributed their labor and got help with building materials and loans for land, they could free themselves from paying high rents. In activist Richard Unwin’s history of Self-Help Housing’s first idealistic decade, he called it “a story of a singular effort, a sustained commitment, to develop imaginative, efficient and humane methods of assisting families to move up from poverty by moving out of riverbank shanties and roadside shacks into decent houses…of determination to make substance of dreams.”
Mario Robles was born in 1999, just after his family had bought this house in Earlimart. (David Bacon)
Mario Robles, now 21 years old, was born the year his parents moved into a house on Sierra Avenue in Earlimart, a small farmworker town in Tulare County. It was already an old house, one of the first built by Self-Help Housing in 1965, 35 years earlier.
A home on Bobbi Avenue in Earlimart, built in the late 1990s as a Self-Help housing project. (David Bacon)
“No one in my family knows who built it,” Robles says. “But when we moved in the house was falling apart. We put a lot of work into it, and now we’re really proud of it.” A string of houses like the Robles’s lines the south side of Sierra Avenue, all built in the same year. A few show their age, but most look like their owners have taken very good care of them, or even rebuilt them after they’d deteriorated.
These homes were the answer community activists had to the chronic crisis afflicting farmworker families-terrible housing, or even no housing at all. Today, it’s still not unusual to see people living in cars when the grape harvest begins in Tulare County and migrants arrive for the picking.
Even families that live in the county year-round have to put up with homes in bad condition, paying a large part of their low farmworker wages to live in them. According to the Census, half the workers in the county earn less than $24,000 a year. Nearly a quarter of the families in Tulare get food stamps and live below the poverty line-more than a third of families headed by single women. For half of Tulare’s 56,000 renters-farmworkers and other low-wage laborers-a third of family income goes for rent.
Self-Help Housing was a product of the early farmworker movement. At the end of the 1950s, Larry Itliong, for whom the Resource Center in Poplar center is named, had been organizing strikes of Filipino farmworkers for a decade, with the Filipino Farm Labor Union and later the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. Cesar Chavez was getting ready to leave the Community Service Organization to found the National Farm Worker Association.
In 1958, in Tulare County, Brad McAlister, a staff member of the Farm Labor Committee of the American Friends Service Committee, brought together the first group of farmworkers to talk about a self-help model for building homes. Two years later, he went to Congress and began writing what became the Housing Act of 1961, which produced the first federal home loans for low-income rural people.
By 1963, the first 12 families had begun construction in Goshen, a tiny Tulare County community on Highway 99. From the start, both Self-Help and the UFW were part of the same rebellious movement for change among rural families. Supportive activists like Clyde Golden and George Salinas worked as carpenters on Self-Help homes in some years, and in others built the union’s retirement home for Filipino strikers, Agbayani Village.
Husband and wife Reginaldo and Gloria Lacambacal in the garage of their home. Gloria came from the Philippines 20 years ago, and worked in the fields for years. (David Bacon)
The Lacambacal family in the garage of the home in Poplar that they built as part of the Self Help program. From left, Gloria, Reynaldo, Giyahna, Reginaldo, Eddie and Eufronio. In front, Lhiann, and Jenika Gwen. (David Bacon)
In Poplar, 20 miles north, Self-Help began pulling together Filipino and Mexican immigrant families two decades ago, and helped them begin building homes on Walker Street. “We moved into our house in 2004,” remembers Gina Lacambacal. “Self-Help provided the materials and it was up to us to put it up. Sometimes if we couldn’t work on our own house people would come and help. All the houses in this neighborhood were built with Self-Help.”
When she was growing up, she recalls, people in Poplar rented homes from the local pawnshop owner. “Our house wasn’t very well built. It was ancient, but you had a roof over your head. That’s all that mattered.”
The Sobrepena family built their home in 1996, just a few doors away. Both the Lacambacals and Sobrepenas come from the Philippines. Family migration wasn’t easy for them: It took Gina’s older brothers more than 20 years to get their visas because of the system’s long backlogs. Another brother had to stay unmarried for years in the Philippines, since married children lose their visa preference. He could only marry his wife once he arrived in the United States.
Valentine Sobrepena, the oldest member of the family, prepares Filipino goat meat for a party that evening, in the garage of the home they built in 1996 as a Self-Help housing project. (David Bacon)
Christina Sobrepena is 83 years old and came from the Philippines and worked in the grapes for 20 years. She now lives in housing built as part of the Self-Help movement. (David Bacon)
Nevertheless, having a stable home gave the families a base from which other members were able to come. Valentine and Christine Sobrepena and Reginaldo and Gloria Lacambacal were brought to the country by family members who were already citizens and legal residents. The couples worked the rest of their lives as farmworkers picking grapes and other fruit. They’re now in their 80s, too old to work, but they have a home with four generations of family looking out for them.
Most families in Poplar, however, are still renting. It is a tiny, unincorporated “Census-designated place,” but growing. In 2000 it had 1,500 residents, and 10 years later 2,500. “We haven’t seen this year’s numbers yet,” says Mari Perez, “but we’re sure they’ll be a lot higher. So we need housing more than ever.”
Rachele Alcantar at the door to her trailer, where she lives with her husband Jose Serna, her son Victor Alcantar, and her baby Ezekiel Serna. She was just elected to the local school board. (David Bacon)
Jose Serna and his sons Victor Alcantar and Ezekiel Serna. Serna is active in the local chapter of CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles. (David Bacon)
Despite some rural housing construction, half the housing in Tulare County was built before 1970, and only 4 percent in the last decade. Like many Poplar residents, Rachel Alcantar lives in a trailer, paying $500 a month in rent, with her husband, Jose Serna; her son, Victor Alcantar; and her baby, Ezekiel Serna. She was just elected to Poplar’s school board, and she and her husband are both immigrant rights activists with the local chapter of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “We all hoped that Self-Help would continue bringing in more families, but they stopped after the houses were built on Walker Street,” Alcantar says.
A few blocks away, Lupe Aldaco moved into a house that was falling apart five years ago, and fixed it up. Then she added a tiny trailer in the backyard for her son and a friend to live in. Arturo Rodriguez, the other organizer at the Larry Itliong Resource Center, grew up in that house and remembers the condition it was in. “I just thought it was normal, the way people lived,” he says. So when the center was organized, he began a campaign to take control of the local development board.
Lupe Aldaco moved into a house that was falling apart five years ago and fixed it up. She set up this bedroom for her son when he was still a boy. (David Bacon)
Lupe Aldaco added a trailer in her backyard for her son Israel Champion and his friend Miguel Ruiz to live in. She and her family live in difficult housing because there is not enough affordable housing for working families in Poplar. (David Bacon)
“It was run by the old guard,” he says, “who stopped any new housing because more people meant a threat to their control.” Poplar is in the district of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the US House of Representatives. The center finally found several acres of land for housing, but it’s still fighting to get rid of restrictions the old guard put in place.
“Housing is a right,” Perez laughs. “But it’s also a fight. If we don’t organize, we’ll never get it.”
The staff of the Larry Itliong Resource Center-Arturo Rodriguez and his daughter, Mari Perez and Rachel Eyla-are organizing the residents of Poplar to demand better housing. (David Bacon)
David Bacon is author of Illegal People-How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (2008), and The Right to Stay Home (2013), both from Beacon Press. His latest book is In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte, University of California Press, Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2017. David Bacon’s photography archive is now in the Special Collections of the Green Library at Stanford University.
