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Gov. Gavin Newsom Selects Secretary of State Alex Padilla as California’s Next United States Senator

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Gov. Gavin Newsom Selects Secretary of State Alex Padilla as California’s Next United States Senator

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Gavin Newsom Dec. 22,  announced the selection of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to be California’s next United States Senator, filling the term being vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Padilla, who previously served as a Los Angeles City Councilman and State Senator, and is a national leader in the fight to expand voting rights, will become the first Latino to represent California in the United States Senate and the first Southern Californian in nearly three decades.

“The son of Mexican immigrants —  a cook and house cleaner — Alex Padilla worked his way from humble beginnings to the halls of MIT, the Los Angeles City Council and the State Senate, and has become a national defender of voting rights as California’s Secretary of State. Now, he will serve in the halls of our nation’s Capital as California’s next United States Senator, the first Latino to hold this office,” said Gov. Newsom. “Through his tenacity, integrity, smarts and grit, California is gaining a tested fighter in their corner who will be a fierce ally in D.C., lifting up our state’s values and making sure we secure the critical resources to emerge stronger from this pandemic. He will be a Senator for all Californians.”

Secretary of State Padilla was sworn in as California’s first Latino Secretary of State on Jan. 5, 2015 and pledged to bring more Californians into the democratic process as the state’s top elections official. With President Trump attacking immigrants and democracy over the past four years, Padilla has been a warrior for voting rights and the American Dream. He was re-elected in 2018 and received the most votes of any Latino elected official in the United States.

“I am honored and humbled by the trust placed in me by Governor Newsom, and I intend to work each and every day to honor that trust and deliver for all Californians,” said Secretary of State Padilla. “From those struggling to make ends meet to the small businesses fighting to keep their doors open to the health care workers looking for relief, please know that I am going to the Senate to fight for you. We will get through this pandemic together and rebuild our economy in a way that doesn’t leave working families behind.”

Since taking office, Secretary of State Padilla has worked to make California’s elections more accessible and inclusive, while fighting to protect the integrity of our voting systems. He:

  • Registered over 22 million voters: Under Padilla’s leadership, voter registration is at an all-time high – over 22 million Californians are registered to vote (an increase of more than four million from the day he took office) and the highest rate in nearly seven decades.
  • Expanded access to the ballot: He implemented innovations like same-day registration, online pre-registration for 16- and 17-year olds and automatic voter registration, also known as “California Motor Voter.”
  • Protected our elections: He oversaw the upgrades and replacement of voting systems in all 58 counties in the state to systems that meet California’s newer, higher security standards.

Padilla also served as Chairman of the California Complete Count Committee, where he led efforts to reach hard to count communities and worked with community based organizations to secure a safe and fair Census count. 

Growing up, Padilla’s parents relentlessly emphasized hard work and a good education as key to a better future. With just an elementary school education, Padilla’s father Santos worked as a short order cook for forty years before retirement. He liked to boast that his kitchen “never failed an inspection.” For the same forty years, his mother Lupe worked tirelessly as a housekeeper for a group of families in the affluent communities of Studio City and Sherman Oaks.

Santos and Lupe raised their three children, Julie, Alex and Ackley, in a modest home in Pacoima. In the 1980s, the neighborhood became one of the more violent areas of Los Angeles and gang activity, prostitution and open-air drug dealing were rampant. Going to sleep to the sound of police helicopters was not uncommon.

Padilla attended local public schools, keeping his focus on books and baseball. He worked his way into the starting rotation at San Fernando High as a senior. The same year, his countless hours of study paid off and he won admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. He worked his way through college doing a variety of janitorial and administrative jobs while mentoring younger students back home to follow the same path.

It was the conditions in his neighborhood growing up and the feeling that the Northeast San Fernando Valley wasn’t adequately served by the government that awakened his interest in political activism. As a teenager, Padilla’s family helped organize neighbors to take back the streets from crime. He and his mother would periodically join community leaders to protest environmental injustice and demand the closure of the Lopez Canyon Landfill. In 1994, after California voters passed Proposition 187, the sweeping anti-immigrant measure, his parents finally applied for citizenship and Padilla, now a recent MIT graduate, resolved to put an engineering career aside and dedicate his life to public service.

Demanding a fair share of opportunity and resources for the people of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, Padilla was elected to the Los Angeles City Council as a political outsider at the age of 26. As a member of the City Council, he worked to expand after-school programs to serve 16 schools in his district, worked to reduce class sizes and built state-of-the-art libraries and a children’s museum. He worked to retain and create more local job opportunities through industrial, commercial and residential development and community reinvestment. And he championed citywide measures to improve air and water quality while directing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to dramatically increase procurement of renewable energy sources.

In 2001, Padilla’s colleagues elected him the youngest Council President in Los Angeles history. As President, he provided citywide leadership at critical times. He was Acting Mayor during the tragedy of September 11, 2001. He assisted in the interview and selection of William Bratton as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and helped negotiate the approval of LA Live and the modernization of Los Angeles International Airport. In 2005, his colleagues throughout the state elected him President of the California League of Cities.

In 2006, Padilla was elected to the State Senate to represent the more than 1 million people in the San Fernando Valley. As a State Senator, he would go on to author more than 70 bills signed into law by both Republican and Democratic governors.

Over two terms, Padilla passed major legislation:

  • Fighting climate change: He passed landmark legislation increasing renewable energy standards, expanding green manufacturing and solar power, developing clean fuels and modernizing the electrical grid.
  • Expanding educational opportunity: He passed bills bridging the digital divide and expanding college access, helping English language learners and protecting student athletes.
  • Fostering healthier communities: He fought for universal health care, stopping tobacco sales to minors, fighting diabetes and obesity, expanding patient protections and improving food safety
  • Increasing gun safety: He passed common-sense gun safety measures like tracking stolen guns and stopping felons from possessing body armor.
  • Harnessing innovation: As an engineer, he fought for the ethical advancement of science and technology. He authored legislation protecting Californians from discrimination based on genetic information and wrote the bill creating a statewide Earthquake Early Warning System.

Padilla lives with his wife Angela, a mental health advocate, and their three sons in the San Fernando Valley.

Why Progressives Must Not Give Joe Biden a Political Honeymoon

Norman Solomon
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Why Progressives Must Not Give Joe Biden a Political Honeymoon

The third time would not be a charm.

People on the left did very little to challenge Bill Clinton after he won the presidency in 1992. Two years later, a big Republican wave took control of Congress.

People on the left did very little to challenge Barack Obama after he won the presidency in 2008. Two years later, a big Republican wave took control of Congress.

Now, we’re being told that people on the left should pipe down and do little to challenge Joe Biden. But silence or merely faint dissent would enable the third Democratic president in four decades to again sacrifice progressive possibilities on the altar of corporate power.

Clinton and Obama — no less than Biden in recent months — could sound like a semi-populist at times on the campaign trail. But during 16 years combined in the White House, they shared a governing allegiance to neoliberalism: aiding and abetting privatization, austerity budgets for the public sector, bloated budgets for the Pentagon, deregulation of corporate behavior, and so-called “free trade” agreements boosting big-business profit margins at the expense of workers, consumers and the environment.

The idea that corporate centrism is the best way for Democrats to defeat Republicans is belied by actual history. Yes, Clinton and Obama won re-election — but their political narcissism and fidelity to big corporations proved devastating to the Democratic Party and very helpful to the GOP.

During Obama’s eight years as president, Democrats lost not only both houses of Congress but also more than 1,000 seats in state legislatures. As the New York Times noted, “In 2009, Democrats controlled both the state senate and house in 27 states, the Republicans 14. After the 2016 elections, Republicans controlled both branches of the legislatures in 32 states to 14 for the Democrats.” Republicans also gained more governors.

It’s worth pondering Obama’s blunt assessment of his administration’s first term: “My policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican.”

Yet the Obama era is now being fondly and routinely hailed as a kind of aspirational benchmark. We’re now being told to yearn to go back to the future under the leadership of the soon-to-be president who boasted last year: “I’m an Obama-Biden Democrat, man, and I’m proud of it.”

On the verge of 2021, populist anger and despair are unabated. And, as economic disasters worsen at macro and individual levels, more widespread populist rage is predictable. Only progressive populism offers an appealing alternative to the toxic pseudo-populism of the Trumpist Republican Party.

Pushing the Biden presidency in the direction of progressive populism is not only the morally correct thing to do, given the scale of human suffering and the existential threats posed by economic unraveling, the climate emergency and militarism. Progressive populism can also be the political antidote to the poisonous right-wing manipulation of genuine economic and social distress. In sharp contrast, “moderate” programs have little to offer.

My colleague Jeff Cohen describes the “No Honeymoon” campaign we’re immersed in at RootsAction.org as “an effort to help save Biden from himself and from following in the footsteps – missteps, really – of his predecessors Obama and Clinton. Too much hesitation, vacillation, corporatism in the first two years will likely bring on a Republican landslide for Congress in 2022, as Clinton’s vacillation and corporatism, like NAFTA, did in 1994, and Obama’s in 2010, for example his bailing out Wall Street but not homeowners through a foreclosure freeze.”

To avert a big Republican win in two years, Cohen says, “Biden has to deliver for poor, working-class and middle-class people. Policies that make a big difference in people’s lives — including cancellation of federal student debt and pushing for a $15 federal minimum wage. That will mean listening more to progressive allies, progressive economists and legal experts — and less to the Democratic corporate donor class. If he doesn’t deliver, Biden plays into the hands of the GOP faux-populists, setting us all up for defeat in 2022.”

In the #NoHoneymoon launch video, released last week, former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign national co-chair Nina Turner — now running for Congress in a special election — explained the concept of No Honeymoon. “We mean that we the people hold the power,” she said. “That we must continue to fight for what is just, right and good, and fight against what is not just, right and good. We mean that we must have solidarity and commitment, one to another.”

She added: “As long as there are injustices, we will continue to fight. What do we mean by that? We know that when everyday people put a little extra on the ordinary, extraordinary things happen. . . . We mean that we will not be seduced by smiles — we need action, and we need it right now. We will not relent. And that’s what we mean when we say ‘No Honeymoon.’”

Over the weekend, under the headline “Biden Cabinet Leans Centrist, Leaving Some Liberals Frustrated,” the New York Times declared with typical media framing that “the president-elect’s personnel choices are more pragmatic and familiar than ideological” — as though centrism itself is not “ideological.” The newspaper reported that “there is no one yet in Mr. Biden’s cabinet carrying the torch for the policies that he campaigned against during the primaries: free college for everyone, a costly Green New Deal, an anti-Wall Street agenda, universal health care and steep increases in the minimum wage.”

Silence or grumbling acquiescence as the Biden presidency takes shape would amount to a political repetition disorder of the sort that ushered in disastrous political results under the Clinton and Obama administrations. Progressives must now take responsibility and take action. As Nina Turner says, “everything we love is on the line.”

_____________________________________

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.

Estella Scrooge: A Made-for-Hallmark Digital Musical “Christmas Carol” Update

Greggory Moore
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Estella Scrooge: A Made-for-Hallmark Digital Musical “Christmas Carol” Update" title="Estella Scrooge: A Made-for-Hallmark Digital Musical “Christmas Carol” Update" />

There is a subsection of American culture who loves Hallmark Christmas movies. I mean, loves. The romance, the schmaltz, the familiar formula — it’s Yuletide comfort food for the soul. 

If you’re one of these people, have I got a musical for you! With a template provided by Charles Dickens, you already know where you’re going with Estella Scrooge: A Christmas Carol with a Twist. Familiarity—check. Schmaltz? Trust me. As for romance, by grafting a bit of Great Expectations onto this Christmas Carol redux, you should feel enough warm fuzzies to get you through at least one cold, COVIDy winter’s night.

The eponymous Estella (Betsy Wolfe), great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of Ebenezer (Danny Burstein), is CEO of Bleak House Capital and wears the label “gentrifying capitalist” with pride. She’s so devoted to the voodoo of trickle-down economics that she sings a whole song about it. On December 23, righthand woman Betty Cratchit (Megan McGinnis) alerts her to a new foreclosure back in Estella’s hometown of Pickwick, Ohio. Curiosity piqued by the fact that the property — Harthouse, a hotel for the down-and-out that never turns away anyone for lack of funds — is run by Estella’s childhood flame Philip “Pip” Nickleby (Clifton Duncan), who she Havishammed all those years ago, nothing will do but to hop on the first plane out in the morning. It’s not like she had Xmas plans, anyway.

According to the press release, Estella Scrooge is “the first digital theatre piece filmed entirely during the pandemic, utilizing cutting-edge technology.” And as a set of still photos over the closing credits documents, the entire film was shot one performance at a time — as in, no two actors were ever together on-set — and cobbled together with green-screen and digital tech that looks like a helluva lotta work.

The result is what you might expect if Grand Theft Auto characters decided to take in a musical whose cast wasn’t CGI. It’s simultaneously impressive and awkward, and the more ambitious the design team get with the digital effects, the more their limitations show, especially since most people alive today don’t know a world without Industrial Light & Magic.

But you’re not coming to Estella Scrooge for verisimilitude, so this isn’t a fatal flaw. In fact, the weirdness is strangely engaging. A more serious shortcoming is one inherent to producing a musical in this manner: the inability of the cast to truly interact. This manifests in two ways. The first is the simple lack of physical/eye contact. The technical team has patched things together reasonably well and for the most part get away with it even when you can’t help but notice. But during the duets we really feel it, particularly the big love song between Estella and Philip. I would love to see Wolfe and Duncan perform this onstage together, because their connection is convincing; but because they aren’t together, their intimacy cannot be fully realized.

The biggest problem, though, has to do with why it’s so much easier to make musicals works onstage than on screen: the spectacle. The thrill of the musical stage isn’t just the songs and lead performances — it’s the totality that shoots you over the moon. When a big number is done right, you almost don’t know where to look for all the movement and action/reaction. But with social distancing tying his hands, co-writer/director John Caird — who’s got a couple of Tonys on his mantle, so it ain’t like he doesn’t know how to do theatre — has opted to cut to single shots for reactions, which is downright clunky. The only serious attempt at an ensemble spectacle is the scene-setting opener, which is so-so as a musical number but does effectively ground us in the film’s universe. Otherwise, Caird and co-writer/composer Paul Gordon have hewed mostly to solo numbers and duets — and when they do go ensemble, they pretty much eschew spectacle, which is probably the right choice.

Musically, look, no-one’s gonna confuse Estella Scrooge with Sweeney Todd — it doesn’t help that are few analog instruments to be found — but Gordon is fluent in the vernacular of musical theatre, and even an overreliance on familiar tropes and less-than-literary lyrics does not prevent him from tickling your funny bone or vibrating your heartstrings now and again. The entire cast sings well enough for the material, even if occasionally it at least feels like there’s a hint of Auto-Tune in the mix. 

The best thing about Estella Scrooge may be its self-awareness. The Hallmarky formalism, the schmaltz, the pat performances, the heavy-handed references to other Dickens works — these aren’t weaknesses but strengths, all perfectly in keeping with the overall attempt. Caird & Gordon know exactly what kind of entertainment they’re creating, and that knowledge is key to its relative success.

This self-awareness is nowhere more apparent than inside Harthouse, which is run by “almost a family, a strange little family” of non-blood relations (there’s a song about that, too) that knowingly waves its banner of inclusivity — multiracial, multigenerational, multisexual — in your face. “Whatever we are, we’re not quite the norm […] Unconventional, that we admit / We do things our own way.” Transboy Smike (Em Grosland) most clearly points this up. “I’m Smike,” he chirps to Estella by way of introduction, pointing to a pronoun pin on his jacket: “He/him/his, or they/them/theirs.” It’s one of several laugh-out-loud moments in a script that’s not afraid to poke fun at both itself and the times we live in. “I told you that mortgage was a bad idea,” Nickleby’s attorney, Mr. Jaggers (Kevyn Morrow), laments. “Interest-only reversed-adjustable sub-prime loan — nobody knows what that means!” 

Despite the cast’s inability to occupy a common physical space, the performances work well enough, acted in true Hallmarkian style. Among the minor characters, Patrick Page stands out as the Ghost of Christmas Future, particularly for his dancing.

“Life isn’t fair, I know that much. But it never was,” says Estella near the end of her spectral travels. “We can make it fairer, if we choose,” rejoins the ghost, culminating the 21st-century spin Caird & Gordon have given A Christmas Carol’s social message. A great critic of capitalism, Dickens himself would surely approve.

But beyond their modest success on that score, the entire Estella Scrooge team have done yeoman’s work to inject our COVID Christmastime with the combined comfort of musical theatre and the delightfully sappy seasonal fare so many of us love. Don’t be surprised if one of these years you find Estella Scrooge running on the Hallmark Channel. But in 2020, you have to go get it. 

Streaming Musicals’ Estella Scrooge: A Christmas Carol with a Twist streams on-demand through January 31. Cost: $22.99–$44.99. For more information or to purchase a “ticket” so that 30% of the proceeds benefit Musical Theatre West, go to musical.org/estella.

Vaccines Have Arrived In Long Beach

Reporters Desk
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Vaccines Have Arrived In Long Beach

On Dec. 17, the first batch of vaccines arrived in Long Beach. At 9 a.m. Dec. 18, the city began its vaccine rollout to medical workers in Long Beach. 

The first residents to get the vaccine in group A will include:

  • Healthcare workers in hospitals
  • Residents and staff at nursing and long term care facilities
  • Paramedics and EMT personnel

Second to receive the vaccine will be healthcare workers in clinics and public health departments. And third to receive the vaccine will be dental and key pharmacy personnel.

In group B are all essential workers in education and schools, grocers, public safety officers, transit workers and other essential workers. And group C will include residents over 65 and other residents with critical care needs. All of these populations should be vaccinated in spring 2021.

Mayor Garcia in his newsletter stated vaccinations for the general public, which will occur at Long Beach testing centers, will likely start in late spring. If the federal government and the state are able to acquire more vaccine doses this timeline could be expedited. 

Details: www.longbeach.gov/health/diseases-and-condition/information-on/coronavirus/vaccines/

State Says Carson At Low Risk For Financial Distress

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State Says Carson At Low Risk For Financial Distress

CARSON — Carson is at low risk for “financial distress,” according to the California State Auditor’s office. The state agency recently ranked California cities by financial risk. Carson was ranked 252nd in the state, placing the City in the top 46%. The State Auditor assessed California cities based on liquidity or having enough cash to pay its bills, a city’s debt burden versus its income, financial reserves, revenue trends, and retirement obligations.

For liquidity, Carson ranked 69 out of 471 cities.

For debt burden, Carson ranked 324 out of 471 cities.

For reserves, Carson ranked 249.

For revenue trends, Carson ranked 334th in the state.

For pension obligations, Carson ranked 118.

With most California cities facing revenue losses related to the pandemic, Carson was given a “green” rating by the State Auditor showing an overall low financial risk category unlike surrounding cities and other Southern California cities that rely on entertainment and tourism industries for revenue.

Pension cost continues to be the common denominator for all local government agencies, the overall financial risk for Carson is low and that’s because of prudent spending, a fiscally conservative budget and a robust $32 million capital improvement program.

CANCEL THE RENT: A RISING NATIONAL RENT STRIKE MOVEMENT GAINS MOMENTUM

David Bacon
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CANCEL THE RENT: A RISING NATIONAL RENT STRIKE MOVEMENT GAINS MOMENTUM

Truthout Photoessay, 12/17/20
https://truthout.org/articles/cancel-the-rent-a-rising-national-rent-strike-movement-gains-momentum/
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/12/cancel-rent-rising-national-rent-strike.html

Rent strikes have spread across the country with the spread of the coronavirus. In the pandemic’s first months, 400 New York City families stopped paying rent in buildings with over 1,500 rental units. In May, rent strikes involving 200,000 tenants spread to Philadelphia and elsewhere. Washington, D.C., in September saw tenant unions spring up in strikes at the Tivoli Gardens Apartments and the Woodner, as well as Southern Towers in nearby Alexandria.

Rent strikes had a history as a resistance tactic before the pandemic hit. Cleveland tenants settled a rent strike in February, after 38 families forced concessions on the landlord of the 348-unit Vue Apartments in Beachwood. San Francisco had a famous rent strike that went on for three years at the Midtown Park Apartments, ending in 2017.

But with the pandemic, rent strikes have become a widespread response to brutal economic pressure. According to the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, 16.5 million families who rent housing lost income when the crisis began. Its October report states, “Nearly 50 percent of households in California have lost employment income since March of 2020, and one in five households (20.7 percent) indicated that they have no or only slight confidence that they have the ability to pay their mortgage or rent next month.”  

According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, 24.6 percent of apartment households were not paying rent as of December 6. But even before the pandemic, 16.8 percent had not paid their rent in a survey made a year earlier. A website set up by Bay Area tenant activists, Bay Area Rent Strike, notes that 78 percent of the people in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck. The group urges people who can’t pay to act collectively – to “work together to prevent eviction and foreclosure.” It adds: “We must demand an immediate suspension of rent and mortgage payments for everyone. And if this demand is not met, we must refuse to pay our rents and our mortgages, together.”

Cancelling rents was the demand that spread across the country with the strikes. In April, Cea Weaver, organizer for New York’s Housing Justice for All, said cancelling rent “is the demand of the rent strike.” In Los Angeles, Larry Gross, director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, says the city is full of rent strikes pushing for rent and mortgage forgiveness. Voicing that demand, the LA Tenants Union grew from 400 to 2,000 members in 2020.

Yet, despite LA’s strong tenant protections against eviction, enacted at the beginning of the crisis with no end date, the housing battle continues. “People occupying the CalTrans housing were forcefully removed,” Gross charged in an email interview. “That was fashioned after the Oakland mothers’ effort.” In March, housing activists occupied homes purchased by CalTrans which the agency intended to demolish for a freeway, but then kept vacant for years. On November 26, Highway Patrol in riot gear took them out and arrested many.

Los Angeles activists were inspired by Moms 4 Housing, a collective of homeless and marginally housed mothers who occupied a vacant Oakland home in 2019 and forced the city to find financing for its purchase, igniting a wave of housing activism. Carroll Fife, a Moms 4 Housing member, was elected to the Oakland City Council in large part as a consequence. On December 5, she spoke to a rally organized by several tenants’ unions, just prior to a caravan to the buildings where rent strikes are taking place.

Carroll Fife speaks to the Oakland rally.

Carroll Fife speaks to the Oakland rally.

With the pandemic, rent strikes have become a widespread response to brutal economic pressure.

“People said cancelling rents was ridiculously radical and not popular,” Fife declared, as the daughter of another activist squirmed and danced beside her. “But District 3 is ground zero for displacement, and people here think otherwise. We think a different reality is possible. The current paradigm in this country is not only not working – it is killing us.”

The caravan then set out. First a bicycle hauling a huge speaker, emblazoned with the slogan “Cancel Rent Debt” left a Lake Merritt parking lot, heading into the densely populated downtown apartment district. Following it came other bicycles, with slogans taped to their frames. Skateboarders and roller skaters snaked among them. And finally came the cars, with placards fixed to their windows and doors.

A caravan of bicycles and cars leaves Lake Merritt, as the lead bicycle pulls a banner with the action’s demand: Cancel the Rent.

A huge speaker with the action’s demand is pulled with the march, playing music and speeches from participants on a connected bluetooth link.

Bicycling tenants call for cancelling the rent.

The caravan arrives in front of a building where tenants are on a rent strike.

The caravan, organized by the JDW Tenants Union, Alice Tenant Union, the People’s Tenants Union, Onday Tenants Council and Veritas Tenants Association, held impromptu rallies in front of several buildings where organized tenants have stopped paying rent.

The banner produced by the caravan organizers taped to a car door.

A statement was read from one group, the SMC Tenants Council, at a building owned by the Sullivan Management Company. “We have been forced to advocate for our rights and our housing against a corporate landlord that is backed by hedge funds and billionaires,” it charged. “Our corporate landlord has ample resources to forgive rent to its tenants for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis but chooses instead to squeeze its tenants, who have lost jobs and federal assistance.”

Councilwoman Fife is the director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which helps organize and support rent strikes throughout the state. “The ‘shelter in place’ orders will end,” ACCE warns. “The crisis for low-income and working families will not. Even before the crisis, most of us were living paycheck to paycheck. With the loss of income, there is no way for most Californians to pay back rent or back mortgage payments that went unpaid during the crisis. Basic common sense dictates that because we won’t be getting back pay, we have no way to pay back housing payments.”

Cancelling the rent, ACCE says, is the only solution.

A driver holds up his fist in a car with his demands taped to the windows.

Skateboarders and a Segway rider in the caravan.

A roller-skating tenant calls for ending capitalism.

Two bicycle participants with the caravan banners.

Mo Green, a member of the ACCE People’s Tenants Union, calls for canceling rents.

An activist urges tenants to join the tenants union.

Supervisor Hahn Urges State to Prioritize Teachers in Vaccination Plan

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Supervisor Hahn Urges State to Prioritize Teachers in Vaccination Plan

LOS ANGELES — In letters to Gov. Newsom, California Department of Public Health, and Center for Disease Control, Supervisor Janice Hahn is calling for teachers and school personnel to be prioritized to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Phase 1B of the vaccine distribution plan will include essential workers. Supervisor Hahn has asked that teachers and school personnel be considered essential workers in this Phase 1B category and that they are included in the first tier of this phase.

The LA County Department of Public Health distributes vaccines based on the recommendations established by the CDC and State Department of Public Health.

Details: www.content.govdelivery.com/newsom-letter-teacher-vaccines

Santa Ana Police Officer Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bribery Charge

Reporters Desk
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Santa Ana Police Officer Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bribery Charge

   SANTA ANA — A Santa Ana Police officer was charged Dec. 15, with accepting $128,000 in bribes from a crime figure seeking to thwart law enforcement activities against his illegally operating businesses.

         Steven Lopez, 28, of Chino, was charged with bribery in a single-count information filed Dec. 15, in United States District Court. In a plea agreement also filed Dec. 15, Lopez agreed to plead guilty to this felony offense. Lopez is expected to plead guilty to the offense in United States District Court in the coming weeks.

         Lopez served as a police officer with the Santa Ana Police Department from April 2016 to Nov. 2020. From Aug. 2019 until Nov. 2020, Lopez received approximately $128,000 in bribes from an individual – named in court documents as “Co-Schemer 1” – seeking to influence Lopez in the performance of his official duties as a police officer, the plea agreement states.

Lopez admitted that he agreed to prevent or stop law enforcement compliance checks at businesses illegally operating under Co-Schemer 1’s control, law enforcement efforts to shut down those businesses, and law enforcement searches and seizures at those illegally operated businesses. Upon entering his guilty plea, Lopez will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal

Reporters Desk
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‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal

Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.

ByDAN DIAMOND

Politico 12/16/2020

A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a “herd immunity” approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by a House watchdog and shared with POLITICO.

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” then-science adviser Paul Alexanderwrote on July 4 to his boss,Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

Read more at: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408

LA Coalition Demands ‘Circuit Breaker’ to urgently suppress the spread of COVID-19 to save lives and support workers

Reporters Desk
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LA Coalition Demands ‘Circuit Breaker’ to urgently suppress the spread of COVID-19 to save lives and support workers

LOS ANGELES — Yesterday, LA County reported 22,422 new COVID-19 cases, recording the highest daily COVID-19 infection count since the start of the pandemic.  That is why a coalition of labor, health experts and community organizations is demanding that the LA County Board of Supervisors urgently enact a ‘circuit breaker’ — a strict 4-week lockdown in January to bring the virus under control.

Bold action and leadership are needed right now, and a circuit breaker in LA County would lower cases to relieve the pressure on hospitals and healthcare workers, allow state and local health agencies to strengthen the testing and tracing system, and allow the system to work better to prevent future surges in viral transmission. A circuit-breaker is a limited-time measure that includes curfews and the closure of all nonessential businesses with safety nets in place for businesses to stay closed and workers to stay safe at home.

The LA coalition members include more than a dozen healthcare, labor and community organizations that represent tens of thousands of LA workers, including frontline healthcare workers, pre-K-12 and university educators, grocery store workers, hospitality workers, educational, housing and racial justice advocates.

The coalition sent a letter to the LA County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday and posted a public petition demanding the Board to urgently plan for the 4-week lockdown and to provide immediate safety nets for businesses, workers and families so they can safely stay home. 

“Healthcare workers throughout Los Angeles are reaching their breaking point. They are understaffed, overworked and inundated with patients fighting for their lives,” said Sal Rosselli, President of the National Union of Healthcare Workers. “COVID-19 cannot be allowed to spread following the December holidays the way it spread after Thanksgiving. We all have to work together to keep this from getting worse, and that starts with people having the financial security to stay home.”

The victims of COVID are overwhelmingly essential workers, poor people, and people of color. Latinos in Los Angeles are dying of COVID at twice the rate of white people. One in three Black Americans personally know someone who has died of COVID.  Asians who become infected with COVID-19 are over four times as likely to die compared to other Angelenos. Residents of high poverty areas are dying at nearly twice the rate of wealthier residents. 

The coalition letter calls on LA County’s elected leaders need to take bold leadership, based on science and rooted in equity, to save lives. The signers of the letter include:  AF3IRM, conveners of Kanlungan.net; AFSCME Local 3299; Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE); California Nurses Association (CNA); LAANE – Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy; National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW); Reclaim Our Schools Los Angeles (ROSLA); Southeast Asian Community Alliance (SEACA); Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE); Students Deserve; UFCW Local 770; UNITE HERE LOCAL 11; United Auto Workers Local 2865, representing Academic Student Employees at University of California and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). Individuals include Prof. Ninez Ponce, MPP, PhD, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Dr. Ryan Huerto, Family Medicine Physician, National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan and Dr. Sue Chang, Pathologist, Assistant Clinical Professor, City of Hope (individual institutional affiliations provided for identification purposes only).

“We have reached a crossroads where only decisive measures can prevent our hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. A time-limited ‘circuit breaker’ can reverse the tide of the epidemic, bring the number of cases down by breaking the chain of infection, and reduce pressure on our healthcare system,” said public health expert Prof. Ninez Ponce, MPP, PhD, with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “This pandemic is disproportionately taking the lives of those in our Black, Latino, Asian and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander communities – many of whom are essential workers in our hospitals.”

With LA County contributing over $710 billion GDP to the U.S. economy, the county has the financial power to provide the necessary safety nets to businesses, workers, and families directly impacted by closures. The coalition is also pushing the Board of Supervisors to demand urgent state and federal funds for safety nets to allow businesses to stay closed and workers to stay safe at home.

Los Angeles County is the largest governmental body in California — and is also leading the state in cases and deaths. The case rate in Los Angeles is nearly four times that of San Francisco’s. This shows clearly that this is not just a failure of leadership at the federal level, as our local leaders like to claim.

In order to make the circuit breaker successful, our elected leaders need to issue clear closure procedures for non-essential businesses and activities, and sufficient supports for businesses and people. This is the only way to enact a meaningful lockdown that truly suppresses the virus. 

Circuit breakers have been used effectively in other countries to suppress the spread of COVID-19 and save lives. Strong, time-limited measures can reverse the tide of the epidemic and bring the number of cases down by breaking the chain of infection.

Details: www.actionnetwork.org/petitions/four-week-lockdown

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