LONG BEACH – A newly completed study of air pollution at the Port of Long Beach has found reduced diesel soot — down 88% since 2005 — and lower emissions of greenhouse gases, which have dropped 19%.
The Port’s annual emissions inventory report, presented to the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners on Oct. 1, shows the Port continued to demonstrate low levels of emissions for diesel particulates and sulfur oxides in 2019 despite containerized cargo at the Port of Long Beach growing 14% since 2005.
According to the 2019 inventory, diesel particulates have decreased 88%. Sulfur oxides are down 97%, while smog-forming nitrogen oxides have decreased 58%. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions were 19%. The pollution levels are all compared to the 2005 baseline, the year before the original San Pedro Bay Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) was adopted.
The CAAP was last updated in 2017 and incorporates numerous strategies to continue to reduce emissions from port-related operations in San Pedro Bay. The port is making a significant investment into developing and demonstrating the first-of-its-kind, zero-emissions equipment through the Technology Advancement Program, and other grant-funded projects, to support future wide-scale deployment. The Port is currently implementing demonstration projects that will test 60 different pieces of zero-emissions equipment. Approximately 15% of the cargo-handling fleet at the Port is already zero emissions today.
The annual emissions inventory is reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Air Resources Board and South Coast Air Quality Management District.
PORT OF LONG BEACH— Long Beach Oct. 2, welcomed the ceremonial opening of the new Gerald Desmond bridge at the Port of Long Beach, reinforcing its importance to international shipping and introducing the iconic structure that redesigns the Southern California skyline.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia dedicated California’s first cable-stayed bridge for traffic, a 515-foot-tall, two-tower span that helps facilitate national goods movement and offers a much-improved transportation link for commuters in coastal communities of Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Friday’s virtual and socially distanced ceremonies were closed to the public because of COVID-19 restrictions. Ceremonies were broadcast live and included taped greetings from more than 15 top elected representatives, local labor leaders and funding partners. The new bridge was jointly funded by the Port of Long Beach, Caltrans, the U.S. Department of Transportation and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro).
The livestreamed celebration featured a coordinated vehicle procession via land, sea and air highlighted by a “first drive” over the bridge led by 30 low- and zero-emissions cargo trucks representing the Port’s terminals and major shipping lines, and 34 classic cars that spotlighted the 109-year history of the Port. The procession included the debut of Volvo’s battery-electric heavy-duty cargo truck that, along with other truck manufacturers building the latest zero- and low-emission vehicles, will help the Port of Long Beach achieve its clean air goals by 2035.
The ceremony included a five-plane formation of the Torrance-based Tiger Squadron — historic warplanes offering a tribute to the Port’s prior legacy as a major U.S. Navy base — as well as a boat parade led by water-spouting fireboats, police boats, tugs and other vessels from state and federal agencies.
Watch the ceremony on our YouTube, along with videos recounting the construction of the bridge.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced his nomination of Justice Martin Jenkins (Ret.) for Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Justice Jenkins has held several prominent state and federal judicial positions throughout his career. He would be the first openly gay California Supreme Court justice and only the third African American man ever to serve on the state’s highest court. It has been 29 years since an African American man has served on the California Supreme Court.
A son of San Francisco, Justice Martin Jenkins (Ret.), 66, was born and raised in the Bay Area. He grew up cleaning office buildings and churches with his father who also worked a full time job with the City and County of San Francisco as a clerk and janitor at Coit Tower. Guided by his parents’ values of hard work and respect for all, Justice Jenkins went on to have a storied legal career, including years as a civil rights attorney, an appointment to a federal bench and most recently, guiding the Newsom Administration’s efforts to build a judiciary that reflects the vibrance and diversity of California as judicial appointments secretary since 2019.
Throughout his career, Justice Jenkins has advanced the cause of equality, particularly across racial and gender divides. Justice Jenkins’s family traces its roots to the Jim Crow South, and while Justice Jenkins did not grow up in the South, his family’s stories of injustice and blatant discrimination stuck with him. As a young attorney working in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, Justice Jenkins pursued cases involving police misconduct and cross burnings. He has also worked to promote gender equality through cases on pregnancy-related leave and sex discrimination.
“I am truly humbled and honored to be asked by the Governor to continue serving the people of California on the Supreme Court,” said Justice Jenkins. “If confirmed, I will serve with the highest ethical standards that have guided me throughout my career, informed by the law and what I understand to be fair and just.”
In his role as Judicial Appointments Secretary, Justice Jenkins has guided the Newsom Administration’s efforts to build a judiciary that reflects the people they serve. He spearheaded transparency efforts by making public the Regional Judicial Selection Advisory Committees, so that for the first time in California history, the individuals who provide feedback on judicial candidates for nomination and appointment will be known to the public. Justice Jenkins has worked closely with these committees to appoint 45 jurists, helping promote the diversity of the California judiciary for years to come.
Prior to his role in the Newsom Administration, Justice Jenkins served as an Associate Justice on the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District from 2008 to 2019. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 1997 and served on the bench until 2008.
In addition to his recent judicial service, Justice Jenkins served as a judge on the Alameda County Superior Court from 1992 to 1997 and on the Oakland Municipal Court from 1989 to 1992. From 1986 to 1989, he was a trial attorney with the Pacific Bell Legal Department of San Francisco and from 1983 to 1986, he worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as a trial attorney litigating civil rights cases. From 1980 to 1983, he worked as a prosecutor for the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.
He will fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Associate Justice Ming W. Chin. The Governor’s nomination must be submitted to the State Bar’s Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments — consisting of Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and senior Presiding Justice of the state Court of Appeal J. Anthony Kline. The compensation for this position is $261,949. Justice Jenkins is a Democrat.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 30, signed SB 203, authored by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), which prevents youth, up to age 17, from being interrogated prior to being held in custody and before waiving their Miranda rights without consulting with legal counsel.
When law enforcement conducts a custodial interrogation, they are required to recite basic constitutional rights to the individual, known as Miranda rights, and secure a waiver of those rights before proceeding. A waiver of these rights must be “knowing, voluntary, and intelligent,” meaning that the person waiving their rights understands them and the effect of giving them up.
Multiple studies have demonstrated that youth often do not fully comprehend the consequences of waiving their rights. They are also much more likely than adults to waive their rights and confess to crimes they did not commit. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, since 1989, 36% of people who falsely confessed to a crime and were later exonerated were under the age of 18. Previous law only required youth up to 15 years old to consult with legal counsel before interrogation. That protection was set to end in January of 2025.
“We are all familiar with instances of innocent youth who become pressured into giving false confessions and have had their lives devastated as a consequence,” continued Bradford. “Youth such as the Central Park Five in New York, who did not have legal counsel during questioning, spent years of their lives in prison for a crime they did not commit and could have cost them their lives due to the current occupant of the White House calling for their execution. I want to thank Governor Newsom for signing this bill and his commitment to making our system fairer for young Californians.”
This legislation is supported by a broad coalition of supporters, including Human Rights Watch, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, the National Center for Youth Law, Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, and the Los Angeles Lakers.
If President Trump dies from the coronavirus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans largely due to his deliberate negligence, the man replacing him will be no less dangerous. While Mike Pence has eluded tough media scrutiny — in part because he exhibits such a low-key style in contrast to Trump — the pair has been a good fit for an administration that exemplifies the partnership of religious fundamentalism and corporate power. The vice president, a former Indiana talk-show host who went on to become a six-term congressman and then governor, has described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” But he remains at cross-purposes with the biblical admonition (Matthew 6:24) that “you cannot serve both God and money.” Whether Pence has truly served God is a subjective matter, but his massive service to money — big money — is incontrovertible. Pence ranks high as a Christian soldier marching in lockstep with Trump on all major policy issues, a process that routinely puts business interests ahead of human lives. Whatever his personal piety might be, the results of Pence’s fidelity to right-wing agendas have further consolidated a de facto coalition of those seeking ever-lower taxes on wealth and corporations; denial of LGBTQ rights; a ban on abortion and severe restrictions on other reproductive rights; voter suppression and barriers to voting by people of color; obstruction of healthcare for low-income people; and on and on. Pence embodies the political alliance of very conservative evangelical forces with anti- regulatory forces of corporatism. In the arenas of elections and governance, that coalition is the present-day Republican Party, dedicated to imposing the edicts of religious dogma, rolling back democratic reforms and serving the rich at the expense of everyone else. “As vice president, Mike Pence is doing everything in his power to control people’s bodies,” the Planned Parenthood Action Fund declares. Meanwhile, those who are inclined toward racism or outright believers in white supremacy are bolstered. And Wall Street has never had a better friend in Washington. Pence’s most consequential role during 44 months as vice president has been as chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Since late February, he has functioned –in effect — as Trump’s willing executioner, standing by and blowing smoke while Trump obfuscated and lied as the death toll kept mounting. “The truth is that we’ve made great progress over the past four months,” Pence proclaimed in a mid-June statement, “and it’s a testament to the leadership of President Trump.” Pence charged that “the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus infections” — but “such panic is overblown.” To underscore his full devotion to Lord Trump’s downplaying of the virus, the vice president concluded with a blame-the-messenger flourish: “The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success. We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future. That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.” Pence’s June 16 statement made its way into the Wall Street Journal as a prominent op-ed piece whistling past Covid graveyards. “It was so clearly wrong back then and has turned out to be so clearly wrong since that I hope there’s some part of him that’s embarrassed,” Ashish Jha, the head of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in late summer. “I had already been seeing data for a good week that things were really heading in the wrong direction.” The Washington Post editorial board immediately responded with a denunciation under the headline “Mike Pence Is a Case Study in Irresponsibility.” No one with any discernment would associate Trump with religiosity because he held up a Bible at a photo op. But the other half of the ticket is a very different matter. Days after the November 2016 election, Jeremy Scahill wrote that Trump is “a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors.” Scahill quoted an author of books on far-right fundamentalism, Jeff Sharlet, who said that “when they speak of business, they’re speaking not of something separate from God, but they’re speaking of what, in Mike Pence’s circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained.” What does all this mean for progressives? The case of Mike Pence should be an ongoing urgent reminder that — as toxic and truly evil as Donald Trump is — the current president is a product and poisonous symptom of an inherently unjust and anti- democratic status quo.Instead of focusing our rage on the persona of one destructive leader, we should remember that corporate domination provides an endless supply of destructive leaders. While they come and go, the system of corporate power remains — and we must replace that system with genuine democracy.
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 for the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Mom got her chicken soup recipe from her mom. It’s a simple, brothy affair with lots of dill, the kind of soup that’s popular throughout the Yiddish diaspora, often referred to half-jokingly as Jewish Penicillin, because it always makes you feel better, no matter what ails you.
Yiddish, the native tongue of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, is based mostly on German but also contains Russian and Slavic words and a Hebrew alphabet. It’s a culture as much as a language, with its own traditions, recipes, and history of struggle of a community that has always been more a state of mind than a nation with borders. Throughout our tumultuous history, chicken soup with dill remained a constant.
Mom, her mom and their foremothers have all helped carry the torch forward to this point, all but assuring it will continue into the next generation as my kids are fans of chicken dill soup. But there is one aspect of this tradition that won’t continue: the step where you put a raw chicken into a pot of water. The idea of boiling a raw chicken bothers me the way boiled hot dogs do. I have to brown it first. And if you try it once, you’ll never go back.
It began when I started bringing home rotisserie chicken from the supermarket, as a quick way to make soup. You put a greasy brown bird in a pot of water with some veggies, and by the time it’s hot the soup is done. I quickly realized that convenience wasn’t the only perk of “cheaters chicken soup,” as I called it.
I was pleased to taste the rich flavor those soft and juicy chickens gave to my soup, and decided to learn how to recreate that magic in my own oven. Turns out, roasting your own chicken requires little more than a chicken, and a sliver of foresight.
Alas, on a typical afternoon, by the time my thoughts turn to dinner it’s too late to roast a chicken. But If you give me a raw bird and 4-hours notice, I can brown it with the best of them. Anyone can, because it’s about as easy as turning the oven on and putting in the chicken.
In my house, by the time a browned chicken makes it into the soup pot it looks like it’s been accosted by piranhas, and that’s OK. The carrion crows posing as my children are part of the plan, because I roast a six-pound bird, which leaves plenty of meat left over for soup, even after feeding us dinner. My kids are trained to save their bones, which I collect after dinner, smashing them with a frying pan to release their marrow. I use the broken, browned bones to make a lusty bone stock.
My soup isn’t clear like Mom’s. The rich, murky broth hides the chunks, including the tomatoes and potatoes I sneak in, breaking further from tradition. But even in my relatively busy and rebellious bowl of soup, the dominant dill flavor remains.
Oven-Browned Chicken
I roast my chicken with an herb or mix of herbs like Italian seasonings, harissa, herbes de Provence, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme. When browning a bird for Jewish Penicillin, the herb might as well be dill.
Rinse the chicken and let it dry — or dry it with a towel. Place the seasoned bird in a deep pan large enough that the chicken doesn’t quite touch the sides of the pan. Rub it with the olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder and dill. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, rub the remaining oil and spices on the potatoes, garlic, onions, celery and any organ or neck meat that came with the bird, and stuff it all into the cavity. Place any veggies that don’t fit around the bird.
Bake uncovered, breast-side down, at 325 degrees for 3 hours (or one hour per two pounds of bird), turning over at once for the last 45 minutes.
That night for dinner, enjoy some oven-browned chicken and juicy vegetables from the cavity. After dinner, strip all the remaining meat off of the bones and cut it into bite-sized chunks for use in the soup.
As for the bones, break or cut them if possible, to let out the marrow. Boil the bones for as long as you can, covered. I use a pasta boiler with the broken bones in the insert so I can easily remove them when it’s time — which it isn’t quite. Turn off the stove before getting ready for bed, so that the pot is cool enough to put in the fridge, bones and all, before you turn in for the night.
The next morning, strain the bones out and skim as much fat as you care to, and return the broth to the fridge until it’s time to make zup, as we say in Yiddish.
Mom’s Medicine
1 3-lb raw chicken or the leftovers of a 6-lb roasted chicken and its accompanying broth
1 cup dry dill, a bunch of fresh dill, chopped
2 onions, chopped
2 cups chopped celery
1 tablespoon salt, more to taste
My additions: 1 pound of potatoes (Mom would use matzo balls), and ½ lb chopped tomatoes for acid (other cooks might add a touch of lemon juice or vinegar)
If starting with a raw chicken: cut it into pieces and simmer in 8 quarts of water with a tablespoon of salt for two hours. Skim some fat, or not.
If starting with yesterday’s chicken, add the leftover chicken meat to the broth you made from your broken, browned bones. Also add any remaining cavity vegetables.
Add the vegetables to the cooked chicken and broth, and simmer for an hour. Adjust salt and dill to taste.
Fears of voter suppression focused on mail-in ballots appear to have receded somewhat, even as generalized fears of electoral disruption — even outright theft — have grown.
“Get rid of the ballots,” Donald Trump said on Sept.23. “[T]here won’t be a transfer [of power.]”
He was ranting against “unsolicited mail-in ballots,” but nobody’s concentrating on that — and for two good reasons: First, because it’s overshadowed by the larger threat of Trump’s refusal to leave office, and second, because it just doesn’t make any sense.
Trump’s latest bogeyman, “unsolicited mail-in ballots” is only found in nine states, only one of which — Nevada — is remotely possible for Trump to win. There, the Trump campaign sued to block a new law automatically mailing ballots to all registered voters. The federal court simply dismissed the case for lack of standing.
But solicited mail-in ballots clearly are a problem for Trump, as shown by SurveyMonkey data from June 8 through Sept. 21. Those who strongly disapprove of Trump were 74 percent likely to vote by mail versus 25 percent unlikely, while those who strongly approve were the reverse: 77 percent unlikely vs 23 percent likely.
Similarly, a just-released Times/Siena poll of Pennsylvania found Biden leading Trump 75-18 percent among voters who’ve requested an absentee ballot (about one in three) and trailing Trump by 8 points among those who haven’t. Biden leads by 9 points overall.
So, disrupting mail-in voting — increasing the number of votes that don’t get counted — is clearly a high priority for Trump. And it’s grown more difficult for Trump with a series of three federal court rulings ordering the U.S. Postal Service to halt changes implemented by GOP mega-donor Louis DeJoy that have delayed mail delivery nationwide.
In short, Trump’s war on mail-in ballots isn’t focused on the nine states that actually have unsolicited ones, but on fueling false narratives and mass confusion in the general public, outrage in his base, and discouragement in his opposition, while providing cover for additional shenanigans in the states that will matter most — particularly the three Rust-belt states he narrowly and surprisingly won in 2016 — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
But Trump trails in all three, by margins that seem too large for all his disruption to erase, especially as Democrats have shifted focus to a multi-option strategy: vote-by-mail, by drop-box, early in-person voting or voting on election day. One indication of success was the long lines of voters on the first day of early voting in Virginia on Sept. 18.
Using 538 and Real Clear Politics averages, Trump is trailing by 4.8 to 5 percent in Pennsylvania, by 5.2 to 7 percent in Michigan, and 6.9 to 7percent in Wisconsin. He’s also trailing in four states he hadn’t counted on needing to worry about: Florida by 1.3 to 1.8 percent, Ohio by 1.1 to 3percent, Arizona by 3.4 to 3.7 percent and North Carolina by 0.8 to 1.3 percent. Disruption of voting could more easily wipe out Biden’s leads in most of this second set of states.
Ohio is noteworthy, since it first reports early votes, which Biden will dominate, then Election Day votes, which will favor Trump. Trump is expected to lead at this point, and Ohio doesn’t report its mail-in ballots until 10 days later. So, if the election does come down to Ohio, expect the mother of all nail-biters.
But odds are that if Ohio is that close, Biden will have already won. It’s a very tall order to block 10percent of Biden’s vote or more, which is what Trump would need to prevail in those three must-win states. So, let’s look at what’s happening in each of them. Republicans control the gerrymandered state legislatures in all three, so there’s been no legislative help in protecting voters or ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Pennsylvania, a key focus has been the requirement to mail your ballot inside a secrecy envelope — the result of a GOP victory in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Sept. 17, stoking fears that tens of thousands of votes could be thrown out. But Democrats won something in that decision, too: it allowed county election boards to have drop boxes to collect ballots and extended the deadline to count mail-in ballots postmarked on Election Day but received after.
“It’s very concerning because we can see 30,000 to 40,000 ballots that can very likely be thrown out, just in Philadelphia,” Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley told BuzzFeed News.
But that same story went on to note:
“The ruling has inspired partisan nonprofits to organize.”
One organization cited, the Philadelphia-based Committee of Seventy, could reach a half-million voters with its voter outreach campaign, WeVote, according to its president, David Thornburgh.
Wisconsin is even more chaotic — but with a 2 percent larger polling average in favor of Biden. In April, Wisconsin had a 1.8 percent rejection rate for absentee ballots, which could be even worse due to late-arriving ballots in November. Usually, Wisconsin absentee ballots are counted only if clerks have them by election day. But, on September 21, U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled they should be counted if postmarked by Election Day, and received within six days — by Nov. 9.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Conley provided the extension because of the coronavirus pandemic, a surge in mail voting and recent problems with delivering mail on time.” Six days later the U.S. Court of Appeals put Conley’s order on hold–but only for two days until it released its decision that Republicans challenging Conley’s order–including state lawmakers–lacked standing to challenge it, because it did not directly harm them.
The state election agency is doing what it can, despite GOP legislative refusal to make the process more efficient in the face of COVID 19. It has sent absentee voting guidelines and applications to 2.6 million registered voters and implemented intelligent mail barcodes to track ballot envelopes through the postal system. Witness requirements were a major problem in April, which jurisdictions like Milwaukee and Madison dealt with using a “drive-up drop off” system, having election inspectors collect and witness absentee ballots outside polling places without voters leaving their cars.
Madison has gone even further for the general election, with its “Democracy in the Parks” program, kicked off last Saturday, at more than 200 locations, where poll workers helped people register to vote or request absentee ballots, served as witnesses for those who with absentee ballots, and collected them once completed. More than 10,800 ballots were collected in all. But mail delays could easily disenfranchise an equal or greater number in November. The early vote doesn’t begin until Oct. 20.
Michigan faces a tsunami of mail-in ballots. In the August primary, 1.6 million out of 2.5 million voted absentee. In November, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office is predicting 3 million absentee ballots, of which nearly 2.4 million have already been requested. To handle this massive influx, Michigan Election Clerks, a bipartisan association, asked for legislation allowing a seven-day pre-processing period before Election Day. Instead, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill allowing just 10 hours. Benson called it a “step in the right direction” that “does not go nearly far enough.”
To work around such limitations, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has announced that he will basically be shutting down city government for two days in order to place all city employees at the city clerk’s disposal to handle the flood of ballots. But it remains to be seen how many other jurisdictions will also step up—as well as how many ballots will be thrown out.
Currently, clerks must accept any ballots postmarked no later than the day before the election, and received 14 days after it, according to a court ruling that Republicans are trying to overturn on appeal. Like Conley’s ruling in Wisconsin, they stand a good chance of success, so the number of votes that will go uncounted is anybody’s guess. But, requested absentee ballots are already being sent out, and Detroit has already set up 30 drop-boxes for quick returns.
“We made sure that every district in Detroit is well-represented with a dropbox and a voting center,” Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said, according to The Detroit News. “We did not just seek the high voter turnout areas, but we also did the low voter turnout areas.”
There are similar stories in the other battleground states mentioned — Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, etc. Beyond that, in Texas, the Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has repeatedly tried to block Harris County (including Houston) from simply sending vote-by-mail instructions to every registered voter!
He’s lost repeatedly in both state and federal court but has not exhausted his appeals. That’s typical of how Republicans, following Trump’s lead, are simultaneously spreading fears of chaos, and refusing to do anything constructive. Meanwhile, Democrats are doing all they can to help people vote safely, smoothly and securely.
Vote-by-mail — once dominated by Republicans — is a critical component of this effort. But the real story is about preserving options and providing voters with everything they need.
To say I am heartbroken over the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not enough. Justice Ginsburg was a brilliant legal mind and an extraordinary champion for women. She gave us everything she could and her death is devastating. May she rest in peace.
Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (44th Dist.)
What a devastating loss to our nation. An inspiration and role model to me and so many others, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a fighter for women. She fought fiercely for everyone. We can never thank her enough for her service to our nation. She will be so missed.
We must fight hard to preserve the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazer for gender equality and fighter for voting rights.
Rep. Ted W. Lieu (33rd Dist.)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg represented the best of America. With patriotism and passion, she never shied away from taking on the challenge of making our country a more just and equal place. As a civil rights icon, Ruth Bader Ginsburg carved out a new path for women in our country — demonstrating that everyone is entitled to justice and opportunity under the law. She was a legal pioneer that our country needed and she will be desperately missed. This is a devastating loss for our country but her memory, and her legacy, are a blessing.
Rep. Alan Lowenthal (47th Dist.)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was more than an icon, or a tenacious champion of women’s rights — she was in every sense of the phrase an American hero.
It is simply too hard to grasp the loss our nation has suffered. Her life and her legacy have inspired generations of Americans. And on her passing, we must rededicate ourselves to fighting for those ideals she believed in and fought for —the rights and protections of the person less well off, the outsider, the marginalized.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a giant: a trailblazer in our legal system, a titan of fairness in the workplace, a champion of equality in our society, and a keeper of American ideals. Perhaps more remarkable than all the acclaim for her judicial rulings was the way young girls and women could see themselves, their hopes, their possibilities and their rights embodied in the figure of this indomitable force for justice.
What made her an icon was her empathy. What made her a hero was her fierce understanding of how judicial decisions connect to people’s daily lives — and her unflinching belief in our Constitution as a living and breathing document, a sacred trust meant to be interpreted, refined, and strengthened by each generation.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew our country could always be better. But our union is surely more perfect because of her service and her judgment. May her memory be a blessing.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
Justice Ginsburg devoted her extraordinary life and intellect to making the words of our nation’s founding documents more true. Throughout her historic legal career, her contributions as a jurist to the cause of equality for women and men were unmatched. Justice Ginsburg fought tirelessly for the rights of women at work, at school and in the life of our nation. She proved over and over again that sex-based discrimination harmed not just women, but men and families, and that reckoning with this inequality was required for our nation to live out its promise.
In moving our nation forward, she inspired millions among us, including so many women and girls, to reach higher, dream bigger and dissent more passionately. Though this loss is incalculable, her legacy will live on in the fairer, more just society that she bravely ushered in and that we must, to honor her, safeguard. Our thoughts and prayers are with her colleagues, her family and all Americans in mourning.
Sen. Bernie Sanders
First and foremost, the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a tremendous loss for our country. She was an extraordinary champion of equal rights and will be remembered as one of the great justices in modern American history.
That said, the right thing to do here is obvious, and that is to wait for whoever wins the presidential election to appoint the next Supreme Court justice.
Diane Middleton
President, Harry Bridges Institute
Although Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her career as an ACLU attorney fighting for women’s rights, she was a symbol of fairness and enforcement of the rule of law for all workers. In her final years she became the embodiment of perseverance and strength soldiering on for years in the face of cancer and multiple medical problems. She was the fighting force in dissent of the hypocrisy and bias demonstrated by the Donald Trump administration and appointees at every level. RBG did not go quietly into the night. We must follow her example and continue to RESIST and DISSENT !
Changes to a variety of Metro bus lines that run through San Pedro were unanimously approved at the Sept. 18 meeting of the South Bay Cities Service Council, which is assigned with adjusting those transportation lines in the South Bay twice a year. The changes will be implemented between December 2020 and January 2021.
Joe Forgiarini, Metro’s senior director of service performance and analysis, said the area of most concern among San Pedro residents is line 205, which goes north on the western side of San Pedro. It crosses over on an east and west alignment on 7th Street, finishing at the waterfront. Forgiarini said it does an unusual zig-zag on 1st Street, 7th Street and 13th Street.
“It’s a really complicated and somewhat inefficient alignment,” Forgiarini said. “The NextGen proposal was to centralize the line on an easier to understand, more direct path on 7th Street, including access to the hospital in the area.”
The 550 Line will no longer serve San Pedro. Instead, the council realigned the end of the 246 Line to serve North Gaffey Street.
“There’s significant retail in that area,” Forgiarini said. “Revising the 246 has the nice benefit of giving both Wilmington and San Pedro residents good connectivity into that significant retail area, rather than the 550 that only provided the San Pedro connection.”
The proposal includes rerouting the LA Dash in San Pedro to cover 1st Street and 13th Street, Forgiarini said.
Due to public feedback, the new plan will serve the far south of San Pedro, extending line 246 to Point Fermin, instead of a previous proposal that ended service at 22nd Street.
Other changes include the return of the 450 Line, which replaces the 950 Line. The 450 will run through Pacific Avenue, connecting to the Harbor Gateway Transit Center during off-peak periods and on evenings and weekends. In addition, it will run to 7th and Metro in downtown Los Angeles every 10 minutes on weekdays during the peak periods of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Off-peak service will be every 15 minutes.
The 950 operates as part of the Silver Line service, and in addition to going to Downtown Los Angeles, it goes to El Monte and the I-10 Freeway. The 950 shares the same stops as the 910 Silver Line.
“There’s a major initiative at Metro to electrify the 910,” Forgiarini said. “One of the key operating challenges for us is to establish charging facilities at both the El Monte end of the line and somewhere in the South Bay cities.”
Metro can install charging facilities in Harbor Gateway on publicly owned land, Forgiarini said. Metro’s plan is to use the 910 as a standalone bus between El Monte and Harbor Gateway, leaving the problem of how to replace it in San Pedro. The original proposal suggested the 510 Line, which followed the 950’s route in San Pedro. Once on the freeway, it would directly go toward the Harbor Freeway Station and connect to the 910 there. However, San Pedro residents strongly opposed this.
Forgiarini said San Pedro residents brought up several issues with this plan, including losing direct access to downtown Los Angeles with a one-seat (no transfer) ride. Others said the Harbor Freeway Station was an unpleasant place to transfer and objected to losing access to the Harbor Gateway Transit Center, which is a regional hub for transportation in South Bay cities.
“I’m concerned about the substitute line, 450,” said J.K. Drummonds, a member of the public who was called into the Sept. 18 meeting. “I hope it will not bypass the Harbor Gateway Transit Center; that’s where you transfer to everything.”
Because of complaints, Metro staff changed the 910 so that it still had access to 7th and Metro station in downtown Los Angeles during peak periods.
“However, we still have been receiving quite a bit of commentary,” Forgiarini said. “We believe people are looking for the more all-day one-seat ride, in fact, let me call it the all-week one-seat ride to downtown LA.”
However, to allow people in San Pedro access to the 7th and Metro Station in downtown seven days a week, the council would need to put the 910 into service during evenings and night owl periods, Forgiarini said.
Szerlip said that one of the council’s biggest concerns with San Pedro is connecting the San Pedro peninsula with downtown Los Angeles.
“I’ve heard it in many of the comments, ‘we want a one-seat ride to downtown,’” Szerlip said. “What does ‘downtown’ mean? Downtown Los Angeles is a big location.”
Szerlip pointed out that the 950 line goes through downtown Los Angeles to El Monte; the 450 Line will truncate downtown Los Angeles since it only goes to 7th and Metro.
“Is 7th and Figueroa downtown?” Szerlip said. “Or is downtown going all the way to Union Station, where you’ve covered all of those downtown options that one might wish to have that single-seat ride to, that are currently being served by the 950?”
Some members of the public did not approve of the council’s changes. Brenda Lopez, a graphic designer for this paper who rides the bus from Inglewood to San Pedro, submitted a public comment saying that service from the 950 should be more frequent.
“The 950 is the only bus that connects the rest of LA to San Pedro,” Lopez said. “There are times I waited for the 950 for over an hour. But other than that, it is the only way to quickly get down here. The 246 makes so many stops it takes three times as long as the 950. The change would require me to take three buses instead of two, which means that’s three times I have to wait for buses that are not on similar schedules.”
Charles M. Deemer, a board member of the South Bay Cities Service Council, said that the proposed changes would make it more difficult to go to evening events in downtown Los Angeles because the 450 does not go to 7th and Metro after 7 p.m.
“How difficult would it be to have, let’s say, three late-evening buses … for events that will be finishing around 10 to 10:30 so they can have [a] direct bus ride all the way back from downtown, so to speak, to San Pedro?” Deemer said.
Deemer pointed out that if commuters miss the bus, they could have to wait 25 to 30 minutes in the cold.
Conan Cheung, senior executive officer of operations at Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said this would be inefficient, as there would only be a few people per night.
“If we were going to implement that, we would have to be able to do this cost-neutrally,” Cheung said. “We would have to take out a fairly substantial amount of revenue that was somewhere else.”
Cheung said this would essentially be a special event service, not regular ridership.
Deemer moved to have the 450 go to 7th and Metro more often, but the motion did not get a second.
For Karena Massengill, do is the operative word. A professional artist who lives next to Sunken City in San Pedro is an accomplished welder-fitter from early on in her career. In the 1970’s in Canada, she was employed in a campaign to recruit women into the ranks as working welders. For many that would be enough, but not for Massengill, who also taught for 24 years and works as an activist.
Massengill is intoxicating. She speaks in a flurry and in that same way, she described several of her recent works while also expressing her feelings on the state of the world.
Alive with motion and form, Massengill’s welding pieces contrast hard metals with materials like glass, found objects, beads or the addition of surprising color manifesting in striking creations. Her new mixed media pieces, Recovery and Hope and Joy deal with recovery, aging and passage of time. Their spiral shapes signify exuberant glee. Each is made of fabricated steel, African beads, wood, metal and fractured mirrors — symbolic of reflective hopes. Shattered Lives connected to Black Lives Matter, a silver/blue based painting, depicts a shattered, yellow rear view mirror, aviator lenses and underneath, a rising fist visually echoes itself in burnt hues emerging from fire while bursts of animated pink hearts, one at wrist’s center, surround it.
“I’m concerned about what’s going on in the world,” Massengill said. “I’m trying to use that seriousness to be able to almost exorcize myself. I feel so concerned for young people. I am encouraged that there are so many young people becoming activists.”
Recovery and Hope and Joy, by Karena Massengill.
From Ukiah, Calif., she began art classes at Mendocino Art Center as a small child while her mother attended classes too. She didn’t think of being an artist. She was just always making things, walking to school looking for things on the ground to pick up and put together in some kind of assemblage.
“It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I had an epiphany about wanting to be an artist,” Massengill said. “I started taking this crafts class, working with clay. They let me stay however long I wanted to. It made me feel like, ‘this is what I wanted to do with my life.’”
Massengill’s resume is extensive. She attended Goddard College in Vermont, then California College of Arts and Crafts, becoming involved in metal smithing and jewelry.She advanced to Temple University, Tyler School of Art pursuing metal work but began to be frustrated with working on a small scale. Still, she was invited to apprentice working on jewelry but soon realized that she wanted to “work bigger.” She took a sculpture class and discovered that was her niche. Massengill graduated from Tyler with a bachelor of fine art in 1975.
“In those days you were [either] a sculpture, a painter, or a craftsman but I always worked two and 3D together,” Massengill said. “I felt pressured but then when I learned about another artist, Nancy Graves, who did sculpture, painting and drawings, it freed me to pursue my work in any way that I wanted to.”
This was only her start. In 1975 as a “landed immigrant” or permanent residentto Canada she worked as a professional artist receiving grants, exhibiting her work and creating public art projects. It’s also where Massengill met her Australian husband, Graham. While training and being paid by the government as a welder-fitter at George Brown College, Massengill worked alongside convicted felons seeking a job on the pipeline. Welder-fitters fulfill a range of employment options from aerospace and defense industries to arts entertainment and recreation. The skilled workers shape and join metals and other materials using heat generated by lasers or torches. Massengill’s goal was to be the female David Smith — an abstract expressionist, sculptor, painter and pioneer of sculpting with welded metal.
Artist Welder
Describing her process Massengill said she used the welder-fitter experience to become a better crafted sculpture. Upon finishing training, they were to go to work on the pipeline in Canada bringing crude oil down into the United States.
“I had to be better than the men to get respect,” she said. “These guys respected me because I could out weld all of them. I could do flat, vertical, horizontal or overhead. I could spit nails. You just have to be tough to keep up with them. They were not liberated for sure. I felt no different than anyone else working to learn a skill that required much perseverance and endurance.”
Massengill explained that much of it is just plain practice and going through a lot of material.
“I have always worked two dimensionally at the same time as my sculpting and this also allowed me to paint with the different metals on my sculpted surfaces,” Massengill said. “The power I feel while welding is a passion I find difficult to explain other than the risk and challenges of building statements, some of them humorous, heartfelt and abstract is thrilling.”
This discovery — as she attempts to create things that she doesn’t know if she will be able to finish successfully — provides allure.
shattered-lives-duo
“It’s so very exciting for me as I am in my helmet, it’s dark, and the fire is in front of me,” she said. “I calibrate the best way to combine at times dissimilar metals and thicknesses. Today, with my welding on top of my drawings, it’s even more thrilling. The controlled destruction as I use a water bottle to stop the burning, I know is going to lead to another canvas for me to paint another interpretation for my concepts.”
Her work is being appreciated for its uniqueness and creativity. Welding enables her to express in her own voice while addressing universal life concerns and passages.
“In a way this encourages other people to bring their own experiences while viewing the work and at the best of times, pause for self-reflection,” she said
She noted the four positions mentioned previously in which a welder-fitter worked to achieve were skills that help her to create sculptures today.
“What I do now is different, Massengill said. “I always liked drawing, painting and murals but now I‘ve found what I really like is to come up with a concept, work on a drawing on high quality watercolor paper, then I use it as a template on my welding table. I start bending steel and figuring out however I’m going to make it and what the concept is and then I weld it on top of the paper.”
In her paintings you can see the burn holes where she welded it. Afterward she has something to paint. She described the painting and the welded sculpture as different generations.
Only half joking, Massengill says “I’m a pyromaniac, but I have it under control. Because I do love fire. I love welding. It’s exciting and challenging. It’s also engineering. There is a lot of figuring out that is mentally challenging. It’s so exciting when I’m working on the paper and it starts to catch fire.”
The concept is the same but she said some people respond to the element; it’s more tactile, tangible, three dimensional and some people respond more to the paintings. Massengill especially enjoys when people buy the pair and she’ll give a discount because she likes them being together.
Art of Teaching and Activism
While working on large-scale public art projects as a welder fitter, Massengill attended University of Toronto earning a bachelor’s in art education and industrial technology. She married in Canada, moved to Long Beach, then in 1993 she graduated with a master of fine arts in sculpture from California State University at Fullerton. She went on to work as a department chair of visual and digital arts and worked with at-risk students at Long Beach’s Cabrillo High School. She taught in many capacities including three dimensional art drawing and painting, digital art and imaging and teaching workshops for artists with disabilities. From there she was recruited as an adjunct professor at Los Angeles Harbor College, teaching graphic design to at-risk adults who had either been released from incarceration or had dropped out of school and were trying to get their lives together. She retired in 2014 after 24 years but noted art is her first love.
Massengill and her husband are very active – writing postcards to voters, they are involved in the local chapter of Indivisible and they attended the Sept. 21 San Pedro vigil for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
“We want to do what we can and we hope it awakens people and gets out the vote,” she said. “Today I’ve been involved in the BLM movement and climate change,” Massengill said. “Going to Africa [in 2017] and seeing people who are the least responsible for climate change and are suffering the most from it broke my heart. We were in Kenya and then Tanzania. I had such an affinity for the indigenous people, the Kikuyu, the Masai and the Samburu. They can’t even do their traditional lifestyle. The animals are so majestic. We wanted to be there to see the mass migrations but because the water dried up the migrations shifted. And now the safaris aren’t happening because people aren’t travelling which has led to the poachers returning. It had a tremendous impact on me.”
On Massengill’s website, you can see works inspired by her time in Africa representing wildlife and nature, among many more. You can also see her work at Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach where she won a competition to create artwork for the leash-free area by the ocean in Belmont Shore.
“I love doing my work and it’s wonderful when I have an exhibition,” Massengill said. “It’s really separate. I’m lucky I have a display area but it’s not the same. When it’s in the gallery, it takes on a life of its own. I just do my work and it keeps me healthy and whole.”
Opening Oct. 1, El Camino College will present, Black Lives Matter. Artists respond to the killing of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, www.elcamino.edu.
You can also see Massengilll’s contribution to Angels Gate Cultural Center’s soundpedro at, www.soundpedro.org/soundpedro2020schizophonia.
And Creative Practices group exhibition will open at South Los Angeles Contemporary [SoLA] opening at 11 a.m. Nov. 14.
