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COVID-19 Can Be Curbed In Multicultural Communities

Reporters Desk
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COVID-19 Can Be Curbed In Multicultural Communities

“Strength Thru Unity” will focus on the hard-hit impact of COVID-19 among Americans of color. Some of the nation’s most influential multicultural leaders will discuss why there is a disproportionate risk among people of color and their recommendations for how to curb this pandemic. 

Topics to be discussed include health and economic disparities, the rise in hate crimes, looming evictions, remote learning, and the White House response and solutions to stop COVID-19 from impacting Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native-Americans.

A new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies reveals this unequal deadly threat on minority communities read the full story here: www.tinyurl.com/an-unequal-threat

Time: 1 p.m. PST Aug. 26 via Live Stream on Zoom and on KPFK.org

Details: STU will also broadcast on KPFK-FM 90.7 at 5 p.m. PST Aug. 28 at Pacifica radio station KPFK-FM can be heard throughout Southern California.

WHY: Today, there are over five million cases of COVID-19 in the US and over 150,000 deaths. In California, there are over 400,000 cases and 42,000 deaths so far. Most of California’s COVID-19 cases are among young people ages 18-49. Hospitalization is on the rise in poor Latino and Black communities statewide.

Coronavirus Update

Reporters Desk
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Coronavirus Update

LOS ANGELES — 11th District Councilmember, Mike Bonin reported Aug. 22, that Los Angeles is making steady progress toward getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control. In the weeks since the city paused reopening efforts and redoubled focus on avoiding crowds, wearing masks, and practicing good hygiene, L.A. has seen the rate that people are spreading the virus shrink.

According to public health officials, there have been roughly 28,000 new cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in LA over the past two weeks, which amounts to about 275 cases per 100,000 residents. Once a county has reduced its infection rate to fewer than 200 cases per 100,000 residents for at least two weeks, schools in the county are allowed to begin asking the state to reopen with new safety precautions in place. While it will likely be a while before schools are ready to reopen, the progress L.A. is making in reducing the infection rate is showing that reopening is within sight. 

Please, continue doing your part to wear a mask, wash your hands, and stay at least six feet apart from people who do not live in your home.

Councilmember Joe Buscaino Honors Kobe Bryant

Reporters Desk
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Councilmember Joe Buscaino Honors Kobe Bryant

SAN PEDRO — Los Angeles City Councilmember Joe Buscaino celebrates Kobe Bryant Day in Los Angeles with a video tribute to the legend. 

Watch the video on Facebook: www.facebook.com/JoeBuscaino/videos/642635433356853 

Your Child’s Mental Health During COVID-19

Reporters Desk
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Your Child’s Mental Health During COVID-19

Los Angeles County understands these next few days and possibly weeks may be tough as you start the school year online. There will be frustrations with the transition. Feelings of anxiety, stress, anger or depression during this time are normal.

Parents and caregivers should be on the lookout for signs of anxiety and depression in children. This can take different forms – being withdrawn, acting out, disobeying, being tearful. 

Reach out if you need support:

  1. Call the LA County Department of Mental Health (DMH) 24/7 Help Line at 800- 854-7771. The call is free and confidential.
  2. Call your pediatrician or healthcare provider if you are concerned about your child. If you don’t have a health care provider, dial 2-1-1 and we’ll connect you to one.

Visit DMH online at dmh.lacounty.gov/resources for resources related to back to-school and other mental health topics.

Learning Together Safely

To help children get back to school, and parents back to work, LA County will be sharing regular content on resources and support for distance learning. Turn change and stress caused by COVID-19 into strength, growth and resilience this new school year. LA County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Debra Duardo, Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer, and Department of Mental Health Director Dr. Jonathan Sherin tell you how. https://www.youtube.com/learning-together-safely

What Happened When Alex Cockburn, Bukowski Walked into a Sushi Bar?

James Preston Allen
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What Happened When Alex Cockburn, Bukowski Walked into a Sushi Bar?

I was reminded earlier this year about a funny incident that happened back in 1992, when Alex Cockburn, noted columnist for The Nation magazine, was introduced to the famous American poet Charles Bukowski. My memory was sparked by the appearance of Laura Flanders, Cockburn’s niece and a radio journalist in her own right, who was speaking at a KPFK radio event at the Palos Verdes Art Center.

It was the year after the end of Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War with Iraq, and a month before the November 1992 general election that would see William Jefferson Clinton elected president. We had published several of Cockburn’s columns on that war, which was a real privilege for a small alternative newspaper struggling for recognition on the edge of the Los Angeles metropolis. Cockburn was someone who Rep. Henry Gonzales, a Texas Democrat, called, “One of the most perceptive and … brilliant minds we have in America.”

Somehow our then-editor convinced him to come to San Pedro and address not one audience, but two. The first was at Los Angeles Harbor College and the second at the Pacific Unitarian Church in Palos Verdes. It was advertised as “Random Lengths News presents An October Surprise, An Evening with Alexander Cockburn. These two programs mark Mr. Cockburn’s first speaking engagements in the Los Angeles Harbor Area.” Tickets were $8.

As I recall, the events were well attended with several hundred in attendance. I had the privilege of giving the venerated journalist a tour of the San Pedro Bay harbors. Driving over the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Cockburn looked out on the industrial expanse of the twin harbors with thousands of containers and terminals that had imported Toyotas.

“Ah, here’s the national trade deficit!” he announced.

He kind of laughed with his Irish accent as though he had discovered some new continent.

Later that evening I had scheduled a dinner with the RLn staff and Cockburn at Senfuku, our favorite sushi bar on 6th Street in San Pedro. We reserved the large table on the upper level of the restaurant. As I entered I noticed a familiar face sitting alone at the bar: It was none other than Charles Bukowski, the poet. I said hello in passing as he sat drinking a large Sapporo beer and eating sushi. He had recently given his once-in-a-life time endorsement of our newspaper and we had gotten to know each other over a very long night of drinking and conversation.

Just as I was sitting down, I realized what an astounding coincidence this was to have two great literary figures in the same room at the same time.

“What great conversation would the two of them have?” I asked myself. 

I immediately got up and walked back to the sushi bar and invited Hank to come and meet Alex.  Now, for all of Buk’s bluster and bodacious writing about his adventures in bars and bedrooms, he was actually kind of a private person, that is, until you put him in front of an audience with a bottle of beer reading his poetry.

So, it took a bit of cajoling to get him to come over and meet Alex.

Well, I never expected what happened next. I was imagining some great discussion of politics or literature or even philosophy, but no. For most of the evening they talked about cats!

Bukowski and his wife, Linda, had a whole family of felines with odd names like Mystery B, Ting and Feather, and apparently Cockburn, like many writers, had some cats, too. This was as if Ernest Hemmingway had met Edward R. Murrow and the only thing they found to converse about was their cats.

I was dumbstruck. By the end of the evening, I had to chuckle over the entire conversation and my own expectations of what I thought would happen. Life is full of surprises and they often aren’t the ones you’d imagine. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be surprises.

Standing in the Shadow of Charles Bukowski

James Preston Allen
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Standing in the Shadow of Charles Bukowski

Reflection on the rise and fall and death of the American poet

It’s getting pretty damn crowded trying to stand in the shadow of the poet Charles Bukowski. It’s like apostles to Christ or worse. Everyone has their own version of who he was–however this time we actually have his original words, and don’t have to rely on the delusions of the mind long after the prophet has died. Don’t get me wrong, there still will be stories told by the devotees, there will be exaggerations and lies, and half truths told and repeated as truth incarnate. So much so that the shadow of Bukowski will grow and expand until that shadow no longer represents the figure who cast it. Luckily we still have his words.

The damnable thing about standing too close to the genius of such a lucky muse is that it is almost  impossible not getting lost in this shadow and losing your own style and sense. Such original power is intoxicating and seductive, seducing those close enough and even those at a distance into chanting mindless refrains like Krishna followers banging drums at the airport.

Everyone does want a hero, and Buk is the best anti-hero-hero to come along since Jack Kerouack.  So he serves his purpose, gives purpose and meaning to a lot of meaningless lives, who would be lost in the dive bars and dead end jobs of this metropolis on the desert.

He always had the sense to strike his own matches in an otherwise dark and crowded closet of people who couldn’t find a light in a butane refinery.

Now for all those who follow who are trying to squeeze into that same closet, pull the chain on that same dim light and strike those already burnt matches, just don’t even try. But try as they do it’s just not the same as when Bukowski sat alone striking match after match dropping the spent ones on the floor like so many smoked poems.

We’re damn lucky though to have his words and not just others remembering those words. Damn lucky!

— James Preston Allen, 1994

His Poems Are Timeless

RLn
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His Poems Are Timeless

By RD Armstrong, Guest Writer

When I first read this poem, Dinosauria, We, by Charles Bukowski, I thought, “This doesn’t sound like the Bukowski that I grew up on.”

But after I checked and was told that it was, I got that old sinking feeling like the one I got from reading Pulp, Bukowski’s last book of fiction. That book seemed to be written by three different voices. It doesn’t matter because I guess I don’t really see what the point is. I’ve read Buk for about 50 years. I’d like to say that I often pull out my favorite volume but during the financial adjustment in 2008, I sold most of my Bukowski library to make the rent. I miss them, but I had to live with my mistakes. So I did. Even so, every time I read one of his poems, I find a deeper richness than I had when I read it before — say 20 years earlier. I’d say that this must be because I’m maturing. Life experience either makes you stronger or it kills you and I’m still at it. So, the reason I mention this is that Buk, well, he had this gift. Many of his poems are timeless. I mean there’s no time stamp, almost no location markers. His poetry (and stories) could be about anywhere in the world. The same losers who populate every slum and after-work dive, every horse track, every “flop” can be found from Los Angeles to Rangoon. Sure, the language is different but what they talk about is the same. That was his draw. He could address that universal theme.So, I am not even remotely surprised at how accurate this poem, Dinosauria, We, is. After all, the themes are timeless, aren’t they?  Buk’s been in the ground for nearly 30 years and he’s still relevant. I should be so lucky!

RD Armstrong, also known as Raindog, has been a poet for more than 50 years. In the past 25 years, he’s published thousands of poets from around the world and the United States. These days, he focuses his energy on procuring donations of personal protective equipment for homeless shelters, and money for poets in need, poetry centers and food banks — “much more rewarding!”

Reflections of Buk at 100

RLn
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Reflections of Buk at 100

By Michael D. Meloan, Guest Writer

When I was 16, my friends and I cruised Sunset Strip and brought back the LA Free Press, which ran Charles Bukowski’s column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. We sat inside a backyard plywood shed that one of the neighborhood fathers had built to keep us out of trouble. As we smoked Tareytons and drank Colt 45, we read the column out loud. It was an explosion of hookers, philosophers, madmen and racetrack junkies — my early education.

Fifteen years later, my girlfriend Jan was working at the Dew Drop Inn, a health food restaurant in South Redondo. One day, she mentioned that the owner, Linda Lee Beighle, was dating a poet named Charles Bukowski. There he was again.

A few months later, I visited the Dew Drop for lunch. Bukowski unexpectedly walked in, spitting venom because his Mac had somehow deleted a couple of new poems. Linda mentioned that I was a software guy.

“Are you any good?” he asked.

My father taught me always to say yes. A few hours later, the poems were back and we sat drinking red wine while he asked me questions about how computers might be used to predict winners at the racetrack.

In the fall of that year, Bukowski invited me over for the evening. Just the two of us and his beloved plastic goose with a light bulb inside. He uncorked the first bottle of red.

“You seem nervous, kid,” he said, pouring.

I took a big drink. I was nervous. But after a few glasses, the night took off. We were laughing and drinking until 3 a.m. With a stubby Indian Beedi dangling from his lips, he flicked his butane lighter a few times. A flame suddenly shot up like a hissing blowtorch.

His left eyebrow sizzled and crackled as he jerked his head back and went, “Arrrrgh!”

Later, he told me that I danced with the goose on my head and recited a long raving monologue about sex and death and science. I don’t remember any of it, but he always did.

Hank’s reputation for wild drunken blowouts was real. But on any random evening, he was hard at work. One of his most important attributes was discipline. He wrote every day — sick, exhausted, hung over — it didn’t matter. He told me that he was like a spider building a web; it was in his DNA to pound the typer.

In a one-on-one encounter, Hank demanded your complete attention, even when he was drunk. Sitting on the couch in the living room, he would take a drink, then a drag and his eye would cut over at you — scrutinize you. There was no place to hide.

He was complex, outrageous and sensitive; loyal to his friends. When I was breaking up with Jan, he called to see how I was doing. He knew I was depressed and suggested that I come over for a drink. When I got there, Linda poured three glasses of good Cabernet. We talked for a while, and I told Hank that a literary agent had contacted me after I had some fiction published in Wired magazine. I asked him what he thought about agents.

He paused, took a long drag, and said:

“Listen kid, the whole thing comes down to this: If you want to write, you’re going to write and you’d better write it your way. If you’re after money or fame or groupies, that’s something else. Then you’ll do it their way … and they will smash you down into a flattened turd.”

He took a big drink, then cut his eye over at me smiling and said, “Ring the bells of the city. The old man has spoken.”

Now that we have reached the Bukowski centenary, I think this is his lasting message: Your life may sometimes look like shit, but there is beauty in art. It can help us rise up from the miasma. Take the gamble. Do it on your own terms.

Michael D. Meloan’s work has appeared in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the National Public Radio syndicate. He also co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother, Steven.

Mayor Addresses LAPD Funding, COVID-19 Testing

Hunter Chase
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Mayor Addresses LAPD Funding, COVID-19 Testing

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti addressed the reallocation of funds from the Los Angeles Police Department and the city’s handling of COVID-19 at the Aug. 1 meeting of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition, which was held via Zoom.

“This is the toughest budget year, obviously, in all of our collective history,” Garcetti said.

The city has a $10.53 billion budget, but it will need to make more than a billion dollars in cuts. The budget increased from last year by 1.7%, but in a typical year, the budget increases by 5 to 6%, he said.

The city has built up a reserve fund twice as big as it was before the 2008 recession; because of this, the city won’t cut any services. Instead, employees will be offered early retirement incentives. 

A few months ago, the city’s budget process was widely expected to provide increased funding to the Los Angeles Police Department. But that changed on May 25, when a Minneapolis police officer killed a black man named George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes. During the worldwide demonstrations that followed — including many in Southern California —  many protesters found common ground in a call to “defund the police.” The slogan means different things to different people, but the short-term upshot is that LAPD is facing a $150 million reduction in its budget. That money, plus money from other areas of the city budget totaling between $350 million to $500 million, will be redistributed to communities of people of color, crime prevention and intervention programs and addressing racial injustice, Garcetti said, adding that this redistribution of funds will reduce the workload of police. The mayor emphasized that this will be done “intelligently.”

“I’m not a ‘defund the police.’” Garcetti said. “I don’t know what that means. Three people probably will give you three answers. To me, as a budget guy, that means get rid of budget allocation 100%. And I don’t think that that’s a responsible way forward, nor a good model to keep our community safe.”

However, Garcetti mentioned that the city recently passed reforms to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, without opposition from the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

He also said that the city has reduced police fatalities by 45% in the past four years and is 82nd out of a hundred per capita in terms of police killings.

“I want to keep driving that number even further down while helping our police officers, who right now, quite frankly, their morale is low,” Garcetti said. “We need to find ways to re-humanize each other.”

This includes the way police treat communities of color.

“It doesn’t matter, as [Councilman] Marqueece Harris-Dawson and others have said, what rank you have or title you have, you experience what still is wrong with policing, with traffic stops and other things that still have a bias,” Garcetti said.

Garcetti pointed to the killing of Floyd by Minneapolis police as one of the extreme cases of police misuse of power. However, Garcetti also said there are police who are heroes and used the example of Juan Diaz, an off-duty police officer who was shot by a tagger.

“People who want to say that there’s no agenda for police reform are wrong,” Garcetti said. “And anybody who would say that our police officers are across-the-board bad people and that everywhere there’s a culture only of oppression and not of help, they’re wrong as well.”

Changes to be implemented in the LAPD include de-escalation training and implicit bias training, as well as crowd control training.

On the topic of COVID-19 testing, Garcetti reported that the city has invested money but said he does not believe people will be able to fully go back to school or work without a different testing paradigm. Because of this, he is looking into paper strip testing with the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Governors Association.

“It’s very early,” Garcetti said. “We’ll see what happens. But this is an example of LA leading and trying to kind of fail forward and hopefully succeed forward.”

The paper strip tests are significantly cheaper, as they are $1 to $5, as opposed to the $100 to $200 the city is paying for the current tests. However, they are only 50% as sensitive.

“They don’t catch as much as the tests we do every day,” Garcetti said. “But the places we catch those people are usually after they’re infectious and they still have some viral load in them, but not an infectious one. So, I think even though this is 50% as sensitive, it’s probably 80 to 90% of what we need.”

Garcetti said that because these strips are cheaper, they could be used on students every day. He also suggested using them on important populations and potentially lowering the curve of COVID-19 within two or three days instead of three or four weeks. He did not explain how testing itself would lower the curve.

Garcetti also acknowledged that this is brand new technology and that the United States did not have the manufacturing capability for it yet  — but he was planning to speak with other cities and co-finance it with them.

Garcetti said that this plan was not public and it is still probably a couple months away.

Garcetti said that one of the frustrations with COVID-19 was that it was a novel coronavirus  — meaning that there is no clear roadmap to deal with it.

“We are seeing it act in ways that no coronavirus has before,” Garcetti said. “As such, we’re having to learn how to respond to it each day.”

Tax Measure to Appear on November Ballot

Joseph Baroud
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Tax Measure to Appear on November Ballot

Editor’s note: The City Manager’s remarks about public support for the sales tax were recharacterized as a statement of fact rather than a defense.

The City of Carson will ask residents to vote for a slight increase in sales tax during the upcoming elections in November. The city council is asking for its constituents to pay 10.25% sales tax, an increase of 0.75%.

The sales tax hike proposal comes in anticipation of revenue loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shut down thousands of businesses nationwide. The city council cited another reason for proposing this increase: The council accused the county of not giving the city its fair share of sales tax monies. 

“The sales tax collected on products sold in Carson is currently [9.5%], of which the City of Carson only gets 1%,” City Manager Sharon Landers said. “The bulk of it goes to other entities like LA County and special districts in the region.”

The proposed tax hike can’t go higher than 10.25%, which is the ceiling put in place by the state. Landers said that if the city doesn’t pass the proposed tax increase, then the city would lose out on money to other cities.

This small hike on products would mean a lot for a small city like Carson, which is filled with small businesses that have felt the maximum adversity that COVID-19 has offered. The press release found on the city’s website states that the revenues collected from this sales tax will be deposited in the city’s general fund to fund services and programs for its residents.

The city manager suggested that there’s support for the tax hike.

“Early feedback is that our residents support this revenue measure,” Landers said. “They understand the need, and want this money allocated for city services like public safety and maintenance of infrastructure and community services.”

Carson generates $23 million annually from sales tax revenue. The hike would bring in an additional $11.9 million. The sales tax is the city’s primary revenue source that goes to the city’s general fund for city repairs, beautification projects and city events.

“We need to make sure progress continues in Carson and the level of security and public safety does not decline,” Mayor Pro Tem Jim Dear said in a released statement announcing the ballot measure. “Funds from the sales tax ensure that our local tax dollars remain in Carson to protect our essential city services. This small increase will make a huge impact to boost our local funding to maintain Carson’s 911 emergency response and public safety, protect small businesses that provide local jobs and make public areas clean and safe.”

The city council was also considering a truck intensive business tax, but shelved the idea following withering public criticism of the tax. During a council meeting on July 21, a flurry of public comments were submitted showing opposition to the tax measure. Critics argued that businesses have suffered due to the coronavirus and that this tax hike unfairly targets the goods movement industry. 

One of those critics, the advocacy director for the Los Angeles County Business Federation, De’Andre Valencia, came out against  the tax increase.

 “Given the current economic turmoil due to COVID-19, this tax would target businesses that are unique to Carson and endanger jobs we need to keep our city prosperous,” Valencia said.

The Los Angeles County Business Federation is a grassroots alliance of more than 200 business organizations, representing 450,000 employers with over 3.5 million employees in Los Angeles County. 

In regards to city funding, the census, which can be filled until the end of September, could provide the city much-needed federal money. 

“The other really important way to secure needed funds for Carson is the census,” Landers said. “So far, only 60 percent of our residents have been counted. It is imperative that we get our complete count since federal grants disbursed to cities are typically based on population.”

Cities are awarded federal funding in proportion to their population. 

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