Leon Carroll Jr. is on a mission — one he considers more important than any since his tenure as special agent in charge of the Puget Sound Field Office of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, where he oversaw criminal investigations and counterintelligence operations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and the five western provinces of Canada.
Carroll is selling copies of his book, Ghosts of Panama, and donating the proceeds to help students at Dana Middle School participate in a class trip to Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., during the 2025 holiday season. The trip aims to educate students about American governance. This trip is separate from the annual trip to Washington D.C. that’s been taking place for the past six years.
Teacher Chinedu Ezeh and Carroll met at a Rotary Club police and student dialogue meeting. Carroll got to know Ezeh and his role as a restorative justice advisor and they began discussing the challenges of broadening the horizons of economically disadvantaged students without outside financial help. Carroll, with the backing of the Rotary Club San Pedro, launched a fundraising drive, supported by the sale of his book Ghosts of Panama.
“The Ghosts of Panama tells the real-life story of Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents in Panama during the 1980s, when military dictator Manuel Noriega was in power,” Carroll said.
In 1989, Carroll led the NCIS office at Fort Amador in Panama. A year after Noriega surrendered to U.S. forces, Carroll reviewed the case files and learned in detail about NCIS agents’ pursuit of the dictator.
“It dawned on me that I had heard some of the quotes in these reports actually said on the news when George Herbert Walker Bush announced the invasion of Panama,” Carroll said. “Up to that point, I had no idea what the office I was running really had to do with that particular action.”
Twenty years later, actor Mark Harmon reached out to Carroll.
“We had been talking about telling real stories about agents doing real things instead of fiction for a TV show,” Carroll said. “Mark said, ‘Do you want to team up with me?’ He told me he had been asked to do a book but only wanted to do it with me based on what we had discussed.”
Carroll agreed. The two met with a publisher, along with their agents, who were interested in capitalizing on Harmon’s popularity. The publisher asked Carroll to propose five book ideas. One of them — NCIS Goes to Panama — became their second book.
The project took about a year and a half to complete. Carroll and Harmon interviewed all the agents involved, most of whom Carroll knew, though none were present when he took over in 1991.
“We were essentially starting from scratch, conducting Zoom interviews for hours,” Carroll said. “One agent, Rick Yell, a retired counterintelligence specialist now living outside Nashville, Tennessee, stood out as the protagonist of our story.”
Yell was operating beyond his area of expertise, attempting to recruit a confidential informant to uncover drug trafficking operations. At the time, Panama served as a key transshipment point for narcotics coming out of Colombia.
“A lot of that is detailed in the book,” Carroll said. “But the key thing Yell did was find a source with close ties to Noriega’s government. The source had access to high-level meetings through family connections and would report what he overheard.”
Over time, tensions escalated between Noriega and the United States. According to Carroll, Noriega had misappropriated funds from various intelligence budgets, including those of the U.S. Eventually, the dictator began retaliating against American citizens in Panama.
“Noriega was his own double agent, using the information he was feeding us against us,” Carroll said. “As the U.S. government intensified its actions against him, he became increasingly hostile toward Americans.”
Carroll and Harmon’s book sheds light on this critical period in U.S.-Panama relations, offering readers a firsthand account of the intelligence operations that led to Noriega’s downfall.
When asked if he thought the United States got what it bargained for after the invasion, Carroll said, “I think immediately after … yes. They got regime change.” Caroll noted that it was hard to put the government back together again afterward.
Ezeh said he hopes to have raised funds for 20 to 30 students at $4,000 each or $80,000 to $120,000 by the end of May 2025.
For any who want to get their hands on this book and support a worthy cause, email Leon Caroll at rotarysp.youthservices@gmail.com.
On a cold April morning with the west wind blowing the palm trees outside my windows, I was listening to Amy Goodman on the Democracy Now! (90.7 fm KPFK) report on the Orange Felon firing of Deborah Rutter, who served as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the last decade. This week, he replaced many board members with his supporters. Then, on Wednesday, the new board elected this cultural ignoramus as the center’s new chair. Something that a U.S. president has never done.
It was a fulfillment of the promise he repeated on Monday to become chairman, along with promising the Kennedy Center’s performances would be “good” and “not woke.”
For decades I have enjoyed the Kennedy Center’s annual awards ceremony that honors so many of our greatest performers from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, actors and musicians from classical to popular — no one ever asked if they were “woke.” No one ever challenged why Harry Bellefonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Dick Van Dyke — a list far too long to reprint here (https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/honors/honors-highlights/) — were given such national honors. And even further, how did this term go from being slang for awoken to the hidden history of America to being a Republican derogatory slur?
This president and his enablers are using this slang to attack America’s arts and education institutions that have been supported by Congress and the American people for generations.
What makes the arts political you might ask?
It’s the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of freedom of expression. Without that protection — that first of our freedoms — all else fails. What is liberty if you can’t express the soul of yourself?
And right now our core institutions are being attacked by an “unwoke,” delusional ego-centric narcissist who thinks he’s the king, rather than an elected officer to serve the people — all of the people — not just the wealthy. He doesn’t know what it means to protect and to serve. He only knows how to inflict harm and disparage others.
Rutter, who recently was interviewed on NPR (another institution under fire), said, “It is by congressional mandate the National Cultural Center [exists] … a mandate from 1958 that calls for [the Kennedy Center] to be the National Performing Arts Center and the National Advocate for Arts Education. In 1964, they added the Living Memorial to John F. Kennedy. So this is more than just the local performing arts center. It represents America to the world.”
It was named after one of our most beloved presidents and now it is being controlled by our most despised, vain and vicious autocrats.
Kennedy once said, “Art is political in the most profound sense not as a weapon in the struggle, but as an instrument of understanding of the futility of struggle between those who share man’s faith.”
And so it is — oddly enough — that this is at the center of that struggle, and symbolically so. The struggle between those who share man’s faith and those who don’t. Clearly, the Orange Felon’s only faith is in greed and abuse of power.
The desecration to the building was the removal of JFK’s portrait that was replaced by the Orange Felon’s, his wife’s and the vice president and his wife, who are now all on the board of the center. The unwokeness of these four and their billionaire collaborators will be the obituary that they will all be remembered by. Not by the great words of JFK that still grace the walls of the Kennedy Center, “The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose … and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization” and “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – Nov. 22, 1963) 35th president of the United States.
This, more than any other words, places the arts at the very epicenter of our political freedoms right there next to our right to vote and the others that are now under attack from a far right overthrow of our Constitutional values.
Marc Bamouthi Joseph in his remarks to Democracy Now! said:
There has been, as you’ve distilled, an infusion of a kind of binary political discourse into what’s supposed to be a sanctuary for freedom of thought and freedom of creative expression. The Kennedy Center, it should be said, has not officially canceled any performances or explicitly contractually removed themselves from relationship to any artists. But as you’ve been describing so diligently and so bravely over the course of your entire career, we create atmosphere through rhetoric. The stated agenda as institutionalized in spaces like the National Endowment for the Arts, let’s say, severely restricts and almost criminalizes demographic realities outside of white, straight, male Christianity. The specific attack on gay, trans and drag performers has narrowed the cultural radius at the Kennedy Center significantly, so that artists feel like they can’t in good conscience come to the Kennedy Center. So, you’re seeing artists like Issa Rae or the producers of Hamilton or the artist Rhiannon Giddens remove themselves from their relationship to the Kennedy Center.
And that, in turn, trickles down to the brave staff, who are arts professionals who care about cultural providence and have to do their very best to make it possible for artists to continue to be at their best. But against the backdrop of this oppressive regime and this politically narrow board of directors, that’s extraordinarily difficult to do.
This needs to be a clarion call to every artist and arts organization in America and beyond to say “This will not stand, we shall resist!”
The U.S. shipping industry has given a strong thumbs down to a Trump administration proposal to levy fees on ocean carriers that own Chinese-built vessels and call on U.S. ports. With few exceptions, industry leaders have nixed the ideas proposed by the U.S. Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer.
Greer’s proposals were prompted by a petition initiated during the Joe Biden administration from labor unions, claiming that China uses state subsidies and control over key logistics infrastructure to undercut global competitors and gain an unfair edge, especially in shipbuilding.
China now builds more than 50% of the world’s cargo ships by tonnage — up from just 5% in 1999, according to the USTR. By contrast, due to the unfair subsidies given to Chinese shipyards, U.S. shipbuilders can’t compete and are now relatively dormant, producing only 0.01% of the world’s commercial cargo ships last year.
While labor unions may have initiated the process, the USTR solution is decidedly Trumpian. It aims to revive the country’s shipbuilding, by collecting levies from shipping lines with connections to China’s shipyards and investing the money back into the U.S. industry — effectively making them another set of Trumpian tariffs.
There are three main levies in the USTR proposal. The first one applies to each port call by a Chinese ocean carrier; the second is an assessment based on the percentage of Chinese-built ships in a carrier’s fleet; and the third depends upon the percentage of a carrier’s future orders that have been placed with Chinese shipyards.
The sharpest criticism of the proposal came from 317 trade associations in a letter written on March 24, the first day of a two-day public hearing convened by the USTR. The group acknowledged the importance of the USTR’s aim in revitalizing U.S. shipyards but said the proposed levies would be counter-productive to the broader aims of the administration.
The 317 group cited a recent study by the Trade Partnership Worldwide assessing “probable net economic effects” of the proposed remedies. “Overall, total exports and imports would decline, negatively impacting the US economy at a time when the administration is striving to grow the overall economy and create jobs around the country,” the report said.
The 317 group said that ocean carriers would respond to USTR’s fees by “reducing service” to many U.S. ports to avoid the per-stop levy and could even “divert cargo” to competing ports in Canada and Mexico.
Such moves would likely reduce ocean traffic at many smaller ports, eliminated by shipping lines to avoid the levy on port calls, creating “profound” economic damage — including lost jobs — in some communities.
Job losses from diverted cargo drew the attention of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which pointed out that “aggressive strategies of Canadian and Mexican ports” have already resulted in significant diversions of cargo and job losses.
“The Northwest Seaport Alliance found that $56 billion of U.S. imports were diverted to Canada and Mexico, from January to November 2024 alone,” the ILWU wrote. “This was an increase of 7.5 percent in less than a year, demonstrating the significant cargo diversion that is already taking place and impacting American ports and American jobs.”
Although agreeing with the USTR’s aim of protecting American interests, the ILWU said “USTR’s measures must be strategically implemented to avoid unintended harm to U.S. workers, supply chains, and to effectively counter China’s efforts to dominate global shipping.”
At the same time, eliminating smaller ports from the normal routes of ocean carrier lines would likely result in greater numbers of ships and cargo heading toward the nation’s larger ports — such as Los Angeles and Long Beach — creating unwanted problems of congestion, with knock-on effects along the supply chain.
“Reduction in service will increase congestion across the country’s logistics network and spur a new normal of higher costs and delays affecting both imports and exports,” the group of 317 said in its letter. “American consumers will suffer a lag in receiving the goods they rely on every day.”
While the USTR’s proposals have sounded alarm bells up and down the shipping industry, some observers feel it is too soon to jump to conclusions about potential outcomes — especially since no date has been designated for the USTR’s final decision.
Matt Cox, chief executive of the Matson shipping line, a U.S.-owned and operated transportation services company headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, spelled out the implications for his firm, which operates a fleet of 30 vessels in the transpacific trade and could face substantial levies on several of the ships it operates.
“Matson has a fleet of 30 vessels,” Cox said on a recent earnings call, pointing out that three of those vessels are chartered foreign Chinese-built ships that operate in the company’s Asia Express service, which calls in at Long Beach, while a fourth Chinese-built vessel operates in its South Pacific service.
“So, we have four vessels out of a total of 30 that are manufactured in China,” he said, adding that the company also has three new vessels under construction in the U.S., but none in China. In a word, Matson could be hit with levies on the four Chinese-built ships it operates.
But Cox was not ready to be drawn on the possible consequences of the USTR fees. “We see this USTR proposal as the next step in a discussion that it’s going to have with China. There may be others that follow, but it’s all to set a stage to be consistent with President Trump’s efforts to try to reset trade balances.”
Summing up, Cox said “I think it’s really, these are opening salvos. We’re in the early innings. We could use different analogies, but we’re watching this closely.”
Scott Taylor, CEO and chairman of the board at Oakland-based GSC Logistics, Inc., who acknowledged that the levies could be “concerning” for ports around the nation, said he is “glad that we’ve got such support from the 317 trade associations.”
At the same time, Taylor likewise referred to the USTR gambit as “early innings” with more yet to come. “You know, I think everything Trump does is a negotiation, and this is the opening salvo. I don’t know if we understand the full ramifications of this yet.”
In fact, even as RLN went to press, rumors already were circulating that USTR Greer — whose final decision has yet to come — is now considering a move to eliminate the per-stop levy against Chinese ocean carriers, replacing it with a single charge regardless of the number of U.S. ports a ship calls on per voyage.
Early innings, indeed.
Eric Watkins is a Southern California writer specializing in supply chain issues. He can be reached via email at eric@hippalusandco.com
Last month, the Carson City Council passed Ordinance Number 25-2507, to prohibit the sale, use and discharge of all fireworks within city limits, except for sanctioned public displays. This proposal followed a unanimous recommendation from the Public Safety Commission, reflecting growing concerns over safety and the misuse of fireworks.
More than a hundred community members attended the March 18 city council meeting in opposition to the proposed ban on all fireworks in the City of Carson, including the safe and sane fireworks sold by TNT fireworks which many local nonprofit organizations sell as part of their fundraisers.
One public commenter, Virgil Portofino, said he stood before the council to urge it to vote against the ban of safe and sane fireworks, a brand of fireworks that do not explode, shoot into the air, or move erratically. They typically include fountains, sparklers, smoke bombs, ground spinners and snappers. These fireworks are legal in many areas with restrictions and are considered safer alternatives to aerial and explosive fireworks. But the risk of fire is not zero. Portofino noted that nonprofit organizations rely on fireworks sales to provide scholarships, senior citizen programs and many more opportunities.
“Banning safe and sane fireworks would significantly impact our ability to continue this important work,” he said. “The needs of the community will be around much longer than most of you, for whatever reasons. We’ll be sitting on those chairs. We need our nonprofits to continue to sustain those needs from the stadium of safe and sane fireworks.”
Portofino concluded his remarks by saying this decision should be left to the residents of the City of Carson. Please leave this decision to the residents of this important matter.
A Carson pastor recounted helping a young man with Parkinson’s become a Christian through the sale of fireworks. He noted that his church has been able to feed over 800 families each week with the finances his church receives from fireworks.
Some commenters argued that the responsibility for the devastation caused by the Palisades and Eaton fire was being unfairly placed on safe and sane fireworks while dismissing the potential for fires to still be caused by safe and sane fireworks.
Arleen Rojas read from the LA Fire Department on the causes of the Edison fire and noted that “sparks created the disaster that we have witnessed.”
Resident and Planning Commission President Diane Thomas praised the council majority for standing strong by their vote to ban fireworks and praised Councilwoman Rojas in particular for relaying the facts.
“Statistics don’t lie,” Thomas noted. “We can be emotional all we want but it only takes a spark.”
Thomas suggested that the city council start a committee to help nonprofits learn how to raise other funds to replace what they would lose.
Carson’s public safety commissioner and retired fire captain, Mike Wilson, brought his work experience and hard statistics to the debate saying he supports the ban on the sale and usage of all fireworks.
“No fireworks, legal or otherwise, are intrinsically safe,” Wilson said. “Your level of danger varies with the user and conditions a few suggestions.”
All personal use for fireworks is banned in all unincorporated areas of LA County and an increasing number of municipalities.
Wilson, citing a law enforcement report put together by the Carson and Lomita sheriff’s stations, found that in cities where all fireworks were illegal, 9-1-1, EMS, fire calls and injuries were significantly lower than in cities where safe and sane fireworks were the only fireworks left.
“We also found the cities where fireworks were legal, attracted illegal vendors and users as well as Illegal users and vendors were and are hiding in plain sight,” Wilson said. “At block parties … backyards … on our streets.”
Wilson noted that the Carson and Lomita sheriff stations compared the 2023, July 4 fire calls statistics and found that Lomita, where fireworks are already illegal, had only five illegal firework calls. Carson had 145 illegal fireworks calls in that same year.
“Similar patterns and statistics are reflected in LA County and I am pleased that Carson is banning the sale and usage of all fireworks,” Wilson said.
Councilman Jim Dear argued for a more politically expedient solution by allowing Carson residents to decide whether to ban fireworks in their entirety or not. Councilman Hilton went a step further, calling for the adoption of AB1403 as city policy until the Carson residents have had a chance to weigh in on the ban at the ballot box. Dear cast his support to the amended motion.
California’s AB 1403 allows authorities to declare a local emergency due to fire hazards caused by fireworks. This gives local governments more power to restrict or ban fireworks when conditions (like extreme heat or drought) make them especially dangerous.
Former Long Beach City Councilwoman Stacy Mungo, citing her background in law enforcement in Carson, expressed support for a measure in alignment with AB 1403 and adopting a drone program that tracks the bad actors using unpermitted or illegal fireworks. Taking such a step wouldn’t be unusual for the City of Carson. The city council has already completed the installation. The surveillance cameras are strategically placed throughout key areas of the city, including high-traffic zones, parks, transportation hubs and other public spaces.
Mungo said the $40,000 to $50,000 in additional revenue the city would get from the continued sale of the safe and sane fireworks could be used to implement the strict drone program.
“I’ve already been in touch with Motorola and cities that adopting three would be eligible to participate,” Mungo pitched.
Throughout the proceedings, the biggest participant in the debate but weren’t physically present was the Alabama-based TNT Fireworks who’d stand to lose the most if more municipalities ban all fireworks outright.
TNT Fireworks partners with numerous schools, churches and civic groups nationwide to raise funds by selling fireworks, especially during the 4th of July and New Year’s seasons. The company doesn’t appear to fund any sort of lobbying effort. But the turnout of supporters of Safe and Sane fireworks on behalf of one the largest fireworks manufacturers spoke volumes about TNT Fireworks ability to influence and protect its products.
David Lynch is hopeful that he’ll be able to move Sacred Grounds to another space that’s ready-made to move in already. My first encounter with Sacred Grounds was in 2003 when it was still in the 399 W. 6th St. space where Niko’s Pizzeria now resides. The walls were covered with paintings, and shelves with books, and the furnishings felt like someone’s living room. Open mic performances were a regular thing. Sacred Grounds was a space for creativity and expression — a meeting ground for divergent walks of life. At the time, memories of Fifth Street Dick’s, a coffeehouse in Leimert Park were as fresh as a freshly poured roasted brew.
I discovered Fifth Street Dick’s Coffeehouse for myself during my second year at UCLA. Five years after the 1992 Rebellion, Leimert Park was the cultural center of Black Los Angeles, and to tell the truth, I was looking for my own Darius Lovehall moment when I attended my first open mic at the legendary coffeehouse.
Fifth Street Dick’s was a multi-generational meeting ground for artists, creatives and intellectuals and posers and electeds, and regular people of all economic classes.
There’s a reason Leimert Park and Marla Gibb’s Vision Theatre has been a subtext of conversations throughout the renovation efforts of the Warner Grand Theatre. The city mishandled a cultural asset at the center of Black Los Angeles. It still serves as a cautionary tale of what could and can go wrong.
Lynch said he prefers to move Sacred Grounds to a place that’s ready-made to move in.
“I don’t really want to go to an empty space because we did that when we came up here [from the building that Niko’s Pizzeria now occupies at 399 W. 6th]. Then the permitting process is so difficult, and so long. So I’m trying to avoid that,” Lynch said.
Lynch purchased Sacred Grounds from a couple in 1995 and stayed at 399 W. 6th St. until 2005. This was a business venture with partners he had been friends with for a long time.
David Lynch, circa 1999, at Sacred Grounds, when it was at 399 W. 6th Street. File photo
Lynch described his venture as simply something to do with a business partner friend … almost like, here’s something fun we can do and make some money-kind of situation.
Sacred Grounds moved to its current location in the historic Warner Grand Theater building in September 2005, a smaller space, but one that allowed Lynch to focus on coffee and catering. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Lynch about running a coffeehouse, regardless of one’s subscribed values or vibe and aesthetic a would-be owner would like to achieve, it must be treated as a business.
The interior of Sacred Grounds, from before David Lynch purchased it. File photo
The city of LA owns the building. So the plan was for Lynch and the gang (Chef Ronald George Tracy and Raul) to move to the space next to the Warner Grand and run the concessions at the theater,which they did for several years, until the end of 2023.
Longtime Sacred Grounds employee Chef Ronald George Tracy who served his last Christmas dinner for the community at Sacred Grounds this past December. Photo by Terelle Jerricks
When the Warner Grand renovations are complete, the coffee shop will be a smaller space and whoever takes it over will get to continue the theatre’s concessions stand.
“Then we started doing a lot of catering at Harbor College, which we still do,” Lynch said. This was on top of the filming money they received from productions that have taken place on 6th Street over the years.
“So it’s just everything kind of working together,” Lynch said.
Lynch said this symbiotic relationship with the Warner Grand worked well for Sacred Grounds and was made possible by the great relationship he had with longtime Warner Grand general manager Lee Sweet.
Sweet told Random Lengths in December 2024 that he was sticking with the Warner Grand until renovations were completed sometime in 2026. Lynch said the city’s plans had changed and Sweet was moved to a facility elsewhere.
For better or worse, Sacred Grounds carries a mantle representing community cohesion, freedom of expression, and thought. The first coffeehouse to do that in San Pedro was known as the Golden Ass Coffeehouse founded by Glen and Louise Bye in 1961.
The Eagle Rock Sentinel described that coffee house as “the usual store converted into a big living room with paintings and hi-fi music.” Glen, who was granted an entertainment license by the police commission, said he planned to host lectures, poetry readings and play readings.
The name came from a novel by a Roman-era philosopher and writer, Apuleius. The only surviving Latin novel from antiquity, tells the story of Lucius, a man who is transformed into a donkey and goes through various misadventures before ultimately being restored to human form through the intervention of the goddess Isis.
This likely went over the heads of most people in their time since the old San Pedro News Pilot newspaper didn’t use the name “the Golden Ass” in print, preferring instead to refer to it as the San Pedro coffeehouse.
Less than a year after opening his doors, Los Angeles Police Department Vice Squad detectives arrested Glen over a difference of opinion about a painting of a nude and where the line is drawn between art and obscenity. A police sergeant bought one of the paintings and took it to the city attorney’s office.
The vice squad returned to the coffeehouse, finding several more questionable pictures and a figurine, all the work of artist Konrad Klem. Despite several warnings, the police said, Bye had kept the art objects on display. So a Deputy City Attorney charged Bye with violating the State Penal Code by displaying lewd material. Quoted by the News Pilot, the deputy city attorney wouldn’t speak as an art critic, saying “I don’t know up from down when it comes to art. “One of the women (in artist Klem’s work) had three legs and one picture shows a plant composed of human parts.”
Glen was found guilty and fined $100. The paintings had been on display for three months before he was arrested.
This didn’t seem like a one-off situation for the Byes. From what can be gathered from old news clippings, the Byes were artists and intellectuals desiring to create a safe space for artistic and intellectual expression. Before opening the coffeehouse, Louise regularly hosted lectures on left-leaning ideas and discussions at the YMCA, while Glen was a musician who performed around Los Angeles.
When David Lynch purchased Sacred Grounds in 1995, he desired to make some money while creating community space. The art on the walls, the books on the shelf, and the performance space in the form of a stage in the corner for open mics did that.
It’s not clear how long the Golden Ass Coffeehouse remained open. The point is that coffee house, along with Androcles Book Shop and a hotel on 6th Street, created a space for artists, thinkers and folks who are just off from center to congregate over a cup of coffee. Coffee houses have historically been semi- public spaces for culture and community.
This column and the one in the last edition of Random Lengths are just the first in a series of columns about coffee and coffee houses that will be published monthly for the next several months.
Sacred Grounds is set to close its 468 W. 6th St. doors for good by the end of the second week of April. Lynch said he is still looking for a new space, but he has no idea how that’s going to play out.
On March 18, workers from the Long Beach Convention Center rallied at Long Beach City Hall in solidarity with workers from 1Fifty1 amidst an ongoing strike at the convention center, after a report by the Los Angeles Times alleging that the company stole wages and unjustly marked up its services.
“We are here today because of the city-owned convention center, after a report of wage theft from labor supplied by ASM Global,” Soledad Garcia, UNITE HERE Local 11 organizing director said during the rally in front of city hall.
Reportedly, 1Fifty1 paid its employees in envelopes, potentially skirting various income tax laws, and not providing pay stubs to its employees with a clear statement on what was withheld.
“We want them to ensure that ASM Global hires the affected agency workers, guarantee that all affected workers are made whole for any labor violations they have experienced,” Maria Hernandez, communications person for UNITE HERE Local 11, told Random Lengths News.
ASM moved to terminate the contract with 1Fifty1 immediately. Members of the union now call for ASM to hire those workers. Those workers are allegedly entitled to preferential hiring under a Long Beach law.
They reportedly charged ASM Global more than other contracts for its services, allegedly paying its workers $17 to $19 an hour while charging ASM Global about $26 to $30 an hour, a 60% markup paid by the city.
“For seven months, Local 11 members have been negotiating with ASM Global for a fair contract that ensures that all employees, including subcontracted workers, earn a living wage and are created firmly at the convention center,” Garcia said during the rally amidst the ongoing labor dispute between the union and ASM Global.
The union that represents these workers, UNITE HERE Local 11, has been in contract negotiations with ASM Global since September of last year amid tension on the inclusion of subcontracted workers who had been left out of the deal during a city council decision earlier that year.
“We oppose the city’s efforts to remove protection for subcontracted workers from the existing living wage ordinance. We know about the work they carry out … the allegations we’ve heard about 1Fifty1 reportedly paying their workers in cash envelopes without pay stubs is damning, we are calling on the city to investigate,” Andrea Romero, a cook for 11 years at the Long Beach convention center, said during the rally.
The living wage ordinance is called Measure RW, which was passed last year and was meant to raise the wages of various hospitality workers across Long Beach for hotels with over 100 rooms.
The measure was later proposed to expand to include airport and convention workers; however, the city council decided to exclude them from that expansion. Measure RW raised the wages to about $17 an hour, which was potentially violated by 1Fifty1, and the ordinance also mandated an escalator for wages to about $29 an hour by 2028, the year Los Angeles will host the Olympics.
The city council heard an impact report during that meeting that stated the potential loss of investment and booking that would lead to the center’s inability to meet those rising operating costs.
Subcontracted workers have hourly limits set at 960 annually, about 18 hours a week. ASM Global and the convention center have cited operating costs as the leading reason for these cuts.
The convention center reported income over pre-pandemic levels in December 2024, generating $2 billion in revenue and about $200 million more than in 2018 before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, workers have reported understaffing that has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.
Long Beach Convention Center has not immediately responded to requests.
The Trump-Musk oligarchy suffered a sharp rebuke at the ballot box in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, where Musk’s record $25+ million campaign spending bought him a dramatic 10 point loss, while in Florida two special elections in the House saw swings of 16 and 22 points away from the Republicans since November. In addition to his traditional campaign donations, Musk gave money directly to voters, in clear violation of Wisconsin election laws.
“As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin, and we won!” Dane County circuit judge Susan Crawford said in her victory speech. “Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court, and Wisconsin stood up and said proudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”
Crawford’s election retains a 4-3 progressive majority on the court, which is expected to rule on an 1849 abortion law as well as a controversial public sector labor law. About $90 million was spent on the election, vastly more than the $50 million spent on the 2023 election, which ended 15 years of a conservative majority, which in turn rubber-stamped an extreme GOP gerrymander that ensured minority rule. Before that, $15 million had been the most ever spent on a state judicial election.
With 98.1% of votes counted, Crawford held a 10-point lead, over Republican Brad Schimel, a former state attorney general, in a state that Trump won by .86% in November. Every county in the state shifted significantly in the Democrat’s direction. And although they failed to win either special election in Florida, the shifts in their direction were even larger, a result that’s sure to significantly worry House Republicans who won election by single digits in November.
If it didn’t already have its hands full, International Bird Rescue or IBR is facing two simultaneous wildlife crises, Demoic acid or DA poisoning and displaced chicks.
Of the former, the Marine Mammal Center in San Pedro diagnosed the first case of domoic acid toxicosis in marine mammals in 1998. This condition is caused by harmful algal blooms, or “red tides.” This neurotoxin accumulates in small fish, like sardines and anchovies, which are then eaten by marine mammals like sea lions and seabirds in large quantities.
Veterinarian and research director at IBR Dr. Rebecca Duerr told Random Lengths News that historically DA poisoning does not hit birds and animals at the same time. However, this year, that is the case. She explained for instance, pelicans and sea lions eat the same fish. She noted the Los Angeles Beach and Harbor Department in March found 40 dead pelicans. This eco-bloom is affecting the entire Southern California bight, the stretch of curved coastline that runs between Santa Barb ara and San Diego.
Dr. Duerr said this is concerning because chicks, who typically arrive in May/June, are just starting to fledge on the very young side — meaning if the parents don’t return (because they have been hit with DA, or other issues) the babies leave the nest to survive. The other issue IBR is seeing with fledglings is, their beaks aren’t fully grown yet.
Regarding the simultaneity of DA toxicity in sea mammals and birds, the doctor said the algae blooms are randomly distributed in the ocean and various levels of concentrated toxins are distributed throughout the blooms affecting all sea life.
Domoic acid attacks the brain and the heart causing seizures and heart failure. If left untreated, it usually causes permanent brain damage.
The folks at IBR are working tirelessly to stabilize and treat seabirds affected by DA poisoning. They are often able to help flush the toxin from animal’s systems by giving them fluids, provided they receive care before significant damage occurs. The sooner a bird gets help, the greater its chance of survival.
IBR needs help. As of March 28, IBR received more than 50 affected birds, including brown pelicans, Western grebes, and red-throated loons. Birds are showing up at beaches in crisis – disoriented, experiencing tremors and seizures, which can resemble those caused by bird flu. In response, IBR is testing the rescued birds for both DA and bird flu. The staff is working with extreme caution to safeguard both people and animals during this outbreak.
Although some birds will not survive the toxicity, other birds affected by DA recover from the problem with expert care. In 2017 when Los Angeles and Ventura Counties had a similar stranding event, approximately half of the birds made it to release.
You can help give these birds a fighting chance. Your support provides critical medications, personal protective equipment, and other essential supplies needed to care for sick and injured birds. Right now, IBR donations are not enough to even cover the overtime of its staff amid these double wildlife crises.
If you see a bird in distress, call IBR’s bird helpline or your local animal control immediately: 866-SOS-BIRD or 866-767-2473. Your quick action can make all the difference.
April 5 could be a day that changes history. As Trump and Musk have taken a wrecking ball to American democracy — illegally firing workers, closing agencies, canceling contracts, deporting green card holders and other innocents, and extorting tens of millions of dollars from perceived enemies — elite institutions (Congress, media outlets, universities, law firms, etc.) have been betraying their democratic commitments at breakneck speed. Which leaves mass resistance as democracy’s last line of defense.
It’s been spreading like wildfire, with protests happening at double the level of 2017, yet the corporate media’s more subservient posture has significantly obscured the depth and breadth of the resistance.
But that could change dramatically on April 5, when “Hands Off!” demonstrations are planned in more than 600 locations across the country, with Downtown LA as one of six anchor city protests. The Pershing Square rally starts at 4 p.m., with a march to City Hall at 5, where the main rally lasts until 8.
Earlier local events in Torrance and Lakewood start at noon — two of 20+ such events in the Southern California region. It’s the fourth nationwide protest mounted or backed by the 50501 movement, which began on Reddit in late January and has seen each successive protest grow substantially larger. There are more than 120 partner organizations this time, most notably Indivisible, which is organizing both local events.
“The rationale behind this ‘Hands-off’ umbrella is really smart because there are so many areas that are being attacked,” said Melanie Jones, of Indivisible San Pedro, which is working with Torrance. “People respond according to their own experience and their own vulnerability. So this allows for a lot of people with different primary issues to come together.”
“The Trump administration and Elon and DOGE are putting their hands into everything … everything from Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, and trans and LGBTQ rights, and it runs the gambit. So the hands-off theme, I think appeals to a lot of people,” said Kenny Johnson, lead organizer in Torrance, with Indivisible South Bay. “But I think democracy and what it means for us to be America is just a universal concern.”
“Hands-off our democracy, hands-off healthcare, hands-off woman’s rights, hands-off our future … hands-off — there’s a whole list,” said Hunter Dunn, 50501’s Southern California spokesman, a lead organizer of the Downtown LA march and protest.
“The thing that’s most concerning and motivating for people is just the legality of what’s happening,” Ashley Craig, with Long Beach Indivisible, stressed. “It’s the overreach and the illegality. Because the vast majority of what the Trump Administration is doing is not allowable. It’s not constitutional. That’s why the courts are ruling against him very consistently. And then he’s choosing to ignore the courts.”
There are specific concerns, Craig noted — trans rights, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, immigration, the climate crisis — but, “The thing that’s gotten everyone so incredibly concerned and fired up and motivated is the fact that this administration is doing things — this is a constitutional crisis — they’re doing things that have never, never been done before and they’re breaking everything.”
Heather Rodriguez, with Lakewood Indivisible, cited attacks on the vulnerable — deportations of innocents, defunding education, threats to Social Security, etc. Deportations were her greatest concern. “He [Trump] tried to claim that people [deported] would be only criminals. Like the worst of the worst would be deported. And I knew that that’s not going to be right,” she said. Nobody objects to deporting dangerous convicted criminals, she noted, but we know that won’t be who’s targeted. “What’s the easier target?” she asked. “Is the easier target going to be somebody who’s part of a gang that might be armed or underground, hidden? Or was the easy target going to be, you know that the mom with a bunch of kids who works at your local store and takes the kids to school and goes to church and has a solid address?” The answer has been obvious and unsurprising.
And then there’s Social Security.
“Lakewood has a lot of seniors that live here. A lot of them rely on Social Security,” Rodriguez noted. “I think it’s offensive that the Social Security head that Trump has selected was talking about how people wouldn’t miss it — how the only people who complain are going to be the fraudsters and scammers. That’s insane to me,” she said. “It’s just so important that we are treating the people that are the most vulnerable as best as we can. That’s how you define a society.”
“We have to stand up for the things we care about about this country and we have to fight for them harder than they’re being attacked because we have less power, less institutional power right now,” said Dunn.
The “Cutting Waste” Big Lie
The idea that the federal workforce is wasteful and bloated may be rhetorically popular with the right, but it can’t stand up to scrutiny. The federal workforce is about the same size it was in 1970 when the U.S. population was only about 60% of what it is today. It was about the same size a decade later, when Ronald Reagan appointed the waste-cutting Grace Commission — which Paul Krugman noted in December, “assembled a staff of nearly 2,000 business executives divided into 36 task forces, who spent 18 months on the job” but “mostly came up empty” in finding anything to cut.
So it’s no surprise that Musk and DOGE are cutting flesh and bone, not fat and that millions are suffering as a result.
But more than that, the chaos Musk has caused at the IRS could result in the loss of a staggering $500 billion in tax revenue this year, according to a March 22 report by the Washington Post. That’s almost five times more than what he’s claimed to save and almost 60 times more than what’s been verified. The initial plan is to cut 20% of IRS staff, with the largest cuts to tax compliance, resulting in far more fraudulent tax evasion by wealthy individuals and corporations. In short, DOGE is dramatically increasing “waste, fraud, and abuse” at the highest levels of private wealth.
One reason it might seem that the government can be cut without consequence is that much of what the government does is invisible to most people — even those who directly benefit from many programs have no idea that they do. This was revealed more than a decade ago in Suzanne Mettler’s 2011 book, The Submerged State, which sheds an illuminating light on what’s happening now.
“For decades, Americans have been relying on the federal government more than ever in their daily lives but appreciating it less and less,” Mettler told Random Lengths. “This ‘government-citizen disconnect,’ as I call it, is paradoxical. In part, it flows from the anti-government ethos of our times, and the way conservatives have been framing issues since the 1980s,” she said, but, “It also emanates from the hidden nature of many government benefits. Some are part of what I call the ‘submerged state,’ channeled through the tax code or private organizations, such that Americans don’t actually realize that the government helped them out. And then there are the myriad ways that government improves our lives that are easy to take for granted, both because government (unlike businesses) doesn’t advertise its accomplishments, and because the services it provides, activities it encourages, and rules it imposes benefit us collectively rather than on an individual basis.”
Classic examples are things Musk is cutting, she noted, “the NIH funding for scientific research, that has led to great improvements in our abilities to prevent or treat diseases. Or our ability to count on the National Weather Service for reliable weather reports. Or the role of the Department of Education in tracking how well American students in different parts of the country are learning.”
So, Mettler concluded, “When Americans tell pollsters that they don’t trust government, my guess is that they don’t really mean that they want all of those services and many others to be eviscerated. And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening.”
Indivisible Groups including Resistance Northridge gathered at Senator Alex Padilla’s office in downtown LA to demand he actively work against nominee Russell Vought who now heads the Office of Management and Budget and expel Musk from the federal government in February 2025. Photo courtesy of Indivisible Northridge.
Fighting Back
Three months ago, before DOGE began eviscerating the government, this was all very abstract. It was mostly people like Mettler who understood this. But now a substantial majority of ordinary Americans understand as well. They understand it viscerally when everything from National Parks to the Post Office to the National Weather Service to Social Security is suffering from slash-and-burn mass firings wreaking havoc with their ability to function.
There’s been a massive wave of organizing in response, with more than 250 Tesla Takedown demonstrations the weekend before April 5 as the latest example. All the leaders we spoke to were either already organizing with Indivisible or joined up in response to Trump’s re-election. But they’ve seen dramatic growth ever since.
Johnson was originally involved with Indivisible in 2020, but “was not super active” and “kind of got complacent” after Joe Biden’s election but “with Trump winning reelection it got me back into being involved.”
Rodriguez reacted similarly. “When Trump was reelected back in November, I felt very strongly that I needed to get more involved,” citing parallels to what happened in 1930s Germany. She did research into different groups and was most impressed with Indivisible’s guide. “I marched with Black Lives Matter, but I’ve never led an organization like this before. So starting from scratch was a little bit intimidating and it was nice to know that we had that support nationally,” she explained.
In Long Beach, “We started as a group of like three or four people and now were well over 200. … That was in the end of November,” Craig said. “I think it is growing exponentially,” she added. “I’ve been involved in activism my whole life, so you know having me be involved, that doesn’t mean much. … What’s unique and where the ball is rolling faster, the snowball is getting bigger, is the number of people who’ve never been engaged before getting engaged and that’s increasing by the day.”
While Musk spent a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump, he and other Trump supporters still try to dismiss mass opposition as being funded by George Soros — the right’s favorite Jewish boogie-man figure. But when I asked Rodriguez about money from Soros, she said she hadn’t seen any.
“We have to pay for our meeting space, and so I asked everybody for donations if they feel like it,” she said. “Indivisible does provide some grants, fairly small,” for specific purposes. “But no, we don’t have any corporate sponsors. We don’t have any shadowy figures paying us.”
Quite the opposite. “None of us are paid,” she said. “A lot of us are contributing money out of our own pockets just to try to do something, to fund these meeting locations, to get people to locations who don’t have rides. Even just like making signs costs money.”
And — as befits any anti-authoritarian movement — they’re fighting the Trump/Musk agenda in multiple ways. A lot of the Lakewood chapter’s energy goes into supporting other groups and initiatives. On March 19, for example, they turned out at local schools in support of the National Educators Association national walk-in day. “We had a couple of people stand out front of the schools with signs just saying support spending for schools, and we need IEP [individualized education programs], we need dual immersion, we need diversity. … And we walked into the school offices and gave them goodies like cookies and flowers and a thank-you card just to show our support.”
More broadly, “We’re trying to support each other’s groups as a whole,” she said.
Building a broad local support base is crucial for long-term movement building, which is why local demonstrations provide a vital complement to the national anchor city events. Pre-event signups have Torrance organizers concerned about space. “A lot of the people who have signed up are not on our mailing list,” Johnson said, which affirms their decision. South Bay people, “need to know that they’re in a community that agrees with them,” he said. “People who are paying attention need to see it, and if it happened in downtown LA and they’re only seeing it on the 6 o’clock news … that feels distant. So that’s why we really want to do something local.”
Indivisible groups also have a long history of electoral involvement. Nationally, Democrats had run 10 points ahead of November in special elections through March 15, when they pulled an upset in a Pennsylvania Senate in Lancaster County, a county that has voted Democrat at the presidential level just once since 1856. That result spooked Trump so badly that he withdrew his nomination of New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be UN ambassador, fearing that her seat could be lost in a special election, even though she won re-election in November by 24 points.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election on April 1 is another key race — which Musk has spent more than $20 million on. Democrat Susan Crawford won decisively by 10 points.And there are two Florida special elections for the House on the same day, which swung 6 and 22 points away from the GOP since November. Those elections have been a focus of attention for Long Beach Indivisible, Craig said. “We have been phone banking, we’ve been sending tons of postcards to Wisconsin, into the two Florida races. And I think that we’re all kind of looking at that with bated breath because I think what happens on April 1 is really going to be indicative.”
While winning elections is vital to block an authoritarian take-over — and Trump is already trying to orchestrate sweeping voter-suppression measures ahead of the 2026 mid-terms — they are clearly not enough.
A positive vision is needed as well — a fact reflected in the massive crowds attending Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” where he’s recently been joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“This moment, this movement is bigger than these next four years. It’s bigger than Congress, hell, it’s even bigger than the Oval Office. Right here, around the country, we can start a great American renewal today,” Dunn said. “It’s not just about saying we’re against this, it’s also trying to provide a constitutive positive vision for the future. Because there are reasons why the country is here right now and if we can reclaim our democracy we can do things about it so that this never happens again,” he said. “We can establish universal healthcare and economic protections and union protection so that the average American worker isn’t being stepped on enough by the big corporations that they will fall to a populist right-leaning candidate who is lying to them and promising things they won’t deliver.”
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have ordered county departments to explore creating a registry to aid in evacuating people with disabilities and older adults with mobility issues during an emergency. Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger—who represents Altadena—brought the motion forward in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades wildfires in January, during which people with disabilities and older adults faced particular difficulties in safely evacuating.
“When the next disaster hits, we need to be better prepared to evacuate people who cannot evacuate themselves,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who authored the motion “In an emergency, our first responders should know who our most vulnerable residents are, where they are, and how to reach them when minutes matter and lives are on the line.”
The board approved a motion yesterday directing the LA County Department of Aging and Disabilities in collaboration with the CEO, the Office of Emergency Management, the LA County Fire Chief, and the Sheriff to conduct an unbiased study on a potential registry that could help emergency responders locate and assist older adults and people with disabilities in future emergency evacuation and response efforts. The study will include engaging stakeholders to better understand the needs of older adults and people with mobility challenges, medical conditions, or cognitive impairments during an emergency as well as assessing any legal, technological and privacy concerns.
The Department of Aging and Disabilities will report back to the board in 120 days with the results of their assessment and options for a registry or other potential solutions, including recommendations for a proactive emergency notification program and improved data-sharing protocols across relevant agencies to help identify and support individuals who may need evacuation assistance during emergencies.
