A toll of millions of people regardless of their worth
Striking with swift consistency
Throughout the entire earth
The coronavirus comes like a thief in the night
Its victims unaware
That they are in a lifesaving fight
Our entire world is fighting a great crisis
Which mostly strikes groups of people
And leaves a deadly virus
With over 300,000 deaths
The world is taking heed
The people are in constant quest
to find an antidote indeed
Testing is of utmost importance
To uncover the positive cases
It makes a difference in the total tested
And the virus it erases
The people quit turning their backs
On COVID-19 officials
Thus making a concerted effort
To test the virus cases
So let us give resolve
And needful prayer and resolution
As we tackle this dreaded disease
While searching for a solution
Jerry Brady, San Pedro
Life After the Pandemic
Last week, the LA Times letters editor put out a call for informal hopes/dreams for “life after the pandemic.” I submitted the following. It’s not eloquent, it’s unlikely to see the light of day, and should come as no surprise, but it’s my wish. I know you’re working on it. Thank you.
“Beds don’t bring people inside. Relationships do,” I’ve said it many times. And, I’ll add this to it: trust does. Right now, we’ve earned the trust of thousands of Angelinos facing homelessness. They were just as scared as the rest of us in mid-march. Scrambling to understand how “safer at home” could be implemented without a home. They’ve trusted us as we brought them inside in unprecedented numbers using LA Rec and Park sites, Project Roomkey…
If you’ve never experienced homelessness, spent time with, or loved a person experiencing homelessness, it’s hard to imagine why people are hesitant to come inside. Why would someone not accept a shelter bed? I could speak endlessly on this topic. On how complex (or simple) the often traumatic, isolating, and fundamentally worth-sucking road is to homelessness as well as the experience of being homeless can be. It is profoundly dehumanizing. This is why programs like rapid rehousing are so important. Every single day someone spends without a stable home makes it harder to ever imagine you’ll again be housed. Week one: your ID gets stolen, you are sexually assaulted, you decide to use to numb the pain. Bam. As the days pile up, the system has more opportunities to disappoint and fail you, your resolve lessens, the decisions you make in order to cope pile up, and you begin to accept this new reality.
Weird silver lining: This pandemic has been scary enough for some to (temporarily) cut through that trauma and baggage like a razor, bringing people inside. Giving us the biggest opportunity we’ve had thus far to keep them inside.
Thousands of people are the closest they’ve ever been to move-in ready. LA is the creative capital of the world. We must utilize the very creativity we mustered to get them inside in order to keep them there. Motels, city properties, my backyard. If any city can figure this out, it’s us.
Demanding McDonald’s prioritize public health and worker safety over profits, hundreds of employees at the fast food chain (140,000 U.S. restaurants) went on strike May 20, a day before the company was set to hold its annual shareholders’ meeting.
Instead of McDonald’s distributing dividends to its shareholders, the striking employees are calling for the company to use its massive profits to pay for safety and financial protections for workers, scores of whom have contracted COVID-19 in at least 16 states so far.
Employees and strike organizers at the fair wage advocacy group Fight for $15 are demanding hazard pay during the pandemic of “$15X2,” paid sick leave, sufficient protective gear for workers and a company-wide policy of closing a restaurant for two weeks when an employee becomes infected, with workers being fully paid.
The strike is taking place at stores in at least 20 cities. Fight for $15 and the Service Employees International Union, which is also supporting the action, say it’s the first nationwide coordinated effort targeting the company since the coronavirus pandemic began in March.
Longtime McDonald’s cook Bartolome Perez joined the strike after having his hours reduced when he spoke up about working conditions during the pandemic.
“They only care for their profits,” Perez told USA Today. “They don’t care for our lives. They show it to us again and again.”
The workers went on strike as25 labor rights and racial justice groups launched a campaign to demand federal legislation protecting workers from employer retaliation.
“Workers being able to speak out is key for a healthy democracy and safe society,” Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future told Common Dreams, a nonprofit news site. “Workers are our first line of defense against corruption, abuse and an essential part of fighting COVID-19. They must feel safe in alerting the public about dangerous threats as they appear. Congress must act now.”
SEIU released a survey of about 800 McDonald’s workers, 46% of whom reported coming to work sick out of fear that they would be penalized if they stayed home. More than 90% of workers said their stores did not supply sufficient face masks.
McDonald’s workers in Chicago filed a class-action lawsuit claiming the company is still not providing enough hand sanitizer, gloves and masks for workers.
“I don’t think there would be strikes happening on 20 cities all on the same day if this was not a widely experienced condition of all workers in fast-food restaurants,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry told USA Today in response to McDonalds’ denials.
Three barbecue days mark the beginning, the middle and the end of summer. But like much else in American life, the coronavirus pandemic will probably alter how Americans celebrate warm temperature holidays and their gastronomy for years to come.
When it became clear that the government-imposed stay-at-home orders would be with us for much longer than anyone had anticipated, attention turned to what will happen to small businesses as Angelenos, like Americans everywhere, became a living social experiment.
Chef Shalamar Lane’s My Father’s Barbecue closed down at the start of the stay-at-home orders in March. Random Lengths News visited with the Carson business owner on the Saturday before Memorial Day to talk about meat. My Father’s Barbecue reopened May 14, fully reconfigured as a takeout restaurant with only half its staff and a hope that the publicity garnered by the COVID-19 food giveaway would jump start business ahead of Memorial Day weekend.
“We closed down for almost three months so there’s no income,” Lane said. “We lost well over half of our staff. For a lot of them, they are making more on unemployment than they were when they were working.”
Lane called the dynamic “sad.”
“With so many businesses closing, what’s going to happen when the money runs out? They are going to be looking for jobs again and it’s mostly the lower-income people doing things like that, so it’s kind of a bad situation.”
But labor wasn’t her biggest issue. Her biggest issue was the price of meat, and how it’s impacted business. She gave an example.
“One of the places I purchase meat has a warehouse the size of this parking lot,” Lane said, gesturing toward the large lot rimmed by businesses on the northeast corner of University and Avalon. “[That warehouse] was always full. I’ve been in business for five years and I have never seen them without meat. [But] right now they have probably 15% of what they normally have in their freezers.”
Lane explained that now when she goes shopping to procure food for My Father’s Barbecue at places like Restaurant Depot, she’s only able to get one or two boxes, even as a restaurateur.
“I have to go in today, go back tomorrow and go back the next day,” Lane said. “Just like how you were seeing empty shelves at the grocery stores, we experienced the same thing at Restaurant Depot…. The same thing.”
Lane doesn’t believe this is due to panic buying as much as the supply just wasn’t there.
“One of my providers said he won’t be getting any more brisket for another two-and-a-half weeks and the cost of everything has just gone up,” Lane recounted. “For instance, I usually charge $22 per pound for brisket. Now I’m charging $30 per pound for brisket. They can double their price for brisket, but I can’t double my price, but they double the price of brisket for me. We buy thousands and thousands of pounds of meat per year, but even with that, the cost is just crazy.”
The Choriman founder, Humberto Raygoza, discussed staying open during the stay-at-home orders and the price of meat increased. Photo by Raphael Richardson.
The Choriman, the foodie destination that’s been grabbing attention with its brand of chorizo, a flavorful pork sausage is at the south end of the 110 Freeway in San Pedro. So far, The Choriman has been able to weather the stay-at-home orders fairly well, since it has been a takeout eatery from the start. But Humberto Raygoza, the man behind the brand, says the business still gives him cause for worries.
“So far, with our brick and mortar restaurant where we are selling food, it’s not so bad,” Raygoza said. “It’s not as busy as it used to be but we’re hanging in there.
“On the wholesale side of the business, that’s very busy because everybody wants oso burritos, meaning they want prepackaged products like our one-pound chorizo, which has picked up exponentially.”
Raygoza said that, so far, he hasn’t had any trouble keeping his supply but he has seen the price of beef double in the past two weeks.
“The beef, I know, has gone up a lot,” Raygoza said. “It’s just a taste of what’s to come. If they keep closing plants down or if they can’t figure out what they are going to do with the plants that are open and they don’t have enough man power left to do the work….
The beef prices right now, it’s a little high. It’s gone up a lot for beef. I don’t know how the other companies are doing, but every time I go to the cash-and carry place, they are always out of meat. And then, a lot of times we are not even getting a lot of stuff in because it’s so high priced.”
The California Beef Council weighed in on California’s meat supply and how it is impacted by the shutdown of meat processing plants due to the coronavirus.
The Producer End
Mark Lacey, a cattle rancher near Independence (about three hours northeast of Bakersfield), is president of the California Cattlemen’s Association and a member of the California Beef Council. That places him on the producer end of the beef market.
“Everything is a little more expensive in California,” Lacey said. “Some of that has to do with regulatory costs.”
Lacey noted that major chain restaurants have raised their prices in response to rising wholesale and retail prices. He not only credits the state’s stay-at-home orders for this state of affairs, but also the panic buying that took place just as everyday citizens stocked up on toilet paper and hand sanitizers during the earliest days of the pandemic.
“This, at the very least stretched the availability of the meat supply from meat processing,” Lacey said.
Lacey blames the price increases on the meat processors, who he said have been able to ask for what they wanted.
“On the production end we are not seeing any decrease on the processing side,” Lacey said. “On the processing side, initially there were these unknowns on what the government shut-downs were going to cost. People started rushing to the stores and stocking up on meat and the retailers responded by doing the same thing with their suppliers trying to keep their shelves stocked.”
Lacey suggested that beef processors have not been impacted by the coronavirus to the same degree as pork processors.
“A lot of the pork plants seem to have experienced shutdowns due to employees sick with illness or employees not showing up due to fear of getting sick,” Lacey said.
Lacey explained that when the beef processing plants started experiencing employee no-shows and/or employees started to show symptoms of coronavirus, the plants went to 40 percent of capacity.
“That created additional supply issues going to the wholesalers and retailers,” Lacey said.
As to whether Californian meat consumers were impacted to the same extent as the rest of the country, Lacey provided a mixed answer.
Lacey noted that consumers in the Western regions of the United States have significant meat processing capabilities, counting Imperial County’s One World Beef, Harris Ranch Beef in Selma, California in the Central Valley and Central Valley Meat in Hanford, California. Central Valley Meat and one other specializes in harvesting ground beef, supplying restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Lacey identified a few more processing plants in places like the city of Vernon in Los Angeles County, and states such as Oregon, Washington and Arizona.
But even while these represent significant processing capabilities, Lacey admits in not so many words that it hasn’t been enough to forestall price increases.
There’s big processors like Tyson, Cargill, JBS — their big customers are large retail chains. Those are your Walmarts, wholesalers like Costco, Sam’s Club (a counterpart to Walmart), Lacey explained. Then there are the large national grocery store chains like Albertsons and Safeway. When it gets down to it, the large customers get top priority. Some of your smaller retail chains probably won’t get a high priority. That would also go for local restaurants like Ruth’s Chris, which just don’t move as much product and they take a smaller volume so it doesn’t last long.
“Just economies of scale that make up the chain and without having other processing facilities out here … there isn’t a secondary market for these guys to go to,” he said.
The new normal going forward?
Lacey is a bit optimistic.
“Higher prices could remain, but the wholesale prices you’re seeing now have already started to come down in the last two weeks,” Lacey said. “More plants have been able to get more workers online and get up to 70 to 80 percent capacity. You’ll continue to see those prices come down. The record highs [for boxed beef cutout prices] were in the mid-$400 range.”
Lacey noted the elasticity of beef prices is difficult to say the least.
“We have challenges when our product gets too high because traditionally our main competitor is chicken,” Lacey said. “[Chicken is] a whole lot cheaper. When it’s an economic decision for consumers, they will choose the cheaper option.”
Lacey admits this scenario poses a threat to the beef industry. From his perspective as a producer, with only the processors making all of their pre-pandemic profit, he believes a number of meat producers aren’t going to make it.
“Frankly, we’re going to lose some production capacity because producers are going to go broke,” Lacey said. “There’s no telling if any producers will expand to pick up that capacity if the economics on the production side is not there. So we could see some capacity loss. We could see some distraction due to competing proteins, ( i.e. chicken and pork).”
At The Choriman, Raygoza sees what’s happening with beef as a kind of canary in a coal mine.
“I know wholesale prices for beef cuts like chuck [were about] $4 a pound,” Raygoza said. “It’s now $8 per pound and it’s going to continue to go up because every week it changes. We’re wholesalers too, so I’m checking prices every day.”
Raygoza said from what he’s seen, after doubling, the prices are going to keep creeping up for beef and across the wider meat market.
“For pork and chicken, which no one is really talking about so much,” Raygoza said. “If coronavirus affects those prices then the prices for pork and chicken is going to go up as well. That’s really going to hurt.”
Steven Maxey, a member of the Certified Meat Products board, agreed to some extent with Lacey’s assessment.
Maxey reported seeing traditionally cheaper cuts of meat like the round and the chuck and some of the ground beef going at very high prices, while the middle portions of the animal, which have traditionally been the more expensive meats, like the sirloin and the ribeye, have been more value priced.
Maxey explained that in the past couple of weeks, the prices of all cuts of beef have gotten pretty high-priced. Maxey was careful to note that what is being experienced right now is not a shortage of meat but a limited supply of processed meats and that the biggest driver of this limited supply is the fact that processing plants are running at less than full capacity due to labor issues as a result of the coronavirus.
To weather this storm, Maxey suggests that consumers, restaurants and families alike may have to make some changes in the choice of meats they are buying.
“They may have to buy the brand or the cut they are not accustomed to buying,” Maxey said. “It’s probably a good time to be a little more flexible in the type of meat you’re looking at early on in this.”
Raygoza noted that he doesn’t have the option of choosing a different cut of meat because changing would mean changing everything on the production side of his chorizo product.
“I’ve talked to other people and they say, ‘Well I will just use this,’” he said. “It’s not what we use. It’s an option. But then you take that hit because your customers are like ‘Wait, this doesn’t taste like it did before.’”
A change like that could potentially put an end to the meteoric rise of a San Pedro success story.
Just this week, the U.S. death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic passed 100,000. It seems like such a long time ago that candidate Donald Trump kept saying, “We are going to Make America Great Again,” and that “We are going to win so much that you’ll get tired of winning.” See the actual video clip here: https://tinyurl.com/trump-albany-rally.
Well, we’re still waiting to see what “winning” looks like because from this point of view, America seems to be losing the COVID-19 war while simultaneously tanking the longest running bull economy ever as DJT goes golfing. Reminds me a lot of Alfred E. Newman’s cartoon in Mad Magazine who famously spouts, “What, me worry?”
Donald appears not to worry about the coronavirus as much as he does about being compared to President Barack Obama, or his taxes being exposed or much else except what it would mean if he didn’t get reelected. The term “loser” comes to mind and getting him kicked off this real-life reality TV show would just be too exquisite to express.
However, it is a fundamental mistake to think that Trump and his pals are men without a plan. It’s just they don’t have a plan that includes protecting Americans from the COVID-19. Let me explain.
While we have all been either distracted by the pandemic or quarantined, the real plan is to just deconstruct all of the “big government” that the Republican Tea Party radicals can get away with, like destroying the U.S. Postal Service, deregulating the Environmental Protection Agency, defunding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization (and a string of other science and health departments meant to protect Americans from just this kind of pandemic) and even going so far as to rid these agencies of anyone who doesn’t support the use of hydroxychloroquine as the cure-all for COVID-19.
This drug, as you’ve undoubtedly heard about by now, is what DJT has self-prescribed (if he is to be believed, which most of us don’t). The common side effects of hydroxychloroquine include: headache, dizziness, ringing in your ears, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, loss of appetite, weight loss (which might do him some good), mood changes, feeling nervous or irritable (which might just explain his midnight Twitter rampages), skin rash or itching or hair loss (we could only hope).
Don’t be distracted by his campaign ploy of the week like “Obamagate” or “Liberate Michigan.” Keep your attention on what’s really going on, especially at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue where Republic Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is busily stacking the federal judgeships with rightwing ideologues.
Remember, “Moscow” Mitch, as he is now called, is the senator who stood in the way of President Obama appointing Merrick Garland to the vacant seat left by the sudden death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Well, just wait until the election results come in on Nov. 3. When DJT loses to Joe Biden, old Mitch will be stacking the courts faster than a three-armed bricklayer on Adderall.
Meanwhile, local congressional repre-sentatives are ringing the alarm bell about the Trump administration actively trying to take away healthcare coverage from millions of Americans in the middle of this pandemic. Congressman Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) writes, “This isn’t the first time Donald Trump and his GOP allies have tried to obstruct American healthcare. His administration has always been intent on dismantling the Affordable Care Act—and due to his attacks, millions of Americans are now uninsured. [He] still doesn’t have a plan to cover coronavirus treatment for uninsured Americans, despite promising to do so months ago when this crisis began.”
Again, this is the plan to dismantle “big government” programs not because they don’t work, not because they are shown to be essential or because they benefit the common good, but because libertarian Republicans don’t want the government to get in the way of the profit motive.
In other words, stopping large corporations from making even more profits at the detriment of the general public or their workers is a problem. We have all witnessed this tactic of using “fiscal conservatism” against public schools and colleges, public health care systems and even now with the U.S. Postal Service. The tactic is used to defund them on the grounds of saving taxpayer money. If these systems survive the budget cuts, they then claim these systems are inefficient or don’t work. This was done while raising the military defense budget from $316 billion in 2001 to over $685 billion in 2019.
Now let me ask you just one simple question — would a rational plan for the defense of our nation be to take just 10% of that defense budget to protect America against the current or future diseases? Would there not have been enough personal protective equipment in the National Strategic Stockpile if this had been done in the past three years?
Or has this administration cheated you, the taxpayer, by pouring billions into weapons and a Mexico border wall that can’t even stop the invasion of a single virus to the detriment of our national economy. Obviously, the Federal Reserve has the money to pay for many things, but only if Congress approves the spending.
At this point, if this is what he calls “winning,” I’d hate to see what losing looks like because 100,000 fatalities in four months is more than we’ve actually lost fighting the last three wars.
Soccer fans often raise their favorite players as heroes, but to Galaxy goalkeeper David Bingman, the real heroes are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The sports star celebrated National Nurses’ Week, on May 6, by partnering with El Barrio Tacos to provide 70 taco bowls to the emergency department, intensive care unit and respiratory care team.
“We had an outpour of support as you know to health care workers around the country and unbelievable amounts of donations from restaurants,” said Megan Martinez, a spokeswoman for Dignity Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center. “David actually is a very humble genuine man. His father is a retired police officer and his sister is actually an ER nurse who works in Georgia.”
David has donated more than 250 meals to front line workers including the Redondo Beach Police Department.
“Because of social distancing we couldn’t have everyone out and we couldn’t necessarily have him (David Bingham) inside the hospital,” Martinez said. “We did it out front of the hospital but it was very heartwarming. He passed out lunches to the emergency department team, intensive care unit team and our respiratory therapist team; the leaders of those departments were outside to receive the delivery.”
Martinez said St. Mary’s Medical Center has been treating patients who are positive for COVID-19. However, she was not able to disclose the number of cases at the center. According to data from the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services, as of May 24, Long Beach reported a total of 1,582 cases of COVID-19, with 67 people hospitalized, 73 people who have died and 1,100 people recovered.
On April 27, District 35 Sen. Steven Bradford announced that the Center for Innovation in STEM Education at California State University Dominguez Hills donated 1,000 medical face shields to be used for the personal protection of resident physicians treating patients with the COVID-19 virus at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
“These shields will provide that protection for those men and women who show up everyday to do the work that is so badly needed,” said Bradford, during a press conference.
Under the direction of program director, Kamal Hamdan, students at CSUDH used 3D printers to create the 1,000 face-shields.
“I am extremely proud of our CSU Dominguez Hills family for their response to the health crisis,” Hamdan said at the press conference. “I’m proud of our students, our staff, our faculty and our leadership team.”
These efforts come at a time when personal protective equipment for frontline workers is more important than ever. On May 10, The Los Angeles Times reported that a 61-year-old nurse at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center named Celia Marcos died two weeks after saving a patient with COVID-19. Her surgical mask was not thick enough to withstand the particles spewing from the man as she performed various breathing treatments on the patient.
As shortages of personal protective equipment continue to be an issue in Los Angeles, many have taken their frustrations to the streets. On May 1, nurses across Southern California organized demonstrations arguing that the state was not doing anything about the shortages of N95 masks, which was putting nurses in danger by forcing them to reuse surgical masks.
However, despite initially slow efforts by the federal government to provide personal protective equipment earlier in the pandemic, nurses have been receiving various donations from members of the community.
“I believe [I heard] that nationally, hospitals were initially hit by surprise but upon checking we have received not only purchased items like masks, etc., but the community has come forward with amazing donations as well,” said Lysa Barry from Dignity Health at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach.
I am writing to tell the community about the at-berth regulation for ocean-going vessels proposed for implementation in January 2021. I am speaking on behalf of Indivisible San Pedro and its more than 300 members, all residents and California voters.
The members of our group support the proposed update to existing at-berth rules. They are necessary and overdue. The update strikes a compromise with industry, accelerating the date for inclusion of exempt classes of ocean going vessels, while providing additional flexibility for the shipping industry. Said industry is a key source of jobs and vital economic activity for our city, state and nation.
We remain concerned that some who have long opposed at-berth emission controls now suddenly discovered the COVID-19 crisis and call for delay, claiming a new environment and an opaque future dictates rethinking this proposed update. Their cynicism and opportunism is breathtaking.
This new environment is killing people. That is a certainty. Rather than support delay, the pandemic emphasizes the urgent need for tough at-berth regulation. That’s because Californians whose health is damaged by goods-movement driven pollution — those with underlying lung, asthma, heart, cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure — are the very people who are the most susceptible to the ravages of COVID-19 and those most likely to die from it, according to numerous reports in medical journals.
The at-berth regulation has been effective in reducing emissions from ocean going vessels, one of the top sources of harmful air pollution in California. The proposed changes to this regulation will save lives and money, as well as provide significant and widespread health benefits.
Our answer to those who would use the pandemic disaster to undermine clean air rules is: Shame on you. And perhaps the regulation should be tougher. We cannot afford to delay or pause efforts to move forward with life-saving regulations, and it would be particularly inappropriate and a disgrace to delay the at-berth regulation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is not going away this year or next, perhaps not in some of our lifetimes.
Further and perhaps as important is that there is no connection between the proposed regulations and the decline in business at the twin ports. You could cut emission rules and permit fees to the bone today and it would neither fix the feared recession in shipping nor the global recession, which are caused by the worldwide pandemic.
The fix is not in easing regulation. It is in defeating the virus. This cynicism from the goods movement folks is to be expected. They subscribe to disaster capitalism, which exploits every major catastrophe to externalize more costs and subsidize corporations at the expense of people’s health. These very same industry voices have always opposed these regulations. This delay would simply exploit the disaster to push industry’s long standing opposition to regulations proven to save lives.
It is hard to find a silver lining in the pandemic. Yet, there are things about it that call to our better angels, that hang a lantern on the true cost of letting industry externalize its costs on the public, that tell us we must build a greener future.
These pandemic days, locals walk on Paseo del Mar in San Pedro, experiencing the vista across San Pedro Bay to Newport Beach as it was in old time California. The air is crystal clear and the pollution is diminished. The people in the Harbor Area are and will be healthier for it.
We are an inventive people. We are entrepreneurial people. We are a hard-working people. Surely, both this vista and a thriving goods movement industry can be in our future.
Yes, we need the jobs and the goods, but the industry must at the very least go electric, plug-in its ships at berth or bonnet them and not fall for the dodge of turning to drilled gas to power trucks and equipment in the 21st century.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragán May 27, introduced a bill to create the first federal program dedicated to greening our nation’s ports and reducing the toxic pollution that severely harms the health of people in port communities. The Climate Smart Ports Act would invest in zero-emissions technology and infrastructure, protect dockworkers, fight climate change, address a source of environmental injustice, and create good-paying green jobs.
“In many ways, the Port of Los Angeles is the heartbeat of my district,” said Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragán. “Ports are job creators, but also major sources of air pollution with serious public health consequences, particularly for the communities of color that tend to live nearby. The people in these neighborhoods live close to working diesel trucks, ships, trains, and cargo-handling equipment spewing poisons into our air and water. And we’ve paid the price. By greening our ports, we can tackle this environmental injustice.”
The Climate Smart Ports Act would create a $1 billion-a-year zero-emissions ports infrastructure program to assist ports and port users with the following:
Replacing diesel-burning cargo handling equipment, port harbor craft, drayage trucks, and other equipment with zero emissions equipment and technology;
Funding the installation of shore power for docked ships, and electric charging stations for vehicles and cargo equipment;
Developing clean energy microgrids onsite at the ports to power their facilities;
Authorizing an additional $50 million a year for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, specifically for reducing emissions at ports.
Implementing strong labor provisions to protect dockworkers from automation, require a prevailing wage for installation work generated through grants, and encourage the use of union labor and local hiring.
“We are often given a false choice between a clean environment and a strong economy. With the Climate Smart Ports Act, we don’t have to choose,” Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragán said.
Barragán was joined by 21 original cosponsors of the Climate Smart Ports Act, including Congressmembers Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Jared Huffman (Calif.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), Alan Lowenthal (Calif.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), Ed Case (Hawaii), Adam Smith (Wash.), Yvette Clarke (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), Harley Rouda (Calif.), Stephen Lynch (Mass.), Joseph P. Kennedy (Mass.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Cedric Richmond (La.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (Del.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), Suzanne Bonamci (Ore.) and Barbara Lee (Calif.).
The Climate Smart Ports Act is supported by the American Lung Association, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, Moving Forward Network, League of Conservation Voters, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Food & Water Action, Greenpeace, Eastyard Communities for Environmental Justice, Friends of the Earth, Jobs to Move America CA, Green For All, San Pedro Indivisible, and the San Pedro & Peninsula Homeowners Association.
The Los Angeles County Registrar has a daunting task ahead of the upcoming November election. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered that all registered Californian voters be sent a vote-by-mail ballot prior to the election due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re not going to let this pandemic stop us,” said California Secretary of State of Alex Padilla at the May 12 meeting of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council. “Our democracy will not be a casualty of this pandemic.”
Padilla said that voters should expect their ballots about a month before the election, around the same time they receive their sample ballots. Once voters are finished filling them out, they can be mailed back with pre-paid postage, or place them in special ballot drop boxes.
“It’s great that we’re going for vote-by-mail ballots because no one should be put in danger … in order to vote,” said Carrie Scoville, president of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council and the former president of the San Pedro Democratic Club.
Scoville was also elected as delegate to the Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee in November, but she won’t be seated until June.
Californian voters can request a vote-by-mail ballot without having to give a reason, Scoville said. This is an advantage some states do not have. Some states require a doctor to give a reason why the voter cannot make it to the poll. The reason must be medical. It can’t just be that the voter can’t make it out of work on time.
California had a similar rule previously, but it was changed decades ago.
“A vote-by-mail drive has been actively pursued by the Democratic Party for a long time because vote-by-mail voters are more likely to vote,” Scoville said. “It’s a higher turnout than there is for poll voters.”
Because of this, Scoville is looking forward to switching to all vote-by-mail ballots even though she prefers going to the polls.
“I like going to the poll,” Scoville said. “It’s a cultural, family tradition and I like to see that my poll is there and that it’s working.”
In-person voting will still be used in the November election and it will be made as safe and accessible as possible. It is being done mainly for voters who need assistance or who need to register on the day of the election.
“It’s still to be determined how many locations, how many days, but there will be in-person voting opportunities on and before election day,” Padilla said.
He also encouraged voting early, whether it is by mail or at the polls. This will reduce the size of the lines on election day, making it safer for both voters and poll workers.
There are several benefits to vote-by-mail ballots as opposed to poll voting, including not having to worry about whether your name will be on the list at the polling place.
“It’s also done in the privacy of their home,” Scoville said. “They can talk about it with their family; they can do it at their leisure; they don’t have to do it only on a certain date or a certain hour.”
Even in the previous election, about 64 percent of voters in Los Angeles County received a vote-by-mail ballot, Padilla said.
“We’re in the transition already to this new method of voting,” Padilla said.
In other counties in California, voters automatically received vote-by-mail ballots a month before the last election, he said.
In order to verify the ballots, the registrar’s office will compare the voter’s signature on the outside of the envelope to the voter’s most recent signature on his or her voter registration form.
The process is proven to be secure, Padilla said. There are other ways to verify the ballots as well. For example, if a voter sends in a vote-by-mail ballot, but also votes at the polls, only the first ballot that is received will be counted.
A few years ago, vote-by-mail ballots had to be in possession of election officials by 8 p.m. on election night. While he was in the California Senate, Padilla voted for a measure that made ballots postmarked on or before election day eligible to be counted if they arrived within three days after the election.
If the voter does not sign the ballot, it won’t be counted, but the registrar will send him or her a postcard saying that the voter has three days to sign it, Scoville said.
“Signatures change a lot over time, so it can be hard to tell, particularly with seniors,” Scoville said. “Their signatures change substantially, you know, as they age.”
Scoville is part of the Long Beach Gray Panthers, which encourages seniors to re-register so that their signatures on file will be up to date with the signatures on their ballots.
Donald Trump has been very critical of mail-in voting, but Padilla said that his accusations were offensive and outright lies.
“Trump himself is a vote-by-mail voter,” Padilla said. “It’s pretty hypocritical that he’ll attack vote-by-mail, threaten to not fund the postal service, yet he himself is benefitting from vote-by-mail as a Florida voter.”
Padilla asked that all registered voters check that their registration information is correct at https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/. At this website, vote-by-mail voters can also see if their ballots were received and if they were counted, as well as a reason for why their ballots were not counted.
“That transparency is good, both for public confidence and underlying integrity of the election,” Padilla said.
While vote-by-mail ballots are the most practical solution for the November election, Scoville believes that switching to online voting is possible eventually. However, access to wi-fi and devices such as phones and laptops would need to be universal.
Such a system is used in Estonia, a small European country with a population of 1.33 million. About 44% of votes cast in the country’s 2019 elections were submitted online.
“They use online voting,” Scoville said, “And guess what? They’re right next to Russia and they don’t care. They use online voting and it works for them just fine.”
Estonian citizens can use ID cards or mobile ID to vote from anywhere in the world, the Estonian government’s website said. The voter’s identity is removed before counting to preserve the voter’s anonymity. The polls are open for seven days and voters can even change their votes up until the last day.
Scoville believes that such a system could work for the United States, but it would need to be government-run.
“It needs to be really run by the government and not farmed out,” Scoville said. “That’s where you have the problem.”
While Donald Trump played golf over the Memorial Day weekend and America’s official COVID-19 death count neared the 100,000 mark, two things stood out:
First, Trump’s negligence. A Columbia University study has shown that if national shutdown actions had been started just one week earlier, 36,000 deaths could have been averted by May 3. About 54,000 deaths could have been averted if shutdown actions started two weeks earlier. But it gets worse: South Korea, which had its first case at the same time, has had only 267 deaths, just one-fifty-seventh of the United States on a per-capita basis.
Second, the threat to American’s well-being goes much farther than just one man. Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, seemed solidly opposed to taking any further action to help Americans cope with the ongoing disaster.
As mentioned in the prior issue of Random Lengths News, 20 countries and five U.S. states have shown that it’s possible to contain the contagion. The real challenge is the Trump administration and the forces supporting him.
Now, there are 48 countries that have shown the virus is containable, according to Endcoronavirus.org. The number of states has not improved, even as all 50 have taken steps to start re-opening. Experts warn that will lead to further outbreaks. A study from Imperial College London, using mobile phone data, warned that 24 states are still seeing epidemic spreading — including California. The challenge represented by Trump and those supporting him has only intensified.
To better understand that threat, Random Lengths turned to Ian Hughes, a physicist, trained psychoanalyst and author of the 2018 book, Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy, describes how leaders with dangerous personality disorders — incapable of feeling the full range of normal human emotions — have repeatedly managed to build power bases largely comprised of similarly disordered supporters: Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Joseph Stalin’s Russia, Mao Zedong’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
America isn’t in that same league. The V Dem [Varieties of Democracy] Institute categorizes it as a democracy suffering “autocratization”: worse than Venezuela, but not as bad as Brazil. Still, the increasing emergence of violent rhetoric and armed protest fueled by Trump in recent weeks points ominously in this frightening direction. Hughes also describes how the growth and development of democracy serves to protect society against the dangers posed by this violent, malignant minority.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has further emphasized two truths about America,” Hughes said. “The first is the self-evident fact that Donald Trump suffers from a dangerous mental disorder,… Mental health experts have been saying this since before Trump was elected, of course, but his response to the pandemic has made his cognitive and emotional deficiencies even more glaringly obvious.
“The condition that mental health professionals converge on with respect to Trump is malignant narcissism, which is a combination of extreme narcissism, paranoia and absence of empathy or conscience…. All of these aspects of malignant narcissism are plainly visible in Trump’s response to the pandemic. The degree to which he has made the tragedy all about himself is mind blowing, and completely inexplicable except in terms of psychopathology,”
Thus, Trump first described the pandemic as “a Democratic hoax,” as if it had been fabricated simply to make him look bad. More systematically, a New York Times analysis of Trump’s coronavirus briefings and other remarks from March 9 through mid-April found that:
“By far the most recurring utterances from Mr. Trump in the briefings are self-congratulations, roughly 600 of them, which are often predicated on exaggerations and falsehoods.”
“His absence of empathy for the victims of the virus, and his complete inability to conceptualize the suffering of the sick and dying is chilling,” Hughes continued.
Of course, Trump has tried to show some superficial concern, but his feeble efforts only underscore how incapable he is.
“Mr. Trump’s attempts to display empathy or appeal to national unity (about 160 instances) amount to only a quarter of the number of times he complimented himself or a top member of his team,” The New York Times reported.
“He is experiencing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans as a personal affront,” Hughes added. “His narcissistic delusions are also evident in his constant reiterations that it will magically disappear, and the world will return to that wonderful state in which he can once again bask in adulation at his political rallies.”
Trump is only part of the problem facing America.
“The second truth that the pandemic has exposed more clearly is perhaps even more disturbing, namely the power structure that supports Trumpism and the extent to which pathology pervades the disparate elements of it,” Hughes said. “Pathology is visible in those within the GOP and its wealthy backers pushing people back to work, risking other people’s lives so they can secure their fortunes.”
The refusal to protect meatpacking workers, led by Republican governors in Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas and elsewhere, is a striking case in point.
“Pathology is evident in the evangelicals claiming that the blood of Jesus will save them, while recklessly dismissing the likelihood that their ‘religious freedom’ will kill others,” Hughes continued.
Churches are already virus-spreading hotspots, as noted by Forbes recently.
“As President Donald Trump sides with churches that want to reopen faster than their state’s safety guidelines will allow, new COVID-19 virus outbreaks associated with in-person religious services are being reported worldwide,” Forbes reported. Among the victims was a Virginia pastor who died in April after defiantly holding services throughout March, saying he would continue “unless I’m in jail or the hospital.”
“Pathology is evident in the armed white militias threatening violence against governors who are acting to save people’s lives,” Hughes added.
In Michigan, this went so far that the state legislature was shut down in mid-May.
“Individuals who suffer from personality disorders, and who had hitherto not been involved in the group’s rise to power, emerge from within every community to assume positions of responsibility and become indispensable in spreading terror through every village, community and region of society,” Hughes wrote in his book.
So, what we’re seeing now in various reopening protests is just a foretaste of potentially much uglier things to come.
“The more alarming truth about America right now is not Trump,” Hughes said. “It is the fact that his pathology has been shown to be deeply embedded within a broad swathe of U.S. society.
“To overcome the pathocracy into which the U.S. has descended, a strategy is needed aimed at disarming and dismantling the power structure underpinning Trumpism, alongside a strategy to defeat Trump at the polls in November. It is a mistake to think that the task is only to change the president. The real task is to change society. And naming the pathology underpinning Trumpism needs to be a core part of the approach.”
“Pathocracy” is the name coined by Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski, who suffered under the World War II Nazi occupation of Poland as a youth, followed by the Soviet occupation afterwards. What he saw in both was a system in which individuals with personality disorders — psychopathy, malignant narcissism, etc. — occupy positions of power, and shape social institutions to meet their pathological needs. Not everyone in such systems necessarily has a personality disorder, but they willingly accommodate themselves to it — as described, for example in the book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. The long line of higher-ups who have joined the Trump administration, only to see their reputations ruined are a tell-tale signature of a pathocratic regime. But it’s not yet one that’s at all secure.
“We are living in a historical moment that is fraught with both danger and opportunity,” Hughes stated. “The COVID-19 pandemic is just one of a whole series of crises that we are facing, from climate change, species extinction, the erosion of democracy, unprecedented levels of inequality, the rise of right-wing nationalism, and rising geopolitical tensions, to name just a few. … Almost every social institution upon which we have relied for direction and stability is failing. … This is true of democracy, religion, economics, gender, technology, education. And they are failing largely because they have lost their moral compass and their focus on the public good.”
In a recent podcast Hughes said that:
We have always had pretty much a majority that are psychologically healthy, and this minority who is incapable of seeing others as equals, incapable of seeing others as anything but a threat, who are much more prone to violence and aggression and inequality … And to my mind, history has been one long struggle of the majority to try and reduce the malignancy of this minority.
Huge strides in this struggle have been made in the past — after the American Revolution and following World War II, for example, when sweeping systemic changes were made in social institutions. “There have been these episodes, but they usually come out of enormous periods of turmoil, enormous periods of violence,” he said.
Hughes also said that these periods of violence were caused by that minority and we’re in another such moment now.
That’s the backdrop for the way forward he suggested.
Fundamental changes are necessary
“As these social institutions are currently configured, the values they valorize encourage pathocracy,” he argued. “A re-imagining, based on values of cooperation, empathy, inclusion and social cohesion, is necessary to neutralize the pathology that currently permeates U.S. society and to move in a more sustainable and humane direction.”
Those values have been vividly on display as the coronavirus pandemic has enveloped America — particularly in the way that essential frontline service workers have emerged as heroes and in popular support for sweeping, large-scale government action to promote the general welfare. But these values also registered strong support before the pandemic, in Democratic primary polling, and yet took a back seat to a supposedly “safer” candidate who promised a “return to normal” which now seems utterly fanciful.
Defeating The Death Cult
That’s profoundly problematic, according to psychotherapist Elizabeth Mika, who joined Hughes on that recent podcast.
“What worries me quite a bit is seeing the calls for return to the so-called ‘normal,’ and I understand that” Mika said in the podcast. “However, the normal is what brought us Trump in the first place,” she pointed out. “The normal is what gave us 150,000 deaths of despair — that’s the number of people who died in 2017 due to alcohol, drug abuse and suicide — in addition to 45,000 that died for lack of access to healthcare. There are thousands of people who die in mass shootings.”
In short, she summarized, “This is not normal. It has not been normal for a very long time. … We have lived in a pathological society well before Trump was elected to the presidency, and so what we are seeing is an exacerbation of that pathological reality.”
Hughes agrees but with a more optimistic outlook.
“A broad coalition, drawn from right across society, opposed to the values of Trumpism and passionate about making the U.S. rational, humane, fair and democratic again is needed not just for a New Deal, but for building a new society which is the antithesis of the pathocracy that is currently destroying America,” he said.
It certainly helps that all of us have seen millions of our fellow Americans act heroically in that spirit over the last few months. It’s no longer a wild-eyed fantasy. We’ve seen with our own eyes what it looks like to see those values in action. We know it’s possible. We can’t un-know it now. We don’t have to accept 57 times the deaths of South Korea. It’s time for the death cult to end.
