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Two Random Happenings: Story Writing Workshop and San Pedro ‘Show ‘n’ Tell’

Collage Features Foundations of Story Writing Workshop with Carolyn McDonald

Do you have an idea for a novel, screenplay, or theatrical script, but need help working out the flow and fleshing out the characters? Carolyn McDonald has produced Emmy-nominated films and documentaries, scripted pieces for film and television, and written poetry and short stories, and knows how narratives work in many media.

She will lead six small-group sessions that will help you understand how to bring your characters to life and involve a reader or audience in their struggles and joys.

The course is $460 for all six sessions, with an early-bird offer of $430 for all six sessions if paid at least 14 days in advance. Payment of the full class price can be done in two installments, please email Collage for details on this.

If any spots are available for individual sessions, they will be offered at $80 each.

Time: 1 p.m., Saturdays, April 12 to May 17

Cost: $80 and up

Details: 424-450-8239; collageartculture.org

Venue: Collage, 731 S Pacific Ave., San Pedro

 

Show And Tell

Call for Photos and Artifacts for San Pedro ‘Show ‘n’ Tell’ on April 26

The San Pedro Heritage Museum invites the community to bring their personal photos and artifacts to San Pedro Show ’N Tell on April 26 at Sirens Java & Tea.

The event will kick off with a photo scanning drive from 12 to 3 p.m. for SPHM’s San Pedro Built project, which aims to create a database of San Pedro’s history, through its community members, to paint a virtual portrait of what’s made the port town what it is today. An open mic-style show and tell event will happen from 3 to 4 p.m. featuring community members sharing their photos, artifacts and stories of San Pedro’s past. If you’re interested in contributing photos during the scanning drive or presenting during the Show ’N Tell, register in advance at the link below

Time: 12 p.m., April 26

Cost: Free

Details:Register, bit.ly/sphmshowntell.

Venue: Sirens Java & Tea, 402 W. 7th St. in San Pedro.

One Party’s Selling a Big Lie; the Other Can’t Sell the Truth

 

The GOP Built a Propaganda Empire. Democrats Built a Consultancy Firm.

For at least a few decades, Republicans and Democrats have been following two very different strategies when it comes to political messaging. And the GOP is doing it effectively — making big, bold statements — while cautious Democrats are getting wiped out.

Republicans are leading public opinion while Democrats are trying to chase it. That does not work.

The essence of the problem is that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party tells their politicians and ad people that they need to pay careful attention to public polling and calibrate their positions around “where the public is at.” And, of course, don’t take positions (like Medicare for All) that would offend donors (insurance companies, in this case).

The results are “safe,” focus-grouped policies that fail to inspire or move voters. And, even more importantly, don’t change public opinion itself.

A few weeks ago, corporate-funded Democrats held a retreat organized by Third Way, a remnant of Bill Clinton’s 1990s embrace of neoliberalism. One of their primary conclusions was that Democratic politicians need to move away from “the left” and instead reconnect culturally with the working class. They argued that the Party must:

  • “Reduce Far-Left Influence and Infrastructure
  • “Build a moderate Democratic infrastructure, including media, talent pipelines, and communications networks.
  • “Push back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging.
  • “Ban far-left candidate questionnaires and refuse to participate in forums that create ideological purity tests.”

In other words, stop trying to convince voters that Democrats are right about things like free healthcare and college, breaking up corporate monopolies, taxing the morbidly rich to ensure the solvency of Social Security, guaranteeing the right to vote, or getting corporate and billionaire money out of politics; instead, just operate within the Republican frame and rant about “illegal” immigrants, trans people in sports (see Gavin Newsome as he commits political suicide), and suck up to young white men.

Republicans, on the other hand, have spent the past four decades actively trying to bend the will of voters to their point of view, rather than chasing what polling says voters want. And they’ve had considerable success.

The New York Times points out, for example, that Republican voters have gone from only 6 percent saying that “a woman’s place is in the home” in 2008 to 48 percent of Republican men and 37 percent of Republican women essentially agreeing with that sentiment today. This has happened because Republican leaders have aggressively pushed the idea that men should oversee both the world and the family, and women should be subordinate.

They’ve been promoting a twisted kind of masculinity for several decades, to the point where Trump just pardoned a couple of rapists and celebrated it; young men are seeing him as a role model. Their meme is contagious and spreading.

Trump has been credibly accused of rape or sexual assault by over 20 women, found liable for the same, twice by a jury of his peers, and blatantly and openly cheated on all three of his wives. Elon Musk has produced at least 14 children in his apparent quest to spread around his “good genes,” including three children in one year by three different women.

Virtually the entire GOP leadership — including almost all the positions that wield real power — are either men or women who, like Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, revel in a male-like “tough guy” persona combined with an explicit, exaggerated female sexuality designed to appeal to men.

Other examples of the public adopting Republican positions include widespread acceptance of the GOP frame that voter suppression is necessary to prevent “illegals” from voting, that America has been “invaded” by brown-skinned people through our southern border, and that tax cuts for billionaires and tariffs on imported goods are great ways to help out average working-class people.

The Clinton presidency was the turning point for the left, when Democrats embraced Reagan’s neoliberalism and Bill Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and “we have ended welfare as we know it.”

While the GOP has pushed a continual stream of policy positions that have changed the minds of the electorate (male supremacy being only one of dozens), Democrats have been largely paralyzed policy-wise by their Clintonian addiction to corporate money and the consultants it buys.

Further proof of how this works came from a polling analysis by Blueprint done in the days leading up to the 2024 election and immediately after November 5th. Democrats had failed to offer bold policy proposals to solve the perceived problems of the country, relying instead on asserting that Joe Biden had done a great job and we should “stay the course.”

Republicans, on the other hand, filled the airways and social media with specific claims that Kamala Harris supported taxpayer-funded transgender surgery for undocumented immigrants, was going to outlaw gas-powered cars, wanted to throw our border crossings wide open, ban fracking, and defund the police.

And it worked, in part because the GOP has spent the past 50 years building out a massive media and social media infrastructure for which Democrats have no equivalent, and more largely because the Republican claims were so outrageous, emphatic, and oft-repeated.

Among undecided voters who broke for Trump in the last two months of the election, they found, fully 83% believed the story about Harris wanting to fund surgeries, 82% thought she wanted to require all cars to be electric by 2035, 77% were convinced she would decriminalize border crossings, and 72% told pollsters Harris would strip most funding from local police departments.

None of these things, of course, were her positions and she had not campaigned on even the slightest variation of any of them. They were all manufactured Republican fantasies/lies.

The two lessons that explain why this worked for Republicans are the ones Goebbels posited 91 years ago: Repeat a story often enough, even if it’s an outrageous Big Lie, and people will believe it; and when you take strong, unpopular positions and stand by them public opinion will bend toward you.

We see this at work today as Trump’s Goebbels wannabee, Stephen Miller, takes America to the next step of gutting the New Deal and Great Society, replacing them with Trump’s vision of a government run by a strongman leader who only respects or fights for straight white men.

He recently posted to social media, speaking of what happened during “the last four years” of the Biden administration:

“We were invaded and occupied.

“Entire neighborhoods were conquered.

“Entire towns were subjugated.

“Our treasury was in the plundered.

“Our democracy was torn apart piece by piece. A national referendum was held on whether to surrender to the invasion or repel it.

“America voted for liberation.”

You may laugh, but Miller is dead serious. Whether he believes it’s true or not is irrelevant; what he knows is that if he repeats it often enough millions will adopt it as their own.

The lesson here is that Democrats must stop chasing public opinion and tolerating people like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk and instead stake out strong, bold Democratic-owned policy positions that they hammer in every possible venue.

And, unlike Republicans, they don’t need to lie to their electorate to make their points:

— Every other advanced nation (and many less advanced, like Costa Rica) have free healthcare and free college as a right of citizenship; Americans should get those things, too.

— “DEI” is the new Republican term for the N-word and, while America still has a bigotry problem, most Americans believe Jefferson’s promise that in our nation “all men are created equal” with regard to opportunity and protection by the state.

— Workers deserve the right to unionize and non-unionized workers should get a living wage; the minimum wage should be at least $15/hour.

— No American should be or live in fear of being homeless, and massive Wall Street firms buying up millions of single-family homes are driving our housing crisis. Homeownership should be limited to the people living in them.

The Obama election of 2008 was arguably the tipping point where Americans decided they wanted bold solutions and real change, going so far as to trust a smart, telegenic Black man — the first elected to the presidency in American history — to lead the charge. Tragically, Obama abandoned the progressive positions he’d campaigned on, and his major accomplishment was handing trillions in revenue to a handful of massive health insurance companies.

Americans still wanted change in 2016, rejecting Hillary Clinton’s Third Way incrementalism in favor of the guy who said he’d shake things up and get things done.

And they still want change; they know that living in the only developed country in the world where a half-million families are thrown into destitution every year because somebody got sick, young people carrying almost $2 trillion in student debt, and cities filled with homeless’ tent cities are all unnecessary.

— We have the world’s richest billionaires, who pay only a tiny fraction of their income in taxes compared to cops and bus drivers. Our middle class, meanwhile, has collapsed from being two-thirds of us in 1980 to fewer than 45 percent of us today as Reaganomics (which is still in effect) has transferred over $50 trillion in wealth from working class people into the money bins of the top one percent.

— Three men own more wealth than the bottom 170 million Americans, and those three men stood with Trump at his inauguration.

— Corporations screw their customers with impunity as fossil fuel company CEOs toast each other with champagne while communities are destroyed by the extreme weather their products are causing.

— Politicians are on the take and that has paralyzed our politics; Citizens United was sanctioned by five Republicans on the Supreme Court who, themselves, had benefited from the largess of America’s billionaires.

There’s a reason Bernie Sanders can draw 34,000 people to a rally: He tells the truth and offers bold solutions. He’s willing to push hard for what he believes is right regardless of polls, focus groups, or overpaid Democratic consultants.

Democrats, if they don’t want to face complete irrelevance, damn well better learn the lesson Bernie is teaching the country and is embodied in the old cliché:

“The future doesn’t belong to the timid; history rewards those who dare to lead.”

Letters to the Editor: Perspectives on Automation, Mercury Concerns Near Mt. Wilson, Honoring Harriet Tubman and It’s the Economy

 

Automation

I write to you out of great concern about the job losses and Tax revenue losses in the great state of California due to automation at the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complexes. The foreign shipping companies Are working to eliminate 90% of Longshore jobs from the waterfront and operate equipment with robots which is 50% slower than a conventional human operation. The Union (ILWU) has a 5-year agreement with these foreign shipping companies which are represented by the PMA (Pacific Maritime Association) which allows for complete automation of the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complexes if the shipping decides to do so, they can and will continue to automate the ports and eliminate Longshore jobs.

Los Angeles and Long Beach port commissioners are giving the green light to automation and are not evaluating the economic impact on the region by eliminating longshore jobs. Further, APMT at Pier 400 did not disclose the elimination of jobs, APMT will no

longer pay the same amount of payroll tax. These two things are important to the economic well-being of the State of California. Furthermore, APMT misused Zero-emission funding from the state of California eliminating jobs being done by human workers driving diesel equipment with Robots driving diesel equipment which did not reduce emissions. APMT should be made to convert back to conventional human operation which can be done quickly.

APMT has slowed down the throughput of the Terminal by 50%. A ship would take 3-4 days to unload and load the ship with human operation. Now, automation ships are in dock up to 10-11 days. Under Human operation, APMT would do 300 containers for each crane during an 8- hour shift. Now, with automation, each crane might break 100 containers in an 8-hour shift, which is more than 50% less cargo movement in an automation operation at APMT 400.

Furthermore, APMT holds less than 50% of containers on site due to the 3-high stack system on the terminal that allows automated Strade carriers to reach. APMT should be made to maximize the use of the Terminal and stack containers 6-high with A-Z pile set-up. What will happen if ports continue to automate 50% of containers presently sitting on the dock in port will be sent inland. That’s a lot of wasted land.

We are asking the state to intervene and install a “Moratorium” on any further automation at the ports in California until hearings can be held to evaluate the economic impact on Automation will have the region. Further, we want the state to mandate Tra-Pac, LBCT and APMT to convert back to human operation.

The loss of these jobs will cause great economic hardship for the region. As outlined in the report by the Economic Roundtable called “Someone Else’s Ocean. Please move quickly to stop the job loss.

Desiderio Chavez

IlWU, Local 13 Longshore worker

 

AI Woes

Really terrible– and illegal — how the shady AI industry is replicating the recordings of so many voice actors and using them for profit without permission or compensation.

These talented humans have worked so hard to perfect their craft. I have many friends and colleagues who are being ‘AI ripped off’ like this. It’s happening everywhere and it’s sickening.

Laurel Garza

Lomita, CA

 

Mercury Under Near Mt. Wilson Observatory

If anyone thought the recent fires in Southern California were bad, you haven’t seen the potential Mt. Wilson Observatory has. The 100” and 60” telescopes are in a seismically active area “EARTHQUAKES,” to stabilize those behemoth’s, they sit on pools of mercury. While there have been no recorded incidents, if any, the potential is catastrophic should mercury get into the soil, water table, wildlife or worse, people, Los Angeles would become uninhabitable, or at the very least, large portions would. This must be addressed immediately, here’s one better,suppose some lunatic ….

I beseech you, someone to do something. The telescopes had their time and day, with Hubble, The Keck, and others. It’s time for them to go. Call who needs to be called, get in someone’s face, yell from the top of a tree, you know someone that knows somebody! I’ve done my due diligence.

Robert Fergusun

San Pedro

 

Salute to Harriet Tubman

During the Civil War, Harriet Tubman (1822-1913, later Brigadier General) was a spy, a scout, a guide, and she led troops into combat. This is in addition to her Underground Railroad work.

President Trump and Secretary Hegseth should salute Harriet Tubman.

I am waiting for those salutes.

Michael Madrid

Veteran

San Pedro

 

It’s the Economy

The economy may not be in a “technical” recession, but consumers are already living through one.

The signs are everywhere—from prices creeping up to businesses making desperate moves.

– The Dollar stores aren’t even dollar stores anymore. First, Dollar Tree raising some prices to $1.75. Now, they’ve officially sold Family Dollar to a private equity firm for $1B—after buying it for $8.5B in 2015. That’s not just a financial loss, that’s a fire sale. And when private equity gets involved, store closures and job cuts are almost guaranteed.

– Layoffs are still UP. More companies are still doing layoffs, while tariffs are doing a layup in our budgets—driving up the cost of everyday goods.

– Could utilities be the next recession indicator? If your energy bill is creeping up, you’re not alone. As costs rise, even basic household expenses are feeling out of reach.

And this is just what’s in the headlines. The reality? People are tightening their budgets, skipping “extras,” and adjusting to a financial squeeze they weren’t prepared for. Stagflation was something I warned about last year and seems like it’s the low tide before the high tide of recession levels.

We don’t need two negative GDP quarters to call a thing, a thing—we see it in our bank accounts and at checkouts. What’s an indicator you’ve noticed in your own budget?

Nadia Vanderhall

Financial Planner & Marketer

Charlotte, North Carolina

Ex-NCIS Agent Uses Book Sales to Fund Dana Middle School Students’ Educational Trip

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.

Gutting the Kennedy Center

 

And you say art is not political?

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!”

Shipping Industry Nixes Trump’s China Port Fee Proposals

 

By Eric Watkins, Guest Columnist

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

Carson —Fireworks Ban Passes, Supporters Cite Safety While Critics Fear Fundraising Losses

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.

 

From the Golden Ass to Sacred Grounds

 

The Evolution of San Pedro’s Coffee Culture

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

But whatever happens, happens.

Wage Theft Amidst Ongoing Strike, Long Beach Convention Center Faces Backlash

 

By Daniel Rivera, Labor Reporter

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.

Voters Reject MAGA/Musk

 

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.

— Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor