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California Gets A “C” On Environmental Scorecard

Paul Rosenberg
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California Gets A “C” On Environmental Scorecard

 

Three-Year Decline Continues, Despite Waning Direct Influence of Oil

Last year was a bleak one for California’s environment, starting with the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, and the inauguration of the most anti-environmental president in history, with a particular animus for the state. And the state government’s response was mixed at best. On Feb 11, EnviroVoters released their annual California Environmental Scorecard. As recently as 2022, the state got an “A” grade with 91%, but with three straight years of decline, it got a “C” with 78%. That reflected a mix of big wins and losses—especially lost opportunities. Governor Newsom did marginally better with 82%.

“We started the year [2025] with devastating climate disasters in January, an inauguration of a hostile president, rising costs and energy, insurance, grocery bills, water bills,” said EnviroVoters CEO Mary Creasman. “And so it was a year where it was a huge call to action for the state to do big things on addressing the interconnected climate and affordability crisis,” she said, but “Too often the call to action went unanswered.”

“There were some big wins,” Creasman said, pointing to “energy affordability and sharing our electricity grid with other states,” along with “a slew of bills that moved forward to protect California’s biodiversity, especially against federal roll backs and attacks,” and the defeat of bad proposals “to create a CEQA—an environmental review—roll back and exemption for oil,” and “to weaken local standards and ability and decision-making on clean air.” She also cited passing Prop 50, to help “ensure that our federal leadership doesn’t continue to be hostile to climate justice, affordability, and environmental issues.”

But there were also big losses. Some were outside the legislative process—federal rollbacks of waivers that allow California to implement clean transportation policies, and court challenges delaying implementation of recent laws requiring corporate accountability for greenhouse gas emissions. There were also important bills vetoed, “like getting forever forever chemicals out of our water,” and “a budget package that jammed through some anti-environmental policies, and it also took a billion dollars away from the greenhouse gas reduction fund.” Creasman also cited “plastics pollution policy weakened and delayed, and a price-gouging policy for oil delayed.”

Historically, there have been two major obstacles to environmental progress, especially around climate issues: the Republican Party and the fossil fuel campaign spending, both of which have long been reflected in legislators’ scores. But the indirect impact of fossil fuel lobbying is harder to trace, and this year there was another factor: the sheer volume of urgent problems facing the state, which tends to give lobbyists an increased advantage. While fewer legislators than ever took fossil fuel money—43% in 2025, compared to 67% in 2021 according to the scorecard—the industry spent “almost $34 million on lobbying last year” according to Politico, which noted, “That spending helped shape consequential energy fights.”

As a result, “While fewer legislators accepted oil money this year, they fell for Big Oil’s anti-climate affordability propaganda and missed critical opportunities to advance clean, affordable energy solutions in a year marked by devastating fires in LA, an increasingly hostile federal government, and an affordability crisis,” EnviroVoters press manager Erika Guzman Cornejo told Random Lengths News.

The biggest difference in scores was due to partisanship: the average score of Democratic legislators was 83% (a “B”) vs 14% (“F—”) for Republicans. But accepting oil money made a big difference, too: Democrats who accepted it averaged a 66% score (D) compared to 89% (B+) for those who didn’t. Nine oil-free Democrats received a perfect 100% score, down from 21 in 2024.

Locally, the oil money difference was more stark. In the Senate, Laura Richardson, who takes oil money, scored 48% (the least for any Democrat), while Ben Allen scored 99% and Lena Gonzalez scored 89%. That was down from her lifetime 98% score, primarily due to support for SB 34, which would have prevented the AQMD from regulating port pollution with an indirect source rule (ISR). Newsom vetoed SB 34 as AQMD was negotiating an MOU with the ports that voluntarily ruled out an ISR in a backroom deal that environmentalists widely condemned.

But a statewide ISR from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) remains a possibility thanks to one of three legislators who spoke at the scorecard press event, Robert Garcia, from the Inland Empire. Last year, he authored AB914, allowing CARB to regulate pollution with ISRs. This year, he’s following up with AB 1777, “making an explicit declaration of CARB’s existing authority,” he explained.

“We think CARB already has authority to do ISR rules, but the bill would make that crystal clear,” Bill Magavern, Coalition for Clean Air’s policy director told Random Lengths. “CARB is not bound by the AQMD MOU. Our hope is that CARB, if the bill passed, would see the need for statewide ISRs for major freight facilities, including ports, railyards and warehouses. So we strongly support AB 1777.”

Oil money makes a difference locally in the assembly as well. Mike Gipson, who takes oil money, scored 73%, while Al Muratsuchi scored 90% and Josh Lowenthal, scored 79%. Differences in lifetime scores were more dramatic: 70% for Gipson, 95% for Muratsuchi and 91% for Lowenthal. Support for SB 34 was primarily responsible for Lowenthal’s low score last year.

A new addition to the scorecard is committee scores. “We decided to highlight committee scores this year because they play a critical role in which bills are stalled and advanced,” Cornejo said. “Since we just started grading those this year, I don’t have previous scores to compare this year’s.”

But the scores themselves are striking: 13 out of 21 committees had perfect 100% scores. Transportation committees scored the worst, 60% in the assembly, 40% in the senate. But for the sheer volume of laws—good ones blocked and bad ones passed—the appropriations committees, unsurprisingly, were the worst. While the assembly committee received an 83% score, it failed to pass 7 good bills while passing two bad ones. The senate committee scored 74%, passing two bad bills while blocking 12 good ones, including five that had passed the assembly.

“This scorecard really reflects all of the work we have left to do,” Creasman said.

Next Generation of Pedro Punks Set 7th Street Ablaze at First Thursday

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Next Generation of Pedro Punks Set 7th Street Ablaze at First Thursday

 

By Rosie Knight, Columnist

Since they relocated to 7th Street, Steady Beat Records have been at the heart of the expansion of San Pedro’s First Thursday Art Walk. As the crowds began to wander through the warm dusk air on Feb. 5, an ever growing group began to form outside Steady Beat for a lineup of local bands that was opened by the newly-formed local screamo outfit Never Say Bye.

It was the band’s very first gig and it was clear that their friends and supporters had shown up in force, with the group starting their set early in order to sate the hundred-person strong crowd. Fronted by Addison Christian Sousa on vocals and guitar alongside lead screamer-in-chief Leilani Garcia, the band is completed by groovy bassist and riff master Nikolas Macias, and energetic heart of the band and bundle of joy, drummer Jose Isaac Melgar Calderon.

Their shoegaze-y, at times almost ambient sound, is perfectly juxtaposed with Garcia’s raw screaming that never gives you the expected melodic break, instead pushing into something that sounds new and urgent. A furious and talented generation raised on lo-fi beats and social media as much as they were by clear influences like Pennywise and Sleater Kinney.

Sousa leads the band with a clear heart and passionate voice, encouraging the audience to follow their dreams and was, along with his band mates, clearly moved by the passionate welcome to Pedro’s legendary punk scene. As the crowd began to dance and vibe, it became pretty clear this was going to be the sort of show that people will lie about being at in the years to come, if Never Say Bye makes the most of the clear potential and momentum they’ve built.

Vibrant, noisy and full of grit, the group soon drew an even larger crowd, at its largest around 200 people spilling over the sidewalks and in both directions down the streets. Vendors, shopowners and passers by were equally as drawn to the brutal vocalizations and grungey riffs and it didn’t take long for a respectful but dynamic circle pit to open up in front of the store.

Over an extended 25-minute set, Never Say Bye cemented the night as Pedro punk legend, with multiple encores and a dogpile for their very first mixtapes. It was the kind of free show that reminds you why you love punk, live shows, music and San Pedro itself. As corporate forces try to sand off the edges of what makes our home special, it was a night that fueled exactly why they’ll never win. This is the kind of place where a group of 20-year-olds can stop traffic with nothing but loud, angry music and their neighbors of all ages will be the ones cheering them on.

Pedro is a town steeped in punk history and legend and if Never Say Bye are anything to go by, that tradition is still going strong on the sidewalk mosh pits of Pedro’s First Thursday Art Walk.

The City That Showed Up

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The City That Showed Up

 

The change, it had to come. We knew it all along. You can’t hide from the turning of the tide – civil society will survive and abide if everyone stands up like one midwestern city.

By Tom Watson, Guest Columnist

Look at this photo.

In another era, Norman Rockwell would have painted it. A young woman in a bathrobe and slippers — she clearly ran out of her house the moment she heard the commotion — stands on an icy sidewalk in Minneapolis, phone raised, stubborn and defiant. Around her, a crowd of neighbors. Some in winter coats, some in whatever they grabbed on the way out the door. A guy in an orange jacket. All of them holding up their phones like shields. And facing them: masked federal agents in full military gear — camouflage, tactical vests, helmets, weapons. The word POLICE is stenciled on body armor designed for a battlefield, not a neighborhood street corner next to a two-hour parking sign.

These are just people who came outside. A woman who didn’t even have time to get dressed stood in the cold on an icy street and faced down the apparatus of a militarized federal government with nothing but a cell phone and the furious, clear-eyed conviction that her neighbors deserved a witness. That’s the whole thing, right there. That’s what democracy looks like when it’s not a speech or a bumper sticker but a reflex — an instinct so deep it gets you out of the house in your bathrobe on a February morning in Minnesota.

There’s a moment in every democratic crisis when you find out who your neighbors really are. In Minneapolis, that moment arrived with federal agents and freezing temperatures and a community that decided, collectively, that it would not look away.

I’ve been writing about the assault on civil society for some time now. The dismantling of USAID. The attacks on nonprofits. The slow strangulation of the institutions that hold this diverse, sprawling republic together. But Minneapolis has been something different — something that cuts against the despair we felt last year. It’s a city that’s providing a real-time model for what democratic resistance actually looks like when it moves from rhetoric to action, from tweets to bodies on the street in subzero cold.

On a recent episode of my podcast, I spoke with Nonoko Sato, president & CEO of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, and her words have stayed with me. “The fear is palpable,” she told me. “We don’t know exactly who’s going to get picked up, what families are going to be impacted, who’s going to be going hungry or homeless.” She talked about the rent coming due, about immigrant families too afraid to go to work, about small businesses in immigrant corridors struggling to survive. But then she said something that reframed the entire conversation: “We’re not going to back down. This is a state where we deeply care about our neighbors.” She described something I think we’re all hungry to see — people who recognize their own privilege going out with their own bodies to protect their neighbors, regardless of race, background, or immigration status. That, Nonoko said, is “extremely heartening.”

It should be heartening to all of us. Because Minneapolis is modeling what a functioning civil society looks like when the pressure is greatest.

Barack Obama sees it too. In a conversation published just days ago, the former president pointed directly to Minneapolis as an example of what gives him hope. He described the extraordinary outpouring of community organizing there — neighbors buying groceries for each other, teachers standing up for their students, citizens using cameras and peaceful protest to shine a light on what he called behavior we’ve previously seen only in authoritarian countries and dictatorships. Obama marveled at a street band performing every night in zero-degree weather after a day of protest and mutual aid. He called it an embodiment of the values that make us care about each other — and argued that when Democrats tap into that spirit, they win.

He’s right. And he’s describing something that goes far beyond partisan politics. What’s happening in Minneapolis is the living, breathing proof of what Francis Fukuyama has long argued: that social capital is essential for stable liberal democracy. In his landmark work Social Capital and Civil Society, Fukuyama made the case that the informal norms of cooperation between people — the trust, the networks, the willingness to act collectively — constitute the cultural foundation without which democratic institutions cannot hold. Minneapolis is building that social capital in real time, under duress, in the cold.

And Hillary Clinton, in her annual letter to the philanthropic community just weeks ago, put it as plainly as anyone has: civil society, philanthropies, activists, faith communities, mission-driven companies, citizens — we must lead the way. She’s right that no one is coming to rescue us. The rescue is the work itself, and it’s happening on the streets of Minneapolis.

And it’s not just Minneapolis. It’s spreading.

Last week in Lindenwold, New Jersey — a small town in Camden County, not exactly a hotbed of progressive activism — ICE agents conducted an operation near a school bus stop at the Woodland Village Apartments. Fourth and fifth graders, waiting for their buses on a Thursday morning, saw the vehicles and the agents and they ran. Children, nine and ten years old, sprinting through a parking lot, captured on doorbell cameras, banging on doors, terrified that their parents had been taken.

The next day, the community came out to protest. And a video went viral of a man at the rally — just a local guy, not a liberal, not an activist — barely holding back tears as he tried to explain why he was there. He’d never protested before in his life, he said. But he watched those fourth and fifth graders run away from their own government, and something broke inside him. He picked up a flag and came out. “I’m not gonna stand by and watch my neighbors run away scared,” he said. “It’s not Camden County. It’s not New Jersey. It’s not the United States.” He loves his country, he said. He loves his town. But this — children fleeing masked federal agents in terror — that’s not what we are. “I never want to see a child ever run away from our own government ever again.”

That man is not an organizer. He’s not reading Fukuyama or following the Democratic messaging strategy. He’s a guy from South Jersey who saw something so fundamentally wrong that he couldn’t stay home. And he’s not alone. From Lindenwold to Minneapolis to high school walkouts across the country, ordinary people — not activists, not partisans, just neighbors — are showing up because the alternative is unbearable. The time to hesitate is through.

This matters far beyond immigration enforcement. The connective tissue being built in these communities — the mutual aid networks, the legal observer teams, the interfaith coalitions, the neighborhood alert systems — is the same infrastructure a community needs to fight poverty, to respond to climate disasters, to demand environmental justice in communities that have been treated as sacrifice zones for decades. It’s the same infrastructure that protects tenants from predatory landlords, that keeps public schools accountable, that ensures access to healthcare isn’t rationed by zip code.

As my colleague Dr. Steven Cohen at Columbia has written, the way to turn around the nation is to make our revival a community project, a reconstruction of the American community in every community — one that requires leadership, shared sacrifice, and a commitment to building common purpose across every divide that the authoritarians are desperate to exploit.

That’s what Minneapolis is doing. Not perfectly — Nonoko Sato was clear about that, and I respect the honesty. Minnesota isn’t perfect, she said. But its people deeply care for each other, and they are proving it with action, not just aspiration.

Let me be blunt about what I think this means for the rest of us.

Every city in America is going to face its own version of what Minneapolis is facing. The federal raids, the funding cuts to nonprofits, the attacks on education and healthcare and housing. The question is whether your community has the social infrastructure to respond. Whether your neighbors know each other. Whether your local organizations — the food banks, the legal clinics, the churches and mosques and synagogues, the neighborhood associations — are talking to each other and ready to act together.

Uncivil Society by Tom Watson is a reader-supported publication about the fight to preserve civil society and save democracy.

Another Try For Climate Justice

Paul Rosenberg
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Another Try For Climate Justice

 

In The Wake Of Wildfires And Floods

For more than half a century, fossil fuel companies have knowingly harmed the climate — and thus people and the economy — causing trillions of dollars of losses from extreme weather events. The Palisades and Eaton fires last year helped spur a burst of legislation here in California. But the most ambitious measure — a proposed polluter’s pay climate superfund, similar to laws passed in New York and Vermont in 2024 —died in committee. That was due in part to an avalanche of spending by the fossil fuel lobby, even as insurance rates soared because of the fires.

But on Feb. 5, a new approach was announced by Sen. Scott Wiener: a bill to authorize the attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies for damages from extreme weather events like the LA fires.

“With the cost of home insurance shooting through the roof and more and more families getting rejected by private insurers, we have to do everything we can to stabilize the market and boost affordability,” Weiner said. “The AIR Act takes an innovative approach to this problem by shifting the cost of wildfires and other climate-driven disasters from the survivors who are suffering to the fossil fuel giants most responsible. No one should be pushed out of their home by insurance costs, and the AIR Act will take an important step to ensure they won’t be.”

Weiner was joined by survivors of the LA fires and San Diego floods, labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, and consumer advocates, as well as other legislators.

“Our house was gone, but so was our entire neighborhood of Northwest Altadena,” said Rashid Ali. “Everything we owned, our furniture, our photos, my music studio, my wife’s photo studio, all of our artwork, all of our works in progress, gone. We had insurance, but insurance didn’t mean we were protected.”

“The system failed us. We’re rebuilding because of GoFundMe, grants and people who showed up for us,” his wife, Gail, said. “Families across California are learning the same painful lesson. After the disaster, insurance falls short and survivors are left holding the bill. That’s why we support the Affordable Insurance Recovery [AIR] Act.”

“I’m a flood survivor, and what happened to my family is happening to communities all across California,” said Marisa Wo. “We are a multi-generational working-class family. What had been a place of music, shared meals, and daily life was suddenly gone. Our homes looked like a war zone. Neighbors were trapped inside, screaming for help. Children, elders, pets, and entire families were displaced all at once. We are paying the price for disasters made worse by billion-dollar oil corporations, not by us.”

“Californians are facing an insurance affordability crisis fueled by extreme weather disasters, and doing nothing is no longer an option. This bill is about shifting the burden off families, homeowners and taxpayers, and placing it where it belongs: on the corporate polluters that knowingly caused this damage,” said EnviroVoters CEO Mary Creasman. “We can protect communities, stabilize the insurance market and hold polluters accountable at the same time.”

“The oil companies have known about climate change for a very long time,” said California state Sen. Jerry McNerney. “I first learned about climate change in 1969 in freshman engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point,” he said. “So the armed forces of this country have been preparing for climate change for decades. And what did the oil companies do despite the fact that they knew that climate change was coming? They suppressed information about climate change. They promoted oil. They promoted fossil fuel use in this country and around the world. And they reaped in billions and billions of dollars.” What’s more, “Since 1991, there’s been 28 trillion dollars of climate-related damage inflicted upon the world by these companies and these actions.”

By any measure, the AIR Act is long overdue. But looking forward, it could add $50 billion to the state’s GDP, along with 340,000 new jobs and $3,800 in average net savings per household, according to a report from Greenline Insights.

Contrary to claims by industry spokesman Jim Stanley in the LA Times that “This is a political stunt that will kill jobs and increase costs for consumers,” the report explained that “The responsible parties covered by the bill are large, diversified firms that sell fossil fuel products into international markets. Because these entities operate on a global price-setter model, California effectively exports the vast majority of litigation damages to the global shareholder and consumer base, while importing the full recovery amount into the local economy.”

When the fires and floods struck, “We all felt helpless,” Heurta recalled, “But now is our moment,” even though there will be ferocious pushback from oil companies. “This is our moment that we’ve got to really organize, organize, organize, and make sure that our legislators in California, whomever they may be, that they are on the right side,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, it is people’s power over corporate power.”

Vacant San Pedro Church Building Burns as Site Awaits Housing Project

Terelle Jerricks
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Vacant San Pedro Church Building Burns as Site Awaits Housing Project

 

On Jan. 31, a fire destroyed Union Baptist Missionary Church on Harbor Boulevard. Ninety-three firefighters knocked down the blaze in 58 minutes through coordinated interior and exterior operations at the boarded-up former church. Primary and secondary searches confirmed no one was inside the building, and no injuries were reported. The cause of the fire was undetermined.

The property at 101 S. Harbor Blvd. in San Pedro was acquired in May 2025 by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles for $2.25 million as part of the broader Rancho San Pedro redevelopment effort known as One San Pedro.

Before the fire, HACLA planned to partner with National CORE for site remediation and demolition, with the property slated for temporary facilities and eventual housing development.

The main building was constructed in 1920 by the Seamen’s Church Institute. Four additional structures were built in 1924 to serve as a recreation center for sailors.

Founded in 1834 in Lower Manhattan, the Seamen’s Church Institute is a nonprofit that provides pastoral care, safe lodging and support to mariners arriving in port. The organization later established regional centers in major U.S. ports, including on the West Coast. In San Pedro, an SCI-affiliated seafarers center offered hospitality services, counseling and spiritual support to merchant mariners between voyages.

In the early 1960s, SCI sold or transferred the Harbor Boulevard property to Union Baptist Missionary Church, then led by the Rev. DeWitt Bradley. The church was founded in the early 1940s, shortly after Bradley moved his family to San Pedro from Harrison, Texas. For the first 20 years of his ministry, he and his congregation worshiped with neighboring churches while establishing a permanent home in the community.

Until his death, Bradley was a 51-year San Pedro resident. During his tenure, he sponsored Head Start programs, created a prison ministry, and helped organize the Harbor Community Church Agency while leading the congregation.

 

“Man of La Mancha” lacks for scale but not talent

Greggory Moore
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“Man of La Mancha” lacks for scale but not talent

Musical Theatre West might be doing Man of La Mancha for the third (or is it the fourth?) time just because it hits the safe, maybe even nostalgic sweet spot for a good portion of their target demographic. But in today’s U.S. of A., when you’re doing a show about a man who’s been driven mad by the world’s injustice and an artist who awaits trial by the Inquisition, there’s no way not to see it as at least a little bit timely.

Writer / actor / tax collector Miguel de Cervantes (Richard Bermudez) and his manservant (Reggie De Leon) have been imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for justly foreclosing on a monastery against the wishes of the crooked local officials. In the dungeon they encounter a group of long-term prisoners led by “the Governor” (Berto Fernández), who decide to pass the time by putting Cervantes on trial for being an idealist and a bad poet, partly to pass the time and partly to so they can justify stealing his possessions after finding him guilty. By way of a defense, Cervantes puts on a play — using the prisoners as actors — about Alonso Quijana (played by Cervantes), an old man driven mad by how unjust contemporary society is in comparison to that which is described in the chivalric romances with which he is obsessed. Believing himself to be a wannabe knight named Don Quixote, he goes out into the world seeking to prove himself by fighting injustice, etc.

The cast is great. Richard Bermudez easily delineates Cervantes from Quijana/Quixote, and he just as easily nails every song — most important of which is “The Impossible Dream”, sending us into intermission on a high note both literally and figuratively. As Aldonza/Dulcinea, Monika Peña especially shines in Act Two, where the dulcet power of her “Dulcinea (Reprise)” simply slays. And cutesy as his Sancho may be, Reggie De Leon probably has it dialed in just right for people who lay their good money down for Man of La Mancha, a known quantity in the world of musical theatre.

It’s almost too bad this show is more about solo numbers than combos, because this cast sounds great together. The best early example is “We’re Only Thinking of Him”, where Louis Pardo, Rudy Martinez, Tatiana Monique Alvarez, and Analía Romero lock in with machine-like precision. And the full company finale has all the oomph you could hope for.

What this production lacks is scale. We’re clued into this problem early in Act One when Quixote tilts at windmills…well, one windmill, represented by four people swinging around rather average-sized banners. Where we should be swept up in Quijana’s delusion, instead we’re stuck wondering why Vásquez couldn’t manage a better solution.

In general, the mise en scène is simply too spare. For a backdrop we get a single set whose second storey is almost superfluous, and little is ever added to the foreground. Unlike with most Musical Theatre West shows, Act One looks almost exactly like Act Two, which in this case is rather dark and drab. Yes, part of this is diegetic — an Inquisition prison ain’t gonna be Candyland — but imitative fallacy aside, there are plenty of spots where they could give us something. Quijana’s hallucinating, after all — how much opportunity do you need?! The one spot where we get a bit of spice is in Quixote’s climactic confrontation with the Knight of the Mirrors, which is basically self-explanatory. Nice, yes, but too little too late.

Man of La Mancha is not the most compelling work Musical Theatre West has staged (though take my saying that cum grano salis, because the original production damn near ran the table at the Tonys. De gustibus non est disputandum), nor is it their best production. But the people on stage (and in the pit) fully do their part to make it the best it can be. Hell, on multiple occasions the audience applauded the characters. It’s that kind of show.

Man of La Mancha at Musical Theatre West
Times: Fri 7pm, Sat 2pm & 7pm, Sun 1pm; plus Thurs Feb 19 7pm and Sun Feb 22 6pm
The show runs through March 1.
Cost: starting at $25
Details: (562) 856-1999, musical.org
Venue: Carpenter Performing Arts Center (6200 W. Atherton, Long Beach)

 

Gloria Martinez Elected As President of United Teachers Los Angeles 

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Gloria Martinez Elected As President of United Teachers Los Angeles 

 

LOS ANGELES — Gloria Martinez Feb. 18 was elected president of United Teachers Los Angeles or UTLA. A longtime special education teacher, Martinez is a passionate advocate for ensuring students with special needs and their families receive the resources they deserve. Raised by a garment worker and a school custodian, she brings a working-class perspective and more than 17 years of experience as a national board certified teacher, grounded in the realities facing Los Angeles school communities.

Martinez previously served as UTLA treasurer and elementary vice president, where she helped lead fights to protect classroom space from charter co-locations and pushed back against excessive testing that drains instructional time. She organized members to address site-based issues, from challenging dysfunctional leadership to amplifying educator and parent voices in school budget decisions. Since 2016, she has served on UTLA’s bargaining team, helping secure contract victories on class size, staffing, salary, and health and safety protections that ranked among the strongest in the nation during the pandemic.

“I am looking forward to continuing strengthening what so many LA educators have built together. I will treat this new leadership position as seriously as I taught every one of my classrooms over 17 years: with utmost care, commitment, hope, and the teamwork necessary for success,” said president-elect Gloria Martinez. “Teachers and workers alike across this district, this city, and nation, have to protect public education, the last societal service that provides our children with the academic and skills necessary to help shape a flourishing society. I am excited to work with teachers, nurses, counselors, social workers, and LAUSD educational staff to ensure this happens.”

Voting ran from Jan. 30 to Feb. 18, during which members cast ballots for seven citywide officer positions and seats on the UTLA board of directors. Ballots were counted Feb. 18 by an independent voting company. There were 32,280 eligible voters in the officer and board of directors elections.

President Cecily Myart-Cruz, as well as the officers from the past administration will continue to operate in their roles until June 30, 2026.

Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers

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Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers
Amandla Thomas-Johnson didn’t know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena until months later. Google never gave him a chance to fight it.

 

Google fulfilled anImmigration and Customs Enforcement subpoena that demanded a wide array of personal data on a student activist and journalist, including his credit card and bank account numbers, according to a copy of an ICE subpoena obtained by The Intercept.

Amandla Thomas-Johnsonhad attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel at a Cornell University job fair in 2024 for all of five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. When President Donald Trump assumed office and issued a series of executive orders targeting students who protested in support of Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding.

Google informed Thomas-Johnson via a brief email in April that it had already shared his metadata with the Department of Homeland Security, as The Interceptpreviously reported. But the full extent of the information the agency sought — including usernames, addresses, itemized list of services, including any IP masking services, telephone or instrument numbers, subscriber numbers or identities, and credit card and bank account numbers — was not previously known.

“I’d already seen the subpoena request that Google and Meta had sent to Momodou [Taal], and I knew that he had gotten in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer successfully challenged that,” Thomas-Johnson said. “I was quite surprised to see that I didn’t have that opportunity.”

The subpoena provides no justification for why ICE is asking for this information, except that it’s required “in connection with an investigation or inquiry relating to the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.” In the subpoena, ICE requests that Google not “disclose the existence of this summons for indefinite period of time.”

Read more at:https://theintercept.com/2026/02/10/google-ice-subpoena-student-journalist/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

photos from the edge 27 – JESSE JACKSON, PRESENTE!

David Bacon
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photos from the edge 27 – JESSE JACKSON, PRESENTE!

Photographs by David Bacon
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2026/02/photos-from-edge-27-jesse-jackson.html

For a while it seemed like Jesse was everywhere. In the last years I worked as an organizer he ran for President, and the first picture I took of him was speaking at a Labor Day picnic – all the big labor leaders behind him – Jimmy Herman, then president of the ILWU, Jack Henning, our rebellious leader of the state labor federation, and others. We organized our labor committee of the Rainbow Coalition, and it was not hard to convince our unions that he was the one. The idea of running for president by bringing in the excluded, enfranchising the disenfranchised, was our touchstone from then on.

But I remember him best because he came out for workers again and again, long after he wasn’t running for anything anymore. I’m sure it’s the workers who remember him best, because the photographs show it. The nurses with Rose Ann De Moro at Summit Hospital, the members of my own union, the then-Northern California Newspaper Guild and the other unions of our conference facing the Chronicle, and the farmworkers in that huge march in Watsonville. You can see the way the hotel workers look at him, during the lockout of Local 2. Barbara Lee, then Congresswoman (the only one with the courage to vote against the Iraq war) and now Oakland Mayor, is there with him fighting for the workers in the nursing homes.

He didn’t come just for labor, of course. He came for the students, battling the University of California to keep affirmative action. He walked with the women at the head of the National March to Fight the Radical Right. And amidst it all, I sometimes found a man lost in his thoughts, perhaps grateful for a moment out of the crowd.

You were there for us, Jesse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pier B Rail Facility Project Update Meeting Set for March 4

Reporters Desk
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Pier B Rail Facility Project Update Meeting Set for March 4

 

The Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility project team will update the public on the status of the Port of Long Beach project during a virtual community meeting at 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 4.

Click here to register. You can join this virtual meeting from a computer, phone and other mobile device. A recording of the meeting will be posted at www.polb.com/PierB for those unable to participate. Requests for translation must be received by Monday, Feb. 23. Contact Alice Castellanos at 562-283-7720 or alice.castellanos@polb.com for translation or assistance registering for the event. Comuníquese con Alice Castellanos al 562-283-7720 o alice.castellanos@polb.com antes del lunes 23 de febrero para obtener servicios de interpretación o asistencia con el registro.

The planned Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility is the centerpiece of the Port of Long Beach’s rail capital improvement program. It will shift more cargo to “on-dock rail,” where containers are taken to and from marine terminals by trains. Moving cargo by on-dock rail is cleaner and more efficient, as it reduces truck traffic. No cargo trucks would visit the facility.

The facility will be built in phases and as each is completed, they will enhance capacity and operations. The project began construction in 2024 and completion of the entire project is expected in 2032.

Details: View the project fact sheet and more information at the project page.

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