One day late last year, retired police officer Robert Mitchell took several visitors on a tour of the West Fresno community where he has lived for decades. But it was hardly a nostalgia excursion.
This is an encore posting from our State of Inequality series
First, there was a stop at Hyde Park, a former dump. There was another at a sports complex and fishing pond built on a Superfund cleanup site. And still another at a controversial meat-rendering plant operated by Darling Ingredients Inc. that residents say has spewed foul smells into nearby residential areas for more than half a century.
“You constantly had the horrific odor of the processing that occurs here at Darling,” said Mitchell, a thoughtful man with a bushy white beard and deep voice. He and his visitors stood outside the Darling plant,
» Read more about: Hell’s ZIP Code: Clearing the Air in West Fresno »
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Walking on the tiered layers of rebar at the Wilshire Grand Center construction site is a challenge, especially when wearing the heavy shoes required for safety. You have to watch every step, looking down to make sure that each foot is firm and the body balanced before moving forward. The rough edges of the rods are a brown, grey and rust color mix that blends through the 20-foot long steel. You see and feel the ordered coherence of an enduring structure.
There is a sense in which the ability to notice, rather than to merely look, is part of an artist’s skill. In his drawing classes, the 19th century British art critic and writer John Ruskin taught that noticing the environment around you in a more rigorous way was something that could be learned, a way of thoughtfully moving through the world that he believed need not be limited to the “cultured” and “educated.”
Ruskin (he is a featured character in the recent movie Mr.
» Read more about: Sefi Edery: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ironworker »
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Do failed policy proposals from public education officials enjoy an afterlife when their creators depart Washington for the private sector? This is no academic question. In fact, the career arcs of two former federal policymakers may well have foreshadowed the life-or-death clash over the accreditation of San Francisco City College (CCSF), one of California’s 112 community colleges. The state is home to about 10 percent of America’s 1,100 two-year colleges.
As San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow’s ruling on the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior College’s bid to decertify CCSF draws near, the story of Margaret Spellings becomes instructive. Spellings, who was George W. Bush’s second-term Secretary of Education, commissioned a controversial 2006 report called “A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education.”
The report’s language was very much in tune with the pro-business Bush zeitgeist.
Unlike restaurant menus, community and democracy don’t work “à la carte.” We do not get to pick the laws we want to follow. The owners of Los Angeles’ trendy Golden Road Brewing seem not to understand this. As they champion one notion of “community,” they turn their backs on the actual people who compose the community.
In a recent L.A. Times piece on how a minimum wage increase will affect city businesses, Golden Road’s Tony Yanow (who also owns the Mohawk Bend and Tony’s Darts Away gastropubs) balked: “I love L.A., but that doesn’t mean it’s my best bet,” he told the Times. “Do you want to go somewhere where you can make money, or do you want to go somewhere where they’re stacking the cards against you?” He went on to engage in some not-very-subtle threat-making, noting that if L.A. increases its minimum wage, he may shift operations to neighboring,
I recently interviewed one of the country’s unabashed progressive leaders, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our discussion ranged from Ronald Reagan’s legacy to the failures of contemporary Democrats to stand up for their values. “We have an income inequality crisis in this country that will endanger the future of the entire United States of America,” de Blasio told me. We present here the fourth in a series of clips from that interview. (Full transcript here.)
Danny is communications director at LAANE and the publisher of Capital and Main. He has led LAANE’s communications efforts for the past decade. He has attracted national media attention for numerous LAANE projects, including the successful effort to stop Wal-Mart from building a superstore in Inglewood and the drive to bring living wages to hotel workers in Santa Monica.
Read more articles by Danny Feingold
» Read more about: Watch Now: Bill de Blasio on Economic Inequality »
“He’s had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me,” (Sarah Palin on Pope Francis)
“He acts so holy. He made love to every girl in every city in America and he had AIDS. And when he had those AIDS, I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him. I hoped he could live and be well. I didn’t criticize him. I could have.” (Donald Sterling on Magic Johnson)
“Everybody who wants to steal your guns is funded by the unions. Everybody who wants to raise your taxes is funded by the unions. Everybody who wants to borrow too much money is funded by the unions. Whatever center-right issue you care about, the unions are on the other team.” (Grover Norquist)
“The guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins best actress.” (Writer-producer Aaron Sorkin)
“They abort their young children,
I recently interviewed one of the country’s unabashed progressive leaders, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our discussion ranged from Ronald Reagan’s legacy to the failures of contemporary Democrats to stand up for their values. “We have an income inequality crisis in this country that will endanger the future of the entire United States of America,” de Blasio told me. We present here the third in a series of clips from that interview. (Full transcript here.)
Danny is communications director at LAANE and the publisher of Capital and Main. He has led LAANE’s communications efforts for the past decade. He has attracted national media attention for numerous LAANE projects, including the successful effort to stop Wal-Mart from building a superstore in Inglewood and the drive to bring living wages to hotel workers in Santa Monica.
Read more articles by Danny Feingold » Read more about: Watch Now: Bill de Blasio on Progressive Movements in American Cities »
“That can’t be,” Alma Gutierrez said, shaking her head.
“Why not?” Hank Dixon shot back. “It makes money for the university and they get to, you know, what do you call it they do in college … field work, I guess you’d say.”
The two were standing in the laundry room of the Eden Arms. Dixon was installing a new drive belt on one of the dryers. She’d been walking by and he’d called her inside. The handyman continued, “Look, I’m not saying this is for sure, since it comes secondhand.”
“But this man, this gambling friend of your nephew is a lawyer?” The widow Gutierrez didn’t approve of card playing or betting on the horses. Her deceased husband had a gambling habit and more than once had lost the rent money chasing the ponies or doubling down in blackjack.
“Yeah,” Dixon answered while continuing his repair work.
» Read more about: The Dixon Family Chronicles: “Shut Christmas Down!” »
I recently interviewed one of the country’s unabashed progressive leaders, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our discussion ranged from Ronald Reagan’s legacy to the failures of contemporary Democrats to stand up for their values. “We have an income inequality crisis in this country that will endanger the future of the entire United States of America,” de Blasio told me. We present here the second in a series of clips from that interview. (Full transcript here.)
Danny is communications director at LAANE and the publisher of Capital and Main. He has led LAANE’s communications efforts for the past decade. He has attracted national media attention for numerous LAANE projects, including the successful effort to stop Wal-Mart from building a superstore in Inglewood and the drive to bring living wages to hotel workers in Santa Monica.
Read more articles by Danny Feingold » Read more about: Watch Now: Bill de Blasio on the Current Economic Crisis »
Our friend showed up late in the evening from Northern California to spend a couple of days with us before pushing on in a long-planned vacation. But when I woke up the next morning, he had been up for hours. I found him surrounded by three screens and his cell phone – solving a tech problem for his company.
“Auspicious beginning of a vacation,” I said. “I thought you were supposed to leave all that behind.”
“Oh, no,” he said, “not at my pay level.”
And so it goes. “No rest for the weary and the wicked go free.” That was an oft repeated phrase an early mentor in work mumbled as he sipped on yet another cup of coffee and ran to yet another customer. He may have been obsessive and wired, but he only worked a 40-hour week. None of us worked more, except the boss now and then.