Thanksgiving is our national food-focused holiday–but Los Angeles has an all-year-round reputation for food obsessions: Paleo diets. Veganism. Juicing. Fasting. Fusion food trucks, kimchi pizza, chorizo-filled potstickers with duck sauce reduction (yes, that is a real recipe).
What gets a lot less foodie press, though, is the City of Los Angeles’s innovation in creating one of the most progressive food policies in the nation.
Cities around the country have established programs to improve the availability of nutritious food for residents and set ethical and environmental standards for the suppliers to the multitude of public institutions that feed millions every year. In 2012 the city established the L.A. Food Policy Council to develop an equitable food policy for Los Angeles and to answer some key questions: How does a city that buys tons of food every year define “locally grown” food? How do purchasing policies sustain small farmers?
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 first in a series of clips from that interview. (Full transcript here.)
» Read more about: Watch Now: Bill de Blasio on the Leadership Role of Cities »
It’s been more than 50 years since Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers union. In the ensuing decades, broader activism and increased awareness of the importance of those who grow and harvest our food have resulted in better wages and living conditions for some workers in our state and others, in spite of public indifference. The farmworkers’ story of struggle and of battles won (and those yet to be fought) are told in Food Chains, an unsparing documentary that screened Sunday at Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 in Pasadena under the sponsorship of the nonprofit Food Chain Workers Alliance.
The film chronicles the exploitation and brutal poverty — and in some instances, forms of enslavement— that plague American agriculture. Food Chains is directed by Sanjay Rawal, produced by Rawal, Smriti Keshari and Hamilton Fish, narrated by Forest Whitaker, and executive-produced by actress Eva Longoria and activist/filmmaker Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation);
» Read more about: American Gulag: A New Film Blasts Farm Labor Conditions »
Steve Clemons is Washington editor-at-large for The Atlantic, whose spin-off site, CityLab, covers new ideas and issues facing urban metro areas worldwide. Each year CityLab convenes a gathering of global city leaders in person to discuss innovative ideas and projects that are emerging in urban communities. This year CityLab’s conference was held at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Shortly afterward, Capital & Main spoke to Clemons.
» Read more about: Up from Gridlock: The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons on Government »
Earlier this month two dozen workers, clergy and other community folks sat down in the aisles of the Walmart store in Pico Riviera, then moved into the streets, where they were promptly arrested. Why would any group of people – much less some not even directly involved in working at Walmart– voluntarily put themselves in a situation they know will lead to their arrest? Because they feel the injustice of minimum wage jobs, whose schedules are unpredictable and deliberately fall just short of offering enough hours to provide health care benefits and paid sick days. These are among other practices that stores like Walmart refuse to rectify.
Without other ways to redress these grievances, people undertake nonviolent civil disobedience. They decide to deliberately break some small law rather than ignore a larger injustice, as Martin Luther King Jr. argued for during the civil rights movement. They break the law,
Nearly a decade ago, L.A. labor leader María Elena Durazo organized the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a national caravan that brought immigrants and their supporters around the country to Washington, D.C., to push for immigration reform. In the ensuing years, there has been much talk but no action on extending legal protections to the country’s millions of undocumented immigrants.
All that changed yesterday, when President Barack Obama announced that he would sign an executive order granting temporary protection to as many as 5 million immigrants. Advocates were elated, while critics sharpened their knives and prepared for a PR counteroffensive.
Capital & Main spoke by phone with Ms. Durazo this morning shortly after she arrived in Las Vegas to join the President as he signs the executive order into law.
Capital & Main: What do you think of President Obama’s executive order granting temporary protection to undocumented immigrants?
» Read more about: Immigration Advocate María Elena Durazo on Obama’s Executive Order »
California voters passed a groundbreaking ballot measure this month that reduces penalties and sentences for nonviolent, “nonserious” crimes. Now, the private industry is responding to these changes in public attitudes and declining prison populations by opening up new lines of business.
A new report released by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Grassroots Leadership and the Southern Center for Human Rights, highlights the expansion of the private prison industry into other profitable and growing areas in the criminal justice system: prison and jail subcontracted medical care; forensic mental hospitals and civil commitment centers, as well as “community corrections” programs such as probation and halfway houses.
The report authors have named this new expanded private corrections industry the “treatment industrial complex” via the report.
As other states follow California’s lead and pass laws reducing mandatory minimum sentences, the report urges policy makers, advocates and others to ensure that private corporations can’t profit from any part of the criminal justice system.
Why are the port truck drivers on strike? It is well known that the U.S. economy relies in part on jobs generated or networked around the imports of manufactured commodities. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach form a nexus of the global supply chain, where multinational corporations focus on every opportunity to keep labor costs low and profits high. One of the unrecognized links in the global supply chain is the port truck driver.
Port truck drivers play a pivotal role in the distribution of goods that makes them a critical piece of the profit puzzle. Professional drivers work long hours hauling nearly $4 billion worth of cargo every day from American seaports for companies like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Costco and Polo/Ralph Lauren. Yet they often receive paychecks below the minimum wage, and on occasion, end up owing money to the firms that hire them.
Due to the privatization policies of the Nixon-Reagan era,
» Read more about: Why They Strike: Port Truck Drivers on the Move »
Los Angeles may be a capital for entertainment, tourism and culture, but for many local workers L.A. is synonymous with working off the clock, unpaid overtime and other labor-law violations. L.A. workers lose an estimated $26.2 million every week to bosses who fail to pay employees what they earn. However, we can learn something from other parts of the state that have taken serious measures to curb wage theft. From raising penalties on employers who steal, to shielding workers from retaliation, there are numerous strategies that can be used to put more earnings into workers’ pockets.
When it comes to enforcing labor laws, “the main obstacle is lack of resources,” Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor at the City University of New York and co-author of a 2010 UCLA wage-theft study, tells Capital & Main. “The scale of the problem is so much bigger than the capacity of these agencies to deal with it,” she continues.
» Read more about: Wage Theft Confidential: Finding Solutions »
The big white tent at Los Angeles Trade Technical College was festooned with balloons, draped in orange and white pennants and full of music. Swelling gospel-flavored sounds, Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” and the ubiquitous party song “No te Metes con Mi Cucu” signaled a break in the program after a parade of speakers.
The floor was covered with AstroTurf.
Last Saturday’s “Parent Power Convention” was the first-ever national gathering held by Parent Revolution, an organization founded here in 2009. With its feel-good inclusive vibe, the November 15 assembly attracted hundreds of parents, mostly African-American and Latino, from neighborhoods with failing and struggling schools.
Invitations offered free local transportation and childcare. There were many out-of-state visitors. Just as a national political party convention would be organized, delegates sat at tables with tall vertical signs that announced where they were from—Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi – or identified the “parent unions”
» Read more about: Jumbotrons & Thundersticks: Parent Revolution Throws a Convention »