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“No whining, no griping, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” That’s how Susan Story describes the hard lessons she learned growing up in rural Alabama. Then why is the corporation she leads as chief executive officer, American Water, complaining about opposition to its plans in West Virginia?
The 24th Street Theatre has a reputation for producing quality theater suitable for everyone from 8 to 80 years old. Hansel & Gretel Bluegrass, Bryan Davidson’s compelling musical adaptation of the fairy tale about two hungry and imperiled children, is the company’s latest effort.
For two decades businessman Bill Bloomfield has poured millions of dollars into political campaigns, and supported George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. He has also used his personal wealth to back former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the gubernatorial effort of GOP candidate Meg Whitman.
Toni Monique is an in-home caregiver who talks like a political philosopher when she is not taking care of her sister, Tonya Ginn, in Buena Park. When told that the Freedom Foundation, an organization with financial ties to right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, had recently moved into California to undermine her union, she got downright angry.
Eight months after Kisha Michael, 31, and Marquintan Sandlin, 32, were shot to death in their car, there are still no answers to why Inglewood police killed them outside a Manchester Boulevard 7-11 store sometime before 4 a.m., February 21.
Of the 17 propositions on this year’s California ballot, few are as divisive as the issue of capital punishment. There are actually two separate initiatives targeting the death penalty: Proposition 62, which would abolish the death penalty, and Proposition 66, which would speed up executions.
Tom Hayden was the leader of a generation that disdained leaders. A thinker who could articulate the agonies of young dissenters to the larger world in plain English and a life-long activist who believed that Americans could move our country towards increased justice and fairness.
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, whose family owns the Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops, has refused to release his tax returns since running and being elected in 2010. It wouldn’t matter so much if Haslam were your run-of-the-mill governor. But he’s the country’s richest politician, with a net worth of $2 billion.
Beginning October 27, the Latino Theater Company will host a program by the New York-based experimental company, Theater Mitu, entitled Juárez: A Documentary Mythology. The piece is based on raw interviews of the residents of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, who tell what it’s like to live and work in a city with a reputation as the “murder capital of the world.”
A four-month pilot program to control and confirm medical cannabis from Humboldt County began August 1, and will be extended another month through the end of the year. The program, dubbed “track and trace,” involves growers, manufacturers and dispensers in compliance with Humboldt’s Medical Marijuana Land Use Ordinance.
In early September, a year and a half after having been pepper-sprayed by a Santa Monica police officer, a man was awarded $1.1 million by a court, plus attorney fees, to be paid by the city. He was apparently singled out by police for being in a park after curfew, while other residents, who weren’t black, continued to charge their electric cars – as he recharged his car. The scars will stay with him and his family for life.
Call it the tale of two pension crises. In June, the Los Angeles Times’ business pages looked at the looming retirement savings disaster caused by the nearly 40-year transition from employer-sponsored defined-benefit pensions to individual 401(k) plans — a sea change in retirement insecurity, it noted, that “has been a failure for all but the wealthiest Americans.”
Devin Browne’s short-subject film Hotel Arizona debuted in Los Angeles October 13 at the Highland Theater in Highland Park. The 22-minute story is about a young woman who, with her mother, runs a hotel where migrants stay, and who devises a way to “Yelp” the smugglers who bring people across the border and rip them off—or worse.
After Ava DuVernay burst into the mainstream as director of the acclaimed 2014 film Selma, she did not earn an Academy Award nomination for Direction, despite the film earning a Best Picture nod. Whatever doubts anybody might have had about her skill as a director should now be put to rest after her stunning new documentary 13th, now streaming on Netflix.
Joel Warner reports on the Netflix CEO’s attempts to disrupt public education.
Sasha Abramsky: Why hopes are riding on the Build Better LA Initiative.
Depending on whom you ask, Solly Granatstein and Rick Rowley have spent their careers either causing trouble or exposing truths. As investigative journalist-filmmakers they have been on the front lines of digging up facts and battling the status quo, all to expose injustice. They’ve been pretty damn good at it too.
EPIX’s new documentary series America Divided bravely tackles America’s myriad problems that stem from systemic inequality. Created by acclaimed filmmakers Solly Granatstein, Rick Rowley and Lucian Read, and executive produced by Lear and the singers Shonda Rhimes and Common, the series reveals a tale of two Americas that coexist in a twisted parallel universe.
Did you know that one speeding ticket in Kansas could land you in jail? That’s what happened to David Jackson in 2011 after he couldn’t afford a $100 fine for speeding. Collection had been outsourced to a private contractor, and his bill quickly ballooned to $2,200 with court costs, jail fines and the contractor’s extra fees.
The theater piece Changing Lives, Changing LA – Hotel Workers Rising was created through many interviews, cut-and-paste pieces of script stuck up on a wall and moved around, lots of serendipity and much heart. It makes its debut Friday at Loyola Marymount University.