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The words of some songs seem to ring true forever. Especially Woody Guthrie’s “Do-Re-Mi,” with its scathing appreciation of life in the Golden State:
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot
If you ain’t got the do-re-mi.
This Saturday, July 14 (Bastille Day!), A Better World’s A-Coming honors the Dust Bowl Bard’s 100th birthday with “An Echo Park Tribute to Woody Guthrie” 
– what its organizers, the Trailer Trash Project (TTP), are calling “a free backyard picnic celebrating the life and music of Echo Park resident Woody Guthrie.” But wait, there’s more! “Enjoy an afternoon concert of hip-hop, blues, jazz, psychedelic and bluegrass by Woody-inspired musicians. Art activities [including children’s music and storytelling] will take place throughout the day.
» Read more about: Woody Guthrie at 100: This Party Is Your Party »
You don’t have to go to Havana to enjoy a good mojito (although such a visit would give you the chance to savor the old Bacardi headquarters, a jaw-dropping example of tropical art deco). Here’s a recipe from our friends at LA Labor 411, who keep you up to date on what goods and services bear the union label.
Looking to sip into something a little more comfortable? Why not try a union-made mojito. Here’s how to build the ideal cool cocktail for those hot August nights that are right around the corner. Make one for yourself and then raise a glass to all the union workers who did such an amazing job repairing the 405 Freeway.
Ingredients:
1.5 oz. of Bacardi Superior Rum
half cup club soda
12 mint leaves
half a lime
1 tbsp.
» Read more about: Brother, Can You Spare a Lime? (Union Mojitos!) »
Mark Lacter, in a recent conversation on KPCC’s Business Update, was surprisingly cynical about the importance of publicly funded transit projects to our region’s economic recovery.
Commenting on the recently passed federal transportation bill that will expedite construction of 12 L.A. County mass transit projects, Lacter challenged Mayor Villaraigosa and other elected officials who tout the “game-changing” job creation benefits of public works investment. He argued that it is hard to determine the number of jobs generated by these types of projects.
It’s true that there is no way to predict the precise number of direct and indirect jobs created through infrastructure investment. But we cannot underestimate the ability of these projects to increase employment in the construction industry, one of the hardest-hit sectors during the Great Recession.
The 12 transit projects that will now be fast-tracked are part of a larger package of transportation improvements that will create at least $2.8 billion in economic activity and $65 million in additional tax revenue for L.A.
» Read more about: Earth to Mark Lacter – Investing in Infrastructure Is a Game Changer »
Imagine you just finished your standard 65-hour work week. You’re exhausted, you want to go home and spend time with your family – you never really get to see them but for your one day off – but you know instead you’re going to fall asleep within minutes of getting home. Your legs and back ache from today’s 12-hour shift, but at least it’s payday. You wince when you see your check: It’s going to be another month of some tough decisions about which bill to forgo, but at least the rent will get paid and you’ll be able to pick up some groceries.
Except that as he hands you your check, your boss tells you that he’s adding another five hours to your weekly schedule. You’re not going to get paid any more money, but you will have to work more hours.
This is essentially the situation that truck drivers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are about to find themselves in as changes roil the industry.
» Read more about: Carriers Stick Port Truck Drivers With Chassis Fees »
The young lifeguard, Tomas Lopez, who was fired recently for saving a life, is now being honored by the South Florida city of Hallandale Beach as a hero. He’s been interviewed on CNN, Fox and Friends and is a YouTube celebrity. This week, he was given the key to the city.
Lopez was the employee of Jeff Ellis Management, LLC, the private company the city contracts with to provide lifeguard services on a stretch of public beach. He ran to rescue a swimmer and was fired because he left the beach zone the company was paid to protect. Six of Lopez’s co-workers said they would have done the same and were fired also. It has been a public relations disaster for the company and has put the small city of Hallandale Beach into the national spotlight.
But, in some respects, the firing was a logical, if unwise,
» Read more about: City Budgets, Outsourcing and a Fired Lifeguard »
Here’s a Google map you may not want to be consulting any time soon – at least without a drink in hand. It’s the one used by Working America‘s Job Tracker feature that shows the locations of American jobs reported to be leaving your community. By punching in a ZIP Code, you’ll be able to see which companies are exporting jobs or laying off employees, as well as those which have been cited for health and safety violations.
Entering one L.A. ZIP brought up the scary-looking map above, along with links spelling out who’s involved and where this labor triage is taking place within a 50-mile radius of the ZIP Code.
Leader of the Pack: Tom Longboat (72) and Dorando Pietri (19) leaving Windsor Castle
When Olympic marathon races first appeared in the 1896 Athens games, the route was a somewhat arbitrarily chosen 25 miles and, contrary to popular myth, had no authentic origin in Greek history. By the time of the 1908 London Olympiad, the length had been even more whimsically extended to 26 miles, 385 yards – the exact distance between its starting point at Windsor Castle and the course’s terminus at a massive, barely completed stadium in Shepherd’s Bush. Among other things, trainers in those days believed it was bad for their runners to drink water while running and instead kept them supplied with shots of brandy, whisky and – in a pinch – strychnine, which was used as a stimulant.
These are just some of the many revelations to be found in David Davis’ Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze,
» Read more about: Marathon Men: Class, Race and Races at the 1908 Olympics »
Los Angeles was granted its anticipated funding for America Fast Forward, a project aiming to expedite construction of more extensive and functional public transportation systems. The project’s approval is a victory for both the people of Los Angeles and Mayor Villaraigosa, who has been supporting it for years.
America Fast Forward is a provision of a larger transportation bill approved by Congress in late June and signed into law by President Obama last week. The $100 billion package, which received rare bipartisan support, will reduce harmful emissions, fund the construction of mass transit projects in multiple cities and create thousands of jobs throughout the country.
That’s the good news. On the downside, the law — which hardly resembles earlier versions of the legislation — cuts funding for a number of important programs and puts off critical decisions by only providing monies through 2014.
L.A.’s program would initially be funded by the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA),
» Read more about: A Good News-Bad News Transportation Law »
The Fourth of July parade rolled down Main Street in Santa Monica while I sat at the computer writing this. Only half a block away, I could hear the sirens and the bands and the sound trucks. What kept me here instead of there was a desire to reflect, not celebrate. Twice a year – on Martin Luther King’s birthday in January and now – I think about the state of American democracy.
I believe in democracy. I believe that democracy is the best form of government human beings have devised to date because it allows people to actually make changes in the government when they feel it’s required. Monarchies, aristocracies, dictatorships and oligarchies preclude that option. In Western civilization, this country broke the tradition of absolute power to create a republic – although participation was narrow: Voting was limited to male property owners. Over the next 150 years those rights expanded.
» Read more about: A Parade Passed By: Rethinking Our Democracy »
After growing up in L.A., I got used to hearing my hometown disparaged as superficial, anti-intellectual, not a “real” city, celebrity obsessed, etc. etc. It was shocking to me that Los Angeles could be so easily dismissed by people who hadn’t even visited here and seen how great a place it really is. Even deep thinkers from Northern California looked (and still look) down on our town from the ivory towers of San Francisco and Berkeley, as if Southern California doesn’t represent the majority of the people in our state and most of its social and political energy.
And we Angelenos, rather than defend our town, have often accepted the judgment of others – that L.A. isn’t a serious place, doesn’t produce important scholarship, and is well behind the intelligence curve.
Well, if you need a boost to your hometown ego, spend some time at the Hammer Museum’s new show Made in L.A.,
Much has been said in recent months about the labor movement’s “impending decline,” with the right wing’s unrelenting attacks against collective bargaining rights in states across the country, from Arizona to Wisconsin to New Jersey. California is facing its own version of this attack with the qualification of the Paycheck Deception initiative for the November 2012 ballot that would dramatically curtail working people’s ability to participate in politics in the state.
Many people in the modern progressive movement date the beginning of these assaults to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 decision to fire 12,000 air traffic controllers after their union, PATCO, went on strike and shut down the nation’s airports. President Reagan’s decision to permanently fire (and prohibit any rehire of) all the controllers destroyed PATCO and served as the starting-pistol shot for three decades of attacks on the right to collective bargaining, that continue today.
» Read more about: How PATCO Crashed – But Why Unions Don’t Have To »
Last week in Stockton, the United Farm Workers signed a three-year contract with Pacific Triple E Ltd., a large tomato grower-shipper based in Tracy, California. According to The Record, the agreement represents the first time the UFW has enjoyed a membership presence in San Joaquin County in more than two decades.
The Packer, an industry newsletter, described Triple E as “a family owned company” operating in Fresno, Merced, Madera, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties. The union’s Web site announcing the pact included the following message from UFW president Arturo Rodriguez:
Thank you for being there for the United Farm Workers. Your support means so much to me and the workers we are here to serve. I want to share some wonderful breaking news with you.
Yesterday, we used a contract signing ceremony in Stockton to congratulate the 800 workers at Pacific Triple E Ltd.
» Read more about: UFW Wins New Tomato Contract in Central Valley »
(The following post appeared on the blog of the International Association of Machinists — IAM.)
If the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) is signed into law at the end of this year, the rules for international trade and the global economy will change dramatically, and not for the better.
Despite the potential for the TPP to negatively impact hundreds of thousands of American jobs, the negotiations to create the massive trade pact are being conducted in unprecedented secrecy. Access to the pact’s draft language is limited almost exclusively to a handful of government negotiators and corporate advisers.
Among those denied access to the pending terms of the trade deal was Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness. Outraged, Wyden responded with a bill demanding greater transparency in the negotiations. Over 130 members of Congress also took action,
» Read more about: Trans Pacific Partnership: Exporting US Jobs »
On July 3 the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 filed a lawsuit challenging the City of Los Angeles’ handling of Walmart’s controversial Chinatown store project.
The suit alleges that the L.A. City Department of Building and Safety failed to notify the public of its decision to issue a Notice of Exemption (NOE), which allows Walmart to move forward on its Chinatown project without environmental review. The lawsuit also asks a judge to stop construction at the store.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are asking a judge to find the exemption invalid and require that a new one be issued. Because the building permits are being appealed – an initial hearing is expected in August – the lawsuit argues that the exemption should not have been issued until the appeal process was exhausted.
The notice to the public of the exemption is intended to prevent the appearance of backroom deals.
» Read more about: Lawsuit Challenges City’s Actions on Walmart Chinatown Store »
Writer/professor Peter Dreier’s new book is called The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century, a nervy title that dares readers to take a poke at the author’s chin. A corrective to Greatest Generation blather, Dreier’s 100 profiles refract a century of progressive movements through the lives of leaders whose native radicalism helped push America toward a more humane vision of society.
Dreier’s inclusions and omissions will thrill some and bewilder others: Roger Baldwin’s here but not James Baldwin; there’s Mother Jones but no LeRoi Jones. Playwright Tony Kushner ends the list on an intellectual note, yet there’s no mention of a Philip Rahv or any Partisan Reviewers, Algonquin Tablemates, Beats or Bohemians.
Of course, provoking debate about who should be included in a “Social Justice Hall of Fame” (the book’s subtitle) is a clever way to stir discussion about history and activism.
» Read more about: Peter Dreier’s A-List of 20th Century Greats »
(This post first appeared on California Progress Report.)
The movie California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, which has been making the rounds of public TV channels, is a tender blend between a family memoir and a nostalgic look at a more hopeful era in California history. At times it makes you want to weep for what we once had and will probably never have again.
The producers, Hilary Armstrong and Sascha Rice, granddaughters of the man who was governor from 1958 to 1966, weren’t troubled by the mix of the personal and the political, much of it in the form of old film clips. And in some ways the past forty years have been a sort of family history: two governors Brown, a treasurer Brown who also ran for governor, plus the half dozen lesser public offices those Browns held.
» Read more about: Pat Brown Documentary: Remembrance of California Past »
Even as more Los Angeles politicians are pledging to refuse contributions from Walmart, one candidate with Walton family support placed third in the closely-watched June 6th primary for Assembly District 46 in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley.
Charter school champion Brian Johnson lost the race despite massive independent expenditures on his behalf by political action committees, including two that are closely tied to Carrie Walton Penner and her husband Greg Penner. Ms. Penner is the daughter of Walmart Chairman Rob Walton and Mr. Penner is a member of the Walmart Board of Directors.
PAC spending was widely expected to carry Johnson into the general election. But in the end it may have hurt more than it helped.
Johnson was put on the defensive by winning candidate Adrin Nazarian’s charge that “right-wing anti-teacher organizations funded by the owners of the Walmart Corporation are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Brian Johnson to the Assembly.”
Johnson’s campaign issued a response which implied that Nazarian’s claim was unfounded,
» Read more about: Los Angeles Election: Walton Family Values? »
Right now former President George W. Bush, who appointed John Roberts as Chief Justice, must be having a Dwight Eisenhower moment.
When Eisenhower nominated California’s Republican governor Earl Warren to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, he thought he was appointing a conservative jurist. Later, Eisenhower reportedly said that appointing Warren, who took the Court in an unprecedented liberal direction, was the “biggest damn fool mistake” he had ever made. (Warren is one of the people I profile in my new book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame).
Chief Justice Roberts is a far cry from Earl Warren. Indeed, the Roberts court has been one of the most conservative in history.
But we can be grateful for Roberts’ decision to side with the 5-4 majority to uphold the Obama health care reform law.
Nearly all employers struggle to contain health care costs. Walmart, however, has long made it part of its business model to externalize those costs. The World’s Biggest Company has repeatedly come under fire from labor and community groups, as well as states, for promoting a health care structure that encouraged employee reliance on Medicaid. The Supreme Court’s June 28 decision upheld the heart of the Affordable Care Act, which was good for President Obama–and also good for Walmart.
“The ‘Obamacare’ plan is a huge subsidy to Walmart,” Nelson Lichtenstein, author of The Retail Revolution: How Walmart Created a Brave New World of Business said in a phone interview. The Affordable Care Act will also benefit the bottom rung of Walmart’s workforce who will be eligible for Medicare under the plan, he added.
Lichtenstein refers to Walmart’s army of part-timers. The retailer’s Web site features a state-by-state report of its average hourly rate for full-time regular employees and makes much of the figures—but the pay scale numbers don’t apply to large numbers of Walmart associates (and are disputed by advocates who use industry research to place the pay scales at a lower rate.)
USA Today reports that Walmart declined to say what the retailer’s national hourly wage is for part-time workers.
» Read more about: Wal-Fare Benefits: Facts About Walmart Employee Plans »
My hometown just declared bankruptcy. No, not the town I was born in, and not the place I have lived most of my adult life, but where I grew up. Stockton, with a population of about 300,000 is the largest city in America to file for Chapter 9 protection. Conventional wisdom says it was the unfunded pension liability or mismanagement or too much debt, and under state guidelines for bankrupt cities, somebody has to take the blame. But the choices that led to this debacle go back decades.
When I left Stockton in the mid-1960s for college, it was a divided city. The affluent and mostly white people lived on the north side. The “others” lived to the east and south. Others were people who worked with their hands, people who picked the fields, people who worked the seasonal canneries. These were mostly low-wage workers, sometimes no-wage workers who turned fresh produce into food for supermarket shelves across the country.
» Read more about: Stockton Bankruptcy: Fat City’s Missed Opportunities »