Photo: Wikipedia

The first meeting of the year for Valley Democrats United produced what most members enthusiastically claimed was ‘the best meeting ever for the club.’

Normally, one would think the issue of ‘Homelessness in Los Angeles’ would not inspire much enthusiasm, but the club president, Brad Parker, initiated the meeting with a powerful personal story of a homeless individual telling a tale of homelessness that was heart rending and compelling.

Four very informative experts on the subject of the Homeless in Los Angeles County were the guest speakers on the panel: Michael Arnold, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) – Ruth Schwartz, Founder and Executive Director of Shelter Partnership – David Sapp, Staff Attorney of ACLU of Southern California – Susie Shannon, Executive Director of Poverty Matters.

Mike Arnold

Giving an overview of LAHSA, Mike Arnold explained the agency’s Mission Statement: “To support, create and sustain solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by providing leadership, advocacy, planning, and management of program funding.”

The supportive cost for housing residents is $605 a month. The typical public cost for similar homeless persons is $2,897, five times greater than their counterparts that are housed. The larger figure includes different types of jailing, Sheriff and Police, Paramedics, Public Health, Mental Health, private hospitals – ER, DPSS food stamps and other services that add to the cost.

On January 25-27, 2011, the Los Angeles homeless count (largest in the nation) took place. The count takes place every other year, with the support of 4,000 volunteers.
The census covers more than 4,000 square miles, all of Los Angeles County, except for the cities of Glendale, Pasadena and Long Beach, which conducted their own census counts. In 2011 the census count of the homeless was 51,340, 3% less than 2009 at 52,931. A looming problem that Arnold brought up was homeless veterans.

Ruth Schwartz

Ruth Schwartz explained that Shelter Partnership is dedicated to alleviating, preventing and ending homelessness by assisting in the development of short-term and transitional housing programs, affordable housing, and supportive services for the homeless and potentially homeless throughout Los Angeles County.

Shelter Partnership Inc. is a nonprofit organization developing resources for the growing number of homeless families and individuals in L. A. County. Since 1985, Shelter Partnership has provided support to hundreds of agencies, free of charge. In addition, Shelter Partnership is a resource to public agencies, the business community, local and national media and community members involved in issues of homelessness and the creation of permanent, affordable housing.

The ACLU representative, attorney David Sapp, explained how the organization had worked with the homeless population on various issues. A question came up regarding ‘veteran’s rights,’ opening up a discussion with Sapp of an ongoing legal battle between veterans and available VA housing in West Los Angeles. The ACLU is leading a class action suit over the VA owned and unused buildings on the property, against the Department of Veterans Affairs.

David Sapp

400 acres of land had been donated in 1888 in what became West Los Angeles, for U.S. Veterans to “establish, construct and permanently maintain” a branch of a national home for veterans, according to the original deed. For close to 100 years that’s what happened: permanent veterans facilities were built, including a post office, a trolley system and housing for 4,000 vets.

During the Vietnam War era, the vets were kicked out. Today, the facility’s abandoned buildings can’t be occupied by the veterans they were built for in the first place. The VA leased parts of the property to businesses. Last September, the VA canceled three leases, but other businesses still exist, including a public golf course, a college baseball stadium, a theater, and practice fields for a private school.

Susie Shannon

The Executive Director of Poverty Matters, Susie Shannon, has been a community organizer, a Housing Advocate with LA Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, and she was the Co-Producer/Director of the anti-war documentary, “Back From Iraq: The U.S. Soldier Speaks.” Shannon has testified before Congress Representative Maxine Waters on the housing crisis for the homeless and poor families in Los Angeles. Her specialty is finding housing for the homeless and low income residents in Los Angeles, often experiencing the most challenging of situations.

A question from the audience: “How can I help a homeless person that I see on my street? Where do I start?” The answer: Call 211. 211 LA County is a private, nonprofit organization, formerly known as INFO LINE of Los Angeles. It is the largest information and referral service in the nation. Since 1981 211 LA County has provided free, confidential services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in English, Spanish and more than 140 other languages via a tele-interpreting service.

Apparently, few people seem aware of the availability and workings of 211. All the panelists agreed that 211 is the best starting place for referral services in finding the correct agency or special needs for a homeless person or family and for that matter any individual seeking help or assistance. The next meeting of Valley Democrats United should invite a representative of 211 to speak about their outreach program.

Jerry Drucker

Valley Dems United Newsletter, Margie Murray, Editor

A ripple of unease goes through the room, as the girls chew on Imani’s defiance.  Making the leap from God to self-determination is blasphemous for some. Yet, the persistence of these beliefs underscores the special peril the current fight over abortion rights poses for women of color.

Over the past several years, Black and Latino fundamentalist anti-abortion groups have vigorously aligned themselves with the white Religious Right in the battle to take down family planning. Indeed, the recent furor over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to withdraw funding for Planned Parenthood highlighted the role of Eve Sanchez Silver, founder of a little-known group called the International  Coalition of Color for Life.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Sanchez Silver, a former medical research analyst for and charter member of the Komen Foundation, has been a leading advocate against Planned Parenthood within Komen.

The International Coalition of Color for Life frames its mission as “protecting minority life from birth to natural death.”  Its website is chock full of shrill abortion-as-God’s-scourge propaganda.  To bolster its claims that abortion is genocide images of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger are stamped with Nazi swastikas. Historically revisionist assessments of Planned Parenthood conveniently omit the connection many early 20th  century progressive Black activists made between family planning, birth control, abortion, and black liberation.  Tellingly, prominent Nazis like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mary McLeod Bethune and Ida B. Wells supported Sanger’s controversial work with the Birth Control Federation of America.

As African American historian Dorothy Roberts contends in her book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty,

“Sanger (may have) adopted the eugenicists’ view of the dangers of racial deterioration…but she rejected their biological explanation for its cause…she held uncontrolled fertility responsible for bringing children into conditions of poverty and deprivation.”

Roberts unpacks the nuances of Sanger’s views and policies, noting that “it appears that Sanger was motivated by a genuine concern to improve the health of the poor mothers she served rather than a desire to eliminate their stock.”

However, by using Sanger as a smokescreen to vilify abortion, anti-abortion foes of color are really savaging women’s right to agency.  Twenty-first century women’s liberation demands that women of color have safe, legal, and unrestricted access to abortion.  As reproductive justice organizations like Sister Song have made abundantly clear, contemporary women of color are not serviceable wombs for the agenda of patriarchy, the state or organized religion.

It is precisely because of right-wing opposition to universal health care coverage that Black, Latina, Asian, and Native American women are more likely to rely on the wraparound health care services that Planned Parenthood provides. Yet, in chastising bad Black and Latino women about the genocidal evil of abortion, groups like the International Coalition of Color want to keep women of color grossly misinformed and subservient.

In one especially fraudulent Power Point slide on the group’s website, Sanchez Silver claims that Komen’s “Pink Money Cycle” actually increases breast cancer in women because abortions cause breast cancer.  This particular bit of right-wing fantasy is just as reality-based as climate change denial.  There is no scientific evidence that abortion causes breast cancer, nor is their medical research to back the pro-death anti-abortion lobby’s persistent claim that induced abortion (rather than spontaneous abortion, i.e., miscarriage, or “God’s” preferred form of abortion) is more likely to lead to death.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has refuted the claim that abortion increases a woman’s breast cancer risk.  According to the NCI:

“The relationship between induced and spontaneous abortion and breast cancer risk has been the subject of extensive research beginning in the late 1950s. Until the mid-1990s, the evidence was inconsistent. Findings from some studies suggested there was no increase in risk of breast cancer among women who had had an abortion, while findings from other studies suggested there was an increased risk.

Most of these studies, however, were flawed in a number of ways that can lead to unreliable results. Only a small number of women were included in many of these studies, and for most, the data were collected only after breast cancer had been diagnosed, and women’s histories of miscarriage and abortion were based on their “self-report” rather than on their medical records.

Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted. These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.”

The fact remains that more women die during childbirth than they do from abortions.  However, in the words of GOP patron saint Ronald Reagan, facts continue to be “stupid things” for Christian fascists.  Thus the website also boasts that carrying a baby to full term protects women from developing breast cancer. Evidently if girls and women want to protect themselves from getting breast cancer later in life continuing a pregnancy by rape and/or incest is a viable immunizer.

Significantly, the Coalition of Color preaches a hellfire and damnation theme that is carefully crafted to exploit the cultural anxieties of “superstitious” people of color.  Pregnant women who might be searching for reality-based options and resources for unwanted pregnancies are exhorted to just believe that God has a plan. The site claims that, “If you are a Bible-believing Christian yet you don’t believe that God can and will take care of you and your baby, His gift to you, then you are calling him a liar.”

Bulging numbers of African American foster care and homeless youth are apparently the result of the unwillingness of apostate black women to cling blindly to faith in God’s plan. In California, Black youth represent nearly 30% of the foster care population, 50% of the homeless population and 30% of those incarcerated in juvenile facilities. Yet Religious Right charlatans who preach an anti-government mantra are vociferously opposed to progressive health care, birth control, foster care and school discipline policies, as well as to repealing racist sentencing laws and prisoner reentry policies.

Is the Coalition of Color willing to accept responsibility for the scores of poor children of women of insufficient faith? Or what about those holy rollers who trusted in God’s plan but can’t quite accept that experiencing rape and incest is a gift? Black and Latina women live in hyper-religious communities that have disproportionately high rates of rape and sexual assault. Restricting abortion access is clearly part of God’s plan.

Early Black and Latino family planning and abortion rights advocates understood that reproductive justice was crucial to dismantling racism and white supremacy. Christian fascists of color want to revert to a medievalism that would enslave and dispossess Black and Latino families and children, pimping women of color as Old Testament sacrificial lambs.

Sikivu Hutchinson

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of  Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars and the forthcoming Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels.

It may not be a coincidence that General Mills, closely associated with Komen, stated, “We are committed to the fight against breast cancer, and we will continue to partner with organizations that will have the greatest impact in that fight,” and Pepperidge Farms “concluded its relationship” with Komen at the end of 2011 for “business reasons,” timing which dovetailed with the decision by Komen to de-fund Planned Parenthood.  Suddenly, brands associated with Komen now have to review their own brands through the lens of the negative publicity being associated with Komen brings them, through the lens of Komen being allied with right-wing, anti-choice entities and individuals – such as Komen higher-up Karen Handel and former Bush speechwriter Ari Fleischer – and through the lens of what the demonization of Planned Parenthood by Komen means to the public at large.  Suddenly, supporting Komen has become unsafe.

We saw the demonization of ACORN by the Right – and many of us were dismayed when it was forced to dismantle.  But ACORN didn’t have the positive branding, even among many progressives, that Planned Parenthood does.  The Left allowed the message of ACORN’s intrinsic value to be overshadowed by the negativity of the Right’s message; Planned Parenthood had enough juice to stockpile public support, and it had enough juice to draw on that support when it needed it.

The sad part is that Komen misled many progressives into thinking it was a politically neutral entity – progressives were clearly looking the other way as it built an organization of people like anti-choice, anti-Planned Parenthood Karen Handel, and, as reported by Mother Jones, stocked its board with people like Jane Abraham, the General Chairman of Susan B. Anthony List (famous for its disdain of science and rabid anti-choice sentiments) and one of the directors of the Nurturing Network, “a global network of crisis pregnancy centers known for spreading ideology, misinformation and lies to women.”  Also sitting on the board of the “Nurturing Network” is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s wife, Maureen.  It appears that Komen’s ties to right-wing, rabidly anti-choice organizations are broad and deep.

So where were progressives when this was happening?  We must have been asleep at the wheel, must have missed a memo or ten, must have relied on the integrity of Komen to truly have women’s issues at heart and to nurture, not right-wing ideology, but what was best for women’s health issues.

• We trusted Komen while it quietly withdrew financial support for Planned Parenthood and hoped progressives wouldn’t notice.
• We trusted Komen to have the best interests of women at heart, until the “best interests of women” Komen had previously played up turned out to be denying poor women much-needed breast cancer screenings.
• We trusted Komen to remain politically neutral while it quietly filled its ranks with anti-choice zealots.

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell, Komen CEO Nancy Brinker engaged inbizarre explanations involving “good grants” and “metrics.”

Organizations like ACORN failed because right-wing witchhunts caused the glare of negative publicity to shine on them, while Komen operated under cover of darkness, ostensibly maintaining a pure brand while snickering behind their hands at what that pink ribbon really symbolized.

Komen failed us, and in response progressives must firmly abandon this organization.  Komen has thrown its lot in with the right-wing ideologues, while Planned Parenthood still delivers critical medical services to low income women – and Planned Parenthood needs all the help it can get, financially and through public support.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Julie Driscoll
Politics Anonymous 

The problem is that witnesses saw Tucson Unified School District Superintendent John Pedicone’s (Illinois) swaggering thugs “remove” the books from MAS classes as students looked on.

Their cowardly behavior reached new lows when blogger Jeff Biggers wrote that the books had been “banned.” They protested that they were not “banned” but only “removed.”

Let me see if I understand: If the books would have been put on a prohibited list of readings they would have been banned, or better still censored. But, because they were already there and ripped from the sight of students, they were removed.

I have been visiting Tucson for the better part of my life. I could always understand white folk there, although I did not always agree with them. For example, Barry Goldwater was my ideological opposite, but he had an affinity for Arizona that few of the carpetbaggers such as Pedicone have today. He knew many of my relatives, and recognized that you better talk the talk.

Not so with the Arizona carpetbaggers (as distinguished from those of the 1860s who had a purpose). This recent bunch has moved there for the sun and the cash. They do not respect the environment, its traditions or the people. Witness the systematic destruction of Mexican American barrios. What is Old Town Tucson but a pseudo replica of Disneyland?

It is difficult to dumb down language to the level of the locust. So to start with, censorship is thought control. The First Amendment reads,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances…

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that this freedom was critical to a free society.

What is happening in Tucson is a political act designed to control what students and the community read and think. It is not a question of good taste or what is true or not. It was the intentional use of naked political power to suppress a particular people.

Huppenthal was elected on the platform of “stopping La Raza [the people].”

On May 12, 2010 Horne said, “The bill [HB2281] was written to target the Chicano, or Mexican American, studies program in the Tucson school system.” According to the Los Angeles Times, “He singled out one history book used in some classes, ‘Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,’ by Rodolfo Acuna, a professor and founder of the Chicano studies program at Cal State Northridge.”

Horne continued, “To begin with, the title of the book implies to the kids that they live in occupied America, or occupied Mexico.” Horne’s language was pretty clear. He did not say remove but targeted the book and MAS.

As with Horne, others have labeled the book Marxist. A prominent scholar of European history labeled Occupied America, a Marxist book. When pressed on what he based this assumption, he fumbled around and finally said in a deposition that I used the term “hegemony” several times in the text.

In Horne’s case, he did not like the title because, according to him, it “implies” that the United States invaded Mexico – a historical fact. Evidentially, Horne has not read the autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant or Abraham Lincoln’s take on the war.

The truth be told, Occupied America does not refer to occupied Mexico; it refers to occupied America. If Horne had a grasp of Latin American history or geography, he would know that Argentines, Peruvians, Cubans, Central Americans and Mexicans are Americans. Indeed, U.S. secretaries of state have exploited the notion of Pan Americanism for economic advantage. Thus the occupation began in 1492 not 1836 or 1848.

The touted Cambium Audit, which Horne’s successor Huppenthal ordered and the citizens of Arizona paid for, said,

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos is an unbiased, factual textbook designed to accommodate the growing number of Mexican-Americans or Chicano History courses. It is the most comprehensive text in this market according to Amazon. The Fifth Edition of Occupied America has been revised to make the text more user-friendly and student-oriented., while maintain its passionate voice. This text provides a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the major historical experiences of Chicanos that invokes critical thinking and intellectual discussion.

The curriculum auditing team refutes the following allegations made by other individuals and organizations. Quotes have been taken out of context. Therefore, the ‘controversial’ aspects are indicated in italics to demonstrate the claims made by concerned constituents.

Thus the nativists’ hypocrisy gives opportunism a bad name. They care nothing about the truth, they care nothing about Latino students; what they care about is controlling thought by “removing” books and killing a highly successful program.

They want to specifically suppress the thought of Latinos. The reason that they have not targeted Native, African and Asian Americans is that these groups are smaller and consequently more manageable. Latino public school students comprise 43 percent of the public schools, and they want to genetically engineer them.

Everyone in this country should be concerned about the removing or banning of books. They are euphemisms for censorship. What happened in Tucson constitutes an attack and constraint on everyone’s freedom.

The locust have a history of trying to control Mexican American Studies through prior restraint. When this did not work, they demolished the program and banned the books. This banning will have a chilling effect on the publication of future books. Usually, there is the opportunity to dispute the charge in court. This has not happened in Arizona – there was no trial.

Aside from Occupied America, Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado, 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez, Message to Aztlan by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, more than a dozen other books have been banned.

The charges of censorship have shaken the administration. After acting brazenly they are drawing the distinction between “banned” and “removed.” However, the record is the record. The banning of the books did not occur in a vacuum.

I have personally never experienced this level of hypocrisy in over fifty years of activism. It seems as if the locust and I do not speak the same language. It is also frustrating because up to now no one seemed to be listening. How do you deal with people who lie with such impunity?

As for me, it is a badge of honor to appear on the same list as the other banned authors. But what I resent is the draft dodgers, Pedicone, Horne and Huppenthal questioning my patriotism. I volunteered for the draft during the Korean War although I had a student draft deferment. They should check the records; they will learn that Mexican Americans served at a much higher ratio than any group in Tucson.

So my advice to them is not be so be opportunistic and hypocritical. The Tucson cabal is giving these words a bad name. Horne said that 2281 targeted Mexicans and specified which books it was going to get rid of. Huppenthal has not listened to facts and pressured the TUSD to ban MAS and the books. As for Pedicone, he is the bagman.

Rodolfo F. Acuña

After suffering a seizure and spending a night in the hospital, the actress—who was famously sober for over a decade—is the latest in a long line of celebrities to publicly embrace Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). But how effective are the 12-steps anyway? Is the program more successful than one-on-one psychiatric counseling? Is it more effective than no treatment at all?

The truth is, nobody really knows. Accurate reports about the success rates of 12-step programs like AA and NA are notoriously difficult to obtain. The few studies that have attempted to measure the effectiveness of the program have often been contradictory. Fiercely protective of their anonymity, AA forbids researchers from conducting clinical studies of its millions of members. But the organization does conduct its own random surveys every three years. The result of AA’s most recent study in 2007 were promising. According to AA, 33 percent of the 8,000 North American members it surveyed had remained sober for over 10 years. Twelve percent were sober for 5 to 10 years; 24 percent were sober 1 to 5 years; and 31 percent were sober for less than a year.

The study didn’t disclose how long each person interviewed had been working the rooms to achieve sobriety. It also revealed little about the percentage of people who attended AA, relapsed, and left the program. A 1990 summary of five different membership surveys (from 1977 through 1989) reported that 81 percent of alcoholics who engaged in the program stopped attending within a year. And only 5% of the AA attendees surveyed had been attending meetings for more than a a year.

One report found AA and cognitive behavioral therapy to be equally effective, statistically speaking. “It was the initial decision to get better that determined a person’s chances of succeeding,” an expert says. “What followed made little difference. Although AA doubtless helps some people, it is not magic.”

“When you look at people just taking themselves to a meeting, long-term abstinence is pretty low,” admits Dr. David Sack, an addiction psychiatrist and the chief executive of Promises Treatment Centers. “But the fact is it works well for the people who work it.”

But how does AA stack up against other treatments, like cognitive behavioral therapy? A 2007 study by the National Council on Alcoholism’s medical journal reported that people attending 12-step treatment programs had a 49.5% abstinence rate after a single year. Those who were in CBT programs were less successful, maintaining a 37%  abstinence rate. It almost seems too close to call. And it doesn’t take into account people who try and try again. The difficulty with measuring AA’s effectiveness is that it’s not really a treatment program. It is a support network of non-professionals that offers a model for abstinence.

“Health care professionals want to study treatment and that’s understandable,” says Sack. “But it’s not like studying the effectiveness of a drug. AA’s view is ‘that’s not our problem if you think it works or not because we are here to help and support each other.’”

Demi Moore

Twelve-step literature routinely stresses the importance of service, encouraging its members to give of themselves to others through sponsoring of fellow alcoholics or even making coffee. Independent studies have affirmed that concept. In a 2004 survey published in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, alcohol addiction researcher Sarah Zenmore reported that giving support helped recovering alcoholics and addicts to maintain their sobriety. “Studies have shown that AA involvement is a strong predictor of sustained recovery,” she reported. That included “meeting attendance as well as helping activities such as doing service in the AA fellowship and being a sponsor.”

How alcoholics come to arrive at AA is another strong predictor of their future sobriety. Call it the Big Boss effect. One study found that people who were directed to attend the program by a counselor or physician boasted abstinence rates of 60 percent. “Adding a little pressure on the front end,” says Sack, “may make a huge benefit from what people get out of it. Even if it’s done by telephone.”

When you consider the gears and levers of AA, it’s not all that different than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which attempts to treat alcoholism from a psychological perspective that stresses rewards and punishment. Twelve-step programs serve up the same pragmatic tips and tools: the idea of ‘stinking thinking’ for negative thoughts; learning what people, places and events will trigger your drinking or drugging; planning activities rather than running around helter skelter. And likewise CBT doctors encourage you to seek out support groups—like AA.

In 2006, a study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that out of 628 people, the ones who went to AA for 27 weeks or more had better 16-year outcomes for such factors as good social functioning and abstinence than those had no treatment at all. So at least it seems that AA is better than nothing, right? Not so fast, says Deborah A. Dawson, a respected epidemiologist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. In her 2005 article in the journal Addiction, Dawson pointed out that many health problems often improve on their own through what’s known as “spontaneous remission.” Everyone gets over a flu or a headache, sometimes even without Nyquil or common aspirin. She calculated that the natural rate of recovery for alcoholism was 24.4 percent. In other words, over the course of one year, a quarter of alcoholics got tired and just gave up. No meetings. No treatment. No nothing. They just woke up one day and said, “Enough.”

Of course, it’s probable that many people die off before they “mature out.” . The toughest barrier to measuring the effectiveness of AA is a difference in value systems. AA places the highest value on abstinence. But a growing number of clinical researchers are willing to consider other, less ideal outcomes, like the occasional backslider or binger. Indeed, ‘harm-reduction’ has become an increasingly used buzzword among many treatment professionals. “Many people go through treatment and then they use drugs less and that is unhealthy,” says Sack.  “It doesn’t mean they’re doing as well as they could. But their behaviors have moderated as a result of those treatments. And that’s not a bad thing.”

A number of experts have criticized AA’s all-or-nothing mentality, not because it’s an unworthy goal, but because it puts unbearable pressure on people who can’t live up to so high a standard. Their philosophy is that once you start to backslide you’re powerless to stop it.

It may be that none of these things really matter. One of the most illuminating reports on the topic appeared in 2005 in the online journal BMC Public Health. It analyzed data of an 8-year study that found AA, CBT and motivational enhancement therapy were all equally effective, and reported that nearly all the effect of the treatment was achieved, much like waterboarding, after attending a single session. “It was the initial decision to get better that determined a person’s chances of success,” said Dr. Bankole Johnson, chairman of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, and author of The Rehab Myth: New Medications That Conquer Alcoholism. “What followed made little difference. Although AA doubtless helps some people, it is not magic.”

No one who has spent time in AA would disagree. And if Demi Moore finds herself in the rooms trying dig out of out the dark hole she’s been cast in, she’ll no doubt find out, too. And we’ll all also know the results one way or another.

Kevin Gray
The Fix 

This behavior may be due to simple ignorance, although it is hard to believe that elected officials, some having been in public service for more than three decades, are still unaware of the Bill of Rights or the Brown Act.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission was taken to task for convening the body without proper notice to the public of the meeting or its agenda, a violation of California’s Brown Act, also known as the Open Meeting Law.

The meeting was cancelled abruptly, prompting Commissioner Bernard Parks to chastise the Coliseum Interim General Manager John Sandbrook for allowing the meeting to take place without letting the Commission know that simply participating in the meeting could be a violation of the law.

One might suggest that the Brown Act violation is the least of the Commission’s worries, coming on the heels of charges that the Commission has been engaged in secret sessions that address a proposal to give operational control of the financially floundering stadium to USC.

This casualness with the law comes on the heels of the recent revelation that Coliseum officials have given over a million dollars in cash to a union official who was then responsible for the wages of the Coliseum stagehands, all with no oversight and accountability for appropriate taxes, insurance, and benefits.

As the US Labor Department and the District Attorney investigate this and other operational and financial irregularities, the Commissioners fall back on the favorite legal defense of elected officials, “I had no idea!”

LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky exclaimed “I was never made privy to, nor informed of, financial statements of any kind that documented any cash payments to anyone.”

Whew!

Zev was recently in the news for his attempt, in his new role as the Chair of the LA County Board of Supervisors, to limit public comment during Board sessions, a move that violates the Brown Act and demonstrates his contempt for public participation and free speech.

Keep in mind that Coliseum audits tend to follow media inquiries, demonstrating the value of public participation in the process and transparency in the management of public assets.

As for the Board of Supervisors, Zev recently introduced a motion to revise the rules in order to “improve the way Board meetings are conducted.” If approved, the new rules of order would mean simply participating in the Board meetings could be a violation of the law.

Open Meeting advocates, from the League of Women Voters to Bob Blue, pointed out that the public can’t be limited to general comments but have the right to comment on agenda items as they come up. They also pointed out that the proposed requirement to require speakers to provide their names and addresses also violates the law.

The open and transparent attempt to violate the Brown Act can only be attributed to contempt of the public, arrogant hubris, or complete and thorough ignorance of the law.

Whatever the explanation, it speaks volumes for the environment of neglect that has allowed the Coliseum to flounder while management paid their own companies to provide services and collected compensation from other Coliseum vendors, all while delivering suitcases of cash to the local union.

Typically, when officials such as the LA County Board of Supervisors or LA’s City Council are sworn in, the oath of office starts with a commitment to uphold the law of the land. Yet when it includes allowing the public to criticize them or to watch them engage in the public’s business, this oath falls by the wayside.

Miki Jackson and John Walsh recently went to LA’s City Council to speak during public comment on the demise of the CRA, an occasion that drew speakers from all perspectives and offered the City of LA an opportunity to participate in a violation of the 1st Amendment.

The City Council’s Sergeant at Arms, a sworn peace officer in uniform and armed with a gun, informed Jackson and Walsh that they couldn’t hold a sign while they were speaking nor could they even sit in chambers while in possession of the sign.

This violation of the 1st Amendment took place and as Jackson and Walsh left chambers, a member of the City Attorney’s office chased them down and urged them to return, demonstrating that somebody in chambers was familiar with the Bill of Rights guarantee of Free Speech and the Brown Act guarantee that criticism is a form of public comment.

This isn’t the first time that the City Attorney’s office has jumped to protect its client from violating the law.

Simply attending Council, Committee, and Commission meetings typically includes a demand for identification in violation of the Brown Act which guarantees open meetings and the right to participate without identification restrictions. (for those who worry about security issues, go visit the state capital. There is still security screening, they simply don’t require you to identify yourself)

The DWP Commission was well into its agenda when a member of the public entered to announce that the meeting was talking place in violation of the Brown Act because security was restricting access. The City Attorney’s representative jumped to his feet and acknowledged that the DWP’s policy of requiring identification was a violation of State law.

For those that question the significance of a simple ID violation, consider that the public agencies and authorities who are cavalier about such specifics are demonstrating a casualness with the law that typically reflects additional and deeper inappropriate or illegal behavior.

A member of City Planning recently stood next to a member of City Hall’s General Services Police Department and blocked entrance to a meeting of a Brown Act governed body to anyone who didn’t show identification. The city employee assured the public that they were trained in Brown Act rules and city staff reiterated their refusal to allow members of the public to attend or participate in the meeting until they produced identification.

This obstinate behavior, even when confronted by the law, speaks volumes to the uphill battle that the public faces when challenging plans, proposals, policies, codes, laws, and other actions that our elected officials and public employees advance on our behalf without our participation or approval.

The City Planning employee committed a misdemeanor, prosecutable because it took place in the presence of a sworn law enforcement officer. Typically, Brown Act violations require a claim of violation and a “demand for cure” which amounts to a do-over of the meeting or agenda item in question.

LA’s Police Commission also demonstrates a cavalier attitude to the Brown Act, either out of ignorance or arrogance, either way a bad sign for the body that purports to have oversight and accountability for the LAPD as it engages in the business of upholding the law.

Whether it’s your 1st Amendment fight to free speech or your Brown Act right to receive notice of meetings, speak in public, review documents before they are acted on, and simply witness the proceedings without hassle, the City of LA and the County of LA are far from a tradition of compliance.

Whether or not you care about the inner machinations of Coliseum management or the demise of the CRA or the details of Brown Act guarantees to open meetings, it’s important that you stand up for those that do.

Whether or not you care about access to City Planning or the DWP Commission or the Police Commission or any of the bodies that act on your behalf, it’s important that you stand up for those that do.

If you care about accountability in our government, it is imperative that you demand that those who are conducting the people’s business abide by the law, in everything they do.

When our elected officials violate the Bill of Rights and California State Law, they have violated their oath of office and clearly demonstrated that they are unfit to serve.

Stephen Box
City Watch 

Wednesday, America’s most well-known breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen succumbed to right-wing pressure and ended its partnership with Planned Parenthood, pulling around $600,000 in grants that allow the women’s health organization to provide breast cancer exams for low-income women. Today on the House floor, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) — a “big booster” for the foundation and a participant in its iconic Race for the Cure event — announced that she would no longer support the organization over it’s decision.

Noting that the foundation based their decision to sever ties on anti-choice advocate Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) “spurious congressional investigation” into Planned Parenthood, Speier blasted Komen for falling into the trap of a “political sandbox.” “A hearing has never been held,” she noted. “I guess it means that Susan G. Komen has become a 501(d)(4), because no longer do they want to be providing nonprofits, they want to become a political advocacy group,” she said.

Speier also pointed out the particular irony of another nearly simultaneous statement from the Komen foundation noting that the rate of breast cancer screening for women without insurance is around 38 percent.

Komen issued an updated statement on their decision, “Grant making decisions are not about politics—our priority is and always will be the women we serve. Making this issue political or leveraging it for fundraising purposes would be a disservice to women.” Maybe the organization should take its own advice.Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood provided 700,000 screenings for low-income and uninsured women last year alone. By bowing to right-wing fear-mongering, Komen is helping to cripple one of its own key efforts.

Tanya Somanader
Think Progress 

SB 810 author Senator Mark Leno

Senate Rejects SB 810 – Bill Solving Healthcare & Budget Crisis:

Coalition gears up to build statewide grassroots movement and win universal healthcare

The Campaign for a Healthy California (CHC) today denounced the failure of the California Senate to pass SB 810, the California Universal Care Act. The bill died when it remained two votes short of passage.

Democrats fell short of previous levels of support, which successfully passed similar bills through the legislature twice before, only to be vetoed by then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. This year 19 voted in favor of the bill, two against, and four abstaining in spite of intensive efforts at persuasion by grassroots proponents. The bill received no support from Republicans.

Democrats voting against the bill were

• Ron Calderon (SD-30, Southeast Los Angeles) and
• Lou Correa (SD-31, Santa Ana).

The six abstentions, which is equivalent to a “no” vote, came from Democrats

• Alex Padilla (SD-20, San Fernando Valley),
• Juan Vargas (SD-40, San Diego),
• Roderick Wright (SD-25, Compton), and
• Michael Rubio (SD-16, East Bakersfield).

No Republican vote for the bill.

The California Universal Care Act would have created a single public health insurance program for all Californians, much like an improved Medicare-for-All plan that has been proposed at the federal level.

CHC member organizations spoke out against the disappointing vote, “Nurses will not give up on winning guaranteed universal healthcare, like SB 810” stated DeAnn McEwen, RN, Co-President of the California Nurses Association, “because we will not abandon our patients who need this vital reform.”

Nan Brasmer, President of the California Alliance for Retired Americans, stated: “This is a very sad day for seniors and all Californians. With millions of us uninsured or underinsured, SB 810 offered the only solution to our skyrocketing health care costs while covering everyone. And the added bonus is that it would save the State billions of dollars once implemented, at a time when essential programs for seniors are being slashed and out of pocket costs for health care have gone through the roof. We will continue to fight for single payer in the legislature and at the ballot box.”

SB 810 would create a new California Healthcare System to provide health insurance for all Californians, replacing the private insurance providers. Critics claim that such as system, often referred to as “single payer,” would be too costly.

“Not true,” said Dr. Henry L. Abrons, President of PNHP California. “Currently the U.S. spends twice as much as any other country on health care. We have plenty of money in the system, enough to insure 100% of us; we just need to spend it more wisely.”

Abrans continued, “The best way to save money is to take the private insurers out of the system. They are responsible for 30% of each healthcare dollar being lost to pay for exorbitant CEO salaries, lobbyists, sales and marketing, administration and shareholder profit. Medicare’s overhead by contrast is only 3%. Californians would still be free to seek services from any medical provider in the private sector — only the financing would change. The difference is that that everyone in California would be fully covered.”

Joseph Foy, spokesman for the California Health Professional Student Alliance said, “Grassroots activists are not deterred by this setback in the Senate. The movement for single-payer health insurance is growing stronger every day among students who are the doctors, nurses, and other caregivers of the future.”

“Healthcare is a human right,” Progressive Democrats of America’s California State Coordinator and Emergency Physician Dr Bill Honigman stated, “It is immoral for businesses to profit from the illness of others, just as we would not expect them to profit from other public services such as police, fire, or education.”

“We’re disappointed today, but this is just the beginning of our efforts to win quality, comprehensive health care for all,” said Pilar Schiavo, the CHC Campaign Coordinator, “We will continue to build on the momentum we have created through our recent actions and statewide activism, and build an even broader and more powerful grass roots movement to ensure we win universal healthcare in California.”

The Campaign for a Healthy California represents over 1.4 million Californians and includes: California Alliance for Retired Americans, Physicians for a National Health Program – California, California Health Professional Student Alliance, Communication Workers of America – District 9 (California & Nevada), Health Care For All, Single Payer Now, California Nurses Association, California OneCare, California School Employee Association, Democracy For America, The Progressive Caucus of California, and Progressive Democrats of America.

Pilar Schiavo
510.385.4213
Coordinator, Campaign for a Healthy California
info@HealthyCaliforniaCampaign.org

Yet when City Hall makes a promise to the people of LA, it comes in a verbal assurance that gets bookended with “Don’t worry!” and “Trust me!”

The City of LA is fast to find fault with its residents and slow to accept responsibility for its mistakes, a pattern that is demonstrated by its reluctance to put things in writing when it puts the City of LA in an unfavorable position.

Consider the mid-city family who requested permission to park in their driveway, between the curb and the sidewalk. The LADOT inspected their property and a supervisor gave them a verbal assurance that their habit of parking parallel to the sidewalk while leaving it clear was within code. A decade of parking officers respected their unique use of limited space and all was well.

Then the LADOT began writing tickets.

The fight was on but the residents had nothing in writing from the LADOT’s now-retired supervisor.

The LADOT’s General Manager was purportedly following the City Attorney’s “instructions” regarding the new interpretation of the law governing apron parking, a dubious claim for two reasons.

• First, the City Attorney advises his client, the City Family, and he doesn’t direct General Managers. Unless they’re simply shifting the blame to him to avoid taking responsibility for the unpopular decision or action.

• Second, the City Attorney is often quoted for positions that don’t make it to print. Verbal CA positions are referenced in Animal Services when the volunteer program was iced, in the LAPD when policies and interpretations are debated, and in neighborhood councils when Brown Act challenges are made.

Where is this huge body of City Attorney interpretive work? Why is there no archive of City Attorney opinions that could be used to guide the City Family with some sense of even application of the law and policy?

Within Council District 13, a local community member has engaged in a campaign of Code Harassment against members of adjacent neighborhoods, one that has spanned several years and has disrupted the lives of hundreds of families.

Most recently, 177 families were subjected to Over Height Fence complaints, all within a small neighborhood that is densely populated and home to two gang injunctions.

The families received written notices of fees, fines, and penalties for non-compliance with the city’s 42” limit on front yard fences. Then the City Attorney’s office issued written notices threatening “garnishment, liens, and other legal action” if the bills weren’t paid.

Through it all, the individual families could “buy” a variance for $4800, a form of Code Harassment extortion that legalizes the illegal for a fee.

Councilmember Eric Garcetti introduced a motion calling on Planning, Building & Safety, and the City Attorney to report back with recommendations on creating tools to address the community’s desire to address public safety issues with fences.

It was in writing.

The motion also called for recommendations on lifting the financial claims and liens. This motion was followed up by a written letter to Building & Safety that called for a moratorium on any action regarding existing and new cases.

This was wonderful news to the community members who were on the receiving end of City of LA written claims and threats.

But it didn’t come with written assurance that their specific cases were covered by the moratorium, that the fees, fines, and penalties were frozen or waived, and that the threat of “garnishment, liens and other legal action” no longer applied.

Specifically, the people who had received written claims and threats from the City of LA wanted to receive written notices that the claims and threats had been rescinded.

After all, when the City of LA wanted money, it knew who they were and where they lived. What would be so hard about simply sending a followup letter from the same departments that made the initial claim, putting the new status in writing.

Eight months after the initial barrage of Code Harassment charges, no written verification of the current status has been offered by the City of LA.

Three months after the City Council motion addressing the situation, no written verification of the current status has been offered by the City of LA.

To this day, the 177 families who live under the cloud of Code Harassment have files full of written claims and threats but they do not have a written assurance from the City of LA that they are free to enjoy the verbal promises that simply never make it to paper.

This pattern of “Don’t worry!” and “Trust me!” comes from all directions, including Public Works. Even something as simple as taking the trash out includes relying on verbal assurances from a Supervisor that the location and use of dumpsters is approved.

Of course, city staff gets furloughed, transferred, and retired which leaves residents at the mercy of a verbal tradition of supervision and enforcement that gets backed up by a written system of claims and threats.

With authority comes responsibility and if City Hall wants to truly demonstrate leadership, it will start by taking responsibility for its decisions and actions by putting them in writing, not just the threats, but also the assurances of compliance and forgiveness.

Stephen Box
CityWatch 

The demise of redevelopment agencies, however, does not mean that we have to abandon the noble and necessary goal of public investment in distressed communities. To do so would punish those most in need and make it virtually impossible to address the poverty and unemployment currently faced by millions of Californians.

It is now up to the state legislature to act quickly to give cities a new tool to create good jobs, affordable housing and more sustainable communities. Here are three steps the legislature and Governor Jerry Brown can take to make this a reality.

First, scratch the word “redevelopment,” which has made many well-meaning neighborhood groups bristle at the thought of big developers coming in to “redo” things.  In 2012, California neighborhoods —while distressed — are by and large “developed” and don’t need to be flattened, cleared or re-created, as the word redevelopment implies.  In fact, many distressed communities are actually cultural landmarks and have numerous historic structures that simply need some investment.  So let’s create a Community Revitalization Program that gives cities a set of practical tools to renew and improve what’s already there.

Second, let’s make this new program fit our collective vision for 21st Century sustainable cities.  The legislature has created a new framework for sustainable urban development that has yet to receive any significant funding.  Senate Bill 375, championed by Senate Pro Tem leader Darrell Steinberg, mandates that cities and regions develop plans to integrate mass transit with housing development and create more sustainable urban environments.  Assembly Bill B32, California’s celebrated climate change amelioration bill, requires all Californians to reduce our carbon footprint during the next 18 years.  On top of these groundbreaking laws, we have the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s projected $72 billion investment in the build-out of 12 new transit lines in L.A. County, with hundreds of new transit stops projected for L.A.’s neighborhoods. Let’s give cities a tool to bring all of these mandates together — doing so would go a long way toward creating the sustainable urban environments California needs.

Finally, let’s give cities a tool to help get us out of this Great Recession.  As economist Joseph Stiglitz recently argued, we need government investment to help incentivize the kinds of things that the private market will not deliver on its own. That means living-wage jobs and careers for the people in greatest need, public infrastructure and affordable housing.

This new tool should be precision-crafted so that everyone understands what the terms are:  Public dollars can only be spent on projects that create construction careers, permanent living-wage jobs and affordable housing units for people who live in or near the areas where the development is proposed.  Investors and developers who don’t want to be part of the solution should use private banks, not scarce public dollars.

While the death of California’s redevelopment agencies is a blow to cities, this could also be a moment of opportunity to create a more vibrant, equitable and sustainable future for all Californians and a model for the country.

Madeline Janis
The Frying Pan