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Judge Rules LA Must Stop Taking & Destroying Homeless People’s Property

April 15, 2016 Elijah Chilang, www.la.curbed.com , ,
By Elijah Chilang for Curbed - The city of Los Angeles has run into another setback in its ongoing quest to confiscate the property of homeless residents. A US Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday that local law enforcement has gone too far in seizing the property of homeless individuals without sufficient reason. As the LA Times reports, the judge issued an injunction that stops the city from taking belongings without sufficient notice and—in the event that property is confiscated—makes the city sort through it and store items of value.

New LA Law: Homeless Can Only Own Trashcan’s Worth Of Belongings

April 11, 2016 Brianna Acuesta, www.trueactivist.com , ,
By Brianna Acuesta for True Activist - The city of LA just passed a law limiting the possessions of homeless people to one trashcan's worth of things. As though homeless people don’t already own so little possessions, the city of Los Angeles just passed a law saying that the amount of things a homeless person can own must fit inside of a trashcan. They even have size dimensions for the trashcan, noting that the items must fit in a 60-gallon trashcan and the lid must close over it.

Newsletter: Justice Takes A Lifetime

March 19, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The #BlackLivesMatter movement continues to grow its power and have notable victories, but 600 hundred years of racial oppression, older than the nation itself, will not be rooted out quickly. The movement had a series of electoral and other victories this week. These victories for #BLM and their supporters are notable but problems still persist and the movement must continue to grow and get stronger. There are no quick fixes to a country that is crippled by its history of racism. We must all recognize that the work we are doing for racial, economic and environmental justice requires us to be persistent and uncompromising. achieve the transformational justice we seek will last our lifetimes – a marathon and not a sprint.

LA Police Commission: De-Escalate, Stop The Killing

March 17, 2016 Thandisizwe Chimurenga, www.dailykos.com , , ,
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga for Daily Kos - Members of Los Angeles’ Police Commission have called for “significant” changes regarding the use of deadly force by the city’s cops. According to a new report, they want to make sure that Los Angeles Police Department officers did all they could in the past to de-escalate tense situations, and they want to urge the city’s cops to do all that they can in the future to de-escalate before they have to use significant force. Yes, that sounds like common sense.

L.A.’s Slow-Moving Oil And Gas Disaster

February 13, 2016 Laura Bliss, www.citylab.com , , , ,
By Laura Bliss for City Lab - Prior to October 2015, many homeowners in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles were unaware that they lived next door to one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the nation. Against the copper hills of the northern San Fernando Valley, their gated clusters of multi-story villas, arranged on neat curves and cul-de-sacs, probably felt worlds away from toxins and industry. Then came the largest methane gas leak in U.S. history.

#BLM Activists In LA Were Shackled In Jail Over Christmas

February 1, 2016 Hillel Aron, www.laweekly.com , , ,
By Hillel Aron for LA Weekly - In the two days before Christmas, Black Lives Matter activists staged protests nationwide. Hundreds swarmed the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Protestors in Chicago hit the area's so-called "Magnificent Mile" shopping district. And in Los Angeles, a dozen or so activists shut down our most sacred of cows: the 405 freeway. Activists were arrested in Chicago, Minneapolis and elsewhere, but according to Melina Abdullah, L.A.'s protestors were dealt with particularly harshly.

Suit Accuses City & LAPD Of Violating Protesters’ Rights

January 18, 2016 Richard Winton, www.latimes.com , , , ,
By Richard Winton for Los angeles Time - Individuals arrested in Los Angeles while protesting the killing of a black man in Ferguson, Mo., have filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the city and police of violating their constitutional rights. The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that in November 2014, the Los Angeles Police Department surrounded several hundred protesters as they marched downtown and in the Westlake district. Police then arrested or detained and questioned dozens of individuals without lawful dispersal orders, the suit says.

Police Chief Wants Officer Charged For Killing Unarmed Man

January 12, 2016 Carimah Townes, www.thinkprogress.org , , , ,
By Carimah Townes for Think Progress - Between 2000 and 2014, the LAPD shot an average of one person every week. Yet no officer has been charged for a fatal shooting in the last 15 years. If Police Chief Charlie Beck gets his way, that could change soon. Despite push-back from his colleagues, Beck has recommended that Officer Clifford Proctor be charged for shooting and killing an unarmed homeless man in Venice last year. Proctor and his partner said Brendon Glenn was harassing customers and confronted a bouncer. The officers claimed Proctor shot Glenn while he was reaching for one of their weapons. But sources who saw video surveillance of the shooting told the Los Angeles Times that the police officers had successfully brought Glenn down to the ground when Proctor walked away and fired the gun. According to the anonymous sources, Glenn tried to stand up and was struggling before he was killed, but did not act in a way that explained the shooting.

Striking Port Truck Drivers Dig In Against Wage Theft

November 17, 2015 Dan Braun, www.capitalandmain.com ,
By Dan Braun for Capital and Main - As Capital & Main reported yesterday, drivers with one of the larger trucking companies serving the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike just before dawn Monday. They struck XPO Logistics, a major international freight transportation company, while at the same time other drivers picketed Pacific 9 Transportation as they entered the 15th week of a strike against that company. These drivers are on the front lines of a critical fight impacting the future of work in the United States. “Misclassification,” a condition in which companies wrongly treat their workers as “independent contractors” rather than as employees, is a growing problem that is receiving increasing attention.

Labor Unrest Continues At West Coast Ports

September 29, 2015 David Moberg, www.inthesetimes.com.com , ,
By David Moberg for In These Times - The nation’s largest port—spread across parts of both Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA—is a strangely varied workplace. And after years of tenacious effort, workers throughout the port may soon share one important tool their predecessors once had: a union and, therefore, a better job. At one extreme of the state's ports, there are longshore workers who belong to one of the most progressive unions in the U.S., the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. It has brought annual incomes of over $100,000 and higher skilled work to many of its members, once regarded as low-skilled. Once these jobs were unionized and paid reasonably decent “middle-class wages,” but the unions—mainly Teamsters—lost their contracts and members.

Amazon Workers Strike For Better Pay & Working Conditions

September 28, 2015 Cora Lewis, www.buzzfeed.com , ,
By Cora Lewis in Buzz Feed - Staff at a major Los Angeles warehouse serving Amazon and other big retailers went on strike Tuesday, protesting unpaid wages and overtime, dangerous conditions, a lack of breaks and water during hot summer months, and retaliation by management against their organizing efforts. The strike continued on Wednesday. The stoppage is the latest tactic in a campaign to improve conditions at the distribution center at the Port of Los Angeles, according to Sheheryar Kaoosji, director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. Workers and advocates have previously filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint, a class-action lawsuit, and an Occupational Safety and Health complaint, the last of which triggered an ongoing investigation.

Here’s How We Free U.S. Cities From Wall Street Control

September 24, 2015 Saqib Bhatti, www.occupy.com , ,
By Saqib Bhatti in Occupy - To try to balance its budget, Los Angeles had enacted hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts over the previous five years. City jobs had been slashed by 10 percent, flood control procedures had been cut back, crumbling sidewalks were not repaired and alleys were rarely cleared of debris. Sewer inspections ceased entirely; the number of sewer overflows doubled from 2008 to 2013. The campaign slogan wrote itself: “Invest in our streets, not Wall Street!” At the city council debate, Timothy Butcher, a worker with the Bureau of Street Services, got up and said, “I don’t know a whole lot about high finance. I’m just a truck driver. But I do know, if I go to a bank and they give me a bad deal, I don’t deal with that bank any more. And I don’t understand why the city can’t use the same kind of concept on some of these big banks, saying, ‘Hey, help us out or, you know, we’re not going to deal with you any more.’ ” The City Council approved the resolution unanimously.

L.A. To Declare ‘State Of Emergency’ On Homelessness

September 24, 2015 Peter Jamison, David Zahniser and Matt Hamilton, www.latimes.com ,
By Peter Jamison, David Zahniser and Matt Hamilton in LA Times - Acknowledging their failure to stem a surge in homelessness, Los Angeles’ elected leaders on Tuesday said they would declare a “state of emergency” and devote up to $100 million to the problem. But they offered few details about where the money would come from or how it would be spent, leaving some to question the effort’s chances of success. The announcement by seven City Council members and Mayor Eric Garcetti was a powerful signal of growing alarm at City Hall over L.A.’s homeless population, which has risen 12% since 2013, the year Garcetti took office. It coincided with a directive from the mayor Monday evening that the city free up an additional $13 million in the coming months to help house people living on the streets.

Teachers’ Union Protests Eli Broad’s Support Of Charter Schools

September 22, 2015 Adrienne Bankert, www.abc7.com , , , ,
By Adrienne Bankert in ABC7 - A crowd of protesters with United Teachers Los Angeles held a rally outside The Broad on the museum's opening day Sunday. Hundreds of parents, teachers and students clad in red T-shirts held up signs and chanted outside the new contemporary art museum, which opened its doors to the public Sunday morning. The protesters said they are not against the museum but are against Eli Broad's reported plan to try to expand charter schools throughout the city of Los Angeles. Broad reportedly plans to put between half a billion and a billion dollars into unregulated, non-union charter schools, that could draw half of the district's students. The teachers' union fears these schools would not be accountable to the public, would cherry-pick their students, and keep parents from being able to interact with teachers.

Occupy LA Attorneys Get $668,000 In Fees

September 19, 2015 Elizabeth Warmerdam, www.courthousenews.com , , ,
By Elizabeth Warmerdam in Courthouse News - Attorneys who secured Occupy L.A. protesters a $2.6 million settlement for mass detentions and "militaristic" police tactics were awarded $668,000 in fees by a federal judge. Cheryl Aichele and five other Occupy Los Angeles demonstrators filed a class action in 2012, claiming police used a "shock and awe" campaign to oust hundreds of protesters from the City Hall lawn on Nov. 30, 2011. Officers tightly handcuffed protesters and kept them on buses for 7 hours with no restrooms or water, the protesters said. "In response to requests to use bathroom facilities, they were told to urinate and defecate on themselves, which some were forced to do," according to the protesters, who had camped out around the clock for eight days to protest economic inequality and bank bailouts. Most of the nearly 300 arrested were kept in custody for more than 60 hours. Others had to post the maximum cash bail for a misdemeanor offense.
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