Everybody in the city has received a copy of the letter Southern Christian Leadership Conference President Eric Lee wrote to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa taking him to task for disrespecting specific Black individuals during the botched City Hall opening ceremony for the city’s Black History Month observance. Heck, I received four copies of it, plus a bunch of comments from Black folks around the city who had the same reaction to it as I did: What’s new? Where has Eric Lee been all this time? Villaraigosa has been disrespecting Black people all over this city ever since he’s been in office and Eric Lee didn’t cry foul until the mayor snubbed his buddies so he could cavort with celebrity entertainers. Boo hoo!

Villaraigosa disrespected Black folks when he tried to remove Marguerite LaMotte from the school board when he ran his own candidate against her. He disrespected Black folks when he fired Department of Transportation General Manager Gloria Jeff just as she was working to correct the awful anti-Black racism that permeates that department. He disrespected Black folks when that administrative genius, Marcus Allen, had to leave the mayor’s office because Villaraigosa refused to pay him what he was worth or to appoint him to one of the higher general manager positions in the city. He disrespected Black folks when he undermined LaMotte’s efforts to retain a unified school system rather than a bunch of individual schools operating any way they want for whomever they want. He disrespected Black folks when he created a lily-White male batch of executives to help him run this city.

Villaraigosa disrespected Black folks when he essentially demoted Miriam Scott Long, the one Black deputy mayor he had, by eliminating “education” from her purview and leaving her to be deputy mayor in charge of a piddley two-people entity entitled “Youth and Families.” He is disrespecting Black folks by paying the Rev. Leonard Jackson, his senior advisor for Black people’s business, less than half of what his other advisors get. He is disrespecting Black folks by having no African-Americans on his communications staff except Tyrone Washington, a photographer, and that’s totally inadequate. He disrespected Black folks by failing to show up, as promised, at the annual SCLC dinner and the NAACP national convention kickoff reception but was prominently present at the Grammy Awards and at Beatle Ringo Starr’s Hollywood star ceremony, and he is disrespecting Black folks most egregiously by the absence of any major development in South Los Angeles. There’s plenty in Hollywood, West L.A., Downtown and the West Valley, but none in South L.A.

So, Eric Lee is upset about how Villaraigosa treated him for Black History Month. What was he expecting? Hugs and kisses? I didn’t tell you people to go over there and show the mayor any love. I told you to go over there and throw your shoes at him. I guess you’ll listen to me next time.

THUGS! — What is the difference between a stick-up artist, a home invasion robber, a brigand, a yegg, a pickpocket, a thief and a crook and the Los Angeles City Council? Nothing!!! They’re all the same. They are robbers. They all specialize in taking money from people any way they can and now the City Council is so poised to implement out-an-out banditry upon the public that it might as well just send cops into the streets and have them hijack motorists at gunpoint!

The city stole almost $10 million from motorists last year through its red-light traffic camera holdups, but that’s not enough for our city leaders. They’re looking to increase their heists by doubling the number of red-light traffic cameras to 64 intersections next year, thus widening their net over prospective victims and increasing their take. The city is in a terrible financial crunch and the council sees motorists as easy marks perfect for pillaging with its red-light program, as well as with its newly imposed hefty increases in traffic ticket fines and parking fees.

Cops say the traffic camera trap is a safety issue. Oh pah-leez! It’s blatant highway robbery, so much so that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has put on his thug suit too and called for traffic cameras to be used to raise $300 million in fines to help close the state’s budget shortfall. Schwarzenegger didn’t say he wanted traffic cameras to make drivers safe — he said he wanted to set up traps so he could steal their money! The whole pretense of safety is questionable and under serious scrutiny as other cities are dropping their red-light traffic camera programs claiming that they cause more accidents than they curtail. They find that motorists are stopping suddenly at yellow lights to avoid coming anywhere close to running the upcoming red lights, thus triggering rear-end collisions. It would be safer on all of us if cops were permitted to just pull us over, pull out their guns and tell us to hand over our wallets. It amounts to the same thing.

I’M A LIAR?!! — That %^#@* Drexel Johnson stood before the Carson City Council (and the whole world via videocast) the other night and said everything I wrote in the Jan. 28 Soulvine about his very public foul-mouthed altercation with Carson Councilman Mike Gipson at Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’ Empowerment Congress summit was untrue! He called me a liar!! Drexel is the liar!! The unseemly dust-up between those two and former Compton Mayor Omar Bradley was witnessed by a huge number of disgusted summit attendees, including Olivia Verrett, the Carson NAACP president to whom Drexel bragged about putting Gipson in his place, as well as David Gamboa, assistant to the president of Cal State Dominguez Hills, who asked Drexel, Gipson and Bradley to leave the college campus, as their loud obscenity-laced “discussion” was causing a disturbance. I’m a liar?!

I wouldn’t have known what the fight was about if Drexel, himself, hadn’t told me because none of the annoyed onlookers seemed to know. After the fight (and after the column), I called Drexel to talk to him about his contractors group’s efforts to get work in Haiti. I mentioned the fight and Drexel went off. Drexel said it was nasty and entirely Gipson’s fault. He said Gipson just came on him like a wild man, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and screamed at him because his Young Black Contractors did not contribute to his political campaign. Drexel told me Gipson was yelling and using the F-word and accusing him of supporting white people for office instead of him. “I told him my group didn’t have money to give to any candidate — Black or White — and we didn’t,” Drexel told me. “The brother is crazy, is out-of-control and is always egging to take somebody on in public — like the time he challenged a resident to a fight in the city council meeting. He doesn’t want to listen. There’s something seriously wrong with the brother,” Drexel told me, and to which, of course, I readily agreed.

Does that sound like everything I wrote was untrue? If I had spoken to Drexel before I wrote the Jan. 28 Soulvine, I most certainly would have included his words in it, as it would have made for better reading. But now that he’s branded me a liar, I’ve been given the opportunity to paint a clearer picture of what went on that day — and why. I don’t know what Drexel thinks he’s doing calling me a liar before a room full of people who know he’s the liar, so now Drexel and I have totally fallen out.