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	<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine ]]></title>
	<copyright>Copyright 2012 Copyright © 2011  Los Angeles Wave.  All rights reserved. </copyright>
	<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine</link>
	 			<description><![CDATA[]]></description>
		<language>en-us</language>
	<pubDate>Thu, 9 Feb 2012 01:40:53 PST</pubDate>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 9 Feb 2012 01:40:53 PST</lastBuildDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: I have an idea!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-I-have-an-idea-138540454.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">138540454</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 1 Feb 2012 20:43:44 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																												                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

You know, Councilwoman Jan Perry&rsquo;s lament about the proposed redistricting of the downtown area out of her 9th District and into the 14th would turn her district into an impoverished wasteland is a valid point and should be taken into consideration. If I were a member of the Citizens Redistricting Committee (and I&rsquo;d be the only &ldquo;citizen&rdquo; on it), I would solve that serious problem by taking USC and its environs out of the 8th District and putting it in the 9th District, thus giving Perry&rsquo;s constituents a significant economic boost. Heck, USC alone is rolling in dough, is spending it like water and is chomping at the bit to spend more. Not only would the 9th get USC, but it would also get LA Live, the Staples Center, the Convention Center and the new football stadium everybody seems to want so badly. The combination of all these would be a fantastic economic engine to drive the rest of the 9th District out of its perpetual poverty. After all, USC and the 8th District Councilman Bernard Parks don&rsquo;t get along and the residents in that general area would love to leave Parks, so why not? Granted, such a move would probably break up the odd couple, but who cares about that? Imagine all the jobs that could be generated in the new 9th! And Perry can enact those county-like agreements that give her constituents first dibs at them. This is about what&rsquo;s good for the people for a change, not what&rsquo;s good for the politicians. Just think about it, OK?

ALAS, IT&rsquo;S LAUSD&rsquo;S TURN &mdash; Now it&rsquo;s time for the Los Angeles Unified School District to redraw the boundaries of its seven districts to reflect the changes in the Southland&rsquo;s population over the past 10 years. Toward that end, the LAUSD Redistricting Commission will conduct its pre-draft public hearing on Feb. 9 for District 1, which is represented by board member Marguerite LaMotte. This meeting will be held at Hamilton High School, 2955 S. Robertson Blvd. at 6 p.m. But I would think people would have better things to talk about with LAUSD than redistricting.

I LOVE IT!! &mdash; Council President Herb Wesson made City Council committee assignments last Friday and he took care of some pressing business: He removed Parks from his beloved Budget and Finance Committee. He not only took the chairmanship away from Parks, but he took him off that committee entirely. Tee hee! He also removed Perry from her post as chairwoman of the Energy and Environment Committee and also took her off that committee entirely. I have suddenly developed great affection for little short guys.

NOT IN OUR CITY! &mdash; Inglewood residents got on the Soulvine hoppin&rsquo; mad about the national black eye the city received when first lady Michelle Obama appeared on TV Wednesday morning touting her healthy eating campaign by pointing out the coming opening of a market in Inglewood that will sell fresh vegetables. Inglewood residents took offense at that and pointed out that their little city &mdash; a perennially designated All American City &mdash; is full of supermarkets that provide a constant supply of healthy foodstuffs, including fresh fruits and vegetables. They say Inglewood has a Vons, a Ralphs, a Superior, two Smart &amp; Finals and a Super Smart &amp; Final, all of which provide healthy fresh food at all times.

&ldquo;And why would they choose to broadcast in front of the one old rundown place that&rsquo;s been closed for at least a year instead of showing one of our many thriving supermarkets?&rdquo; asked one resident. &ldquo;And why would Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa come to Inglewood for this? He should have taken Mrs. Obama to one of the many areas in his city where the inaccessibility of good groceries is a problem. No. He came over here to make us look bad &mdash; and our mayor helped him do it,&rdquo; said another.

BROOKINS AGAIN &mdash; What started with the AME-defrocked Rev. Frederick O. Murph and was reportedly compounded by the Rev. Joseph Nixon has now fallen to the Rev. C. Dennis Williams for resolution. The Soulvine learned this week that the perpetually troubled Brookins AME Church has developed a million dollar mortgage and is unable to pay it. However, the newest financial committee, together with the church&rsquo;s newest pastor, Williams, has worked out refinancing for the property so the congregation can avoid looming foreclosure and keep its church. Williams is the second savior to ride to the rescue of Brookins after Murph took it to the cleaners a couple of years ago. Nixon was sent in to undo the damage Murph had done, but they tell me Nixon was worse than Murph! The Brookins folks, alarmed by their deepening financial woes, sought succor from Bishop T. Larry Kirkland, who promptly removed Nixon and sent in Williams. So far, so good.

ON THE POLITICAL FRONT &mdash; Rep. Janice Hahn has run away with the race for representative of the newly created 44th Congressional District. She&rsquo;s been endorsed by just about everybody, including the California Democratic Party, where 79.16 percent of the delegates voted to support her. &hellip; City Controller Wendy Greuel has achieved frontrunner status in her bid to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. By the Dec. 31, 2011 deadline, Greuel had raised $1,107,118 from 1,982 donors for her campaign &mdash; more than anybody else. &hellip; Danette Meyers is building momentum in her race for district attorney. Last week she won the endorsement of the West Hollywood Democratic Club/Beverly Hills Democratic Club right after winning the endorsement of the Stonewall &amp; Stonewall Democratic Club.

KEEP AN EYE ON MIKE &mdash; Despite his heavy heart, Assemblyman Mike Davis has managed to attend to some serious pieces of the people&rsquo;s business. Davis&rsquo; bill to revisit the Three Strikes Law passed the Assembly last week. Davis&rsquo; AB 327 is a measure that would put an initiative on the 2014 ballot to amend Penal Code Sections 667 and 1170.12 so the &ldquo;third strike&rdquo; for a convicted criminal would have be classified as a &ldquo;serious&rdquo; or &ldquo;violent&rdquo; felony. Davis said his bill is necessary to give voters an opportunity to revise the current Three Strikes Law that has led to many unjust sentences over the past 18 years that were not proportionate to the offenses. Davis said there are 23 states in the country with Three Strikes laws, but California is the only one that counts non-violent, non-serious felonies as a third strike. Davis&rsquo; bill passed the Assembly on a 41-33 vote and is headed for the Senate.

Also, Davis is holding his fifth annual Job Fair Saturday in the Wallis Annenberg Building in Exposition Park from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Also, Davis is running for councilman of the 9th District in 2013, when Perry is termed out.

RIP DON CORNELIUS &mdash; A community candlelight vigil and tribute to the memory of legendary music impresario Don Cornelius will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. in Leimert Park.

AND FINALLY &mdash; I don&rsquo;t understand the minds of the people who run our school system. Here they&rsquo;ve got this creepy old man committing atrocities on the children he&rsquo;s supposed to be teaching, and they&rsquo;ve known about it for at least a year and we, the people and the parents, just learned about it this week!!! The school district is so secretive and protective of their precious personnel that they would do this?! What else is going on in the schools? Only God knows. We don&rsquo;t know because the administrators hide stuff from us under the pretext that questionable behavior of school employees &ldquo;is a personnel matter.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s the answer I get to any question I pose about any school district employee. I hate that. I&rsquo;ve always hated that. You can&rsquo;t trust our school district with your kids. There&rsquo;s no telling what&rsquo;s going on in our schools.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Loonies, all of them]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Loonies-all-of-them-138098198.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">138098198</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:23:34 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																												                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

The Republicans are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. First, they resurrect Newt Gingrich as their serious contender to face Barack Obama for the presidency, and then Tuesday night they pick the very man who caused this country&rsquo;s economic woes &mdash; Mitch Daniels, the present governor of that right-to-work state, Indiana &mdash; to deliver the GOP&rsquo;s rebuttal to Obama&rsquo;s State of the Union address. That&rsquo;s insane. 

You might recall that Daniels was President George W. Bush&rsquo;s director of the Office of Management and Budget, which is the largest office in the executive branch. It was Daniels who frittered away the $5.6 trillion budget surplus that President Bill Clinton left, turning it into an eye-popping $2.1 trillion budget deficit by 2003! They picked him to rebut Obama!! He can&rsquo;t even rebut me!! I will give Daniels credit for one thing: He did say Tuesday that Obama is not responsible for the country&rsquo;s financial problems (but he failed to say that he is), but quickly added that Obama has &ldquo;done nothing to solve the problems.&rdquo; 

Daniels went on to criticize the president and relate the better job Republicans can do to improve the economic situation they got us into. I would love to have had the opportunity to posit this to Daniels: &ldquo;Given your acknowledgement that Obama and the Democrats did not create the problem, ergo you and your party did, why should Americans put you guys back into the White House? Haven&rsquo;t you people done enough damage? What makes you think you can fix what you broke?&rdquo; And they say Daniels is a &ldquo;rising star&rdquo; in the GOP and that they fawn over him like he&rsquo;s Justin Bieber. Fascinating! That&rsquo;s positive proof that Republicans everywhere should be shunned and repudiated because they&rsquo;re all crazy. 

WELL, NOW &mdash; Here comes some news we can use: Assembly Speaker John A. Perez has created the Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color and that committee, chaired by Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, held its second hearing in Oakland last Friday. The next one is scheduled for March 2 in Los Angeles. According to Perez&rsquo; spokesman, the new committee is an effort to direct and drive state policy impacting young men of color and is a direct response to a recent study funded by the California Endowment that revealed significant differences between the lives of Black and Latino males and white ones. At Friday&rsquo;s hearing, the committee studied the report, which found that males of color encounter more health problems than white ones, and heard testimony from more than a dozen local school, law enforcement, social leaders and youths that supported the notion that investing state resources for health, education, employment and juvenile justice programs for young men of color creates financial benefits for California.

&ldquo;The information shared at the select committee hearing shows we need to continue supporting youth statewide,&rdquo; Perez said. &ldquo;I applaud the committee&rsquo;s efforts to examine the challenges facing young men and boys of color in our state, and am hopeful these hearings will shine light on the solutions we need.&rdquo; Hearings in Fresno and Sacramento will follow the March 2 hearing here.

STAY OF ELIMINATION? &mdash; State Sens. Curren Price and Alex Padilla have co-authored Senate Bill 659 which would extend the ultimate elimination of the state&rsquo;s redevelopment agencies from Feb. 1 to April 15 to provide more time for the agencies to transfer their current labor agreements and legal and financial obligations to their successor agencies. Price, a member of the very body that eliminated the redevelopment agencies, said of the Legislature&rsquo;s actions: &ldquo;Today, we must balance the needs of economic development against providing funding for our schools and public safety. I believe education is the civil rights issue of our next generation. ... I strongly urge the governor, Legislature and stakeholders to work together to develop new [redevelopment] policies. ... I fully understand the need for using redevelopment as a tool for local economic development.&rdquo;

DOUBLE HONORS &mdash; The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved the appointment this month of Larry Gross to its Low-Income Oversight Board. Gross is the extremely feisty executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival and his new job is to watchdog, advise and liaise between the CPUC and low-income utilities ratepayers &mdash; much like he does for renters through CES. But wait, Gross was also elected this month to the board of directors of the ACLU of Southern California, also putting him on the front line in the battle to win economic justice by protecting folks&rsquo; First Amendment rights.

SINGULAR HONOR &mdash; State Sen. Rod Wright led a freeway dedication ceremony last Friday for a World War II hero who grew up in Watts, came home from the war wounded by shrapnel, obtained his bachelor&rsquo;s and master&rsquo;s degrees at USC, taught for 30 years in the LAUSD and received a belated Medal of Honor from President Clinton. Rudolph B. Davila is his name. He died in 2002. Wright authored SCR 107 to rename the westbound portion of Highway 91 between Central Avenue and Figueroa Street in Carson the Rudolph B. Davila Memorial Freeway, and last Friday in a ceremony attended by his family, the educators with whom he worked and the students he taught, the state of California made it so.

DATEBOOK &mdash; City Controller Wendy Greuel will be the newsmaker featured at the Urban Issues Breakfast Forum&rsquo;s first meeting of the year. Greuel will discuss who is accountable for wasteful and abusive spending in local government and whether anyone is really watching. The forum will be held Friday at 7:30 a.m. in the Crystal Room of West Angeles COGIC&rsquo;s North Campus, 3045 Crenshaw Blvd. The forum is free and open to the public.

Reminder: The 10th District Women&rsquo;s Steering Committee will hold its 37th annual installation luncheon in the Tuskegee Room of the Proud Bird Restaurant from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Brian Nelson, special assistant to Attorney General Kamala Harris, will be the guest speaker.

The Los Angeles NAACP has taken on a new initiative: To build a network of opportunities and pathways to give South L.A. communities access to farmers&rsquo; markets, full-service grocery chains, community gardens and healthy living education. NAACP President Leon Jenkins has coined the term &ldquo;food deserts&rdquo; to describe the isolated areas in the city that lack the above and whose absence result in poor nutritional habits and consequent poor health among residents. The NAACP is convening a meeting to begin dealing with these &ldquo;food deserts&rdquo; on Feb. 4 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Southside Bethel Church, 10400 S. San Pedro St.

PASSINGS &mdash; The grande dame of black journalists, Libby Clark, has died. The 94-year-old &ldquo;Nelly Bly&rdquo; of my profession, whom I&rsquo;ve known well and worked with most of my life, was found in her Village Green home Tuesday morning by her caregiver. &hellip; December and January will go down as the worst months in Assemblyman Mike Davis&rsquo; life. His father, Lawrence Kenneth Davis, died just before Christmas and funeral services were held in Charlotte, S.C. Wednesday for his mother, Myrtle A. Davis. How devastating is that?. &hellip; The family of Etta James announced that a public viewing of the legendary singer who died last week will be held Friday from 5 to 10 p.m. in the Inglewood Cemetery Mortuary&rsquo;s Manchester Chapel, 3801 W. Manchester Blvd. They also said the Rev. Al Sharpton will lead a private memorial service Saturday for the multi-faceted singer. May Libby, Etta and the Davises rest in peace and may the Lord have mercy on Mike.

AND FINALLY &mdash; I found the news commentators who commented on Obama&rsquo;s speech Tuesday night to be biased against him &mdash; at least, the ones I saw. Some of them actually sneered and made ugly faces and belittled his stirring oration as merely a routine campaign speech. Damn the racist, right-wing, corporate mainstream media. I hope they burn in hell. (Orate pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.)]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Sweet!!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Sweet-137640853.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">137640853</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:25:09 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																												                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

According to Tuesday&rsquo;s New York Times, the Black bane of Black people everywhere &mdash; former University of California regent Ward Connerly &mdash; is getting his comeuppance. No, he&rsquo;s not dead, but he&rsquo;s the next best thing: he&rsquo;s in deep trouble! Connerly&rsquo;s closest collaborator in his infamous crusade to strike down affirmative action everywhere he sees it ratted him out as a charlatan; a man who launched his hateful anti-affirmative campaign for money &mdash; for himself, and for lots of it.

You might recall that it was Connerly, the lone Black UC regent, who spearheaded the drive that led to the 1996 passage of the California ballot initiative which outlawed any consideration of race or gender in college admissions and in the awarding of government contracts in the state. Connerly took his anti-affirmative action to other states, and his chief ally and subsequent employee, Jennifer Gratz, was instrumental in the 2003 Supreme Court case that struck down a race-based admissions policy at the University of Michigan.

While he was doing this awful stuff, Connerly founded a group, the Sacramento-based American Civil Rights Institute, into which rich right-wing racist White people poured money to finance the smart, brave pseudo Black man&rsquo;s efforts to keep real Black people down. Now, Gratz has turned on Connerly and informed the group&rsquo;s board that Connerly has been ripping off the foundation&rsquo;s money for his own personal benefit for years, starting with his salary, which was reported to be between $1.2 million and $1.5 million each year(!), a sum which is more than half of all the revenue the organization collects. 

Furthermore, Gratz reported that Connerly&rsquo;s group has eight employees &mdash; five of whom are related to Connerly or have close personal relationships with him.

Check this out: Connerly and his group are currently under investigation by the IRS and by California&rsquo;s own little Black female attorney general, Kamala Harris!! Don&rsquo;t you just love it? 

PARADISE LOST &mdash; This year is only 19 days old, and already the pastor of one of our premier Black churches has been hauled into Superior Court and ordered to appear for a hearing on Jan. 25. The trouble at Paradise Baptist Church between its pastor and the membership came to a head when the church sued its pastor, the Rev. Aaron D. Iverson, over exactly who owns this church &mdash; the pastor or its membership. The plaintiffs in this case are Paradise Baptist Church on South Broadway, a California religious corporation; and Donald Friend, Renee Grant, Theresa Kyles, Brenda Logan and Roderick Swain, the five new trustees the church membership elected at its Dec. 11 membership election meeting. The defendants are Iverson, Kyle Walker, Wesley Todd and James Black, the trustees who were voted out of office on Dec. 11. The problem is this: They refuse to relinquish their offices. They won&rsquo;t give &rsquo;em up. They&rsquo;re here to stay. They won&rsquo;t leave.

According to the court documents, Pastor Iverson, who technically is an employee of the church, appointed himself a trustee in 2009 and then appointed Walker, Todd and Black as trustees in 2010. Now Iverson claims to own the church and to be the sole leader of the Board of Trustees and the church, consequently neither he nor the other three are going anywhere unless he says so. And he refuses to say so.

All last year, Paradise roiled over issues involving disappearing assets, the lack of financial accountability, the termination of longtime and leery church employees and blatant violations of the church&rsquo;s bylaws. Members said throughout the year that their requests for business meetings with the pastor had been ignored. All of these issues led the members to invoke a section of their bylaws that call for an annual business meeting and the election of a five-member Board of Trustees each year. They did that, and since Iverson et al. have refused to budge, the church is asking the court to validate the election and provide injunctive relief. At a court appearance on Jan. 6, the judge scheduled a hearing on the matter for Jan. 25.

Now, Iverson did convene what was purported to be a &ldquo;business meeting&rdquo; on Jan. 8. I have the DVD of that meeting and, frankly, it was a farce. No one was allowed to speak at the meeting accept Iverson. He presented no reports and he handled no business. All he did was praise himself for the wonderful job he says he&rsquo;s done as pastor and rail at the membership about how the church is his because he&rsquo;s the God-chosen leader and as such he isn&rsquo;t supposed to listen to the membership because God speaks to him and he speaks to the membership and the membership is to do as he says because blah, blah, blah. Didn&rsquo;t Jim Jones say something like that?

BAD DAY AT THE MORTUARY &mdash; Just when you thought things were calming down in Inglewood, Royce Esters and his National Association for Equal Justice in America have come up with a dilly. It seems that an active NAEJA member &mdash; a 30-year-old, conservatively dressed, untattooed man &mdash; charges that he and his sister were intimidated and abused by an Inglewood police officer named Rankin on Dec. 22, 2011 while they were attending the funeral of a friend at the Inglewood Mortuary. The mourner said he was manhandled by Rankin, who asked, &ldquo;What gang you (sic) in?&rdquo; and then handcuffed him. The stunned NAEJA activist asked why he was being mistreated, to which Rankin is said to have replied: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in Inglewood and I can do any f@#*ing thing I want!&rdquo; The man and his sister were led off in handcuffs some 20 minutes later with no explanation; their car was towed away, impounded and put on a 30-day hold.

Here is the rub: On Jan. 2, Esters described this incident and asked for an investigation into it and an explanation for it in a letter to Jacqueline Seabrooks, the Inglewood police chief. He sent copies of the letter to Mayor James Butts, to members of the Inglewood City Council &mdash; including Councilman Ralph Franklin, who is also president of the Inglewood NAACP, and to D.A. Steve Cooley and Attorney General Harris. It has been 17 days and none of these people have responded to Esters&rsquo; letter; not even Seabrooks. You know, Esters and them don&rsquo;t play. NAEJA is not the NAACP. This national group is closely allied with the Justice Department and is tenacious when it comes to the lack of equal justice in America. This time, the cops messed over one of their own members! Inglewood needs to deal with this and respond to Esters&rsquo; letter. Remember what NAEJA did to Culver City?

COMING ATTRACTION &mdash; The special assistant to Attorney General Harris, Brian Nelson will be the guest speaker at the 37th annual installation luncheon of the 10th District Women&rsquo;s Steering Committee on Jan. 29. The luncheon, whose theme is &ldquo;Educating, Motivating and Creating Tomorrow&rsquo;s Leaders,&rdquo; will be held in the Tuskegee Room of the Proud Bird Restaurant from 1 to 5 p.m. and will feature music, entertainment, a raffle and prizes. Gloria Gray, a director of the West Basin Municipal Water District, will install the new officers.

GLORIOUS! &mdash; More than 2,000 people attended the Empowerment Congress summit at USC last Saturday where keynote speaker Al Sharpton was magnificent! Alas, I was not there in person, but I saw the video several times and it felt like I was there. Sharpton put the whole thing in its proper perspective and had everybody fired up to get up and go out and do some serious empowering. Sharpton was a speaker who was worth his weight in gold. It was just like the good old days. Thank you, Mark.

AND FINALLY &mdash; So, the Los Angeles City Council has another cop on it. Humph.

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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Boycott Koch!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Boycott-Koch-137152238.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">137152238</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:57:46 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																												                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

The San Fernando Valley and Northeast Los Angeles Chapters of the National Organization of Women (NOW) have joined with the California League of Latin American Citizens to form the Misma Pagina (Same Page) Coalition and launched a boycott against the products of the infamous Koch family, headed by elderly billionaire brothers David H. and Charles Koch. These brothers and their kin are notoriously and blatantly anti-union, anti-worker, anti-human rights, anti-American and are funding an ultra-ultra right wing political agenda set on the abolition of Social Security, minimum wage laws and all federal agencies. They espouse laissez faire gone amok and are waging all-out war against President Barack Obama &mdash; and against us!

These old men are crazy and have money to burn (like those old men in that TV milk commercial) and their Koch Industries make a lot of things we buy and use everyday without a moment&rsquo;s thought. This boycott of Koch-made products is spreading, as every group that has heard about it has joined it. Do not give these people your money. Do not buy any Georgia-Pacific products or anything Georgia-Pacific makes, such as Stainmaster carpet and Lycra fiber. Do not buy Angel Soft, Quilted Northern or Soft &rsquo;n Gentle toilet paper, because they are made by Koch Industries. Also, do not buy Brawny paper towels, Mardi Gras, Sparkle, Vanity Fair or Zee napkins, and do not buy Dixie plates, bowls, napkins or cups, as they, too, are manufactured by Koch Industries. Google these Koch people and you&rsquo;ll get a better idea of why you shouldn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ll give you some more taboo products next week.

BEING &rsquo;BUKED AND SCORNED &mdash; You know, there comes a time when a person with a devilish bent such as mine has to pray really, really hard not to hate White people. That time came twice last week when two White Republicans who want to become president went out of their way to insult Black people. First, Newt Gringrich said he wants to go to the NAACP and urge Black people to demand paychecks, not food stamps. He said at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, &ldquo;The African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.&rdquo; After that, Gingrich&rsquo;s rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Rick Santorum, said he did not want to &ldquo;make Black people&rsquo;s lives better by giving them somebody else&rsquo;s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.&rdquo;

Do these two racist #@%s of $^&amp;%*@s know that Blacks are among the smallest percentage of the country&rsquo;s population, as we are far outnumbered by Whites and Hispanics? And that it is, therefore, difficult for us to dominate any national statistics, except in regards to basketball and maybe football. Do they know that, according to the National Urban League, 70 percent of the people getting food stamps in this country are WHITE?!!! Apparently not, as they are obviously too intent on pandering to the race hatred running rampant in the Republican party. Lord help me, Jesus.

DOUBLING UP &mdash; Another Republican presidential wannabe, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, is coming under fire for being a &ldquo;double dipper&rdquo; since his recently released personal financial statement shows he is collecting a $7,700 monthly state pension in addition to his nearly $133,000 annual salary as governor. The Texas Democratic Party condemned Perry for it and the state&rsquo;s Democrats are calling him dirty names. But there&rsquo;s a lot of that going around, most blatantly in the Los Angeles City Hall where we have ex-cops on the City Council (and one more trying to get on it) who are collecting hefty city pensions while being paid six-figure salaries to work as city councilmen. It seems to me that whenever people start collecting retirement benefits they ought to friggin&rsquo; retire.

MLK DOINGS &mdash; The California Legislative Black Caucus held its annual MLK Jr. breakfast Wednesday at which it honored former assemblyman, former congressman, former lieutenant governor, former state Sen. Mervyn Dymally by bestowing upon him the caucus&rsquo; Living Legend Award. The legislators also posthumously honored the late former state Sen. Teresa Hughes. The group gave its Distinguished Government Service Award to Robbin Coaxum-Lewis, chief of staff to Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter; its Community Advocacy Award to the California Black Health Network and its Civil Rights Leadership Award to Public Utilities Commissioner Timothy Simon.

City Council President Herb Wesson will be honored Friday at the 48th Assembly District&rsquo;s MLK national holiday commemoration event at the California African American Museum from 6 to 9 p.m. &hellip; USC will be a busy place Saturday, when the Los Angeles Police Department holds its annual MLK community breakfast in the Town and Gown at 9 a.m. and the 2nd Supervisorial District convenes its 20th annual Empowerment Congress Summit at the same time in the Bovard Auditorium. I&rsquo;m supposed to go to both, but I still can&rsquo;t legally drive and my relatives are loathe to get up early Saturday morning and chauffeur me about. I just might drive myself &mdash; going first to their houses to retrieve the Christmas gifts I gave them!

And then there&rsquo;s this: According to ujamaadeals.com, our own Tavis Smiley was set to speak at the annual MLK luncheon Monday in the Peoria, Ill., Civic Center until Obama supporters began a boycott of the event. About 30 supporters requested their money back from luncheon organizers and many others called to complain about Smiley&rsquo;s appearance. It seems it all began when a local book club decided to boycott Smiley over his criticisms of President Obama. In a published letter, a retired university professor and others boycotting Smiley said they&rsquo;d rather donate money to Obama&rsquo;s re-election campaign than give it to Smiley. An organizer for the event said ticket sales had been sluggish in comparison to previous years. Smiley would have been paid $37,500 for the speaking engagement. They say the organizers are still negotiating his cancellation fee. ($37,500?!! What on earth was he going to say?!)

THE RUSH TO HAHN &mdash; Now that Isadore Hall has chosen to seek re-election to the Assembly and the rancor surrounding the race for representative of the new 44th Congressional District has quelled, Compton&rsquo;s African-American leaders have joined Basil Kimbrew &mdash; and everybody else in the Southland &mdash; in endorsing Rep. Janice Hahn for election. Compton City Councilwoman Janna Zurita, Compton school board members Skyy Fisher and Satra Zurita came in from the cold and enthusiastically expressed their support for Hahn.

ANOTHER NAACP PASSING &mdash; We lost another local NAACP stalwart. Raymond L. Johnson Sr., an attorney, civil rights activist, former Tuskegee Airman and a leader of the Los Angeles branch NAACP during the 1960s and 1970s, died Dec. 31 of complications of pneumonia and heart failure. He was 89. His services will be held Thursday at 11 a.m. at Holman United Methodist Church. Johnson was a Howard University Law School graduate who assisted Thurgood Marshall with his preparations for the historic Brown v. Board of Education case. Johnson practiced law in Los Angeles for 50 years and after the 1965 Watts riots, he provided free legal services to those who were wrongfully arrested during the disturbances and he sought justice for those who were convicted without adequate counsel. Johnson was an expert on medical legal issues and he worked to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices in hospitals. He was involved in the creation of Charles Drew University of Medicine and the Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital. His wife of 61 years, Evelyn, survives him, as to three children and three granddaughters. May he and Geraldine Washington rest in peace.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: If I were Herb Wesson …]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-If-I-were-Herb-Wesson--136709213.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">136709213</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 4 Jan 2012 19:11:33 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																												                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Welcome to a whole new year that started off with a whole new day for the city of Los Angeles when City Council President Herb Wesson took office and led his first City Council meeting as president Tuesday. As president, Wesson, who represents the 10th District, is in a position to right a lot of wrongs in city government and to retune some negative vibes that fill the air in South L.A. By my reckoning, Wesson has one of the two best positions in city government: City Council president and city controller, as both offices have independent powers and their holders can make decisions and implement action that requires nothing from anybody else. I love that! 

As council president, Wesson&rsquo;s most powerful function is the fact that he &mdash; and he alone &mdash; will assign his fellow council members to the various and sundry city and joint powers committees, whose work is the lifeblood of all our politicians. Given that, I&rsquo;ve spent more than a year pondering the point of the overt niggling, malicious contempt Councilman Bernard Parks and his handmaiden, Councilwoman Jan Perry, displayed toward Wesson, given the universal recognition that he would become the next council president. It&rsquo;s been a real mystery to me. Now, Wesson is in a position to get even. And if I were he, I would hurry up and gleefully put this vicious odd couple in its place, way beyond the areas of significant governance.

If I were Herb Wesson, I would remove Parks from his precious Budget and Finance Committee, giving him no further impact upon the distribution of the city&rsquo;s money; remove him from the Exposition Transportation Authority Board so that agency can do its work on behalf of the people, rather than the players, and remove him from the Coliseum Commission so that impotent body can go forth and turn the Coliseum over to USC without Parks spewing nonsense in the background.

Perry currently chairs the council&rsquo;s Energy and Environment and Ad Hoc Stadium committees, and is a member of the Housing, Community and Economic Development, Public Safety and Transportation committees. I don&rsquo;t have a particular beef about Perry&rsquo;s work on those committees, but given her nastiness toward the new president, if I were Herb Wesson, I&rsquo;d remove her from all of them, just in case she likes them and is comfortable there. Payback can be, and often is, a b----.

And another thing: Someone sent me an item from The City Maven blog which states that Parks is recovering from elective surgery he underwent during the week of Dec. 11. Yeah, but everybody saw Parks enjoying the entire 50-0 total butt whipping USC put on UCLA at the Coliseum on Nov. 26, three days after calling in sick (or boycotting?) the historic Nov. 23 election of Wesson to the council presidency. He&rsquo;s obviously a quick recoverer. Was he really sick? Did he really have surgery? It&rsquo;s hard to know or believe. Anyway, that&rsquo;s how I feel about it. Next week I want to talk about that $40,000 Parks&rsquo; office owes the Coliseum for a fireworks party he held, which he refuses to pay because he maintains it is a debt the cash-starved city (you and I) owe the Coliseum. (See what I mean?)
Now, if I were City Controller Wendy Greuel &hellip;

WELL, WELL, WELL &mdash; Assemblyman Isadore Hall announced last week that he is bowing out of the race against Rep. Janice Hahn for the new 44th Congressional District. He said he is going to seek re-election to the Assembly from the new 64th District, which includes the cities and communities of Compton, Carson, Watts, Wilmington, Willowbrook and portions of Long Beach and Los Angeles. I am not going to be mean about this because I like it when people come to their senses. Hall made a gracious statement about his change of plans and I will not call him names nor denigrate him in any way. I can be civil sometimes.

Now, Basil Kimbrew, on the other hand, is a different story! Basil spent months trying to turn Black people against Hahn. He called her a traitor; accused her of trying to take a congressional seat away from Blacks, to whom he insisted it belonged. Basil has just been awful and I fell out with him over his racist tirade against the very idea of Hahn running for that seat. Now, he&rsquo;s eating crow and apologizing to Hahn and everybody else. Now he says: &ldquo;I was wrong. This is not about race. This is about caring for and delivering representation with honor and ethics we can all be proud of.&rdquo; Duh!! I&rsquo;ve been telling him that all along. Basil is an idiot!

TO THE RESCUE &mdash; The thousands of tenants in the hundreds of Jones &amp; Jones-owned apartment buildings have been rescued from the owner&rsquo;s demands that they pay their rent only online, thanks to the combined efforts of the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES), the Housing Department, the city attorney and City Council President Wesson, who brought the full force of the city upon this mega-landlord. While the city was reading the riot act to Jones &amp; Jones, CES attorneys, acting on behalf of all the tenants, was sending a demand letter to the management company telling it to drop its online-only rent payment requirement on or before Jan. 1, or they would &ldquo;seek appropriate judicial relief.&rdquo; Wesson&rsquo;s office said the landlord agreed to obey the laws affecting this matter and leave these tenants be. Chalk up another one for the little guys and gals.

Another issue involving Jones &amp; Jones properties is about to rear its ugly head and it involves residents&rsquo; complaints about capital improvement rent increases and CES is on it, and I&rsquo;m jumping on it too.

DATEBOOK &mdash; The redistricting committee is conducting hearings in each of the 15 City Council districts to obtain community input into the decennial task of redrawing the boundaries of each council district, as has already been done for the federal, state and county districts. The Council District 8 hearing will be held Tuesday from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in the Expo Center, 3980 Bill Robertson Lane. The Council District 10 hearing has already been held &mdash; this past Tuesday &mdash; when we were all away on holiday trips or wrapped up in family festivities and didn&rsquo;t know about it until we all got back here on Jan 3!!! Doesn&rsquo;t seem fair, does it?

Assemblyman Mike Davis will honor City Council President Wesson at his 48th Assembly District&rsquo;s Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday Commemoration event, Jan. 13 from 6 to 9 p.m. in the California African American Museum in Exposition Park.

The 20th annual Empowerment Congress Summit will convene at 9 a.m. on Jan. 14 in USC&rsquo;s Bovard Auditorium at which the residents and stakeholders in the 2nd Supervisorial District will come together again to discuss their shared vision for genuine community empowerment and create strategies for effective leadership.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Did you notice that KTLA did not show the Occupy protest &ldquo;float&rdquo; in its stupid Rose Parade telecast? It just goes to remind us where America&rsquo;s mainstream media&rsquo;s head, heart and soul are. Obviously, with the one percent. But we shall overcome anyhow; we always do &mdash; despite being ignored, jeered, arrested, beaten, even murdered &mdash; as long as we stay united and committed to the cause for justice &mdash; be it racial, social, gender and this time, economic &mdash; history has shown that we will always overcome. So forget KTLA and the Rose Parade horse it rode in on.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: In memoriam]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-In-memorium-136353288.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">136353288</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:48:45 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																												                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

These black people &mdash; of international, national and local repute &mdash; died in 2011. They are gone, but not forgotten.

BILLY TAYLOR, jazz pianist/musicologist/advocate; Dec. 28, 2010
ROOSEVELT DOUGLAS, Inglewood community activist; Dec. 31, 2010

CARLTON &lsquo;COOKIE&rsquo; GILCHRIST, AFL star fullback; Jan. 10, 2011
MAXCY FILER, Compton civil rights leader; Jan. 11
ELLEN STEWART, Off-Off Broadway theater pioneer; Jan. 13
MISSISSIPPI WINN, oldest living African-American, at 113; Jan. 14
GEORGE CROWE, baseball player; Jan. 18
SAM YETTE, journalist, &lsquo;The Choice&rsquo; author; Jan. 21
FRED HORN, community activist; Jan. 22
JEAN WILLIAMS, Inglewood commissioner/activist; Jan. 31

MARVIN SEASE, blues singer; Feb. 8
RICHARD LEE ATKINS, real estate developer; Feb. 17
DAVE DUERSON, football player; Feb. 17
AUDREY QUARLES, community/political activist; Feb. 17
OLLIE MATSON, NFL Hall of Famer; Feb. 19
HAROLD LEGAUX, Harold &amp; Belle&rsquo;s co-owner; Feb. 21
DWAYNE McDUFFIE, comic book writer/publisher/animator; Feb. 22
JOSEPH DYER, KCBS-TV news reporter/executive; Feb. 24
REV. PETER J. GOMES, Harvard spiritual leader/scholar/author; Feb. 28
ROBERT MACKEY, L.A. Superior Court judge; Feb. 28

BILLY INGRAM, Maranatha Community Church pastor; March 8
CLEO JOHNSON, model who founded USA&rsquo;s first Black-owned modeling school; March 8
BERNARD ST. CLAIR LEE, &ldquo;Hues Corporation&rdquo; singer; March 8
MITCHELL PAGE, baseball player; March 12
NATHANIEL &lsquo;NATE DOGG&rsquo; HALE, rapper; March 15
DREW HILL, NFL wide receiver; March 19
LOLEATTA HOLLOWAY, disco singer; March 21
JOE WILLIE &lsquo;PINETOP&rsquo; PERKINS, multiple Grammy-winning blues pianist; March 21
ALMENA LOMAX, journalist/founder of L.A. Tribune; March 25

MANNING MARABLE, historian/author; April 1
LARRY FINCH, college basketball star/coach; April 2
REV. JOHN NIX-McREYNOLDS, pastor, 2nd Baptist Church in Santa Ana; oldest (88 years) and largest Black church in Orange County; April 2
GERALD LAWSON, electronics engineer/video game pioneer; April 9
JOE PERRY, Hall of Fame fullback, first Black &lsquo;49er&rsquo;; April 25
PHOEBE SNOW, singer/songwriter; April 26

CORNELL DUPREE, guitarist; May 8
ROBERT &lsquo;TRACTOR&lsquo; TRAYLOR, Ex-Michigan basketball star; May 11
SNOOKY YOUNG, jazz trumpeter; May 11
LLOYD KNIBB, Jamaican drummer; May 12
ALONZO ESTER, Inglewood night club owner; May 13
RON SPRINGS, Dallas Cowboys running back; May 13
REV. JOHN N. DOGGETT, Pasadena Methodist pastor/civil rights leader; May 15
MONTAE &lsquo;M-BONE&rsquo; TALBERT, rapper; May 15
DR. HENRY S. WILLIAMS, a Charles R. Drew University founder; May 21
FAYE TREADWELL, former &ldquo;Drifters&rdquo; manager; May 22
HERSHEL K. SWINGER, founded urban fathers program; May 23
MARK DANTZLER, Challengers Boys &amp; Girls Club program director; May 24
GIL SCOTT-HERON, musician/poet; May 27
CLARICE TAYLOR, actress; May 30

RAY BRYANT, jazz pianist/composer; June 2
ELMER &lsquo;GERONIMO&rsquo; PRATT, Black Panther leader framed for murder; June 2
GODFREY MYLES, ex-Dallas Cowboys linebacker; June 8
CLARA LUPER, Oklahoma lunch counter sit-in leader; June 9
CARL GARDNER, &ldquo;Coasters&rdquo; founding lead singer; June 12
ALEJANDRO STEPHENS, longtime SEIU Local 660 president; June 13
CLARENCE CLEMONS, E Street Band saxophonist; June 18
BILLY COSTELLO, ex-WBC boxing champ; June 29

RAYMOND JONES, keyboard player for &ldquo;Chic&rdquo; band; July 1
LEONARD EARL ROBERTS SR., D-Day hero; July 5
EDNA ALIEWINE, Watts community activist; July 6
JOHN MACKEY, NFL Hall of Famer; July 6
DAVID LEE TURNER, ex-NFL running back; July 9
LILLIAN MOBLEY, community activist; July 18
FRANK FOSTER, saxophonist/composer; July 26
CHARLES GITTENS, first black Secret Service agent; July 27
GENE McDANIELS, singer/songwriter; July 29

DeLOIS BARRETT CAMPBELL, gospel singer; Aug. 2
BUBBA SMITH, actor/ex-NFL star; Aug. 3
SHERMAN WHITE, LIU basketball star; Aug. 4
MEDA CHAMBERLAIN, Local NCNW leader; Aug. 5
RALEIGH BASTINE, noted church organist; Aug. 6
RALPH McKNIGHT, Pasadena activist; Aug. 9
ZACHERY TIMS, pastor of Florida megachurch; Aug. 12
NICK ASHFORD, Motown songwriter; Aug. 22
ESTHER GORDY EDWARDS, Motown Records executive; Aug. 24
DAVID &lsquo;HONEYBOY&rsquo; EDWARDS, Delta bluesman; Aug. 29

LEE ROY SELMON, NFL Hall of Famer; Sept. 4
WARDELL QUEZERQUE, &lsquo;Creole Beethoven;&rsquo; composer/musician; Sept. 6
LEWIS BROWN, Verbum Dei basketball star; Sept. 14
WILLIE &lsquo;BIG EYES&rsquo; SMITH, Grammy-winning bluesman; Sept. 16
NORMA HOLLOWAY JOHNSON, only woman chief judge of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.; Sept. 18
BOBBIE LEE HOLMES, L.A. teacher who integrated Pacoima; Sept. 19
TROY DAVIS, executed by state of Georgia; Sept. 21
ORLANDO BROWN, NFL offensive tackle; Sept. 23
VESTA WILLIAMS, R&amp;B singer; Sept. 23
WANGARI MAATHAI, Africa&rsquo;s first female Nobel Peace Prize winner (2004); Sept. 25
JESSY DIXON, gospel singer; Sept. 26
SYLVIA ROBINSON, record label owner, &lsquo;Mother of Hip-Hop;&rsquo; Sept. 29

REV. FRED SHUTTLESWORTH, civil rights leader along side MLK Jr.; Oct. 5
GUY CROWDER, photographer; Oct. 30

JOE FRAZIER, former heavyweight boxing champion; Nov. 7
DWIGHT ARRINGTON MYERS, rapper &lsquo;Heavy D&rsquo;; Nov. 8
WINSTON CHURCHILL DOBY, former UCLA vice chancellor; Nov. 10
TERESA HUGHES, former California state senator; Nov. 12
STANLEY ROBERTSON, pioneering TV executive; Nov. 16
WALT HAZZARD, ex-UCLA basketball star/coach; Nov. 18
LENNY LYLES, ex-NFL kick returner; in 1958, helped break pro football&rsquo;s color barrier; Nov. 20
GREG HALMAN, Seattle Mariners&rsquo; outfielder; Nov. 21
CHESTER McGLOCKTON, former NFL defensive back; Nov. 30

HOWARD TATE, soul singer; Dec. 2
HUBERT SUMLIN, blues guitarist; Dec. 4
LOREN MILLER JR. retired Superior Court Judge; Dec. 5
DOBIE GRAY, soul singer; Dec. 6
MARIO HAMILTON (rapper Slim Dunkin); Dec. 16
CESARIA EVORA, Grammy-winning Cape Verdean singer; Dec. 17]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Occupying Eddie Jones, Part 2]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Occupying-Eddie-Jones-Part-2-136044413.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">136044413</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:55:17 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Mason2.jpg" length="120210" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Civil rights icon, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, was in town Monday and all the activists in the Southland flocked to the Staples Center for the Urban Issues Breakfast to hear Jackson discuss the most important issue facing America today: economic justice and the disparity of wealth, and to discuss among themselves the admission of Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Organization, that he charges people for his civil rights services. When Jackson wasn&rsquo;t talking, his audience was &mdash; about Jones and the black eye he has given them and the mission to which they have devoted their lives.

Adrian Dove, chair of California CORE, an imminent national civil rights organization that will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, said: &ldquo;We are totally opposed to charging people for our efforts to achieve racial equality anywhere in this country. Our staff of organizers and counselors are all volunteers and we hold a huge fundraiser each year to cover our operational expenses. We are not lawyers and charging people would be practicing law without being a lawyer.&rdquo; (The Soulvine has been told that Jones is, by profession, a security guard.)

Paulette Gipson, president of the Compton NAACP, said: &ldquo;Real activists care about our people and do what we do from our heart. It&rsquo;s unfortunate, but the love of money seems to continue to be the root of people taking advantage of a bad situation. Pimping our community has to start being a thing of the past.&rdquo;

The Rev. K.W. Tulloss, California chair of the National Action Network, said: &ldquo;Eddie Jones&rsquo;s wolf mentality is an embarrassment to those of us who sincerely love to help our people. Eddie needs to immediately return the money or I will personally seek legal action against him and his shameful for-profit organization.&rdquo; 

The eloquent Brother Pedro Baez likened Jones&rsquo; actions to a sin before God. &ldquo;When one picks up the torch to serve humanity, it is done because that individual is truly interested in helping those in need, not for any riches that may be at the other end of the rainbow. What Jones has done is give the cause of activism a bad name and in essence cast a shadow of suspicion upon all of us who do this work because it is in our heart to do so. From this day forward, I will not utter the name of that individual who has brought shame and disgrace to not only ourselves, who treated him as a friend, but to the community that we reside in and serve. May this individual be shunned and live the rest of his life in shame, and may God have mercy on his soul. B&rsquo;Shalom.&rdquo;

Jones&rsquo; longtime nemesis, Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic HOPE, has had a lot to say about Jones during the past couple of weeks, but I&rsquo;ll forego the angry name-calling and permit Najee to say: &ldquo;We are demanding that Jones drop the name of civil rights from his for-profit group because he is not a civil rights activist like we are. He&rsquo;s a businessman and a poor one at that. He has been officially censured by every major civil rights group and activist in the South L.A. community.&rdquo;

SPEAKING OF CIVIL RIGHTS &mdash; The hard feelings following that ugly racial incident at Santa Monica High School in May in which a Black student was subjected to a simulated lynching, called a slave and a n---er, has not been assuaged despite District Attorney Steve Cooley&rsquo;s passing on whether anything criminal had occurred. A petition has been created by the student&rsquo;s mother, Victoria Gray, and is being distributed by a Santa Monica Methodist minister and others calling on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education to take the issue of racial justice seriously. The petition circulators assert that the horrible incident involving the Black child is proof that their children&rsquo;s school climate in Santa Monica High, and possibly other schools, is not safe for racial minorities and are susceptible to hate-motivated attacks. They want everybody to sign it, believing the incident was deeply egregious and problematic in the district&rsquo;s schools and the wider community as well. Sign the petition. Send an email to: disalindgren@hotmail.com to request a link to the petition so you can see it and sign it. They need 750 people to sign it and as of this moment, I am the 540th person to do so. The incident has outraged residents from San Pedro to Chatsworth and points in between and they have signed it.
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: New nonsense]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-New-nonsense-135632543.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">135632543</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:40:18 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

I don&rsquo;t know which is worse &mdash; the United States Congress or the Los Angeles City Council. By its sheer size, Congress appears to be the worst, but by the degree of its continuous lunacy, our local City Council is running neck-and-neck with the national body. So, what is the City Council&rsquo;s nonsense of the day? This mess between it and USC over the future of the Coliseum is its nonsense of the day.
This is the situation: The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena are public entities located in the 8th Councilmanic District and operated under the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, through a 66-year-old joint powers agreement with the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California. As stadia go, the Coliseum is a dump. It&rsquo;s in need of serious repair and renovation and its physical decline is turning it into a useless eyesore and an embarrassment to the world-class city we say we are.

USC has always leased the Los Angeles Coliseum as the site for its at-home Trojan football games, and the lease currently in effect between USC and the Coliseum Commission promises that the commission will renovate the crumbling facility. The commission has not done so and has been in default of that lease agreement for most of this year. USC, then, has the legal right to declare the Coliseum in breach of its contract.

Instead of doing that, USC is offering to pay for the expensive repairs and renovations the Coliseum needs if the commission will hand over the day-to-day operations of the publicly-owned stadium to the university, with the proviso that the USC will make the Coliseum available for community events, including future Olympic games or as a temporary home should a National Football League team relocate to Los Angeles. Considering that the joint powers &mdash; the city, county and state &mdash; are running out of money and can&rsquo;t afford to deliver us our routine tax-paid-for services, this is a win-win deal, right? Right. Except the City Council&rsquo;s odd couple, council members Bernard Parks and Jan Perry, don&rsquo;t see it that way.

Parks authored, and Perry seconded, a resolution on Dec. 7 calling for the City Council to oppose the efforts that have been going on for several months to transfer the &ldquo;operations, maintenance and future redevelopment decisions of both the Coliseum and the Sports Arena&rdquo; to USC until the proposal has been thoroughly vetted blah, blah, blah. Displaying good sense, council members Herb Wesson and Bill Rosendahl amended the resolution rejecting an outright opposition to the proposition, but rather requesting that the commission &ldquo;take no action [Dec. 7]&rdquo; on the proposition. The council adopted the amended resolution and the commission has postponed until Dec. 21 any decision on the proposed transfer.

Now this is my question: Where does Parks get off opposing the transfer of the deteriorating Coliseum to USC? He considers himself to be the watchdog of the city funds and he has been on the TV news advising us that the city is so poor that we homeowners may have to pay to repair the public sidewalks in front of our homes. He&rsquo;s also been seen on TV warning us that we may have to pay fees whenever paramedics and ambulances are called to help us during medical emergencies. 

Mind you, we&rsquo;re already paying taxes for both of these things, but he makes wise of that fact with insensitive rejoinders about the expectations of little old ladies. Rejoinders that are not the least bit clever. As councilman of the district that is already home to the biggest blighted area in the city &mdash; namely the Santa Barbara Plaza cum Marlton Square debacle &mdash; he should be loathed to add a Coliseum that rivals in ruination the original Coliseum in Rome to the list of dilapidated and unusable structures in his district. But no, he wants to deny control of the thing by USC, the most prominent and prestigious entity in the 8th District &mdash; one of the top universities in the country whose Trojan football team is one of the best on the planet, as proven by the 2011 football season. 

Parks has said he wants the city to get &ldquo;a better deal&rdquo; from the proposed transfer. Well, Parks has sat on the Coliseum Commission for 10 years now and has done nothing to push his fellow commissioners to live up to their contractual obligation to fix the thing. But now that USC wants to reverse the steady deterioration of the stadium for itself and for the rest of us, he wants a better deal. What better deal could there be for us cash-strapped Angelenos? Well, it could be a better deal for me if USC would renovate the Coliseum, repair the broken sidewalk in front of my home and put a new roof on my house. I&rsquo;d be eternally grateful.

OCCUPY EDDIE JONES &mdash; The activists in the region have been in an uproar all week following the admission last week by Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Organization, that his is a &ldquo;for profit&rdquo; organization that collects a fee from troubled people beset by the vagaries of our racist and discriminatory society when they seek his help in solving their problems. I had heard rumors that Jones charges for his &ldquo;civil rights&rdquo; services, but I never believed them because, well, we all know civil rights groups don&rsquo;t charge to exercise their activism and exert their pressure to reverse injustices. So I just figured people were lying on Jones. But no, he admitted it last week in my Bottom Line column that he charged a mother $500 to help her daughter. I was shocked. And so were lots of other people &mdash; especially other civil rights activists who spent the week censuring Jones in a stream of Facebook comments, in emails and telephone calls to me and in a radio program that aired Tuesday. Jones has taken a beating from virtually every activist group in the city.

You&rsquo;ll hear from two today and others next week, because I&rsquo;m running out of room. For example, the Rev. Eric Lee, president of SCLC, wrote: &ldquo;Eddie Jones is an embarrassment to the history and tradition of genuine civil rights activists who for moral and ethical reasons alone defend the rights of the oppressed. Jones should give the money back or be considered censured for his profiting off the oppressed.&rdquo;

Royce Esters, president of the National Association for Equal Justice in America (NAEJA), called to say: &rdquo;We are a 503 C(3) charitable organization and no one has to pay or give anything to us to get our help. In fact, no civil rights group worth its salt would charge anyone for its help. We have five lawyers, plus paralegals and private detectives working with us &mdash; all volunteers, and all committed to equal justice in America. We are a real civil rights group.&rdquo;

And by the way, Seal Beach City Councilman Gordon A. Shanks sent a letter of apology to Esters for the nasty public comments Shanks made about Compton following that murderous rampage in the Seal Beach beauty salon that left eight people dead. Esters took Shank to task for saying &ldquo;you expect something like this to happen in Compton, not Seal Beach.&rdquo; In his letter, Shank wrote: &ldquo;I sincerely apologize to the citizens of Compton, the city of Compton and NAEJA. It was not my intent to speak negatively about another community during a very emotional and tragic time in the history of our community. It was a thoughtless comment and I deeply regret making it.&rdquo;

ROBERTSON&rsquo;S RITES &mdash; A Celebration of Life memorial service for Stanley Robertson will be held Monday at 11 a.m. in the Palisades Garden Room at the Courtyard beside the Marriott, 6333 Bristol Parkway in Culver City.

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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Remembering Robertson]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Remembering-Robertson-135221453.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">135221453</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 7 Dec 2011 20:10:11 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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Funeral services will be held Monday for a man a lot of people didn&rsquo;t know existed, but yet all of us who are Black and grew up here and became journalists and television actors and television producers and television directors and studio executives and screenwriters knew him well and we&rsquo;ve been standing on his shoulders all our lives.

Stanley Robertson died Nov. 16, but I didn&rsquo;t learn about it until Tuesday night when arrangements for his celebration of life were announced. Stanley Robertson was a monster. Not in the gory sense, but in the sense of being bigger than anybody else &mdash; in talent, in accomplishments, in knowledge and ability, in affability, in grace. Robertson broke down color barriers before we realized there were any. I knew him well. I worked with him, somewhat. He was my idol.

Among many other things, Stanley Robertson was the first Black vice president of NBC, which he became in 1970 after being promoted from vice president of motion pictures for television &mdash; in itself, an already lofty pinnacle for a Black person. Robertson was an esteemed movie studio production executive who was in charge of my all-time favorite show, &ldquo;Star Trek,&rdquo; as well as shows such as &ldquo;The Name of the Game&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Bill Cosby Show.&rdquo; He subsequently became vice president of Columbia Pictures in 1984 and launched his own production company, Jilcris Inc. (named for this two children, Jill and Christopher), with which he delivered on mega production deals with Universal and Paramount studios.

Robertson wrote, produced, filmed and directed numerous shows back when the TV business was opening up for Black folks and he was there to handle it all. He started out as an editor for Ebony magazine and he launched his TV career as a page for NBC after he graduated with a telecommunications degree from USC in 1957, and it was upward and onward from then on. Before my time there, Robertson was a reporter and managing editor for the Los Angeles Sentinel, but after I had arrived at the paper, Robertson was doing his Hollywood thing and writing a weekly column for the Sentinel and I had the privilege of seeing and talking to him every week when he dropped off his column.

Robertson was the only Black person I knew who lived in Bel Air and because of that, I&rsquo;ve always wanted to live in Bel Air &mdash; nowhere else &mdash; just Bel Air, but alas, I don&rsquo;t.

He was 85 when he died of a heart attack in his Bel Air home and is survived by his wife, Ruby, and his two children. A celebration of his life will be held at 11 a.m. Monday in the Courtyard next to the Marriott, 6333 Bristol Parkway in Culver City.

HUMAN RIGHTS FOR SOUTH L.A. &mdash; Thursday is International Human Rights Day and a coalition of policymakers, health care workers, activists and residents will gather at 8 a.m. for the South Los Angeles Health and Human Rights Forum to assess the health and human rights in South L.A., an area marred by a long history of inequity and disinvestment. The forum will be held at Mercado La Paloma, 3655 S. Grand Ave., and will address such issues as environmental and health campaigns, organizing slum housing residents, and increasing access to education and employment. Dr. Jim Mangia, president and CEO of St. John&rsquo;s Well Child and Family Centers, said health is a human rights and moral issue. &ldquo;Everyday we see families in South L.A. facing health and economic disparities that no one should have to endure &mdash; much less in the richest nation on Earth,&rdquo; he said.

ON THE JOB &mdash; Assemblyman Warren Furutani, who faces a runoff election to fill the vacant 15th District Council seat, is already acting like the councilman. He effectively lobbied the City Council to pass a measure to allow free parking meters in downtown San Pedro and Wilmington through the rest of the year. Before Rep. Janice Hahn left her council office, she introduced an ordinance calling for the permanent removal of the parking meters, which was stalled in the Transportation Committee. Furutani met with the committee chairman and pressed for a hearing on the measure right away. Furutani was amazed by the council&rsquo;s swift and overwhelming response to his request and stated, &ldquo;clearly, everyone will benefit from free parking during the holidays. Now we just have to make it permanent.&rdquo;

It might also be noted that Furutani is the first candidate in the special election to report raising $50,000, thus triggering matching funds of $150,000. In the primary last month, Furutani raised more than any other candidate and raised over $80,000 more than is opponent, the cop.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; Rep. Hahn picked up a load of endorsements last week, when she added state Sen. Alex Padilla, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, the National Associaition of Letter Carriers, Branch 1100, City Councilman Tony Cardenas, Patricia Bellasalma, president of the California Chapter of the National Organization for Women, to her long list of people in government and in the community who support her June 2012 primary election to the newly created 44th Congressional District.

The City Council voted unanimously to approve out-going Council President Eric Garcetti&rsquo;s motion to extend the city&rsquo;s moratorium on foreclosure-related evictions, much to the satisfaction of tenants rights watchdog, Larry Gross and his activist Coalition for Economic Survival.

African-American clergy are showing their support for longtime community activist Greg Akili&rsquo;s run for the new 59th Assembly District (formerly the 48th District). A group of ministers &mdash; led by the reverends James Lawson, Norman Copeland and Chip Murray &mdash; gathered the other day to pledge their support and assistance to Akili.

DATEBOOK &mdash; The Skid Row community&rsquo;s four-year &ldquo;Positive Movement&rdquo; project will feature a downtown art walk Thursday evening from 4 to 10 p.m. at The Exchange,114 W. 5th St. The art walk will feature exhibits, prepared by USC design students, that blend the Skid Row community with the historic core, based around the Hotel Cecil on Main Street. It&rsquo;s all about showing positive things about Skid Row and it&rsquo;s really intriguing.

Public school kids will be cuttin&rsquo; up and struttin&rsquo; their stuff all day long Saturday when the school district holds its annual Band and Drill Team Championships at East Los Angeles College. More than 2,500 LAUSD high school students will be performing from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. under the judgmental eyes of the Southern California Band and Orchestra Association.

Lori Gray, Gretchen Nelson and Hamid Towfigh will host a Baldwin Hills holiday celebration and fundraising event on the evening of Dec. 14 in honor of Danette Myers, candidate for district attorney. RSVP: (818) 323-3753.

State Sen. Curren Price will hold his annual holiday toy drive and open house on Dec. 14 from 6 to 8 p.m. at his district office, 700 State Drive. A wide assortment of food from the 26th Senate District restaurants will be served and admittance requires an unwrapped toy of $10 value, per person. RSVP: (213) 745-6656.

PASSING &mdash; Assemblyman Mike Davis&rsquo; father, Lawrence Kenneth Davis, died last Sunday and a wake is scheduled Thursday, from 1 to 6 p.m. at the Long Beach Colonial Mortuary, 638 Atlantic Ave. in Long Beach.

AND FINALLY &mdash; When reporters questioned Councilman Bernard Parks&rsquo; chief of staff son, Bernard Jr., about his father&rsquo;s absence from the City Council meeting at which Councilman Herb Wesson was elected president, he told them his dad was out sick. 

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only his second sick day in 46 years, so I think he&rsquo;s due,&rdquo; Parks Jr. told the reporters. I can understand that and I&rsquo;m sure he was sick, after all Parks was in a sickening situation. I can easily see how the very thought of being in the room when the person he despises is elected president would make Parks seriously ill.

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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Mr. President]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Mr-President-134801378.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">134801378</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:46:52 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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History has been made! Tenth District Councilman Herb Wesson was unanimously elected president of the Los Angeles City Council Nov. 23, making him the first African-American to lead that council since it has been in existence &mdash; like maybe for thousands of years. Think of it, we&rsquo;ve had a Black mayor, we have a Black U.S. president and now a Black man heads our City Council. Congratulations to Wesson and to us. 

Now, you realize that Wesson won by the unanimous vote of the council members present for the election, which were 12 &mdash; the White ones and the Latino ones. The Black odd couple, council members Bernard Parks and Jan Perry, did not attend the meeting, obviously eschewing the election so they would not be formally registered as the only two &ldquo;no&rdquo; votes against Wesson. Their absence was cowardly and unexpected in view of the overt hostility they&rsquo;ve shown to Wesson and their well broadcasted disapproval of his rise to the presidency. Why didn&rsquo;t the two Black council members support their Black brother&rsquo;s historic election to the presidency? I think it&rsquo;s a &ldquo;crabs in the barrel&rdquo; thing and I think these two will require close watching so they do not take a psychotic turn and seek to undermine the new president. We have to be on guard and help Herb fight them off!

STOP IT!! &mdash; You know, Eric Lee and them&rsquo;s obsession with being the Black community&rsquo;s education gurus need to stop. Their grotesque disrespect for Marguerite LaMotte, as the only African-American member of the LAUSD school board, needs to stop. Their insistence that Lee and them will do whatever they want to do any way they want to do it needs to stop. In the election earlier this year, Lee &mdash; backed by a much ballyhooed coalition of fellow preachers &mdash; tried to unseat LaMotte from the board of education. They failed miserably. LaMotte was re-elected with 80 percent of the vote. It&rsquo;s obvious that we don&rsquo;t want them handling our school business. Yet, they persist, like gnats, to pester people with their own agenda which has had no vetting by our duly elected and recognized educational representative. It&rsquo;s foolish and nonproductive.

Comes now Leon Jenkins, president of the Los Angeles NAACP, joining the pro-Lee forces and disrespecting LaMotte by programming with Superintendent John Deasy behind LaMotte&rsquo;s back. This is not right. All of this has got to stop. We Blacks would not be in the educational shape we&rsquo;re in now if Lee and the preachers had been working with LaMotte all along. Instead, we&rsquo;ve had LaMotte standing up for Black students against White and Latino interests all by herself. Stop it! Remember, LaMotte won re-election by the greatest margin of anyone who ran for any office this year. She ain&rsquo;t going nowhere. So get over it and join her.

THE ANSWER IS &lsquo;NO&rsquo; &mdash; It seems that a bunch of former residents of the contaminated Ujima Vilage public housing complex bombarded the California Regional Water Quality Control Board at its Nov. 10 public regional meeting and testified that they had become ill due to soil pollution at the village site. The state board became upset and sent a letter on Nov. 23 to Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, director of the L.A. County Department of Public Health, stating: &ldquo;This letter is to inquire if the County Department of Public Health, or any other entity, has conducted or is considering conducting health assessments of the former residents of the Ujima Village complex and surrounding neighborhood. If a health assessment has been completed, please advise us of its availability. If a health assessment has not been initiated or completed, we urge you to begin one as soon as possible and to contact me to discuss our concerns.&rdquo; It is signed by Samuel Unger, executive officer of the state board, and is cc&rsquo;ed to 32 individuals: federal and county representatives of the former residents, federal and county officials who are involved in and/or responsible for such matters, the oil companies and other litigants in the lawsuit and their lawyers etc. The list of cc&rsquo;s is longer than the letter.

HAIL TO THE DEPUTY CHIEF &mdash; State Sen. Rod Wright hosted the family, friends, and co-workers of the late Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner, at a community ceremony Monday unveiling freeway exit signs honoring the memory and service of the well known and well loved 32-year LAPD veteran, who died of natural causes March 1, 2009. Wright authored Senate Concurrent Resolution 106 last year to rename the northbound and southbound Florence Avenue off-ramps of the 110 Freeway the &ldquo;LAPD Deputy Chief Kenneth O. Garner Memorial Exit.&rdquo; Wright, along with Chief Charlie Beck, led the community unveiling event, which featured the participation of many law enforcement officials, religious and community leaders and politicians.

DUELING CONFABS &mdash; Insomniacs who wouldn&rsquo;t dare stay away from Tuesday morning&rsquo;s sentencing of Dr. Conrad Murray, were blessed with another early morning attraction: Dueling press conferences at 8 a.m. On one side of the Criminal Court Building steps was Eddie Jones, president of the L.A. Civil Rights Association, calling for the imposition of the maximum four-year prison term for Murray. At the same time, Najee Ali, executive director the Project Islamic HOPE, was holding a press conference on the other side of the steps calling for leniency for Dr. Murray. Both events were well attended. 

DATEBOOK &mdash; State Sen. Rod Wright and Assemblyman Steve Bradford will host a district office open house and holiday celebration Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Inglewood City Hall. They are asking that each guest bring an unwrapped toy. &hellip; Also in Inglewood, an urban garden meeting will be held Dec. 8 in preparation for launching citywide projects aimed at &ldquo;transforming Inglewood into one of the greenest cities in the United States.&rdquo; The meeting will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 8 in City Hall&rsquo;s Community Room A. They want you to RSVP: (323) 640-8288.

Next Tuesday, the City Council will attend to the matter of extending for one year the city ordinance prohibiting banks from evicting tenants of foreclosed properties without just cause. The present law expires at the end of the 2011 and the council must pass Councilman Eric Garcetti&rsquo;s motion to extend it.

State Sen. Curren Price will co-host an informational forum for enterprises seeking to do business in Africa. As part of the African Diaspora Marketplace Road Show, the informational forum is designed to educate interested parties about a business plan competition and financial support available for businesses seeking to develop innovative enterprises on the African continent. It will be held Dec. 6 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Wallis Annenberg Building in Exposition Park.

The GLAAACC (the Black chamber of commerce) will hold its annual Peace &amp; Prosperity Holiday Mixer and Toy Drive on Dec. 8 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel downtown. Attendees must bring toys and toiletry items valued at $10 for admission, which will benefit the Parents of Watts and the Union Rescue Mission. RSVPs required: (323) 292-1297.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Here's my say]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Heres-my-say-134371583.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">134371583</guid>		
			<pubDate>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:58:51 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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You know, I need to comment on that thing in Monday&rsquo;s Times headlined: &ldquo;Hahn&rsquo;s campaign tests her ties to black community.&rdquo; An impolite one-word comment immediately comes to my mind, but I won&rsquo;t use it. I&rsquo;m sure you know which one I&rsquo;m thinking. I admit that it was an admirable undertaking to try to maintain three local Blacks in Congress as we now have, but Basil Kimbrew and them are out of their minds if they think we would want any old Black person to represent us whether he or she is worthy, qualified, of sound mind and good character, has a proven record of accomplishments, stood by the Black community in times of travail, has leadership ability, or not. Rep. Janice Hahn, while White, has all of these. Her two Black opponents in the 44th Congressional District race, do not.

I won&rsquo;t even talk about Rep. Laura Richardson because I&rsquo;m still debriefing her staff about her leadership idiosyncrasies. Assemblyman Isadore Hall is now and has always been an empty suit. If he was not, he would have done something to try to save his city; to stop the needless, serendipitous hemorrhaging of funds that&rsquo;s leading to the bankruptcy of Compton &mdash; his hometown and on whose City Council he once served. Even though Hall is no longer a city official, he should have used the force of his personality and vaunted state political office to intercede and help Compton officials stop the madness that has turned that city into a mess. Other politicians worth their salt do it all the time. They maintain their &ldquo;been there, done that&rdquo; leadership cachet that gives them ingress into situations that may not formally concern them and they grasp opportunities to use their leadership skills to help resolve all the issues affecting their constituency, not just the ones on their plate. But not Hall. Compton&rsquo;s gone to hell and he did nothing to stop it.

Hahn, on the other hand, worked that crisis when Latino gangsters killed Black teenager Cheryl Green in Harbor City. That thing was seething; Cheryl&rsquo;s cold-blooded murder was pitting Blacks against Latinos all over the city and no Black politician rose to help Councilwoman Hahn defuse the situation. She did it all by herself. She organized the community; she led anti-gang marches through the district to stop the violence; she convened community meetings; she brought LAPD brass to the murder site so they could tell the community what the cops are doing about it, she fought for justice for Cheryl and memorialized her death by created a youth center in her name. Hahn&rsquo;s constituents were in a crisis. She owned it and she resolved it. That&rsquo;s leadership. And that&rsquo;s what all residents of the new 44th Congressional District need to be voting for &mdash; leadership, not a color.

TAKING SIDES &mdash; The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor overwhelmingly endorsed Assemblyman Warren Furutani to replace Hahn as City Council member for the 15th District Monday. The County Fed&rsquo;s endorsement of Furutani places the two candidates in the January runoff with clearly contrasting bases of support. Last week, the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, representing large downtown business interests, endorsed Furutani&rsquo;s opponent, the cop, who was a registered Republican until he began his campaign for City Council. Furutani, on the other hand, is a life-long Democrat, is endorsed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and is an experienced and effective fighter for good jobs and working families.

NEW SCHOOLS &mdash; LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy was joined by students, parents and community members Saturday in cutting the ribbon on the Juanita Tate Elementary School, located at 123 W. 59th St. A mural of Juanita Tate, a tireless activist who worked to improve the quality of life in South L.A., was also unveiled at the event. The school opened on Sept. 7 and serves approximately 900 children. Tate died in 2004.

The LAUSD Board of Education last week renamed the Mid-City Magnet School for Enriched Sciences on West Adams Boulevard in honor of the late educator Ronald Prescott, who died at age 68 in 2007. Prescott, a Dorsey High School graduate, began his career in education with the LAUSD in 1961 and over the years served in seven leadership positions. He retired in 2000. His family attended the meeting in which the board voted to rename the school the Mid-City Prescott School of Enriched Sciences, followed by &ldquo;thank you very much,&rdquo; from Willie Mae Wise Prescott, his 100-year-old mother.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is holding a community meeting on the environmental investigation at Ujima Village and the nearby Magic Johnson Park next Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the MLK Jr. Center for Public Health, 11833 S. Wilmington Ave. in Willowbrook, where residents can learn about the Los Angeles Regional Water Board&rsquo;s ongoing investigation of contamination issues and the county&rsquo;s role in it. Concerned residents can get their questions answered by health personnel who will attend the meeting. 

Ridley-Thomas appointed civil rights stalwart the Rev. Cecil &rdquo;Chip&rdquo; Murray to the county&rsquo;s newly formed Citizens Commission on Jail Violence, which was established last month and charged with investigating allegations of abuse in the County Jail and with reporting its findings to the Board of Supervisors with recommendations for reform.

Outgoing City Council President Eric Garcetti introduced a motion last week to extend the sunset date of the Foreclosure Eviction Ordinance (No. 181496) from Dec. 31, 2011 to Dec. 31, 2012. This is the year-to-year city ordinance that forbids banks and other financial institutions from evicting tenants from foreclosed property without just cause, about which I expressed concern in last week&rsquo;s Soulvine. Garcetti has taken care of it. Good job.

A South Los Angeles Residents forum will be held next Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at 7100 S. Western Ave., so neighbors can discuss the state of the community &mdash; primarily the 8th Council District &mdash; and what can be done about it. The agenda will include updates on South L.A. elections, marijuana outlets and other quality of life issues. RSVP: (424) 240-8510.

LOOK AT THIS &mdash; A terrible thing occurred in the community last Saturday morning that is being kept too hush-hush for my liking. So here it is, out in the open where it belongs. According to my interview with the family, this happened: At about 6 a.m. on Nov. 19, Kamisha Davidson, 30, a diagnosed schizophrenic under treatment by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, was behaving loudly and was unruly in her family&rsquo;s Santa Rosalia apartment because she was not taking her psychiatric medicine and was refusing to take it. Davidson&rsquo;s mother called the mental health office, described the situation to them and asked that a psychiatric social worker come out to help. Somebody, possibly the mental health people, called the cops. The cops got there before the mental health expert arrived. When the cops got there, Davidson was holed up in her bedroom wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties. The cops took it upon themselves to order her out of her bedroom. As she was coming out, the cops shot her in the lower right side of her abdomen. She was taken to the UCLA Medical Center. The psychiatric social worker. who was en route, never arrived at the home &mdash; but was sent instead to the hospital to see his patient. The family has a lawyer and the cops are &ldquo;investigating.&rdquo; What is wrong with this picture? 

Happy Thanksgiving.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Another fight for justice]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Another-fight-for-justice-134012433.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">134012433</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:20:48 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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The ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) &mdash; the group that spearheaded the drive to achieve justice for Jeremy Marks against that ludicrous lynching charge that D.A. Steve Cooley tried to lynch him with, has been spurred into battle for justice again. This time, ANSWER has joined with the Campaign to Stop Police Violence in pressing for the criminal prosecution of Downey police officers who gunned down Mike Nida on a Downey street like a rabid dog last month for having done nothing.

The two activist groups, Nida&rsquo;s family and attorney Brian Claypool held a news conference and rally in front of the Downey police headquarters Nov. 10 and announced their intent to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against Downey PD and demand criminal prosecution of the officers. According to the outraged activists, this is what happened:

On Oct. 22, Downey police detained Nida multiple times in a single night for a crime he did not commit. At one point, fearing for his life, Nida, a 31-year-old father of four and union carpenter, ran to escape the notoriously brutal Downey police. As he ran, he was shot multiple times with a submachine gun, limping and stumbling an additional 75 yards before collapsing on the ground and being shot again while on the ground. Doug Kaufman, a coalition leader, said: &ldquo;The Downey police stopped Mike Nida because he allegedly matched a description for a suspect. In reality, Nida was the nearest young brown man to the officers at the time they received the call and they decided to harass him for that very reason.&rdquo;

Kaufman continued: &ldquo;The officers made no attempt to subdue Nida in any other way and made no attempt to chase him. They treated the streets of Downey like a crude shooting range and essentially hunted Nita from a distance. They shot him with automatic weapons and then executed him on the pavement as he lay there with an additional shot to the chest.

&ldquo;The Campaign to Stop Police Violence will organize tirelessly with Nida&rsquo;s family and all of the working families affected by his death to win justice and to ensure that the murderers responsible for Nida&rsquo;s death are locked up for their crime,&rdquo; Kaufman vowed. Immediately after the killing, the community staged a protest at D.A. Cooley&rsquo;s office demanding a proper investigation of the Nida slaughter which, of course, was ignored. Now it&rsquo;s time to roll out the artillery and handle this business the way we did when ANSWER et al. saved Jeremy Marks from the clutches of Cooley.

ON THE CITY COUNCIL BEAT &mdash; Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES), informed me that despite the City Council&rsquo;s rejection of the motion to split increased rent control code enforcement fees evenly between the tenants and the landlords, as discussed in last week&rsquo;s Soulvine, the matter may not be over. He said the council, then, asked the Housing Department to come back with a report analyzing the impact of splitting the fee and providing proposals on ways of possibly splitting the fees. It seems a couple of the more humane members of the anti-split fee majority may have had a change of heart. Good for them.

Also, Gross reminded me that the Foreclosure Tenant Eviction Protection Law, which Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed amid much hoopla last year, expires this year and must be extended into 2012 within the next couple of weeks. Council President Eric Garcetti authored this ordinance extending rent control eviction protection to all foreclosed rental properties throughout Los Angeles. It states simply that banks and other financial institutions cannot evict tenants from foreclosed rental property without just cause. Gross and CES are keeping a close eye on this.

Officials in the city of Lynwood this week joined their counterparts in South Gate, Long Beach, Carson and Los Angeles in backing the re-election of Rep. Janice Hahn in the new 44th Congressional District. Good for them, too. Which reminds me, the results of last week&rsquo;s election to replace Hahn as the 15th District councilmember, gives me pause. The stalwart Assemblyman Warren Furutani came in second to that other guy &mdash; the cop. So, there will be a runoff between a seasoned and proven multifaceted representative of the people and a cop. Yeah, and that&rsquo;s just what the Los Angeles City Council needs &mdash; another cop on it. Not!!!

I just realized this week that Ed Reyes is being termed-out of his 1st District seat. That makes me very sad. Reyes is one of the few good guys on the council. He will be sorely missed. (Unless, of course, his replacement is a person of the people and not a pawn of the power brokers.)

WHAT IS THIS?! &mdash; I saw where 9th District council member Jan Perry resigned her post as the council&rsquo;s president pro tem because she is troubled by &ldquo;private&rdquo; talks that have taken place over replacing Garcetti as president. What is this?! Perry has been an active participant, herself, in these &ldquo;private&rdquo; talks for almost two years now! I repeat, what is this? Could it be a lame attention-getting ploy on the part of a mayor wannabe? Or is it her way of casting some kind of aspersions on Councilman Herb Wesson, who is the only person I&rsquo;ve heard mentioned as a successor to Garcetti and is a person Perry has come to visibly and viscerally despise. What is this?! I have to find out what this is. I have to hold some private talks.

ALONG COMES JONES &mdash; The country&rsquo;s uber musician, Quincy Jones, has stepped over to his social activist side and endorsed Deputy District Attorney Danette Meyers for district attorney. He said that while he is impressed by Meyers&rsquo; credentials as an accomplished trial lawyer and veteran criminal prosecutor, he is especially moved by the amount of time she&rsquo;s spent outside the D.A.&rsquo;s office to ensure the justice system is working. &ldquo;Danette&rsquo;s broader community perspective is key to the effective pursuit of justice, and I wholeheartedly support her as the next district attorney of Los Angeles,&rdquo; Jones said.

RIP, CHURCH &mdash; My condolences to the family of Winston Doby, the former UCLA vice chancellor who devoted his life to improving educational opportunities for children, who died Nov. 10 after battling cancer. Doby was a graduate of Fremont High School and he returned to Fremont as a teacher in the middle 1960s before joining the UCLA administration, where he remained for the next 30 years overseeing programs and services to more than 35,000 UCLA students. Because his middle name is Churchill, we called him &ldquo;Church&rdquo; back in the day when he was busy establishing nationally recognized programs to provide support services for disadvantaged students, such as the Young Black Scholars Program and Edutrain, a charter school for high school dropouts. Some of us stopped calling him &ldquo;Church&rdquo; after he earned his Ph.D. in higher education at UCLA. Then he became Dr. Doby, as befitting a man of his erudition and zeal for the betterment of our community&rsquo;s youth. Rest in peace, my old friend.

AND FINALLY &mdash; How is it possible that someone could walk in and see an old man in the act of molesting a child and not grab the nearest blunt object and proceed to beat the old SOB to death?]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Get off my TV]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Get-off-my-TV-133587683.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">133587683</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 9 Nov 2011 20:49:14 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



				
	
	


									

																		



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																		                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

During the course of the six-week trial of Dr. Conrad Murray for his ministrations &mdash; or lack of same &mdash; in the death of Michael Jackson, many people asked me for my opinion and comments about the issue. There were preachers and other church-going folk who urged me to join in their support of Murray&rsquo;s innocence, while avid Jackson fans pressed me to join their crusade to make Murray burn in hell for having killed their idol. I refrained from taking either side because, frankly, I had no opinion one way or the other. Can you believe that? I had no opinion!

But now that the verdict is in, I have an opinion, but not about Murray&rsquo;s guilt or innocence, but about that pitiful, showboating, grandstanding mess of a press conference District Attorney Steve Cooley held on TV immediately after the jury convicted Murray of involuntary manslaughter, during which Cooley preened and gloated and praised and patted himself and his staff on their backs for having done an outstanding job of nailing the doctor &mdash; while his right-hand woman, Jackie Lacey, stood silently by his side with her heart glowing all over the place. It was sickening.

Yeah, well, where were Cooley/Lacey, et al. the other day when they tried Aubrey Berry for murder for the shooting death of rapper Dolla (Roderick Anthony Burton II) in the Beverly Center mall in 2009? Like Murray&rsquo;s, Berry&rsquo;s trial was presided over by Judge Michael E. Pastor, but unlike Murray, Berry was acquitted. As is his wont, Cooley overreached and charged Berry with murdering Dolla; the defense attorney, Howard R. Price, proved to the jury that Berry killed Dolla in self-defense. What did Cooley and the gang have to say about that loss? Nothing. Few people know it even occurred.

Granted, the death of Michael Jackson by whatever means was a global event that caused Cooley to make an extremely rare public appearance to hail his victory in that case. However, several popular Black entertainers have met their demise here in Cooley County in the past couple of years about which we know nothing.

Cannot Cooley&rsquo;s precious investigators (as well as the LAPD) do anything to solve the 1997 murder of Biggie Smalls? What do we know about the circumstances that caused Nate Dogg to wake up dead in Long Beach in March? Are there any clues to the drive-by shooting death of M-Bone in Inglewood in May? Were there any suspicious medical personnel in the vicinity when Heavy D died in Beverly Hills Monday?

None of these guys are Michael Jackson, but they died here too and their fates deserve some attention from Cooley&rsquo;s wonderful staff, and until they get it, Cooley needs to shut up and stay off my TV. That&rsquo;s my opinion.

OCCUPY CITY COUNCIL? &mdash; Those on the bottom of the 99 percent are taking it on the chin again here in Los Angeles &mdash; thanks to the votes of City Council members Bernard Parks, Jan Perry, Tony Cardenas, Herb Wesson, Bill Rosendahl, Paul Krekorian, Mitchell Englander and Dennis Zine.
Late last month, the council voted to increase rent control and code enforcement fees associated with tenants in rent control housing. While tenant groups were not opposed to the fee increases &mdash; which they say will prevent a deficit and will enable the Housing Department to maintain its current operations and services &mdash; they were opposed to the inequity in who pays the code enforcement fee. Currently, landlords can pass on the full fee to tenants. The tenant groups want the payment of the code enforcement fee split 50-50 between landlords and the tenants, similar to the payment arrangement of the rental unit registration fee.

At a recent council meeting, Councilmen Richard Alarcon and Ed Reyes offered a proposal to evenly divide the code enforcement fee to alleviate the financial burden on tenants who, for the most part, can least afford to pay the full and increased fee. The Alarcon-Reyes proposal was voted down the by the eight council members named above &mdash; some of whom surprise me.

BROAD? I THINK NOT &mdash; Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District&rsquo;s PR consultants made a big deal out of announcing that LA&rsquo;s Promise, a nonprofit organization working with South L.A. schools, had selected Veronica Melvin as its new president and CEO. That&rsquo;s OK, I guess. But then the PR people handling this matter, pulled a Steve Cooley and overreached and ticked me off. They sent me a press release with a headline that screamed: &ldquo;Broad Spectrum of L.A. Community Members React Positively to LA&rsquo;s Promise Board of Directors Choice of Veronica Melvin as LA&rsquo;s Promise President and CEO.&rdquo;

Oh yeah? What followed was a three-page press release of statements from 12 people gushing with praise for Melvin, the first of which was racist school board President Monica Garcia, followed by her equally racist cohort, Yolie Flores and that out-of-it Superintendent John Deasy and a bunch of other people I dislike or either do not know. I called the writer of this thing and complained that this is by no means &ldquo;a broad spectrum&rdquo; of anything; it is simply the opinions of a group of folks many people in the community are fighting against. In fact, it doesn&rsquo;t even list Marguerite LaMotte, the only Black member of the board of education and in whose district LA&rsquo;s Promise operates! I brought this to the writer&rsquo;s attention and asked if he&rsquo;d even interviewed LaMotte for her opinion. He indicated he hadn&rsquo;t, but added, &ldquo;Marguerite knows how to get information to me.&rdquo; Bull----! I asked LaMotte about it and she said: &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t told anything about it. I never met the woman (Melvin). I don&rsquo;t know anything about her background and I don&rsquo;t know whether her selection is good for the district or not. This matter was kept completely away from me.&rdquo;

Melvin could very well be a fine person and an exemplary educator, but nobody I know and respect has been called upon to attest to that. I don&rsquo;t like being played.

MORE OF THE SAME &mdash; Speaking of schools, the second of four community meetings for the parents of students attending 42nd Street Elementary and Dorsey and Los Angeles high schools will be held Saturday to consider the fate of these three schools, which are currently under consideration for LAUSD&rsquo;s Public School Choice Resolution. The four meetings are being held to determine how these schools will be improved, administered and who will run them. The purpose of the meetings is to inject community input into the implementation of public education in our neighborhood schools. The first meeting was held on Nov. 5, but the next one is on Saturday at the Cochran Middle School, 4066 W. Johnnie Cochran Vista (17th Street) from 8:30 a.m. to noon. The third one is scheduled for Dec. 10 and the fourth one will be held Jan. 28, 2012. This is important. Parents, students, and community members are urged to attend.

MEYERS AT THE LECTERN &mdash; District attorney candidate Deputy District Attorney Danette Meyers has been invited to provide the training at the Thomas A. Mesereau Free Legal Clinic Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Morningside Church, 8722 Crenshaw Blvd. in Inglewood. Meyers&rsquo; subject will be &ldquo;Alternatives to Incarceration: Misdemeanors to Felonies,&rdquo; and she will answer the question: &ldquo;What happens when you get caught up in the judicial system?&rdquo; Mesereau said client consultations will immediately follow Meyers&rsquo; presentation and he said walk-ins are always welcome at his free legal clinic.

PUT IT BACK! &mdash; The appropriate political representatives along the Crenshaw Subway route met with a standing room only gathering of residents, merchants, property owners, parents and stakeholders Monday who approved the Crenshaw Subway Coalition&rsquo;s lawsuit against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and who called upon the mayor and Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to put the Crenshaw Boulevard Rail Tunnel back on the MTA board&rsquo;s table, from whence it was flung by the mayor on May 26 when the Villaraigosa-controlled MTA board rejected the very idea of a Park Mesa tunnel as a portion of the subway.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Damn! I thought we&rsquo;d have two Blacks running for president.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Court actions]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Court-actions-133124118.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">133124118</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 2 Nov 2011 17:46:11 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

In case you haven&rsquo;t heard, Reuters reported that a federal judge last week approved a $1.25 billion (yeah, billion) settlement in a decades-old discrimination case by Black farmers, thus clearing the way for them to seek compensation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for being left out of farm aid programs. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman wrote in an order approving the agreement that Congress, by waiving the statute of limitations, has further redressed &ldquo;the historic discrimination against African-American farmers.&rdquo; He called the settlement &ldquo;fair, reasonable and adequate.&rdquo;

The California Supreme Court last week rejected two challenges to the new voting districts drawn by the citizens commission. The justices voted unanimously to reject the two lawsuits filed by Republicans to overturn the new congressional and state Senate boundaries and they chose to remain mum as to why they kept the new boundaries intact. One of the challenged districts was the newly configured 44th Congressional District where Rep. Janice Hahn is handling an empty suit and an empty dress who are seeking to claim that office as a &ldquo;Black seat.&rdquo; Hahn has already obtained the endorsement of the relevant Los Angeles city officials and now she&rsquo;s picked up the support of the leaders of Long Beach, South Gate and Carson, as well as the support of more labor unions that you can shake a stick at. Oh, and the Soulvine, as well.

Last week&rsquo;s legal victory of Sharon Song Byrd against accused sexual harasser and batterer Tony Wafford was really quite simple. You might recall the previous reportage of Byrd&rsquo;s lawsuit against Wafford, her employer, was tried by a jury in Superior Court, which listened to nine days of testimony about an aggressive filthy workplace campaign by Wafford to get Byrd to have sex with him. When Byrd&rsquo;s attorney, Jeffrey W. Cowan, and Wafford&rsquo;s attorney, Dermot D. Givens, finished the nine-day proceedings, the jury adjourned and deliberated for less than an hour and returned a verdict of guilty of all charges, all counts &mdash; just guilty of everything, and awarded Byrd punitive damages of $23,726.17. In fact, the few minutes the jury spent deliberating on a verdict was actually spent bickering over how much the obviously guilty Wafford should pay Byrd in damages.

Then the case went back to Judge Michael C. Solner&rsquo;s courtroom to adjudicate the past and future non-economic damages on Byrd&rsquo;s battery and sexual harassment claims. You might remember that Wafford fired his attorney, Givens, and appeared in pro se and got on Judge Solner&rsquo;s last nerve by insisting he was innocent. Solner told him repeatedly that he was not innocent because a jury had already found him guilty and the only reason he was in court now was to determine how much more he is going to pay for being guilty. Wafford didn&rsquo;t understand and refused to deal with the issue, so Solner said, in effect: &ldquo;Never mind; I&rsquo;ll do it myself.&rdquo; So, on Oct. 25, Solner issued an order that Wafford will pay Byrd $40,000 for general damages and that she is to receive the jury&rsquo;s $20,000 punitive award. And that she &ldquo;will be entitled to interest at the rate of 10 percent per annum from the date of entry of this judgement until paid.&rdquo; So, that&rsquo;s that.

The Crenshaw Subway Coalition took the historic step of filing a lawsuit last Friday against the Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa-led MTA for violating environmental and civil rights laws when the MTA board approved the Crenshaw-LAX project on Sept. 22. The coalition is having a public meeting on this issue Monday at 6 p.m. in the Crenshaw DWP Auditorium, 4030 Crenshaw Blvd. We&rsquo;ll discuss this some more next week.

CHURCH MATTERS &mdash; The problems at Paradise Baptist Church continue. The members say they are still kept in the dark regarding the church&rsquo;s finances and day-to-day operations. They say they have made many unsuccessful attempts to meet with Paster A.D. Iverson and the trustee board. However, a little light is shining through in that on Oct. 23, the members held an election to seat a new trustee board to resolve some of the issues the church faces. I&rsquo;m told that 90 percent of the voting members voted to remove the current trustee board and to elect new interim trustees. The question, then, is will they go?

Speaking of going, St. Paul Baptist Church is gone. It was sold on Halloween for $3.1 million, which was the sum of the debt the church owed on its loan from the bank with which it financed the creation of Pastor Joel Ward&rsquo;s narcissistic John Joel Scholastic Academy across the street from the church, which has been defunct for a couple of years now. The church was listed for a flat $4 million, apparently so Ward could get some relocation funds. But that dog wouldn&rsquo;t hunt (as my grandfather would say). The congregation, such as it is, moved out of the church building and was seen worshipping in the school last Sunday. That is so sad. John Branham&rsquo;s legacy has ended.

MEYERS&rsquo; MESSAGE &mdash; The Inglewood Links and the AKA Sorority sponsored a forum on domestic violence last Sunday at the Crenshaw United Methodist Church and invited district attorney candidate Danette Meyers to speak on the subject. Meyers talked about the resources available to domestic violence victims, the rights of such victims and probably, most importantly, the need for people to do everything they can to get their friends and family members whom they know to be victims of domestic violence to get away from it, or they will surely end up dead. Meyers&rsquo; message: &ldquo;Nothing is going to change; it&rsquo;s not going to stop and it will only get worse.&rdquo; Meyers provided a graphic example: The 2007 case of Rickie Rene Madison, who stabbed his pregnant girlfriend, Aysha Sly, 172 times after years of abuse. Meyers prosecuted him and got him the death penalty. Meyers&rsquo; presentation was most effective.

Meyers will be honored as an Outstanding African American Woman in Law Enforcement by the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation when it holds its National Black Police Officers Association conference at the downtown Radisson Hotel Thursday.

A TRICK &mdash; On Halloween, the Los Angeles County Sheriff&rsquo;s Department released the results of its investigation into that troubling &ldquo;lynching&rdquo; incident at Santa Monica High School a while ago and reported that their investigation &ldquo;found no probable cause that any staff member or employee of the Santa Monica Unified School District acted in such a manner that supports an allegation of criminal misconduct.&rdquo; Isn&rsquo;t that surprising? Upon learning this, the school board directed that &ldquo;a third-party investigator immediately probe the incident to examine whether existing policies, practices and procedures were followed immediately following the incident and to make recommendations about changes that should be made.&rdquo;

WELCOME BACK, MARY &mdash; I was so happy to learn that my good buddy, Mary Grady, has been named director of public and media relations at the Los Angeles World Airports. For 10 years, Mary was the spokesperson for the LAPD, and she and I go back farther than that &mdash; to the days when she was pounding the news pavement like me. I was shocked and very upset to learn that she was no longer with the cops and nobody would give me a straight answer as to why, so I assumed she was screwed and that made me mad and so I decided I could do without any further LAPD media relations since my friend was gone. I&rsquo;m delighted with the fact that she landed on her capable and experienced feet. Now I&rsquo;ll hang out at the airport.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Rest in peace, Guy Crowder.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Bothersome stuff]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Bothersome-stuff-132667068.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">132667068</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:28:28 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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Just when you think it&rsquo;s safe to stop hating people, they do something to reinforce that feeling deep in your gut that everybody is up to no good; that nobody can be trusted; that you&rsquo;re all alone on this planet. These are the things that are bothering me this week: I heard the Los Angeles Police Commission is quite concerned by the tweeting habits of Sal LaBarbera, an LAPD homicide detective. It seems that LaBarbera&rsquo;s tweets differ in content and tone, depending on the color of his subjects. Using the handle, LAMuderCop, LaBarbera sent a grisly picture of a murder victim in the park at 88th and Hoover. He tweeted: &ldquo;Guess where I am.&rdquo; Then added: &ldquo;IfAnyOneCares.&rdquo; Then, in reference to the beauty salon massacre in Seal Beach, the LAPD detective tweeted: &ldquo;Thoughts n prayers for the victims, and their loved ones. If one community can come together Seal Bch can.&rdquo; Do we have to put up with this? Najee Ali and them don&rsquo;t think so and he pressed the issue with Chief Charlie Beck and Commission President John Mack.

Then there&rsquo;s that Seal Beach City Councilman, Gordon Shanks, who, at age 76, hasn&rsquo;t got the sensitivity he was born with. While publicly reacting to the horrible massacre in which a lone White gunman killed eight people in a beauty salon, Shanks said: &ldquo;These things are not supposed to happen here. Maybe in Compton. But not here.&rdquo; This bigoted old fool doesn&rsquo;t seem to understand that these things are not supposed to happen anywhere, so an outraged Compton resident, Royce Esters, president of NAEJA, gave Shanks a big piece of his mind, including a statistical history and the current status of crime in Compton.

Then a Downey police officer, in pursuit of some kind of perpetrator, shot and killed the wrong man &mdash; an innocent man who had done nothing wrong. To add insult to you-know-what, guess who&rsquo;s investigating the police shooting of this innocent man &mdash; yep, the Los Angeles County Sheriff&rsquo;s Department! Isn&rsquo;t this the same law enforcement body that was supposed to be investigating the controversial Culver City Police killing of that young Black man in a strip mall last year? The one in which witnesses said the man was unarmed and had his hands raised when the cops gunned him down? Whatever happened to that? And is this the same law enforcement body whose actions resulted in the death of Mitrice Richardson and whose &ldquo;investigation&rdquo; resulted in a multi-million-dollar county settlement with Richardson&rsquo;s family? Richardson&rsquo;s death has been settled, but not solved and while the Justice Department is busy probing the brutality of sheriff&rsquo;s deputies in the county jails, it needs to investigate Richardson&rsquo;s death and determine once and for all whether she was killed by a sheriff&rsquo;s deputy and what Sheriff Lee Baca knows about it and when did he know it. Law enforcement investigating law enforcement. Does that make sense?

Politico has reported that House Ethics Committee is moving toward a full-scale investigation of Rep. Laura Richardson, whom I reported months ago as being under scrutiny over allegations that she forced her staff to perform prohibited political activities on government time. Of course, she&rsquo;s denied the accusations and even denied the scrutiny. But, you know ... If the Ethics Committee creates a special investigative committee to oversee the Richardson matter, that will make the fourth Black Congress member to land squarely in the crosshairs of the secretive Ethics Committee: Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, Gregory Meeks of New York, Maxine Waters of California and Richardson. I hoped we were better than that. 

FEEL GOOD STUFF &mdash; More than 1,000 mourners attended the funeral of 16-year-old Angela Gettis, the Washington Prep cheerleader who collapsed and died during her high school&rsquo;s football game. The grief-stricken community rushed to provide emotional support to her devastated family and to provide financial contributions to help pay the popular teen&rsquo;s funeral expenses. In fact, we responded so well to the tragedy that Angela&rsquo;s cash-strapped mother was able to pay every penny required to send her daughter home in a glorious manner. Lily Evans, Angela&rsquo;s mother has issued the following statement of gratitude to the community:

&ldquo;I am deeply grateful for the overwhelming community support to help bury my daughter. I want to thank everyone for their financial and other support during our family&rsquo;s tragedy. This includes the alumni associations of Washington and Fremont high schools, Dr. Todd Ullah, the principal of Washington Prep and the entire student body, faculty, staff and parents, the Cal State Dominguez Hills students and staff, Jim Manga and the St. John&rsquo;s Family Center, the owners and staff of Buffalo Wild Wings, Arnetta Mack of Mack Interprises, community leaders Najee Ali, Reverends Norman Johnson and E.L. Williams, the judges of the Compton Courthouse, school board member Marguerite LaMotte, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Rep. Karen Bass and all the other individuals who opened their hearts to help us. Last, but not least, I thank The Wave, which was the only Black paper in the city to cover our family&rsquo;s tragedy.&rdquo;

THIS AND THAT &mdash; A Los Angeles County District Attorney candidates forum will be held next Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum, 369 E. First St. It is sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of L.A. County and co-sponsored by 12 other multi-racial organizations. In addition to Deputy D.A. Danette Meyers, the forum will feature the other candidates seeking to replace the beast D.A. Steve Cooley &mdash; Deputy DAs Bobby Grace, Steve Ipsen, Alan Jackson, Mario Trujillo and, oh, Jackie Lacey. The event is free and you&rsquo;re asked to RSVP by Halloween to contactapaba@gmail.com (subject line: &ldquo;DA Forum&rdquo;). I wouldn&rsquo;t miss it for the world!

The Occupy South L.A. forces will protest and rally around the Chase Bank at 4401 Crenshaw Blvd. at 10 a.m. Saturday as part of their continuing efforts in support of the Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Wall Street movements and their emphasis on addressing the perceived racist practices of big banks operating in the Black community.

The first of a series of public hearings by the Joint Conference Committee on Public Employee Pensions was held Wednesday in the city of Carson Council Chambers. The committee is co-chaired by Assemblyman Warren Furutani and state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod. Additional hearings are being scheduled and I certainly hope Furutani&rsquo;s staff, or somebody will provide advance notice of them because this agenda is heavy, as the committee is charged with assessing the current condition of public employee benefits and reform efforts.

WOFFORD LOSES &mdash; Superior Court Judge Michael C. Solner entered a judgement of $60,000 Tuesday against community activist and bon vivant Tony Wofford in favor of Sharon Song Byrd, the woman who sued him for damages suffered by his sexual harassment and assault of her. I&rsquo;m past deadline, so I&rsquo;ll write about it some more next week after I&rsquo;ve read all these court documents. 

AND FINALLY &mdash; Now that my once blind right eye has been repaired and I can see out of it perfectly, I am having surgery Thursday on my weak left eye. I am told my left eye only has a cataract in it and removing it is a minor procedure and not nearly as unusual or complicated as the work done to restore sight to my right eye. Therefore, I expect to be back here next week shooting off my mouth and doing battle with DMV to get my driver&rsquo;s license restored, which was revoked after my optometrist ratted me out and told DMV I was blind and should not be driving. Unbeknownst to me and my optometrist (whom I&rsquo;m firing and possibly suing), I was driving blind with a license and had no accidents for more than two years. Now that I can see, I have no license and cannot legally drive! What do you bet? After I get two good eyes and a driver&rsquo;s license, I&rsquo;ll probably have an accident! Anyway, I figure the worst part of this whole three-month ordeal will be having to do business with the DMV.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Bye, bye Baca]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Bye-bye-Baca-132211158.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">132211158</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:19:51 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Will somebody please explain to me how it is possible that complaints of brutal treatment by sheriff&rsquo;s deputies in the County Jail have been legion for years; how journalists have written thousands of words about prisoners&rsquo; complaints, their families&rsquo; complaints, even fellow deputies&rsquo; complaints about the systematic beatings and killings of inmates in the County Jail &mdash; often carried out by organized gangs of specially tattooed sheriff&rsquo;s deputies &mdash; is common knowledge to us all and yet, Sheriff Lee Baca, the head of that thing, could tell the L.A. Times: &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know about it?&rdquo; Baca told the Times: &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t ignoring the problems in the jails; I just didn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; He went on to say his subordinates keep things from him. Indeed.

Every time we write about one these jail house beatings or deaths, we seek comments from the Sheriff&rsquo;s Department about them and we always get Baca&rsquo;s media spokesman, Steve Whitmore, who always tells us &ldquo;A thorough investigation will be done, blah, blah, blah...&rdquo; and nothing more is ever said. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, having long been fed up with Baca, remarked that the county has paid millions of dollars to residents and their families to settle lawsuits occasioned by jailhouse abuses. And true to form, every time we write about threatened litigation against the Sheriff&rsquo;s Department, Whitmore comes out and says, &ldquo;We welcome going to court so we can tell our story. We are anxious to tell it. We are anxious for the facts to come out.&rdquo; (I don&rsquo;t even bother to talk to Whitmore anymore because, regardless of the incident, he always says the same thing.)

So, is it possible that neither Whitmore, Baca&rsquo;s mouthpiece, nor anyone else among the many who surround him have never told him about the hell hole of a jail system he&rsquo;s running? No. It&rsquo;s not possible. Baca has dismissed calls for his resignation, which is good, because he should be fired for one of two causes: Cause No. 1: He is a liar. He has known about the abuse because he either orchestrated it or was complicit in it, or Cause No. 2: He is incompetent for not knowing about it. Either way, he&rsquo;s got to go.

HYPOCRITES, ALL OF THEM &mdash; LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy summarily fired substitute teacher Patricia McAllister Tuesday afternoon for a bigoted, disrespectful remark she made about Jews when interviewed by a news reporter while she was participating in the Occupy L.A. protests at City Hall on her own time. I watched her say it on TV, and believe me, she could have righteously assailed corporate entities all day long without reverting to the Nazi-era sentiment of attacking the Jews for the bad economy. But my concern is this: People in high places, in low places and in places in between have been attacking, slurring and vilifying African-Americans ever since there were African-Americans and they all went merrily along their way. 

When Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamonte was in office, he called us &ldquo;n---ers&rdquo; while making a speech to a ballroom full of people. Nobody called for his head but me &mdash; and he kept it. Then there was that crazy Republican Party official in Orange County who circulated a picture of President Obama as a baby chimpanzee, and, despite the outrage she ignited among us Blacks, she didn&rsquo;t lose her post. And what about that awful postage stamp Mexico issued depicting Blacks as monkeys? As far as the McAllister matter is concerned, my most significant beef is with LAUSD&rsquo;s hypocrisy. In his press statement announcing McAllister&rsquo;s termination, Deasy states the school district &ldquo;will never stand for behavior that is disrespectful, intolerant or discriminatory.&rdquo; Oh shut up Deasy! 

LAUSD has been nothing but &ldquo;disrespectful, intolerant and discriminatory&rdquo; to African-Americans for years &mdash; in the hiring and firing of personnel (remember Adm. David Brewer et al.?); in the implementation of educational programs (remember when they had summer school for Spanish-speaking students only?); in the cavalier rejection of Black parents&rsquo; involvement in decision-making affecting neighborhood schools (remember the Clay Middle School takeover?); the institutionalized disregard for the underachievement of the district&rsquo;s Black students (remember the African-American Learning Initiative, which the board adopted and then shelved?). And finally, remember how the discriminatory operation of the district that led to the U.S. Department of Education&rsquo;s 19-month-long civil rights probe of the LAUSD was settled last week? Did you know the department&rsquo;s assistant secretary for civil rights, Russlyn Ali, a Black woman, expanded that federal investigation to include forcing LAUSD to implement actions to raise the achievement level of its Black students? Until then, the probe was all about Spanish-speaking students. 

The only thing McAllister did Tuesday that was different from what Deasy and them have been doing all along, is that she stepped on the third rail, and therefore, had to go. LAUSD is a bunch of hypocrites.

WHEW! &mdash; I do not engage in &ldquo;social networking&rdquo; of any kind and I only read a blog if it has been directed to my attention for some particular reason. So, imagine my horror when someone sent me an entry on Jasmyne Cannick&rsquo;s Facebook page on which she posted a huge photo of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Councilman Bernard Parks standing in extremely close proximity to each other and both were smiling as though they were involved in a great bromance!! I was shocked by this. I figured this obscenity before me had resulted from one of only two possible events: 1. That Parks had come over from the dark side and embraced the concept of community empowerment and decided to address the needs and aspirations of the people he represents or, 2. That Ridley-Thomas had lost his mind due to a drug administered by some fiend intent on ridding the Black community of the only public servant working in our behalf. I was very upset about it. I made inquiries about that photo and learned that, no, Ridley-Thomas does not require a mental health intervention as his sensibilities are still firmly intact. I learned that there were more than 20 people in that picture from which Cannick made her &ldquo;cutesy&rdquo; two-man crop and put it on the Internet. It&rsquo;s been dismissed as &ldquo;Jasmyne playing games.&rdquo; One would think she would have had enough game-playing with her Gloria Gray/Danny Tabor Internet caper.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; The Occupy South L.A. Movement activists will hold their third protest rally Thursday evening at 5 p.m. at the Chase Bank, 4401 Crenshaw Blvd. Their actions are in solidarity with and in support of the national Occupy Wall Street Movement. &hellip; A 15th Council District candidates forum will be held Saturday at noon and will end with a straw poll at 2:45 p.m. at Los Angeles Harbor College, 1111 Figueroa Place, in Wilmington, on the second floor of the Seahawk Center. The forum is sponsored by the Harbor Alliance of Neighborhood Councils. &hellip; Rep. Laura Richardson fired Eric Boyd, her local chief of staff, and replaced him with &mdash; hold onto your hat &mdash; Joey Hill. Get ready for even bigger fireworks! (I don&rsquo;t know why Eric let that woman fire him. He should have quit like everybody else. It would have been better for his self-esteem &mdash; and his r&eacute;sum&eacute;.)

AND FINALLY &mdash; Cornel West, along with a group of others, was arrested for protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court last Sunday. He was in Washington, D.C. to attend the dedication of the MLK Memorial. I don&rsquo;t know why he was protesting at the Supreme Court. He should have been on the steps of the Capitol, protesting the Republican Senate&rsquo;s failure to pass President Obama&rsquo;s Jobs Bill. After all, West is traveling the country talking about poverty, so he should have been on the Capitol&rsquo;s doorstep demanding that Congress help Obama alleviate the poverty he despises so much.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Redux]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Redux-131692703.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">131692703</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:49:39 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

I went to the Tavis Smiley/Cornel West show at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple last Sunday for the singular purpose of hearing these two Black pariahs-come-lately attack President Barack Obama, as they had reportedly done at previous stops of their cross-country poverty tour. The temple was almost filled with people genuinely concerned and affected by the economic state of the union and by people, like me, who were there prepared to do battle should the pair attack the president. But, thankfully, they did not do it. Instead, they attacked poverty, and that was great.

Smiley made a comment about how the issue of poverty never came up in any of the last presidential debates (&ldquo;they talked about the middle class, but said nothing about poverty&rdquo;) but how he and West want to make sure poverty is part of the debate this time. That was OK. Smiley slid an oblique remark that Obama, through his jobs bill, is finally doing something about poverty. That was unnecessary and led one fellow to persistently call him and West &ldquo;poverty pimps&rdquo; during the question-and-answer period. That was as vitriolic as things became, though.

The meeting in the temple took me back to the 1960s civil rights movement, when ministers preached against the evils of racism and discrimination and our bravest freedom fighters urged us to rise up, take action and claim our civil rights. Only this time the demon is poverty, and our rights are to a job and a decent standard of living. The only thing lacking at Sunday&rsquo;s gathering was music. I missed the part where we used to stand, hold hands and sing &ldquo;We Shall Overcome.&rdquo;

NEW LAWS &mdash; Assemblyman Warren Furutani, a candidate for the vacant L.A. City Council seat in the 15th District, had several of his bills signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown last week, including key career technical education legislation and his High School Drop Out Prevention Act. Furutani has been working feverishly on &ldquo;anti-double dipping&rdquo; pension reform legislation, an issue that resonates here in Los Angeles, where some public officials get multiple public pensions. The governor held back the assemblyman&rsquo;s bill because Brown plans to release his own proposals on pension reform soon. The Legislature called a conference committee to review all pending pension reform legislation, including the governor&rsquo;s, during the interim. Furutani is chairman of that committee and he said the first of three hearings scheduled on the issue will be held Oct. 26.

The governor signed all seven of Assemblyman Mike Davis&rsquo; bills into law, including the one requiring that state prisoners be counted as residents of their home communities for redistricting purposes, rather than be counted among the population of those far-flung territories in which the prisons are located. Gov. Brown also enacted the bill Davis and Assemblymember Wilmer Carter wrote to ensure equity and transparency at all levels of the judicial selection process, thus ensuring fairness in the vetting process for jurors.

IT&rsquo;S TIME TO REACT &mdash; The state of California is in the middle of a 30-day public review period of the Department of Mental Health&rsquo;s California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP), relating to mental health issues in the state. As part of this overall assessment and revamping of the state&rsquo;s mental health approaches, the CRDP is issuing what it calls &ldquo;The African-American Population Report.&rdquo; This report is about what Black people believe would be important practices that need to be offered in California for the prevention and early intervention of mental health issues in Black people. A draft of this AA Population Report is being circulated and reviewed by Black people all over the state in an attempt to get our views of what this thing is saying about us. Officials want to know if we think the report is accurate, if we think it should include additional information and, if so, what specific inclusions do we recommend. 

Public forums have been held on the report in Los Angeles for the past two weeks (the most recent being Wednesday) to which Black mental health experts and members of the Skid Row community have flocked, but the general African-American public is being asked to weigh in on the issue, as well. Go to &ldquo;CRDP African-American Population Report&rdquo; on the Internet, read it and send them your comments. Don&rsquo;t wait until it is adopted and written in stone before you get mad about it.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell will host a town hall meeting on the &ldquo;State of Children in the 47th District&rdquo; Thursday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Holman United Methodist Church. A panel of seven experts in child and family health and well being will assess the unmet needs of the district&rsquo;s children in our current anemic economic times. &hellip;

Cal State Dominguez Hills will host the second annual Pan African Global Trade Conference Oct. 13-15, at which every level of politician &mdash; including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa &mdash; and virtually every municipal entity will confer with representatives of all regions of Africa over how the upcoming Tripartite Free Trade Agreement will increase and make more effective trade and business between us and Africa. Everybody looking to make a buck will be drawn to this.

Rachel Haserjian from the West Adams Preparatory High School, and Terry Little from Ascot Avenue Elementary School were among 16 classroom teachers named Los Angeles County Teachers of the Year in a recent ceremony and they are now in the running for the California Teacher of the Year honor.

State Sen. Curren Price will hold a free consumer education seminar for seniors on Oct. 20 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Claude Pepper Senior Center, 1762 S. La Cienega. Experts will discuss eight different kinds of scams to which elderly Californians often fall victim. I think a lot of not-so-senior residents ought to attend, too.

Najee Ali pulled out of the mass of demonstrators who have seized downtown L.A. and led a group of protesters to occupy Crenshaw Boulevard. Ali, along with staunch social/economic activists Big Money Griff, Jackie Grimes, Paulette Gipson, Beverly Hester and others marched on Crenshaw&rsquo;s Wells Fargo Bank Wednesday and will do it to Bank of America in the Crenshaw Mall Thursday at 5 p.m. Like the rest of us, Ali and them abhor the banks&rsquo; racist, &ldquo;reverse redlining&rdquo; lending practices that have robbed African-Americans of their homes. But unlike the rest of us, they&rsquo;ve resolved to do something about it.

The revitalization of the Slauson Avenue Corridor could very well be in the offing. Earlier this month, residents of View Park, Ladera Heights, Windsor Hills and other impacted neighborhoods met with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to discuss their long-held dream of having that blighted Slauson strip revitalized to fit its surrounding communities. Ridley-Thomas took the residents through the steps leading to revitalization and showed them diagrams and artists&rsquo; conceptions of what the strip could look like. 

AND FINALLY &mdash; Najee Ali stays on top of the news, knows what&rsquo;s going on in the world and in the community, but for the past six or seven years, he hasn&rsquo;t known how old he is. The other day, Najee was talking with a friend about his upcoming birthday. He said that since he will be turning 50 in December, he would like to throw a big party to celebrate his turning that landmark age. His friend asked him when was his birthday. Najee replied: &ldquo;I was born Dec. 6, 1962.&rdquo; His friend reply: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re turning 49, not 50. Can&rsquo;t you count?&rdquo; Najee was shocked. In fact, he&rsquo;s still shocked because he can&rsquo;t remember when he lost track of his age. He said: &ldquo;I know I turned 49 last December because before that, I was 48...&rdquo;  No, Najee, on Dec. 6 you can celebrate turning 49 for another year.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Compton drama]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Compton-drama-131195023.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">131195023</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 5 Oct 2011 19:56:57 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

The murder conviction of an innocent Black man was overturned in the Compton courthouse last week. Why? Because one of District Attorney Steve Cooley&rsquo;s prosecutors, Scott Collins, did what we have become inured to: Cooley&rsquo;s prosecutors lying, making secret deals with witnesses, withholding, concealing and/or making up evidence and material facts and doing whatever they want to get a conviction of anybody for anything. Acting upon three years of research done by Loyola Law School students, Superior Court Judge Kelvin D. Filer overturned the murder conviction of Obie Anthony, a 37-year-old man who was found guilty of the 1994 killing of a man outside a South L.A. brothel. Anthony had already served 17 years of his life in prison for the crime he did not commit, and last Friday, Judge Filer freed him and cut prosecutor Collins a new one.

The law school kids discovered that the prosecutor had made a deal with a pimp to provide key testimony against Anthony and a co-defendant, Reggie Cole, in exchange for a light sentence for pimping and pandering charges. The prosecutor elected not to disclose his deal with the pimp to the jury and Judge Filer harshly criticized him for it in court Friday when he freed Anthony. Cole, who was also convicted on the deal-making pimp&rsquo;s testimony, was freed from prison several months ago on the same grounds by another judge.

I brought this situation to the attention of Deputy D.A. Danette Meyers, who is running for Cooley&rsquo;s job, and she said: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why people hate us. Justice is never served when those kinds of things occur in criminal cases. When we have situations like this, where two Superior Court judges overturn convictions based upon the failure of the prosecution to turn over discovery, that calls for more training of prosecutors in our office.&rdquo;

SAY WHAT?! &mdash; The California Legislative Black Caucus drew a packed house for its policy conference last weekend at which our eight Black state legislators were expected to get the public&rsquo;s input in shaping a working agenda for the next term that related to the needs of our community. So what did they do? They had Sheriff Lee Baca come to the podium and address the crowd about absolutely nothing. Baca talked utter nonsense and didn&rsquo;t say a word about the U.S. Justice Department&rsquo;s probe &mdash; both overt and covert &mdash; into the institutionalized brutality of jail inmates by sheriff&rsquo;s deputies. He didn&rsquo;t say anything about the narcotics and contraband trade his deputies are accused of implementing in the county jail and he failed to mention any of the wide range of troubling circumstances that led to the death of Mitrice Richardson and the recovery of her body. These matters loom large in the Black community and dealing with them ought to be on the front burner of the Black caucus&rsquo; agenda and Baca should have been talking about them. What was the point in having him there?

HERE THEY ARE &mdash; So much for &ldquo;coalition politics,&rdquo; which, as we expected, was no more than a slogan. Sept. 29 was the last day that lawsuits contesting the newly drawn congressional districts could be filed with the California Supreme Court. A lawsuit was filed that day challenging the three Los Angeles area African-American districts, the 37th, 43rd and 44th congressional districts, on grounds that they violate the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. The suers also maintain that several Los Angeles congressional districts violate the state constitutional criteria, that the new boundaries denied districts to Latinos and one in Orange County unnecessarily divided the Little Saigon Asian community. Plaintiffs in the suit are former Republican Rep. George Radanovich and Los Angeles and Orange County residents Charles and Gwen Patrick, Omar Navarro and Trung Phan.

But you know, I don&rsquo;t understand why the new 44th Congressional District is being seen by anybody as an African-American district (other than the fact that a couple of Black people think they ought to represent it). The district is highly diverse, while leaning a bit toward Latino. It includes San Pedro, Wilmington, Watts, Carson, South Gate, Compton, Lynwood and parts of Long Beach and Walnut Park. Rep. Janice Hahn already represents a major portion it and has represented other parts of it for the more than a decade she served on the Los Angeles City Council. I don&rsquo;t see what the fuss is all about: it&rsquo;s a multiracial district with a White congresswoman.

SHARPTON STEPS IN &mdash; While Najee Ali and them were busy showing their support for President Obama on Crenshaw Boulevard, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had already called the demonstrators to offer his support, was busy in Washington, D.C., tearing up Democratic lawmakers for being critical of the president. Sharpton gave an interview to the conservative Washington Times in which he singled out Democratic Obama critics, Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, for having never supported Obama in the first place. &ldquo;I think there&rsquo;s a lot of discontent because of unemployment. I think that the media has been irresponsible in saying that the president has lost support without saying that these people never supported him,&rdquo; Sharpton told the reporter. &ldquo;The people you are referring to supported Hillary (Clinton) against him. How could he be losing people he never had? So I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s cracks within the foundation. I think it&rsquo;s the same people that told people in &rsquo;08 &lsquo;don&rsquo;t vote for him,&rsquo; and the community went and overwhelmingly voted for him anyway,&rdquo; Sharpton said. The reporter asked Sharpton if he thought Democratic forces are pushing a Hillary Clinton 2012 candidacy. Sharpton responded: &ldquo;I have no idea what they&rsquo;re doing. I just know that it seems to be the same players and the same play.&rdquo; I wish I had done that interview.

PASSED MEASURES &mdash; The MTA Board approved two historic measures authored by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas which requires that a specific percentage of jobs created by the many MTA projects undertaken in the county be set aside for disadvantaged workers: the homeless, high school dropouts, those with criminal records and residents of high unemployment zip codes. The MTA Board voted to negotiate an agency-wide project labor agreement and the construction careers policy. This is the third such set of agreements Ridley-Thomas has executed since he&rsquo;s been on the Board of Supervisors. &hellip; Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 1386, Assemblyman Steve Bradford&rsquo;s bill which seeks to increase the number of businesses owned by women, minorities and disabled veterans who contract with the state&rsquo;s largest cable satellite providers.

PASSING &mdash; I extend my condolences to my longtime friend-in-the-fight, Roland Betts and his family, upon the recent death of his brother, Ray Betts, who was a staunch fighter for civil rights. Ray was a member of the SCLC&rsquo;s national staff and was a leader of many civil rights campaigns and actions, including the James Meredith&rsquo;s March Against Fear in Mississippi, the Chicago Open Housing Movement, the Midwestern leg of the Poor People&rsquo;s Campaign, and much more. Rest in peace, my brother.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Wouldn&rsquo;t it be funny if we had two African-Americans running for president in 2012? Barack Obama for the Democrats and that Herman Cain fellow for the Republicans?

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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Cost of union busting]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Cost-of-union-busting-130751863.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">130751863</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:09:51 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

As anticipated, the lawsuit against District Attorney Steve Cooley and his joined-at-the-hip cohort, Jacquelyn Lacey, for their union busting campaign to thwart the organizing of their subordinate deputies in the District Attorney&rsquo;s office, is costing us taxpayers a fortune.

A portion of the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court on April 5, 2010 by four individual deputy D.A.s and the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, was settled last week. According to the &ldquo;Memorandum of Understanding Re: Settlement&rdquo; dated Sept. 19, the county will pay the ADDA $125,000 for Cooley&rsquo;s and Lacey&rsquo;s wrongdoings, and will pay Dep. D.A. Marc Debbaudt $440,000 for the pain and suffering Cooley/Lacey caused him. And that&rsquo;s just one plaintiff; there are three more plaintiffs involved now in settlement negotiations over the unlawful actions of Cooley/Lacey. 

Oh, and you know that face-slapping preliminary injunction Judge Otis Wright issued on March 2, 2010 against Cooley for his flagrant anti-union actions? Well, last week&rsquo;s settlement stipulates that the injunction be declared permanent and in full effect for as long as Cooley is the D.A. &mdash; &ldquo;including both his current term and any subsequent terms.&rdquo;

But wait. That&rsquo;s not all. We know that whenever private citizens sue a government entity, we, the taxpayers, have to pay the price. When this matter came up, I decried the fact that the tax-supported county counsel was defending Cooley/Lacey against this suit. I felt, and still feel, that the Cooley/Lacey crimes are outside the realm of prosecutorial immunity and that &mdash; like Rep. Laura Richardson and other alleged law-breaking federal officials &mdash; these two should pay for their own defense. The on-the-payroll county counsel started working on the Cooley/Lacey defense, but then passed it off to the big time downtown law firm of Jones Day, which is expected to earn big time fees for representing these two miscreants. So, at a time when government coffers are supposed to be at an all-time low, we taxpayers must pay for the settlements and/or awards to five plaintiffs, the salary of the county counsel and the fees for Jones Day &mdash; all because Cooley didn&rsquo;t want his deputies to form a union.

You know what else Cooley did? He did what he always does: He manipulated the justice system to meet his own ends. He engineered a stipulation to dismiss Lacey from the lawsuit, leaving only himself to blame. Why did he do that? It&rsquo;s obvious. He desperately wants Lacey to succeed him as D.A. and he wanted the taint of this suit removed from her while she&rsquo;s running for his office. Ah-h-h, he&rsquo;s so sweet. He&rsquo;s so helpful to her. That&rsquo;s why Lacey loves him so and why she says, &ldquo;working for this man makes my heart glow.&rdquo; 

There is nothing Cooley won&rsquo;t do to get Lacey elected, up to and including bad-mouthing his old friend and staunch supporter City Attorney Carmen Trutunich and calling in all of his Republican markers so Lacey can have plenty of money to run on. Well, it&rsquo;s a long time until election day and this thing can get very ugly, particularly in the Black community where the effect of the current Cooley/Lacey regime in the D.A.&rsquo;s office has been onerous.

THAT&rsquo;S WHAT I&rsquo;M TALKING ABOUT! &mdash; In the wake of the arrest of two Fullerton police officers for the murder of Fullerton homeless man Kelly Thomas, the families of Doug Zerby and Ismael Lopez &mdash; who were killed by Long Beach police officers &mdash; their attorney and community groups held a press conference and rally in front of D.A. Cooley&rsquo;s office Wednesday to demand that he charge LBPD officers for having murdered the two men. &ldquo;The Orange County D.A. justly arrested the police that murdered Kelly Thomas. The Los Angeles D.A. should follow this example and arrest the cop that murdered my brother,&rdquo; said Maria Macias, sister of Ismael Lopez.

THE GOOD ONE &mdash; Comes now the people&rsquo;s choice: Danette Meyers, the deputy district attorney with a detailed list of Smart Justice principles to ensure that we get something new in Los Angeles County: &ldquo;Equal access to justice for all citizens; fairness in application of the state laws and uniformity in the application of those laws throughout Los Angeles County.&rdquo; She has been a gutsy, high-powered deputy D.A. for the past 25 years, is a resident of South Los Angeles and she is running for district attorney. I&rsquo;ve already written a 2,206-word profile on Meyers (Hey look, the first two letters of her name are D.A.!) so I won&rsquo;t repeat myself. I like her a lot and so do a growing number of people. She has been endorsed by people who matter to us, including our Rev. Cecil Murray, who is heading a group of community stalwarts in hosting a fundraiser for Meyers in Marina del Rey on Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m. Information: (818) 523-3753. Also check with that number to learn about fundraisers groups of attorneys have scheduled for her on Oct. 6 in Pasadena and Oct. 8 in Torrance.

RUMBLE ON THE &rsquo;SHAW &mdash; Folks are mobilizing to rally for President Obama and against Cornel West and Tavis Smiley at noon Thursday in front of Smiley&rsquo;s radio station at 4434 Crenshaw Blvd. to condemn the two guys&rsquo; efforts to name a candidate to challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination for re-election. Word has it that West and Smiley have enlisted the assistance of consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Remember him? Nader ran as a no-way-in-hell-could-he-possibly-win independent in the Al Gore/George Bush presidential race. But as an independent, Nader siphoned off enough votes in Florida that would have gone to Gore, resulting in the ultimate and infamous Supreme Court decision that made Bush president. And here he is again. And West and Smiley fetched him.

MUSICAL SEATS &mdash; Longtime political activist Greg Akili is running in 2012 for the 59th Assembly District, which was formerly the 48th District, which is being vacated by Mike Davis, who will run for the 9th District City Council seat, from which Jan Perry is being termed-out and who is presumed to be running for mayor. Rep. Janice Hahn is being endorsed by everybody in her bid for election in the newly created 44th Congressional District and the perennial Assemblyman Warren Furutani is barreling through the political &ldquo;who&rsquo;s who&rdquo; and &ldquo;what&rsquo;s what&rdquo; and snatching up every endorsement he sees in his quest to fill Hahn&rsquo;s vacant 15th District City Council seat.

CALENDAR ITEM &mdash; The California Legislative Black Caucus will hold a policy conference on &ldquo;The Challenge of Achieving America&rsquo;s Dream in California&rdquo; at the LAX Westin Hotel, with 10 topical sessions all day Friday and Saturday. The eight-member caucus will deal with everything, from health and human services, education, business, housing, criminal justice, etc. Information/registration: (916) 651-4026.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Just when I got a new eye and I thought it was safe to watch TV again, I looked up and saw Rep. Maxine Waters on national TV talking about how &ldquo;curious&rdquo; were the remarks President Obama made when he spoke last week to a gathering of the Congressional Black Caucus. In essence, Obama told the Black legislators to stop complaining about everything, stop bitching all the time, and do something constructive by helping him pass the Jobs Bill. Waters said she didn&rsquo;t know who he was talking to. I do. He was talking to her!!]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: I'm ba-a-a-ck!!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Im-ba-a-a-ck-130326233.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">130326233</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 21 Sep 2011 19:44:36 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Several things happened around town while I was an invalid &mdash; devoid of my dignity, robbed of my personhood, denied the exercise of my free will &mdash; and was, therefore, unable to respond. And I hate it whenever I cannot express myself about what is going on around me. In order to keep my head from exploding, I&rsquo;m going to clean out my craw and comment on things I missed, starting with Council President Eric Garcetti&rsquo;s City Hall reception for the national NAACP staff and officers at the start of the NAACP convention held here.

That reception was held in the City Hall Rotunda. And in that rotunda was a prominent permanent poster urging visitors to buy Mexican food at the Homeboy Industries restaurant in operation in City Hall. I couldn&rsquo;t believe my left eye! I searched for posters advertising restaurants run by other ethnic groups in City Hall and found none. What is this? Why is this? How is it that one ethnic group is permitted to sell its food in City Hall and others are not? Whereabouts in City Hall is the Ghetto Girls&rsquo; restaurant where I can buy beignets for breakfast and gumbo for lunch? Where in City Hall can I get some of those delicious spring rolls the Vietnamese sell downtown?

This is a bitch slap by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa&rsquo;s racist administration. Since he has no African-Americans around him, he has no one to challenge his galloping Latino favoritism, to tell him about the need to be inclusive in all things. We have three members of the City Council who look like African-Americans but they don&rsquo;t act like it. You would think that they would have fought for some ethnic parity in this City Hall restaurant undertaking. But no-o-o. One of the Black looking council members is busy running for mayor and talking about pets; one is busy appearing on TV telling us we need to pay extra fees to get paramedics to pick us up when we&rsquo;re sick even though our taxes are already paying for the paramedics; and the third one &mdash; the only one in which I have any faith &mdash; hasn&rsquo;t said a word about this, nor has he said anything &mdash; even after I asked him about it &mdash; about the program Villaraigosa announced on TV sometime ago in which city funds were going to be used to teach immigrant hotel workers to better communicate with hotel patrons. In fact, the African-American-looking City Council members haven&rsquo;t done or said a thing about racism in city government. It&rsquo;s just me and Dwayne Wyatt crying in the wilderness.

City Controller Wendy Greuel issues regular reports on the audits she conducts on how the city spends its money. Why can&rsquo;t Greuel conduct racism audits? Why can&rsquo;t Greuel audit the city&rsquo;s departments to determine whether their programs and activities benefit one ethnic group to the exclusion of others?

And another thing. People called me acting like giddy little girls about the City Council&rsquo;s vote in favor of the AEG football stadium deal. Hey, I never said I didn&rsquo;t want the stadium built. I said I didn&rsquo;t want to buy a stadium for AEG. I said I didn&rsquo;t want any public money spent on the thing. After Nate Holden and I expressed ourselves on that issue, AEG amended its original offensive proposal and announced it would build the thing without public funds. Bingo. I&rsquo;m done. And as long as AEG uses its own money, it can build football stadia up the wazoo. But since AEG officials made a big deal out of the huge numbers of jobs the stadium project will create, I will keep in close contact with my good friend Martin Ludlow, AEG&rsquo;s Black cheerleader, to monitor the number of Blacks employed in all aspects of the project, from its beginning to its conclusion. I want Martin to help me count the Blacks at work.

BYE, BYE ST. PAUL &mdash; Another thing that happened during my absence has been the sounding of the death knell for St. Paul Baptist Church. The historic 104-year-old church &mdash; once one of the largest and most influential Black churches on the West Coast, especially under the pastorship of the late legendary Rev. John L. Branham &mdash; is seemingly in its last three months of existence. According to these county documents I&rsquo;m holding in my hand, St. Paul Baptist Church, located at 49th and Main streets, is recorded on April 15, 2011, as being in foreclosure. Not only is the church listed as being foreclosed upon, but so is its vacant Joel John School/Academy across the street, and the Leimert Park house its pastor, the Rev. Joel Anthony Ward (remember him?) lives in, which the church also owns. The documents state the total loan amount for the foreclosed items is $9,725,000 and the church is in default by some $3,195,500.

I called Ward and he denied that it was in foreclosure and said he had decided to sell it. He said that $9 million figure was his &ldquo;asking price&rdquo; for the property. The documents read: Total Loan Amount: $9,725,000. Ward said he sold the property and is looking to relocate his congregation to an area closer to Black folks, claiming that there are too many Hispanics in his present area for his church to succeed. He refused to tell me what he&rsquo;d sold it for, so I checked it out and learned that the property currently is, indeed, in escrow and is, therefore, still in foreclosure. Ward told his handful of remaining congregants the other Sunday that he sold the place for &ldquo;a little over $3 million,&rdquo; making it a heck of a short sale. A member also told me they could stay in the building through December and that Ward&rsquo;s financial legal obligations are so heavy that he had to give his jewelry to the county sheriff recently to try to pay off the judgments of lawsuit he&rsquo;s lost. (For one, you might recall that in January 2010, St. Paul member Verna Woodfox sued Ward, his church and his school for fraud and the court awarded her general and punitive damages of $323,955.70. That&rsquo;s a lot of very fine jewelry.)

Ward told me all inner-city Black churches are having hard times because of changing demographics. He also blames the demise of Black churches on the Black press. I, on the other hand, blame the demise of Black churches on the behavior of Black preachers.

I must note the recent death of Roy Jenkins, a fine Christian man who served as chairman of St. Paul&rsquo;s Deacon Board for 40 years and who did everything he could &mdash; often all by himself &mdash; to save St. Paul from Ward&rsquo;s clutches. He finally gave up on trying to get Ward to run St. Paul right, so he joined the exodus of members and left the church in 2009. He died on Aug. 30 and his funeral was held on Sept. 9 at Greater New Jerusalem Baptist Church. The service was packed with former St. Paul members and Ward was not invited, did not attend and was not mentioned. Roy Jenkins, rest in peace.

AND FINALLY &mdash; I want to thank you readers for the flowers, cards, emails and telephone calls I received from you during my convalescence. The outpouring of well wishes for my recovery was unexpected but greatly appreciated. In fact, you guys almost sent me back to the hospital, as I was warned not to cry with my new eye. Thank you.

Next week, we&rsquo;ll move on to new business &mdash; political business, because we have a lot of people running for a lot of offices &mdash; some really good people and some downright dogs &mdash; and we must take them apart so we can tell the difference. We voters have made some dreadful choices in the past; we must do a lot better this time.

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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Who can go to hell?!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Who-can-go-to-hell-128360693.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">128360693</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:36:20 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Yes, I&rsquo;m almost as blind as a bat now, but my hearing is extremely acute and what I&rsquo;ve been hearing on television and on YouTube over the past week has me so riled up that I can&rsquo;t hold my peace. I am between eye surgeries, armed with what seems to be the world&rsquo;s biggest magnifying glass and interrupting my sick leave because I have something to say about this dastardly assault on President Barack Obama by people who ought to know better: Black people &mdash; the very people who have the most to gain if Obama&rsquo;s initiatives succeed and very people who have the most to lose if he fails and is turned out of office.

We&rsquo;ve got two nationally known and formerly respected Black people &mdash; my ex-friends Cornel West and Tavis Smiley &mdash; traveling around the country in a bus in what they call their &ldquo;Poverty Tour&rdquo; of economically depressed communities to call attention to the fact that there are poor people in this country. Using antics that smack of Laurel and Hardy (I&rsquo;m loathe to use the names of a couple of Black comedic characters who more readily come to mind), these two are blaming Obama for the impoverished conditions they encounter on their cross-country Poverty Tour and they insist that the Obama is doing nothing to alleviate the suffering of the poor.

Jesus said in Matthew, Mark and John: &ldquo;The poor will always be with you...&rdquo; and they have. The only president who grabbed poverty by the throat and tried to beat it down was Lyndon Johnson. The others who followed him &mdash; Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and the two Bushes &mdash; barely acknowledged the presence of the poor. Did Smiley and West launch poverty tours and accusatory tirades against these presidents? No-o-o-o. They waited until we got a Black president to do it. And toward what end? Do you think they give a damn about the poor? I don&rsquo;t, because if they did, they would have poverty toured their asses off by now! Do you think they&rsquo;re getting paid by some wealthy White folks to get the Black president out of what once really was the White House? I do.

Then there&rsquo;s Maxine Waters, one of our own congressional representatives, piling up on Obama big time. Actually, that&rsquo;s nothing new because Waters didn&rsquo;t like Obama from jump street and she never did support him. Her nose has always been too wide open behind the Clintons. When Obama ran for the Democratic nomination, she supported Hillary Clinton. When Obama became our first Black president, Waters &mdash; as well as some other members of the Congressional Black Caucus &mdash; were often heard grumbling &ldquo;if Hillary was president...blah, blah, blah.&rdquo; Now that this anti-Obama mess has flared up, Waters is in her milieu. 

After getting &ldquo;permission&rdquo; from her constituency, Waters is now tearing into him like she&rsquo;s wanted to do all along, with the phony excuse that Obama is not adhering to some kind of &ldquo;Black&rdquo; agenda&rdquo;; that he&rsquo;s ignoring the needs and aspirations of Black people. Waters has attacked him for meeting with Americans around the country to discuss and develop support for his administration&rsquo;s programs and not meeting specifically with residents of Black communities. Those of us who are sane know that Black people are Americans and that, therefore, they are certainly welcome, even urged, to attend whatever community meetings the president has. But Waters is mad because Obama has not specifically met with Black people to address whatever problems are peculiar only to them. This is ridiculous, and she knows it.

Suppose we had a Latino president who went around the country meeting in barrios with nothing but Latinos and talked of all the wonderful things he wanted to do only for Latinos. Black people would set this whole country on fire. Black communities would burn from Oakland to Bedford-Stuyvesant, N.Y.; from Gulfport, Miss. to East St. Louis, Ill. Waters knows that. So why is she castigating Obama for something he absolutely cannot do?

Those of us who enjoy good mental health recognize that Obama is the president of the United States &mdash; all of it and everything and everybody in it. He must, therefore, develop policies and programs that lift all boats, not just Black ones. And you can bet your bottom dollar that all the initiatives he&rsquo;s put forth &mdash; and which have been attacked, eviscerated, and rejected by the Republican Party &mdash; benefit the neediest among us: Black people. I&rsquo;m talking about his much Republican-maligned health care program, $1 trillion stimulus funding package, job creation measures, education funding, auto industry rescue package and the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency &mdash; which will benefit Americans of all kinds and colors. He even killed Osama Bin Laden and brought down Muammar Gaddafi and is bringing home the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, for crying out loud! Geez!!

If Smiley, West and Waters (and that &ldquo;been there too long,&rdquo; 24-term Rep. John Conyers of Detroit) want to pull Obama down, what is chafing at the bit to replace him? A bunch of Republicans who have already made it clear that they want the rich to get richer and the poor, who are always with us, to get poorer. They want to pay no taxes for anything and pay nothing for anybody: they want to eliminate Medicare, Social Security, education grants, unemployment funding, loans to small businesses and mortgage assistance programs. And then they want to tell us how to conduct our private lives!

Waters vacillates between blasting Obama and giving aid and comfort to the far right wing one day and then cussing out the people she&rsquo;s emboldening the next day. For some reason, her latest gambit has her telling the Tea Party this week that it can &ldquo;go to hell.&rdquo; Well, the way I see it, exactly who among these players &mdash; one who wants to start a race riot, one who needs to retire and two who really, really need to go home and shut up &mdash; should be consigned to hell is subject to debate.

THE NEW CD 44 &mdash; I have a whole lot to say about the 2012 race for the newly created 44th Congressional District in which Rep. Janice Hahn will be running against a crazy Black woman and an empty Black suit who seem to believe that particular district belongs to a Black person. I&rsquo;m running out of space here and I can&rsquo;t deal with the subject like I want, so I&rsquo;ll save it for next time &mdash; along with Assemblyman Warren Furutani&rsquo;s race against &ldquo;comeback&rdquo; Councilman Robert Farrell, who broke his story in The Times instead of with me, like he was supposed to. I&rsquo;m upset about it. 

But as to Hahn&rsquo;s race. Chew on this until I get back to you: The public opinion research and strategy firm, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz &amp; Associates, just concluded a poll it took of the 44th District voters and found that Hahn can beat all contenders in her race by winning from 47 to 53 percent of the vote. Mercy!

AND FINALLY &mdash; I must rest now. You know I&rsquo;m not well and am really not up to all this drama.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: It's the city's turn]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Its-the-citys-turn-127498498.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">127498498</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:57:15 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

The state and congressional redistricting process is nearing an acrimonious conclusion, the county redistricting is moving right along, so now appointments are being made to the citizens redistricting commission that will revamp administrative boundaries for the city of Los Angeles. The 21-member commission is due to be completely established by Aug. 17. Most of the appointers have made their selections and we can only assume that within the next six days, those who have not made up their minds will have done so, lest this process start off by lagging behind.

The city of Los Angeles Redistricting Commission is to be composed of three appointees by the mayor; one by the city attorney; one by the city controller; two by the City Council president, and one each by the remaining 14 members of the City Council. These are the appointees to date: Estela Lopez, CD 1; Alejandra Arce, CD 3; Grover McKean, CD 4; Jose Cornejo, CD 6; Michael Trujillo, CD 7; Robert Kadota, CD 11; Ken Sampson, CD 12; Antonio Sanchez, CD 14 and Jerry Gaines, CD 15.

Council President Eric Garcetti, who represents CD 13, has appointed Jackie Dupont-Walker and Robert Ahn, and Controller Wendy Greuel has appointed Helen B. Kim. 

The full commission is scheduled to begin meeting in September and is expected to complete the redistricting process and report to the City Council on its work in March, after which the council is required to adopt a redistricting plan by July 1, 2012. Oh, and somebody must redraw lines for the Los Angeles Unified School District. I don&rsquo;t know who. The fun never stops, does it?

COPS! &mdash; The brutal beating death of Kelly Thomas by a swarm of Fullerton police officers last month has led to a revelation that should have occurred to us many years ago: that the investigation of possible crimes by law enforcement should not be conducted by the District Attorney&rsquo;s Office, as such a probe would be a conflict of interest. Sure it would, and it took Thomas&rsquo; killing for the obvious and overlooked to be firmly asserted and hopefully acted upon.

Whenever a cop or a sheriff&rsquo;s deputy kills or hurts a person &mdash; or does anything questionable, for that matter &mdash; it is the D.A.&rsquo;s office which determines whether the law enforcement official did anything wrong. But, in response of the multiple cop killing of the homeless and mentally ill Thomas, Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, decried the Orange County D.A.&rsquo;s usual investigation, and stated: &ldquo;Because the District Attorney&rsquo;s Office relies on the testimony of police officers to convict suspected criminals, having the same agency investigate officers for possibly breaking the law presents a conflict of interest.&rdquo; Of course it does! Whether it&rsquo;s a good cop or a bad cop, it&rsquo;s still a conflict of interest and we all know how the D.A. &mdash; when it comes to the general public &mdash; hates a conflict of interest. Think of the number of people of all ages in the Southland who have been killed by cops during your lifetime. Now think of the number of cops who have been charged with a crime for having done so. You can&rsquo;t think of any, can you? That doesn&rsquo;t seem right, does it? 

Villagra hit the nail squarely on the head, and he added in a subsequent interview, &ldquo;You should have to take [the investigation] to another level of government because the public needs to have real confidence that the investigation is being done objectively.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m going to send the ACLU some money.
And here in Los Angeles, 10 LAPD officers filed a lawsuit against the police department in Superior Court last week alleging they&rsquo;re being penalized for not meeting their traffic ticket quotas!! Traffic ticket quotas are illegal under state law!! I&rsquo;m going to talk to their attorneys, and Chief Charlie Beck, you need to talk to us.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE &mdash; The members of Paradise Baptist Church are on the warpath against their pastor, the Rev. A.D. Iverson, over the church&rsquo; s finances that are so seriously strained that Iverson has felt the need to fire the church entire five-person staff make other cuts, but has done nothing to reduce his $16,000-a-month salary. 

The members have requested and/or demanded meetings with Iverson to deal with their financial concerns and he has ignored them. The members took their problems to the District Attorney&rsquo;s Office, which referred them to a police investigator who is already handling the financial shenanigans occurring in two other Black churches. The officer added Paradise to his caseload.

The members will meet Sunday in the church to plan further action whether Iverson is present or not, and, lest a 2nd Baptist Church-type incident arises, the police department has been apprised of the meeting and is said to be prepared to ensure that an orderly gathering takes place.

ENRAGED &mdash; More than 100 residents, activists and public school educators gathered at the Obama Global Preparation Academy the other day to protest the removal of the school&rsquo;s popular principal Veronique Wills, as well as the school board&rsquo;s decision to give Henry Clay Middle School completely over to Green Dot, the local charter school operator. 

The action featured a diverse group of speakers including parents, staff members and community leaders, such as Greg Akili, who attacked the high-handed disrespect the school district is exhibiting to the Black community. John Parker, chairman of the Empowerment Congress Central Area Development Council, railed against the LAUSD for having &ldquo;blindsided&rdquo; the community by its treatment of Clay and removal of Wills, whom he described as &ldquo;someone who fought to get Obama Academy everything it needed.&rdquo; While the school district will not discuss its removal of Wills, rumors abound, the most prevalent being that Wills made some kind of &ldquo;administrative error&rdquo; necessitating her removal. I am extremely interested in learning what that terrible &ldquo;error&rdquo; was, particularly in view of the fact that the district had teachers who had sex with their pubescent pupils and yet remained in their posts until somebody ratted them out, or caught them. Surely, Wills&rsquo; &ldquo;administrative error&rdquo; did not rise to that level of immoral and criminal behavior. The community wants to know exactly what Wills did to incur the district&rsquo;s wrath so it can decide for itself whether Wills deserves to be treated so badly, or whether the district is full of ----. This will not go away.  

THIS AND THAT &mdash; The residents and allies of Watts will hold a media event Thursday at 1 p.m. to reflect upon the 46th anniversary of the Watts Riots and to announce a job creation proposal. The event will be held at the Watts Towers, 1727 E. 107th St., and will feature speakers who will recall where they were and how they felt when the riots broke out, relate how far we&rsquo;ve come since that day and speculate as to where we need to go. Forty-six years, huh?!

The lawsuit of Mitrice Richardson&rsquo;s parents against the county of Los Angeles for the Sheriff Department&rsquo;s negligence in her death goes to court Friday. A mandatory settlement hearing will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Superior Court, with a 9:30 a.m. summary judgement hearing scheduled, at which the judge will determine whether the evidence of negligence is sufficient for the matter to go to trial.

AND FINALLY &mdash; I&rsquo;m going to be away for a while. I don&rsquo;t know for how long, but, like MacArthur, I shall return. I am going to have eye surgery Monday because &mdash; in the redundancy of my people &mdash; I am blind and I cannot see. Specifically, my right eye doesn&rsquo;t work at all and my left eye is nothing to write home about. I&rsquo;ll be back as soon as I can see how to get here. In the meantime, Fight on!!]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Second thoughts]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Second-thoughts-126743228.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">126743228</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 3 Aug 2011 19:22:54 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Well, it seems our great powers-that-be have recently had second thoughts about some actions they took that offended us, the people, and have switched to our side, for a change. The first switcheroo was LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy&rsquo;s decision to put on hold that ill-conceived Ramon Cortines plan of drastically downgrading the significance of students&rsquo; homework in their pursuit of a decent education. Cortines and them believed the kids were getting too much homework and the volume was interfering with their life! That notion had to be the most ridiculous one to come forth from a school district already noted for a long list of ridiculous notions. 

We parents and teachers were appalled. We, of course, realize that &ldquo;becoming educated&rdquo; is our kids&rsquo; life and going to school and doing their homework &mdash; whatever the amount &mdash; is their job and once that job is done and they have time left in the day to do something else, then they can do something else. The limited homework policy would have deeply undermined our ability to help our kids establish priorities and focus on achieving goals. Thank you, Deasy, for rethinking this mess.

The Los Angeles City Council thought and thought and thought again about whether it should abandon its red light camera traffic ticketing operation which we, the people, hate so much. And it finally did so. We thank the council for finally voting to drop the red light cameras in designated city intersections, which experts reported were causing more accidents than they were preventing. Knowing them, we assume the members voted the cameras out of existence, not because they, themselves, were dangerous and ineffective, but because the city was losing money on them rather than making money, as they believed they would. Whatever the reason, its good to have that albatross removed from our necks.

Now there&rsquo;s something else heinous being put into the wind by the city&rsquo;s anti-people councilman, Bernard Parks: He wants homeowners to pay for the repairs of the city sidewalks that front their homes! The City Council&rsquo;s Public Works and Budget and Finance committees met the other day to consider a proposed ordinance that would transfer the liability for broken sidewalk repair costs to the homeowner. Parks is all for it, and said so. (He was also all for retaining the red light cameras, insisting that they saved lives, tsk, tsk.) Why do we pay taxes? To pay Parks or to pay the city to keep all public property in good repair? The next thing you know, Parks and them will be telling us we&rsquo;re responsible for taking our trash cans to the dump every week, as the city can no longer afford to do it. 

I don&rsquo;t believe these people &mdash; or rather, this person. I know one thing, if I become liable for the upkeep of the sidewalk in front of my house, that would mean I own it and can, therefore, do whatever I want with it. I may fence it off and refuse to let anybody walk on it. Or, I may make it an extension of my driveway and park my car on it. Or, I may remove the concrete and turn it into a dirt path. Or I may plant tomatoes, okra and corn (I love that combination!) on it. The possibilities are endless and this is truly a stupid stroll the council is considering. May it, too, die the death of red light cameras and less homework.

OMG!! &mdash; I&rsquo;m in a tizzy over two things: Assemblyman Warren Furutani is running for the 15th District City Council seat vacated by Rep. Janice Hahn. He was first endorsed by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas AND later endorsed by Rep. Maxine Waters!!! What is that? What does it mean? Ridley-Thomas and Waters never ever, ever, ever support the same candidate for anything, the height of which was when Barack Obama ran for the historic Democratic presidential nomination and Waters supported Hillary Clinton. It has always been all-out war between these two on virtually everything. I&rsquo;m confused. I don&rsquo;t know what to do. I don&rsquo;t know how to act when clear battle lines are not drawn in an election. Help me somebody!

Tizzy number two is this: Lillian Mobley died on July 18. Her obituary appeared prominately in all the local newspapers &mdash; both Black and White. She was buried the following week. On Monday, Aug. 1, I received an email from the mayor&rsquo;s office entitled: &ldquo;Mayor Villaraigoa Issues Statement on the Passing of Lillian Mobley.&rdquo; I have nothing to say. 

THIS AND THAT &mdash; A communications official with the Association of Deputy District Attorneys informed me that I was incorrect when I wrote last week it had sent out ballots a couple of weeks ago for the agency shop vote of deputy district attorneys. She said those were only notices of the coming election and that the actual ballots were sent out this week. But she added everything I wrote about D.A. Steve Cooley was on the money. We must talk.

Speaking of D.A.s and elections, Danette Meyers, the Compton born and bred deputy district attorney who is running to replace Cooley as district attorney, is picking up quite a bit of steam. She has the endorsement of former District Attorney Gil Garcetti, Culver City City Council members Jeffrey Cooper and Andrew Weissman, former Culver City Mayor Alan Corlin, and the Beverly Hills Police Officers Association. She has been feted at Sunday afternoon fundraising meet-and-greets at supporters&rsquo; homes in the San Fernando Valley and Redondo Beach. I guess I should forget about the Furutani City Council race and jump into this one.

The AARC is holding a &ldquo;Community Conversation&rdquo; Thursday evening to evaluate the final redistricting draft maps for the state Senate, Assembly and Congress which were approved last Friday. The open community meeting will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at the West Angeles Villas, 6030 Crenshaw Blvd.
A measure by state Sen. Rod Wright to help prevent the spread of HIV through improved reporting was signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown. Wright&rsquo;s law, SB 422, enables physicians &mdash; with their patients&rsquo; consent &mdash; to notify public health agencies about their patients&rsquo; HIV affliction. That was not possible until this law was enacted this week.

Rep. Laura Richardson&rsquo;s press person, the ubiquitous Ken Miller, finally packed it in. He resigned Friday and I must debrief him.

AND FINALLY &mdash; My condolences to my bosom buddy, Annette May Thomas, upon the sudden death of her husband, Frank Thomas, Saturday after suffering an asthma attack that arrested his heart. Frank can be visited Friday from 1 to 8 p.m. at Angelus Funeral Home. His funeral will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. May he rest in peace and may God help Annette.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Say what?!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Say-what-126296198.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">126296198</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:22:05 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

South Bay political operative Basil Kimbrew sent out one of his ubiquitous &ldquo;Urgent Breaking News&rdquo; newsletters this week screaming that Rep. Janice Hahn told him she plans to give up the 36th District seat in Congress that she won this month and run for the newly drawn Compton area congressional district currently under consideration by the state Redistricting Commission! Everybody was shocked and livid by this &ldquo;urgent breaking news&rdquo; of Basil&rsquo;s, so I called him to determine whether he was hallucinating and hearing awful things in his head. Basil swore up and down that Hahn told him exactly what he wrote. I then called Hahn to hear from the horse&rsquo;s mouth, so to speak, exactly what&rsquo;s going on. This is what Hahn said:

&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m going to do. The commission has taken my district out from under me. The 36th District in which I have lived and worked for many years and was elected to represent no longer exists. They removed my base &mdash; the Harbor, Wilmington, San Pedro (where I live) &mdash; and put them in the new Compton District. They&rsquo;ve redrawn the lines of my 36th District into a &lsquo;coastal district&rsquo; that includes Palos Verdes Peninsula, El Segundo, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Topanga, Calabasas and Agoura Hills. I have no base there. This is not the district I was elected in. This is Rep. Henry Waxman&rsquo;s longtime stronghold. They&rsquo;ve taken me completely out of it. Now my supporters who worked hard to get me elected are accusing me of abandoning my people. I&rsquo;m not abandoning them; they&rsquo;re being taken away from me and put into Compton! I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m going to do.&rdquo;
The commission is scheduled to take its final vote on its redistricting maps Thursday.

HERE COME DA JUDGE? &mdash; Somebody needs to inform U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II that District Attorney Steve Cooley is violating the spirit of the preliminary injunction the judge slapped on him to cease and desist his nasty intimidating tactics against his deputy D.A.s&rsquo; rightful unionization pursuits. Cooley is an extremely bad piece of work who has launched a new terrorism attack against his employees in the district attorney&rsquo;s office. Despite his cruel retaliatory efforts, Cooley couldn&rsquo;t stop his deputy D.A.s from amassing enough signatures to gain employee representation by the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, in affiliation with the gargantuan AFSCME union. So now, he is seriously interfering with his deputies&rsquo; right to vote on whether the county&rsquo;s district attorney&rsquo;s office should be an &ldquo;agency shop,&rdquo; which is sometimes called a &ldquo;closed shop,&rdquo; meaning a workplace where everyone in the bargaining unit will pay union dues, since everyone in the bargaining unit would benefit from the contracts and agreements for which the union would collectively bargain. 

It&rsquo;s done everywhere and it makes sense: if everybody benefits, then everybody should pay. Since Cooley doesn&rsquo;t want the union, he sure as hell doesn&rsquo;t want an agency shop. Last Wednesday, the association mailed ballots to the deputy D.A.s so they could vote on the agency shop issue, with the ballots being due on Aug. 17. Almost immediately, Cooley announced he will conduct examinations for at least 300 deputy D.A.s eligible for promotions to the top trial lawyer positions of Deputy DA Grade IV. 

There are some problems with this: First of all, Cooley has no money in his budget for these promotions he has people thinking they are going to get. The county has a hiring and promotions freeze in effect throughout all its departments. Secondly, the promotion exams are normally given in the spring and spring 2011 has sprung, so crafty Cooley has scheduled a bogus exam for the dead of summer to divert his employees&rsquo; attention away from the union vote and remind them that their lives are in his hands &mdash; not theirs! 

This is a scare tactic on Cooley&rsquo;s part &mdash; and it&rsquo;s working. These D.A.s are absolutely convinced that Cooley will know how they, as individuals, vote on the agency shop issue and that he will retaliate against them as he has done in the past. I don&rsquo;t get it, but there it is. I&rsquo;ve always thought that the more scared people are, the closer they&rsquo;d band together to fight off the thing that&rsquo;s scaring them. However, I&rsquo;ve been made to understand that in this economy, lawyer jobs are hard to come by, and these people &mdash; just like everybody else &mdash; need desperately to keep what they have. In fact, they even told me that City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has unemployed attorneys working in his office for free in the hopes of getting a paying job there. I also understand some county supervisors are aware of this, have discussed this and decried this arrangement in the city as &rdquo;setting a bad precedent.&rdquo;

Anyway, Cooley&rsquo;s dangling this phony promotion carrot in front of the D.A.s has had a chilling effect upon them and a lot of them will probably not participate in the union vote, certain, as they are that bogey man Cooley will get them if they do. Somebody ought to tell Judge Wright. I think I&rsquo;ll do it.

WAFFORD REPORT &mdash; I received the following statement last Friday from Rachel Noerdlinger from the New York office of the Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network: &ldquo;Tony Wafford has taken a leave of absence from the National Action Network (NAN) effective [July 21]. We were only informed of the case involving Mr. Wafford a week ago at which time the matter was investigated by NAN&rsquo;s general counsel.

&ldquo;Calls have been received within the course of a week from various persons asking for funds relating to this case and those calls have been referred to the Los Angeles District Attorney&rsquo;s Office for a possible criminal investigation for extortion. NAN had no involvement in the matter related to Mr. Wafford, nor would the alleged conduct be tolerated. However, we will not be exploited by those trying to capitalize on the matter.&rdquo;

E-mails flew back and forth between Noerdlinger and me as to exactly what Sharpton means by the last sentence of his statement and why Wafford was allowed to take a leave of absence rather than having been fired for obscenely sexually harassing and battering his employee. We&rsquo;ll discuss that next week.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was honored last week with the National Leadership Award from the National Forum for Black Administrators at its eighth annual awards banquet in Washington, D.C. The Leadership Award, which was also given to Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II and Harry E. Johnson Sr., president and CEO of the MLK Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, &ldquo;is given to public servants who have demonstrated an unselfish commitment to serving the community, exhibited exemplary leadership, and achieved excellence in public service,&rdquo; the awarding officials said.

Assemblyman Steve Bradford received the New Connections&rsquo; Champion of Diversity Award last week during the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners. Bradford was honored for his work in the minority, women, disabled and veteran business enterprises community.

Donald Bakeer, former teacher, author and Project Islamic HOPE board member, will sign copies and read excepts from his latest book, a memoir entitled: &ldquo;I, Too, Can Create Light.&rdquo; The reading/book signing will be held Friday at 2 p.m. at Bilal Islamic Center, 4016 S. Central Ave. Bakeer is a retired LAUSD school teacher best known for his 1986 cult classic novel, &ldquo;CRIPS&rdquo; and for his collaboration with director Oliver Stone and Warner Bros. Studio on the 1992 movie, &ldquo;South Central.&rdquo;

Councilman Herb Wesson, along with city officials and more than 500 community residents opened the new Westside Park last week in the West Adams section of his 10th District. The park is located on a three-acre site on Clyde Avenue between Adams and Jefferson boulevards.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Another day, another district]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Another-day-another-district-125928654.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">125928654</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:46:50 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

The redistricting of California is an extremely fluid undertaking that results in maddening swings from one direction to the other. The angry outcry of Blacks over a potential loss of congressional representation resulting from last week&rsquo;s round of redistricting maps, has caused the state redistricting commission to abandon its ideas about disenfranchising Los Angeles&rsquo; African-Americans and restoring the 33rd Congressional District to the fold &mdash; for now. So, as of today, the commission&rsquo;s thinking has reverted to what it was when we were not so terribly unhappy, meaning it has posted redrawn lines that result in our area retaining our two state Senate, three congressional and four state Assembly districts &mdash; for now. 

To do this, the commission has drawn one of our state Senate districts so that it stretches from Culver City to Florence-Firestone and includes Downtown Los Angeles &mdash; complete with the Civic Center, the Financial District and Staples Center &mdash; and a large portion of northern Inglewood! While the Assembly districts remain largely intact, the 48th Assembly District loses its area north of the Santa Monica Freeway and picks up population east of the Harbor Freeway, all the way to Alameda Street. Who knows how any of these districts will look tomorrow.

But one thing is certain: Come what may, a lot of lawsuits will be filed when this thing is finally done. I have heard continuous talk about the mythical &ldquo;ethnic coalition&rdquo; working together to create &ldquo;unity districts&rdquo; being a complete fairy tale. In reality, these are the ethnic wars and it&rsquo;s every group for itself out here: Blacks are trying to hold on to what we have, and Latinos are trying to get themselves configured in such a way that their populations total 50 percent plus one in every district. Regardless of what happens, everybody is gearing up to go to court.

THE WAFFORD REPORT &mdash; Things have gone completely haywire for Tony Wafford, the usually arrogant associate of the Rev. Al Sharpton with the &ldquo;lady killer&rdquo; mantle. Black women are incensed by his nasty sexual harassment and battery of his employee, Sharon Song Byrd, and are out to get his hide. And Wafford made a complete fool of himself in court Monday when he was on trial for the determination of his non-economic damages to Byrd. The thing is, Wafford had fired his original attorney, Dermot Givens, and chose to defend himself at Monday&rsquo;s trial. He should not have done that because if any man ever needed an attorney, Wafford certainly did.

Wafford, with an armload of papers, went into court intent on proving himself innocent of the charges of which he had already been found guilty at his previous nine-day jury trial. The man didn&rsquo;t know what he was there for! Wafford told the judge he was innocent. The judge told him in essence, &ldquo;No, you&rsquo;re not.&rdquo; Every time Wafford opened his mouth, the judge shut him down because he refused to deal with the matter before him and insisted on retrying the case he had already lost! It was pitiful. 

Finally running out of patience with Wafford, the judge said he would study the evidence submitted by Byrd&rsquo;s attorney, Jeffrey Cowan, and would decide on the damages within a few days. Pitiful, Pitiful.
In the meantime, the National Black Women&rsquo;s Network, the South Central L.A. Progressive Movement and the Sistahs of the Black Liberation Movement coalesced to implement a boycott of Sharpton and his National Action Network until such time as Sharpton severs ties with Wafford, who is Sharpton&rsquo;s West Coast coordinator. The women called Wafford &ldquo;a sexual deviant and pervert and should not be in a leadership role with any respectable leader.&rdquo; Paulette Gipson, president of the Compton NAACP, wrote the Soulvine that her organization stands in full support of Byrd in this matter. &ldquo;No civil rights organization should have anyone in a leadership position who has been found guilty of sexually harassing and battery against a woman,&rdquo; Gipson wrote. &ldquo;Civil rights leaders are supposed to protect women, not abuse them.&rdquo;

Comes now the National Council of Negro Women Inc., specifically the View Park Section, Southern California Area. President Carolynn Martin sent us a copy of a letter she wrote to Sharpton about a problem her organization and the Women Alive Coalition had (and evidently still have) with Wafford. It seems the two groups never received $2,000 in prize money they won for having referred the highest number of people for HIV testing when they participated in an event with Wafford for the National Action Network&rsquo;s observance of National HIV Testing Day in June 2009. Martin wrote that all advertising for the event stated the prize money would be awarded. The two women&rsquo;s groups were declared the winners, but never got the money. Wafford stories go on and on.

A MAN OF THE PEOPLE &mdash; While dealing with the recurring liquor license issue in the 8th District, I learned that the future Target, in the District Square project, at Rodeo Road and Crenshaw, which along with the Walgreens at Coliseum and Crenshaw, had initially requested conditional use permits so they could sell liquor in their stores in the 10th District &mdash; right across the street from Bernard Parks&rsquo; 8th District. In both cases, Herb Wesson, 10th District councilman, stood with his people and opposed the issuing of liquor permits/licenses to those stores. See what I&rsquo;m sayin&rsquo;?

GOOD NEWS FOR COMPTON (FOR A CHANGE) &mdash; Just about everybody is expected to gather in Compton on July 28 for the grand opening of the newly constructed Compton WorkSource Center that will provide free job training and job placement in a city where such is sorely needed. The event will begin at 8:30 a.m., breakfast will be served at 9:15 a.m. and a tour of the facility will begin at noon at 2909 East Pacific Commerce Drive. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, the inspiration for the worksource center, will keynote the grand opening, which will be attended by a host of federal, state and local officials, as well as ministers, educators and community leaders.

RIP &mdash; I extend my condolences to the family of Lillian Mobley, a woman who was instrumental in the creation of Los Angeles&rsquo; African-American community. May she rest in peace.

AND FINALLY &mdash; The NAACP kicks off its 102nd national convention with a press conference Friday afternoon. Council President Eric Garcetti is going and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is not. That means I can attend and keep my shoes on.

Speaking of which, are there any initiatives in play or outreach activities being developed to lure all these NAACP delegates away from Downtown L.A. and into South L.A. where the Black people are? Instead of having our visitors spend all their time and money in those garish downtown venues, shouldn&rsquo;t they be picked up and transported, en masse, to Crenshaw, Leimert Park, Watts and points south to Inglewood? Shouldn&rsquo;t they come and see us, eat our food, shop in our stores and go to our churches? Heck, we have stuff and our NAACP brethren from around the country ought to be encouraged to come and see us. If they resist, we should kidnap them.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Redistricting war]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Redistricting-war-125540168.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">125540168</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:02:18 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

What started as a couple of skirmishes on the road to redistricting the state of California is turning out to be an all-out civil war, as the second set of preliminary maps recently issued by the California Redistricting Committee is a shot across the bow signaling the CRC&rsquo;s intent to cripple local African-American political power as we exercise it today. The new maps divide South Los Angeles and dissolve years of hard-won African-American voting power via a process that has suddenly turned secretive and arcane.

Whereas the first maps maintained multicultural unity throughout most of the Greater Los Angeles area, this new batch does just the opposite. It guts the Black population in the 33rd Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Karen Bass, and previously by retired Rep. Diane Watson and the late Rep. Julian Dixon. The new maps scatter the Black population throughout the 33rd, 35th and 37th districts and then group the historic African-American strongholds such as Ladera Heights and Exposition Park with such places as South Gate and Topanga Canyon!! Can you believe that?! 

If this mess is approved, African-American congressional representation will decrease by 25 percent. Blacks currently hold four of California&rsquo;s 53 congressional seats. These new maps guarantee that we would lose one &mdash; the newly configured 33rd District &mdash; thus shifting African-American representation from being on par with our population numbers, to creating a situation of underrepresentation.

It&rsquo;s war!! And we are fighting back. The African American Redistricting Collaborative has already sent a lengthy letter of protest to the CRC, calling particular attention to the fact that these new maps have been drawn on the basis of data that is not available to the public. The AARC is demanding to know what this data is and they want to see it. Secondly, our community leaders are holding a press conference Thursday at 10 a.m. at the California African American Museum to protest and reject any move to reduce African-American representation.

&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve gone along with the process so far in good faith,&rdquo; said Urban League President Blair Taylor. &ldquo;Now we&rsquo;re going to organize all our allies &mdash; community groups, churches, civic organizations and our friends in business and labor. It&rsquo;s time for action, and we&rsquo;re going to stay on top of this to ensure that the commission delivers fair maps for our community. We refuse to accept any reduction in African-American representation.&rdquo;

While the redrawing of federal and state representational lines have garnered all the attention, the county of Los Angeles&rsquo; redistricting efforts have proceeded without much fanfare. Over the last two months, 19 plans have been submitted by the public to alter representation for the county&rsquo;s 10 million residents. Some plans recommended adjustments to the 2nd Supervisorial District, which has the highest concentration of African-Americans, but at the moment, African-American and Latino redistricting aspirations for Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas&rsquo; constituency are aligned, fueling speculation that the 2nd District may be the least impacted of the five when the process is completed next month.

RUMBLE AT THE SCHOOL BOARD &mdash; The recent removal of the popular principal at Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy by LAUSD officials caused an uproar among school parents, local residents and activists and led to the formation of an ad hoc Committee to Defend Public Education under the aegis of the Empowerment Congress Central Area Neighborhood Council. The group regards Veronique Wills&rsquo; removal as principal of Obama as a pattern of undemocratic, disrespectful and high-handed actions by the LAUSD to give schools in the Black community to charter school operators.

The ad hoc committee led a demonstration at the district headquarters this week and addressed the school board, demanding the immediate reinstatement of Wills and the reinstatement of the stakeholder vote for Public School Choice and that that vote be taken for all other major educational efforts. 

Subsequent to that, school board President Monica Garcia made a racist remark and all hell broke loose. It seems the board was being criticized for an abrupt change in some kind of policy, to which Garcia commented: &ldquo;That was voted on before any Latinos were on the board.&rdquo; Marguerite LaMotte, the lone Black board member, lost her mind. A furious LaMotte fired back: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re here to serve all children, not just Latino ones...&rdquo; and she went completely off, berating Garcia for her intolerant rejoinder and ending by saying, &ldquo;this is the worst school board meeting we&rsquo;ve ever had.&rdquo; 

There&rsquo;s nothing new here. We all know the school district is racist and Garcia just broke her concentration and made it plain. And who&rsquo;s behind this racism? We all know that too, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He controls four votes on the school board where they do his racist bidding; he controls four votes on the MTA board where they do his racist bidding and he&rsquo;s the head of a racist city administration with no significant Blacks which will host the NAACP&rsquo;s national convention this month! If Villaraigosa gets up to speak at any NAACP convention event at which I am present, I&rsquo;m going to throw my shoes at him. He&rsquo;s got no business there and the NAACP, in theoretical terms, has no business here, as there is no advancement of colored people in this city.

HE QUITS &mdash; And along those same lines, John Frierson, the vice president of the city&rsquo;s Transportation Commission, resigned his post Wednesday after almost 10 years because he is fed up with the mayor&rsquo;s racism. Granted, John didn&rsquo;t say it exactly like that, as he is more genteel than I. John, an important fixture in the Black community for as long as I can remember, said he can no longer tolerate the mayor&rsquo;s &ldquo;questionable race relations&rdquo; in the personnel, programs and priorities that brand his administration, as opposed to that of former Mayor James Hahn, who first brought John into city government. John will, of course, maintain his chairmanship of the California State Boxing Commission.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; Freedom Schools, a six-week literacy and enrichment program for children ages 5 to 18, returned to the 2nd Supervisorial District last week. The program will host more than 200 students in four 2nd District sites: First Church of God in Inglewood and three South L.A. locations: First New Christian Fellowship, Bethel AME Church and the Foshay Learning Center. The Freedom Schools were established by Children&rsquo;s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman and are rooted in the work of the civil rights movement.

A black-tie fundraising event will be held Saturday at 6 p.m. as a tribute to Albert Cowart Jr., playwright, screenwriter and college professor, to support and benefit the preservation and development of talent and other artists in the African-American community. The event will be held at the California African American Museum. Information: (323) 217-6541.

The latest DWP General Manager, Ron Nichols, will meet in South L.A. on July 21 at 6 p.m. to discuss jobs, services and rates. The meeting is open to the public and will be held Scope/Agenda, 1715 W. Florence Ave.

COMINGS AND GOINGS &mdash; I extend my condolences to the family of Edna Aliewine, who created virtually everything that&rsquo;s wonderful about Watts; to Congresswoman-elect Janice and Judge James Hahn upon the death of their mother, Ramona Hahn, who held a dynasty together; to Mayor Roosevelt Dorn upon the death of his nephew, Dr. William Dorn, orthopedic surgeon, and to the family of Leonard Earl Roberts Sr., a D-Day hero who was among the first wave of soldiers that stormed Omaha Beach during the June 6, 1944 Normandy invasion. His funeral was held Wednesday at First AME. May they rest in peace.

And my grandson has come. He was born Sunday at 9 a.m. weighing 8 pounds, 14 ounces and 21 inches long. (Doctors don&rsquo;t know what they&rsquo;re talking about. They need to shut up and stop predicting and just let nature do her job.)]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: Public integrity, indeed!]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-Public-integrity-indeed-125117484.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">125117484</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 6 Jul 2011 18:06:06 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

No wonder District Attorney Steve Cooley decided not to seek re-election: The man&rsquo;s a criminal. He&rsquo;s been enjoined by a federal judge to cease his criminal ways and that, alone, is priceless fodder for anybody who would run against him. Heck, I think I could have run against him and beat him. My campaign slogan would have been simply: &ldquo;I am not a crook. He is. Vote for me!&rdquo;

Cooley doesn&rsquo;t need to be re-elected. What he needs is to be indicted and dragged through the same legal hell of trumped up charges through which he put Jeremy Marks, Roosevelt Dorn, Rod Wright, Richard Alarcon, Najee Ali, Jasmin Eskew Ali, James Harris, Trina Williams and countless others, while ignoring blatant offenses committed by his favored elected officials &mdash; and you know who they are because I&rsquo;ve mentioned them before.

Not only has Cooley been enjoined to stop operating the District Attorney&rsquo;s Office as a criminal enterprise, he is being sued by the people he has harmed, and it is my understanding that we, the taxpayers of the county of Los Angeles, must pay for his defense! I&rsquo;ve been told that the county counsel is busy filing pre-trial stalling motions and such in Cooley&rsquo;s defense because his legal woes flow from his on-the-job activities as a county employee. This is insane. Our district attorney is guilty of illegal on-the-job activities and he should be forced to provide and pay for his own defense. Nothing in his job description says he&rsquo;s supposed to do what he did; having done it, then his defense ought be on his own dime. 

Making matters worse is the fact that Cooley&rsquo;s victims are not only suing him, but they&rsquo;re suing the county of Los Angeles, as well. So that means, we, the taxpayers, are paying for Cooley&rsquo;s defense and we, the taxpayers, will have to pay damages to the victims when Cooley loses his case! This man could cost us a fortune &mdash; for what?! I think Cooley&rsquo;s well-heeled Republican buddies should help him out and provide for his common defense. I also think our Democratic state legislators should enact a law requiring elected officials and government employees who engage in illegal on-the-job activities to pay for their own defense. There ought to be a law against this kind of thing because criminality among our elected officials has gotten way out of hand and we, the people, must stop it. 

NOW, LOOK AT THIS ONE &mdash; A recent issue of Roll Call reports that Rep. Laura Richardson has admitted to having hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills because of a host of ethics allegations against her surrounding her on-the-job office activities, thus depleting her campaign account and creating substantial personal financial liabilities for her. And rightfully so!! According to the Capitol Hill newspaper, the Richardson for Congress campaign account did not pay down outstanding balances in excess of $115,000 owed to three law firms during the first quarter of 2011, even as it brought on yet another law firm specializing in campaign finance and ethics law. Federal Election Commission records show the campaign paid $13,000 for legal work performed during the first three months of this year. At the end of March, Richardson&rsquo;s re-election campaign account reported $454,000 in debt &mdash; including about $130,000 in legal fees &mdash; and had only $36,000 left in its coffers.

Now see, that&rsquo;s what needs to happen to Steve Cooley. Richardson is being forced to pay very good money to defend herself against allegations of crimes she&rsquo;s committed in office, and Cooley should too. The same laws that are breaking Richardson ought to be breaking Cooley, not us.

HE&rsquo;S ON IT &mdash; Najee Ali and his Islamic HOPE organization filed a federal civil rights complaint Wednesday with U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte&rsquo;s Central District Office against Santa Monica High School wrestling coach Mark Black and the student wrestlers who were allegedly responsible for the racially motivated attack and taunting with a noose of a Black student at the school on May 4. 

JULY YULE &mdash; Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell will host &ldquo;Christmas in July&rdquo; Saturday at the Lower Olympic Forest of Kenneth Hahn Park. The event, which starts at 10 a.m., is intended to provide a fun and healthy environment for at-risk children in the 47th Assembly District. The day will promote literacy, health and wellness and provide games and prizes and all kinds of fun things to do.

RIP &mdash; Funeral services are being held Thursday morning at 10 o&rsquo;clock for Gladys Wesson-Strickland, the mother of Councilman Herb Wesson, at Holman United Methodist Church on West Adams Boulevard. She died June 29 at Cedars Sinai Hospital after a long illness and after a long life of political and social activism that began in her teens. May she rest in peace.

AND FINALLY &mdash; The annual Juneteenth party hosted last week by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Sen. Curren Price, and Assemblymembers Holly Mitchell and Steve Bradford was, as usual, a rollicking success and attended by everybody &mdash; the usual invited guests and one notable party crasher. People invited to this event usually share the same political mindset, have similar sociopolitical goals and are followers of the sacred empowerment holy grail. In other words, we get along; we like each other and we delight in each other&rsquo;s company. Last week, however, Councilwoman Jan Perry showed up at the party and upset the whole apple cart. People were incensed and outraged about her presence and expressed themselves frequently and loudly about it. They advised Ridley-Thomas that he needs to have better security for next year&rsquo;s party because they don&rsquo;t want to come in here and look up and see Bernard Parks and Maxine Waters. (It&rsquo;s getting so you can&rsquo;t go anywhere in peace ...)

OH, BY THE WAY &mdash; On July 13, I will have an approximately 8-pound, 19-inch grandson named Mason. Since my son is teaching summer school and will be unable to devote all of his time to caring for his wife, newborn son and rambunctious 3-year-old daughter, I will have to step up to the plate and be a dutiful grandma and help them out. So, you may not hear from me for a while &mdash; but then again, you might.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: A tale of two meetings]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-A-tale-of-two-meetings-124752069.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">124752069</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:45:00 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

AEG&rsquo;s proposed construction and complicated financing of a downtown football stadium was the topic of two community meetings this week, which were held in two different parts of the city and attracted residents with two completely different opinions about the controversial project. The first one was a town hall meeting hosted Monday night by Councilman Bill Rosendahl in the Mar Vista Recreation Center for his 11th District constituents. It was billed as an opportunity for Westside residents to hear AEG officials describe, in their own words, what the football stadium deal is all about and to answer whatever questions the people wanted to ask about it. And boy, did they have questions! The place was packed with people and there were people in the streets who couldn&rsquo;t get into the center. For the most part, this was an engaged, skeptical crowd that went to the meeting armed and ready. They asked specific, technical and probing questions of AEG executive Tim Leiweke and challenged his answers as he, of course, painted a glorious picture of how his football stadium will cure all the ills of the city and make Los Angeles the Mecca of the planet.

Leiweke began the meeting by informing us that his organization had revised its initial stadium financing plan it had offered the city and had removed and/or reduced some of the elements that we, the thinking public, found so objectionable about the deal. Leiweke said that during Thursday&rsquo;s meeting with the city&rsquo;s ad hoc football stadium committee, he would submit a proposal that would reduce his original request for $350 million in municipal bonds for the project to a high of $200 million and he said he will offer to lease the stadium land and obtain advertising deals that, together, will generate sufficient revenue to cover the bond payments. Leiweke said this revised proposal would not put the city&rsquo;s general fund in jeopardy. &ldquo;We will build the stadium without asking the city for any money,&rdquo; Leiweke told us.

As it is with most salesmen, Leiweke put on an energetic show, but it failed to mollify most of the residents and he offended academicians in the room by dissing their credentials, and he offended me by ballyhooing about all the jobs this football stadium will create in Los Angeles, on top of all the jobs AEG&rsquo;s other downtown businesses are already creating. He had the nerve to ask AEG-affiliated workers in the audience to stand up. A whole bunch of them did &mdash; of which only two were African-American. And to add insult to injury, he had one of the Blacks  stand at the microphone up front and praise AEG and its stadium project as being an important source of jobs and urged us to support it for that reason alone. He yelled: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about jobs! It&rsquo;s about jobs!&rdquo; Bull....! The only reason that Black man was up there talking was probably because he was one of the only two who could speak English! 

If this is AEG&rsquo;s downtown workforce now, why sould we think the addition of a football stadium would make it look more inclusive? Leiweke harped on and on about all the new hotels that will be built downtown as the result of the stadium and that the hotels will hire all these new workers. What new workers?! African-Americans have been driven out of the hospitality industry and replaced by immigrant workers for some time now, further increasing Blacks&lsquo; unemployment rate in Los Angeles. Hell, special amendments have to be added now to contracts for new enterprises so African-Americans can be employed in their own communities! So what makes us think this stadium will result in Blacks getting jobs downtown? No, Leiweke did not need to go there and his having done so only made me dislike him more.

Segueing into Blacks: I, and former Councilman Nate Holden, attended the overwhelmingly White Mar Vista football stadium town hall meeting because we were apprised of and invited to it. While attending that meeting, we learned that AEG/Leiweke and them were meeting with some Black folks for breakfast the next morning at West Angeles Church on Crenshaw. The organizers of that meeting neither informed us of it nor invited us to it. Therefore, we did not attend. (Nate thought it was at FAME. He went there Tuesday morning and found no meeting.) From what I heard, the meeting among the Blacks was a different thing altogether. I heard it was, in essence, an AEG support rally and I wonder if these were they who held a press conference to support Frank McCourt and the Dodgers the other day. But that&rsquo;s OK, as long as the people at both meetings came away with what they needed. Me? The thing is a little better than it was initially, but I still have issues and I&rsquo;m not done.

RICHARDSON, AGAIN &mdash; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the FBI to begin a criminal investigation into Rep. Laura Richardson this week. CREW, acting upon Richardson&rsquo;s internal office e-mails and numerous media reports, found that Richardson routinely forced her congressional staff to work on her campaign and perform personal errands or risk losing their jobs. CREW&rsquo;s complaint to the FBI alleges that Richardson intimidated her staff into making political contributions, soliciting contributions on federal property, improperly appropriating funds and making false statements to Congress.

&ldquo;Rep. Richardson didn&rsquo;t just violate House rules, she likely committed crimes,&rdquo; said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. &ldquo;While the House Ethics Committee is already investigating &mdash; for all the good that ever does &mdash; the FBI should step in and conduct its own inquiry. The Department of Justice has a responsibility to ensure members of Congress who violate the law are held accountable,&rdquo; Sloan said.

THIS AND THAT &mdash; The Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk&rsquo;s Executive Office hosted a reception last week in honor of the retirement of Darlene M. Bonds, assistant registrar-recorder who is retiring after 44 years service with the county of Los Angeles. After having been originally hired as a keypunch operator in the County Assessor&rsquo;s Office on April 5, 1967, Bonds became the first African-American woman promoted to the classification of assistant registrar-recorder and was the only African-American woman to serve as the interim registrar-recorder/county clerk prior to the Board of Supervisors&rsquo; appointment of Conny McCormick as registrar-recorder/county clerk in 1995.

The Crenshaw Subway Coalition meets Thursday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. to strategize toward winning the Battle for Crenshaw. The meeting will be held in the US Bank Community Room on the corner of Crenshaw and Slauson.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Remember the other day I related how my City Hall source said Councilwoman Jan Perry is thinking about running for city controller and not seeking the mayor&rsquo;s office? Well, one of my other City Hall sources said that particular intel report is not true. They said Perry is &ldquo;adamant&rdquo; about running for mayor and nothing can change her mind. My source and I just stared at each other for a minute and they said to me: &ldquo;Regardless of what you may think, there are two things you cannot tell a person: (1) What office to run for, and (2) Who to marry.&rdquo; Hey.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: About the maps]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-About-the-maps-124395064.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">124395064</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:24:48 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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Alice Huffman, president of the California State NAACP &mdash; which is an active organization in the ad hoc African-American Redistricting Collaborative, addressed the California Redistricting Commission at the hearing it held in Culver City last week to receive public feedback on the preliminary legislative district boundaries it released earlier this month. Huffman told the 14-member commission that, for the most part, it had done a good job in redistricting the state. She said its maps were close to the ones the NAACP had drawn and submitted earlier and stated that, on the whole, the maps &ldquo;reflect the wisdom of the courts that drew the current lines under which the state now operates.&rdquo; 

However, Huffman took serious exception to the fact that some present multicultural areas were broken up and turned into segregated, uni- or bicultural districts for apparently geographically illogical reasons.

Huffman told the commission that in many urban areas, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and Whites all live in the same neighborhoods. &ldquo;This means that we work together, socialize together, attend school together and compete with each other to create exciting, diverse and thriving communities,&rdquo; Huffman said. 

The NAACP official further stated that, in most cases, the commission&rsquo;s preliminary maps kept those communities together and did not create racially polarized enclaves. However, she said the commission&rsquo;s maps did, indeed turn two specific areas important to African-Americans into segregated bi-cultural districts &mdash; namely the congressional district of Rep. Maxine Waters and the Assembly District of Mike Davis, from which Koreatown was removed, thus eliminating that ethnicity from what is now a vibrant multicultural district.

Huffman professed total confusion about what the commission did to Rep. Laura Richardson&rsquo;s district and questioned the commission&rsquo;s motives in that regard. She sees no rhyme or reason for it and requested that the issue of Richardson&rsquo;s district, as well as Waters&rsquo; and Davis&rsquo; be revisited, reassessed and redrawn.

CRIME BLOTTER &mdash; Remember back in 2005 when the LAPD SWAT Team shot 19-month-old Suzie Pe&ntilde;a to death in an attempt to rescue her from her drunken father, who was armed and holding her hostage at the time of her death? The cops tried to shoot the dad but they shot the kid. The family sued the city over Suzie&rsquo;s killing but the court dismissed the case in 2009. The family appealed and the other day the 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the lower court&rsquo;s ruling that the SWAT team was not negligent in the tot&rsquo;s death. She would be almost 8 years old now. That sucks.

Remember back in 2008 when a popular Black employee of a Canoga Park bowling alley was emptying the trash in the bin behind the bowling alley and he was shot to death by some Latino gang members simply because he was Black? Well, earlier this month, Martin Sotelo was sentenced to life in prison without parole for having killed James Shamp, the 48-year-old married father of two. Three others in the gang had already been sentenced, including Richard Bordelon, the admitted sniper who fired the shot that hit Shamp right through the heart. He got life without parole plus 40 years. That rocks.

In light of reports of illegal behavior on the part of workers in the city&rsquo;s Building and Safety and other departments, Controller Wendy Greuel is seeking ways to make such miscreants pay back the money they stole. She&rsquo;s also seeking to modify the city&rsquo;s practice of putting employees accused of job-related crimes on administrative leave with full pay until lengthy investigations and court proceedings are concluded. Something ought to be done to collect the money public employees steal from us. Just going to jail isn&rsquo;t good enough. And what about the sons of that Housing Commission woman? The woman resigned her city post because she knew her single sons had no business living in a city-operated family housing complex, but were her sons forced to move? I certainly hope so.

SUBWAY-MINDED &mdash; The Crenshaw Subway Coalition will hold an open meeting to unveil a community-based strategy to convince the MTA Board of Directors to add the Leimert Park Village Station to the Crenshaw-LAX subway line and build the Park Mesa Heights portion of the line underground. The meeting will be held June 30 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the US Bank&rsquo;s Community Room, 5760 Crenshaw Blvd.

Along those same lines, the Committee for Sustainable Inglewood Development, will hold the first two of many planned community meetings to gather ideas around the Crenshaw-LAX Line on June 28 at 1:30 p.m. and at 6:30 p.m. at the Ed Vincent Park&rsquo;s Veterans Center. The group is focused on ensuring that the rail path in Inglewood is built safely and increases customer traffic along the Market Street area of Downtown Inglewood.

SCHOOL NEWS &mdash; The LAUSD school board last week voted to name the elementary school under construction at 61st Street and Hooper Avenue the Lawrence H. Moore Elementary School in honor of an exemplary educator who served the district for 39 years prior to his retirement in 2000. During his career, Moore was an elementary, special education and adult education teacher, a vice principal and principal and held several administrative positions, including director of instruction. He also taught as an adjunct professor in the Department of Education at Cal State Northridge.

The LAUSD named 14 educators as &ldquo;Teacher of the Year&rdquo; for 2011-2012, of which six teach in neighborhood schools. They are: Daniel Buccieri, U.S. history teacher at Mark Twain Middle School; Pamela Chirichigno, who teaches multiple subjects at Buchanan Street MST/Magnet Elementary School; Terry Little, fourth grade teacher at Ascot Elementary School; Raymond Taylor, 68th Street Elementary School math teacher; Guillermo Adonay Cabrera, fifth grade teacher at Budlong Avenue Elementary School and Rachel Haserjian, an advanced placement calculus teacher at West Adams Preparatory High School.

A team of students from Audubon Middle School won first place in the Local District 3 Middle School Academic Decathlon. The Audubon team consisted of Vicente Cota, sixth grade; Brandon Taylor, seventh grade; Ralston Galvez, eighth grade and Josias Escobar, wild card. Cynthia Calhoun, Audubon&rsquo;s magnet coordinator, was the coach. Good job, guys. (No girls?!)

DATEBOOK &mdash; Councilman Herb Wesson&rsquo;s fourth annual &ldquo;Movies in the Park&rdquo; series kicks off Friday evening at the Baldwin Hills Recreation Center with the 7 p.m. showing of the movie &ldquo;Megamind.&rdquo; The family-oriented event is free of charge and free hot dogs and popcorn will be available. Residents are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs to the movies so they can make themselves feel at home.

A conversation with economist and Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux will be conducted at Saturday&rsquo;s Urban Issues Forum from 9 to 11 a.m. at the FAME Renaissance Conference Center. Malveaux will discuss her latest book, &ldquo;Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History.&rdquo; For the nighttime crowd, Malveaux will discuss and sign copies of her book Saturday evening, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the office of Sen. Curren Price, 700 State Drive.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, together with his legislative posse &mdash; Sen. Curren Price and Assembly members Steve Bradford and Holly Mitchell &mdash; will host the AAVREP&rsquo;s 10th annual Juneteenth celebration on June 29 from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Quarles&rsquo; Baldwin Hills estate. The celebration will feature musical performances by the Greg Dalton All-Star Band and Sheila E., Pete Escovedo &amp; the Family. Information: (310) 422-8681.

ATTENTION! &mdash; Venerable community activist Edna Allewine, whom most of us have known our entire lives, is gravely ill in Brotman Hospital suffering from stage 4 lymphatic cancer. Pray for her.

AND FINALLY &mdash; Times&rsquo; Headline: &ldquo;Villaragosa to lead national group of mayors&rdquo; ?!! Oh, pah-leeze! This is obviously a national group of &hellip;]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[The Soulvine: The maps]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/the-soulvine/The-Soulvine-The-maps-123961079.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">123961079</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:34:53 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







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The voter-mandated 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission, seeking to end a long and nasty history of gerrymandering by California politicians, took a stab at redrawing the boundaries for the state&rsquo;s congressional and legislative districts and released to the public Friday the fruits of its labor &mdash; the first draft of new district maps. These maps are subject to extensive public vetting and changes are most likely to be made to them before they are subjected to final action in August.

According to the analysis prepared by experts engaged for that purpose by the California Democratic Party, the preliminary maps drawn by the redistricting commission would have the following affect upon Los Angeles County&rsquo;s African-American elected representation:

&bull; Congressional Seats: Rep. Karen Bass would continue to represent the Crenshaw-Leimert Park-Mid-City areas, as well as Westwood, Mar Vista, Culver City and Ladera-Windsor Hills-View Park. But her district would stretch eastward to the Harbor Freeway from Venice to Slauson.
Rep. Maxine Waters&rsquo; South L.A. district gets stretched eastward from Inglewood to the Long Beach Freeway corridor cities of Bell, South Gate, Cudahy and into Downey. She loses Gardena, Hawthorne and many neighborhoods north of the 105. With the exception of Inglewood, she loses the neighborhoods surrounding the airport, which is a big employment center for the residents she has represented for decades. She picks up areas represented by Rep. Linda Sanchez, fueling speculation that the two could face each other in a 2012 primary should this draft district prevail in August.

Rep. Laura Richardson&rsquo;s district is shifted eastward as well and picks up Paramount, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood, Cerritos, Los Alamitos, Signal Hill and virtually all of Long Beach. She loses all of South L.A. south of Manchester, Compton and Carson. The first-draft seat overlaps with the one held by Sanchez, triggering speculation that she could abandon her Long Beach base for a new Hawthorne, Lawndale, Gardena, South L.A., Harbor Gateway, Compton, Carson seat that could attract the interest of Waters and a host of others looking for that next opportunity. &ldquo;Big Mama&rdquo; and &ldquo;Little Mama&rdquo; may yet have the falling out predicted when Waters engineered Richardson&rsquo;s election following Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald&rsquo;s death. Or, termed-out state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, who hails from Long Beach, could give Richardson the challenge disgruntled Long Beach voters have been waiting for.

&bull; State Senate Seats: Sen. Curren Price&rsquo;s sprawling preliminary district includes all of South L.A. within the city of Los Angeles and he keeps Culver City, Windsor Hills and Ladera-View Park. The district gets pushed well east of the Harbor Freeway into Huntington Park as he loses portions of Hollywood, Hancock Park and Silver Lake. Price picks up virtually all of Westwood and Palms and he would represent collegiate crosstown territory.

Sen. Rod Wright&rsquo;s proposed district would retain Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lawndale, Gardena, Compton and San Pedro. He picks up East Compton, Carson, Wilmington and Lynwood. He loses Long Beach and Rancho Palos Verdes. Assemblymembers Steve Bradford, Isadore Hall and Warren Furutani all live in this new district.

&bull; State Assembly Seats: Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell&rsquo;s district spreads further north and west to pick up all of Westwood and Mar Visa. She retains Culver City, Ladera-View Park and Windsor Hills and picks up mid-Wilshire. According to these draft maps, Mitchell and Assembly Speaker John Perez now reside in the same Assembly district. That&rsquo;s messy.

Assemblyman Mike Davis&rsquo; string bean-shaped district gains weight to the east of the Harbor Freeway to pick up Florence-Firestone, and west to Arlington to include all of incorporated South L.A. He loses Koreatown and most of the territory north of the Santa Monica Freeway.

Bradford&rsquo;s Inglewood-Hawthorne-Gardena seat picks up the Harbor Gateway and Harbor City portions of the city of Los Angeles east of the Harbor Freeway to include some of Torrance, while Hall&rsquo;s Compton-based seat gets merged into a Lynwood, Carson and Wilmington-San Pedro configuration which would place him at odds with Furutani, who represents the new areas folded into Hall&rsquo;s proposed district.

As I keep reiterating, these are only preliminary district boundaries drawn by the redistricting commission and they are certainly subject to change before the final maps are drawn. Toward that end, the African-American Redistricting Collaborative is urging Southlanders to meet with the redistricting commission Thursday when it holds its only local hearing to take testimony from residents as to their reaction to these preliminary maps. Activists with the AARC are opposed to the way these maps divide, truncate, split &mdash; whatever you want to call it &mdash; African-American communities of interest, thereby reducing opportunities for Blacks to be elected. They plan to talk to the commission about that. The meeting will be held in the Culver City City Hall, 9770 Culver Blvd. beginning at 5:30 p.m.

HEARD THROUGH THE SOULVINE &mdash; Pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of tea and listen to this: I heard that former Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell is planning to come out of retirement and run for the unexpired term of Councilwoman Janice Hahn after she is elected to Congress on July 14. Bob does live in San Pedro, you know. &hellip; I heard that Secretary of State Debra Bowen lost her runner-up spot to face Hahn for Congress because she hired a whole bunch of Latinos to campaign for her and their large presence in tony 15th District neighborhoods in Bowen&rsquo;s behalf turned the usually liberal white people off, causing them to vote for the Republican, Craig Huey. And that&rsquo;s why the state&rsquo;s first open primary didn&rsquo;t turn out as expected. &hellip; I also heard that about-to-be-termed-out Councilwoman Jan Perry is thinking about abandoning her quest for the mayor&rsquo;s office and seeking the city controller&rsquo;s job instead. Also being talked about is Councilman Bernard Parks&rsquo; interest in going after the controllership himself. After all, it&rsquo;s a citywide office that pays more than councilman and since he won re-election by a measly 277 votes, he would not have to fool with a constituency that doesn&rsquo;t like him and, with his conservativeness, he can bask in the sunshine of Valley voters whom he&rsquo;s representing on the council now anyway, and he likes dealing with money issues. So, I say do it. But then, whither Parks&rsquo; buddy, Councilman Dennis Zine? I thought he wanted to be controller. Wendy Greuel&rsquo;s office has become the political office du jour. Of course now, I can&rsquo;t swear that all of this is true. I can only say that I heard it from some folks in City Hall who have proven to me in the past that they know stuff, and I must tell it. 

AND FINALLY &mdash; Happy Father&rsquo;s Day, guys.]]></description>
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