LOS ANGELES

PLANNING WATCH-If you follow the news regarding including housing-related legislation bubbling up in Sacramento and at LA’s City Hall, you have been subjected to a series of big lies. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Over the past few years we’ve been hit by hurricanes that build up to enormous sizes and then hover over the target area – sometimes for days.

GUEST WORDS-For the past six years, homelessness in Los Angeles has increased by more than 75%.

SMILE, YOU’RE ON COP CAMERA--Since its inception, predictive policing has courted controversy.

CHATMATES-I assume this is my third and final installment of WILTL. It was a pleasure sharing with readers of all political stripes my previous two pieces of the same name. Coincidentally, "Why I Left the Left," part 1, was posted in late August of 2017; part 2, was published in late August of 2018.

THE CALLOUT CULTURE-What do you do when someone says something offensive?

ONE MAN’S OPINION--We put criminals in charge and then are bewildered why the criminals are robbing us blind.

AT LENGTH-At one point in the early 1990s, this newspaper hosted the famous Nation magazine columnist Alex Cockburn to speak at Los Angeles Harbor College.

IMMIGRANT WORKER RIGHTS-In 2017, Raul Novoa, who had been detained at the Adelanto Detention Center in the Mojave Desert near San Bernardino between 2012 and 2015, filed a class action suit alleging that he’d been forced to work for $1 a day at the facility, which is operated by the GEO Group, the nation’s largest for-profit detention firm, whose 2018 revenues totaled $2.3 billion. 

LABOR 2019--When workers don’t have a voice in their workplace, they eventually lose their voice at the ballot box, too.

ALPERN AT LARGE--You've heard it before--Labor Day is too often a holiday of barbecues, the un-official end of summer, and a time for family gatherings more than the actual celebration of labor.

GUEST COMMENTARY--I am in agreement with Bianca Barragan’s August 29, 2019, CityWatch piece, “6,000 LA Bus Stops Leave Riders in Rain and Boiling Heat.” I ride buses and trains, and in City Watch I have written articles on the need for more covered bus shelters.

LABOR 2019--For the past 125 years, Labor Day has been a time to celebrate the relevance, and political power, of the American working class. As recently as the 1990s, organized labor’s big day was an important milestone on the political calendar, particularly for Democrats.

BCK FILE--Just one month after the bloody weekend when a gunman killed 22 victims at an El Paso Walmart and another nine people were killed by a gunman in Dayton, Ohio, yet another mass shooting left another 7 people dead and 22 injured.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Although the modus operandi of Trump and der Wunderkind Garcetti are different on the surface, they are almost indistinguishable underneath their veneers.

CLIMATE POLITICS--After two weeks of sailing, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in New York on Wednesday with an urgent call to action.

CURBEDLA TRANSIT REPORT--With more hot days expected in the future, transit advocates say the city must add shade at bus stops and transit hubs.

RANTZ & RAVEZ- Talk about throwing more and more tax money down the drain with little improvement to the ever-increasing homeless population in Los Angeles and beyond! 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Once Upon a Time, there was bipartisanship, a Common Enemy who was either Hitler or Stalin or the Ayatollah Khomeini, and both Democrats and Republicans disagreed with each other but respected each other's talking points as issues that we ignored at our collective peril. 

NO ONE ABOVE THE LAW-On August 27, 2019 I sent the following complaint to LA County Deputy District Attorneys Alan Yochelson and Michele Gilmer: 

OTHER WORDS-This Labor Day, Democratic presidential candidates will no doubt be touting their support for a $15 per hour minimum wage. None have opposed the idea.