LOS ANGELES

LABOR WAR-United Teachers Los Angeles Members (UTLA)—including Adult Education, K-12, Teachers on Reduced Workload Status, Health and Human Services Professionals, and Substitute Teachers—went on strike from Monday, January 14, 2019 through Tuesday, January 22, 2019—when a deal was announced and overwhelmingly approved by members. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--I have always been in awe of those who give so much of their time to their community.

ENERGY POLICY-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti should rethink his short-sighted decisions to cut three much-needed natural gas power plants generating electricity.

EASTSIDER-We’ve already covered the disastrous failure of Mayor Garcetti’s “ownership” of the City’s homeless crisis. However, in a separate initiative, Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell seems to be dead set on throwing them out of town. 

CLIMATE POLITICS-The oceans are “crying for mercy,” a fact that is starkly revealed in a telling 900-page draft of a forthcoming UN report due for release September 25.

WORLD WATCH--Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran deal) was sadly based on a lack of understanding of its importance and potential contribution to a future nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

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.