The Thorn West is a state and local news roundup compiled by members of DSA-LA. Our goal is to provide a weekly update on the latest developments in state and local politics, and to track the issues that are most important to our membership.

Issue No. 19 - July 17, 2020

Coronavirus: Resurgence and Response

• Los Angeles may be on the brink of shutting down again as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge to record levels in the county and across California. The surge began in late May as California allowed businesses to reopen, mass protests took place, and quarantine fatigue led to less adherence to social distancing. While many workplaces in LA have seen outbreaks, cases have been concentrated at food processing and distribution facilities, manufacturing facilities, garment factories and wholesale warehouses. County health officials have said that these locations are not enforcing proper safety guidelines such as social distancing, face coverings and regular sanitation.

• The California Department of Public Health has adjusted its recommendations for how COVID-19 tests should be allocated. Whereas the guidelines used to recommend that tests be available to all who want one, the new guidelines recommend that they only be available to those who show symptoms or who work in high-risk settings. Los Angeles County, meanwhile, has added testing sites in areas that have been hit hardest by the pandemic.

Police Violence and Mass Incarceration

• A federal judge has temporarily blocked the city of McFarland from constructing a previously approved GEO Group detention center. The order also prohibits the center from housing detainees. This suit was brought on by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the activist group Freedom for Immigrants, due to concerns that the detention center had been approved by just one public hearing. The proposal for the detention center was also previously rejected by the city’s Planning Commission. This comes as the Adelanto Detention Facility has been ordered to release ICE detainees via bail. After losing a class action suit filed by the ACLU of Southern California, 43 detainees are now awaiting release.

• After ongoing outcry and pressure from families of incarcerated people and activists due to the increasing outbreak of COVID-19 in the state prison system, Governor Gavin Newsom has approved three separate efforts to reduce the prison population by 8,000 by the end of August. Ten of the state’s 35 prisons currently have outbreaks, and San Quentin alone has over 1000 coronavirus cases.  

• A federal judge issued a tentative ruling largely upholding the ban on private prison contracts in California. Two separate lawsuits, one brought by a Florida private prison company and the other by the Trump administration, both allege that California Assembly Bill 32, which bans new for-profit detention contracts and calls for phasing out existing facilities by 2028, violates the federal government’s right to enforce detention in California. The ruling is expected to be the beginning of a long court process.

• Alex Villanueva’s chief of staff, Capt. John Burcher, was removed from his position and reassigned after making social media posts in which he said that Andres Guardado, the 18-year-old shot in the back and killed last month by a sheriff’s deputy, “chose his fate.” The attorneys for Guardado’s family have pointed to this incident as further evidence that the sheriff’s department should not be conducting the investigation into the shooting, and have continued to call for an independent outside inquiry.

Climate

• President Trump unilaterally rolled back the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on Wednesday, accelerating federal approval for projects like pipelines, chemical plants, highways and waste incinerators. The 1970 law changed environmental oversight in the United States by requiring federal agencies to consider whether a project would harm the air, land, water or wildlife, and giving the public the right of review and input. Environmental groups immediately promised legal challenges, saying the regulatory rollbacks threaten public health and make it harder to combat climate change. Some have called it “the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years” and “a blatant attempt to silence the working class communities of color who are resisting the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure into their communities.”

• A state fire department investigation has found that Pacific Gas & Electric’s equipment caused last year’s Kincade fire. The fire lasted for nearly two weeks and burned 77,758 acres, causing thousands of Northern Californians to flee their homes. Last month PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 criminal counts of manslaughter in connection to the 2018 Camp fire.

Labor

• Garment workers are getting sick at factories participating in the city’s LA Protects scheme, which enlists local businesses to fast-track production of face masks. There have been hundreds of cases and multiple deaths so far; workers have described cramped working conditions and lax enforcement of safety guidelines.

• A firsthand account details the lack of safety on sets following the recent partial reopening of film and commercial production.

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