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.

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Issue No. 23 - August 14, 2020

Local Politics

• The state Democratic Party is divided between those who want to fund pandemic relief and other social services with taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and those like Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg, whose stimulus package relies on funding from “complex financial mechanisms and vouchers” and hypothetical federal loans from the Trump administration.

• In the aftermath of corruption probes that have implicated two sitting councilmembers in pay-to-play real estate deals, the City Council voted to initiate the process of establishing an Office of Anti-Corruption and Transparency, and to establish an inspector general for land use and development.

• Los Angeles will soon begin its redistricting process, which happens every ten years. An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times explains how the past decade’s corruption within the City Council is linked to the redistricting that occurred ten years ago. Activist pressure has resulted in what should be a more transparent process this time around.

Labor

• A landmark ruling from the California Superior Court compels Uber and Lyft to reclassify their drivers from independent contractors to employees. This will entitle California drivers to health insurance, worker’s comp, and other benefits. Uber and Lyft have already initiated a capital strike in response, threatening a shut down of operations in California if the ruling isn’t somehow reversed. Proposition 22 — a November ballot measure funded in large part by Uber, Lyft and Door Dash — would change the law to allow the companies to continue treating their gig-worker employees as independent contractors.

Climate

• Environmental activists are regrouping after AB 345 — which would require a mandatory setback distance between fossil fuel production operations and homes, schools or hospitals — failed 5–4 in a contentious committee vote last week. The lack of such environmental protections in California means the state lags behind states such as Texas and North Dakota; while the majority of people living in close proximity to drilling are Black, Brown, or Indigenous.

• The sec­ond largest teach­ers’ union in the coun­try passed a res­o­lu­tion in sup­port of the Green New Deal this July. In These Times checked in with the AFL-CIO to spell out what obstacles remain to this support spreading to the broader labor movement, where job security is a concern.

• At a recent hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, testimony from Drew Shindell, Nicholas professor of earth science at Duke University (and a lead author on both recent IPCC reports), revealed that the increase in hospitalizations and premature death that would result from Trump’s rollbacks of Obama’s fuel economy standards and Clean Power Plan are up to twice as large as previously estimated.

• The Trump administration is not alone in ignoring science in service of capital. City Council District 4 candidate Nithya Raman called out the Los Angeles City Council for voting 12–1 in favor of relaxing pollution-reduction requirements at the Port of LA for China Shipping despite opposition from the NRDC and the California Air Resources Board.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• At a dystopian press conference, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department attempted to rationalize the killing of Andres Guardado by sheriff’s deputies... by noting that the location of the shooting had previously been the scene of unrelated violent crime. A department spokesperson theorized that the deputies who killed Guardado were “probably drawn to that location in being proactive.” A lawyer for the Guardado family called out this narrative as “nothing more than an attempt to justify the killing of this young man.”

• At a press conference earlier this week, Compton Mayor Aja Brown called on the state’s attorney general to investigate allegations of excessive force and discriminatory policing at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Compton station: “We demand the same treatment that deputies provide to the residents of Malibu, Rancho Palos Verdes and other affluent communities.” The deputies who killed Andres Guardado worked in the Compton station.

Housing Justice

• On July 29 the City Council voted in favor of resuming sweeps of unhoused encampments around “bridge housing” shelters, a process that had been suspended as a result of the pandemic. Mitch O'Farrell voted in favor of sweeps, but insisted that they be referred to as “deep cleans,” as the approach would be “very very compassionate” and take care to focus on cleaning without displacing anyone. Monitors from Street Watch LA observed a scheduled sweep in O’Farrell’s district, which their coverage demonstrates was undertaken without proper notification. Unhoused residents who did not happen to be around during the sweep had their tents destroyed.

• Relatedly, a detailed article on michaelkohlhaas.org demonstrates, using many internal emails from within Los Angeles’ municipal government, how these sweeps get initiated, commonly without any checks or balances.

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