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. 25 - August 28, 2020

Black Lives Matter

• Reporting by Yahoo News recounts the intense two days that led to a wildcat strike in the NBA. The action was initiated by the Milwaukee Bucks in response to the police killing of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, and then led by players on the Lakers and Clippers.

• What do the owners of basketball teams have to do with protesting police violence? Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s organization, the Ballmer Group, has provided $750,000 to the LAPD’s community safety partnership (CSP). This is the type of police program Mayor Garcetti touts as “reform,” but which #Defund activists decry as responding to over-policing with more policing. To understand how CSP is just another way police tighten control over communities, watch this People’s City Council video. If you question whether many professional athletes would bother to draw these distinctions, the official demands of the Baltimore Ravens, released yesterday, may be worth your time.

• Just hours after the NBA meeting, BLM protesters were kettled by LAPD in the 3rd St. tunnel after the police declared that their makeshift shields were illegal weapons. Meanwhile, the city of Beverly Hills has taken the extraordinary step of filing misdemeanor charges against 25 protesters for “curfew violations” related to a peaceful protest on June 26.

• In a process accelerated by protests held in response to the recent killing of Anthony McClain by Pasadena police, Pasadena City Council passed legislation to create a Police Commission that will attempt to provide law enforcement oversight. An editorial written by the president of NAACP Pasadena considers what this legislation accomplishes, and some of the steps it fails to take.
  

• An editorial in the Sacramento Bee, widely circulated on Twitter, runs down all the common-sense police reforms the Democratic-controlled state legislature is failing or has failed to pass. Reporting in the LA Times observes the power police unions have to water down reform legislation.

Housing Justice

• In April a federal judge ordered the city of LA to suspend the confiscation of “bulky items” belonging to the unhoused, ruling that the summary destruction of property likely violated due process. The latest round of CARE+ sweeps around “bridge” housing violated that order. Now, attorneys representing Koreatown-based advocacy group Ktown For All, have asked the city to be held in contempt, and for fines of $45,000 to be imposed.

• Tweets from the Services Not Sweeps coalition recount the successful interruption of a morning sweep in Hollywood by a blockade of protesters. The coalition moved the unhoused residents impacted by the sweep into a hotel for two nights, challenging Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles Homeless Services Director Heidi Marston, and Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell. “If we can do it, why can’t [they]?”

• Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “A Bridge Home” program has not met goals in moving program participants into permanent housing. A survey of three PATH bridge housing shelters found that after over a year in operation, only 24% of program exits were into permanent housing.

Transit

• The High Desert Corridor freeway was envisioned as an 8-to-10-lane freeway, until Climate Resolve and others won a legal settlement that forced Caltrans to shelve the project. The Metro Planning and Programming Committee has approved diverting some of that funding to high-speed rail — specifically, the development of a 54-mile intercity rail service between Palmdale and Apple Valley, site of the future western terminus of the XpressWest project (connecting Las Vegas with Southern California).

• This week The Metro Board of Directors will consider awarding key contracts for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor Project — a proposed above-ground rail or subway system between the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles International Airport. This is the first time Metro has tried this kind of public-private partnership on a large scale.

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