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. 38 - December 4, 2020

Coronavirus Relief

• In response to rising COVID-19 numbers, new stay-at-home orders have been issued by the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and the state of California.

• The patchwork of laws protecting tenants from being evicted during the pandemic is falling apart, with the federal eviction ban set to expire on December 31. Meanwhile, new research, which compares the outcomes in states that have already resumed eviction proceedings with those that haven’t, finds that evictions have already been responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of COVID-19 and thousands of unnecessary deaths.

• Meanwhile, Mayor Garcetti has co-authored a proposal that tries to address this crisis by immediately returning all tenants’ security deposits as one-time payments. In exchange, tenants will be required to make monthly payments to purchase an insurance policy to protect their landlords. See Twitter for early commentary.

Housing Justice

• Last week, Councilmember Gil Cedillo proposed purchasing the Hillside Villa Apartments to maintain it as affordable housing for the tenants who live there. An essay in KNOCK.LA examines the low cost of that purchase relative to other city expenditures.

• Also in KNOCK.LA is a nice piece of media criticism examining the dehumanizing language regularly used on local TV news to refer to Los Angeles’ housing-insecure and unhoused residents.

Labor

• In early November, the Department of Labor established a new regulation to freeze farmworkers’ wages under the H-2A agricultural guest worker program for the next two years. This past Monday, the United Farm Workers filed a lawsuit in a California federal court to challenge this decision. The arbitrary and punitive measure to freeze workers’ wages will only cause harm to those who are already the most economically vulnerable.

• Ed Asner is the lead plaintiff among ten actors who are suing the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan after new restrictions excluded them from receiving health benefits.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• At the coroner’s inquest into the police killing of Andres Guardado, both deputies involved in the shooting and both sheriff’s detectives investigating the killing refused to cooperate, instead asserting their Fifth Amendment rights. As the purpose of the inquest is only to establish cause of death, the judge was uncertain if the Fifth Amendment applies.

• Following outcry over sheriff’s deputies covering their names with duct tape at a protest this week, Sheriff Villanueva has gone on record flagrantly sanctioning this behavior. Deputies will now only be required to to display their badge numbers.

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