Solnit: California’s deficit of common sense — latimes.com

Opinion

California’s deficit of common sense

The state has plenty of money and resources. What we’ve been lacking is a real-world discussion about how we distribute them.

By Rebecca Solnit

November 1, 2009

California is rich. Even in the midst of a drought, we have lots of water, and in the midst of a recession, we have lots of money. The problem is one of distribution, not of actual scarcity.This is the usual problem of the United States, which is not just the richest and most powerful nation on Earth now, but on Earth ever, and one of the most blessed in terms of natural resources. We just collectively make loopy decisions about how to distribute the money and water, and we could make other decisions. Whether or not those priorities will change, we could at least have a reality-based conversation about them.

 

Take water. My friend Derek Hitchcock, a biologist working to restore the Yuba River, likes to say that California is still a place of abundance. He recently showed me a Pacific Institute report and other documents to bolster his point. They show that about 80% of the state’s water goes to agriculture, not to people, and half of that goes to four crops — cotton, rice, alfalfa and pasturage (irrigated grazing land) — that produce less than 1% of the state’s wealth. Forty percent of the state’s water. Less than 1% of its income. Meanwhile, we Californians are told the drought means that ordinary households should cut back — and probably most should — but the lion’s share of water never went to us in the first place, and we should know it.

Americans usually have fantastic visions of where our resources come from and go. A lot of Americans seem to believe that the federal government spends tons of money, rather than a small percentage of the federal budget, on the arts and foreign aid; but in fact, about half of discretionary spending goes to the military — the largest and most expensive military the world has ever seen, one that costs nearly as much as all the other militaries put together.

In discussing the national financial crisis, the military was never really on the chopping block, even though its budget could, with a little paring, provide healthcare, education, environmental restoration, some cool climate-change adaptation and all the other pieces of a good society and a great nation. Do we really need several hundred military bases in more than 125 countries? And all those expensive toys? And the research programs to do things like weaponize insects? Do we need them more than we need to keep children healthy?

Speaking of poor children reminds me of Sitting Bull, as good an authority on our economy as anyone, even if he wasn’t an economist and even though he died in 1890. After the Lakota were defeated, he joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show for a season, but he never got ahead financially. He gave the bulk of his earnings to the street urchins who hung around the show. He was shocked that a nation powerful enough to conquer his people couldn’t or wouldn’t feed its own future. The white man was good at production, he concluded, but bad at distribution.

It’s the same today. We have enough in this nation to feed, clothe, shelter, educate and provide medical care to everyone. If the will was there.

In California, the story is the same in spades. Take our state budget crisis. A British newspaper recently ran a rather melodramatic piece about California as a failed state and compared us to Iceland. It was a wacky comparison. Iceland went bankrupt because its bankers spent lots of money they didn’t have. California is in conniptions because it has lots of money it won’t spend. I’m not talking about raising individual taxes, though it would certainly make sense to revisit Proposition 13, and we’d have an extra billion dollars if we hadn’t phased out estate taxes.

But look at corporate taxes! According to the nonpartisan California Budget Project, if we taxed corporations the way we did in 1981, we’d have $8.4 billion more coming in. That would wipe out more than a third of the budget shortfall that led to the draconian cuts (and cover about what we spend annually on the world’s second-biggest prison system). We’re home to the fifth-largest corporation in the world, Chevron, whose profits were $24 billion last year. Chevron has lobbied to keep corporate taxes low and to avoid paying an oil severance tax — a tax on oil taken out of the ground (and we’re abundant in oil too, for better or worse). Texas charges one, but we don’t. A few years ago, Chevron worked hard to defeat Proposition 87, which would’ve levied a severance tax capped at 6% of the oil’s value — but Sarah Palin’s Alaska raised its severance tax to 25%, a figure that would bring in an estimated $4 billion or more.

Examine the way that we changed corporate income tax policy in the crisis years of 2008-2009 to give a small number of corporations tens of millions of dollars a year in tax breaks — $33.1 million apiece, on average, for nine corporations; $23.5 million to six others, according to the California Budget Project. There’s money there, ripe for the picking, and powerful forces to prevent that from ever happening — or maybe weak forces, because it’s our Republican legislative minority that prevents us from ever achieving the supermajority to raise taxes (and our weak Democratic majority that goes along with crazy tax cuts amid a crisis).

Turning California into a Third World nation where the environment is neglected, a lot of people are genuinely desperate and a lot of the young have a hard time getting an education or just can’t get one doesn’t benefit anyone.

We’re not poor in money or water. We’ve just chosen to allocate them in ways that benefit tiny minorities at the expense of the rest of us. We should at least have a conversation about how we distribute our abundant resources. Derek is right: California is a place of abundance, except when it comes to political sense.

Rebecca Solnit, a product of California public schools from kindergarten to graduate school, is the author most recently of “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.”

 

Opens at the Huntington Oct. 24: Central Avenue and Beyond: The Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles

A new exhibition focusing on the extraordinary artistic, cultural, and intellectual expressions and accomplishments of African Americans in Los Angeles will open at the Huntington Oct. 24, 2009.  Titled, “Central Avenue and Beyond: The Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles,” the exhibition will include material from both The Huntington and the Mayme A. Clayton Library, a new cultural and education institution founded by Avery Clayton to house and make available his mother’s extraordinary collection of African Americana gathered during her 40-year career as a librarian in Los Angeles.  The show will continue until Jan. 4, 2010.

For more information, click here.

 

USC’s Archives Bazaar resurrects L.A.’s history — latimes.com

USC’s Archives Bazaar resurrects L.A.’s history — latimes.com.

They gathered outside a nightclub called the Black Cat one winter night in 1967, perhaps a few hundred men and women in all, joined together in a moment of happy subversion on a Silver Lake street. Weeks earlier, police had swept through the club and arrested 14 people after witnessing, at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, the “crime” of one man kissing another.

It’s unlikely any of the protesters had been to an organized gay-rights demonstration — the movement in Los Angeles was then in its infancy. Someone brought a camera and snapped a few pictures. Finally the demonstrators dispersed. They put away or threw away the signs they had made.

There are precious few known artifacts remaining from the Black Cat protest, an event that preceded by more than two years the famous Stonewall “riots” in New York. People who make history are often unaware they are doing so. They don’t always preserve the objects and documents that could make those momentous events come alive for future generations.

That’s where a small but dedicated band of Los Angeles archivists comes in. They rescue the things that make up our collective history: a Remington typewriter owned by the Depression-era pioneer of Spanish-language radio, posters and sheet music from the jazz glory days of Central Avenue, the photographs taken outside the Black Cat on the night of Feb. 11, 1967.

On Oct. 17, the people who collect and catalog these artifacts of modern Los Angeles will gather for a kind of open house, the fourth annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar at USC’s Davidson Conference Center.

“It’s a first attempt at building history,” Chon Noriega told me, describing his work as director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, one of the 70 institutions contributing exhibits to the Archives Bazaar. “Three hundred years from now when somebody comes to this university and wants to write about what happened in Los Angeles, there will be something for them to see.”

Los Angeles is among the youngest of the world’s great cities. Rome has a couple of millenniums of history; New York, four centuries. As late as 1880, Los Angeles was still a little country burg of 11,000 people. In a dozen decades it became a diverse metropolis, home to utopian dreamers and ambitious capitalists, to groundbreaking artists and refugees from poverty and discrimination.

Our city might look beat up and tired these days. But we still enjoy many of the fruits of the glorious, good fights of the 20th century, when L.A. became a cosmopolitan crossroads with an ample middle class. In the last decades of that century, people lived more freely here than almost anywhere else.

The raw material of that remarkable narrative is gathered in places such as the Culver City Historical Society, the Autry National Center for the American West, the Chinese American Museum and the Mayme Clayton Library and Museum, an archive built by a local librarian with a passion for black history.

All those institutions will be represented at the Archives Bazaar.

I’m writing these words today as a kind of thank-you note to the professionals and amateurs who’ve built those archives. Over the years, I’ve spent many hours perusing their collections. I’ve learned that there’s a certain power and knowledge that comes from spending time with history in its rawest, most unprocessed form.

Michael Palmer of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives knows that power too. A few years back, he found the photographs of the Black Cat protest in a box of materials donated to the archives. He doesn’t even know who shot the images. For historians of gay culture in Los Angeles, it was like finding a Holy Grail. And it left Palmer and fellow archivist Loni Shibuyama hungry for more.

So if you know someone who was at the protest and might have materials related to the police raid that New Year’s Eve and the demonstrations that followed (an arrest report, maybe, or some personal correspondence), please give the ONE archives a call.

“Basically, we’d get them in a room and beg and plead until they gave us the originals,” Palmer said. In exchange, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives would offer the closest thing on Earth to immortality. They would promise to protect those precious documents and objects so that they could live on for centuries.

Noriega at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center can also promise the controlled humidity and temperature and careful handling of a professional archive. The center’s collections are stored, along with many others, in a vast facility underneath the UCLA campus. “They’re safe,” Noriega said of the materials. And they’re all available to researchers.

Noriega spends a lot of time thinking about how the present will look to the future. “You ask yourself, ‘What is going to be useful to historians trying to reconstruct this period?’ “

The 20th century saw a boom in Latino arts in L.A., so Noriega has reached out to artists like Judy Baca, who has donated papers, along with the painter and performance artist Gronk. “He gave us all of his papers, notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, even napkins he’s drawn on,” Noriega said.

I thought I knew a lot about the history of Latino Los Angeles. But I’d never heard about two other men who donated their papers and mementos to the UCLA center.

Pedro Gonzalez was a one-time soldier in Pancho Villa’s army who later migrated to California, where he started the first Spanish-language radio program in Los Angeles. In the 1930s, he broadcast denunciations of the immigration raids on Latino neighborhoods, and he was later arrested and deported. His typewriter survived his years of exile and is now in the center’s possession.

Dionicio Morales organized protests against segregation

in Southern California theaters. His struggle began the night in 1940 when he was told to sit in “the Mexican section” of a Moorpark movie house during the opening night of “Gone With the Wind.” He refused.

“I was hustled out of the theater and my 25 cents was refunded,” Morales wrote. Later he organized a successful campaign to force an end to the practice of segregating seating.

Of course, the histories of protest, art and ambition are still being written in Los Angeles. People are marching, imagining and striving here as much as ever.

If you’re one of them, you might want to think twice before throwing out those old letters and pamphlets — and consider instead putting the items in safe hands. In the distant future, a lover of early 21st century Los Angeles history may thank you for it.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

 

Author event at Book Passage in San Francisco: John Buntin on the LAPD; Sept. 24

John Buntin will talk about his new book, L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City at Book Passage in San Francisco on Sept. 24.  From the Book Passage listing:

Buntin offers a fascinating examination of how the LAPD created a  dangerously unaccountable surveillance-intensive model of crime fighting that damaged Los Angeles’s social fabric and eerily prefigured today’s “war on terror.”

Thurs., Sept. 24, 6:00 pm, Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, #42, San Francisco, CA 94111, Phone: (415) 835-1020

 

Los Angeles History Research Group’s first meeting of 2009-10 is Sept. 19

The first meeting of the Los Angeles History Research Group for 2009-2010 will take place at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 19, 2009, in Classroom 3 of the Munger Research Center at The Huntington Library.

The presenter will be Sara Fingal, PhD candidate, Brown University, who will discuss her paper, “Turning the Tide: Conflict, Leisure, and Access along Southern and Baja California’s Coastline, 1940s-1980s.”  To request a copy of the paper, please contact Carolyn Powell at cpowell@huntington.org.

Anyone with questions may contact one of the coordinators listed below, who can also provide a complete schedule for the year.

Nick Rosenthal, ngrosen@lmu.edu

Allison Varzally, avarzally@exchange.fullerton.edu

 

A New Issue of Southern California Quarterly has been published

The Historical Society of Southern California has published a new issue of Southern California Quarterly (Summer 2009, Vol. 91, No. 2).  The contents include the following three articles:

“Keeping Alive the Old Tradition”: Spanish-Mexican Club Women in Southern California, 1880-1940,” by Eileen V. Wallis;

“African-American Leisure Space in Santa Monica: the Beach Sometimes Known as the Inkwell, 1990s – 1960s,” by Alison Rose Jefferson; and

“Delano Diary: the Visual Adventure and Social Documentary Work of Jon Lewis, Photographer of the Delano, California Grape Strike, 1966-1970,” by Richard Steven Street.

There are also six book reviews:

Beebe and Senkewicz, Testimonios: Early California Through the Eyes of Women,
1815-1848, by Jennifer Gurley;

Horsman, Feast or Famine: Food and Drink in American Westward Expansion, by
Patricia Cleary;

Round, The Impossible Land: Story and Place in California’s Imperial Valley, by
Erik Akenbernd;

Sanchez-Jankowski, Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor
Neighborhoods, by Elaine Lewinnek;

Griswold del Castillo, ed., Chicano San Diego: Cultural Space and the Struggle for
Justice, by Jerry Gonzalez; and

Schrank, Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles, by Thomas W. Devine.

Southern California Quarterly is not published on-line, only in print, but it is well worth joining the Historical Society to receive a subscription to the journal. –Frank Gruber

 

Hector Tobar in the LA Times: “California is free, vibrant and diverse”

The estimable Hector Tobar in his column today (7/28) in the L.A. Times makes the case that for all its troubles, nostalgia is just nostalgia, and in many ways, California’s golden age is now.  To bolster his points, he interviews historian Kevin Starr, who points out to him that for all its troubles, California is a much more just place than it was when it seemed that government worked like a well-oiled machine.

Tobar and Starr focus on two monuments to California history, the now-nearly forgotten Ft. Moore Pioneer Memorial on Hill Street in downtown L.A., dedicated in 1957, and a more recent monument, to the 1847 Treaty of Cahuenga, at the Universal City Red Line subway stop.  About the latter monument, Tobar writes:

The brightly colored tile murals installed by Margaret Garcia inside the Universal City Metro Station are under the site of the signing of the 1847 Treaty of Cahuenga, which brought an end to the fighting in California.

A fraction of the size of the Ft. Moore memorial, they detail the exploits of the U.S. military men like John Charles Fremont, but also the courage of the Californio resistance leaders like Doña Bernarda Ruiz.

It was Ruiz who helped make the treaty possible, by writing a letter to Fremont proposing “to put an end to the war . . . upon such just and friendly terms of compromise as would make the peace acceptable and enduring.”

This newer monument may be buried under the Hollywood Freeway, but I think its message of compromise and diversity deserves to last a little longer.

To read the whole column, click here.

 

Hidden Stories in Santa Monica: African American Beach Culture, 1900s-1960s

Hidden Stories in Santa Monica: African American Beach… – Eventbrite.

Hidden Stories in Santa Monica: African American Beach Culture at the Site Controversially Known as “the Inkwell”, 1900s-1960s, lecture with Alison Rose Jefferson

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 from 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM (PT)

Santa Monica, CA

5:15-6:15PM Docent tours at the Guest House

6:30PM Lecture

In 2007 Ms. Jefferson created the language engraved on the plaque: “The Ink Well”: A Place of Celebration and Pain, that graces a marker in the City of Santa Monica located along Ocean Front Walk at the end of Bay Street. The monument commemorates the Jim Crow era beach site used by African Americans as a gathering place and Nick Gabaldon, the first identified surfer of African American and Mexican descent. Her independent research, of people and places which have been overlooked in the ‘collective memory’ of the heritage of the Southern California region, also resulted in the 2005 designation of Phillips Chapel, a 100-year-old African American church as a Landmark in the City of Santa Monica. An article on her research will appear in Southern California Quarterly, Summer/July 2009 issue. Ms. Jefferson earned a Master’s degree in Historic Preservation in 2007 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Stop by early for Beach House tours by docents from the Santa Monica Conservancy before every evening event, first come, first served.

Tickets: All events are free but seating is limited and reservations are required. If you would like to attend, please reserve online. Please plan to arrive by 6:15pm to retain your reservation. Late seating is not guaranteed. To adjust or cancel your reservation for this event, email beachhouse@smgov.net. We appreciate your keeping in touch!

Parking and Driving directions: From the Pacific Coast Highway north of California Incline, turn at the Beach House Way traffic light into convenient parking ($4/hr, $8/day, disabled placards and Santa Monica senior beach parking passes accepted).

Other events:

To view & make reservations for other Beach=Culture events, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/org/199463539/

For more information about events at the Beach House, visit http://beachhouse.smgov.net/plan-your-day/events-and-happenings.aspx

 

California Media Collaborative Rethinks News Media Deployment

From David Simon, formerly of the Baltimore Sun, to Joe Rodriguez of the Mercury News, reporters, media executives, and observers suggest that we either need to bail out the newspapers, change corporate practices, or invent some a form of media or expand an existing one to distribute the news in a responsible and orderly way.

This post comes to us from Louis Freedberg, the founder and director of the California Media Collaborative, an inter-sectoral project to try and rethink the deployment of news media. They have a new project for investigative journalism on issues facing our state. Take a look at Freedberg’s announcement below.–ed.

****

Dear Friends:

I wanted to pass on some good news.

As many of you know, over the past year my colleagues and I at the California Media Collaborative have been developing a plan for a new reporting venture in California, in response to the multiple crises facing the news media

We have now joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, the nation’s oldest investigative journalism organization, which is also making California a major focus of its work.  CIR is led by Robert Rosenthal, the former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Together we will be launching a new California-focused reporting venture at CIR, with major support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation. We’ll be hiring a small group of reporters to do in-depth, watchdog and investigative journalism, focusing on issues such as education, immigration, criminal justice and the impact of the recession on  Californians.   Much of it will be data driven in order to show how state level issues affect people in their own communities, and we’ll be using Web-based technology in new and creative ways.

Many of these ideas were first discussed at the landmark Travers Program conference at UC Berkeley to which many of you made such valuable contributions about 18 months ago.

This project is at its core a collaborative one  – which will mean collaborating not only with other media outlets, but with non-profit organizations, academic and public policy institutions, foundations, civic leaders and others who care about how Californians will be informed and engaged on critical issues facing the state and the nation.

I also encourage you to take a look at the Collaborative’s blog site, http://californiamedia.org as well as CIR’s website, http://cironline.org.  We are developing an entirely new Web site for our new California initiative.  In the meantime, the blog site is intended to be an online convenor of discussion and comment on the state of the news media in California — and to highlight new media innovations.   Please participate!

I look forward to being in touch with you as we move forward with this exciting opportunity

Regards,

Louis Freedberg

 

New Book on Prop. 13 from IGS at UC Berkeley + Companion Conference Online

Our colleague, Ethan Rarick, the director of the Center for Politics and Public Service at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, sends us information on IGS’s publication of this new book on Prop 13. Ever timely, revisiting Prop 13 is especially critical now with rumbles of a constitutional convention and new tax policies reverberating through the state. The book contains articles from several friends of the California Studies Association.

In addition to the book, take a look at IGS’s recent conference on Prop 13: the conference is available on several video sites linked from this site where  you can also view slide presentations. IGS has other publications here.

After the Tax Revolt: California’s

Proposition 13 Turns 30

Jack Citrin and Isaac William Martin, editors

A New Examination of the Legacy of a California Political Milestone

In 1978 California voters shocked the political world by approving Proposition 13, a strict limit on local property tax rates. No state had ever approved such a far-reaching constitutional limitation of the power to tax. And Californians did not just approve it; they embraced it, rejecting dire warnings of doomsday from the state’s political, business, and academic leaders. Voter turnout was the highest recorded for any off-year election in the history of California and the tax cut won in a landslide, with 65 percent of the vote. Thirty years later, Proposition 13 remains firmly entrenched in California’s constitution, but what has it meant for politics and public policy in the state?

On June 6, 2008, the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of Proposition 13, a group of scholars, journalists and policy experts gathered to assess the legacy of this groundbreaking measure. Their mandate was a simple one: assess what we have learned about the political, economic, and fiscal consequences of Proposition 13 over the last 30 years.

After the Tax Revolt: California’s Proposition 13 Turns 30 is a result of that conference, and an attempt to summarize the state of our knowledge about the consequences of this critical event in the history of California and the United States. This collection of essays constitutes a cutting-edge and timely review of one of the most important reforms in California history, and will be crucial for anyone trying to gain a full understanding of politics and policy in the Golden State.

Order at igs.berkeley.edu/publications or by calling 510-642-1428

Contributors include:
Mark DiCamillo, Field Poll
David Doerr, California Taxpayers Association
William Fischel, Dartmouth
Joel Fox, Fox and Hounds Daily
John Fund, Wall Street Journal
David Gamage, UC-Berkeley
Jean Ross, California Budget Project
Terri Sexton, California State University, Sacramento
Steven Sheffrin, UC-Davis
Kirk Stark, UCLA

About the Editors:
Jack Citrin is Heller Professor of Political Science and the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Isaac Martin is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

--
Ethan Rarick
Director
Robert T. Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service
Institute of Governmental Studies
University of California, Berkeley
111 Moses MC 2370
Berkeley, CA  94720
510-642-5158
erarick@berkeley.edu

 

South Los Angeles Health & Human Rights Conference, Fri. June 5

South Los Angeles Health and Human Rights Conference

There is a fundamental crisis of health and human rights in south Los Angeles. South L.A. has the poorest health outcomes and indicators in the County of Los Angeles – mirroring the health status in some developing nations. Chronic institutional under-funding, substandard environmental and living conditions, a lack of necessary health services and other inequities have produced some of the worst health conditions and disparities in the country. While local coalitions, community clinics, hospitals, advocacy groups, and nonprofits have pieced together a safety net to address these chronic health inequities, the situation is worsening. The abject failure to uphold and protect the fundamental human rights of
south Los Angeles children and families mandates a community based, transnational, results-oriented approach by residents, service providers and advocates.

JOIN US FOR THE 1st ANNUAL SOUTH LOS ANGELES HEALTH & HUMAN RIGHTS CONFERENCE

Friday, June 5, 2009, 8:00am – 5pm

California Science Center
700 Exposition Drive
Exposition Park, Los Angeles, CA 90037

Register Now
www.southlahealthandhumanrights.org

Or call: 323-541-1600, x. 4001

Convenors
St. John’s Well Child and Family Centers
Community Health Councils
Esperanza Community Housing Corporation
Los Angeles Community Action Network
Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles (PSR-LA)
SAJE (Strategic Actions for a Just Economy)
Southside Coalition of Community Health Centers
South Bay Family Healthcare Center
UMMA Community Clinic

Sponsors
California School Health Centers Association
L.A. Care Health Plan
Los Angeles Best Babies Network
MedPoint Management
St. John’s Well Child and Family Centers
The California Endowment
California Wellness Foundation
The USC Center fro Community Health Studies
Kaiser Permanente

Key Endorsers
African American Alcohol and Other Drug Council /SPA 6 Homeless
Coalition (AAAOD)
American Academy of Pediatrics California Chapter 2
Bienestar
California School Health Centers Association
Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science
Children’s Defense Fund-California
Community Coalition
City of Los Angeles AIDS Coordinator’s Office
Doctors for Global Health
Ex-Offender Action Network (EAN)
Homeless Outreach Program/Integrated Care System (HOP/ICS)
Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA)
—Worker Health Program
MedPoint Management
National Economic Social Rights Initiative / National Health Law
Program
National Latino Research Center
National Physicians Alliance
Office of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas 2nd District
Pacific Institute for Women’s Health
Partners in Care Foundation
Partners in Health
People’s Health Movement USA
Physicians for Human Rights
Society for Adolescent Medicine
South Central Farmers Health and Education Fund
UCLA Program in Global Health
USC Office of Religious Life
UCLA Center for Civil Society
UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

 

“Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman”; Special Screening at LACMA June 7, 2 pm

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present a special screening June 7, 2009 at 2 p.m. of a new documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, that explores the monumental career of Julius Shulman, the 98-year-old Los Angeles-based architectural photographer. From the announcement:

Julius Shulman combines the organic with the synthetic, melding nature with revolutionary urban design in images that helped shape the careers of some of the key architects of the twentieth century, including Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Pierre Koenig, and John Lautner.

The documentary was directed by Eric Bricker and written by Mr. Bricker, Phil Ethington and Jessica Hundley.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036

 

Call for Papers: Sabato Rodia’s Watts Towers in Los Angeles: Art, Migrations, Community Development

Submission Due date:  July 20, 2009

As a follow-up to an international conference that took place April 2-5, 2009, at the University of Genova in Italy on the theme of art and migration as they relate to Sabato (Simon) Rodia and the Watts Towers, an independent group of scholars (partly in formation) has announced that it is ready to consider submissions for a volume of selected papers related to the themes of the Genova conference.  From the announcement:

The tentative title of the collected essays will be: Sabato Rodia’s Watts Towers in Los Angeles:  Art, Migrations, Community Development.  The volume will seek to treat the monument and its maker from a diverse spectrum of disciplinary perspectives and cover these areas: 1) The Community of Watts and its Monument:  Physical, Socio-Economic and Political Realities; 2)  Art Environments, Vernacular Traditions, and their Imaginaries; 3)  Italian Migrations:  Literary, Artistic, and Visual Legacies; 4)  Reproducing Nola (the Watts Towers vis-a-vis the Gigli of Nola).  Consult subjects 1 – 4 below for further details.  Please reply immediately with your intention to contribute (include your name, essay title, one-sentence description).  Submit your essay contribution for consideration by July 20.  All submissions will be peer-reviewed by an editorial advisory committee with expertise in the publication’s subject areas:

1.  Migration
- The life of Simon Rodia in the context of 19th to 20th-century Italian immigration
- Italian immigration as bridge between two worlds
- From Nola to Watts:  material culture traditions
- Oral history, oral culture and the Watts Towers
- Watts Towers and migration studies

2.  Art & Architecture
- Varieties of artistic definition:  e.g., Outsider Art, Folk Art, Visionary, etc.
- The Watts Towers and the Architecture of personal fantasy and genius
- Engineering, Construction, Conservation of the Towers

3.  Literary and Visual Legacies
- Los Angeles, the Towers, literature, film, music, etc.
- Visual documentation

4.  Socio-Economic and Political Realities
- Economic underdevelopment and renaissance:  yesterday and today
- In their shadow:  cultural politics and the Watts Towers
- Watts Towers Art Center:  arts education and community activism
- Italy as the New America:  immigrant art and literature in Italy

Submit:  Digital copy of your 20 – 25 page, double-spaced, essay (as an email attachment, Microsoft Word .doc file please).  Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html).
Appropriate critical apparatus (notes and bibliography), as well as illustrations, encouraged.

Send materials to volume editor:

Luisa Del Giudice, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 241553
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1553

Tel.:  (310) 474-1698
E-mail:  luisadg@humnet.ucla.edu

 

Calbuzz: New Blog from Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstein on California Politics

Just in time for the special election circus and governor’s race side show, two longtime political journalists and commentators have teamed up to form Calbuzz, a new blog about the Golden State’s pu . . . pu . . . pu . . . political scene. Trounstein was recently on the CSA’s radar for our most recent conference on the Silicon Valley because he co-authored, with San Jose State professor Terry Christensen, one of the seminal books on politics in  San Jose, Movers and Shakers: The Study of Community Power (1983).

“About Us

Jerry Roberts is a California journalist who writes, blogs and hosts a TV talk show about politics, policy and media. Former political editor, editorial page editor and managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, he serves as student adviser for the Daily Nexus newspaper at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of “Never Let Them See You Cry,” a biography of Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Phil Trounstine is a communications consultant, pollster and political writer. He is the former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, former communications director for California Gov. Gray Davis and was the founder and director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University. He is co-author of “Movers and Shakers: The Study of Community Power.”

via Calbuzz.

 

Hector Tobar in the L.A. Times on L.A. Memories

Columnist Hector Tobar devotes his column today (May 7, 2009) in the Los Angeles Times on preserving memories in L.A., focusing on the lost Victorian world of Bunker Hill, as it became the setting for the novels of John Fante, and as a little of it is preserved at Heritage Square, as well as Chavez Ravine (known to those who lived there as La Loma) and Chinatown.  The immediate contexts are the centennial of Fante’s birth and the rising controversy over whether to save the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City.

As Tobar writes:

Last month was the centennial of John Fante’s birth. He died in 1983, and much of the L.A. of his famous Bunker Hill novels is gone now.

It was swept away with wrecking balls and bulldozers in the years after the freeways came through.

This is what L.A. does to its history. Much of Chavez Ravine was swept away too, along with the old Chinatown and so much more.

That’s because one of L.A.’s great traditions is smashing and stomping upon our own history.

We are addicted to newness. So we topple landmarks and neighborhoods as if they were unsightly weeds.

It might be happening again, in Century City, where a jewel from another era of Los Angeles history is facing the threat of demolition: the Century Plaza Hotel, a 19-story modernist curve designed by the same architect who gave New York City the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Query whether the Century Plaza has made the same contribution to L.A. as Bunker Hill did, but perhaps my skepticism is the same attitude that allowed the destruction of all those streets and houses.

—Frank Gruber

 

“California Regionalism: Oils on Canvas” at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica Apr. 29 – Aug. 23

The California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica opened an exhibition April 29, 2009 of paintings under the title, “California Regionalism: Oils on Canvas.”  The show closes August 23, 2009, and there will be an opening reception Sat. evening, May 9, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

For more information:

The California Heritage Museum
2612 Main Street
Santa Monica, California 90405

Phone:  (310) 392-8537
Fax:  (310) 396-0547

Email:  calmuseum@earthlink.net

Hours: 11am to 4pm, Wednesday through Sunday.

Admission: $5.00; seniors and students, $3.00; members and children under 12, free.

 

Civil and Uncivil Rights in California: The Early Legal History; A Colloquium June 1 in Los Angeles

The California Supreme Court Historical Society and the Los Angeles Times will present a colloquium on Monday, June 1, 2009 on “Civil and Uncivil Rights in California: The Early Legal History,” from 4 pm-7 pm at the LA Times’ Harry Chandler Auditorium. (The program starts at 4:30 pm and will be followed by light refreshments.)

Panelists will include Hon. Joseph Grodin, former Associate Justice of the Cal. Supreme Court, and a distinguished Professor of Law at UC Hastings, and Dr. Jean Pfaelzer, a professor at the University of Delaware and author of Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. Jim Newton, editor of the LA Times Editorial Page, will moderate. Dr. Robert Chao Romero, a UCLA assistant professor in the Dept. of Chicano/a Studies, will provide additional remarks.

Admission is free for Historical Society members, and for students (with I.D.) and press; $15 for non-members; $10 for government / nonprofits. 2 hours of MCLE will be offered courtesy of Southwestern Law School.

For more information, and to register on-line, go to the California Supreme Court Historical Society’s website.

 

Author event at Capitola Book Café: Eric Soderquist and Chris Burkard presnt their “California Surf Project” April 22

The Capitola Book Café will present the authors of The California Surf Project April 22, at 7:30 p.m.  From the book café’s listing:

Eric Soderquist is a professional surfer and artist who has participated as both in numerous contests, films and community events while traveling the world from Peru to Australia. Chris Burkard is a surf photographer who has worked for Surfer, Surfing, Transworld Surf, Surfline.com, Patagonia and Burton Snowboards; he is the winner of the Follow The Light Foundation grant (in memory of Larry Moore). Together they cajoled their Volkswagen bus along Highway 1 from the Oregon border to the Tijuana Sloughs. Their fully illustrated book is a love letter to the astounding California Coast and a testament to the passion for catching a perfect wave. This event includes a visual presentation.

CAPITOLA BOOK CAFE
1475 41st Avenue, Capitola, CA 95010
831-462-4415

 

Landmark of Death: Purpose, Meaning, and Culture at the Golden Gate Bridge; a conversation with Louise Nelson Dyble at the Huntington, April 23

The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West has scheduled an “In conversation” seminar April 23 with Louise Nelson Dyble, Ph.D., on her research about the Golden Gate Bridge.

From the announcement:

Landmark of Death: Purpose, Meaning, and Culture at the Golden Gate Bridge
Louise Nelson Dyble, Ph.D.

Suicides have been a persistent problem for the officials of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District since the first disconsolate jumper plunged to his death in August 1937.  By 1940, the bridge’s macabre appeal had attracted national attention.  Seventy years later, the iconographic bridge retains its lure and fatalities are more frequent than ever.  It has been the site of more than 1,300 confirmed suicides, three times more than any other structure in history.  Dyble will discuss this phenomenon, drawing upon historical research and organizational theory to offer an answer to the question of why there is no suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Louise Nelson Dyble is the Associate Director of Research of the Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy at the University of Southern California.  Her book, Paying the Toll: Local Power, Regional Government and the Golden Gate Bridge, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in March 2009.

Thursday, April 23, 2009
12 noon to 1pm
Seaver classrooms, Huntington Library

This seminar is a part of a brown bag luncheon series sponsored by ICW.  The events are open to any who wish to attend, and a limited number of lunches will be available on a first come/first served basis.   To reserve a seat, please respond to Kim Matsunaga at kmatsuna@usc.edu at least one week prior to the seminar.

 

Where Minds and Matters Meet: Technology in California and the West; Conference at the Huntington April 25

The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West will sponsor a conference April 25 at the Huntington Library entitled, “Where Minds and Matters Meet: Technology in California and the West.”  From the announcement:

ICW invites you to attend an All-Day Public Symposium:

Where Minds and Matters Meet: Technology in California and the West

April 25, 2009
Seaver Classroom #3
Munger Research Center
The Huntington Library
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino

PROGRAM

Coffee and Welcoming Remarks (8:30-9:00am)

I. Engineering Culture  (9:00-10:45am)
Bruce Sinclair (Lehigh University) “Engineering Hetch-Hetchy: Nature and Civil Engineers in early 20th Century California”

Amy Bix (Iowa State University) “Millikan’s Monastery: Caltech and the Tensions of Women’s Technical Minds.”

Patrick McCray (UC Santa Barbara) “Of Futures and Fringes: California’s Technological Enthusiasts, 1975-1985”

Peter Neushul (UC Santa Barbara) and Peter Westwick (ICW) “Aerospace and Surfing: Connecting Two California Keynotes.”

Comment: Janet Brodie (Claremont Graduate University)

II. How Technology Made Place (11-12:30pm)
Matthew Roth (University of Southern California) “The Public Relations of Urban Form: The Major Traffic Street Plan of 1924 and the Origins of Los Angeles Car Culture”

Louise Nelson Dyble (University of Southern California) “Landmarks of Death: Institutions, Technology, and Golden Gate Bridge Suicides”

Aristotle Tympas (University of Athens, Greece) “A Deep Tradition of Computing Technology: Calculating Electrification in the American West”

Comment: Sue Thomas (De Montfort University, Leicester UK)

Lunch (12:30-1:30pm)

Remarks: Volker Janssen (Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West) (1:30-1:45pm)

III. How Place Made Technology (1:45-3:30pm)
Carlene Stephens (Smithsonian ) “Time in Place: Is there a California Style in Aerospace Timekeeping Technologies?”

Stephanie Young (UC Berkeley) “Would Your Answers Spoil My Questions: Art and Technology at the Rand Corporation, 1968-1971″

Jason Weems (UC Riverside) “Sight Off Scale: Exponential Space and the Lure of the Limitless in Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten”

Martin Krieger (University of Southern California) “Placing Sound: Accurate Aural Documentation of L.A.“

Comment: Dan Lewis (Huntington Library)

IV. Transcending the West (3:45-5:15pm)
L. Chase Smith (UC San Diego) “Technologies of Leisure in San Diego’s Transpacific Borderlands”

Michaela Hampf (John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universitaet Berlin) “Beacons of Modernity: Western Lighthouses and Transatlantic Engineering of the 19th Century”

Linda Nash (University of Washington, Seattle) “From the Columbia Basin to the Helmand Valley: American Engineers, ‘Global’ Technoscience, and U.S. Imperialism since World War II”

Comment: Gail Cooper (Lehigh University)

Limited seating available. Please RSVP by April 17 with the symposium organizer: Volker Janssen (vjanssen@fullerton.edu)

Sponsored by: The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West / Additional Funding provided by The History Channel

 

The Los Angeles History Research Group’s Clark Davis Memorial Seminar takes place May 16 at the Huntington

The next meeting of the Los Angeles History Research Group will take place on Saturday, May 16, 2009, in Classrooms 1 & 2 of the Munger Research Center at The Huntington Library.  As usual, the  meeting will take place at 10:00 a.m., with coffee available from 9:30.

Sarah Schrank, Associate Professor of History at CSU-Long Beach and author of Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles, will speak about her recently published book at group’s final session of the year, which will commemorate accomplished scholar, beloved friend, and one of the group’s founding members, Clark Davis.

No paper will be circulated prior to the gathering.

If you have any questions, please contact one of the coordinators listed below.

Nick Rosenthal, ngrosen@lmu.edu

Allison Varzally, avarzally@exchange.fullerton.edu
(On leave)

 

Los Angeles vs. Las Vegas: Which is the Most Unreal City in America? Zócalo panel at the Autry, April 29

Zócalo and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West present a program April 29, 2009, at the Autry National Center, entitled: “Los Angeles vs. Las Vegas: Which is the Most Unreal City in America?”  From the announcement:

Los Angeles and Las Vegas are cities founded on fantasy—narratives of youthful glamour, the languor of palm and pool dotted landscapes, the ease of private automobile transport, the promise of self-invention and easy fame and power. They share city plans designed according to car culture. And they grow toward each other as they expand into the Mojave Desert. But reality has hit both cities: water grows scarce, space is tighter, cars clog roads and pollute the air, and money is disappearing. Zócalo hosts a panel of experts—including architect and University of Washington assistant professor Nicole Huber; writer, curator and former director of the Las Vegas Art Museum Libby Lumpkin; and educator, author and architect Ralph Stern—to discuss how the cities can continue to expand and to mirror each other even as they are forced to spar over dwindling resources.

The panel will be moderated by William L. Fox, Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.

The event is made possible, in part, by a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation of Los Angeles.

Details:

Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 7:30 pm

Autry National Center
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Directions and parking
Go Metro

For more information, and to make reservations, click here.

 

At the Huntington, April 8: The Loren Miller Papers

The Huntington Library will present a free lecture Weds., April 8, 2009, on Attorney and Judge Loren Miller.

From the Huntington’s calendar:

Attorney and Judge Loren Miller was also a civil rights activist who knew and worked with Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and author Langston Hughes. Amina Hassan, scholar and biographer of Loren Miller, will present a lecture on this prominent Los Angeles figure.

No reservations required. Friend’s Hall, Huntington Library.

 

Zócalo at the Hammer: John Fante’s 100th Birthday; April 7

The Zocalo at the Hammer series will present a program to commemorate the centennial of John Fante’s birth on April 7, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.  From the Hammer’s announcement:

John Fante is a quintessential Los Angeles writer who penned the beautifully desperate words in Ask the Dust: “Los Angeles, give me some of you! …Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.” Los Angeles was his muse and inspired him to write some of the most influential prose about the American immigrant experience and the development of a young writer ever to reach print. A panel of Fante fans and scholars visit Zócalo to celebrate his work.

From Zocalo’s website:

Discovering John Fante is like tasting garlic for the first time. He is a quintessential Los Angeles writer, who penned the beautifully desperate words in Ask the Dust, “Los Angeles, give me some of you!…Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.” H.L. Mencken, John Steinbeck, Charles Bukowski, Robert Towne and Francis Ford Coppola number among the many fans who swear by Fante, who might have turned 100 this year if he hadn’t taken such lousy care of himself. (It’s a miracle he made it to 74.) Los Angeles was his muse, and inspired from him some of the most influential prose about the American immigrant experience and the development of a young writer ever to reach print. A panel of fans and scholars — including Fante biographer Stephen Cooper, KCRW’s Frances Anderton, and Esotouric co-founder Richard Schave – visit Zócalo to celebrate the work of John Fante.

The program will be moderated by David Kipen, Director of Literature, National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information, go to the Hammer Museum’s website, or to the Zocalo website.

 

Call for Proposals: 2009-2010 Los Angeles History Research Group

From the Los Angeles History Research group:

The Los Angeles History Research (LAHR) group invites proposals for its 2009-2010 seminar season.  Since 1991, the LAHR group has provided a stimulating environment for scholars of Los Angeles history to discuss works in progress.  Presenters pre-circulate a paper and then meet with group members in seminar at the Huntington Library, located in San Marino, California.

If you are interested in presenting, please send by email a one-page proposal and a brief CV to one of the coordinators listed below by April 25.  Please indicate if you will be in Southern California for only part of the year, as travel stipends are not provided.  Those interested in receiving regular announcements of LAHR meetings are also invited to contact one of the coordinators to ask to be added to the email list.

Allison Varzally, California State University-Fullerton
avarzally@exchange.fullerton.edu

Nick Rosenthal, Loyola Marymount University
ngrosen@lmu.edu

 

“Journeys in the Land of Sunshine: The Natural History of Early Los Angeles” – Lecture at the LA Main Library, April 5

The Los Angeles City Historical Society & the History Department, Los Angeles Public Library
present the annual Marie Northrop Lecture, on Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 2:00pm, at the Mark Taper Auditorium of the Richard J. Riordan Central Library, 630 West Fifth Street (between Grand Avenue and Flower Street), Los Angeles.  This year’s lecture will be given by Elizabeth Pomeroy; she will speak on: “Journeys in the Land of Sunshine: The Natural History of Early Los Angeles”

From the historical society’s notice:

Through books and photographs, we can trace the early topography and natural features of Los Angeles and its surroundings.  The river, canyons, embracing hills and broad plain to the sea all influenced the settlement which grew into our metropolis of today.  Come and learn the history of this place so famous for its natural environment.

Elizabeth Pomeroy, a California native, holds a Ph.D. in English from UCLA.  She has taught English at Pasadena City College and served on the staff of the Huntington Library.  She has long been active in organizations devoted to history, nature and conservation, serving as a Board member of the California Preservation Foundation, the Pasadena Historical Society, the Sierra Club, and other groups.

Her writing includes literary studies and books on Queen Elizabeth I and John Muir.  Her recent volumes, Lost and Found and Lost and Found II, contain the best of her many newspaper columns by that name on historic landmarks around the San Gabriel Valley.  These take-it-with-you guides reveal the history and geography of the Southland, with glimpses of art, culture and society. In 2000 she established Many Moons Press, which has published titles on California history and nature, including new editions of classics long out-of-print.  She continues to explore Southern California’s
interesting characters and gives seminars on the skills of the grassroots historian.

Free and open to the public – Made possible by the Wood Family Trust

This facility is handicap-accessible. Validated parking is available for $1.00 (between 1pm and 5pm only) at the 524 South Flower Street garage (validation at library desk with library card, obtainable that day.) Check www.lapl.org for more information, or call (213) 228-7000. The Metro
Blue Line and Metro Red Line both have stops near Central Library, and most buses
coming downtown stop near the Central Library; check www.metro.net for rates, routes and schedules.

Los Angeles City Historical Society       PO Box 41046, Los Angeles CA
90041           (323) 936-2912            www.lacityhistory.org

 

“Living the Legacy/Lessons Learned: A Dialogue with Black Panthers, Brown Berets and Community Activists” – at the Calif. African American Museum, Mar. 21

On Mar. 21, 2009, at 1:00 p.m., the California African American Museum will present a program entitled, “Living the Legacy/ Lessons Learned: A Dialogue with Black Panthers, Brown Berets and Community Activists.”

From the CAAM website:

The Black Panther Party created 65 community programs and published a weekly newspaper. Join former Black Panther Party and Brown Beret members as well as community activists for a lively discussion with Yusef Omowale, Director of the Southern California Library, as moderator. What lessons can we learn from them? How are activist organizations remaining vigilant in their quest for social justice and equity?

The museum is located at 600 State Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90037.

Main Number: (213) 744-7432

CAAM RSVP line: (213) 744-2056

The California African American Museum (CAAM) is located in Exposition Park at the corner of Figueroa Street and Exposition Boulevard, west of the 110 (Harbor) Freeway. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena are adjacent to CAAM.

For more information, visit www.caamuseum.org.

 

“Linking Western Heritage and Environmental Justice: Parks Planning and Activisim in the San Fernando Valley, 1965-1995” – Autry Western History Workshop, Mar 24

The next meeting of the Autry Western History Workshop will take place on Tuesday, March 24th.  The presenter will be Laura Barraclough from Kalamazoo College, discussing her paper, “Linking Western Heritage and Environmental Justice: Parks Planning and Activisim in the San Fernando Valley, 1965-1995.”

The workshop starts at 7PM, with dinner available at 6:30 for those who reserve a place by Friday, March 20th.  To make a reservation and obtain a copy of the paper, email Belinda Naskasato-Suarez at bnakasato@autrynationalcenter.org.

 

“The First to Cry Down Injustice?: Western Jews and Japanese Removal During WWII” – Goldsmith Foundation Lecture Mar. 22 at the Autry

This year’s Goldsmith Foundation Lecture on Violence and Justice in the West, by Prof. Ellen Eisenberg of  Willamette University, will take place on Sunday, March 22, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. at the Autry National Center (Griffith Park).  The lecture is entitled: “The First to Cry Down Injustice?: Western Jews and Japanese Removal During WWII.”  Professor Ellen Eisenberg will discuss her new book, paying particular attention to the Jews of Los Angeles and their response to Japanese removal.

Free event, but RSVP by March 19th for free admission to the lecture and the museum by calling 323.667.2000 ext. 340 or send an e-mail to egreenberg@autrynationalcenter.org

This lecture is part of the Autry’s ongoing programming in preparation for its future exhibit on the history of the Jews of LA, and is made possible by a generous grant from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

For more information, see the Autry calendar.

 

“Edward R. Roybal and the Politics of Multiracialism” – the 2009 Whitsett Lecture, April 2 at CSU-Northridge

The 2009 Whitsett Lecture at California State University, Northridge is scheduled for 7:30PM on Thursday, April 2, in Sierra Hall 451, on the CSUN campus. This year’s speaker will be George Sanchez from USC, and his lecture is entitled “Edward R. Roybal and the Politics of Multiracialism.”

Seating will be limited; to rsvp and to obtain parking information, call 818-677-3566.

For a PDF of the announcement for the lecture, click here.