Jul 28 2011
Community Members Push for Racial Justice in Redrawing LA District Lines
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The California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission will release its final maps tomorrow – it’s the culmination of months of work to redraw state legislative and Congressional districts. They will take public comment until August 15th. With Los Angeles County’s population growing less than the rest of the state, the area is facing a loss of representation. North County Times journalist Dan Walters observed “[a] shuffle in [the County's] long-static congressional delegation is looming.” Ahead of Friday’s release, a draft of the proposed boundaries was made public, sparking anger and even accusations of racism from a multitude of sources. The African American Redistricting Collaborative, AARC for short, strongly opposed plans to break-up African-American strongholds in the 33rd, 35th, and 37th congressional districts. Overall, it warned that a 25% reduction in African American congressional representation …
For about three weeks starting on July 1st, a multiracial group of inmates from the Pelican Bay State Prison’s Secure Housing Unit or SHU, began a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions such as arbitrary solitary confinement and more. Thousands more prisoners from 13 other California prisons joined the hunger strike in solidarity, bringing to light the cruel treatment they face. After years of unsuccessfully working through the complaint process and launching legal challenges, the inmates saw a hunger strike as the only way to call public attention to their conditions. Through the solidarity work of outside activists, the prisoners managed to express specific demands for an end to the human rights abuses they face. Their strategy worked – the strike generated more coverage of the conditions at Pelican Bay and …
A spate of state-level legislation attempting to curb the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouses gases swept the nation this year. The seed of inspiration that grew into at least 20 separate anti-EPA bills can be traced back to the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. ALEC brings together legislators and corporate leaders who draft model legislation that gets turned into industry-friendly copy-cat bills around the country. Jill Richardson of PR Watch, the organization behind ALECExposed.org, yesterday revealed ALEC’s climate change agenda. Going back at least as far as 1998, Richardson reports that ALEC created a model resolution which state governments could adopt to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. ALEC has been actively opposing environmental protection legislation since. At an ALEC conference last year, the EPA’s effort to …
Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of 
The House Government Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing yesterday, hammering officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) about the growing scandal over operation Fast and Furious. An estimated 1000 firearms were trafficked to Mexican drug cartels under the watch of the ATF, as part of a failed anti-gun tracking program. Firearms trafficked under Fast and Furious have been found at multiple bloody sites. Last December, a gun traced back to Fast and Furious was found at the scene of a gun battle where US border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed. Yesterday William Newell, former special agent in charge of the Pheonix ATF office, testified, “It was not the purpose of the investigation to permit the transportation of firearms into Mexico.” ATF officials acknowledge their goal …
In 1985, celebrated film maker Haskell Wexler released his feature film on the secret U.S. war in Nicaragua called simply Latino. The film’s plot was centered around a character named Eddie Guerrero, played by Robert Beltran, who ends his tour of duty in the Vietnam war, only to find himself in Central America, training U.S.-backed counter-revolutionaries or Contras. The film dramatized one of various covert American efforts to destabilize Latin American governments at the time. While Latino didn’t result in a box office hit for Wexler, it typified the kind of work the Hollywood veteran became known for in challenging conventional wisdom, particularly the impacts of U.S. militarism. Latino was chosen to screen at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where it won a prestigious award (Un Certain Regard). More than a …
A last-minute bid by Borders Group Inc to sell 30 of its bookstores and assets to Books-a-Million, has failed. Borders Books, the nation’s second largest book seller now faces the liquidation of its nearly 400 stores nationwide. Internationally, Borders operates more than 500 stores. The giant retailer announced Title 11 bankruptcy in February of this year. The fall of Borders raises questions about the future of print books, and the physical stores that sell them. The growing popularity of digital books, and the expansion of online retailers like Amazon.com, has made print and digital books almost instantly available to consumers through a few clicks online. What does this mean for independent booksellers? On the one hand, the imminent absence of a Borders store in a city can drive more business to existing …
The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents. 
