Poverty and the Profit Motive

By Mark Lipman

Disparity is all around us, pocketed by great bunkers of wealth.  Fortified swimming pools and Rolls Royces share the same intersections as shopping cart homeless.  Invisible to all, poverty is everywhere.

The common theme we see from California to New York, from Benton Harbor to New Orleans, is that in every single community in this country there is an out and out war on the poor and dispossessed, with a mishmash of local “quality of life” ordinances targeting and criminalizing the weakest among us.  Any sign of community or compassion is jeered at and attacked relentlessly by vigilante neighborhood watch groups.

The wealthiest and well-connected do not want to have to see poverty; do not want to be directly confronted with the by-products of the system that made them rich – the system that supports their every need and desire – as only money can for the few.  They do not want to feel guilty, so they get angry and look for someone to blame.

Unable to find a mirror, they instead turn their fury to the very victims of the system, convincing themselves that the poor are there because they are lazy and don’t want to work.

That, however, would better describe trust-fund socialites than the family of four trying to scrape by, in a system that has trained them to be dependent on factories and corporations – dependent on the next paycheck – which then overnight took all the jobs away, casting aside countless of middle aged workers, who are then left unprepared for survival in a jobless economy.

Those, who somehow think that merely “working hard” is the solution, have forgotten the founding principles that govern the economic system known as capitalism.

For every “boom” in one corner of the world, a “bust” is required in another.  The very cornerstone of the profit motive is founded on the exploitation of others, of disposable workforces and communities that are used up for their resources and labor, and then quickly discarded as soon as a cheaper means of production – through both the use of robotics, and the exportation of local manufacturing to unregulated markets abroad.

Poverty is a necessary and inevitable pillar of capitalism, for the greater the poverty, the more widespread the destitution and destruction, the more wealth that is accumulated and hoarded by those at the very top.

At this very moment, while America reels from one financial crisis after another, with tens of millions of families living in abject poverty, the richest one percent are sitting on a combined wealth of $4 trillion, which lies stagnant outside of the economy in private coffers and offshore accounts.

Any attempt to tax or redistribute this wealth for necessary social programs is immediately scoffed at by politicians, who are indentured to corporate lobbyists and campaign contributions, in order to maintain their own positions of privilege and power.  The ability to concentrate wealth enables the capitalists to also concentrate power, leaving all those without out.

Without poverty and the massive debt it ensnares, capitalism would not be able to function.  Therefore, when we speak of overturning the system of capitalism we are going directly after the root causes of the poverty that we see in our everyday lives.

Venice Homeless Person Not Guilty – For Erecting a Toilet

By David Busch

I love you.

After a year now of controversial Venice arrests, 12 jurors have found that a homeless person’s “porta-potty” erected here in Venice on Third Ave. near Rose – and which was torn down and destroyed by the LAPD last April – had been a lawful benefit to this community.

I’m David Busch.

And the porta-potty was mine.

The potty, covered with hippy peace signs – and bearing a smiley-faced placard, stating, “Hi, I’m your porta-potty” – had been erected by me as a way to serve all of Venice.

And, like all basic human needs must be – it was free. For I have been given so much to my spirit, I now know this.

I first came here to Venice in 1980 and rented for a couple of years on the boardwalk. I was a diesel mechanic back then – for the city; and today I’m a proud Venice Hippy.

But early this year, after pushing literally hundreds of us “homeless people” and youth travelers several blocks off the people’s Boardwalk from midnight until 5 am each night with the City of L.A.’s  illegal beach closure and with no toilets available until nearly 8 am, I was actually arrested by LAPD – and charged with “creating and maintaining a public nuisance” (P.C. 372), for erecting a much-needed homemade porta-potty behind Digital Domain.

Where up to 120 people – and still without toilets right here in Venice – have been attempting for all this time, to this day, to find themselves a safe spot for nightly shelter in Venice. As the poor, youth travelers, street kids – and we hippies in Venice – long had on the Beach and Boardwalk, before its illegal closure. And with  plenty of room for both us and the thousands of tourists we welcome here, in our own Venice way.

So starting with a tent, I had began collecting donations of soap, cleaning supplies and toiletries; and I soon found myself daily emptying and carefully re-cleaning a bucket, and a toilet seat lid for the porta-potty. Later, a beautiful lady here named Mariska donated a bigger tent. One homeless man, living in his car, donated rolls of toilet paper he bought himself – each week. I kept things washed, and had some water with chlorine for occasional spills.

This setup was in line with procedures outlined in Red Cross emergency manuals.

For months, maintaining this potty further required the hauling of some tightly-sealed 5 gallons buckets for nearly four city blocks, down to the Rose area Beach toilets once they were opened.

But I want you to know, I now know that any of us can do it – and juries will stand with us on this.  And even the hazmat officials who arrested me agreed that our porta-potty beat out the City’s Beach toilets for over-all cleanliness.

At the end of the four day trial, the verdict was handed down in Los Angeles’ LAX/Airport Superior Court on Wednesday, December 19. And in declaring me innocent, this jury had to find that the utility of my  conduct to the  community outweighed any other offense.

Additionally, I was also charged in this trial by LAPD with violating the Los Angeles municipal code LAMC 56.11: leaving or permitting to remain “any article of personal property upon any parkway or sidewalk.” For having, on Third Ave., my homeless shopping-cart wheeled box, which holds my, and other people’s on the streets, possessions.

At trial the jury deliberated for many hours over two days, and after three requests to the Judge for the

– Continued from page 1

court to clarify the law and testimony, including one  seeking a further explanation of the ordinance, which was denied, the jury, in response, returned its verdict to me on this second charge: “Guilty.” For violating LAMC 56.11.

This is despite the fact that in Los Angeles LAMC 56.11 has been significantly constrained for several years by a Federal injunction, due to a prior homeless lawsuit against this homeless-abusing city: “Lavan v Los Angeles.”  This injunction had specifically been brought to prevent the seizure and destruction of homeless people’s property that is merely left on the sidewalk, and not abandoned, just as I had  maintained in this instance.

But for several years, this injunction has also brought the ire of some vocal, and winey,  LAPD officers here in Los Angeles, who claim that they cannot tell what an imminent threat to public health and safety is. And a bizarre crusade to overturn this law by our current Los Angeles City Attorney, Carmen Trutanich.  And now in Venice, LAPD is using this ordinance to harass the youth hitchhikers here – and lump them all in with us homeless, in violation of their rights to continued coastal access.

And so, strangely, and despite this injunction’s being upheld in a recent 9th Circuit appeal – at my  trial, the judge would not allow jurors to hear about this injunction. And not even a simple proposed, jury instruction that merely would have stated that the charge must be balanced – by all people’s 4th Amendment right to property.

My attorney here in Venice, John Raphling, who has represented me on this, further argued that this  Los Angeles city law is so vague that merely locking one’s bicycle to a pole, or parking one’s car in Venice, on the face of it, violates this crazy ordinance.

Yet housed people aren’t driven from Venice over it.

To me it is so sad to see that our Venice, a community of 42,000, has absolutely no shelter beds now whatsoever; and this, additionally, while our Councilman Bill Rosendahl was recently bombarded by another homeless-hate campaign for his support that we homeless people merely have access to some kind of day-storage facility here.

I ask you, “What good is an equal  ‘Right to Property’ anyway – if we haven’t even a legal place to keep it? Do they make housed people here now carry their houses around on their backs, everywhere they go?”

What will you do when you loose your own house?

So, for standing up for this storage, the City Attorney’s Office demanded at my sentencing – for parking a box on the sidewalk in Venice – that I be entirely banished from Venice for three years.

The honorable Nancy Newman was this trial’s presiding Judge.

Newman, instead, sentenced me to no probation, one day in jail – and time-served for this arrest.

To me, the bottom line of this absurdly wasteful trial was that after three days, and hours and hours of truly bizarre testimony officially presented by LAPD officers, the jury, in cleaning up all this mess – just spoke for all the loving Venetians here.

The LAPD testified that they never saw urination or defecation in any of Venice’s streets, gutters, or alleys – contradicted by testimony and photos, from their own hazardous waste officials, that more than 60 pounds of feces, and urine-deposited matter was collected by them from the streets, sidewalks and alleys around Third Ave.. And these Venice officers insisted that feces contained in a bucket and later dumped down the toilet was supposedly a greater threat to the public than the pounds of feces and urination that they, in fact, had found themselves smeared across Venice’s sidewalks, parking lots, alleys, and streets – and all of which, supposedly, was meant to pick apart my own effort to keep Venice safe.

Venice’s LAPD officers have now been given some new, common-sense orders by their own, highest authority – we the people. Twelve jurors have now instructed LAPD in Venice to open up their eyes, and recognize that even a homemade porta-potty by a homeless person here is far better than urination and defecation anywhere in Venice’s beautiful streets. I hope those that cry for “law and order in Venice” aren’t just hypocrites and will recognize that this is now the law.

Homeless porta-potties, simply and properly maintained, are not a public nuisance – and without something better to meet human need and sanitation – they are a benefit to all in the community.

Finally, I just especially want to thank my Defense Attorney John Raphling, who provided his own services to all of us here in Venice in this matter pro-bono, and is a member of the National Lawyers’ Guild.

Because with this victory, you can bet we all who’ve loved Venice have even more plans. And adequate toilets for Venice are just a start.

To sign a petition demanding more available public toilets, go to change.org and search “Access to toilets is a human right.”

I love you.

——————————————————

David Busch has recently taken a vow to begin and end all his conversations with I love you.

Skateboarding is Not a Crime

By CJ Gronner

There was a rally August 22 for Ronald Weekley, Jr., the kid that was beaten by police August 18th for skateboarding on the wrong side of the street. In Venice, California. That alone should tell you how wrong it is.

How horrifying is it that this can still happen in this day and age! And how inspiring and chill inducing it was to be there this afternoon with a Venice community that CARES, and is demanding action.

Weekley, Jr.’s skater friends were there, his classmates, his neighbors, the news, and people that had never heard of him before this despicable incident, came out in support on a gorgeous Venice afternoon, as cars of strangers drove by and honked their support.

The police line is that the young skater was violating traffic code by skating down the wrong side of the street (who hasn’t?), and then resisting arrest for this blatantly heinous crime (who wouldn’t?!). Then it was somehow decided to have four cops beat him up. In broad daylight. In front of his home that he was skating back to. He has a concussion, a broken cheek, jaw and nose, and frankly, he looked a little like a Picasso painting as he stood in front of the crowd at the rally. For SWB. (“Skateboarding While Black”, as one of the speakers said, and which appears to be so sad, but awfully true. Sorry, but you consider the neighborhood, the kid doing nothing anyone else doesn’t do every day in Venice, and it really does look like his afro was his main problem. Which sickens me just to type). His father said that his son had thought he was going to die. In front of his own home. For SKATING!

Weekley Jr’s very well-spoken and unbelievably calm, considerate father, Ronald Weekley, Sr., addressed the gathered crowd and brought tears to my eyes with his considerate and heart-felt words. He clearly loves his community, and wants kids of ALL colors to skate safely in Venice. He said people have asked what the family wants, and it is simply to have their son’s charges dropped (he had to spend a night in County Jail without visiting a hospital first!), and the police officers that committed the crimes against Weekley, Jr. identified and charged publicly. In other words, JUSTICE. Which IS what we want, and we do want it NOW, as the chant went.

Mr. Weekley, Sr. went on to say that they hold no vengeance, no hate, and they are practicing forgiveness, but “forgiveness in context”. That’s right. He asked for skaters around California (and the World) to join together to combat police oppression, and “Redefine what it means to protect and serve!” That got a round of applause, as did most everything everyone said. When we weren’t crying.

Like I was when Weekley, Jr. took the microphone stand and cried himself as he very softly said, “Don’t be angry at what happened … Just help people that need it.” What a special young man, that he already lives in a place of forgiveness, and is himself moving on to looking how to help others.

Obviously we have a big problem with police using excessive force in this country. It happens far too often to deny it. Now the press has it out that Weekley Jr. had warrants out for traffic misdemeanors  (that almost everyone in Los Angeles has also had), but who cares? Police can’t tell you have warrants by looking at you, and warrants don’t equal beatings, even in our antiquated law books. The Weekleys have retained Benjamin Crump to help them, the same attorney who is handling the Trayvon Martin case. The Nation Of Islam were there today, standing in solidarity in their bow ties, and their spokesman Tony Muhammad reiterated that “This is not about color, this is about justice.”

Reverend Al Sharpton called the family, and let them know that the whole nation is watching Venice now because of this. Venice 2000 and the Venice Neighborhood Council were both represented, and all claimed to be in it “for the long haul.” Police need to be re-trained in cultural sensitivity, and as their Pastor, Horace Alan, of Westminster Baptist said, “We are ALL human beings … and human beings need to be treated better than laws.” Amen.

Weekley, Sr. took the microphone again in closing, and expressed his family’s gratitude for everyone there, for this “Community of HUMAN BEINGS”, and again said all they want is for kids to be FREE to live and play safely in Venice. Everyone wants that. For it to be the police themselves making that NOT the case is abhorrent, and Venice won’t stand for it, I can tell you that. Over-zealous, over-steroided, over-whatever their problem is cops will not be tolerated here. Where skateboarding is definitely NOT a crime.

The press conference wrapped and one of the young skaters started up the Justice chant as Weekley Jr. was surrounded by press wanting more from him.

The chant evolved into “Peace From The Police!” as the group made their way down 6th Street, holding signs that read “Justice 4 Ron!” and the best one, “PEACE for Ron!” To quote everyone there, …. “YEAH!”

Police and Selective Enforcement

In yet another incident exemplifying waste of time and resources on the part of the LAPD, Ibrahim Butler was arrested Friday, August 24.

A resident made a citizen’s arrest on him for playing drums in what the resident deemed to be noise violation. It took twelve officers and a whole lot of hoopla to take him to jail and to seize about 15 drums that belong to four different people.

Ibrahim was released on $100 bail that same day and the police released all drums as well. While waiting for him in the lobby of the Pacific Division, Shelly Rachel Gomez over-heard a child tell an officer that he wants to go and see inside the jail. The officer replied: “No, you don’t. It’s nothing but homeless, stinky people in there.”

On the other side of the wall, Ibrahim was a first-hand witness to the discrimination leading to most arrests. He called it “profiling based on race and socio-economics.”

The current Ocean Front Walk ordinance, which established the allowed noise levels, is one of the best examples of legislature created and used for the sole purpose of profiling and selectively targeting individuals.

Created with the stated intent of eliminating mass-produced items from the West side of the boardwalk, ordinance 42.15 was inaugurated with signs that listed LAMC 63.44.B.14(b) first. Although numerous community meetings were held and attended by hand-fulls of city higher-ups regarding the 42.15 vending and noise level ordinance, LAMC 63.44.B.14(b) was not once mentioned. The public did not know that it existed, let alone that the LAPD were getting ready to start enforcing it, and most definitely not that the signs concerning 42.15 were going to start out by listing 63.44.B.14(b).

By the way, 63.44.B.14(b) concerns the illegal curfew selectively now being enforced on OFW between midnight and 5:00 am. A person sleeping on OFW during that time is likely to be harassed by the police either with a ticket or an arrest, while someone walking his or her dog is likely to be ignored by those same cops.

According to the Coastal Act of 1976, “the public should have 24 hour access to the beaches.” Under that same act, the city needs a permit for “any sort of curfews or restrictive ordinances that have such a negative impact on coastal access” said Charles Posner, Coastal Program Analyst with the California Coastal Commission in a phone conversation with the Beachhead in January.

While the illegal curfew is being selectively enforced, vending of mass-produced items is in full swing just like before the dozens of hours spent arguing about the ordinance. The police do not enforce the backbone of the legislature, whose one and only goal was to free up the space for self-expression and free speech.

More times than not local artists and performers are harassed on slow, overcast afternoons during the week for being out of a spot or other petty BS while on a crowded, sunny Sunday all spots are taken by vendors selling made-in-China crap they bought downtown the day before.

For example, Sheila Richburg was found guilty of selling to an undercover officer a $3 bracelet with beads that she hand-made out of paper. She was ordered to pay a fine and to complete 19 hours of community service. “It’s like they’re trying to get rid of the people the ordinance was supposed to protect,” she said.

Ibrahim was arrested just because some lady told the cops to get him, and the cops complied. Meanwhile several others were performing on the boardwalk, some with amplified sound, which Ibrahim didn’t even have. Next time you see an officer shitting all over Venice on a horse, why not place a citizen’s arrest on him or her?

Anonymous Talks to the Beachhead

By X

Thank you, to those citizens of the world who took part in the 99%, to expose the 1%. We, soon, with our brothers’ and sisters’ help, are going to expose the 0.5%, which have hundreds to thousands of millions of dollars. Anonymous is not a communist or an anti-government group, as was reported by those in the media.

Anonymous wishes to show the unjust when it comes to income and wealth. When someone has an annual income of $1 million, one can make wealth, as the system is set up by the 0.5% for this to work for them, and not you.

This can be seen in Venice and other places around our world. Greece was the first country to fail. Next will be Spain, then Portugal, then Ireland. With our online research and our informants, all the roads seem to lead back to the new 4th Reich. Anonymous has found out that it is a 1000 year Reich that still reigns by the 3rd generation.

The 0.2% who have thousands of millions of dollars will be exposed next. Then the 0.1% will expose themselves as having billions to trillions of dollars and access to military machines. We need to remind ourselves that Greece is the cradle of democracy, and Iraq is the cradle of civilization, the Garden of Eden.

We are signing off with the notion that they wish you to believe that democracy is capitalism. This is untrue. Thank you to the Beachhead from Anonymous.

We do not forgive. We do not forget. The Olympics 2012.

We are Anonymous.

Anonymous is an International online community, a leaderless group with no official membership. It is a way of working loosely coordinated, independently and Anonymously. More a concept than an organization, their primary areas of interest are internet privacy and freedom from censorship.

Anonymous actions have involved using hacker skills to attack corporate and government websites in the US and abroad. Anonymous has been involved in occupy Wall Street, and the Guy Fawkes masks Anonymous participants wear in public have become symbolic of the broader occupy movement.

Online actions in support of Julian Assange of Wikileaks have brought about increased scrutiny by law enforcement agencies around the world. It was with this in mind that when the Beachhead reporter offered to meet with an Anonymous participant, he was required to follow various security protocols.

Not Born on the 4th of July

By Ronald McKinley

When I was younger, I celebrated the 4 of July as all good Americans did. I lit strings of firecrackers. I burned sparklers. I ate hot dogs, corn on the cob. In New Orleans, where I was born I would go to the French Market and buy a large watermelon. One hundred years before my birth the same market sold slaves.

I was born eighty-five years after slavery was abolished. Slavery was abolished eighty-nine years after America got its independence. As an African-American, it took me long a time to understand the implications. My ancestors were not freed when America was freed.

In Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland the fear of slaves on one hand, and the military potential of mobilizing slaves on the other, gave a peculiar twist to the logic of war. Virginia’s royal governor John Murry, the Earl of Dunmore, offered freedom to slaves.

“And I do here by further declare all indented servants, negroes, or others, appertaining to rebels, free that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty’s troops as soon as maybe, for the most speedily reducing this colony to a proper sense of their duty to His Majesty’s Crown and Dignity.”

Dunmore’s proclamation triggered a mass escape. Lord Dunmore’s “Ethiopian Regiment” went to work pillaging patriot plantations, along the shores of the Chesapeake, to supply British ships with food. Some of the captured were put to death, some were sold up the river to slavers in the West Indies. Some were, at public expense, sent to work in western Virginia’s lead mines.

In Connecticut, the state with the largest slave population in New England, the legislature passed two important acts which paved the way for the recruitment of black soldiers: any men who procured a substitute would be exempt from the draft, and former masters who freed their slaves to serve in the Continental Army would be relieved of any future obligation for support. Any slave who agreed to serve would exempt both a master and his son. Whites who were drafted who did not own slaves often bought one. Some slaves were able to negotiate freedom as the price for their service. Some did not get this promise; however, others failed to get it in writing, and were pressed back into slavery.

The 4th of July is more than barbecue, hot dogs, and fireworks. “The Star Spangled Banner” should mean more than the opening of ball games. I want to be proud to be an American, even eighty-nine years after the fact. I have a higher standard for America. I live here. I give America my best, and want no less in return. Make America the true home of freedom, not more choices at the market, and two on the ballot. Put people before things. Make no man or woman a prisoner for thinking differently than you. Whole sections of America think we should imprison people for doing drugs. Deny adults who are not related the right to marry. Criminalize people without housing. Make corporations citizens. Bomb countries into the stone age. I try to be the America I want.

Make America the true home of freedom. Do no harm in speech or action to any living thing. Celebrate freedom from fear.

I have seen the auction block. I have been in the slave quarters. Do you feel free? Does Congress make you feel free? Does the Supreme Court make you feel free? Yes, we have a black president. Does he make you feel free?  b

Beach Curfew Violates Law

By John Davis

The Beachhead has reported on an ordinance of the City of Los Angeles that violates the California Constitution and the California Coastal Act. Former Executive Director Peter Douglas of the Coastal Commission agreed with the public that the City curfew has violated the law from the beginning. He stated that the City curfew was “unenforceable.”

Yet the City continues to arrest people to prevent them from legally using the public trust lands whenever they like, night or day. Some people work in the day so the only time they can enjoy the beach is at night. The same is true of fishermen when the bite is on at night or people who like to view the full moon in all its splendor as it illuminates the shining night sea.

But the L.A. City Council, particularly Councilperson Bill Rosendahl of CD 11, implies that there are Boogie Men who may roam the beach after sunset, creating such wild mischief that the public must be kept away. The City implies it cannot afford to provide a police patrol at night, even though untold millions of tax revenue is generated by Venice annually.

What is really happening is that Councilman Rosendahl is riding point for his posse so those who can afford beachfront real estate will enjoy higher property values.

Removing the public from the beaches they own provides exclusivity to certain property owners. If you owned a nice beachfront home in Venice, like former Congressperson Jane Harman does, would you prefer to see poor people on your beach after sunset? Of course not, they would ruin the view, and God forbid, reduce the value of the real estate. What better way to stop this than to imprison them! Bill is their man. Atop his high horse, he bugles the cry to sweep up the homeless from their home and to cleanse the beach. But he not only wants to remove the homeless. He wants all of us to get off the beach by sundown, or else his dark posse will ride down and punish you.

But the story goes ever further. Dockweiler State Park has three sections. One is south of the Marina Del Rey main channel, the other is just north, 11 acres (Least Tern Reserve) and most importantly, three acres where the Venice Pavilion once stood.

The City entered into an agreement with the State Department of Parks and Recreation in 1943 to lease and operate Dockweiler State Park. That agreement ended in 1998.

Currently, the City has no legal authority over the Park nor does the County, which provided maintenance and lifeguard services to the City while the lease was current. This places major liabilities on the State Park System, which is now responsible for any injuries that occur on State Park lands. The City no longer holds the State harmless and indemnifies it, (the State is now responsible for loss not the City). I met with and informed the Superintendent of the State Park, Craig Sap, of this matter on June 13.

At no time, even when the City leased the State Park, did it ever have the authority to impose a curfew on the public parklands. The Regulations that govern the State Parks system only allow the Executive Director, Ruth Coleman, to impose a temporary curfew, and only for minors.

The State Parks Commission needs to consider this matter as soon as possible to make the City straighten up and fly right.

Andrew Willis, enforcement officer of the Coastal Commission, said the Commission is discussing the matter with the City and is encouraged the City will soon apply for a Coastal Development Permit. However, when I spoke to Rosendahl’s trusty sidekick, Arturo Pina, he informed me the City had not yet applied. How many years does it take to fill out an application?

Andrew Willlis has said the same thing for years, but with no visible result. The Commission has failed to place this on its agenda as a violation of the Coastal Act.

Alex Halprin, Senior Staff Legal Counsel, sent the last formal letter to the Commission on February 3, 2011 reiterating Peter Douglas, “Because no such authorization has been granted, it is the position of the Commission’s Legal Division that the Beach Curfew is currently of no legal force or effect.”

Willis indicated that the Commission might be sued if it attempts to enforce the Coastal Act. I responded the Commission should welcome such a suit because a legal motion for dismissal or summary judgment would easily defeat it. I said the public would be enraged if the City fought to keep the people off of their beaches. The City would then back down. Willis would not even acknowledge this as a possibility, but focused only on not bringing the violation before the public Commission for enforcement.

Perhaps he and the Commission are in fear of the L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, who stated on October 1, 2010 that the City needs no permit from the Coastal Commission, which is attempting to exercise the powers of a “super-legislature or court with power to effectively veto or nullify the laws of Charter Cities….Indeed, your interpretation of the Coastal Act is contrary to separation of powers defined by the Constitution of the State of California… A development in the Coastal Act always refers to physical structures and things: buildings, walls, fences, etc.” (Note: The Coastal Act also defines development as change in access according to the Coastal Act).

Trutanich went on to state that “the Commission is not a Court….We trust the concept of the democratic process is not completely lost on the Commission and its Staff…The Commission obviously intends its investigation, (into the illegal curfew), to harass the City…The ongoing investigation ….represents retaliation against the City.”

Trutanich fails to even address the issue of constitutional access to public trust lands because there is no logic in which the City can override the Constitution of the State.

As for the Coastal Commission, they have known about the violation since 2008. The Commission staff has hidden well over 1,000 other known violations from the public by failing to place them as enforcement matters before the Commission. This allows the staff, behind closed doors, to decided who can violate the Coastal Act and who they will let get away with the crime. It is the Commission at a public meeting that is to decide, not staff.

My opinion is that the Commission is not afraid of the City, but is working with it behind closed doors and with no written record to allow the violations to continue without intervention.

The non-enforcement of the Coastal Act further encourages the City’s ongoing violation and is green lighting to all other coastal communities up and down the coast that they too can remove the public in order to prop up real estate values for certain financially privileged individuals.

“Make all those poor people go away, Daddy!”

By Mary Getlein

Well, sweetness, we are doing the best we can – we’ve made it illegal to sit in the sand after midnight – that probably gets rid of a bunch right there. It’s illegal to feed them. It’s illegal to give them money. It’s illegal to talk to them. We have to isolate them – it’s the only chance we have. We don’t want to end up like them, do we?

So we turn people invisible. All you have to do is be poor, and people can’t see you.

Sometimes I hang on the beach and there is this big mound of bread delivered to the poor. What’s sad is, there are so many older people who rely on this. At the end of the month, when everyone has spent all their money, the bread goes very quickly. And many older people are disappointed, and don’t get any bread. Google and other companies notwithstanding, there are still hidden “pockets of poverty” all through Venice. It would be nice if we could help people in- stead of trying to get rid of them.

You might miss out on a great friendship with someone you wouldn’t ordinarily meet. The poor have a lot to tell you, but you don’t want to hear how it feels at the bottom rung of society, right before they come and take you away, for being crazy in public. Not eating regularly, not having enough water to drink, living on the streets, in a car, or in an alley, that life takes its toll on you. It’s hard to stay sober when you’re trying to “make it through another day.”

This country has so much money, wouldn’t you agree? We need shelter for our citizens. We need to stop criminalizing people for being poor. We need our beach back. Our beach was ripped off by the L.A. City Council and “closed” from 12 am to 5 am. The Coastal Commission says every Californian has 24 hour, 7 days a week access to the beach. What is Ven- ice Beach without the beach?

Criminalizing people and throwing them in jail only creates money for the prison system. Every time

they move a prisoner (from jail to court and back again), the State gets charged. It should not be a crime to be homeless. The real criminals are the banks, which led a lot of people down a pretty path to economic ruin. And yet our country bailed the banks out. They need to bail our citizens out of poverty, persecution, and fear. We have a caste system in place and we don’t really care what we do with the “Un- touchables,” as long as we don’t have to look at them or see their reality.

Venice needs to have more input with the deci- sions that affect Venice. Most of the citizens of Ven- ice are not on the side of the “homeless haters.” Most people are able to put their prejudices aside and see the person there, not the cartoon figure they have in their mind of what a homeless person is supposed to be. 

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander

Reviewed by Mary Getlein

Once upon a time there was slavery in this country. Jim Crow laws were laws put in place during the reconstruction of the South, for the management and regulation of freed black slaves.

Ladies, when you’re walking down a street and it’s dark, and you see a Black man following you, does your heart accelerate and you start moving faster down the street? That reaction proves that racism is not dead.

The Jim Crow laws got Black men lynched. In 1954 Emmett Till went to Mississippi to visit a cousin. He was fourteen years old. He supposedly whistled at a white woman, which you did not do in Mississippi. A small crowd of white men forced their way into his cousin’s house, took him away, and beat him until he died. They wrapped him with barbed wire and chained him to a car motor and threw him into the river. When they found his body, his face was mutilated beyond description. His mother got his body back to Chicago and had an open casket funeral. White America got to see what happens to a young black man in their country. Most whites were horrified beyond belief. That happened in 1954.

Michelle Alexander and her book, The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in The Age of Colorblindness, documents what is happening to millions of Black and Latino people today. Instead of lynching, we have the “War on Drugs,” which started with the Nixon White House. President Nixon said to Haldeman: “Face the facts! The whole problem is the Blacks. We have to devise a system to keep them in check.” Voila! the War on Drugs was born, designed specifically with the goal of locking up an incredible number of people with Draconian drug laws.

Black people are set up for a crime, are harasse and intimidated into accepting a “lesser charge,” but it’s still a felony conviction. Now they have a felony drug conviction in their records, and thus do not qualify for any federal aid such as food stamps, federal housing, any federal education grants, or anything else. You have no food and no place to live, yet you’re supposed to get a job and have a place to live in order to stay on parole. Most people will not hire anyone with a felony conviction.

Our country leads the world in locking up its citizens. For a drug offense in England, for example, you might get six months. In the United States, because of mandatory drug sentencing laws, a person might get five to ten years. The three strikes law gives you 25 years to life for your third strike. This year in the US there are over 50,000 in solitary confinement. This is “cruel and unusual” punishment. These people are locked in a cell twenty – four hours a day. Their food is shoved into the room. There is no contact with another human being. Humans are social animals. We need to be around other people. This is a prescription for mental illness, and it comes true.

This is a prison system that is cruel beyond belief. Who profits? The criminal “justice” system starts with juvenile hall and goes all the way up. They make money on the entire imprisoned population, which is often put in jail illegally. People do not know their rights and are easily persuaded to take a “lesser charge.” What they should have done was to stay in jail and fight it. If you fight it, they will usually drop it. Once you have a felony drug conviction, your life gets less and less your own. You are busy trying to get a job, trying to find a place to live, trying to reconnect with your kids, trying to live down the shame and stigma of a felony drug conviction.

Criminals are the one social group that we have permission to hate. They are entitled to no respect. They have our collective scorn and contempt. They are routinely treated as less than human.

What can we do? We can fight for new laws on drugs. In the Senate there is bill 1506, which would make posession a misdemeanor and not a felony. Marijuana is socially acceptable in most of the US, yet the drug laws do not reflect this. If they were reduced to misdemeanor charges, they would pay a fine and go home.

If you feel no compassion for the prisoners, you might care about this issue just on the cost to taxpayers. This is a 100 billion dollar issue. That’s how much California’s budget pays their criminal “justice” system. The jails and prisons are overcrowded as it is.

Michelle Alexander has written a brilliant book about this apartheid has come to be. While most white Americans think that racism is over: the fact is that we lock up mostly Blacks and Latinos. Why is that? She details the process extensively.

Alexander: “Rather than shaming and condemning an already deeply stigmatized group, we collectively can embrace them – not necessarily their behavior, but them – their humaness.”

People think that people in jail are in there because of their own fault. Mass incarceration is based on the belief that all these people have freely chosen a life of crime and that they deserve to be in prison. It’s exactly like when people believe that homeless people have freely chosen to be homeless. Losing a job, being evicted, having no money and no place to live – that has “nothing” to do with people being homeless. Those that are trapped at the bottom actually “chose” their fate.

Alexander ends the book by saying, “I was never a believer in conspiracy theories, now I am. Now I am a believer.”

The Fire Next Time

By Jim Smith

Christine Burrill’s stunning exhibit of photo collages of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising has an impact and immediacy that few other art forms can convey.

Three of the large collages were printed on brushed aluminum sheets by the Social and Public Arts Resource Center’s (SPARC) founder and artistic director Judy Baca. The effect gives an appropriately industrial feel to scenes of devastation and repression. The show, entitled Uprising Los Angeles: A Walk Through the Civil Unrest of 1992, continues at SPARC (old Venice jail) through June 8.

Twenty years ago, Los Angeles exploded in anger. Poor people of every nationality took out their frustration at nearby stores and shopping centers. Many took the opportunity to claim goods and food out of stores that they could not normally afford to patronize.

Others were more political. The Los Angeles Times, seen as a defender of the establishment, was one of the first targets. The ground floor of the Times building was trashed. Parker Center, the Los Angeles Police Department’s headquarters, was under siege. The dismissal of charges against four LAPD officers who had been videotaped beating African-American Rodney King by a nearly all white jury was the final straw for many in South Central and Midtown Los Angeles.

As the uprising, which began on April 28, gathered momentum, it spread throughout the area, from Long Beach to Venice. There was little property damage in Venice, compared to other pockets of poverty around L.A. A store was burned on Lincoln Blvd., but it was later determined that it was torched by its owner to collect the insurance money.

In all, there were 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damages to 3,100 businesses and nearly $1 billion in financial losses. Sympathy uprisings occurred in other cities, including San Francisco, Las Vegas and Atlanta. Venice, and other parts of the city, hosted 4,000 California National Guard troops. Ocean Front Walk was closed down with bayonets. Since many of the Guard troops came from the “war” zone, many turned out to be not sufficiently tough enough to put down the civil disturbance. A further 4,500 military troops, mainly Marines, were deployed to restore order. In addition, 1,000 federal officers, including FBI, arrived on the scene.

In the face of tens of thousands of determined rebels, it was not enough. The uprising finally petered out as people returned to earning a living and the increasingly difficult task of finding food. In the aftermath of the uprising, a half-hearted effort was made to reconstruct the damaged businesses and increase economic activity in the poorest neighborhoods. A public-private organization called Rebuild LA was created and Peter Ueberroth was named to lead it. He had recently made a success of the first privatized Olympics, held in Los Angeles in 1984. However, his entrepreneurship didn’t work this time. Rebuild LA quickly faded into oblivion.

Today, much of Los Angeles is still in the throes of poverty, higher education is even farther out of reach than it was in 1992, and unemployment reaches 20 percent in some neighborhoods.

On the other hand, the LAPD has become militarized, with high-tech weapons (soon to include drones) and many officers who have experience in urban warfare in Fallujah, Baghdad and Kandahar. Even so, a random, unscientific poll around Venice reveals that many people think it’s just a matter of time until the next uprising. I asked one San Juan Avenue resident at the art opening when he thought the next uprising might occur, he answered, “When Zimmerman goes free.” (George Zimmerman is the alleged killer of Black teenager Trayvon Martin).

More of Christine Burrill’s work may be seen at http://www.photocollage.com.