WISHFUL THINKING ABOUNDS-Thank you Kellyanne Conway. Now we have a name for the phenomenon, Alternative Facts. We needed a simple term to encompass the lies, deceit, misinformation, disinformation, “fair and balanced untruths,” the fake news, the fatally flawed data, and the wishful thinking that have been plaguing us for years. 

When his eminence President Donald Trump tweets about fake news, he too may have a point. The Left loves fake news. The media loves fake news. The Los Angeles Times has perfected Fake News by Omission. That’s why I stuck the LA Times with the motto: “All the News the Elite Wants You to See.” The media can fake the news by using misleading headlines and by omitting crucial facts. The most notorious example is, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” As we now know, Michael Brown was not standing with his hands up surrendering when shot. 

President Trump’s greatest contribution to our understanding of Alternative Facts is his ability to “perchance” Tweet From the Hip. I imagine some of his advisers have pasted signs on the walls of the West Wing urging, “THINK before your TWEET.” If that is so, the signs have been ineffective. While Trump presents a clear and present danger to the Union, we should realize that he did not invent the use of Alternative Facts. We are all in this current nightmare because Alternative Facts have become as American as apple pie. 

Propaganda vs. Love of Truth 

Many decades ago in the build-up to World War II, Alternative Facts ran rampant in the world. Europe had the Nazi Party, but American had its Lindberghs and the American Bund Movement.  America also had a couple of Jewish kids, Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students from Cleveland, who created Superman in 1933. Interestingly, Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, was a nerdy guy who worked for a newspaper, The Daily Planet – a rather universal sounding name. 

Although Superman’s powers were allegedly involved with leaping tall buildings in single bound, etc., in reality his greatest super power was his belief in “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” 

Somewhere after WW II, our belief in “Truth Justice and the American Way” waned somewhat. Instead, Alternative Facts came into favor with doctors telling Americans that smoking cigarettes was good for their health and the government warning us that smoking a single reefer would make you commit suicide. 

Yet, we Americans had our limits in those yesteryears, as was shown on June 9, 1954, when chief counsel for the United States Army Joseph Welsh brought the McCarthy Era to an end by asking the Republican Senator from Wisconsin, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” In the 1950's, Truth, Justice and the American Way was not yet a dead. 

Are Truth, Justice and the American Way, a Thing of the Past? 

With Donald Trump’s cleansing of Jews and Genocide from the Holocaust Remembrance Day, with his claims that Mexicans are rapists and drug lords, and with the banning of Muslims from certain nations while expressly exempting Christians from the ban, Americans are drowning in a tsunami of Alt-Rightism that is emanating from the White House. There is a constant barrage of Alternative Facts about millions of illegals voting for Hillary Clinton, along with Trump’s cropped photo of his inauguration he showed to David Muir on ABC. It clouds our minds to the reality that Trump did not make America safe for Alternative Facts. That happened long ago. 

We have become aware of Alternative Facts not because Trump has brought us something new. We are only shocked by the brazen absurdities of his Alternative Facts. Thus, we all need to stop and look at ourselves; we must remember Pogo who pointed out that we have found the enemy and he is us. Let me tweak that -- we have found the enemy and the enemy is our acceptance of Alternative Facts. 

Alternative Facts Govern Los Angeles 

In January 2014, Judge Alan Goodman warned Angelenos that the City intentionally used Alternative Facts to mislead the public and subvert the law. Judge Goodman’s exact words were, “fatally flawed facts,” “wishful thinking.” The judge said, “…material [facts] are necessary to informed decision-making and informed public participation.” As a result of then Councilmember Eric Garcetti’s habitual use of Alternative Facts, Judge Goodman rejected the Hollywood Community Plan. 

In its aftermath, Mayor Garcetti has repeatedly said how important community plans are for the city. Yet, more than three years have passed and there is no new draft of the Hollywood Community Plan. In April 2016, Mayor Garcetti released a foreshadowing of that Community Plan. It was intentionally based on fatally flawed data claiming that Hollywood’s population had grown from 198,288 people in 2010 to 206,000 people in 2016. He cited something called the SCAG 2012 RPT as the source for this “fact.” That SCAG document had absolutely no – nada, zilch -- population data for Hollywood. Lies, deceit, fake news, Alternative Facts are falsehoods are that are found everywhere, too numerous to mention. 

Does Garcetti’s perennial use of Alternative Facts matter? He has used them to divert over $2.5 billion to his developer buddies and he is proposing several mega-projects in Hollywood based on his lies about Hollywood’s population. 

What did the 15-member Los Angeles City Council do when they were asked to approve the Hollywood Community Plan based on lies? During a council hearing on June 19, 2012, one councilmember asked whether City Planning could redo the Plan with accurate data. Senior Planner Kevin Keller basically said, “Yes, that is possible.” Whereupon Garcetti insisted that his Hollywood Community Plan, which everyone knew was based on falsified data, be approved. The LA City Council then unanimously approved it. 

Alternative Facts that the entire City Council knew were false, ended up carrying the day. The Los Angeles City Council is often faced with projects based on Alternative Facts and each and every project is unanimously approved. 

While Mayor Garcetti and Donald Trump are habitual users of Alternative Facts, does this pollute America? Or is using them something akin to a used car salesman’s saying, “This car was used only by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.” 

The New Yorker ran an article in its January 30, 2017 issue called “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich” in which Evan Osnos noted: 

“Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, "The media is under attack now. They wonder, is the court system next? Do we go from 'fake news' to 'fake evidence'? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death." 

The New Yorker, Mr. Osnos, and financiers are woefully behind the curve. Back in 1992, the California Supreme Court ruled that the court must enforce decisions where errors of fact and law are apparent on the face of the award and where they cause substantial injustice. See Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase, (1992) 3 Cal. 4th 1, 27-28. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Kennard noted, “the majority's holding requires our trial courts not only to tolerate substantial injustice, but to become its active agent.” Yes, the California Supreme Court requires its lower courts to treat known Alternative Facts as true! 

The California Supreme Court ruled that some things are more important than Truth, Justice and the American Way, and winning is one of those things. The threat facing America does not come from Donald Trump, from Breitbart, from the corrupt Los Angeles City Council, or from judges who find facts and fiction to be fungible commodities. The threat comes from our acceptance of those lies, deceit, fake news, dishonest judges, dishonest media, lying Presidents, and prevaricators calling themselves Members of Congress while knowing that they are bold faced liars. 

After the world economic crash in 2008, the nation accepted the Alternative Fact that certain Wall Street executives took unwise risks. That’s a “liar, liar, pants on fire” type of Alternative Fact. The economy crashed due to intentional multi-trillion dollar frauds perpetrated by Wall Street executives, none of whom went the prison. Why? Because we believed the in the Alternative Realty that criminality was mere carelessness. 

Our nation seems to run on Alternative Facts. The use of perjury to convict people is so common that in January 2015, the federal courts said that the California courts had an “epidemic of misconduct” after a prosecutor took the stand and committed perjury in order to convict a defendant. Did U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, who was then California’s Attorney General, do anything about that perjury? No. She just took the credit for another successful prosecution.

As bad as Donald Trump may be, we the American people have created the swamp where Alternative Facts create Alternative Realities. The difference among Trump’s lying Alternative Facts, the court’s lying facts, the media’s lying facts, and Eric Garcetti’s lying Alternative Facts is basically nothing. A lie is a lie is a lie. The fault rests not in the stars nor even in the politicos but in ourselves for pretending that falsehoods are part of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)  Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MY TURN-This doesn't happen often! Remember college days when you ran to watch "Days of Our Lives" on TV, anxious to find out what disaster befell which member of the cast? Each morning I reach for the news to see what happened. It’s like living in an alternate universe and I keep hoping that, with time, I will be able to look at the "happenings" more dispassionately. 

When last I wrote at the end of the year, I was leaving on my annual R&R break, giving me a chance to travel – my second favorite thing…after writing for CityWatch, of course. Getting away is a good way to clear the head and think about the upcoming year. People who don't take a work break are doing themselves harm. No one is indispensable. 

I went to see longtime friends in Australia and New Zealand. I would suggest adding both countries to your travel "bucket" list. And it was the perfect time to be gone from all the political noise. Both countries have beautiful scenery, great food and wine, warm friendly people, stable governments and a lot of interest in the political changes taking place in the United States. 

In fact, I've not experienced this much curiosity about our country in many a year. They both have an arsenal of cartoonists and journalists who are having a great time at our expense. 

My first stop was a lake house north of Sydney that didn't have CNN or Fox News. The first couple of days withdrawing from news was like quitting smoking. But I adjusted and managed to clear my head by reading books and having huge political discussions with four generations under one roof. The patriarch of this family was a big Trump supporter but most of the rest were definitely not. The "Aussies" have always been strong allies of the U.S. but seem disconcerted about what is happening with our 45th President.

That was somewhat surprising because Australia tends to lean more conservative than its neighbor New Zealand, a country that was the birth of Greenpeace and remains very environmentally conscious. During my visit to New Zealand, I stayed with friends living in a forest overlooking a bay. There, they had both CNN and Fox News so my viewing habits returned quickly. 

I became accustomed to people asking me if I was from "Trump Land" -- and this was before the inauguration. Some of my fellow American travelers told people they were from Canada so they would avoid the usual comments and questions! 

I’ve been home for a short time now, and would say the atmosphere is certainly promoting increased sales in tranquilizers – especially for those who lost the election. Let's hope this will be a lesson learned for 2018: there is no such thing as a "sure thing" and staying involved is vital to a working democracy. 

So many words have been written about the national state of affairs. Unfortunately, much of the harsh rhetoric has extended to personal insults on social media. One of my long-term activist friends called me to say that she can't even look at her Facebook account. Many relationships have broken apart due to this Presidential election. 

One can criticize a policy but should not insult the person. President Trump was not my candidate but he won the election. No one else has called the voting into question. We need to respect the office and the people who voted for him. I am well aware that this courtesy was often not extended to ex-president Obama, but he set a great example by showing dignity and class.   

I have been paying attention to our local elections and have been bombarded by phone calls and flyers. If it was ever important before, it’s now of paramount importance. Never again will local government have as much influence on our lives as it will for the next four years. 

And no, I don't think CalExit is an option. I am an American by choice. I love this country and, like a marriage, it’s for better or for worse! 

Will we lose Federal funding? Maybe. But I believe we send more money to the Federal government than they remit to us. What are the contingency plans? There are many candidate meetings where constituents have the opportunity to ask the tough questions. The race for City Council seats is rather mild with only District 7 without an incumbent. This is the seat vacated by the infamous Felipe Fuentes where there are now 19 candidates. 

Does the Mayor’s recommendation mean an automatic winners? The majority of candidates are civic activists competing against a couple of professionals. One has to decide if political experience counts more or less than new ideas and a fresh outlook. It is really tough to raise money without strong backing. 

District 3 has Councilman Bob Blumenfield running unopposed as are Mike Feuer for City Attorney and Ron Galperin for Controller.

More and more I tend to think that in local elections like LA City Council, each candidate that qualifies should have the same amount of money to spend. How they use it will be a good indicator of how creative and financially responsible they are. 

We lose good people who would make great public servants because of unequal funding. Several candidates have stated they will not accept money from Real Estate Developers. They should also refuse union money. Both have vested interests in who is elected and have a disproportionate influence on the outcomes. 

I am sure that if every LA resident was asked to pay a small "fee"(since tax is a dirty word) to finance our local elections, the majority would do so if it would keep special interest money from gaining an unfair advantage. 

Not all "special interests" are evil. But instead of raising money for elections they could hold Town Halls and community meetings. This would give them a better opportunity to educate the electorate about their issues than sending dozens of flyers that often "stretch" the truth. 

We are a nation of survivors and if we do our part we will make sure that the next four years will not be the end of the world. 

As always, comments welcome.

(Denyse Selesnick is a CityWatch columnist. She is a former publisher/journalist/international event organizer. Denyse can be reached at: [email protected]) Cartoon: Australian Financial Review. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SAVING A SYMBOL-Not all historic places engender strong positive feelings or associations from the public. Perhaps no place illustrates this better than Parker Center, the 1955 former LAPD headquarters in downtown LA’s Civic Center. 

Sometimes a site’s history is so mired in controversial events or personalities that people can’t imagine keeping it. Yet significance can encompass both positive and negative elements in multiple layers of history. Parker Center and other places with such importance can teach us valuable lessons and empower us to face, and own, the totality of our history – both the good and bad parts. 

Efforts to preserve places with difficult histories is not a new idea. For instance, the nearly twenty-year effort to preserve LA’s iconic Ambassador Hotel became more challenging without support from the family of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated there in 1968.     

We all know that history is not always pretty. It can be painful, and it includes some events, actions, and outcomes that we would like to forget. We need to ask ourselves: are we being honest and preserving the full, authentic story of a place, or only the bits and pieces that form our preferred image of history? 

Located at 150 North Los Angeles Street in downtown LA, Parker Center is partly known as the backdrop for television’s long-running Dragnet television series and home to Sergeant Joe Friday. People generally feel good about this association. But there are other layers of history that evoke less nostalgic feelings, ranging from displacement to discrimination. These elements need to be confronted and acknowledged as well. 

As Parker Center currently stands vacant and in a prime location, some in the City’s administration are calling for its demolition and replacement with a new, nearly thirty-story tower for City office space. 

The Conservancy and our Modern Committee, the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission, and others are advocating for Parker Center’s preservation and reuse. Soon the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee will hear the pending Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) nomination for the building. The full City Council will have until mid-February to decide whether to designate Parker Center as an HCM. 

When Parker Center was built in 1955, the eight-story, International Style building with integrated art and landscaping components was a significant, postwar addition to the Los Angeles Civic Center. Designed by Welton Becket & Associates and J. E. Stanton with landscape by Ralph E. Cornell, Parker Center was then known simply as the Police Facilities Building (renamed in 1966 for Police Chief William H. Parker.) 

Exemplifying Becket’s “Total Design” philosophy, the building prominently features art installations, including a piece by sculptor Bernard J. Rosenthal and one of the largest mosaics ever built, the “Theme Mural of Los Angeles” by Joseph Louis Young. The building’s innovative design, which integrated virtually all departments into a centralized facility, was critically acclaimed at the time as a model for modernizing the police force -- as were the state-of-the-art crime labs and communications center. In 1956, Popular Mechanics called Parker Center “the most scientific building ever used by a law-enforcement group.” 

By these facts alone, Parker Center’s significance is undeniable. The building has been identified as individually eligible for the California Register of Historic Resources and as a contributor to a National Register-eligible historic district of the Los Angeles Civic Center. 

Yet the stories of how Parker Center came to be and what it later symbolized make preserving it all the more challenging and compelling. Before it was Parker Center, the site contained two of the most vibrant blocks in Little Tokyo. It housed many small mom-and-pop businesses and cultural organizations serving the Japanese-American community. Starting in 1948, the City earmarked these blocks as part of a Civic Center expansion plan and an early form of urban renewal. The site was cleared of all existing buildings -- many of which would be considered historic if still standing. The property was remade into a single superblock, with Parker Center’s construction beginning in 1952. 

Despite being a federally supported program that ended more than forty years ago, urban renewal remains a touchy subject today, especially for preservationists and for those personally affected. Thousands of historic buildings, as well as part or all of neighborhoods such as Little Tokyo and Bunker Hill, were lost during this era of massive urban redevelopment. Parker Center’s construction was particularly hard felt: in addition to displacing hundreds of Japanese Americans, it spurred feelings that history was repeating itself, as some of these same people had been forcibly removed just a decade earlier and confined in World War II internment camps. 

Parker Center’s role in telling the story of Little Tokyo’s history is not without controversy. Yet it is also meaningful -- something many do not want to forget or wipe away through demolition. 

In September 2014, the Little Tokyo Historical Society joined the Conservancy in urging the City to support a preservation alternative that calls for preserving the main portion of Parker Center while allowing for an expansion at the rear of the site. In recent months, as the Civic Center Master Plan process has gotten underway, the Historical Society has decided to support demolition. Some in the Little Tokyo community are calling for Parker Center’s destruction as a form of retribution. While understandable, is this a good basis for deciding the future of LA’s Civic Center? If so, it raises similar and complex questions for other urban renewal areas in LA that have very similar origins and also resulted in displacement, including Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine.   

In addition to Parker Center’s early urban renewal roots, its subsequent layers of law enforcement history were not always perceived as positive. William H. Parker, who oversaw the building’s construction, was one of the most distinguished -- and controversial -- police chiefs in Los Angeles’ history. During his leadership (1950-1966), he professionalized the police force and developed crime-fighting concepts that are now standard practice. Yet his tenure was also marred with discrimination against the African American and Latino communities, a deep-rooted problem brought into the national spotlight during the 1965 Watts Riots. 

Even after Parker’s death in 1966, for many the building continued to symbolize racial inequalities and police brutality in the city. The most visible example occurred in 1992, when violent protesters surrounded the building following the acquittal of four officers accused of brutally beating Rodney King.   

Some argue that it is counter-intuitive, or at the very least ironic, to want to preserve a place like Parker Center today. Yet without the physical place in which these events happened, it is infinitely harder to tell the stories and demonstrate just how far we have come. Parker Center has the ability to teach us many things, and perhaps in today’s uncertainty, is more relevant than ever before. 

The fact that Parker Center brings out so many strong feelings only underscores its important role in Los Angeles’ history and how it can help us remember our past while also allowing us to move forward. In a recent piece about why old buildings matter, Tom Mayes at the National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote, “[t]he history of an old place may be viewed differently over time -- and interpreted and reinterpreted as our conception of who we are as a people changes.” 

The effort to save Parker Center will likely continue to play out over the next month or so, as cases are made for and against preservation and reuse, and demolition and new construction, and which approach makes the most sense. That decision comes down to simple facts of dollars and cents, feasibility, and developing creative design solutions. What is not so easy to measure are feelings about a place and deciding whose feelings are more important than others. However, whether these emotions are positive or negative, there should be no question about Parker Center’s significance.

(Adrian Scott Fine is the Director of Advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RANTZ & RAVEZ-How much does it cost a well-intentioned community-concerned developer to buy off an unscrupulous attorney and a homeowner who filed a court action protesting a much needed eldercare residential facility adjacent to Walnut Acres in Woodland Hills? 

A number of years ago when I represented Council District 3, I was approached by a developer who wanted to build an eldercare residential facility on Fallbrook Ave just south of Victory Blvd in a mixed neighborhood. The development was within walking distance of a major shopping center consisting of a Ralph’s supermarket, a Target, a Wal*Mart, movie theaters, restaurants and a host of other retail establishments. 

The neighborhood immediately to the south of the proposed development is close to a fire station, retail stores, a medical marijuana store, a gas station, houses of worship, other markets, a restaurant and multiple single-family residences -- all located on a multi-lane roadway with a 45 mph speed limit and traffic lights at strategic intersections. In other words, the area is a mixture of business, commercial and residential. 

The prospective development site was a former private school that generated noise from the students; I received complaints from neighbors about that noise and associated factors connected with the students who played in the schoolyard at recess and other times. In negotiations with the community, the developer reduced the size of the structure and made other concessions to gain support from those who filed court actions against the project. When it was finally agreed upon by those who filed the legal action, the facility was ready to begin construction. 

To add more support for the development, the City of LA’s Zoning Administrator was in favor of it. Before the first shovel of dirt was turned, a new group of residents from Walnut Acres began to protest the facility and to pressure the current councilman, Bob Blumenfield, to deny it. I bet that this new group of “concerned residents” now wants its piece of the action just like the unscrupulous attorney and resident obtained. And what is their price to remove their objections? In a recent conversation with Councilman Blumenfield about the development, I expressed my continual support for it and urged him to move forward in spite of the opposition from this new group that wants its piece of the Money Pie.

I will continue to report on this matter as progress is made. I may even name the people that have little to no concern for the seniors in our community. 

I was involved in the Second Annual Greater Los Angeles Homeless count on January 24 

I teamed up with Valley resident Diane Jack Delaney and we headed out to our sector in the western portion of the West San Fernando Valley. We patrolled the area west of Valley Circle and north of Roscoe Blvd. While we did not locate any homeless people residing in the quiet residential neighborhoods, we did observe a quiet community reflective of tranquil mountain living.

On our way back to the Homeless Count command post at the Canoga Park Community Center, we drove down streets in the Canoga Park area and found a number of homeless people living in motor homes and on the street. In one area, the sidewalk was so congested with tents and shopping carts, you could not walk down the sidewalk. While the good people of the city are counting and providing information on the homeless population to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the number of homeless is increasing and we see little reduction in the number of people living on the streets, sidewalks and parking lots in Los Angeles. 

Those of you who voted for the $1.2 billion Los Angeles Bond measure to address homelessness in Los Angeles may want to think twice before you vote for the pending Los Angeles County Tax measure to provide supportive services for the homeless. Money alone is not appearing to help reduce the homeless population in and around Los Angeles. 

While we are on the subject of LA’s homeless, let me share with you the latest city plan for the homeless living in vehicles on our city streets: LAMC 85.02. 

As of January 5, 2017, there is now a map for “vehicle dwelling” on the streets of Los Angeles.                 

There are three areas listed: 

1) No vehicle dwelling at any time. These are Red Zones. 

2) No vehicle dwelling overnight between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. They must comply with all posted parking restrictions. These are Yellow Zones. 

3) Vehicles are permitted but they must comply with all posted parking restrictions. These are Green Zones. 

The areas approved for vehicle dwelling are along major roadways. 

For additional information go to: goo.gl/79tLQc 

Upcoming City Elections 

The Mayor, City Attorney, Controller and the odd numbered council district offices are up for election. This will be a very sleepy election cycle. After the recent Presidential election and the turmoil associated with it, few care about Los Angeles’ local elections. I will be reporting on the races in the near future. 

Building Developments and Los Angeles Politics 

Developer Rick Caruso is a former LA Police Commissioner and someone who can influence local politics. While his campaign contributions are significant, he is well connected with local elected officials. In a recent project Caruso is pursuing on the Westside, the community expressed concern about the size of the development. Being a man who likes to win, Caruso modified his project and gained the support of the local councilman and city council to approve the project. Councilman Paul Koretz supported it, then pulled his support, but then supported it once again. Talk about a councilman that can blow with the wind…Paul Koretz wins the title! He is facing a strong opponent in his re-election bid from Jesse Creed. I have met with Jesse and he is determined to beat Paul in this race. Is it time for Paul Koretz to move on? Time will tell.        

Los Angeles Traffic and Housing and Measure S 

I recently took my son and granddaughter to Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park on a Saturday. Traffic from the San Fernando Valley to Buena Park was congested both going to and returning from the park. Orange County, Los Angeles County and this entire region is smothered by excessive traffic congestion seven days a week, day and night. While the public transit system is not the answer for most of us, we continue to get more and more frustrated with the lack of traffic relief. Our elected officials can only give us false promises with no real relief or improvements in sight. 

Remember the billions of dollars spent on the 405 expansion and improvements? Not much has changed from before the construction until after it was completed. That brings me to Measure S and what it will do to force our elected officials and planning departments to deal with the traffic and shrinking quality of life we are all experiencing in this region. I say YES on Measure S. A Yes Vote on Measure S will offer an opportunity for city leaders to finally deal with development and traffic in the city. 

More election news will be coming in future editions of RantZ & RaveZ.

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. Zine was a candidate for City Controller last city election. He writes RantZ & RaveZ for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected]. Mr. Zine’s views are his own and do not reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's 1968 all over again, except that this time people are marching in favor of science, women's rights, and the freedom of Muslims to travel. It's different than the chants of "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh," but the emotion is right up there. Oh, and there's one other difference that is as the night to the day. 

As the eleven o'clock news came on Sunday night, local television stations had something live to cover, and for once, it wasn't a car chase on the 405. For the second night in a row, large crowds of protestors gathered at the Tom Bradley international terminal at LAX (photo above). By now everyone knows about the Trump administration's moves to freeze international travel for people from a few countries. (Ironically, the countries that provided the participants in the September 11 attacks and hosted Bin Laden weren't affected.) Los Angeles has a huge Iranian community, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and it was inevitable that some local families were going to be affected. 

So there they were, thousands of protesters with signs and chants, or just being there to make a point. They filled sidewalks and parts of the terminals and from time to time interrupted traffic flow on the airport's main roads. 

And that, you see, is where that big difference between 1968 and 2017 became apparent. Blocking a street or an intersection in 1968 was a whole different affair. An earlier generation remembers the police reading out the words, "This is an unlawful assembly." There was an official script that was colloquially referred to as "reading the riot act." Failure to disperse led to the police firing tear gas and, often enough, moving forward with clubs against the crowds. 

June 23, 1967: Los Angeles residents remember the so-called police riot at the Century Plaza hotel. More than ten thousand demonstrators began in Cheviot Hills Park and walked over towards the Century Plaza Hotel to protest the presence of President Lyndon Johnson and the escalation of the Viet Nam War. The crowd got jammed in front of the hotel and backed up for blocks along the street. I remember the noise of motorcycles being gunned and people screaming, then crowds retreating back towards Pico Blvd. Middle class, middle aged white people from all over the city were shoved around and hit with clubs. The event soured relations between Angelenos and the LAPD for a decade and more. 

Sunday night was different. As one reporter explained, the police had worked out an agreement with the protesters which allowed the crowd to close down the airport road for fifteen minutes of each half hour. 

Imagine that. No tear gas or swinging clubs. The police and the protesters kept the peace. This is not to say that the situation won't break down at some point, but the attitude on the part of the city's leaders is worlds away from how things used to be. 

There are a couple of differences between 1967 and 2017 that help to explain the change in outcomes. The biggest difference is that Los Angeles in 2017 is semi-officially in rebellion against the existence of the Trump administration. It isn't surprising that residents and elected leaders are on the same side in being annoyed with how the administration is toying with the lives of our own residents. 

Los Angeles in 2017 is enormously multinational, with dozens of Asian nationalities and probably an equal number of nationalities from the middle east and Africa. A lot of this is fairly new compared to the Los Angeles of 1967 -- if you add up the Iranians and Koreans you are looking at somewhere between half a million and a million Los Angeles residents. Add Jews, Latinos, African-Americans, and Armenians, and you have a disparate population that has in common the propensity to self-identify as members of minority populations. 

The 1960s were an era in which a smaller group of white, middle class people found themselves on the wrong side of the police barricades. There was a lot of anger on both sides. Somehow, much of the bad feeling has slowly evaporated. Perhaps it's the result of changes made since the federal court consent decree, but a lot of it is just time passing since a war that much of the current population wasn't around for. There is also the fact that we no longer have to deal with people like Chief Parker, who used the police to enforce racial separation and wasn't shy about saying so. 

This obviously doesn't mean that the LAPD is without issues, but at least it has learned to deal with a serious demonstration in a constructive way, a negotiated settlement that allowed both sides to retain their dignity and pride. 

The leftside Tea Party develops 

Recently, CityWatch referred to the development of the left wing equivalent of the right wing's Tea Party. The two sides are comparable in their total opposition to an elected president and their willingness to protest. The movement has recently become symbolized by a banner that said "Resist." 

This week, Eric Loomis in Lawyers Guns and Money wrote: 

I spent the afternoon celebrating my birthday by protesting with about 2000 fellow Rhode Islanders in support of our Muslim and Latino comrades.

Standing out there today, I realized that what we are seeing is the opening of the left Tea Party. Or at least that’s how it feels in Rhode Island. 

When we start to see demonstrations, even small ones, in Alabama and Mississippi and Kentucky, we will know that change is coming.  

What would scientists march for and against? 

This is a question that merits a detailed response, possibly a column (or a book) of its own. But there is one topic that needs to be explored, and a group of scientists and people who respect the process of science would be just as good as any others to push it. We should be getting really sick and tired of this administration reveling in its lies. Whether you call them alternative facts or just plain lies, the problem is clear. We might also add, "How can anybody trust a president and his administration when they can't even deal with something as trivial as the number of people who came to the inauguration? 

What are we going to do when something serious -- like an escalation of the tension with North Korea -- lands in our lap? People remembering the 1960s may also remember that Lyndon Johnson began to suffer from what the news media called the credibility gap. It seems to me that Trump has always had his own credibility gap, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

On January 6, the Housing Committee of the L.A. Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates led by Barbara Ringuette met with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) for a brief rundown of their program and funding. LAHSA is an independent agency established by the County and City of Los Angeles whose primary goal is to coordinate funding in providing services to homeless people throughout the City and County of Los Angeles. 

“We are a pass-through entity,” said Stuart Jackson, Chief Finance Officer of LAHSA. “We receive funds from the City, County, and the federal government –U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and we pass it on to nonprofits in the community to do the foot work.”

LAHSA works with the City and County of Los Angeles, and HUD partners to do an Annual Needs Assessment for the community. Last year, their collaborative effort culminated in the County Homeless Initiatives and City Homeless Strategies. Additional partners include the County Department of Health Services, County Department of Mental Health and the United Way. 

“We came together with a needs assessment of what types of programs are needed to address homelessness in our community, and created the Homeless Initiatives and Strategies that were approved by the County Board of Supervisors and Los Angeles City Council,” said Stuart Jackson. Based on the programs of need that were identified, the County and City provided funds to LAHSA. 

“We fine tuned the programs of need. Put them into a working process, then asked our nonprofit partners to submit proposals for funding following the guidelines of the program that they’ll be doing,” said Stuart Jackson. 

The challenge is the timing of going through the process with the nonprofit partners: Creating a list for proposals, opening a window for submission, and the scoring of the proposals that require both time and the funding. Most of the programs were ready to be funded by October 1st, said Jackson. He added that because of the lengthy process, in a sense it seems as though “we’re just getting started.” Nonprofits that were funded have experienced growth in a short period of time, as LASHA has also, he said. 

Agency funds services that range from street outreach to several different shelter types for families and singles. It includes several housing intervention types – from supportive rapid and transitional housing with short-term financial assistance to permanent supportive housing with in depth services and ongoing rental subsidies, explained the Director of Programs Paul Duncan. 

Jackson added that the main increases in funding this year have been for Rapid Re-Housing accommodating Singles and Youth Systems. In the past, United Way funded these Rapid re-housing through fundraising and other activities as a pilot program. Now that Rapid Housing has become a proven system of excellence for the community, it’s been incorporated into our government structure. Last year was the first year that the City and County funded rapid housing for singles and youth, Jackson said. 

Staffing

This year, LAHSA’s staff increased 100 %. Personnel doubled from 100 to 200 to manage the increased funding we have received from the City, County and HUD, said Jackson. 

Director of Communications Tom Walden added that LAHSA has 80 emergency response team members in the field, “a doubling from last year.” There are now more field workers dispersed throughout the City and County of Los Angeles engaging everyday with the homeless in the streets, and especially where there’s a concentration of homelessness such as Venice, Downtown, and Hollywood, said Walden. 

Funding Increase for Fiscal Year 2016-2017 (Per Records viewed on 01/06/17) 

• LAHSA’s funding from City, County, State, and HUD for FY 2016-17 increased 35% or slightly over $34.5 Million. The total funding for the whole Program and Operations was slightly over $132.1 Million. 

• There was a 53% increase or an additional $20.3 Million from the City of Los Angeles’ General Fund, totaling $58.5 Million. 

• While some County funding programs for the homeless dissolved others emerged.  The County’s Homeless Strategy Initiative dedicates nearly $12.9 Million for services to the homeless. In addition, a new state grant with funds nearing $1.5 Million has been committed by the state. 

• Department of Public and Social Services for families increased funding to the homeless by 51% or $5.7 Million, totaling about $17 Million. Also, the Department of Children and Family Services increased funding by $861,180. totaling nearly $3 Million. “The latter funds are for foster care youth,” said Jackson. 

• HUD increased funding by 12% or nearly $2.9 Million, a total of $26.9 Million for the Continuum of Care Program that includes: Permanent Housing, Rapid Re-Housing, Transition Housing, and Supportive Services.     

Coordinated Entry Systems

The fastest growing homeless population is women said Walden. We’ve seen an increase in the last three years, and often single women with kids, he said. 

Walden explained that using the Coordinated Entry System (CES), LAHSA is able to coordinate the different populations serviced: Homeless Families, and the Singles and Youth System. It tracks histories, shows where individuals are in the process as well as the assistance each individual received. 

“This is a better way to coordinate our services throughout the continuum of care for individuals,” he said.

Service Planning Area (SPA) 

There are seven Service Planning Areas in Los Angeles County. Each SPA covers nearby communities. For example, SPA 4 ---North East Los Angeles (NELA)--- encompasses 13 neighboring communities. LAHSA allocates funding across the county based on the geographical need of the particular SPA, said Duncan. “We try to distribute funds based on our homeless count,” he said. 

Winter Shelters 

LAHSA’s Winter Shelter Program provides homeless adults with overnight shelter, meals, showers, and case management services from December 1 – March 1. Free daily transportation is available to and from the shelters by going to any of the pick-up locations. Shelter Hotline: 1(800) 548-6047 

“I can’t force someone to move into housing. Therefore, I have to build a relation and through that relationship, hopefully, I built a trust that I’m looking for their best interest,” Paul explained. “We have success that we can quantify.”  

(Connie Acosta participates in the neighborhood council system and frequently reports on Neighborhood Council matters.)