TWO WRONG-HEADED DECISIONS THAT ASK FOR OUR ATTENTION
THE POLICE UNION Vs. THE LA PUBLIC LIBRARIES
I wish this was not grindingly predictable that the LAPD’s union, the LAPPL, would come out against Measure L, the item on the March 8 ballot that would set aside funding for the Los Angeles Public Library system.
In a statement put out Wednesday, union president Paul Weber made the usual dire predictions. Measure L will force cuts in police, fire and public safety, blah, blah, blah.
The LA Weekly detailed the deep and shameful cuts to the LA Public Library system last year in their excellent cover story by Patrick Range McDonald, City of Airheads, which showed that Los Angeles stood alone among big cities in failing to protect its libraries.
Many public library systems — the five biggies are Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles — have faced an ugly two years of recession-spawned budget cuts and trimmed hours. Yet political leaders who control the purse strings for the biggest cities fought and saved their libraries from severe harm.
The city that has not done that is Los Angeles.
Measure L was, in part, a response. Granted, it didn’t help the union’s attitude toward the ballot measure, that it was proposed by Councilman Bernard Parks who, one could plausibly argue, has never scene an opportunity to stick it to the Los Angeles Police Department he didn’t like.
As the LA Weekly points out in a Wednesday night blogpost, Measure L doesn’t raise new $$ but rather sets aside a certain portion of property tax dollars as sacrosanct for the city’s libraries. This kind of ballot box budgeting can be a dicey strategy in that it ties the hands of lawmakers to move all funds around as needed. But given the council’s unwillingness to protect LA’s library system, supporters feel it is necessary, in this instance, for the citizenry to step in.
As Councilman Park’s chief of staff (and son) Bernard Parks Jr. noted,” Public safety already accounts for 70 percent of the city’s general fund.” That 70 percent should be enough. Public safety is important. But it is also important to feed the minds of our children by protecting their libraries.
So to the LAPPL, please sit down. We got this one.
CRIMINALIZING CAMPUS PROTEST
I’ve been meaning to comment on the troubling decision of Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas to bring criminal misdemeanor charges against 11 Muslim Student Union UC Irvine students who heckled and otherwise disrupted the on campus speech of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
Salon Magazine has presented the issue well. Here’s a clip from their story.
The Orange County district attorney has brought highly unusual misdemeanor charges against 11 Muslim students for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. at the University of California at Irvine last year, raising questions about the First Amendment and the criminalization of protest on campus.
The case has generated competing free speech claims, with both sides arguing they have the Constitution on their side. Supporters of the so-called Irvine 11, including progressive Jewish groups, have argued that the prosecution is politically motivated because of the explosive nature of the Israel-Palestine issue and because the students are Muslim.
Ambassador Michael Oren came to speak last February at U.C. Irvine, which has been the site of tensions over Israel-Palestine for several years. Members of the Muslim Student Union took turns interrupting the speech every few minutes, calling Oren, who is an Israeli Defense Forces veteran, “an accomplice to genocide” and a “mass murderer.” Each student briefly stood up, shouting a sentence or two, then walked to the aisle and was arrested by police and escorted out. After four interruptions, Oren took a 20-minute break, according to news reports at the time. He was then interrupted another six times before a group of protesters left the lecture hall. Oren then finished his speech.
In response to the incident, the U.C. Irvine administration revoked the charter of the Muslim Student Union for a year and disciplined the students involved. [Ed. note: Which should have been good enough.]
Now, after a year-long investigation that included issuing search warrants and convening a grand jury to interview witnesses, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has brought charges against 11 students for “conspiring and disrupting a lawful assembly.”
Let me repeat that: Rackauckas, in all seriousness, convened a grand jury and issued search warrants about a campus protest. Your tax dollars at work. How is this a bad precedent? Let me count the ways.
The Jewish Journal reports that a hundred UCI faculty members have called on the OC DA to drop the charges.
Photo by Jebb Harris, Orange County Register
I generally agree with your assessment on the libraries vs. the PPL (whose opinions are often myopic and wrong-headed since Weber-Novey took over, unfortunately) and appreciate our pointing out this isn’t a new tax, just setting aside a portion of current property taxes. (Didn’t Janice Hahn, who now wants to take Harmon’s seat, float a proposal for a new library tax, like she pushed for a gang tax for years? It seems that after Measure B and already raising the trash fees and Phone Measure S or whatever for public safety, but still no more cops on the streets, this is the only sort of option the council dares put before the voters right now.)
It’s true as you point out that cops AND firefighters, as public safety, account for a lot of money – but I understand largely from pensions, not so much cops on the street. Bernard Parks is right to want to reform the pension plans (an issue which as you know, managed to figure even in the PPL’s endorsement of Meg Whitman, who’d have exempted cops and firefighters alone among city and government workers).
However, his son and Chief of Staff B. Parks Jr. is the one you quote, I have some skepticism re: his objectivity, since his father has also been a staunch opponent of the LAPD Chiefs who want to maintain the force for the purposes of public safety, leaving the pension issue to the union: it’s been widely speculated he never forgave Hahn/the city for replacing him and has it in for future chiefs, using his power over them to second-guess them on matters great and small (like whether movie cops, who may be retired LAPD or not, should be allowed to use LAPD-look-alike uniforms and badges).
I think we need to separate the issue of keeping enough cops on the streets to maintain public safety (the min. 10,000 and ideally 12,500 numbers quoted by Bratton and I gather supported by Beck), while Parks, Perry and his supporters support reducing the force and recruit clases – even though districts are among those which have a large number of the cops that are deployed, the “cops on the dots” system of deploying where there’s greatest violent crime, to the chagrin of the westside and west valley homeowner groups who bemoan the resultant rise in property crimes and at least one group documented that it can take 20 minutes to get a car over to the Palisades, for example. I know you understand this distinction but when you use Parks (either Parks’), I’m skeptical that they do.
BTW I note that Parks Sr. is the only incumbent so far endorsed by the conservative homeowner groups and their Ron Kaye-promoted “Clean Sweep campaign,” because they say he’s fiscally conservative and so on (even though he draws a huge police pension himself he has no indication of giving up).
However, they also demand more cops on the street, while fighting new taxes and virtually all development, however well-designed (certainly they also have legitimate grievances in this city which sometimes does try to ram through projects and has overlooked the interests of longtime homeowners for decades) – just another of what seem to me their inconsistent demands. This makes them oppose virtually all incumbents who, despite their other flaws, have a realistic understanding you have to balance services with income whether from taxes or some development, while newcomers who unrealistically pander to them and promise the sky earn their unbounded enthusiasm. Until they actually take office and can’t deliver, natch.
This whole issue really merits an honest discussion re: the pensions and their part in the budget and vs. what other services like libraries. You are certainly right, Weber/ PPL obfuscate this distinction by always conflating cops on the streets with preserving all current benefits without context of overall budget.
Good points all, sbl.
Thanks. Also agree re: your second issue, outrageous for the DA to convene a grand jury to prosecute students on a college campus disrupting an appearance/ discussion. As I recall some in the audience claimed they’re feared for their safety because the students were so beligerent, but I think they and the DA definitely over-reacted. As you note this issue is especially tense on that campus which has a lot of students from south asia, Indians and Muslims it seems to me (I know quite a few wealthy families who bought the tidy tract homes there just so their kids can attend the university there) – don’t you teach there also?
BTW re: the earlier discussion on ur earlier thread re: Egypt, the military vs. the “government”/Mubarek and the police (which have largely bowed out of the scene recently), you’re no doubt also following how there are reports that the army/ military Command Council is allegedly pushing Mubarek to concede the protesters’ points or they won’t continue to support him, without with his gov’t IS powerless…we’re about to hear an announcement.
A propos the UCIrvine issue, closer to home, our CA Carmen Trutanich, whom you strongly endorsed by the way, so I hope you have a particular interest in how he’s turned out – maybe buying the fake hype of the L A Times which you’ve now come to see is suspect in many cases – wants to lock up protesters for a full year. See the story in the L A Times. Referring specifically to protesters re: the DREAM act last May – I recall he was furious for being stuck in traffic for over an hour because of it, sounds like another over-kill motivated by some exaggerated sense of personal slight and vendetta. Rocky and other predecessors granted such folks a hearing in the CA’s office, but Trutanich insists on their going to trial and seeks jail time: even though, as Roderick in LA Observed notes, he never stops decrying cuts to his office and crying wolf that he won’t be able to prosecute important misdemeanors as a result, that our city will go to the wolves, etc.
This sounds truly dictatorial and without understanding or respect for right to protest. If you support such rights to protest even in Egypt, what do you make of this for L A? True, those people (and those protesting Prop 8) tied up traffic, impeded commutes and made lives miserable for many. What is a fair penalty?
I don’t know where that happy face came from, instead of Prop!
Now, sbl, I know I endorsed Trutanich, but I think I’ve made it extremely clear by now that endorsing him turned out NOT to be a good idea. At all. So stop beating that horse, please.
The protesters thing is appalling. I should have blogged about it. But Egypt has gotten in the way. I see that he’s already backed up on it, a bit.
sorry, didn’t mean it that way, just that as even “Jack” his former ardent supporter urged you to do, someone has to hold him to the fire, especially those who had supported him, because the thought of him having real power as DA is truly troubling. Indeed you have challenged various moves and do a vital public service across the social justice spectrum. You are one of the few fearless voices out there, saying it how you see it, changing your opinions as situations warrant. But moves like this, wanting to jail non-violent protesters, who are even more innocuous than the Irvine students because they protested in a neutral public space, something even Egypt’s government and police have backed off from, show he just doesn’t get it, that hard to define balance of a democracy that spirit of truly being a public servant. — Great to see that in Egypt even the secret police have backed off from punishing protesters with jail and worse, after a lot of outcry. Unfortunately here in L A there is too much civic apathy until something shocking happens. 🙂
I was listening to KPFK this morning in passing and am not a regular so would have to check schedueles/podcasts to get the name of the show/ participants, but sometime between 9-11 a.m. someone involved of the defense of the protesters involved in the DREAM Act protests, prepping for their upcoming court battle with Trutanich, made exactly the same point, about the stunning silence on the part of the local media about this situation while riveted with and denouncing the same in Egypt. (It was my insert that they instead often did PR for the guy and now just seem to want to step back from the egg on their face or maybe they just find it easier to decry injustice far from home they don’t have to or can’t do anything about, who knows.)
They also discussed other aspects of the case, previous court decisions that didn’t bode well for their side and so on – you might want to check it out if you ever do a story on this.
So people should be allowed to protest regardless of the ramifications? I heard Trutanich say he was going after the paid protesters with a harsher response than any students. Is there a problem with this type of thinking? I don’t think so.
Really, have any of you leftists actually looked at this Muslim group and checked their past conduct? Did they break the law and are they now being held accountable? If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about your investigations Celeste it’s that at times they’re woefully weak when you’ve made up your mind and settled on how you feel about on an issue.
It looks like you guys are ok with a slap on the wrist when it comes to denying free speech to all, what an odd way to think.
“Really, have any of you leftists actually looked at this Muslim group and checked their past conduct?”
Answer: Yes. Very closely, over time and in excruciating detail. In fact, in addition to my own tracking and research on the topic, I’ve had three different students over the years, starting in 2006, who have researched, reported and written 5000 word stories on the on campus conflicts between the Muslim students and the Jewish student groups—which have going on with lots of high drama for quite some time.
As it happened, one student was very involved in the Jewish groups and had to get beyond HER biases to write the story. Another was an MSU member, and had to get beyond HIS biases to write his story. The third, who was neutral and had no personal experience with either side, profiled the presidents of both groups, for a fascinating story. But all three students did engaging and thought provoking work, with plenty of input and criticism from me and their fellow workshop members.
So, yes, I know one or two things about the UCI Muslim Student Union—and its history, particular its history in the ongoing back and forth at the university—and also about UCI’s Hillel and Anteaters for Israel.
About Trutanich, he’s backed down on his original statement about the protesters, which was far more sweeping.
Well that’s great Celeste, are their stories on your blog? I’d love to see them. It shouldn’t come to any surprise that all those faculty members want the charges dropped, why would that even matter? Of course some of the students get that stalwart of civil liberties, Carol Sobel, to defend them.
KPCC radio broke the story on Thursday’s “AirTalk” program, where hosts talked to Sobel and UCI’s founding law school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, about the possible charges facing the students.
“It’s pretty much a certainty,” Sobel said, later adding, “In light of the fact that all the physical evidence was available publicly, including video of the students engaging in the protest, I don’t see what the secret goal of a grand jury is, except to file a felony conspiracy charge.”
So much for that felony conspiracy charge though really, is there any doubt the MSU in fact conspired to break the law in this case?
Nope.
By the way, imho Sobel is nothing but cop hating scum. Just thought I’d make that clear.