Local Nonprofit Health Advocate MIA When It’s Time to Protest Fast Food

INSIDE INGLEWOOD-A new Jack-in-the-Box is being built into the former KFC on the corner of Manchester and Crenshaw—where three fast-food joints are already present. McDonald’s is sponsoring an “inner city mini-marathon & health festival” at Darby Park in District 1 (D-1). 

And an Inglewood non-profit whose members have been involved in questionable activities regarding possible water-well contamination and an allegedly forged petition have failed to step up to protest the so-called “retail justice” joints that have been accused for decades of being a primary source of diabetes and other health problems.   

Some Inglewood residents also take issue with the Darby Park event being called “inner-city.”   

“We live in a suburb that if you take pictures of here and pictures of Fullerton [California], you wouldn’t know the difference. This is not the inner city; it’s a suburb with tree-lined streets and single-family residences,” said an Inglewood homeowner who asked to not be identified owing to fear of retribution from the mayor and city council members.   

A local non-profit, Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI), claims that “(SJLI) defines food justice as ensuring that individuals, families and communities have access to healthy, high quality, low cost, locally grown, culturally relevant and nutritious food from the seed to the plate.”   

SJLI’s Executive Director, D’Artagnan Scorza, would not comment specifically on why his close association with Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts may have prevented him from speaking out on the new fast food joint and McDonald’s sponsorship.   

 “SJLI is committed to improving the health of Inglewood residents through access to healthy, affordable and sustainable foods,” was the only comment Scorza would offer. 

Scorza and SJLI Health Equity Programs Director Derek Steele are known to be close to Butts, who personally appointed the current planning commissioner chair Larry Springs.   

Springs, a real estate agent and former D-1 planning commish, did not return requests for comment.   

Steele has been accused by Inglewood residents of being a party to an allegedly forged petition presented to the city council in March, 2013. The petition contained names of Inglewood senior citizens at senior homes that are funded by the City of Inglewood, and some of those people claimed to have never signed it. (Inglewood’s city attorney, Cal P. Saunders, refused to investigate the allegations.) Steele twice argued strongly in favor of the petition at a single city council meeting.   

The City of Inglewood bussed in handicapped senior citizens from one of its funded homes in order to stage support for the petition. Many of those senior citizens were videotaped asking why they were forced to attend and why Inglewood city employee Patricia Crenshaw forced them to go to city hall. Crenshaw was a campaign employee for the April, 2013 district campaign of George Dotson.    

Steele did not return requests for comment.   

According to a white paper published by SJLI in August 2012 and titled Facilitating Change in the Food Justice Movement, “SJLI works directly with the City of Inglewood and Inglewood Unified School.”   

Scorza was also involved in an illegal water well on a property owned by Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD). The property, at the corner of Yukon and 107th Street and which Scorza claimed was for irrigating a garden, was abandoned in such a haste that notebooks containing names, addresses and social security numbers of those who are presumed to have volunteered were left behind.    

According to Corporate Accountability International, “[f]ast food is a driving force behind the epidemic of diet-related health conditions, setting our kids up for a lifetime of health problems. Nearly one out of every three children in the U.S. is now overweight or obese.” The organization is presently pursuing a campaign that states, “Tired of McDonald’s marketing its junk food to our kids? Call on CEO Don Thompson to end the fast food giant’s predatory marketing for good.”

(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a weekly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com) Photo: SJLI’s Derek Steele and Inglewood’s mayor, James T. Butts, at Inglewood city hall.

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 41

Pub: May 20, 2014