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ERIC PREVEN’S NOTEBOOK -
Moderator: The next participant is Eric Preven. You may begin.
Smart Speaker: Thank you. I condemn all War crimes. I don't know if you saw 60 Minutes but the story of the grandfather who drove across enemy lines back into Gaza and went to his grandchild's bedroom or bomb shelter on the kibbutz where they were hiding. But first, he had to stop and rescue two young people and then eventually he had to kill a terrorist. And in the end, he got his family out.
I do think that there are some land acknowledgment questions around equity here at the Board of Supervisors. Who speaks for the Jewish community? I'm open to it not being the Fab 5. I don't know. I think Fred Rogers, who people know as Mr. Rogers -- said it, I'm not upset. I'm very upset, but, Mr. Rogers said, “I like you. And when I say I like you, I'm talking about the deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things that without which humankind cannot survive. Love conquers hate and peace will be triumphant over war and justice proves more powerful than greed."
At that point, The Board of Supervisors had to shut the meeting down due to a major disruption.
**New Recusals**
A new county protocol, wherein Supervisors have begun recusing themselves when, for instance, "Supervisor Barger is recusing herself from the vote pursuant to government code 84308 because she received a contribution or contributions of more than $250 within the past 12 months from a party participant and or agent of the party or participant in the proceedings.
40 Supervisor Mitchell is recusing herself pursuant to government code 84308 because she received a contribution or contributions of more than $250 within the past 12 months from a party participant or agent of the party or participant in the proceedings.
41, Supervisor Barger is recusing herself from the vote pursuant to government code section 84308 because she received contributions of more than $250 in the past 12 months from healthcare services who are the party, participants or agents of party or participants in the proceeding.
41, Supervisor Mitchell is also recusing herself on 41 because she received a contribution or contributions of more than $250 within the past 12 months from Jackie Majors who is a party, participant or agent or a party in the 16 proceedings.
45, this includes a revision as indicated on the supplemental agenda. Also on this item, Supervisor Hahn is recusing herself from the vote pursuant to government code section 84308 because she received a contribution or contributions of more than $250 within the past 12 months from David Prince who is a party, participant or an agent of a party or participant in the proceeding
66-d Supervisor Hahn is recusing herself from the vote pursuant to the government code section because she received a contribution or contributions of $250 in the last 12 months from Maria Trujillo, who is a participant in the proceeding.
Smart Speaker: Why isn't the city doing this as well?
Supervisor Janice Hahn, Chair: In case you haven't had enough of this meeting, we have some video, so just stay tuned. Wherever you are, and keep watching. Supervisor Barger particularly, because she has two video presentations. Honoring EDI media incorporated the 19th annual Chinese American film festival, and Chinese American television festival, and the 100th year of Whitley Heights. And Supervisor Horvath has a video presentation honoring Sycamores.
LIVE from the Nation's Capital:
While a compassionate mob of progressives ground things to a halt in Los Angeles, across the country, Bernie Sanders greeted the Mayor's special delegation.
Senator Sanders is one of a growing number of progressive Democrats voicing concerns about the debacle in the Mideast. "The United States has rightly offered solidarity and support to Israel in responding to Hamas' attack," he said but continued. “Let us not forget that half of the two million people in Gaza are children. Children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished for the acts of Hamas.”
And so this year's Mayoral road trip with a half dozen city council members and two canceled public meetings is in the books. The entire whirlwind of high-level meetings was brought to you, frequently live, by KNX News 97.1 FM and Craig Fiegener.
The DC "Resource MiningTrip" scrapbook, anchored by Senator Bernie Sanders, who stands with UAW.
Fiegener traveled all the way to the nation's capital to get the scoop, and the scoop is "never show up with just one scoop on Ice Cream day," if you can show up with seven or even twenty-five scoops, why not? And every day in Washington DC is Ice Cream Day. That's my characterization, Mayor Karen Bass put it this way, “...Washington, D.C. is like everything else. The squeaky wheel is what gets the resources.”
Disclosure: I like my resources with cocoa crispies and the petit chocolate chips.
City Attorney: Mr. Preven please get back on the items or we will send you to general public comment.
Smart Speaker: Groat, the council meetings were canceled in favor of Fiegener's live coverage. See you on Friday... now, I will continue. No word if the rumor that conjoined housing arrangements resulted in any inter-district co-mingling.
The mayor and her cabinet came east asking for hundreds of millions for housing, the Olympics, and transit and by today's deadline announced that at least a $50 million grant had been secured for the DWP from the Department of Energy. Not too bad.
How much was the hotel bill?
When Traci Park was asked if she would consider sharing a room with Bob Blumenfield, who immediately agreed pending FEMA approval, she reminded everyone that we must do a better to assist our Veterans.
In order to get a very clear picture of how much quad housing Paul Krekorian and Hugo-Soto Martinez in one section and Heather Hutt and Eunisses Hernandez in another, I sought the hotel bill of the great county of Los Angeles who scheduled their boondoggle in April or May.
At the County of Los Angeles, they do a better than average job of providing a record requester with a psychotic rollout of records in the most labyrinthian, convoluted, Kafkaesque, piecemeal manner known to man, woman or what have you.
How far away was the room of Mark Pestrella of the County Flood District and Public Works from Janice Hahn's suite? We may never know.
I asked Nicole Davis Tinkham for everything and was rewarded with next to nothing by Noro Zurabyan, who is doing a very nice job. Disclosure: I was able to LAND the county's Hilton hotel deal. Or... L'Enfant DC Hotel LLC dba Hilton Washington DC National Mall The Wharf (the "hotel").
Breaking: $380/night
Not bad. Not cheap, but not bad.
Pain Management:
The interesting piece in the Los Angeles Times about how Los Angeles is leading the league in psychiatric restraints caught my attention. I worked at Bloomingdales during my summers off from the University of Michigan. Not the department store, Bloomingdales but rather the old psychiatric hospital up on the hill behind the store in White Plains, New York.
The place up on a hill, was reminiscent of McClean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where Girl Interrupted took place, formerly known as Somerville Asylum and Charlestown Asylum.
I was a mental health worker and because I was (and am) a strong young man I was frequently called in to assist in the restraint of out-of-control patients. At this particular hospital, a part of Cornell Medical Center, New York Hospital, Westchester Division, we would deploy a quiet room.
A what? A quiet room that had a single mattress on the floor and that's it. The door would lock and there was a small plexiglass looking-in window.
There were several different phases of restraining a patient. The confrontation, the transport, the medication, and finally the constant observation. It was important to keep an eye on someone after a possibly prolonged period of distress.
As with law enforcement, depriving a person of their liberty even for a moment is totally fraught.
One time me and my colleague, Keith, a fifty-year-old Jamaican dude with much more experience than me was bringing a man named Lenny who was 6' 4" and possibly 300 lbs into compliance. I was like, "rufkm"...but Keith was cool and had a way about him. Not like he was going to kick your ass, but ... somehow, he managed to convince the angry giant to come with us... amazing.
Another time, we had to physically carry a very scrappy psychotic adolescent spread-eagled into the quiet room. It was horrible. During the period when the nurse was teeing up the inevitable injection, my comrade Keith put his knee right onto the body of the patient in a way that made me uncomfortable but must have really hurt the kid. I put my hand on Keith's arm. He brushed me off.
Later, on a lunch break a few days later, I asked him about the incident. Why was he trying to hurt the kid?
Keith shrugged it off and said "You ask too many questions."
Do No Harm:
Long Beach City College set aside a parking structure for its homeless students after discovering in 2021 that close to 70 students were sleeping in their cars each night.
That’s a very thoughtful plan, and safe parking is a great way to allow working people who are priced out of the housing market to get some sleep and continue the uphill climb.
College kids these days, unless they come from a well-off family, are heavily impacted by the rise in the cost of living and can slide downward quickly. Everybody needs to sleep especially people who are carrying a full load and working.
Out in Malibu, along the Pacific Coast Highway, where the laws were recently rejiggered to keep motor homes moving, an unspeakable tragedy occurred. Four Pepperdine students were mowed down and killed on the PCH. It was not their fault that the City of Malibu has a highway running through the middle of it and that someone lost control of a vehicle. The Sheriff spokesperson said, "we need to slow down."
We do.
I bet the California State Assembly member and candidate for California's 30th congressional district, would agree.
Laura Friedman must have been one of the politicians who jumped headfirst into the officer-worn body camera craze. What a comforting notion, that everyone behaves a little better when they feel they’re being recorded. I jumped in, too.
Friedman recently got the great state of California to dip its baby-toe into the automated speeding ticket business.
To save lives, obviously.
Motorists, regardless of how badly they’re being hit by the rising cost of living, who carry on more than 11 miles over the speed limit near certain test-zones, including some selected schools, will qualify for this exciting program.
It is just a pilot now, but presumably, once we see the astonishing results, we’ll all agree to a massive rollout of thousands of onerous speed traps everywhere!!! The PCH?
City Attorney: Sir, that’s not on the agenda.
Smart Speaker: Yes, it is. How will this plan to issue speed camera tickets, prevent a situation like the one in Malibu …?
City Attorney: These are only $50 tickets and the first one will be at no cost to the motorist — the taxpayers will cover it.
Smart Speaker: How will this prevent the out-of-control driver?
Last Call:
Smart Speaker: This is a heist of public money
Angeleno: Which council member is involved with Taste of Soul?
Smart Speaker: Wesson, Price, MRT Harris-Dawson and of course, Heather Hutt, his baby. Not to mention Eric Garcetti and Karen Bass. They all agree to pay him out of city funds, even though what he does, host Taste of Soul is... on city streets. He should pay the city, right? Danny Bakewell is a ‘for profit’. He throws a party and charges the municipalities (all of them including the AQMD, the county, the city, the LADWP hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up booths, for which he charges in the public right of way.
And then he boosts the incumbents who go along. He owns black media in Los Angeles, and some say he owns many politicians.
Coming Saturday, October 21, 2023, Taste of Soul.
(Eric Preven is a longtime community activist and is a contributor to CityWatch. The opinions of Mr. Preven are not necessarily those of CityWatchLA.com.)
