In the News
Hurricane Stalling: Something Else to Worry About
Houston suffered massive flooding and now the Bahamas have been severely damaged. At one point, hurricane Dorian moved a mere 30 miles in 30 hours. If the death toll were not so tragic, comedians would be tossing out lines comparing the ne…
Garcetti Keeps Lying While the Homeless Keep Dying
GUEST WORDS-For the past six years, homelessness in Los Angeles has increased by more than 75%.
Location-Based Policing: New LAPD Technologies, Same Racisms
SMILE, YOU’RE ON COP CAMERA--Since its inception, predictive policing has courted controversy.
Re-Re-Visiting ‘Why I Left the Left’. . .Two Years On
CHATMATES-I assume this is my third and final installment of WILTL. It was a pleasure sharing with readers of all political stripes my prev…
Questions to Ask Before ‘Calling Out’
THE CALLOUT CULTURE-What do you do when someone says something offensive?
We Put Thieves In Charge and Then are Shocked When Our Wallets Go Missing
ONE MAN’S OPINION--We put criminals in charge and then are bewildered why the criminals are robbing us blind.
Don’t Sanitize Bukowski or San Pedro for Tourist Consumption
AT LENGTH-At one point in the early 1990s, this newspaper hosted the famous Nation magazine columnist Alex Cockburn to speak at Los Angeles…
Detained Immigrants Claim They Were Forced to Work Without Pay
IMMIGRANT WORKER RIGHTS-In 2017, Raul Novoa, who had been detained at the Adelanto Detention Center in the Mojave Desert near San Bernardin…
Democracy Needs Unions
LABOR 2019--When workers don’t have a voice in their workplace, they eventually lose their voice at the ballot box, too.
A Labor Day Wish List … for Workers in the Twenty-First Century
ALPERN AT LARGE--You've heard it before--Labor Day is too often a holiday of barbecues, the un-official end of summer, and a time for famil…
Paul Koretz: Maybe We Could Get Some Bus Shelters if the Councilman Rode a Bus to Work for a Few Months
GUEST COMMENTARY--I am in agreement with Bianca Barragan’s August 29, 2019, CityWatch piece, “6,000 LA Bus Stops Leave Riders in Rain and B…
The American Working Class Dilemma
LABOR 2019--For the past 125 years, Labor Day has been a time to celebrate the relevance, and political power, of the American working clas…
How Many More Must Die?
BCK FILE--Just one month after the bloody weekend when a gunman killed 22 victims at an El Paso Walmart and another nine people were killed…
Crude vs Cool: A Shared Disrespect for the Law
ONE MAN’S OPINION-Although the modus operandi of Trump and der Wunderkind Garcetti are different on the surface, they are almost indistingu…
Global Climate Strike! Calling for End of ‘War Against Nature’
CLIMATE POLITICS--After two weeks of sailing, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in New York on Wednesday with an…
6,000 LA Bus Stops Leave Riders in Rain and Boiling Heat
CURBEDLA TRANSIT REPORT--With more hot days expected in the future, transit advocates say the city must add shade at bus stops and transit…
Here’s the Big Question for LA’s Homeless Crisis: Millions of Tax Dollars Spent on What and … for Whom?
RANTZ & RAVEZ- Talk about throwing more and more tax money down the drain with little improvement to the ever-increasing homeless popul…
Goodbye Republicans, Hello JFK Democrats ... Now You’re Both Old, Grumpy, Discriminating Regressives!
ALPERN AT LARGE--Once Upon a Time, there was bipartisanship, a Common Enemy who was either Hitler or Stalin or the Ayatollah Khomeini, and…
Screw the Brown Act! State Don’t State Laws Apply to the Closed-to-the-Public LA County Mayoral Meetings?
NO ONE ABOVE THE LAW-On August 27, 2019 I sent the following complaint to LA County Deputy District Attorneys Alan Yochelson and Michele Gi…
This Labor Day, We Need Real Plans to Build Worker Power
OTHER WORDS-This Labor Day, Democratic presidential candidates will no doubt be touting their support for a $15 per hour minimum wage. None…
