LOS ANGELES

PLANNING GONE AWRY-Re: Opposition to March 2021 Guidance Memo from Director of Planning Vince Bertoni Regarding the Mulholland Scenic Parkway Specific Plan. 

EASTSIDER-This week I have two stories that you couldn’t make up even if you smoked a doobie and drank a bunch of alcohol.

FALSE SOLUTIONS-It is important that Californians up and down the state understand just how terrible Senate Bills 9 and SB 10 are and that action must be immediately taken by all to express opposition to these measures to your local State Assembly representatives while the Assembly is in recess and returns on August 16th. Your local Senator should also be contacted.

VIEW FROM HERE-All politicians’ favorability ratings fluctuate, often based on factors beyond their control. 

CALIFORNIA DREAM REEXAMINED-California being what it is – a very large state with a complex social and economic matrix and a unique political structure – it generates an endless stream of analysis and criticism. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN -- That there's a new Delta Variant of the COVID-19 virus which is more contagious and aggressive than before is not new news.

GELFAND’S WORLD - Here's a short list of a few cultural presentations I'm looking at: 

COMMENTARY-Much as many of us have come to dislike Zoom meetings and long for in-person interactions when great ideas are discussed in Neighborhood Council meetings, there are many powerful arguments to maintain virtual attendance as a robust option. 

VIEW FROM HERE-On May 17, 2021, four days after CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s atrocious statement that vaxed people need not wear masks inside, I wrote: 

VOICES - White supremacy in America was never simply a rightwing phenomenon.

DEEGAN ON LA-This is Number 5 in a series. Councilmember Nithya Raman (CD4) sat silently in the council chamber on July 28, as her colleagues spoke for and against a motion to regulate homeless encampments.

THE CITY - Home: The dense metropolis of Kolkata is among the only places in India -- and one of the few left in the world -- where fleets of hand-pulled rickshaws still ply the streets.  

COVID WATCH - It was more than two weeks ago that Dr. Peter Hotez, a nationally recognized vaccinologist, put it in plain language.

COVID WATCH - The next time someone tries to tell you that implementing restrictive COVID-19 policies affecting the public is nearly impossible, point them to San Francisco. Or New York City. Or the State of California. Or even Pasadena,

BRAINPOWER DUMBING - The near hysteria, though justifiable, among conservatives concerning the imposition of racialist Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools fails to address how this theology both reflects and contributes to the “systemic” decline of education itself.

LGBTQ NATION - Ed Buck, the gay white millionaire on trial for the deaths of two Black men, has been found guilty on all nine felony counts.

PLANNING WATCH-The Atlantic magazine, a consistent source of thoughtful American opinion since 1857, has added its voice to the chorus praising trickle-down housing policies through Conor Friedersdorf’s essay: The California Dream is Dying.

RANTZ & RAVEZ-I have been writing RantZ & RaveZ for a number of years. My observations and comments reflect over 70 years of residency in the City of Los Angeles and neighboring communities.

RIGHTS OF THE UNHOUSED-Organizations from across Los Angeles (including U.T.A.C.H, LACAN, LATU, Unión de Vecinos, Reclaiming our Homes, and members of the SNS coalition) gathered at City Hall on Wednesday to protest the City Council’s second hearing of Councilmember Mark Ridley Thomas’s alternate motion that bans sitting, lying down, and sleeping on large swaths of LA sidewalks, leaving the unhoused to ask the question, “Where will we go?”  

COMMENTARY - My view from the ground as a Southern California community organizer is aligned with the latest poll released by Berkeley.

GELFAND’S WORLD - It was one of those half-hours when strangers are thrown together and begin to chat. After all the standard, polite commiseration about how complicated life had become, one fellow said, "I'm young and healthy. Do I really need to get vaccinated? Who will tell us the truth?" A woman in the same area seconded the "young and healthy" line with a similar level of skepticism about the vaccine.