Schwarzenegger gets an F in Education

Schwarzenegger was the commencement speaker June 14, 2005, at Santa Monica College, which he once attended in the early 1970s. Before he spoke, a overflow crowd of faculty, students, and community people went to the Board of Trustees asking the invitation be withdrawn, but the Board of Trustees refused. Then while he spoke about 300 people had a peaceful picket outside including four former mayors of Santa Monica-- Paul Rosenstein, James Conn, Judy Abdo and Michael Feinstein--while many inside the stadium frequently and loudly booed Schwarzenegger.

Since he’s been governor, Schwarzenegger has raised fees on college students, restricted access to public higher education, and cut the education budget drastically. Many Santa Monica College students want to transfer to UC, but Schwarzenegger raised fees 14% at UC (within the last three years fees have already rise from $14 to $21 for the community colleges). This fee raise at UC made it impossible for some students to attend. Keith Mason, a teacher at Santa Monica College and one of the rally’s organizers said, Schwarzenegger’s polices were like a Robin Hood horror film " where the governor 'steals from the poor and gives to the rich.'"

The day before the commencement, Schwarzeneggar unveiled his plan to call for a November special election costing the state over $60 million with plans to reduce the power of that legislature and states’ employees unions. He has specially targeted such “special interests” as nurses whose butts he wanted to kick as well as firefighters, teachers, and policemen. All the while he raises over $50 millions from huge corporations who get tax breaks in California.

Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said the state uses “students as cash-cows when finances go bad." Instead of raising taxes, Schwarzenegger raises student fees for higher education. At UC since 2002 fees have gone up 60% for undergraduates (up 14% in fall 2004 for in-state undergraduates). He taxes students, not the rich!

To make matters worse, Schwarzenegger wanted in 2004 to cut UC’s budget 7 percent. Schwarzennegger's cut in UC's budget forced an end to the 40-year historic promise in California that any student who does the work gets into higher education in this state. In the spring of 2004 over 7,000 in-state students eligible for UC were told they couldn’t go. Only by late July when the Democrats forced Schwarzenegger to restore UC’s funding were 7,000 students given places but it was too late for most of them. Those 7,000 students also had their lives disrupted by Schwareneggar’s budget cuts. When community college fees were raised from $14 to $21, over 125,000 students had been already driven out of college even before Schwarzenegger took office. Schwarzenegger continues to disrupt thousands of young people's lives by making even public higher education too expensive for them to attend.

Schwarzenegger also made a deal with the California Teacher’s Association in 2004 to cut the state’s education budget $2 billion, suspending the state's constitution to do so. What impact has the $2 billion cut in education had? Delaine Eastin, former State Superintendant of Schools said, “If you adjust for the cost of living, you can make the case that we are close to last in per-pupil spending in this country.” For example, California’s per pupil spending is around $6500, while New York spends nearly $11,000 per student. Schwarzenegger has the accomplishment of reducing the state's education budget to an ever lower level.

Schwarzenegger’s cuts will harm poor children the most. West Contra Costa Unified School District, an urban area encompassing some of the poorest parts of the San Francisco Bay area, was forced to cut its budget by $28 million over the last three years, eliminating all school sports programs, closing all its libraries and pink-slipping more than 200 employees in March, 2004. According to Shane Goldmacher in the August, 19, 2004, online Nation the cuts amount to nearly $1,000 per student over three years. Taking away students’ libraries is disrupting their lives to an incredible degree!

While rich schools will have parents raising money to make up some of the deficits, poor schools like West Contrast Cost Unified School District lack this parents’ base, so poor children will suffer the most. In other words, rather than raise taxes on the wealthiest (and there’s huge wealth in California), Schwarzenegger makes poor children suffer ever-worsening education. Schwarzenegger picks on poor children to carry the budget on their backs.

Goldmacher reported that "in May 2004, Field Poll, 62 percent of Californians (and a plurality of Republicans) said that taxes will have to be raised to resolve the state's budget deficit, but Schwarzenegger will have none of that." I have students in community colleges who weekly work 30-40 hours and then go to college. For thousands of self-supporting students, UC is now out of their reach. Schwarzenegger's policies make students subsidize the ultra rich in California. He seems to be motivated by shortsighted greed: at all costs never never raise taxes on those who drive $80,000 hummers, send their children to private schools, have 2 or 3 homes.

We should think about tens of thousands of students’ lives in California Schwarzenegger has already disrupted.Schwarzenegger's main accomplisment regarding education in California is to make a bad situation much, much worse. Yes, indeed, Governor Schwarzenegger has flunked education.

Celebrate Kenneth Rexroth!

Celebration of Kenneth Rexroth's 100th Birthday
Sunday, June 4, 4:00, Santa Monica Beach, Santa Monica /CA
behind lifeguard station #24, about 3/4 miles south of Santa Monica Pier parking lot just south of Ocean Park
A reading of his poems, free & open to th public

Worldwide celebration:
January 19th, 6 pm Kaminarimon, Sensoji Temple, Asakusa, Tokoyo, Japan
March 20th, 5 pm, Grey Area, All Areas, Oude Lelierstraat 2, Amsterdam, Holland
June 25th, 2-4 pm, Rexroth Panel, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont CA USA
August 22, 4:30, Muhinjuan, Doshisha University, Guest House, Kyoto, Japan
August 28th--all day, Wat Chai Wattanarm, Ayutthaya, Thaland

Kenneth Rexroth more than any other writer created the best in California culture. He was the father of the Beats in San Francisco, Long before Kerouac, Rexroth had hitchhiked across the country, working at odd jobs. Linda Hamalian has said, “Rexroth slipped into the spell of the American West, of the California spaces, the mountains, the forests, the wild terrain, and the Pacific Ocean itself.” He saw the divine in the natural world around him, and his poetry exactly captures the natural world he loved. Long before poet Gary Snyder Rexroth was writing an environmentalist poetry. He was a pioneer translator of Japanese and Chinese poetry into English, paving the way for generations to turn to Asian philosophy and art.

Rexroth was a populist, mystic, and pacifist, participating in radical protests from fighting for workers’ justice in the 1930s to the 1960s where he supported the civil rights movement and was against the Vietnam War. He declared that he was a radical, "a social outcast [who] identified...with the forces striving for a better social system, a system in which humanity and leisure for vital appreciation of the arts would be the common property of all men." He was always ignored by East Coast critics and establishment.

Linda Hamalian has said that Rexroth wrote poetry for

‘all producing classes of the west,’ the workers and the farmers the country depended on, using the words from factories, farms, and trades, as Whitman would have them do. Rexroth was pleading, ultimately, for the recognition of regional literary magazines filled with good writing. More basically, he was stating that in order for people to tap into their creative energy, and to respect, seek and support the art and poetry of others, they had to feel connected to their immediate environment. In a sense, Rexroth was redefining democracy in dynamic terms by asserting that a free country was a country that nurtured and validated an artistic sensibility in all people, a position that Whitman had articulated more than fifty years earlier in "Democratic Vistas."

He took his ideas into action in the late 1940s in San Francisco when he organized a salon at his house for new poets—the beats. In this salon Asian and Native American literatures were respected as much as the European literature. He started reading poetry to jazz. He started a poetry of democracy, of environmental sanity, of equality for all people. Yes, we should all celebrate Kenneth Rexroth.

Upton Sinclair’s Oil!: A High Octane California novel!

In Sinclair's novel Oil! oil magnates giving bribes to politicians in exchange for favors; evangelical preachers crusade; leftists are witch hunted; and Hollywood movies do right-wing political propaganda. Doesn’t that sound like 2005? The novel in question was published in 1927. Oil! brilliantly shows us our modern world taking shape in the 1920s.

Though famous for his novel The Jungle about Chicago’s meat packing industry, Sinclair moved to Pasadena in 1916 and spent over thirty years of his life in Southern California, writing both pamphlets and novels set in California. The best of Sinclair’s California writings is Oil! Lawrence Clerk Powell, former UCLA head librarian, has said Oil is a “novel of high California octane … the largest scale of all California novels.”

The novel starts with thirteen year Bunny Ross and his father Joe Ross, a small independent wildcat oil man, drive in a car hurtling down country roads to Beach City, a fictionalized Long Beach, Ca, as oil has just been discovered. Sinclair is fictionalizing the beginning of the Signal Hill oil field right outside the Los Angeles in the early 1920s. Ross wants to educate his son into the oil industry, and the whole novel is both Bunny Ross’s and our education.

Bunny Ross sees the small folks who had dreams of oil wealth from leasing their land again and again get nothing while his father bribes one politician after another starting with the country superintendant of roads; the elder Ross grows rich from his oil fields. In an early chapter Bunny meets Paul Watkins, a sixteen year old boy who runs away from his fundamentalist Christian poor father farmer and is starving on the streets, so Bunny starts to learn about destitution.

The main conflict is between Dad Ross who wants his son to become an oil tycoon like himself and Bunny who has first developed a conscience and then becomes a millionaire socialist. This is an epic novel, capturing the reader as it hurtles forward showing Dad’s rise from small independent oilman to part of a big oil syndicate, Bunny’s progress through the left, and their conflicts. The elder Ross is not any stereotyped tycoon, but a roughneck and sentimentalist, aruging with Bunny about politics but usually breaking down to give money to get his son's friends out of jail.

Bunny sides with the oil workers in two hard fought strikes, tries to organize a left-wing newspaper while at Southern Pacific University (a fictionalized USC), and gets involved in left factional fights between Socialists and Communists. Bunny is our guide to all classes from the high society parties where wealthy young women are flirting with a oil prince to his USC Jewish socialist friend Rachel Menzies and her garment worker family to the Watkinses, starving dirty farmers who are Holy Rollers. What’s fascinating about the Watkins is the reminder that destitute rural Protestants have turned to fundamentalism in the past.

One fascinating character who reappears is Eli Watkins who becomes a famous preacher like Aimee Semple MacPherson. Though Watkins preaches against immorality, he is seeing a pretty young thing on the side and pulls a good phony disappearance to hide his love affair. The other Watkins, who remain Holly Rollers, also support the oil strikes when the union comes to their countryside. Sinclair’s novel gives hope that if a fighting anti-poverty politics again comes to rural America, many of the blue collar fundamentalists would change their politics leftward.

Upton Sincliar's novel illuminates 2005 and 1925

In his novel Oil! Sinclair wonderfully sketches the Los Angeles of the 1920s: oil tycoons making bribing politiians; a tiny left being witch hunted; and Hollywood celebrities—it sounds just like 2005. A wonderful character in Sinclair’s Oil is Vee Tracy, a Hollywood sex star appearing in an anti-Bolshevik film, who goes after the hero Bunny Ross and gets her oil prince. Here Sinclairgives us celebrity romance as well as shows us an early instance of Hollywood churning out propaganda films like Vee’s anti-Bolshevik epic. Vee, of course, aligns with Dad Ross to try to end his son’s Bunny’s socialist politics

For oil tycoons like Dad Ross it was boom times during the 1920s as the country was switching to automobiles; the power of the Ross and his other Western oil tycoons is seen in their funding Harding’s successful presidential run. Sinclair is fictionalizing history, making it exciting. Dad Ross teaches his son that oil tycoons, unhappy with President Wilson letting European countries get control of the new oil fields in the Middle East, decide spend millions of dollars to elect their choice, Harding, as U.S. president.

After Bunny Ross sees his good friend Paul and other union organizers trying to defend the oil workers were arrested during the 1st Red Scare after World War I, Bunny learns from his college history teacher that the anti-Red scare had a cause: after the Russian Revolution, Russian aristocrats were forced into exile. Displaced Russian aristocrats and U.S. bankers, who had loans to the Czarist government and who were going to lose a fortune if the Bolsheviks stayed in power, made a political coalition that convinced the U.S. government to send troops to Russia in 1918 to try to end the revolutionary government; also the coalition started a Red Scare in the United States that illegally imprisoned trade unionists and deported radicals. Bunny is faced again and again what to do as a person of conscience when his friends wind up in jail during the anti-Red post World War I witch hunts. The question reverberates today: how does a person of conscience act today?

Sinclair is also capturing Los Angeles’s and United States politics in Oil! In the novel oil tycoon Pete O’Reily is a fictionalized Edward Doheny, the Los Angeles oil magnate who was indicted in the Teapot Dome oil scandal for bribing President Harding’s appointees. In the novel as in real the oil magnates paid bribes to government officials and got in exchange cheap leases on navy-owned land which had oil. Sinclair shows how Pete O'Reily, Dad Ross and the oil syndicate are likewise indicted for bribing the president's men. In an amusing chapter the oil magnates flee the country to avoid testifying in front of a U.S. Senate committee. Later in the novel the big oil syndicate’s try to influence U.S foreign policy to countries where they want to drill for oil such as Mosul, Iraq! Well, right now our government has troops in Mosul! Again, the novel focuses on how Bunny Ross reacts? Does he help his friends? Or does he run away?

Sinclair shows us the oil politics of1925 that have ramifications in 2005; the novel allows us the distance to gain understanding of the 1920s as well as our own era. As the Republican Party ends parts of FDR’s regulatory commissions and social safety network, the United States of 2005 more and more resembles that of 1925. How does Bunny Ross and his friends deal with the make-it-rich atmosphere of the 1920s? How do they offer alternatives? The novel is totally relevant to today's problems and world.

In our era Sinclair who didn’t flee to Europe and who had a brilliant understanding of the United States in the 1920s is becoming more relevant.The University of California Press reprinted Oil! in 1997 as part of their fine California Fiction series. In the last ten years there has been a Sinclair revival as part of a increasing sense that Sinclair has important insights into American history and culture. George Mitchell’s 1992 book Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics has inspired a musical which was produced in 2003.

Also in 2003 the first annual Uppie [humanitarian] Awards named after Upton Sinclair were held in San Pedro, California, near where Sinclair was arrested for reading the Constitution in support of striking long shore and oil workers. In that same year San Francisco’s Word for Word Theater dramatized the first chapter of Oil! Two years later in 2005 Lauren Coodley published an anthology The Land of Orange Juice and Jails: Upton Sinclair’s California which is a selection of his California writings including Oil! (Heydey Books).

Get Oil! It’s a fascinating read. You’ll learn a lot about California and the United States, then and now.

Wallace Thurman's lost classic novel

I just finished reading Wallace Thurman's novel The Blacker the Berry, a lost classic work of the Harlem Renaissance. After graduating from USC in the 1920s he put out an issue of a black literary magazine in Los Angeles, hoping to start a literary renaissance on the West Coast, but soon moved to New York where he became part of the Harlem Renaissance. In New York he put out a literary magazine with Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston. Besides his novel The Blacker the Berry, he published other novels; had a play on Broadway; and returned to Los Angeles to write two screenplays for films which were released. He died much too young at thrity-two in 1934 from tuberculosis.

Blacker the Berry was controversial in the 1920s because it was the first African-American novel to explore prejudice among blacks. The heroine, Emma Lou Morgan, is born to a middle class "high yellow" family in Boise, Idaho; her family keeps their distance from other darker Blacks as well as puts down Emma because of her black color. They do, however, send her to USC for a college education where Emma futilely tries to win the friendship of lighter skinned Blacks who are polite but think her "too dark" to be their friend. As the author points out Emma herself is a snob, devaluating herself because of her dark color and endlessly wanting to be friends with light-skinned girls and to marry a light-skinned man. After experiencing much loneliness at USC, Emma flees to Harlem.

Thurman has wonderfully portrayed the Harlem of the 1920s, showing Emma at night clubs, rent parties, vaudville shows and dreadful employment agencies. He portrays a whole panorama of characters from black writers to bellboys and maids to college students and schoolteachers as well as white writers interested in Blacks. Thurman shows Emma's heartaches in a romance with a light-skinned black man who uses her, takes her money, and betrays her again and again. The novel revolves around the heroine's illusions about the world and herself like, and her struggles to survive when her illusions are shattered again and again. Thurman has written a novel equivalent to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice where our heroine struggles with her own prejudices. Black the Berry is a brilliant novel both offering piercing psychological insight and illuminating a fascinating historical time.

Villaraigosa Wins as L.A's New Mayor!

Last Tuesday Antonio Villaraigoisa won as mayor of Los Angeles by 18 points. That was terrific. Two weeks earlier I had volunteered for Villaraigoisa in his westside office on Venice Boulevard. Two older men in their sixties were on the phones in the office where I sat, calling voters asking them who they were voting for and trying to convince them to vote for Villaraigosa. At the same time I input the results that other phone callers had gotten into the computer. After about an hour my wrists were beginning to hurt, and I was afraid of wrist injury as I’m prone to that sort of thing. A young woman reported in who was walking her neighborhood in Westchester for our candidate. There had been a huge grass-roots mobilization for weeks for Villaraigoisa. A couple times a week volunteers would call me.

Mine was just a tiny contribution but I wanted to make it as I think Los Angeles desperately needs a new mayor with a new voice and a new vision: for working people, civil liberties, and the environment. This city has been governed too long by men of little vision who make backroom deals like Hahn's appointees in the "pay-for-play" scandal where people got city contracts after giving Hahn appointees "contributions." I wanted to go to Villaraigosa victory celebration Tuesday nightbut I had to work, but I heard thousands were downtown, listening to gospel, mariachi, and rock ‘n roll in a tremendous party. What’s great is Villaraigoisa got support from voters from every part of the city—an amazing feat.

Actually, the grass-roots mobilization is the culmination of ten years of grass-roots work by trade unions and progressives to change Los Angeles. Over ten years ago progresssives in the LA County AFL-CIO elected Miguel Contreras the first Mexican-American president of the L.A. County AFL-CIO. Contreras made a huge difference, getting union members involved in working to elect progressive pro-trade union candidates for over 9 years. In 1996 I helped woman the phones at the Burbank headquarters of the steelworkers in a drive by L.A. County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO to elect progressives to state legislatures and L. A. City Council and we were successful! Slowly the labor electoral workers elected more progressives to the city council and the state legislators until the LA County AFL-CIO alongside fellow progressives had turned themselves into a political power. Year after year Contreras, the AFL-CIO, and fellow progressives did this electoral work.

We’ve elected state legislators, city councilpeople (we have a progressive majority) and now mayor! Hurrah!

Adrian Louis: Native American Odysseus

Adrian Louis’s book of poetry Among the Dog Eaters published by West End Press in 1992 is one of the best, most moving books of poetry I’ve read in years. I was asked to write an essay about working class poets of the western United States. Since most of the self-defined working class poets I knew lived in California, I searched for poets from other western states and stumbled on Louis who a member of the Lovelock Paiute tribe born and raised in Nevada. I’d read a couple of his poems in the anthology Modern American Poetry and was very impressed. The University of Nevada Reno press in 1999 has included him in Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Reading Dog Eaters I was more than impressed: I felt had had just read a major American poet. But I wouldn’t say he’s working class. After working as a journalist for Native American papers, he taught English for a decade at the Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. He writes many poems in Among the Dog Eaters about Lakota at Pine Ridge but I wouldn’t define Lakota as working class either, but I’ll get to that later.

Louis begins his first poem “Notes from Indian Country” with a quote from Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus boasts of his wiles, his fame, and his home. Louis in this poem is also boasting of his wiles in teaching; his pot gut; his can of Bud; his suffering of the “wannabees, squamen and white liberals/who pretend to save Indians by daylight;” and his home on Pine Ridge with its K-mart folding chairs. In this poem he is rewriting The Odyssey. Louis is very funny with dark humor , honesty, and audacity that make these poems a great read. Think Bukowski’s honesty combined with Whitman’s audacity.

Louis has given Nevada fine poetry. Actually, Louis is the first Nevada writer I’ve ever read. I don’t know much about Nevada, and my strongest Nevada memory is that afternoon I was o horrified by Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas praying for an escape. But Louis’s Nevada is very different, evoking that time in Northern Nevada a hundred years ago the Paiute prophet Wovoka started the Ghost Dance religion. In Louis’ poem “A Visit to My Mother’s Grave” he sees his skeletons the Ghost Dancers “dance/in the burnished morning.” and in this amazing, lyric poem he ends it with his singing and praying for “this soil of Nevada/this soil of Wovoka/this song of love/for my people.” He does look to the dance for heroes and moments of redemption and hope in the past of his home.

This book doesn't only look backward but is a book drenched in love and honesty about the present. The honesty sears in the next poem “At the Knight’s Inn in Reno,” an Indian bar, where he and the other Indians seems imprisoned wanting to go home to their mother earth which has murdered but “we helped the white man/do the dirty deed.” Louis is unsparingly honest both about himself and his struggles with alcoholism as well as self-destructiveness of some of his people he loves so dearly. In the Afterword Lakota journalist Tim Giago says, “the poetry of Adrian Louis is a must for all serious students of Indian literature because it grabs the liberal dreamers by the nape of the neck and forces them to look at reality.”

In ar brilliant moving poem “Breakfast at Conoco Convenience Store in Pine Ridge” Louis describes Pine Ridge as a town mixing up desire and defeat: “It is the town I grew up in/and left only to return, forever tethered./I will not scorn it as a world governed by grandmothers, welfare, and wine./It has been my sanctuary. It has been my home.” For Louis Northern Nevada Indian country is the same as Pine Ridge, so in a way these are all Nevada poems because Louis is writing about his “home, his sanctuary” where he constantly struggles with his demons. He can't live there sober but he can't leave Pine Ridge either. Like the Odyssey this book is dominated by the idea of "home."

The poet does talk about leaving home. In the poem “At a Grave in an Eastern City” he’s visiting Kerouac’s grave but one stanza etches out a impoverished childhood in Northern Nevada with a outhouse, a shack with no water, the oldest of twelve kids and then hitchhiking America six times in the cities searching for Kerouac’s catharsis and open roads but those roads always lead back to the Indian territory--home. The poems careen between “Unholy Redemptions" about striving for those moments of redemptions and then “Tombstones” sad funny elegies for friends who ha died. Redemption, tombstones, love, home, drunkenness—Among the Dog Eaters includes it all.

Years ago leaders of the American Indian movement told an audience of white leftists that Marx was another European whose ideas are oppressive to the Indians. Marx like most 19 century European thinkers adopted the idea that humanity has progressed, but for Marx progress was from primitive tribes like the Iroquois to feudalism to capitalism and eventually to communism.

Canadian Peter Kulchyski in his article “Socialism and Native Americans” says that Marx did have some positive insights about Native Americans. Kulchyskis argues that Marx describes ”forcefully in Capital that the dissolution of the bonds between working people and their land was a central moment in the history of capitalism. However, such dissolutions did not take place in a vacuum: they were hotly contested in the old world as in the new.”

Futher, Kulchyski says that many Native Americans, forced into the cities, are exploited as workers and fought back with strikes and unions. But Native Americans are not, particularly those in rural reservations, working class. Many tribes still have the land, which provides subsistence. Native Americans provide another track of resistance to capitalism in their centuries long battles to retain and protect their land, their cultural identity, and their nationhood. Louis is a tremendous voice of this other track of resistance heading straight back to Paiute, Wovoka, the Lakota and Wounded Knee.

In Louis's poems he describes his work as a college teacher/writer alienated by the “white UFOs” who dominate his college. He writes very little about the work done by the Lakota since his focus isn't work. Instead he's a moralist, wanting himself as well as the people around him to improve. He puts himself on the same level as those around him: engaged in the same struggle as the people around him to survive, to resist, and to hope. He tells his stories of his long battles to make his home a better place.

If one reason we look at working class poetry is to see those who the economic system has exploited and how they survived, resisted, and hope--the majority of the North American population-- then it makes to me perfect sense to include those, like Louis and other Native American writers, while not working class, are a parallel resistance tradition. For Louis' story--how he tries to survive, resist, and hope is all our stories.

Healing from the War: Naomi Hirahara's first novel

Naomi Hirahara has written a fine first novel in Summer of the Big Bachi. A former editor of the Rafu Shimpo, the bilingual Japanese American daily in Los Angeles, Hirahara has both written an engaging mystery story and examined the lives of the generation of Japanese Americans coming of age during World War II. So Summer of the Big Bachi has transformed the mystery story into a generation’s story.

The hero, Mas Arai, a 69-year old survivor of the A-bomb blast in Hiroshima, works as a gardener in Altadena/Pasadena area just north of Los Angeles. Mas is one of 500 Hiroshima survivors who were born in the United States and then returned to their native country after the war. Mas’s favorite pastime is gambling at the backroom of the lawnmower shop owned by Wishbone Tanaka, a survivor of the relocation camps.

One of Mas’s best friend isTug Yamada, a member of the 442^nd , the legendary army unit of Japanese Americans that won an amazing amount of Purple Hearts and Silver Stars for their heroism fighting in Italy. Throughout the novel, more and more of these men’s lives from 1945-1999 are revealed. We learn about their wives, their children, their careers, their hobbies, their close friendships—how they made a life in Southern California. Mas’s philosophy has always been, “[Y]ou can’t blame the Bomb, Accept it, go, and forget.” Mas like his friend Tug is a ultimate survivor who went on to create a rich life after the war.

All these men believe in “bachi” of the title”: if you hurt someone, you soon get hurt in return (what comes around, goes around). There is also a mystery involved two men who came separately from Japan. Both the older man Nakane and the young reporter Yuki Kimura are looking for Joji Haneda who was Mas’s childhood friend in Hiroshima.

Despite not wanting to help either man, Mas sends the young reporter Yuki to the house of Junko Kakita, the mistress of Joji Haneda . Yuki arrives to find the mistress has just been attacked. After the police arrest Yuki as the suspected attacked, Mas tries to investigate seriously. Yuki is alone in California, so Mas steps in as a substitute grandfather to help him. So now we have a traditional crime for this mystery to solve, but some of the clues are 50 years in the past. The novel moves between the mysteries of 1999 Los Angeles and the mystery of 1945 Hiroshima.

As Mas investigates, we learn both what he and his teenaged friends had to do to survive in wartime and occupied Japan Some of the bad guys are the Japanese chauvinists who harassed American-born Japanese in Hiroshima because they had English-language books. Hirahara exames the questions of loyalty to country, to friends, and to self. Another bad guy was teenaged Riki Kimura who sold heroin on the black market when Hiroshima was occupied by the U.S. The novel investigates a further mystery: where does evil reside?

Mas doesn’t think like his friend Wishbone that the world owes him because the Americans locked him up during the war. For Wishbone, the Americans are the evil ones. While Mas sympathizes with the Nisei’s suffering, he feels differently after living through Hiroshima: “Once you witnessed that, you saw evil, and it didn’t live in just Americans or Japanese. It lived close by in friends, in neighbors, and most frighteningly, inside yourself.” Finally, the novel concerns itself with forgiving oneself for surviving Hiroshima and not being able to save one’s friends. Hirahara has transformed the mystery novel into a fiction that searches into the mysteries of life itself. She has written a splendid first novel.

Hollywood Boulevard Anti-War March 3/19

It was raining with a slight drizzle when I walked through Hollywood to Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street at noon for the anti-war march commemorating the 2^nd year of the war. I stopped to buy a candy bar at a coffeehouse at Selma and Cahuenga, noticing the two young L.A.P.D. in the front of the room drinking their coffee? Coffee break? Munching my chocolate down Hollywood Boulevard, I saw a couple more L.A.P.D. lounging next to their bikes. Most of the streets were blocked off: Hollywood Boulevard was and most of the side streets were.

Actually this march almost didn’t get its permit because the local businesses thought it would be bad for business, but a deal was cut at the last moment calling the march a “parade,” so it was legalized. Actually, most of the police looked relaxed, hanging out in doorways. The anti-war marchers have proved themselves to be peaceful crowd after two years of marching down Hollywood Boulevard. The drizzle is a little harder as I stand on the southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard half listening to the speeches. Speeches and songs go on for a while, with a rousing anti-war lesbian demanding both the Iraq War to end and the right to marry her fiancee getting the most rousing applause.

More people kept on arriving in the drizzle until there must have been 5,000 people there—maybe more. It’s hard to tell. I manage to take photos in the break in the rain. The most prominent new banner is for Iraq Veterans Against the War marching near Veterans for Peace. The Iraq Veterans Against the War carried a U.S. flag draped coffin. To me, they were the most moving. It’s good to see they have organized. I also remember the seven year old girl with long blonde hair holding up a huge American flag with a peace sign instead of stars—she marched behind her mother.

I

Top Forty: Los Angeles' Top Forty Works of Fiction

The first part of oldies But goodies, the latest hits plus some obscure numbers you need to know. From Oscar Acosta's radical Chicano lawyer hanging out with the Brown Berets to Joseph Hansen's gay detectives searching for clues during the AIDs plague:

Acosta, Oscar- Revolt of the Cockroach People. – novel of Chicano revolt in1960s by the legendary Oscar “Zeta” Acosta

Adamic, Louis. Laughing in the Jungle. Debunker novel about LA in 1920s-the first fine novel showing poor immigrant struggling to achieve his dreams.

Boyle, T.C. Tortilla Curtain. Novel of the two couples in Topanga Canyon: the wealthy Anglo and struggling Mexican-American

Bukowski, Charles. Post Office .Story explains why a postal worker would go postal.

Cain, James. Mildred Pierce. Brilliant story capturing life of single working woman in Glendale during the 1930s.

Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. – the first, the great, detective novel.

Connelly, Michael. Angel’s Flight. Fine detective work dealing with mid-1990s conflicts over L.A.P.D. and race.

Didion, Joan. Play It As It Lays. The great car story of a alienated actress driving.

Dunne, John Gregory. True Confessions. Corruption and murder in high places in Catholic church in late 1940s L.A.

Fante, John. Ask the Dust. Wrenching tale about poor young man living in Bunker Hill and struggling to have his dream of being a writer..

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s last unfinished novel describing the last brilliant Hollywood movie producer.

Fitch, Janet. White Oleander- Girl surviving the craziness of the foster care in this tale.

Fuchs, Daniel. The Golden West- lovely short stories and a novella about Hollywood by Jewish-American working class writer who worked a sreenwriter in 1930s-1950s.

Himes, Chester. If He Hollers, Let Him Go African-American fights racism in South Central- best novel written about Los Angeles during World War II.

Hansen, Joseph. Early Graves. Gay detective investigates deaths of gays with AIDs.

The second half of oldies but goodies, the latest hits plus some obscure numbers you need to know, from 1920s exposes of corporate corruption by Upton Sinclair to 2000 exploration of East L.A. by Luis Rodriguez and many points in between:

Hirahara, Naomi. Summer of the Big Bachi. Mystery about Japanese-Americans spanning a time period from war-torn Japan to present-day Los Angeles.

Huneven, Michelle. Jamesland. Funny novel explores L.A's obsessions with eating good food and exploring new religions.

Huxley, Aldous. After Many Summer Dies a Swan- Brilliant satire of Hollywood and its environs in the 1930s.

Jackson, Helen Hunt. Ramona. 1st novel about Southern California published in late 19th century about half-Mexican/half-Native young woman Ramona and her sweetheart having hard times in Anglo era.

Kadohata, Cynthia. In the Heart of the Valley of Love- surviving the horrors of postacolyptic days of 2052 Los Angeles.

McCoy, Horace. They Shoot Horses Don’t They. Classic noir about Depression L.A. marathon dancers.

Morales, Alejandro. Brick People. Magic realist novel about epic struggle between Mexican-American brickyard workers and the Simons family who owns the brick yeard.

Mosley, Walter. Walking the Dog- brilliant novel about African-American ex-con rebuilding his life in Southcentral.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Blonde. Sizzling fictionalized novel about actress Marilyn Monroe.

Ponce, Mary Helen. The Wedding. Novel about working class Chicana’s large wedding.

Rechy, John. The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. One of the best L.A. novels of the 1980s about Mexican-American woman surviving hard times.

Revoyr, Nina. Southland. Searing novel about two generations of blacks and Japanese in Crenshaw district.

Rense, Rip. The Last Byline.Captures the decline of the old time newspapers in California and the rise of corporate journalism

Rochlin, Michael. Cascaron. Wonderful novel about the last days of the Mexican ranchos in Southern California in the 1850s.

Rodriguez, Luis. The Republic of East Los Angeles. Fine stories about East Los Angeles.

Schulberg, Bud. What Makes Sammy Run. Classic noir expose of film industry and a nasty movie executive.

See, Carolyn. Making History. Living with random violence on the Westside.

Sinclair, Upton. Oil. The first strong anti-boomer novel exposing corruption in the oil industry in the 1920s.

Tervalon, Jervey. Understand This- Surviving drugs in a black neighborhood.

Tobar, Hector. Tatooed Soldier. Great work dealing with Guatemalan immigrant on the city’s downtown mean streets during the 1992 riots

Waugh, Evelyn. The Loved One. Brilliant satire on 1930s L.A. from a master.

West, Nathanel. Day of the Locust. Classic noir on down-and-out Hollywood wannabees.

Woods, Paula. Inner City Blues. Mystery with African-American LAPD detective heroine investigating murder during 1992 riots.

Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables. Dazzling stories about Japanese-Americans in L.A. from through 1930s farms through the post war period.

Top Forty: Los Angeles's Best 40 Works of Fiction

The second half of oldies but goodies, the latest hits plus some obscure numbers you need to know, from 1920s exposes of corporate corruption by Upton Sinclair to 2000 exploration of East L.A. by Luis Rodriguez and many points in between:

Hirahara, Naomi. Summer of the Big Bachi. Mystery about Japanese-Americans spanning a time period from war-torn Japan to present-day Los Angeles.

Huneven, Michelle. Jamesland. Funny novel explores L.A's obsessions with eating good food and exploring new religions.

Huxley, Aldous. After Many Summer Dies a Swan- Brilliant satire of Hollywood and its environs in the 1930s.

Isherwood, Christopher. A Single Man. Fine tale of a single day in life of gay professor--captures Los Angeles of the early 1960s.

Kadohata, Cynthia. In the Heart of the Valley of Love- surviving the horrors of postacolyptic days of 2052 Los Angeles.

McCoy, Horace. They Shoot Horses Don’t They. Classic noir about Depression L.A. marathon dancers.

Morales, Alejandro. Brick People. Magic realist novel about epic struggle between Mexican-American brickyard workers and the Simons family who owns the brick yeard.

Mosley, Walter. Walking the Dog- brilliant novel about African-American ex-con rebuilding his life in Southcentral.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Blonde. Sizzling fictionalized novel about actress Marilyn Monroe.

Ponce, Mary Helen. The Wedding. Novel about working class Chicana’s large wedding.

Rechy, John. The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. One of the best L.A. novels of the 1980s about Mexican-American woman surviving hard times.

Revoyr, Nina. Southland. Searing novel about two generations of blacks and Japanese in Crenshaw district.

Rense, Rip. The Last Byline.Captures the decline of the old time newspapers in California and the rise of corporate journalism

Rochlin, Michael. Cascaron. Wonderful novel about the last days of the Mexican ranchos in Southern California in the 1850s.

Rodriguez, Luis. The Republic of East Los Angeles. Fine stories about East Los Angeles.

Schulberg, Bud. What Makes Sammy Run. Classic noir expose of film industry and a nasty movie executive.

See, Carolyn. Making History. Living with random violence on the Westside.

Sinclair, Upton. Oil. The first strong anti-boomer novel exposing corruption in the oil industry in the 1920s.

Tervalon, Jervey. Understand This- Surviving drugs in a black neighborhood.

Tobar, Hector. Tatooed Soldier. Great work dealing with Guatemalan immigrant on the city’s downtown mean streets during the 1992 riots

Waugh, Evelyn. The Loved One. Brilliant satire on 1930s L.A. from a master.

West, Nathanel. Day of the Locust. Classic noir on down-and-out Hollywood wannabees.

Woods, Paula. Inner City Blues. Mystery with African-American LAPD detective heroine investigating murder during 1992 riots.

Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables. Dazzling stories about Japanese-Americans in L.A. from through 1930s farms through the post war period.

Michael Connelly Writes LA Brilliantly

Two colleagues of mine have been praising detective writer Michael Connelly for a long time, saying he's their favorite Los Angeles detective writer I've never read any Connelly until one of my students loaned me his novel Angel's Flight. The novel was a gripping read, capturing the period of the mid-1990s in L.A. when the town was split by racial conflict and all attempts to reform the L.A.P.D. were making the slowest of slow progress.

In Angel's Flight LAPD detectives find two dead bodies in Angel's Flight, the much beloved funicular railroad downtown that takes people up to the top of Bunker Hill. One of the dead bodies is the black civil rights lawyerHoward Elias whose specialty is suing the L.A.P.D. over cop brutality. Obiviously, the L.A.P.D. officers he had sued are prime suspects. The white lead detective Harry Bosch and his two black detective partners have to investigate cops as well as any other suspect while the cops resent being looked on as suspects. The city leaders are terrified of another riot like the 1992 one while black churchmen lead protests demanding justice. Angel's Flight captures those racial conflicts in Los Ageles better than any other piece of fiction I've read.

Part of the pleasures of the novel is its use of locations. Besides finding the muder victims on Angel's Flight, the detectives go to the deceased lawyer's office which is in the Bradbury Building which Connelly calls "the dusty jewel of downtown." Then the detectives go to the lawyer's apartment which is one of the new apartment towers downtown as well as his home in Baldwin Hills and then stop by Grand Central Market. The characters really inhabit the downtown streets as well as the corridors of power in Parker Center and the houses of the wealthy in Brentwood in a way similar to how Phillip Marlowe explores the whole town.

Another of the novel's pleasures is the naive hard working hero idealistic Harry Bosch who wants to think well of his fellow white cops as well as investigate them as possible suspects. Bosche is forever getting in trouble with his bureaucratic superiors--the novel does a great job of caputring the experience of working for a large city bureaucracy. Bosch like the other white cops can't believe in Elias's latest case accusing the L.A.P.D. of torturing an innocent black man; it's only later in the novel when Bosch finds that Elias was completely right: his client was innocent and manhandled by the cops. Part of the novel is watching idealistic Harry Bosch who peels away lies including the lies he tries to believe in. The hero has to face his own demons and terrors in his investigation, so Connelly is writing a fine character as hero who goes from naivite to knowledge. At the same time Bosch has to deal with how to keep his integrity while working within this bureaucracy which tries to protect itself.

Another pleasure is Connelly's ability to capture the media frenzy of press on the trail of a hot story at the press conference at Parker Center. He shows us Los Angeles buffeted by conflicts among the L.A.P.D., frenzied media, and community civil rights activtists--his LA is real as today's news story. While other novels might have the place right, Angel's Flight captures both the place, the period of the mid-1990s and the periods intense conflicts. My colleagues were right--Michael Connelly is a brilliant detective writer, a worthy succesor to Raymond Chandler.

"Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad" Party with Golem

Last Thursday I went to see two groups from New York: “Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad,” vaudville, comedy, music, burlesque of seven young Jewish women; and Golem, a klezmer/rock band. It was a soldout show in the little backroom at Tangier Restaurant in Los Angeles

“New Jewish Girls Gone Bad” is fronted by the Goddess Perlman, a singer/comic/bad Jewish chick. Well, if I ever wondered what raunchy vaudeville on the 1920s was like, I got to see it. Perlman entered in one extraordinarily breast bearing costume after another, and acted like a female Lenny Bruce. Fifty years ago Bruce showed a Jewish boy could talk dirty, and it’s only taken fifty years until a Jewish girl could also talk dirty on stage. She said such lines as “I put the whore back in hora.” The audience didn’t laugh—it seemed too much for them as if they were thinking, “Nice Jewish girls don’t talk that way onstage.” Well, sometimes they do.

In the show there were two comics telling us about dating disasters; a spoken/word poet Vanessa Hidrary, a writer/actress whose work combined Jewish feminism, slam poetry, and hip-hop to affirm her Jewish identity to jokers in bars; singer Michelle Citrin, a former Jewish camp singer who wore dreadlocks and sang her own blusey songs. The best of all were then Shiksa dancers (a.k.a. Hot Pink Feathers from San Francisco) came in stage. First, three young women dressed like Eastern European girls from Fiddler on the Roof arrived, moaning about who will fix them up a marriage match and then two young women dressed as Hasids with big round fur hats flirt with them. Then the two Hasids proceed to do a striptease. Definitely, not a pious reworking of the tradition. At the end all the performers came back in star studded short blue costumes and did a can can.

The second hour was the wonderful band the Golem, named after the original Frankenstein created by a rabbi in Prague some centuries back. Annette Ezekiel, who is a bandleader, accordionist and singer, created this new Golem. Ezekial is also a diva, commanding the room with her brilliant singing, her dark beauty, and her joy in the music. The fine vocalist Aaron Diskin also helped wonderfully to bring Golem alive. They were a tight, superb band, bringing to life that jazzy nightclub side of klezmer but reworking it for 2005. The band sang songs from the new CD “Homesick Song,” powerful songs about love, usually from a women’s viewpoint; each of the songs was set in a different city of southern and Eastern Europe. While “Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad” were in-you-face confrontative, Golem was seductive, wooing the audience with it superb musical reworking of traditional klezmer added to jazz and rock.

Seeing the two acts together reminded me that in American popular culture the defintion of Jewishness is Fiddler on the Roof, celebrating a life lived in Eastern Europe 100 years ago--a definite act of nostalgia. My great-grandmother was the last women in my family who had an arranged marriage and that was before 1900. But what's omitted is the last one hundred years of living, as if social history--the actual lives of three generation of Jewish Americans-- is a big taboo. Well, "Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad" and Golem gave us a little taste of the last 100 years of Jewish life we've been missing on stage.

Extreme Weather in Southern California: looking at Mike Davis again

In the last week in February 2005 Southern California has had flash floods that covered the Hollywood Freeway and blocks of Hollywood; a stretch of the San Gabriel Mountains right near Mt. Wilson which a gotten 100" of rain a year; water spout-like hurricanes off Santa Monica; avalanche conditions in the San Gabriel Mountains; a huge sinkhole opened up in the middle of the road in Sun Valley where an engineer died; and mud slides in Malibu, Pasadena, Brentwood, Silverlake, Hacienda Heights et al.

When Mike Davis published in 1998 his book Ecology of Fear detailing Southern California's extreme weather, he was loudly criticized as a catastrophe-monger, a man who looked everywhere and saw Apocalypse. A Malibu realtor named Brady Westwater sent a 22-page letter containing Davis's supposed flaws to local media, and then local media starting with New Times regurgitated Westwater without fact-checking him. No media this last week would now argue with Davis's contention that Los Angeles has extreme weather.

In Davis's first chapter of Ecology of Fear, he explains extreme weather and environmental hazards in Southern California better than any book I know. He details thirty years of scientific research to understand "deep history of Mediterranean landscapes" which include Southern California, Italy, central Chile, the costal zone of South African's Cape Province and West and South Australia. Both drought and regular fires are centuries-long features of the Meditarrean environment, so plants have adapted: they are drought-resitant and some need fire to send off seeds. The first Spanish explorers saw evidence of great floods and experienced earthquakes, but the Spanish had long familiarity with the Mediterranean climate of Southern Spain.

The problem is that Anglo-Americans were familiar with the ecology of England and eastern United States: regular seasons with rainfall that didn't vary that much over the years; rivers that ran year-round; and stable ground without earthquakes. They based their ideas of natural law on the "uniformitariaism" of these eastern environments where one year was very much like the previous. So Anglo-Americans based their ideas of "average" climate and rainfall on this Eastern ecology, thinking of Los Angles as having a naturally sunny, warm climate. Then they created a whole publicity campaign that successfully sold the image of California as endlessly sunny, pleasant climate. This image of Southern California just wasn't true.

In Mediteranean climates like Los Angles Davis says "high-intensity , low-frequency events ('disasters') are the ordinary agents of landscape and ecology change." Our ecology naturally produces floods, mudslides, drought, and fire while our geology produces earthquakes. In a ecology where fires, floods, and mudslides regularly occur, they occur most extremely in floodplains at the base of mountains: Los Angeles is one such floodplain at the base of the San Gabriel and Santa Monica Mountains. Davis adds, "consequently, [these floodplains] are at risk from multiple-interlinked disaster .... Drought, for examples, dries fuel for wildfires which, in turn, removed ground cover and makes soils impermeable to rain."

But throughout the 20th century people have ignored Southern California's ecology of disaster and have ignored common sense in building homes. They have put homes in harm's way: homes have been built in areas such as La Conchita or on the cliffs in Mailbu which have regular mudslides; homes have been built all over the foothills and mountains which have fires occurring every decade; a huge city in a semi-desert has been built with little conserving of water flooding down in winterstorms. Davis feels most of the tragedies such as the recent nine deaths from the mudslide in La Conchita were avoidable if we treated the land differently.

Further, after each flood or fire or earthquake the federal government through FEMA gives low-interest loans or even outright disaster aid for people to rebuild in the same dangerous areas. Davis argues this "diaster amnesia is a federally subsidized luxury." Right now FEMA has been on the radio announcing it will give its low-interest loans to homeowners affected by the recent mudslides.

Davis argues instead building in "redundancy" in emergency systems to help us through our extreme weather and geology as well as reduce their impact. Extreme weather will occur again, but Davis feels we can reduce its impact through "hazard zoning": exluding intensive housing on "most disaster-prone terrains" of foothills and wetlands . Also, increasing apartments inside the city instead of sprawling new housing through more disaster-prone foothills and plains would save money on flood control systems.

The federal government should end its low-interest loans to homeowners on dangerous hillsides previously harmed by flood or fires. Homeowners can rebuild, but the taxpayers won't subsidize them. If some homeowners then abandon their hillside homes, the city could buy the land from them and we might wind up with more hillside parks--Los Angeles desperately needs new parks. We already have tougher requirements for retrofitting buildings to make them earthquake-safe.

In the past Southern California has had regular droughts, so it needs to adopt a saving water ethic including having catchbasins and barrels to catch rainwater using it to water gardens, lawns and parks. Also, we could get rid many lawns and instead use drought-resistant plants in our gardens as these reduce our use of water. In Los Angeles we've already adopted low-flush toilets and showerheads--that is good. This redundancy in our water use would lessen the impact of the next drought.

Davis's ideas on how to avoid the harm of future floods, earthquakes, drought, and mudslides are sensible and practical. He is hardly, as his critics have said, a man yelling catastrophe about Los Angels but a man with intelligent ideas how to avoid catastrophe. It those like Westwater and Davis' critics who ignore such sensible ideas to make people safe that are the producers of disaster.

Villaraigosa for LA's Mayor

Villaraigosa is the only one of the 5 mayoral candidates with a vision for Los Angeles that would actually solve some of the city's problems while the other four candidates--Hahn, Hertz berg, Parks, and Alarcon--are only offering band aids that would keep LA's wounds festering.

On the city council, he helped resolve the MTA bus strike in November 2003 while Mayor Hahn was unable to do so. As a board member of the MTA, he's done necessary work to link transit and land use planning as well as adopt sustainable building pratices for all large projects.

Villaraigosa says to solve Los Angeles traffic gridlock we need to a comprehensive plan to upgrade the roads, build more rail lines including expanding the lines we have, improve the bus system until it is first class, and create more bikeways. He argues that to solve the housing crisis we need to build more middle class homes and more affordable homes for the poor as well as create tax incentives for families to help them buy their first home. Homes, schools and transporation should all be coordinated.

While in the state legislature he was important in passing a $2.1 billion initiative effort to provide parks and open space throughout the state. By helping to pass the bill for the Los Angeles river conservancy, he brought more than $87 million to Southern California to spur development of parks along the Los Angeles River and he also funded an extensive expansion of water quality enforcement by the state. He’s by far the best candidate for the environment with his vision for a green Los Angeles: planting a million trees to both conserve water and improve air; improve air quality; reduce dumping of toxics in the beaches; increasing recycling throughout the city; and a host of other ideas. He’s the best candidate for increasing much needed park space: he wants to build parks, particularly a string of pocket parks along the Los Angeles River.

For the economy, he further suggests to solve the problem of poverty in the inner city we need a community-development bank to improve the economy in low-income neighborhoods. Villaraigosa would work harder than any other candidate to extend the living-wage ordinance and build more affordable housing. With low-income workers making more money, they would immediately spend the money, spurring the economy. Building housing and also rehabilitating existing slum housing would also employ construction workers and would positively affect the economy. Villaragoisa’s economic solutions will benefit citizens of all classes. Further, with poor people getting higher wages and better housing, there would be more social peace, again benefiting all classes. His plan of adding more police without a tax increase would also help social peace.

Villaraigosa has real achievements both when he was in the state legislature and on the city council. When he was in the state legislature, he authored a state health insurance program, “Healthy Families,” currently serving 600,000 children of the working poor--this is one of the most important pieces of legislation passed in California in the last decade. Also he led the passage of a $9.1 billion initiative to rebuild and modernize California schools.

He is a politician who has done more for the environment than any other in Los Angeles and he's also extremely knowledgable about transportation issues, important for solving traffic gridlock. All in all he's already improved California's health, schools, environment, transportation, and water quality. That is quite a record. As mayor he would support ideas that would improve schools, health, transportation, the economy, and public safety. Los Angeles needs Villaragoisa’s vision and needs him as mayor.

Villaraigosa versus the other candidates

The other four candidates running for Los Angeles's mayor don't even come close to Villaraigosa.

Bob Hertzberg is a moderate business-orientated Democrat. His best is to use the rubber from heaps of used tires to make rubber sidewalks, a good idea but far from an environmental plan to solve L.A.'s many environmental problems. To improve the economy, he suggests the mayor persuade Korean banks in invest in this city, but Koreans and Japanese companies have been investing in L.A. for years with little impact. His major idea is to break-up Los Angeles Unified School District, but as mayor he has little power to do so, and can only suggest that the state legislature take action. He has a few proposals to help driving such as no roadwork during rush hour, but these plans won't solve traffic gridlock. He has a couple ideas how to reduce runaway film production by eliminating $20,000/day location, but this will so little for the economy.

Richard Alarcon is a decent liberal Democrat, but he, as many other candidates want to add 1,000 more cops. His major ideas are to roll back DWP rates 11%--nice but a quick fix, solving no long-term problems. His idea for improving transportation by creating a Green Business Program to provide tax credits for business that have good wages and give public transportation to their employees would have little or no impact on reducing traffic gridlock He had some decent ideas for improving schools--reduce administrative spending; increase per capita spending; localize decision making--but the mayor has little influence over the huge bureaucracy of the Los Angeles United School District. He wants to get rid of pay-to-play for awarding city contracts by limiting campaign contributions of developers and lobbyists to $100. That's a nice idea but laws such as these have been passed for a decade with little discernible effort.

As for Bernard Parks, he has been a good representative for his district, getting more than $7 million in funds for the redevelopment of the Vision Theater in Leimert Park, so arts and culture can be catalyst for economic development in the African-American area. He has supported the Lula May Washington Dance Studio and African Marketplace and other art projects in L.A.’s. He is serious about supporting arts through funding the Cultural Affairs Department, has helped support gay rights, and has a good transportation plan that integrates pushing for more rail lines, better buses, and improved street driving. His business orientated idea to help the economy through tax incentives would do little. Often Parks seems to be more campaigning against Mayor Hahn than giving forth ideas to solve the city problems. He has made witty remarks attacking Hahn such as "asking Mayor Hahn about reforming the pay-to-play scandal is like asking Fat Albert about dietary tips."

Finally, Mayor Hahn's boasts his two most notable accomplishments were appointing Bratton as head of the L.A.P.D. and stopping Valley succession--a very shortlist. As for the environment, he as one small accomplishment: getting the DWP not to invest in a Utah coal plant. Other than that, he's do nothing for the environment; for example, he hasn't pushed the DWP to increase its use of non-polluting energy sources.

During the long bus strike in fall 2003 he walked a picket line but was unable to negotiate an end to the long, drawn-out lockout/strike. During the February floods he was again M.I.A. He's usually not there, without a vision, without ideas. He has been decent to labor, supporting both the grocery workers and the longshorepeople during their strikes as well as allowing for raises of city hall workers. But that is not enough to be re-elected mayor. His administration has been tarnished by the pay-to-play scandal of giving city contracts to developers who had previously given him campaign contracts.

All in all Villaraigosa beats out his four competitors for mayor in terms of previous accomplishments and he has the most far-reaching and detailed vision for Los Angeles.

Hollywood Floods

When I drive to my mother's house for dinner at 5:30 Monday during the storm, the streets are wet but there is barely a drizzle, so when I start east at 7:00 pm down Melrose Avenue through Hollywood I think there would no problems. Driving through Melrose and Highland there is a an inch or two of water over the intersection but I keep on going. I'm an old hand now after a month of storms of driving through slightly flooded intersections.

Then as I approach Vine Street the cars are really backed up and I could see the westbound lanes are flooded. There are two lanes going east where I am in the left lane with the right lane flooded. I think for a second maybe I should turn around but I didn't. Instead I slowly inch forward until I got to the intersection. Yes, on Vine going north there is a couple inches of rain flooding the street with a car stranded in the middle. Big water ahead! I see there is a couple inches of rain all over the intersection--I'm driving a sedan, not a truck or a SUV. I inch forward through the water saying a prayer. Now I'm driving on water, praying my brakes hold up. I keep inching forward until finally I'm out of the intersection. Oh my god, I made it.

On the other side of Vine Streets Melrose Avenue is again clear of water as I pass by Paramount Studios on my north. Then approaching Bronson Avenue I see that the cars are slowing down ahead. I know at Melrose and Wilton Avenue there was in previous storms at least an inch or two of rain. Two weeks ago the traffic light at that intersection had gone out in a power outage that effected the whole area, so I decide to turn right to avoid the Melrose/Wilton intersection, taking backstreets. One street is blocked off--I guess it had flooded so the neighbors wisely blocked it off. I take backstreets the few blocks until home but there are strangely a lot more cars--obviously taking detours as I am.

As I turn into the parking garage undearneth my apartmenthouse, my neighbors are with buckets bailing out the inches of water on the garage floor near the entrance. I park my car at the opposite end of the parking garage, put my purse in the apartment. Twice in the previous month's storms the power had gone out--once for three hours. In late December I had a friend over for dinner during the storm when lightening and thunder happened together right over my apartment house--the lights went out including the computer. God, I thought my building had been hit. I lit candles and we continued eating--what else is there to do? Back to the quail! Later I checked my computer which luckily was protected by a surge protector so the computer was O.K.

Now, thank God, the lights are on in my apartment. Then I return to help by carrying buckets full of water to dump in the street. They fill up buckets while I haul them out of the garage. One neighbor said that Beverly and Western is flooded. I learn later that it had about 2 feet of water, the power is out in the neighborhood, and also homes are flooded. With six of us working at filling up water buckets and dumping them in the street we clear out the water in the gargage in about 15 more minutes.

On the news on channel 9 I see the Hollywood Freeway at Santa Monica is totally covered with water. Cars had gotten stranded (thank god it wasn't me), firemen had to rescue the people, and towtrucks had to tow out their cars. In an hour a storm cell had dropped 1 1/2 inches of rain over Hollywood and then moved north and dissipated. That's what is so weird. The storm can be drizzles all day like today and then pow! a storm cell in an hour can flood the streets! Because all four lanes of the Hollywood Freeway were closed, cars were backed up on the soutside for miles and on the north for miles while police were taking cars slowly off the freeways. Cars must be crisscrossing Hollywood trying to avoid flooded intersections and the freeway.

The funny thing is now it isn't even raining. Well, I hope that stops the flooding of Hollywood.

Kevin's Starr's Coast of Dreams

Kevin Starr’s Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge 1990-2003 is the sixth in a series of books on California history, and the only one written just at the end of the decade it is about. The book gets some things very right about California in the 1990s while it completely misses other.

What’s best about the book the chapter “The Boys from Texas” where he brilliantly covers the mid-1990s deregulation of California’s energy and then the resulting energy crisis shortage of early 2000-1. Starr writes as an angry California nationalist not wanting his state to become an energy colony of “the boys from Texas” but instead energy independent. Further, he gives a good argument for an very unpopular opinion: Governor Gray Davis did as much as he could to get the state through the energy shortage.

Starr in "Zen California" has an enlightening description of the state’s multitude of religious communities including Hindus; Japanense and Tibetan Buddhists; New Age; Protestants, covering the Pentecostal revival; Catholics, focusing on the impact of Mexican Catholics; and Jews. In “Diversity” he paints good portraits of the growth of immigrant communities from Mexicans to Asians to Muslims, Armenians, and Russians. In his chapter “Immigrants to the Rescue” he powerfully argues that immigrant busnisspeople have started small businesses and new industries and also immigrant professionals have important jobs in high tech industries--both were key to the state’s economic recovery.

Starr counters the prejudiced idea that California is becoming a nightmare of impoverished immigrants by showing how many immigrants are contributing to economic life as well as becoming established by buying homes and moving into the middle and upper middle classes. His idea of the “dream” does capture these dream riven people. These immigrant success stories need to be told—Starr does a good job of telling it.

But even here Starr ignores an important story. He neglects entirely another key event: Latino trade union leaders such as Gilbert Cedillo as well as immigrant activists such as Jose Guiterrez organized a huge demonstration against Proposition 187 and then started drives to naturalize Latinos and register them as voters. These registration drives helped to elect Latino politicians. Also Miguel Contreras, the new head of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO, had unionists work hard to mobilize Latinos and trade unionists, contributing to the effort to elect first Latino candidates and then progressive non-Latinos. These efforts helped create the strong progressive bloc of legislators in the state assembly and senate, thus changing both Los Angeles's and California's politics and policies.

Starr has similar strengths and weaknesses in his discussion of the environment. He gives an excellent statewide panorama of California’s environmental problem from sprawl in the Central Valley to statewide drought to conflict over redwoods to corruption in building Los Angeles's subway. The only environmental group he does discuss is Earth First--their attempt to stop Pacific Lumber’s cutting of old growth redwoods in Humboldt County--but he describes them as quaint but uncivil remnants of the 1960s.

His “Going Green” chapter omits the many citizen’s groups that have reshaped the state. In Los Angles, these groups have had great impact: a coalition West L.A. group saved from the developers a remnant of Ballona Wetlands, the last wetlands in Los Angeles; Friends of the Los Angeles River and Latino politicians got the state to pass 1999 bill establishing the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy as well as established bike paths along the river; the Desert Chapter of Los Angeles Sierra Club persuaded the U.S. congress to pass legislation for a new national park made up of Joshua Tree, Death Valley and parts of Mohave; the Chinatown Yard Alliance, which is a coalition of Anglo, Chinatown and Latino groups, successfully fought Mayor Riordan to keep the old railroad land called the Cornfields from being industrialized and got itinstead turned into park with an elementary school.

This is just Los Angeles—the missing story is even Los Angeles has a powerful environmental movement. The second missing story is that throughout the state environmental citizens groups were a political power. The third missing story is Anglo environmentalists on the Los Angeles’s Westside are now working politically with Chinese, blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in such groups as the Chinatown Yard Alliance. These citizens groups and coalitions are hardly 1960s remants but the new politics of the 1990s and the 2000s

What's Really Happening In L.A.

Even more problematical is Kevin Starr’s view of Los Angeles in his book Coast of Dreams. He gets the little details wrong, saying Santa Monica by the 1980s and 1990s had such irritating homeless that they “effective [were] creating a no-man-s-land between Santa Monica and the sea.” Nita Nickerson, one of my students, said that during this period as a pregnant woman she felt perfectly safe walking the area—hardly a no woman’s land. Starr's examples of catastrophe mostly occured in L.A.: horrifying murders, corrupt cops of the Rampart scandal, the 1992 riot, never ending ethnic tensions, dreadfully poor children, and out-of-control gangs. After reading Starr’s litany of catastrophes, some of my students were astounded to hear me call him a booster.

What’s quite missing is all the citizens groups who bravely battle to make Los Angeles livable. After the 1992 riot Los Angeles’s business and political establishment had established Rebuild LA to address the city’s poverty but it failed miserable. But Starr omits the real story: -Latino led AFL-CIO, immigrants rights groups and progressive Jewish, black Latino politicians and groups defeated Mayor Riordan’s attempts to privatize city services, which would have led to lower wages, producing even more poverty.

Then this coaltion fought for and won a livable wage ordinance; supported the Justice for Janitors campaign to first unionize and then got a wage increased for immigrant janitors working in high-rise luxury offices. All these efforts were the real beginning of addressing poverty after elites had failed miserably. Again, the city's establishment failed to make any dent in the gang problem, but anti-gang groups were making small progress. These many small groups-- Amer-I-Can, Hands Across Watts, Homies Unidos, Unity One, Barrios Unidos, HomeBoy Industries, and Communities in Schools--all flew under Starr's radar as they worked to have gang truces an to provide alternatives to gangs in recreation, life-skills and job-training programs.

Other groups tackled the affordable housing shortage, hunger, and rundown schools. These citizens groups tackling Los Angeles’s problems across the were giving the city much needed compassion and humanity but also were presenting viable proposals that would lessen the growing gap between the state's wealthiest and its poorest citizens. The story was not of a city out of control but of citizen's groups presenting viable proposals. A few of these proposals were adopted but mostly the city's political and econmic establishment stonewalled.

A final story that Starr omits is how Los Angeles arts have come of age in the 1990s. Starr has bits and pieces of the story strewn around his various chapters, but one needs to gather the pieces together in a coherent story. In the 1990s of Los Angeles architecture reached world fame with Frank Gehry while the Getty musuem now had the finest photography collection in a private museum in the country. In the early 1930s Mexican muralist David Sequiros painted his murals in Los Angeles, starting a 60-year old outdoor mural tradition with murals across town, more than any other U.S. city; further, the city has a roster of important visual artists and a huge number of museums and galleries showcasing all kinds of visual art. Many small theaters were daring and adventurous while its large theater pioneered with such plays as Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

Los Angeles finally had a large scale repertory cinema in the American Cinemateque at the Egyptian The city had one important film festival after another featuring Latino film, African and African-American film, independent cinema, and even a homegrown alternative Silverlake film festival. After New York, Los Angeles was the most important visual arts as well as theater center in the country; in cinema it was, of course, the most important.

Starr even discusses Los Angeles novelists—Bukowski, Ellroy—as being too down and dirty but he has focused on pre-1990s novelists: Bukowski is really a countercultural voice of the 1960s and 1970s celebrating the little guy while Ellroy is a 1980s debunker exposing in his best novel LA Confidential the corrupt, racist 1950s LAPD. Two novelists who did capture the 1990s were Janet Fitch’s White Olander and Hector Tovar’s Tatooed Soldiers. Where Starr gives us a long litany of ills suffered by trashed children, Fitch’s heroine is one of those trashed children who manages by the end to find some happiness. Tovar’s is the best immigrant story, detailing a Guatamlan refugee fleeing the civil war to see in Los Angeles his life hit bottom and then begin to go upwards. Both novels ending with small moments of redemption.

Starr’s book, despite its flaws, is still the best book about California in the 1990s because he begins to tell a major important California story in how the great immigrant wave of the decade was transforming the state’s economy and culture, but a second story needs to be told: how immigrants are transforming its politics. How immigrants form coalitions with non-immigrants in dealing with issues of environment, hunger, jobs, anti-gang and housing may prove to be the big story of the decade starting in 2000. A new arts and literature resulting from this stew of new cultures is also bubbling. Rather than a decade strewn with catastrophe, the 1990s may prove in the future to be a decade like New York 1900-1910 when citizens started small scale groups to produce ideas--seeds of hope--to solve their many problems and to creative innovative new arts.

Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate

Two days ago at the Los Angeles County Museum I saw the director's cut of Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate," the 1980 film that is one of the greatest American films I've ever seen. The film was stupendous-- the best film yet made about the epic history of the American West-- but when it was first shown it did miserably.

When "Heaven's Gate" was released in 1980, director Cimino had gone way over budget and the United Artists executives cut 1 1/2 hrs out of a 3 1/2 hr film director's cut and threw out the negatives for the film. The released shortened film got savaged by the critics and ignored by the public--this financial loss helped United Artists go into bankruptcy and destroyed Cimino's career. No one ever got to see the director's cut until now.

MGM film archivist, in reconstructing the original 3 1/2 hour film without any negatives, carefully made it out of duplicates. The archivest as well as the cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond spoke about the film afterwards at LA County Msuem to a rapt film audience, detailing both the making of the film and then the careful reconstruction from duplicates.

"Heaven's Gate" as well as two other Hollywood films--"Shane" and "The Johnson County War"-- are about one of the most amazing events in U.S. history: the Johnson County War in 1892 Wyoming. The East Coast rich who owned large cattle ranches were unhappy at alleged cattle rustling of their cattle in Johnson County, Wyoming. Small farmers/ranches dominated Johnson County whose court did not punish the alleged cattle rustlers.

The cinematography by Vilmos Zisgmond is beautifully captures the conflict. In one early shot the sherrif, Kris Kristofferson, is coming into town in comfort in the railroad car while on the top of the car are seated hundreds of impoverished new immigrants from Eastern Europe--men, women with scarves around their heads, children.The film is visually stunning, contrasting the gorgeous western scenery of pine trees and snow covered mountains, with the grueling work of immigrants pulling plows by hands without oxen. In another early shot an immigrant is butchering a calf for his hungry family living in a tiny cabin in the plains when a gunmen shots him dead; then his wife drags his dead body on a cart down the road with their two children following. At the same time the cattle barons must in their luxurious club organized a vigilante group of 50 gunmen that invaded Johnson County on a railroad car with a death list of 50 people they aimed to kill.

There is a stellar cast of actors in the lead roles: Kris Kristofferson plays the sherrif; Isabelle Huppert is his love, a madame who runs a bordello; Christopher Walken, who is hired as a vigalente for the cattle barons who falls in love with Huppert; Jeff Bridges, who plays a saloonkeeper who sides with the immigrants; and Sam Waterson who is brilliant as the leader of the cattle lords.

During the discussion after the film one man in the audience said that the film, one of the last films deep affected by the Vietnam War, came out just when Reagen was elected in 1980, and those in the Reagen administration thought the film "anti-American" and didn't want to see any more such films. Scenes such as when the vigalentes arrive, they then executed three men in a shootout that Cimino's captures in all its gore--these scenes opposed the heroic cowboy myth of the new President Reagan. In Heaven's Gate the small ranchers/small farmers of Johnson County are impoverished, hardworking East European/German immigrants, organize with the sheriff a force of both men and women to defend their county. What's stunning is the film's end when the immigrants attack the invaders, defeat them in one battle, and then have a seige against the invaders. Women turn out to be warriors as well as men taking part in a seige against the vigalente invaders.

Cimino has captured some of the complex, fasinating history of America as few films ever had. To me, the crux of Cimino's brilliance in "Heaven's Gate" is he makes at look at America's history, particulary the suffering, strength and courage of immigrants who suffered racism and exploitation and had to put their lives on the line in Johnson County. His cinematory also shows the glories of the West, the visual backdrop of the war. Hopefully, MGM will put the director's cut out on DVD so more people can see this great film.