Tag: Los Angeles

The Surveillance And Policing Of Looted Land

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is a community group rooted in the Skid Row community on Tongva/Gabrielino land, stolen territory known as Los Angeles. Over the past decade, we have been working to build power to abolish LAPD surveillance. This report grew out of that organizing and examines the relationships of policing and surveillance to displacement, gentrification, and real estate development. We study those relationships with a focus on the process that has always bound policing and capitalism together: colonization.

We often hear that police are an occupying army in our communities. Throughout the history of imperialism and colonization, occupying forces have used surveillance to monitor and contain populations they deem threatening, all for the purpose of maintaining their violent rule.

Factory Workers Strike Against Poverty Pay And Abuse By Management

Santa Fe Springs, California – In Santa Fe Springs, California, located in the Los Angeles area, a group of largely immigrant Latina factory workers is waging a high-stakes strike against the multibillion-dollar food manufacturing company Rich Products. Since November 3, the group of well over 100 strikers has been on the picket line at the Rich Products-owned Jon Donaire Desserts plant, demanding better wages, improved retirement benefits, and changes to the company’s abusive, punitive point system, which provides workers with only three days of sick leave per year.

The striking workers are members of Local 37 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM)—the same union that has waged multiple strikes across the country against major multinational food manufacturing companies thus far this year.

BCGTM Los Angeles Strike Worker Rights and Jobs

LA Sheriff’s Department Needs To ‘Curb Influence Of Problematic Subgroups’

The long anticipated report on the deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was released on Friday, Sept. 10. And it has a lot to say.

The 230-page report by the nonprofit RAND Corporation was commissioned by the LA County Board of Supervisors, who are fed up with the deputy gang issue, and it contains a list of interesting conclusions about what needs to be done about the problem of deputy cliques that has plagued the nations largest sheriff’s agency for approximately half century.

“At their worst,” the authors write, these “sub-groups encourage violence, undermine the chain of command, and gravely harm relationships with the communities that LASD is dedicated to serve.”

And, because these deputy gangs/cliques/subgroups have existed for so many decades, the report’s authors admit that efforts to change this deputy subgroup culture will likely be met with “internal resistance.”

LASD Los Angeles Police Police abuse

A Global Anti-Olympics Movement Rises

Just three months into 2021, police officers wearing riot gear descended on an encampment of houseless people in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, forcing residents out in a sweep that went viral on social media. For Los Angeles-based activist Gigi Droesch, the videos were reminiscent of a park sweep that took place in 2015 on the other side of the world — in Tokyo.

“When I was looking at the footage from the Tokyo sweep, it looked really similar to our own footage,” Droesch said. “The way the police were hassling residents — it was the same sort of thing. There were people who were unhoused in this park, and the police came and violently swept them away.”

While some might think it’s a big jump to go from Los Angeles to Tokyo, it was a natural conclusion for Droesch, who has spent the past several years involved in an international movement to end the Olympics and the displacement, policing and militarization that the games bring to hosting cities.

Displacement Los Angeles NOlympics Olympics

Unions Call For L.A. County Shutdown In January

In a move that reflects the desperation of teachers, nurses, healthcare, grocery and hotel employees, their influential unions are calling for a strict month-long Los Angeles County shutdown in January to control the raging COVID-19 pandemic, save lives and ultimately allow for a quicker reopening of schools and the economy.

Evidence of mounting frustration and anxiety has also emerged in newly released surveys of teachers and parents as most campuses across L.A. County remain closed to in-person classes.

The union coalition called for what it described as a “circuit breaker” in a letter Wednesday night to the county Board of Supervisors and in an online petition.

COVID-19 Los Angeles Unions Worker Rights

Protesters Descend On Garcetti’s House For 6th Consecutive Day

Los Angeles, CA – A sixth day of demonstrations outside Mayor Eric Garcetti’s official residence unfolded Sunday in an attempt to persuade President-elect Joe Biden not to appoint Garcetti to his cabinet.

Tabatha Jones Jolivet, a spokeswoman for BLM-LA, said Garcetti “has failed the people of Los Angeles in an unending number of ways — from criminalizing folks for being houseless, to refusing to stand up for people who are killed by his police force.”

“We refuse to be quiet as President-elect Biden considers him for a cabinet post where his reach will extend to setting national policy,” she said.

Garcetti Housing Joe Biden Los Angeles

Blacks In LA Nearly Four Times As Likely To Be Cited By Police

The Los Angeles police department (LAPD) gave 63% of its citations for “loitering while standing” to Black residents in recent years, despite African Americans making up just 7% of the city’s population, a new analysis of public records has revealed.

A report released by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights analyzed low-level infractions in California between 2017 and 2019 and found that LAPD and police agencies across the state disproportionately target Black residents.

Black America California Los Angeles Police abuse

Report Finds ‘Gang Like’ Police Clique That Exerts ‘Undue Influence’

Los Angeles County’s top watchdog said Monday that substantial evidence exists that a secretive group of tattooed deputies at the East L.A. sheriff’s station are “gang-like and their influence has resulted in favoritism, sexism, racism and violence.”

In a 32-page report probing activities of the Banditos clique, Inspector General Max Huntsman alleged that Sheriff Alex Villanueva “continues to promote a code of silence regarding these sub-groups” which have plagued the agency for decades.

Los Angeles Police abuse Racism Violence

Police Fatally Shoot Man 20 Times After Suspected Bike Violation

Los Angeles – A Black man who was stopped on his bicycle for an alleged “vehicle code” violation was shot to death by two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies, who fired 15 to 20 rounds after the man punched one officer and dropped a pistol on the ground, authorities said on Tuesday.
A semiautomatic handgun apparently fell from a bundle of clothes that the man, identified as Dijon Kizzee, 29, had been clutching and dropped when he struck an officer in the face, said Lieutenant Brandon Dean, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman.

Dean said the two officers opened fire when Kizzee made “a motion that he’s going to pick up the firearm.”

Los Angeles Police lying Police violence Systemic Racism

Antifascists Are Facing Off Against The Far-Right, Backed By Local Cops

Every Friday in Sunland-Tujunga, a small neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, just 15 minutes from Downtown LA, a group of violent far-Right Trump supporters meets under the guise of rallying in support of the police. Here’s how local antifascists have responded.

They assemble out front of a Big 5 on Foothill Blvd from around 11 am to sundown every Friday and have since the start of the George Floyd uprising. Their hate has been countered by members of the local community since day one. Early demos would have 2-3 Black Lives Matter protesters standing across from a group of 10 violent fascists. A large counter-demo was called for on June 19th, with the far-Right stepping up to mobilize their forces on that day as well.

Antifascist Fascists Los Angeles Police abuse

LA County OKs Coronavirus ‘Health Councils’ To Watch Worker Safety

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, July 21, approved a proposal to facilitate worker-led “health councils” to monitor business compliance with public health orders.

Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Mark Ridley-Thomas co-authored the motion recommending that the county reach out to labor leaders and business representatives and quickly come up with effective ways to monitor compliance with mandates to wear facial coverings, install protective shields and disinfect workplaces.

Essentially, the workers themselves would monitor conditions within their workplace, Kuehl said, noting recent reports of “devastating” coronavirus outbreaks.

COVID-19 Los Angeles Public Health Worker Rights

Scheer Intelligence: The Cartoonist The Cops Didn’t Let Get Away

Ted Rall, the Pulitzer Prize finalist, columnist and cartoonist joins Robert Scheer on in this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence” to talk about his firing by the Los Angeles Times and and his latest book, “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.”

The host commends the journalist for his “courageous” and “gutsy” reporting on the Afghanistan War and a long, noteworthy career. Yet, it is precisely his candid storytelling through words and visual arts that earned him a place in the Los Angeles Police Department’s crosshairs. The story of Ted Rall’s firing as a cartoonist by Los Angeles Times in 2015 reveals the historically cozy relationship that existed between the media and the police. Writing a blog for the LA Times, in which he detailed an encounter with an LAPD officer who’d detained and handcuffed him for allegedly jaywalking years earlier, ultimately led to Rall’s very public firing and a legal case that now threatens to bankrupt him.

Los Angeles Podcast Police abuse Press Freedom

The Struggle For No Police In Los Angeles Schools: Victory In Sight

On Tuesday, June 23, in Los Angeles, the decade’s long struggle for No Police in the Schools had a major breakthrough. Los Angeles School Board member Monica Garcia introduced the most structural and hopeful motion to make “defund the police” a reality. Her motion, expressing gratitude to the national Black uprising, called for cutting the $70 million budget of the Los Angeles School Police Department—with 350 armed officers—by 50% in 2021, 75% in 2022, and 90% in 2023—essentially phasing out the entire department. We think “50%, 75%, 90%” is a model for the “Defund the Police” movement nationally. Any movement that gets to 100% first wins. Her Civil Rights motion did not pass but neither did any of the toxic compromises.

Los Angeles Police Public schools Rebellion2020

LA City Council President Introduces Motion To Cut LAPD Funding

The president of Los Angeles’s city council introduced a motion Wednesday that would direct officials to identify millions of dollars’ worth of funding cuts to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) following criticism of the department’s treatment of protesters.

Councilwoman Nury Martinez (D) said in a statement released on Twitter that the move was about resetting the city’s priorities in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody last week. Video of Floyd’s arrest and death sparked protests around the country, including in Los Angeles.

“Today we intrdcd a motion to cut funding to the LAPD, as we reset our priorities in the wake of the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & the #BlackLivesMatter call that we all support to end racism. This is just one small step.

City Budget Los Angeles Police Rebellion2020

Another Group Of Homeless Moms And Families Are Taking Over A House — This Time In L.A.

Weeks after a group of homeless mothers took over a vacant house in Oakland and managed to keep it, another group of moms is trying to do the same in Los Angeles. On Saturday morning, the protesters and their families moved into a two-bedroom bungalow in El Sereno. They say they plan to remain indefinitely and potentially take over more houses.

Homelessness Los Angeles Mothers

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