by Bobbi Murray on
It was only a few breezy spring Sundays ago that the New York Times produced a headline sure to provoke heartburn in Bentonville Arkansas, the corporate HQ for Walmart: “Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle” “Vast,” “bribery” and “hushed up” are four words you don’t want to see topping a front-page story in the Sunday New York Times related to your business practices, even if … read more.
by Bobbi Murray on
It was only a few breezy spring Sundays ago that the New York Times produced a headline sure to provoke heartburn in Bentonville Arkansas, the corporate HQ for Walmart: “Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle” “Vast,” “bribery” and “hushed up” are four words you don’t want to see topping a front-page story in the Sunday New York Times related to your business practices, even if … read more.
by Rev. Jim Conn on
A few weeks back I stood at the corner of 65th and Normandie, in South Los Angeles, remembering what used to be there. An old church, maybe from the 1930s -- Spanish Revival with white-washed plaster and enough curved red tile on the roof to make you think it might be real. The congregation members had long since moved away or died, and now the building itself was gone, … read more.
by Steven Mikulan on
Until recently the Internet, along with the devices that brought it to us and the platforms that have expanded its usefulness, held a certain cool, selfless allure. The Web was mostly the idea of young, rule-breaking rebels, and their insurgent mystique made them hero geeks. Browsing a favorite blog on our laptops, a cup of red-eye coffee nearby, we felt a part of the New. Then money began doing … read more.
by Vivian Rothstein on
On Mother’s Day I noticed that a tiny hummingbird had built a miniscule nest on a wire in my backyard. She was snuggled into the tiny sack warming four little eggs, all the while being buffeted by the breezes. When people attempted to watch the sunset at the table near her nest, she had the nerve to buzz by our heads to get us gone. What brave dedication. Despite the … read more.
by Cassidy Noblett on
Just like a swift slap across the face, it hits me. I’m lying on the muddy concrete floor of a warehouse among old rusty screws and nails, puddles that resemble a witch’s brew -- and broken patches of exposed fractured foundation filled with oil and water. I wait in quiet anticipation for that simple word that begins the whirlwind of magic, “Action!” and a world of horizontal expression is … read more.
by Steven Mikulan on
The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) has filed a lawsuit against current and former members of Walmart’s board of directors, and other company officers, charging them with gross violation of fiduciary duty in connection with the company’s Mexican bribery scandal. That scandal, extensively examined by a recent New York Times feature, revealed a corporation so eager to expand its Mexican operations that it ignored findings by its own … read more.
by Allison Mannos on
I received no less than 25 emails celebrating the passage of the 2035 SCAG RTP within the past few weeks. This stands for the Southern California Association of Governments’ Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy. Environmentalists, low-income groups and housing groups all cheered the vast improvements to the way regional planning organizations look at future development. This new, more comprehensive view ideally would address the twin goals of … read more.
by Danny Feingold on
Memory is not only highly selective, but fatefully idiosyncratic. We remember – or forget – based on where we were, who we were with and, more elementally, who we are. In April 1992, I was a 28-year-old editor of a now long-defunct weekly, the Village View. When violence erupted following the unfathomable not-guilty verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial, I was where I usually was in those days … read more.
by Steven Mikulan on
What I mostly remember about the riots is the smell of an urban fire – not the consoling, woody scent that wafts from a campfire, but the melting-telephone smell of a city’s guts ablaze. There was also the smoke, thick as tule fog – and the not-knowing, when you drove into it, if you’d come out on the other side. There was something else about that week – a … read more.
by Rev. Jim Conn on
Wikimedia If absence makes the heart grow fonder, distance makes reality look rosier. From a long way off Santa Monica appears like a liberal’s fantasy of justice in paradise. After all, we have a tough rent control law and we’ve had a mostly enlightened city council, government and school board for more than three decades. But from up close, the picture’s not that sweet. A recent hotel approval exposed … read more.
by Danny Feingold on
John Densmore has been famous for longer than many of us have been alive. The drummer with the seminal 1960s L.A. band The Doors, Densmore parlayed his early success into a long career – not just as a musician but as a writer, actor, dancer, producer and social activist. He’s a native Angeleno (his childhood home is now an onramp where the 405 meets the 10) who cares deeply … read more.
by Steven Mikulan on
Ed Padgett was driving in the rain to a union meeting when the L.A. Times called to tell him he was fired. The pressman, a third-generation Times employee, listened in shock last December to an HR woman’s voice explain he was being dismissed for “safety violations, dishonesty and suspicion of sabotage.” That last charge had a bittersweet irony. Padgett had been at the paper for more than 39 years … read more.
by Rev. Jim Conn on
Things are seldom what they seem. Sometimes the distance between what we think we see and what is actually there is the result of personal prejudices. Sometimes it’s influenced by a kind of factual gerrymandering created by official sources and reinforced by the media. Most vacationers, for example would choose Carnival-happy Brazil in a moment over drug war-scarred Mexico. Unless they knew that Mexico has only 11 homicides per … read more.
by Vivian Rothstein on
I could be a hopeless optimist, but it seems that more people are thinking deeply about the kinds of lives they want to lead as life has become harder in our country. Recently I was invited to speak to students in a Nonprofit Leadership graduate program on “How to Build a Career Based on Social Justice Principles.” It gave me a chance to think about what has worked for … read more.
by Jim Lair Beard on
I thought for sure we were going to have to call a locksmith to get Rene released from the Porta-Potty. We didn’t hear his calls for help at first because we were screaming at the hotel at two in the morning. It was the second night of our union’s weeklong strike against the Hyatt Andaz Hotel on the Sunset Strip. Luckily, Rene just seems to have problems opening doors. … read more.
by Steven Mikulan on
Ed Padgett works as a pressman at the L.A. Times’ Olympic Boulevard printing plant – a third-generation employee who has been with the paper 39 years. He currently blogs at his site, Los Angeles Pressmens 20 Year Club. Padgett began posting messages in 1990, before the advent of the Internet, because, he says, “I was getting a bit bored.” His tedium vanished in 2008 when, after press operators voted … read more.
by Roxana Tynan on
I think I have about 19 minutes to gather my thoughts about stepping into the role of executive director of LAANE this week. Jack, my two-year-old, is napping, and Izzy, my almost-five-year-old (going to kindergarten this September, phew!), is happily giggling at Pingu, a towering work of claymation genius that is one of the few things we both love to watch. I’ve been at LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for … read more.
by Aiha Nguyen on
The recent confirmation that Walmart will be setting up shop in Chinatown made my heart drop. This is a neighborhood that will always hold a special place in my heart. Having previously worked in the community for two years, I can tell you stories of eating pastries at Phoenix Bakery or the smells of ginseng and tea wafting from Wing Hop Fung or the sound of elders debating loudly … read more.
by Rev. Jim Conn on
People in our apartment building don’t have to guess the shape of my and my wife’s politics. A weathered NO WAR sign stands in front of our doorway and on one wall there’s a flag with an image of planet Earth, taken from space, on a blue field that’s hung there since 9/11. Hard to miss. So I was taken aback when a three-page printout from an NPR interview … read more.
by Rev. Jim Conn on
We drove north out of Santa Fe, through Espanola and past Abiquiu, the village where the artist Georgia O’Keefe lived, until we reached a narrow road in the high country. Then we drove until we came to a dirt and gravel road that led another 10 miles to a small cluster of houses and buildings named Ganado, the Spanish word for “cattle.” My wife, Susan, would live for a … read more.
by Rev. Jim Conn on
A few weeks back I stood at the corner of 65th and Normandie, in South Los Angeles, remembering what used to be there. An old church, maybe from the 1930s -- Spanish Revival with white-washed plaster and enough curved red tile on the roof to make you think it might be real. The congregation members had long since moved away or died, and now the building itself was gone, … read more.
by Guest Feature on
By Carl Franzen (Note: Last January Donald Cohen wrote here of the conservative political animus against new, green lighting technologies – namely, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). The following repost of a May 12 Talking Points Memo feature looks at the evolution of another alternative to wasteful incandescent lighting – illumination by light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Battle lines were drawn in Las Vegas, Nevada this week at the 23rd annual Lightfair … read more.
by Steven Mikulan on
Until recently the Internet, along with the devices that brought it to us and the platforms that have expanded its usefulness, held a certain cool, selfless allure. The Web was mostly the idea of young, rule-breaking rebels, and their insurgent mystique made them hero geeks. Browsing a favorite blog on our laptops, a cup of red-eye coffee nearby, we felt a part of the New. Then money began doing … read more.
by Vivian Rothstein on
On Mother’s Day I noticed that a tiny hummingbird had built a miniscule nest on a wire in my backyard. She was snuggled into the tiny sack warming four little eggs, all the while being buffeted by the breezes. When people attempted to watch the sunset at the table near her nest, she had the nerve to buzz by our heads to get us gone. What brave dedication. Despite the … read more.
by Frying Pan Staff on
New York City’s Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, and the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending (CAPS) have put together a nifty online chart called 6 Degrees of Walmart. It’s actually more than a chart – think of it as a kind of star finder that allows the user to locate eight constellations of alleged corporate malfeasance and consumer abuse committed by the retail giant. Click on its Gun … read more.
by Cassidy Noblett on
Just like a swift slap across the face, it hits me. I’m lying on the muddy concrete floor of a warehouse among old rusty screws and nails, puddles that resemble a witch’s brew -- and broken patches of exposed fractured foundation filled with oil and water. I wait in quiet anticipation for that simple word that begins the whirlwind of magic, “Action!” and a world of horizontal expression is … read more.
by Guest Feature on
(The following action alert comes from ClimatePlan.org; news of the alert first appeared at Housing California, which lists 18 Los Angeles County projects that could be affected by the transfer of housing construction funds.) Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is considering using unencumbered housing funds from former redevelopment agencies to balance the 2012-13 state budget. Such a sweep would impact at least 175 pipeline developments poised to create 23,455 construction-phase … read more.
by Frying Pan Staff on
This week the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor sent letters to every elected official in L.A. County (including Congress members), urging them to return all campaign contributions they may have received from Walmart – and to refuse future donations from the retail giant. The letter, which is signed by a broad spectrum of union leaders, juxtaposes Walmart’s alleged bribery scheme in Mexico with L.A. City Hall’s quick approval … read more.
by Guest Feature on
(The following post first appeared May 1 on Truthdig.) By Bill Boyarsky By chance, the revelation of how Apple evades millions of dollars in taxes broke three days before May Day, when workers of the world traditionally protest such injustice. Although the Apple practices aren’t illegal, the dodging of taxes on revenue generated, to a large extent, by low-wage Chinese workers, was a perfect introduction to this year’s May 1 … read more.
by Donald Cohen on
The SEC is dragging its feet implementing a section of the Dodd-Frank reform that would require publicly traded companies to calculate the ratio between the CEO’s pay and that of the firm’s median pay package. The New York Times editorial board urges them to push forward. Corporate lobbyists say it’s too complicated to figure out the math. They figured out how to create uber-complex financial products that untangled the … read more.
