Even though my job is share my opinion, it took a LONG time to share that I'm queer in a column.
In my last piece for
@latimes
, I got to share a bit about why -- and explore the many ways the US slices and dices its citizens’ intersectional identities. 🧵
Gotta say, this feels like a video I'm going to see 40 years from now in some documentary about the battle for American democracy and equality in the 2020s.
Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson speaks after vote to expel him from the House over participating in gun protests: “Our lives are at stake. And we're going to fight for our lives, just like they're fighting for the NRA."
#TenneseeThree
NEW: Samiel Asghedom, the brother of
#NipseyHussle
, recounts what happened in those final moments outside The Marathon Store. He got there just in time to perform CPR. I honestly can't even imagine.. '
Four Latino "leaders" — Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo, Kevin de León and Ron Herrera — have been exposed making racist comments and plotting to dilute Black political power in L.A.
It's only renewed a deep fear. That it's us vs. them.
My take on this mess.
It decades for took for South L.A. to recover from the ‘92 riots. So what you see now is no accident.
“We want to go to places of white affluence so that the pain and outrage that we feel can be put right in their faces.”
Wow! “Mary Trump revealed that she had surreptitiously taped 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry in 2018 & 2019. She provided The Post with previously unreleased transcripts and audio excerpts which include exchanges that are not in her book”
@erskinetimes
Yikes Chris. First of all, she wasn’t a “prostitute.” She was 16, which makes her a sex trafficking victim. Second, she was human and deserves justice just like every human. She didn’t ask to be killed anymore than Kupfer did, and I don’t think it’s too much for LA to act like it
Interesting read… “The effort by white Southerners to reclaim power in the aftermath of the Civil War… may help explain how Americans think about guns in this country: who guns are ‘for’ and who they are to be used against.”
@cmclymer
Several people in L.A. have told me that such a request is very "Midwestern." I'm usually like, "Whatever, text me when you get home anyway."
This would be huge! “The bill, if passed, would allow Los Angeles County, which currently runs a lifeguard center on the site, to transfer the property to the Bruce family.” It “is necessary to lift the restriction that the state placed on the property.”
No wonder Vanessa Bryant is suing... “The lawsuit alleges no fewer than 8 sheriff’s deputies at the crash site, pulled out their personal cell phones and snapped photos of the dead children, parents and coaches... for their own personal gratification.”
Now here’s some welcome honesty about California’s past from the
@SierraClub
. “(John) Muir experienced Yosemite as God’s empty paradise only because armed men stole the land by violence 17 years before he arrived in 1868.”
So I had to write about the
#Oscars
slap heard around the world.
What Will Smith did was caveman-like and wrong. But his instinct to protect Black women — protect his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith from humiliation — was correct.
Our hair is not a joke.
This is just… Ugh…
“Valentina was a shy girl in Chile, but everything was turning out well for her in the U.S.,” aunt Carolina Peralta told
@latimes
. “She was catching up with English and being more outgoing. She was happy to be with her older sister.”
I'm still at a loss of what to say about these layoffs at
@latimes
. I'm still employed. But this is such a blow to journalism, not just in California but across the U.S. -- and at a critical juncture for what's left of democracy too.
Subscribe.
Some news, as they say.
This will be my last week at the
@latimes
. Starting later this month, I’ll be writing columns covering policy and politics on the West Coast for Bloomberg
@Opinion
.
I’m beyond excited, especially given the high stakes of this already crazy election year.
Sad but no doubt true. Hope they can change this for other kids.
"Neither can recall a single educator who made a difference in their lives while growing up — except perhaps for the college teacher who pulled Iovine aside and said: 'This isn’t for you.'"
Little infuriates me more than a Black person using cherry-picked facts and willful blindness to make simplistic arguments that whitewash the complex problems that come with being Black in America.
So for my latest column, I had to write about
@LarryElder
.
This is important.
"The CROWN Act...would outlaw policies that punish black employees and students for their hairstyles. Supporters say the bill’s acronym reflects its intention: creating a respectful and open workplace for natural hair."
The woman grabbed her cellphone and called her husband...
“Is there a place here we can try?” he said.
“It’s completely illegal in Texas,” a staffer said.
“Even for the fetal anomaly?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s draconian,” he said.
True story. These are the kids who leave small towns to go to college, graduate and move to liberal cities, and then never come home. And their parents and grandparents wonder why.
It says so much about Manhattan Beach that there’s only one local elected official here at the bill signing ceremony to return Bruce’s Beach to the Black family that it was stolen from by the city in 1929.
This is what systemic racism looks like in real time.
“As Black people and Latinos moved to the suburbs in search of safer neighborhoods and cheaper housing, crime-free housing policies often came soon after.” That’s 147 cities and counties in California.
In non-snow news...
You might have heard about a plan by the city of L.A. to stop renting hotel rooms for dozens of people who were displaced from their neighborhood because the LAPD blew it up.
Well, it bothered me so much that I wrote a column about it.
A bit of professional news.
Come June, I will be writing columns again, this time for
@latimes
. I’ve somehow managed to convince my bosses to let me travel California and write about politics, demographics, social and economic issues and, of course, the coronavirus.
Some fact to counter the fiction out there today: “Among Shadow’s clients is Pete Buttegieg’s campaign, which paid $42,500 to the firm in July 2019 for ‘software rights and subscriptions’ ... for a service used to send text messages to voters.”
#IowaCaucus
For the first time in American history, we will have a vice president who looks like me.
It’s strange to even type that after four, long years of ruthless attacks on everything having to do with my race and my gender, led by Trump.
#BidenHarris2020
Black people don’t get many good days in this country.
But yesterday was one of them — at least in California.
For my latest column, I wrote about the signing of several new laws to hold cops accountable and return beachfront property to a Black family.
@bricondrey
@JMShumway
@BrianDahleCA
How so? From what I’ve read, his office was fine with — to pull from the LAT story above — an “alternative solution of the goat getting to be donated to a farm that does weed abatement.”
LAPD blew up part of South L.A. and 2 years later, THIS is the thinking?
“Said City Councilman Curren Price, who represents the neighborhood: ‘They’ve had it good living in the hotel rent free for several months. They want that to last as long as it can’”
Kevin de León just told
@CBSLA
that the "joke" he made about a fellow councilman's Black son being designer handbag was about Nury Martinez, not about the kid.
This has got to be the longest, most insincere, most self-serving non-apology I've ever heard.
So a bit of personal news: After three and half years at
@sacbee_news
, I’m making a move to
@latimes
to become an assistant metro editor. I couldn’t have asked for a better city than Sacramento for my first gig in California, but I’m really looking forward to this next adventure.
This. 👉🏽 “History — life — is not an easy-peasy snap-judgment call. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: Every saint had a past, and every sinner has a future... It’s a thought that took me my adult life to realize and appreciate — and accept.”
Ever since Joshua McKinney got out of prison, he has been dreaming of returning to the fire lines. But he and thousands of others can't suit up again because of their criminal records.
#AB2147
could change that.
#CALeg
This
#TransDayOfVisibility
, I spent some time talking to four lovely transwomen about the
#COVID19
vaccines.
Two decided to get it. Two decided against it.
Regardless, there are lots of barriers for this vulnerable community.
Karen Bass is the first woman and only the second Black person to be elected mayor of Los Angeles.
It's a big deal.
But, as I write in my latest column, Bass is also part of a new wave of Black women attaining power in elected office in California.
Now HERE is a good take: “Neither the Klan nor legally dubious covenants nor flagrantly unconstitutional land grabs were arguably as effective as the automobile and its attendant infrastructure at turning Los Angeles into an intentionally segregated city.”
Well, damn. This really is everybody now.
"'The president is glad to see that one of the participants in that conversation has resigned, but they all should,' said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary."
I had wondered what led
#NipseyHussle
to move from gang life to being an activist and entrepreneur in South L.A. This excellent piece from
@AngelJennings
connects some dots.
At this point, the question is who DIDN'T these members of the LA City Council insult?
"In an audio clip reviewed by The Times, Martinez can be heard saying the 'Judíos' — which means Jews in Spanish — 'cut their deal with South L.A.'"
I get that that DA wants to explain why
#StephonClark
was apparently breaking car windows that night, but it's a bad look at a press conference designed to announce whether two officers would be charged for killing him.
It says so much about Texas (compared to California) that the Texas Department of Public Safety just did an entire press conference on the Uvalde school shooting and took ZERO questions in Spanish, even though most of those killed were Latino.
Beto O'Rourke interrupts Greg Abbott's press conference after the school shooting in Texas: "You are doing nothing...You said this was not predictable. This is totally predictable when you chose to do nothing"
Same tone deaf argument that was made about keeping the Placerville noose. 🤦🏽♀️ Anything to hold onto red California.
“There was never any reference I found that compared him to any of the bad Jim Crow image. That was just the guy’s name... Why change it?”
This story reminds me of what
@GavinNewsom
said earlier about whether to punish folks who get vaccinated early.
“We’re not enforcing against just common sense and..someone who says, ‘Look, I don’t want to waste this dose. Why don’t I get it to someone?’”
Tioni Theus was 16. She got good grades, played golf and liked to sing.
But in early January, Tioni was shot and dumped on the 110 Freeway.
For my latest column, I spoke to her family, who wonder why she isn't getting as much attention as Brianna Kupfer.
Shocker. No charges.
This sounded more like a prosecutor presenting a case to a jury than a DA presenting the facts to the public about a police shooting -- and Schubert wonders why people have accused her of not being able to conduct an impartial investigation.
#StephonClark
Sooooo we get the weed, the water and the wine. "California" gets Hollywood and the warmest beaches. And "Southern California" gets all of the food. Somehow I feel like we got the best deal here in "Northern California."
Exhibit A of why there’s a California exodus…
“From 2007 to 2017, Culver City added roughly 12,100 jobs but issued permits to fewer than 200 new housing units, according to a 2019 report by the Southern California Assn. of Governments.”
Already this year, 3 men of color, including
#KeenanAnderson
, have died after encounters with the LAPD — and each were in a mental health crisis.
So this
#MLKDay
, I’ve been thinking about what he said about “the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
Often true. “When Latinos are out protesting immigration or other problems, the first things you hear are white people saying, ‘Get a job!’ or ‘Follow the rules!’ But when it’s white people in Huntington Beach, it’s all about ‘fighting for your rights.’”
Now that California hater and world's richest man
#ElonMusk
owns Twitter, his plan is to turn this here platform into a bastion for free speech.
He calls it "the town square" where vital issues get debated.
I doubt
#BlackTwitter
will be taking part.
"It is not only the far right that has embraced the idea that truth is what you think it is... Recall supporters mock data that shows that crime is down; they post photos of broken car windows and ask, are you going to believe statistics, or your own eyes?"
This is important.
California is "still planning for a worst-case scenario, quietly publishing a sobering set of detailed guidelines to answer the troubling ethical question of who lives and who dies should California face a new surge in the coronavirus"
Expect “reparations” — as in righting past wrongs for the descendants of Black people who were enslaved — to be the buzzword of the next year.
Here’s one example...
"We have become accustomed to videos of white people behaving badly in the age of coronavirus... But this video is of another magnitude entirely. It’s no wonder it moved through the digital world with lightning speed."
#blacklivesmatter
With
#ElectionResults2020
still being counted in Detroit and elsewhere, I'm happy Biden might yet win.
But I cannot get over how Americans, including almost 4 million of them in California, voted to re-elect Donald Trump.
Wall Street? Oh great. 🙄
“One of his firm's strategies is to profit from water in part by making the farms it buys more efficient and then selling parts of its water rights to other farmers and cities increasingly desperate for the natural resource.”
This will always, always be a VERY big deal.
“This has been a marathon, not a sprint — and it was a marathon where a number of people have taken the baton and pass it and pass it and pass it to get us here today.”
“Let’s welcome the Bruces home.”
When severe weather and severe poverty collide...
Many people died in their cars because the blizzard "hit on a Friday — a critical payday for many people who live paycheck to paycheck — a day where many may have planned to buy gifts, food or supplies."
For all the talk of reform in the LAPD, they never change.
“Journalists were pushed, struck with batons, forced out of areas where they had a right to observe police activity and blocked from entering areas where police and protesters were clashing.”
“I’d like to create a culture of economic sustainability,” Hargins said. “I want to create an expectation that people do something better with their space than water grass.”
Meanwhile, I just want to create a garden that looks half as green as his.
He doesn't believe in systemic racism.
He scoffs at reforming policing.
He mocks critical race theory, though I’m not sure he understands it.
He's against mask and vaccine mandates, even as
#COVID19
continues to kill Black people disproportionately.
What do
#GeorgeFloydProtests
say about California?
That they are happening up and down the state proves what black people know and many others ignore: California is not as enlightened about race as we would like to believe.
First column for
@latimes
.
“In Australia, fires have killed from hundreds of millions to more than 1 billion native animals. The toll illustrates that, while humans can adapt somewhat to intensifying fires delicate ecosystems are far more vulnerable.”
This. 👉🏽 “A common sentiment I hear is that rioting is not the answer. But the painful truth is that rioting is not supposed to be an answer to anything. It is explicitly an expression of anger and frustration.”
I swear, some of the sharpest political commentary I’ve heard this week during NABJ in Chicago has come from my Uber drivers. Immigration. Inflation. A fact-based analysis of the veepstakes. Can’t wait for the DNC.
For weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out why polls keep showing that a small, yet still politically significant number of Black men say they will vote for Trump.
I found some clues in this week’s drama over Ice Cube and his Contract With Black America.
Not sure how this will work since L.A. has to build A LOT more housing.
"Both candidates believe that many single-family-home neighborhoods — about three-quarters of all residentially zoned land in the city — should remain off-limits for greater density."
What would happen if the essential workers hardest hit by
#COVID19
were able to get a stimulus check each month for two years?
Compton is about to find out.
For my latest column, I wrote about
@ComptonPledge
, a huge new guaranteed income experiment.
Now that today’s LA City Council meeting is over, it’s even more clear that Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León need to resign.
They need to do it not just as punishment for their racist remarks, but so that the rest of L.A. can start to heal.
For those who question why people today are on the hook for paying for past injustices:
“If you can inherit generational wealth, you can inherit generational debt,” said Sen.
@SteveBradford
, who is on the state's new task force examining reparations.
This right here is something I keep hearing again and again as the biggest reason for the inequities and for the vaccine gentrification we see in L.A. County. 👇
"One of the biggest barriers to vaccinations had been the appointment registration process."
A political stunt, for sure. But it’s a stunt that, just maybe, could work. 🤔
“Modeled on the Texas law that… allows private citizens to sue (abortion) doctors…. it would allow private citizens to sue manufacturers or distributors of assault weapons.”
Every time we get a new batch of results fom the Nov. 8, it becomes clearer just how badly Sheriff Alex Villanueva underestimated the people of Los Angeles County.
And, as I write in my latest column, it's not just that he's trailing opponent Robert Luna.
The real story is far more complex, starting with her mental breakdown.
@donovanxramsey
has the details.
“Never in a million years did I think that Black people wouldn’t protect me. I was really given space to be angry; I had... a lot of sadness.”