After Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act forty years ago, Dad wrote an article about it--very excited that workers would finally be protected. So it's strange for me to writing about the status of OSHA today:

Should Your Job Kill You?
 LA Progressive June 23, 2011 By Diane Lefer 

“Regulation kills jobs.” We keep hearing that mantra from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What became clear at the forum called on Tuesday evening by the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health is that we need to say loud and clear that “Lack of regulation kills people.”

According to “ Dying at Work in  California,” recently released by SoCalCOSH and Oakland-based Worksafe, 40 years after President Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), an estimated 6,500 workers in California die from chronic exposure to chemical, biological, or physical agents each year and in 2009 (the latest year for which data is available) there were over 300 confirmed worker deaths and 491,000 reported work-related injuries.( The report can be downloaded here)

The evening of June 21, SoCalCOSH coordinator Shirley Alvarado-del Aguila briefed workers and activists on the status of Cal/OSHA, the state enforcement agency which as been long plagued by poor training, slow (or nonexistent) responses to complaints of hazards, and understaffing. (According to “Dying at Work,”California has one of the lowest staffing levels per capita in the U.S. There are more Fish and Game Wardens than
there are Cal/OSHA inspectors.) “The system is broken,” said Alvarado, but “there’s new leadership. Ellen Widess won’t attack Cal/OSHA. She’ll hold people accountable.”

Prospects aren’t so rosy on the federal level, said Tom O’Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. Agencies including OSHA are indeed under attack. Even after Obama’s election when Democrats controlled both House and Senate and “the time seemed right to strengthen OSHA,” the proposed legislation “couldn’t even get a vote on the Senate floor.” And that was in the immediate aftermath of explosions at the Tesoro refinery in Washington State (which killed five workers and could have been prevented) and the Kleen Energy Systems power plant in Connecticut (where five died); the 30 miners killed in the worst US mine disaster in decades (at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine which had been cited by federal regulators for“substantial violations” of safety protocols no fewer than eight times during the previous 12 months); and the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, with the House taken over by Republicans, “there’s no chance for improved legislation.”

Of course Obama’s executive branch could write and implement new regulations. Safeguards now are often weak, enforcement is lax, and penalties for noncompliance are minimal. Many worksites and occupations fall outside the scope of the original law while since 1970, the American workplace has evolved. (In Nixon’s day, who’d ever heard of carpal tunnel or computer vision syndrome? Or solar panel installation? Or balers for
recycling?)

But instead of moving forward, said O’Connor, “We have to fight back against bad
ideas.”  Ideas like the REINS Act–the “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act” which was introduced in the House. If passed by House and Senate, it would prevent the implementation of any new“economically significant” regulatory proposal until approved by both House and Senate. The regulations could therefore be stopped by doing nothing, by not bringing them to a vote.

Obama’s OSHA has already backed off and withdrawn two proposals on health and safety standards–one of which merely restored the original standard that Reagan had weakened. In addition, O’Connor said, the OIRA–Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs which was created by Reagan to stop regulation–reviews every proposed new rule and even if it doesn’t stop it, can delay it indefinitely. OIRA delays are already having impact on OSHA.

O’Connor urged more work on the local level, citing a statewide campaign in Massachusetts to protect workers hired through temp agencies and a success in Austin, Texas where–after seven construction workers died of heat-related illness–the City Council mandated 10-minute rest breaks every four hours on construction sites.

Here in California, many people are aware of the danger high temperatures pose to farmworkers. The heat-related death in 2008 of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez after nine hours of work in the blazing sun spurred demands for water, shade, and rest. Chloe Osmer, California Labor Federation campaign coordinator working on behalf of carwash employees know it’s an issue for these workers as well who may work 8-10 hours in the hot sun. (Standing in the sun in-between customers does not constitute rest!) The
CLEAN Carwash Campaign has taken water bottles and information about heat stress
to 100 carwashes around Los Angeles and has helped workers file OSHA complaints
about other problems as well, including the lack of protective gear when they
use sulfuric acid to clean rims.

At first, she said, Cal/OSHA didn’t respond to complaints or return phone calls. With advice and support from SoCalCOSH, she led a group of workers right into the Cal/OSHA district office and finally got some attention.

“OSHA is a tool for workers to make their workplaces better and also use it as an organizing tool,” she said “If one man says ‘my hands are burning and cracking,’ you find how to get him to take action with his coworkers. Health and safety is not a side issue, it’s part of an organizing campaign, getting workers to take collective action, to become experts and do trainings for other workers.”

Attendees shared problems and recommendations. Lisa Fu of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative pointed out that workers are exposed to dangerous chemicals but because they are considered independent contractors, the salons are not inspected. Domestic workers and day laborers aren’t covered either. And day laborers aren’t just
picked up at Home Depot to work for a few hours at a private household. They may
be contracted to a single construction site for weeks or even months. Angela
Alvarez, a lead organizer with the Workers Health Program of IDEPSCA (Instituto
de Educación Popular del Sur de California) and new member of the SoCalCOSH
advisory board, just heard from a worker whose thumb was almost sliced off on
the job. He was immediately let go. After treatment at the emergency room, he
was told he would need surgery to regain use of his hand. He’s left without work
and without money to pay for the surgery. The boss told him if there was an
accident, it was his own fault.

(The blame game gets played a lot. The Injury Illness Protection Program requires safety training for workers in a language they understand. But many employers reportedly just hand out a sign-in sheet and then use the signatures to tell injured workers this means you knew not to act unsafely and are responsible for the accident.)

A day laborer named Fernando said when he worked on a construction project for the US Navy in San Diego, they made sure he wore a safety harness and goggles. Here in LA, he said, no one cares about him. He works on sites where there’s no protective gear.

The difficulty of regulating anything in an environment of multiple contractors, and subcontractors came up again and again on construction sites and elsewhere. In a single warehouse, for example, the logistics workers may come from as many as six different staffing agencies. If there’s an safety violation or an injury, it is often difficult to
unravel who exactly is the employer of record.

Participants came up with recommendations for Alvarado del-Aguila to take to Ellen Widess, most often citing:

Coordinated enforcement with other agencies.
Employers who violate OSHA regulations are often in violation of Wage and Hour
rules and Workmens Comp rules as well. A more comprehensive look should also be
taken at specific industries where abuses are widespread.
    
Better training for OSHA staff.  
           
Targeted hiring of culturally competent inspectors. The hiring freeze should be lifted so that  complaints can be investigated in a timely manner. Cases now take so long,
workers don't see the point in filing. More bilingual inspectors are needed as
immigrants predominate in the most hazardous jobs. Written materials about OSHA
and workers rights as well as safety training must be available in the language
the workers understand. (Participants reported cases in which managers served as
interpreters during safety inspections by OSHA--hardly the best way to get
workers to speak openly about working conditions.) And Mark McGrath from
the  Adult Film Industry Subcommittee, UCLA School of Public Health, added that
cultural competency includes respect for all marginalized groups, including
workers in the adult film industry, "a very at-risk and transient population"
who need better health protection, such as mandatory condom use. "If they use
their bodies in labor, Cal/OSHA should protect them without moral judgments."
        
Off-site interviews.
Workers should have a way of arranging meetings with inspectors away from the
jobsite where they may not feel it's safe to air their complaints.
           
Protection against retaliation.
Workers who file OSHA complaints now risk being fired, reported to immigration
authorities, or having their hours cut or schedule changed to a less desirable
shift or location. According to "Dying at Work," workers who've file complaints
about retaliation have waited as long as seven years for a decision.
         
Expanding who is covered. 
           
Stiffer fines and sanctions. When nothing is done to correct problems or punish violators, workers stop reporting. "Fines are ridiculously low," said Jessica Martinez of
the national Council, and so corporations pay them as an ordinary cost of doing
business. Under Cal/OSHA, the minimum fine for violations is $5,000--very little
for a big corporation and certainly inadequate when a known hazard leads to a
fatality. "It's nothing to a corporation." In practice, on appeal, even the $5,000 is often reduced.

Given our economic woes and high unemployment, the importance of advocacy groups and community organizations becomes very clear. Without support and backup, workers are less likely to demand their rights and risk retaliation at the very time when employers are tempted to cut corners. 
 
Sometimes we prevail: Before the meeting ended, Chloe Osmer reported that carwash workers who'd been cheated of money had won an $80,000 wage and hour settlement. 

The next morning, at the rail car loading facility at the BP Refinery in Carson, an
employee was fatally injured on the job. His name was not released.
 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
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I want to share this excellent article by the always knowledgeable, committed, wonderful Natalia Fajardo.

Water Inspires Strange Bedfellows
How a Colombian city united against gold greed
by Natalia Fajardo

 BUCARAMANGA, COLOMBIA—Spirits were high last month among students,
environmentalists, businesspeople, and politicians as the news came in that
Greystar Resources had revoked its application for a large-scale open-pit gold
mine in the mountains of northeastern Colombia.


But just twelve hours later, Greystar’s intentions became clear—it was
withdrawing that application to bring in a new one for a redesigned, underground
mine.


The short-lived but significant victory for those against the mine was
possible thanks to the tireless efforts of the broadest, most diverse coalition
in Colombia’s recent history. This coalition brought together an engineer’s
association, committed student activists, the head of the local business
federation, NGOs, teachers, environmentalists, and water utility employees.


Foreign investments in Colombia’s mining sector grew slowly in the 1990s, but
in the eight years of former President Alvaro Uribe’s regime it skyrocketed in
part due to a perception of safer exploration conditions. Even the Canadian
government showed interest in making Colombia prime for investment needs by
having the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) draft Colombia’s mining law of 2001, granting generous privileges to foreign companies. Uribe’s disciple, current President Juan Manuel Santos, has made resource extraction a centerpiece of his economic plan, deeming it the main “motor” of development and plans to follow the lead of Chile and Peru, two truly mining-oriented countries.

 Santos’ strategy includes generous tax breaks to mining companies and
modifying laws to be more “investor friendly.” It also involves persecuting
traditional small miners—some who lack a mining title—aligning them with the
neo-paramilitaries and guerrillas who mine illegally to fund their “dirty” work.
Mainstream media plays into this dynamic by focusing on illegal mining
but remaining silent about the large-scale corporate takeover of Colombia’s
resources. Currently, 40 per cent of Colombia´s entire area is under mining
permits, some of it on environmentally protected land or Indigenous and
Afro-Colombian communal territories.

 Into this mining binge came Greystar Resources, a Vancouver-based junior
exploration company. (Junior exploration companies typically explore potential
mining sites, deal with permit processes, and then sell their acquisition to an
actual mining company, making financial speculation their real business.) Among
Greystar’s investors are the International Financing Corporation—the World Bank’s
private financing arm, and JP Morgan.

 The company has mineral rights over 74,000 acres of land in the mountains of
California and Vetas, two small and remote towns forgotten by the government,
where Greystar has invested in infrastructure and had brought promises of
employment and progress. Many locals in that area badly want the mine. 

The project is just 40 kilometers northeast of Bucaramanga, Colombia’s
fifth-largest city. Greystar plans to dig out an estimated nine million ounces
of gold, making its mine one of the largest gold deposits in South America.

But that gold sits under the Santurban paramo, a tropical version of high moorlands. This unique ecosystem supplies water for Bucaramanga and 21 towns. The proposed use of cyanide at the Greystar mine caught the attention of the region’s citizens, who see it as a major threat to their  “liquid of life” source: water. In fact, mineral extraction was legally banned  in paramos in the amendment  to article 34 of the Colombian Mining Law in 2010.

 Besides the national effort to render all paramos mine-free zones, various
environmental organizations in the Bucaramanga area worked for years to have
Santurban declared a protected area, which would exclude mining, logging and
cattle grazing from its grounds. More recently, opposition to the mining project
gained ground when university students and other environmentalists joined the
cause, concerned not only about the threat to their local water supply, but also
about the sovereignty and long-term economic implications this mine represented
within the national mining policy. They realized that the need for water was
shared by everyone, regardless of their political views, and they framed their
anti-mining campaign through water’s unifying lens.


The coalition started growing and taking a new shape when the municipal water
utility workers union joined. Then they sought support from the state assembly
leadership, where their calls landed on receptive ears; the assembly’s
president, a member the leftist Democratic Alternative Pole (Polo) party,
publicly denounced the mine.


Following this victory, the economic federations of Bucaramanga, which,
besides understanding the intrinsic environmental value of the Santurban paramo,
came to the conclusion that damaging the city’s water source would have a more
negative financial impact in the long term than the ephemeral gains of mining.
The state engineers association also opposed the project. At this point, it
became clear the general public sentiment in the region was that water was worth
more than gold.


“Take to the streets in support of your treasure, the Santurban paramo,”
called out members of the coalition during a public demonstration on February
24, 2011. Previous protests had seen low turnouts, but the issue became so
well-known and the opposition so diverse, that over 30,000 Bucaramangans marched
in their streets, petitioning the Environment Ministry to deny Greystar’s
license application. Around this time other segments of the government,
including the Attorney General, publicly denounced the mine.


With all eyes on Bucaramanga, the ministry held a public hearing on
Greystar’s case. There was a clear division between the small crowd from
California and Vetas that was bused there by the company to support the project,
and the large, mostly urban majority opposing the mine.


The majority of politicians, most prominently the state’s governor,
explicitly called to shut down the project for its technical flaws and risks it
posed to the community. Tensions ran high as the hearing progressed. Two
attendees started a fight, and the ministry ended the hearing early. Media coverage focused on the fight rather than on
the near unanimous resistance to the gold mine.


The hearing was a public disgrace to the company, whose stock value dropped
30 per cent. To top it all off, Colombia’s energy minister and even Serafino
Locono, a prominent oil-and-mining CEO, highlighted Greystar project’s flaws at a miner’s conference in
Toronto.


Greystar decided to preempt the environment ministry’s decision on the
company’s license application, and withdraw its request for the mining
operation, only to announce later that Greystar was reconfiguring its
project to “address the concerns of the community.”


This company is just one of a group of businesses after Santurban’s gold. Its
counterparts include Galway Resources and Ventana Gold
Corp, recently purchased by energy billionaire Eike Batista. The
success of these companies will likely be impacted by Greystar’s fate.


Laura Galvis, a student member of the anti-mining coalition, says that the
group’s lack of hierarchy, its clarity in its position on the issue, and its
ability to take an angle that resonated with everyone were essential to the
recent success. “It’s not just about the environment, it’s about our very
survival,” she explained.


Coalition founders worked hard to bring everyone to the table, and found a
common point of interest with their traditional political opponents in the
belief that the public’s right to clean water takes precedence over private
interests. Through educational campaigns and public demonstrations, they slowly
gained ground.


This broad alliance against the mining project is not quite a movement, for
it rose to meet a temporary need, and its members have little in common beyond
their rejection of the mining operations. The coalition is a something of an
interim union aided by current elections, with politicians seeking supporters.
Whatever its nature, this grassroots experience opened the door to a multi-party
dialogue rarely seen in Colombia.


The most committed segment of the coalition—the students and
environmentalists who oppose large-scale multinational mining in general—want to
move the argument beyond the threat to Bucaramanga’s water supply. They see a
need to adapt to the reconfiguration proposed by Greystar, and to deepen the
debate to include other harmful effects the mine would bring, such as a
deterioration of the area’s agricultural web and the loss of a local supply of
gold for Bucaramanga’s thriving jewelry industry.


Publicly, the coalition’s success in bringing the Santurban case into the eye
of the media hurricane has forced Greystar to change its strategy. Whether the
coalition is able to stop the mining project compltely and protect its beloved
paramo remains to be seen.


Natalia Fajardo is a mining consultant for Cedetrabajo, a political
analysis institute in Colombia. Cedetrabajo is a member of Reclame, Colombia’s national network of organizations
facing large-scale mining.


This article was originally published by Toward Freedom.

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Health Care as a Human Right — in South LA and Nationwide

by Diane Lefer posted on Thursday, 16 December 2010No Comment

[go to the version at LAProgressive.com if you w


On Monday, Judge Henry Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond ruled unconstitutional the provision of Affordable Health Care Act that would require all Americans to carry health insurance. A few days earlier, almost as though he expected such a setback, Jim Mangia, President and CEO of St John’s Well Child & Family Center, said “There couldn’t be a more challenging time to do this work,” as he welcomed almost 1,000 community members and service providers to the LA Convention Center on Friday, December 10–International Human Rights Day–for the second South LA Health and Human Rights Conference.

As reported here last year,  the first conference in June 2009 reframed access to health care, including behavioral health services, as a human right and recognized that access to housing, education, employment, fresh food, environmental and public safety are integral to good health. The Declaration that emerged from that event was released publicly one year ago and this year’s conference was intended to move signatories “from declaration to action.”

Before I go on to the many challenges, I should follow the lead of Second District County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas who reminded us, “Given where we were a year ago, there has been significant progress. We should not allow people to drown out our successes.” Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital reopens in 2012. This June, South LA will see the opening of a public health clinic, and of a new emergency room suite at Harbor-UCLA — an ER where, incidentally, a woman recently waited 24 hours to be seen while other patients fought for a place to sit as there weren’t enough chairs to go around. These new facilities are at least a step in the right direction for a neighborhood that has been designated by the federal government as MUA/MUP, i.e., a Medically Underserved Area/Medically Underserved Population.

Now, the challenges:

Dave Regan, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) who also serves on the Health Care Division Steering Committee, said he hopes to train and deploy 5,000 health care workers to do outreach and defend reform against attacks from the incoming Republican Congress.

But defending Affordable Care is not enough. We can’t leave implementation up to others but have to start planning now, said Robert Ross, president and chief executive officer of the California Endowment, a foundation focused on the health needs of underserved Californians and one of the sponsors of the conference. “Get folks enrolled,” he said, aiming for 100% enrollment in California. “We need to educate the public.” In doing public opinion polls, the foundation learned the extent to which people had been deceived or confused.



Wendell Potter

Several days later, on Tuesday, the California Endowment as part of its Center Scene public programming, exposed how deception happens by hosting Wendell Potter, former insurance company executive and PR man, whose new book, Deadly Spin, gives an insider’s view of how insurance companies influence opinion and policy.

Potter sees himself now “making amends,” and has publicly apologized to Michael Moore for trying to discredit him and his health care documentary Sicko. One example of spin: Insurers now get generous subsidies from the federal government for participating in Medicare Advantage plans. Under the Affordable Health Care legislation, these subsidies are reduced, but, Potter explained, the insurance companies mounted a campaign telling seniors that it was their own personal benefits that would be cut.

Potter has an interesting take on Judge Hudson’s decision. He thinks the mandate for individual coverage, in the absence of a competing public option, amounts to a “profit protection and enhancement plan” for insurance companies. He wondered if Republicans will realize they are pushing an agenda that cuts into the profits of the companies that spent millions putting them in office.

During two decades in the health care field, Potter saw nonprofit hospitals overtaken by the proliferation of for-profit businesses. Insurance companies divested themselves of other divisions and focused on health insurance as the most profitable area. Patient care got a smaller share of resources, not only because of astronomical salaries to top executives and the costs of advertising and public relations, but the “relentless pressure from Wall Street.” When you’re for profit “you have to meet Wall Street’s expectations and profit expectations of your investors and you have to report every three months.” It means health insurance corporations focus on the short-term stock prices and profits instead of health care.

This distorted emphasis leads to the transfer of more costs to consumers. At Friday’s conference, Dave Regan reported that some of his union members now face a contract battle at Centinela Hospital which is owned by Prime Health Care–a family business and the second largest hospital system in California. The company wants to increase the employee share of premiums for family coverage by an additional $600/month. Workers can’t afford so substantial an increase and are now looking to a situation where they, as health care workers, won’t be able to afford health care coverage for their own kids.



Orthopaedic Hospital site.

Howard Kahn, instrumental behind the Children’s Health Initiative of Greater Los Angeles and CEO of LA Care Health Plan which serves 800,000 low-income county residents, points out that health care itself only accounts for only about 20% of health outcomes. Genetics are important. But so are environmental factors and individual behavior which underlines again the interrelatedness of all human needs. Housing, education, employment, reliable buses (especially at night), child care, stoplights at dangerous intersections, safe parks where kids can exercise and play–without these, there’s a negative impact on health.

To take Mark Ridley-Thomas’s advice and focus on some success stories, think about conference panelist Robert Smith, an ex-felon who beat his substance-abuse problem and the odds after going through a program at the Midnight Mission. Smith landed a job with Regal Theaters because community organizations including SAJE (Strategic Action for a Just Economy) pressured the businesses at LA Live to hire local workers. Through his own efforts and work ethic, Smith was soon promoted to supervisor.



Violeta Menjivar

We learned that criminal records that so often stand in the way being hired can in some cases be expunged and advice and assistance is available from the Pepperdine Legal Aid Clinic at the Union Rescue Mission. Juvenile records can be sealed, but you must go through a process; it doesn’t happen automatically.

The Community Rights Campaign recently won a concession from LAUSD — a moratorium on truancy and tardiness tickets that led to expensive fines and often juvenile detention and even jail. (Though the school district’s new plan for Attendance Improvement Centers raises concern as parents must pick their children up at the end of the day and if working parents can’t get there in time, the kids are removed by the police.)

An example of hope and possibility came from special guest speaker, Violeta Menjívar, vice minister of public health and welfare of El Salvador, a former member of the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional ) rebel movement. During the civil war, she provided medical care both to the FMLN as well as to government soldiers because, as she said with a sly smile, “the FMLN observed the Geneva Conventions.” Describing her country as “small in territory but not in spirit,” she reported that in the year and half since Mauricio Funes — also formerly of the FMLN — took office after his election as president, the new administration has rebuilt two hospitals which had been left undone due to corruption and the siphoning off of public funds. She is working to reverse the privatization of health care that occurred when public health budgets were cut, leaving care only for those who could pay for it. Her department is now implementing plans for preventive care, expansion of primary care, and expansion of basic free medical services to the rural areas where up until today none were provided.



Sandra Matamoros and Genesis

The progressive administration is instituting price regulation on prescriptions medicines. El Salvador–one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere — has also had the highest prices for prescription drugs which I would say can be traced back to the Central American Free Trade Agreement — CAFTA — with protectionist provisions that benefit Big Pharma by delaying the introduction of generic drugs. (Similar, barely noticed provisions are written into the proposed Free Trade Agreement with Colombia that has fortunately been stalled in Congress for other reasons for several years.)

More international perspective came via Deborah Borden who ended up homeless on Skid Row seven years ago after losing her job and health insurance. Now she’s an organizer with LA CAN (Los Angeles Community Action Network). Deborah recently gave testimony about human rights abuses in Los Angeles to the United Nation’s Periodic Review in Geneva, Switzerland and was part of the team that coordinated the visit of Raquel Rolnick, Brazilian architect, urban planner, and professor, sent by the UN to investigate and report on adequate housing in the United States as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living and on the right to non-discrimination.

Rolnick’s report, presented in March, found “significant cuts in federal funding for low-income housing, the persistent impact of discrimination in housing, substandard conditions such as overcrowding and health risks, as well as the consequences of the foreclosure crisis.” Specifically, she noted that over the past decade there has been a net loss of approximately 170,000 public housing units while “Each year, the federal government spends more than three times as much on tax breaks for homeowners–with a large share of the resulting tax benefits going to upper-income households–as it spends on low-income housing assistance.”

And “housing is not simply about bricks and mortar,” she wrote, “nor is it simply a financial asset. Housing includes a sense of community, trust and bonds built between neighbors over time; the schools which educate the children; and the businesses which support the local economy and provide needed goods and services. Government policy has sometimes resulted in tearing apart this important sense of community, removing a source of stability for subsidized housing residents, and engendering a sense of mistrust of Government regard for their interests.”

Indeed, at the end of the conference, about 200 participants traveled to Flower and 23rd to demand that community interests be taken seriously by the City Council. A young woman named Genesis sat in her wheelchair in front of the parking lot where the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital used to stand and where she saw her doctors until the facility was demolished. Now, explained her mother, Sandra Matamoros, they must take three buses and travel three hours for the specialized care her daughter needs. The site is still zoned exclusively for medical and educational use, however real estate developer Geoff Palmer is asking the City Council to rezone it so he can move forward with the Lorenzo project and build luxury housing on the site. (Palmer is known for suing the city so he could get out of providing any affordable housing in his other faux-Italian developments: the Medici, the Orsini, and Pieri I and II.)

“No to luxury housing!” chanted the crowd. In South LA, the pressures of gentrification and loss of income now have two and three families sharing apartments that would be a tight squeeze for one. Even so-called “affordable housing,” is beyond the reach of most when you consider that Los Angeles considers a living wage to be $12/hour. Though it beats the minimum wage, it still means a monthly income for a fulltime worker that, after taxes, won’t go much further than market rent on a one-bedroom apartment leaving open the question of how to cover transportation to and from the job, food, clothing, utilities, school supplies, medical care for a family and all the other necessities for a normal, healthy life.



Diane Lefer

The challenges for the people of South LA are immense so it’s essential to be, with a nod to Violeta Mendívar, big in spirit. At the contested site, many of the demonstrators were smiling. They had each other, after all, and the support of community organizations like SAJE, like LA CAN, like Esperanza Community Housing.

As Mark Ridley-Thomas told us, “if you want Movement to go forward, you have to celebrate it and not let anybody rob you of your joy.”

Diane Lefer

 

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