UEPI News and Commentary

Povert, Crime, Housing, Race, -- What's the truth?

Colleagues:   

When journalists and social scientists write about poverty, crime, race, and housing policy -- especially when they stir them together -- it is bound to provoke controversy.  Journalist Hannah Rosin recently stirred up a hornet's next with her cover article, "American Murder Mystery," in the July/August issue of The Atlantic magazine, arguing that two federal programs designed to give poor families more housing choices are responsible for a major increase in crime.  She claimed to show that efforts to "deconcentrate" poor families (particularly families of color) out of high-poverty areas backfired by spreading crime into otherwise stable neighborhoods, using Memphis as an example, but generalizing about the entire country.  Her larger point is that liberal do-gooders failed to anticipate the harmful consequences of their well-intentioned but naive policy ideas.  Rosin's article has generated a lot of interest on the right-wing blogosphere and in the mainstream media. 

Downsizing the News at the L.A. Times

The continuing departure of L.A. Times staff, thanks to the downsizing agenda of its new owner Sam Zell, has sunk the paper to an incredible low point. Some of the finest journalists have now departed the paper: staffers like Henry Weinstein (who long represented the conscience of the paper and whose coverage of legal affairs and labor was insightful and invaluable); Marla Cone (among the best environmental reporters in the country); and Bob Sipchen (who sought to make the opinion pages both more lively and innovative). The L.A. Times has gone through upheavals before, to be sure.

The Chandler family long used the paper as its tool for a virulent reactionary politics and an effective economic instrument for its own purposes. Even when the paper changed in the 1960s and 1970s, those changes happened, at times, despite rather than due to a progressive vision of the publisher. The more noteworthy of paper’s heroes during the past four decades had been a handful of its editors (Frank McCulloch during the early 1960s comes to mind) as well as those reporters who stretched boundaries, shifted the paper away from its past reputations, and made more visible the issues, communities, and ideas that had been previously at the margins of the paper’s coverage. When the Tribune Company bought the paper in 2000, the Times had already suffered some embarrassments, such as the paper for sale scandal around the Staples supplement. Tribune made matters worse, highlighting downsizing as its own version of how to undermine a paper’s reputation.

Now comes Sam Zell who clearly has no shame in gutting the paper.

I’ve thought about the shrinking news hole as I’ve followed the fascinating and not reported story through emails and blogs of the battles now taking place regarding the proposed warehouse development on the site of the bulldozed South Central farm. It’s a great newspaper story – political intrigue, battling agencies (South Coast AQMD vs. L.A. City Planning Department), the return of the immigrant farmers, huge numbers of truck trips increasing the particulate matter in the area and the region; enviros battling it out with a well connected developer. But you can’t find it in the L.A. Times, nor, one presumes, would Sam Zell care.

Bike or walk to Vote!

It might seem like a very modest suggestion, but what if cities, counties, states, and other jurisdictions like the Board of Elections encouraged people to vote by biking or walking to their polling place. “I biked to vote” or “I walked to vote” stickers could be used as a substitute for the “I voted” stickers now available.

Why might this be important? Consider that: 28% of all car trips are less than a mile; that a “cold start” (where the car first is turned on during the day) uses far more gasoline for that < than a mile trip and generates far more pollutants than any other point in a car’s journey; and that the reduction of the number of polling places generates more parking problems and more “cruising for parking” taking place, which itself consumes more gasoline.

It might be symbolic but short trips are precisely the area where biking and walking are more efficient and less costly and ultimately healthier for both people and the planet!

A Motion to Increase Motion

The recently adopted Physical Education (PE) Motion by the LAUSD Board is a great victory and good first step to getting our youth healthy and in shape. The motion asks the Superintendent to ensure that LAUSD meets the State Dept. of Education mandated physical education requirements, along with other specifics. The motion states that

“The average physical education class size in Los Angeles Unified secondary schools is 48.8 students per instructor, with some classes having as many as eighty students…” (PE Motion, July 2008)

'Bike Riding in Los Angeles'

Now that UEPI is collaborating on a biking summit with some great folks from LA's energetic bike movement (stay tuned for more news and links to a summit planning wiki), I decided to re-read Bike Riding in Los Angeles, a 1972 novel by Marc Norman, best known for writing the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love.

"ACORN Under the Microscope" -- Huffington Post

Friends and Colleagues:

In our article today's HuffingtonPost, "ACORN Under the Microscope,"  John Atlas and I examine the current controversy surrounding ACORN, the country's largest and most successful progressive community organizing group.
Last week the New York Times reported that 8 years ago ACORN's chief financial officer embezzled almost $1 million from the organization, but that top staff agreed to keep it secret. ACORN put new financial controls in place and the money has now been repaid.  Even so, covering up the embezzlement revealed poor judgment.  Now that the story has leaked, ACORN's allies and  funders are understandably upset by this episode. Most have already indicated their willingness to continue to support ACORN, but with more scrutiny over its finances. ACORN has chapters in 103 cities in 38 states and has played a key role in winning victories for low-income people on such issues as living wages, predatory lending, affordable housing, voting rights, public schools, health care, and welfare reform. In its 38-year history, ACORN has accumulated many enemies among corporations and conservative politicians with whom it has done battle. These opponents, along with right-wing media, are happy to use the current scandal to try to weaken ACORN and undermine its reputation and political influence. ACORN is now reorganizing its leadership and management structure, a process that is certainly painful many of its veteran leaders and staff.  Our article puts this controversy in the larger context, exploring whether this self-inflicted wound will do irreparable harm or will help strengthen the organization in the long run.