“Our Students Need the Money Now”
The United Teachers of Los Angeles are on the precipice of a historic strike against corporate education reform.
489 Search Results for: Los Angeles
The Olympics Is a Racket
The world’s top athletes coming together in a spirit of friendly competition is a beautiful vision. But the Olympics have become a machine for the ruthless extraction of profit at the expense of working-class people.
The Origins of Stop-and-Frisk
Racist policing has a long lineage in urban America.
In LA’s School Board Race, It’s Rocío Rivas Versus Privatizers
Billionaires are pumping money into a single Los Angeles school board race in an effort to defeat the teachers’ union candidate, Rocío Rivas, and advance their agenda of privatization. We spoke to Rivas about what’s at stake.
The Fire Next Time
Almost 60 years ago, Joan Didion wrote that “the city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself.” Since then, insurance companies and developers have prioritized short-term profits over housing resilience and affordability for Californians.
For Father Luis Olivares, Christianity Was a Radical Doctrine
This Easter, we remember the life of Father Luis Olivares, a leader in the sanctuary movement of the 1980s and a proponent of liberation theology. To him, Christianity was a call to stand with the poor and oppressed of the world.
Breaking Promises
Obama’s “Promise Zones” anti-poverty program is a Trojan horse for deregulation.
“Officer-Involved” Obfuscation
Police use bloodless language like "officer-involved shooting" to cover up the blood on their own hands.
What Would Mike Davis Bomb?
Legendary socialist writer Mike Davis used to put a prompt to his students: If you had a B-52 with unlimited tonnage, what ugly, antisocial buildings would you bomb? We put the question to urbanist thinkers who have been inspired by Davis’s writing.
LA Real Estate Lobbied to Develop in High-Risk Fire Areas
In California, policymakers have long warned that continued development in high-risk wildfire zones was magnifying fires. But real estate interests have lobbied hard against any development restrictions, helping exacerbate the fires raging in Los Angeles now.
Super Bowl Dancers Need to Be Paid
The NFL Super Bowl is one of the most profitable sporting events in the world — yet the halftime show continues to use “volunteer” dancers. It’s blatant exploitation of workers by an industry worth billions of dollars.
The World Would Be a Better Place Without the Rich
They coarsen our culture, erode our economic future, and diminish our democracy. The ultra-rich have no redeeming social value.
LA Mayor Karen Bass Puts a Progressive Veneer on Centrism
LA mayor Karen Bass has burnished a progressive reputation throughout her political career. But that reputation has helped legitimate her move toward punitive approaches to homelessness and other social problems.
New Tools Are Helping More Tenants Than Ever Fight Eviction and Rent Debt
Undergirding California’s mass homelessness is an ongoing eviction crisis, with tenants often flung into the legal system to fight evictions without help. New tools are making is possible for tenants to stay in place — and coordinate efforts to fight back.
California’s Proposition 15 Ballot Measure Is About Rolling Back Neoliberalism
For decades, California has been robbed of billions of dollars a year from schools and social services by a state tax system on commercial property that favors wealthy corporations. Proposition 15, on the ballot this November in the Golden State, would change that.
US Media Is Collapsing. Here’s How to Save It.
Mass layoffs are tearing through US media. To preserve a functioning media ecosystem, we need three things: immediate aid to struggling journalists, public subsidies to smaller news outlets, and eventually industry transformation into a publicly funded system.
Bernie Sanders Is Trying to Save Minor League Baseball — and Get Its Players a Raise
Major League Baseball is threatening to sever ties with scores of minor league teams in an apparent attempt to cut costs. But Bernie Sanders is resisting the plan — and insisting that MLB instead grant minor leaguers a living wage and union representation.
Hollywood Is on Strike Against High-Tech Exploitation
As both writers and actors are on the picket lines in Hollywood, the stakes couldn’t be higher: Will average entertainment workers be able to eke out a living in an industry awash in cash, or will studio executives use new tech like AI to gobble up all of it?
After LA’s Strike, “Nothing Will Be the Same”
The Los Angeles teachers' strike was big, it was united, and now it's victorious. We interview UTLA chief negotiator Arlene Inouye about how the strike turned the tables on the billionaire privatizers.
Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too
By calling for a ban on for-profit charter schools, Bernie Sanders has gone further than any other candidate to confront the privatization of our schools. But we can’t fully defend public schools if we let nonprofit charters off the hook.