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Community Announcements Ride for Kids
Come join hundreds of your motorcyclist (and scooter) friends at the Los Angeles Ride for Kids®, starting at 8 a.m. May 5, at American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance. The Ride for Kids ® program supports the efforts of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation to find the cause of and cure for childhood brain tumors. Registration opens at 8 a.m. There is $40 minimum donation. Details: http://larideforkids.org/the-event/registerto-ride/ Venue: American Honda Motor Co. Location: 1919 Torrance Blvd., Torrance
The 2013 Long Beach QFilm Festival
Submissions now being accepted through June 8, for the 2013 Long Beach QFilm Festival, which will take place Sept. 6., at the Art Theatre and The Center in Long Beach. The Long Beach QFilm Festival annually presents narrative features, documentaries and short films that embody the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. There is a nominal fee for each submission Submit via www.withoutabox.com. The full festival line up of films as well as passes and tickets for purchase will be available beginning in mid-August through the Long Beach QFilm Festival website, www.qfilmslongbeach.com.
Lights, Camera, Ocean
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium’s Youth on Board video contest is the perfect opportunity for youth in Southern California to have their voices heard. Cabrillo Marine Aquarium’s video contest is for middle school and high school students in Southern California. Participants are tasked with creating a video that is 60 seconds or less without dialogue, featuring their inspiring impressions of Southern California’s ocean. Entries will be judged on originality, creativity and how effectively the message conveys the inspirational nature of the ocean. One grand prize trophy will be awarded to the winning entry (group or individual) and gift certificates to the Aquarium’s gift shop will be given to individual winners. They will be awarded at the Aquarium on World Ocean Day Saturday, June 8. Visit the website at www. cabrillomarineaquarium.org to download a complete list of video contest rules and an entry form.
Long Beach AIDS Ride
Phone Bank from Home for Marriage Equality
Join The Center as part of the National Equality Action Team to help local communities win marriage equality in Delaware, Rhode Island, Minnesota and Illinois. Volunteers currently help via weekly phone banks from home, as well as weekend volunteer trips in April and May where transportation and housing are provided. Volunteers will be calling IL, DE, RI and MN from their homes using a computer and telephone. Volunteers will be talking to supporters of marriage equality in those states providing information on where we are in the fight for marriage equality, and how they can help. For each shift, volunteers will be provided with training via a conference call during the first 20 to 30 minutes, and support during their shift via email, phone and instant message. Details: www.marriageequality.org/neat
SPIFFest Calls for Entries
After a typical long delay, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments April 16, in a case brought by American Trucking Associations, Inc., challenging the Port of Los Angeles Clean Trucks Program. A decision is expected in June. Although ATA, along with the rest of industry, has long claimed to share public pollution concerns, a brief exchange in oral arguments seemed to show that ATA rejects the entire purpose and premise of the CTP. “Could the terminal say, we have a pollution problem and only modern trucks can come and unload here?” Justice Sotomayor asked ATA’s attorney, Daniel Lerman. “No,” he replied, without qualification. The exchange was striking, since ATA did not challenge CTP’s core regulation of trucks. In addition, the most weighty and controversial provision that had been challenged—requiring companies to own and maintain their own vehicles and hire drivers as regular employees— was already thrown out by a lower court, and Los Angeles had declined to appeal. But the ATA challenged the decision anyway, as deep pocket corporate interests so often do. Federal law generally prohibits state and local governments from passing rules and regulations that impact interstate commerce. However, there are exceptions, and one of those is for government entities, such as the port, acting as business entities or “market participants,” what’s known as the “market participant doctrine.” The CTP was intentionally modelled on similar exceptional cases, such as the licensing and regulation of taxis serving international airports. It regulates activities centered on its property, not open to the general public. Going into oral arguments, the question is framed rather narrowly, over whether a few provisions of the CTP are legal under this approach. These include whether the port can require licensed motor carriers to provide offstreet parking and post placards in trucks so the public can report violations and whether the port can ban carriers that violate its standards. But it’s possible that the court might rule more broadly than the case at hand, perhaps even undermining long-standing practices, much as its Citizens United ruling undermined over 100 from p. 3
City Idles
“This patchwork system of regulation has serious challenges,” said Don Holmstrom, director of Chemical Safety Board’s Western Regional Office. But problems are similar throughout the United States, he explained. “[T]he current U.S. regulatory system for process safety is largely reactive; companies generally have a default right to operate, subject to penalties when accidents occur or their activities otherwise draw negative attention from regulators,” he said. “In the case of the Chevron refinery fire, the reactive system of regulation simply did not work to prevent what was ultimately a preventable accident.” This is precisely what local activists fear could happen with Rancho LPG. In contrast, Europeans have developed a proactive approach, which “places the impetus on industry to evolve with current best safety practices, wherever they have been developed, to ensure that process hazards have been adequately identified, evaluated and controlled,” Holmstrom said.
years of election finance law. This prospect has brought an array of state and local government representatives into the case filing friend of the court (aka amicus) briefs. As National Resources Defense Council lawyer Melissa Lin Perrella explained on NRDC’s Switchboard blog the Port of Los Angeles’ adoption of the CTP was necessary to allow the port to expand its business and to remain competitive and is well in line with widespread business practices in the private sector. NRDC itself played a key role in litigating the China Shipping Settlement, which signaled the end of port development without taking responsibility for community health and environmental impacts. But this landmark achievement only served to bring the port in line with how large-scale corporations are increasingly doing business in the world today. “The total spent on sustainable business programs by large companies (those with revenues of more than $1 billion) in Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. will reach $60
billion this year,” Perrella wrote. Since the market participant doctrine allows state and local governments to take the same sorts of actions that private enterprises might take, the CTP ought to be allowed, proponents argue. “If our name was Walmart, you wouldn’t even be having this lawsuit. We’re operating like a private company,” said former Harbor Commission President David Freeman, in a quote Perrella cites to lead off her blog post. At the original trial, Freeman testified specifically: [W]e quickly realized that in order to grow the port, we had to abate the pollution because the people in San Pedro and Wilmington were not only angry and not only suffering from terrible air pollution, but they had learned that the law was there to protect them, and the NRDC and others had filed lawsuits, and they had stopped the port from growing. So green growth which is what we called it was an absolute CTP Faces Supreme Court/ to p. 23
April 19 - May 2, 2013
The San Pedro International Film Festival is calling for entries for the Oct. 4 through 6, film festival. SPIFF is organized in partnership with the Croatian Cultural Center of Greater Los Angeles and City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Call for Entries are open until Aug. 19. The San Pedro International Film Festival was founded to celebrate the diverse culture and community of San Pedro with a wide spectrum of independent film, documentaries and shorts. Details: www.spiffest.org
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
The Local Publication You Actually Read
Registration for the Long Beach AIDS Ride now is open. Riders can choose between a 40- or 75mile route that winds down the coast. Details: http://longbeachaidsride.org
Clean Trucks Plan Goes to Supreme Court
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