2020 Fall Los Angeles Collegian Issue 2

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BALLOT DROP BOX ARRIVES ON CAMPUS BY ANGELIA COYNE An official ballot drop box has been placed on the Los Angeles City College campus adjacent to Heliotrope Drive and Monroe Street near the Student Union Building. The L.A. County Registrar and the Los Angeles Community College District partnered to offer voters another secure and socially distant way to cast their ballots in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election. The Los Angeles County Registrar has placed an additional 194 ballot drop boxes throughout the county since the state and presidential primary elections in March. The drop boxes were set up on Oct. 3 at each college in the District and will be available until the General

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Election on Nov. 3. Voters have access until 8 p.m. (or sundown) to drop in their ballots at locations throughout the county that can be found at LAVote.net. Drop boxes are designed with security features, and there are more than 400 of them throughout L.A. County. L.A. Metro will also post a drop box outside of the campus on the northwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. Union Station downtown and the El Monte Station are two drop box locations that are easy to get to on the Metro train or bus. “We want to make it easy for people to reach the polls or vote by mail and cast their ballot this election,” said Phillip Washington, CEO at Metro in an interview with CBS News. “Democracy works best when everyone participates in it.”

Collegian SEE “BALLOT DROP BOX” PAGE 6

LOS ANGELES

Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Volume 185 Number 2

The Voice of Los Angeles City College Since 1929

Armenians are on the March

COMMUNITY

Alcohol Sales, Consumption Goes Up in Lockdown COVID consequences drive rise in purchases and compulsive drinking.

It was a Sunday morning attack. Neighboring Azerbaijan dropped bombs on Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh in an area contested since 1992 that lies South of the Caucasus Mountains between Armenia and Azerbaijan on Sept. 27. The attack reverberated half a world away in Los Angeles. Members of the Armenian diaspora decided to reimagine their protests, through shock at the sudden, overt surge in posts for Facebook and Twitter by Azerbaijani accounts. Enter

SEE “ARMENIANS” PAGE 6

Social Justice Center Organizers Blaze Path for Racial Equity

President Seeks Campus Space and $10 Million Endowment.

Friends of Brianna Nelms say she is a generous woman. The 34-year-old said before the pandemic she loved going out with her friends to clubs, to dance, hookah lounges and restaurants, when she could find the time.

BY JAMES DUFFY V

SEE “ALCOHOL SALES” PAGE 6

INDEX 2-3

Arts & Entertainment

4,5

News

6

Resources

7

Sports

8

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Angeleno Armenians shut down Sunset Boulevard at Vine Street in the heart of Hollywood over Azerbaijan’s attacks on the majority-Armenian, disputed region of Artsakh/NagornoKarabakh on Oct. 4, 2020. Protesters also marched at media outlets like the L.A. Times and CNN to call for more coverage of the conflict.

the rapid execution, from planning, to graphics and slogans, to campaigning, to meetups and marches, all quickly coordinated. Community mobilization included marches on Azerbaijan’s consulate, Turkey’s consulate, the L.A. Times building, the CNN building in Hollywood and blocking freeways and ramps. The Collegian looked to both communities for comment, including the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA Western Region). The “grassroots”

BY CASHIA KIRKSEY

Opinion & Editorial

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This Time, It’s About More than April 24 BY RAPHAEL GERSOWSKY

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PHOTO COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS Center organizers hosted a series of Black Lives Matter Town Halls at L.A. City College over the summer.

Georgetown University sociology professor and New York Times contributing opinion writer Michael Eric Dyson compared contemporary U.S. politics to the civil rights era of the 1960s at LACC’s fall convocation on Aug. 27. He told his online audience the topic of his speech is the “United States of Amnesia,” borrowed from author Gore Vidal. “We are living in an epic and an era when the echoes of history resonate and rebound in our own day,” Dyson said. “Emmett Till, meet George Floyd.” Dyson came at the invitation of organizers of the college’s new Race, Equity and Social Justice Center. He called the center “extremely important.” Center organizers hosted a Black Lives Matter Summer Town Hall speaker series, which culminated with the attorney for the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Ben Crump. Crump asked organizers of LACC’s Black Lives Matter Townhall to pause their meeting

when former Vice President Joe Biden’s office texted him on Aug. 31. Both Biden and President Donald Trump called Crump the next day about his latest client, Jacob Blake, an unarmed African American man shot seven times in the back by police. The 29-year-old father’s three children were in his backseat when he was getting into his minivan. “You can only imagine what kind of psychological problems these babies are going to have for the rest of their lives,” Crump said to his LACC Zoom audience. The shooting stoked a national furor already raging for months over police killings of Black Americans. The day before, Crump warned the meeting organizer, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Thelma James Day, that Biden would be calling. “He could’ve called me that morning and told me, ‘I’ve got too much going on,’ but that’s SEE “SOCIAL JUSTICE” PAGE 6


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