[Retrospect, from page 5]
A Not Quite Random Retrospective
courts. But a broader national effort building on labor law, strongly supported by the Teamsters Union, has built a powerful movement, which has grown rapidly in the past few years. The movement has had hundreds of legal victories and an escalating series of short-term strikes, which is strongly reminiscent of the 1934 birth struggles of the ILWU—even before it was an independent union. Not surprisingly, no other publication has told the story of this struggle quite the way that Random Lengths has told it. Finally, waterfront development has been a key port-community issue since 2000, both in San Pedro and Wilmington. Since it ties together two different threads, we deal with it below in the thread of issues with the land.
The Second Thread with Municipal Issues
Within its first few issues, the original editors of Random Lengths had to decide whether to remain a sectarian political publication or to engage more broad-ranging political discussions from a non-sectarian viewpoint—the path they ultimately chose, which Random Lengths has followed ever since. From Stanbery’s 1980 “Neighborhood Associations Drive,” to the emergence of the inter-community 15th District Community Coalition candidacy in 1996, to the complicated legacies of a contradictory secession attempt, compromised charter reform and the watered-down-but-still evolving neighborhood council system that shapes district politics, Random Lengths has kept local news first and foremost as the honest measure of the health of local electoral Randomdemocracy. Lengths was launched at the
December 24, 2015 - January 6, 2016
Serving the Seven Communities of the Harbor Area
start of the primary season that swept erstwhile California Gov. Ronald Reagan into the presidency. When George Bush, The First, took over in 1988, Random Lengths, in its new biweekly format, began covering deeper political issues—the Iran-Contra scandal, the Lockerbie airline bombing, and the first Iraq war—in a distinctively critical manner. Setting aside the corporate media fixation on President Bill Clinton’s sexual pecadillos, Random Lengths, instead, probed his bombing of Sudan and the geopolitics of NATO’s bombing of Kosovo. After 9/11, we documented the misinformation and concealed abuses leading into and through the second Iraq war of George W. Bush, which ultimately gave birth to ISIS, devoting countless pages to an eclectic mix of skilled, original analyses and information that never surfaces in the mainstream press. From Hurricane Katrina onwards, Random Lengths News has repeatedly probed different ways global warming is already threatening our lives — particularly in terms of prolonged droughts, wildfires and rising sea levels. And, in multiple other cases—from malathion spray, to the CIA-crack connection, to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment; from the Savings and Loan crisis, to the Walmart-driven union-busting of the local supermarket strike—history has justified the paper’s conclusions. In its early issues, this paper sharply criticized conservative pro-business Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who succeeded John S. Gibson in 1981, yet her office maintained open lines of communication as befitted a public servant. Such was not the case with her similarly-minded successor, 6 Rudy Svorinich Jr., who finally beat her in
Above Wilmington environmental justice advocate, Jesse Marquez has been a constant presence in the past issues of Random Lengths News’ 35-year history. Two other constant issues are waterfront development (represented by the rendering of the Downtown Harbor on the top right and in reality as of 2014) and the community fight against the POLA’s energy company tenants such as Rancho LPG, below left.
failure to fill the gap left by PCAC’s disbanding. Similarly, during Hahn’s first term, the paper covered the long efforts of the politically stymied Harbor Area secessionists and later that decade it covered efforts to restrain downtown-centric power, including a proposed charter amendment cutting back city council pay scales. 1993. By the mid-1990s, Svorinich’s office took the unprecedented measure of refusing to provide any public information press releases to Random Lengths, the Harbor Area’s only community newspaper, while also refusing to return our phone calls. That actively obstructionist impasse continued until Svorinich was termed-out of office. His subsequent defeat in a run for state office was brought about to some degree by our never-ending scrutiny, documenting his frequent evasions of direct and open democracy. With the turn-of-the century election of Janice Hahn to the council office and her brother, James, to the mayoralty, Random Lengths’ again had a decision to make: return to its initial position as a sectarian political publication or continue with its independent, non-sectarian point of view. Staying true to its original mission statement, Random Lengths chose the latter. But it was also forced to sharpen its critical acumen, to adjust to the increasing complexity of participating in whatever direct democratic empowerment was in store—not only criticizing abuses of power but also praising the responsible exercise of reform whenever it emerged. These two poles of engaged critique were already seen regarding Janice Hahn’s first elected service on the Elected Commission for Charter Reform. Random Lengths praised her initial efforts for a proportionally elected, legally empowered neighborhood council system, then chastised the new charter she ultimately supported for its evasion of direct democracy, for its backroom deal to bypass the voters and create a disempowered version of the neighborhood council system that the electorate had once mandated Hahn to create. The various strengths and weaknesses of the neighborhood council system have been frequent subjects for similar critiques ever since, including its evident
Random Lengths also repeatedly reminds its readers that the Harbor Area’s largely Latino, mainly immigrant majority must be included in political debates, beginning with the very emergence of issues to be debated, not only within the neighborhood council system and in Los Angeles’ municipal government as a whole, but increasingly in other Harbor Area communities. Random Lengths has remained critical of the continuing inequities faced by Wilmington, Harbor Gateway and Watts in their smaller-scale economic development projects. Since 2000, we have also paid increased attention to Carson and Long Beach, communities in which Latinos and other minorities still struggle for equitable treatment on many fronts. Attention to labor struggles of mostly Latino hotel workers in Long Beach and truck drivers at both ports has been reinforced by broader coverage of endemic wage theft in the low-wage economy regionwide, and the fight for a $15 minimum wage over the past several years.
The Third Thread: Issues with the Land
Publisher James Preston Allen has said, “If you want to see a good San Pedro street fight, just hold a meeting on land use!” Inextricably bound to issues of port expansion and of city governance, local land use issues lie at the heart of why Random Lengths was first created. The Byzantine legal interconnections between apparently isolated battles over this or that piece of public property over the past 25 years are mind boggling. They have been further complicated by the decommissioning of military property following the Vietnam War, which included Angels Gate and White Point Parks, and properties related to the Long Beach Naval Station’s closure. Since late in the Richard Riordan administration, land-
use conflicts have repeatedly erupted around waterfront development, both in San Pedro and Wilmington. Although the port had created a brand-new master plan when Random Lengths’ first issue appeared in 1979, the community of San Pedro had no such plan for itself, thanks to business forces (working through Councilman John Gibson) who ensured that San Pedro’s General Plan hadn’t been updated since 1962. Random Lengths began with a land use “revolution’’ among Point Fermin neighborhood residents, who were determined to create a San Pedro land use plan democratically at a grass roots level. The fact that the public Cabrillo Beach was not destroyed by the port’s expansion of its marina and has now been restored as a community center is just one direct result of their efforts. Although the “San Pedro Plan’’ became a campaign issue in 1981, with all candidates—including Flores— favoring it, it was never allowed to come to legal fruition. Nonetheless, the grassroots structure of the “revolution” remained in place, and each time a new issue sprang up, Random Lengths has been there to put it back into its larger context. The survival of any open spaces or low-income housing through San Pedro’s development frenzy in the 1980s and 1990s is largely due to the information and analyses Random Lengths has steadfastly provided. From the eviction of Park Western residents in 1980 to the foundation of the Angels Gate Cultural Center in 1981, to the marina and the battle over Navy housing at White Point, to the socalled “Pedro 2000” plan to eliminate the Rancho San Pedro housing project, to the struggle over Taper Avenue housing, to Recreation and Parks’ eviction attempts at Angels Gate and Hernandez’s Ranch on the basis of a “master plan’’ that never was, to the port’s “eminent domain” at Knoll Hill and its first scuttling of the Pacific Avenue corridor redevelopment project; from John S. Gibson Field, to Joan Milke Flores Park, to Svorinich’s unrequited efforts to get a park or a field or a something named after himself, the story remained the same. [See Retrospect, page 9]