Long Beach’s Homelessness “MAC” Truck EXPOSED!

April 19, 2023

Long Beach Investigates: Obscene Waste of Public Resources and Staff Time on Bungled, Brain-Dead Approach to Homelessness in Long Beach EXPOSED by Amateur Local Activist Investigators

Click the video below to watch their exposé on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eOTTvgqGUBw

From our partners at Long Beach Investigates:

Wanna see Long Beach city employees literally doing nothing—chatting, wandering around, chatting some more—for hours on end? Just follow Long Beach’s much-heralded homelessness “Mobile Access Center” RV around. Then get angry, not at them, but at the political leadership that just doesn’t give a damn.

We put a Benny Hill-style theme to our sped up footage exposing this, one of Long Beach’s signature new homelessness outreach programs… because what we witnessed can only be described as FARCE.

Amid Long Beach’s mushrooming homelessness crisis, with the unhoused dying out on the streets nearly every day, Long Beach’s mayor and city leaders are ALL ABOUT the big announcements, emergency declarations, and press releases.

The reality is, of course, a joke, because the reality is… they really don’t care. After all, the homeless don’t vote, and if you do, you only need to THINK they care.

While Long Beach wastes tens of millions of dollars intended for homelessness outreach, services, and shelter, received from the federal and state governments, thousands are left to slowly commit suicide on our streets.

We do care about this, and we believe you do, too. Residents have a right to see accountability with their tax dollars and truth behind their leaders’ words.

– The Long Beach Investigates Team, volunteer investigative journalists making a difference

Share the video at: https://youtu.be/eOTTvgqGUBw

Fraud, Misappropriation of Public Funds by City Auditor Alleged

February 11, 2022

LINK: Fraud, Misappropriation of Public Funds by City Auditor Alleged

City Auditor Challenger is Widow of Former Police Oversight Investigator

January 6, 2022

Democrat Ginny Gonzales, C.P.A., a retired IRS agent and the widow of a prominent former City employee, has announced a run for Long Beach City Auditor, drawing a contrast with the Republican-registered incumbent. While party identification does not appear on the ballot in Long Beach, candidates for various offices in recent years, from mayor to city council, have frequently advertised their partisan credentials.

Gonzales’s entrance into the race would mark the first time that the incumbent, City Auditor Laura Doud, has been forced to appear on the ballot alongside a challenger in sixteen years and the first time she has had to appear on the ballot at all in eight years. Doud was reelected in 2018 with no votes cast, as no official ballot opponent nor certified write-in opponent materialized. She was also reelected without ballot opposition in 2010 and 2014 and is currently serving in her fourth term of office.

Doud was first elected in 2006 when she unseated 14-year incumbent City Auditor Gary Burroughs after a contentious race. If reelected in 2022, she would be on course to serve 20 years in office and become Long Beach’s second longest serving City Auditor (the longest was Myrtelle Gunsul, who served in the role from 1919 to 1951).

In 2018, Doud controversially took a pause from her office’s self-described “110 Years of Reliable Independence” by endorsing a charter amendment, Measure BBB, which loosened term limits for her fellow elected officials in the positions of mayor and city council. No term limits exist for the elected offices of city auditor, city attorney, or city prosecutor.

Should Gonzales unseat Doud, she has made clear that she would focus on rooting out “municipal government corruption”. Her late husband Thomas Gonzales was plaintiff in a long running wrongful termination litigation against the City of Long Beach after he was fired as an investigator for the City’s Citizens Police Complaint Commission. He alleged that he was fired in retaliation for his refusal to cover up police abuse and was awarded over $700,000 by a jury. The City appealed repeatedly but eventually agreed to a $775,000 settlement.

Gonzales’s campaign press release:

Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell Bows Out

January 5, 2022

The four-term Long Beach-based assemblyman and former Long Beach City Council member—who previously discussed the possibility of running for mayor and emphasized to the Long Beach Post, “I’ve essentially won citywide multiple times”—released the news on Twitter. He made clear he will neither be a candidate for mayor nor reelection, creating an open State Assembly seat.

Assemblyman O’Donnell included the following statement with his tweet:

News Analysis: Robert Garcia Loses Front-Runner Status in Race to Succeed Lowenthal with Assemblywoman’s Entry

December 23, 2021

The race to succeed retiring Congressman Alan Lowenthal is heating up as a new entrant denies Mayor Robert Garcia his hoped-for sense of inevitability. The Long Beach mayor had been the only prominent candidate in the race, having entered immediately following the announcement of Lowenthal’s retirement last week.

But today his prospects have changed radically with the entry of Democratic five-term Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens, as reported by The Hill. Known as a champion of good government for her co-leadership of BASTA (Bell Association to Stop the Abuse), the reform organization which cleaned up the City of Bell after the Rizzo scandal by replacing the corrupt City Council.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (Bellflower, Downey, Bell Gardens)

Assemblywoman Garcia (whose campaign released this bio and this previous campaign video) is also known as a political survivor, after beating back a $1.3 million onslaught from Big Oil-aligned unions, and the charter schools lobby, during her 2018 re-election in retaliation for her environmental legislation (attempting to exploit unfounded allegations of misconduct, of which she had been cleared by an Assembly ethics investigation). Her environmental justice record includes authoring AB617, which created the West Long Beach/Carson/Wilmington air quality monitoring district and opposition to I-710 expansion.

The state legislator enters the race with a host of endorsements, according to her press release, from the northern half of the congressional district, which overlaps with the Assembly district she has represented since first being elected in 2012, including the following:

City of Downey Mayor Blanca Pacheco
City of Bell Councilmembers Ali Saleh, Fidencio Gallardo, Monica Arroyo, and and Mayor Alicia Romero
City of Bell Gardens Councilmembers Lisseth Flores, Marco Barcena, and Mayor Pro Tem Jorgel Chavez
City of Commerce Mayor Leonard Mendoza and Mayor Pro Tem, Oralia Rebollo
City of Cudahy Councilmember Daisy Lomeli and Vice Mayor Liz Alcantar
City of Maywood Mayor Herber Marquez, Mayor Pro tem Frank Garcia, and Councilmembers Eddie De La Riva, Ricardo Lara, and Jessica Torres.
City of Huntington Park Mayor Graciela Ortiz, Councilmembers Karina Macias, and Manuel “Manny” Avila
City of Vernon Mayor Melissa Ybarra and Councilmember Leticia Lopez
Downey Unified School Board member and clerk Martha Sodetani and School Boardmember Linda Salomon Saldaña
Montebello Unified School Board Member Elizabeth Cabrera
Cerritos College Board of Trustees Mariana Pacheco and Carmen Avalos

According to The Hill piece, “Cristina García will run to the left of the Long Beach mayor, a former Republican who’s been criticized for his support of GOP immigration policies in the ’90s.”

One can see how formidable her candidacy will be simply by examining the new congressional district lines.

Newly drawn Long Beach / Downey / Huntington Park congressional district being sought by Mayor Robert Garcia and Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia.

Essentially the southern part of the newly drawn congressional district, depicted above, has been represented by Mayor Robert Garcia since 2014, and the northern part has been represented by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia since 2012. Her current Assembly district can be seen here:

Other political factors include the fact that Cristina Garcia’s reputation as a good governance heroine who emerged out of the Bell scandal precedes her throughout the small, corruption-plagued cities of southeast Los Angeles County, beyond her own Assembly district lines (the City of Bell is just outside her current district).

On the other hand, the portion of Long Beach included in the new congressional district is largely composed of eastern Long Beach, where Robert Garcia has traditional performed poorly. For example, in Robert Garcia’s last campaign in 2020, in which he led an effort to pass the Measure A tax extension, his campaign lost nearly all the east side precincts of Long Beach.

The map below overlays the new congressional district lines in red over the City of Long Beach results for Measure A in March 2020:

2020 Measure A results. Robert Garcia’s Yes campaign won the blue and green precincts but lost those colored in light or dark yellow.

Clearly, the mayor of Long Beach was done no favors by the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which left much of his northern and western Long Beach bastions of political strength outside the new Long Beach-anchored congressional district but left in many areas where his unpopularity has been manifest.

As a result, the year 2022 is set to be an interesting one for southeast LA County congressional campaigning. Given the power of incumbency, whoever wins this new district is likely to represent the region in the halls of Congress for many years to come.

Assemblywoman Garcia’s 2018 re-election campaign video.

The assemblywoman’s congressional campaign web site is CristinaGarcia4Congress.com.

News Analysis: Long Beach Independent Redistricting Commission’s “independence” thrown into question by political operative’s interference

November 3, 2021

Out of hundreds of maps submitted by the public over the last nine months, two of the four semi-finalists to be considered by the Long Beach Independent Redistricting Commission (LBIRC) are being promoted by Cory Allen, a longtime, well-connected Long Beach political consultant and operative.

The two maps under heightened consideration, #47428 and #49564, break up Long Beach City Council’s 4^th District by placing Los Altos in the 3^rd District, thus likely eliminating Councilman Daryl Supernaw (a Los Altos resident) as the 4^th District representative.

Cory Allen has deep ties to Long Beach’s politicians and political machine. For years Allen worked on, coordinated, and managed numerous Long Beach political campaigns. Among his campaigns, Allen was the campaign chair for Herlinda Chico who lost to Daryl Supernaw in the last 4^th District election (which was the 2015 special election to fill the seat vacated by now-Assemblyman O’Donnell, Supernaw having run unopposed in subsequent reelections).

Cory Allen also happens to be Chico’s roommate.

Allen promoted his gerrymandered maps at the October 20, 2021 LBIRC meeting. While he mentioned his position as a Long Beach Human Relations Commissioner, he failed to mention his day job: political consultant with deep political ties to the local political machine.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Allen currently is the Campaign and Policy Director for Progressive Solutions Consulting (PSC), a political consulting firm belonging to Melahat Rafiei with professional ties to candidates including Chico (a Long Beach City College elected trustee), State Senator Lena Gonzalez, Councilwoman Cindy Allen, Councilman Rex Richardson, former councilmember and school board candidate Tonia Reyes Uranga, Councilwoman Mary Zendejas, and Councilwoman Suely Saro. A look at the firm’s Facebook page shows the extent of its connections to numerous Long Beach politicians and their elections.

PSC principal Rafiei pictured (center) with prospective city council candidate Herlinda Chico (right) and LBUSD School Board Member Meghan Kerr. From PSC’s facebook page.

Allen’s own LinkedIn profile makes clear he is a “political consultant, community organizer, campaign strategist” for Rafiei’s PSC. Allen’s and Rafiei’s firm represents their clients, not the interests of the public at large, as could be said of any consulting firm.

Cory Allen’s LinkedIn page: “political consultant” and “campaign strategist”.

Allen’s Twitter account name is @corypolitics and notes that he is also a Democratic Party Central Committee Member for Los Angeles County and involved with numerous other Democratic Party clubs.

The connection to Chico is important because the Cory Allen Maps that are now under consideration do two things:

First, they redistrict Supernaw out of the 4^th District, thus eliminating him from running again and opening the way for Chico. Chico has had a longtime ambition of being on the City Council.

Second, they carve out a new 4^th District with the center of the district being Chico and Allen’s own Bryant Neighborhood. The new 4th District would break apart neighborhoods, student housing, business districts, and police and fire divisions.

The odds of having two of the four citizen’s maps being reviewed for consideration being those of political operative Cory Allen, out of hundreds of community maps submitted, appears not to be mere luck or serendipity.

This appears to be nothing short of the gaming of the new “independent” redistricting commission’s process, according to sources contacted by LB4D, which the political bosses of Long Beach have become very adept at.

As a political consultant and establishment operative, Allen has a lot of connections with experience from the statewide 2010 redistricting process, under the then-new “independent” citizen’s redistricting system.

In fact, it is the Long Beach Independent Redistricting Commission’s city hall-chosen consultant Paul Mitchell, and his company Redistricting Partners, who the noted investigative journalists at ProPublica have previously reported on and identified as essentially having invented the process of gaming the California “independent” redistricting system for politicians.

Citizen redistricting started in California on the state level with the 2010 Census after the passage of Proposition 11 in 2008 and Proposition 20 in 2010. Both Propositions passed with landslide wins despite opposition from both the California Democratic and Republican parties. It was the majority party bosses during redistricting that would no longer have the power to gerrymander political district lines to increase power, or so the voters were led to believe.

In 2009 and 2010, with the power to draw the Assembly, State Senate, and Congressional districts lines under threat, the Democratic Party and its associated actors poured millions of dollars to defeat the two initiatives. With both initiatives eventually passing, party bosses then turned to strategies to game the new system to get lines that were favorable for their numerical objectives.

After the first statewide redistricting under the new state commission, surprisingly to many, did not produce the expected shift away from Democratic-maximization gerrymandering of seats, ProPublica took notice.

An independent, non-partisan, award winning, nonprofit newsroom that investigates governmental and business abuses of power, ProPublica investigated the 2010 California redistricting process and released an article that examined the strategic gaming of the system.

Central to ProPublica’s investigative piece is Paul Mitchell, who is now the contracted consultant for the new Long Beach Independent Redistricting Commission.

The ProPublica piece reveals that party operatives’ plan was to get the lines the party wanted by using others to advocate for their chosen lines, also known as astroturfing. Mitchell’s firm Redistricting Partners was hired by Congressman Jerry McNerney to save his gerrymandered Northern California seat centered in San Joaquin County.

According to the article, Mitchell and his firm gamed the system by creating a made-up Community of Interest called OneSanJoaquin, which falsely referred to itself on Facebook as a nonprofit, despite no records of such a nonprofit in any state. The idea was to have party supporters then echo the Community of Interest’s maps and talking points to the Redistricting Commission.

The article reports: “The author of OneSanJoaquin’s maps was not identified on the Facebook page, but ProPublica has learned it was Paul Mitchell, a redistricting consultant hired by McNerney. Transcripts show that more than a dozen people delivered or sent the canned testimony to the commission, which accepted it without question.” (emphasis added)

Mitchell, with his firm Redistricting Partners, was successful in saving Congressman McNerney, and according to the article he gloated on social media:

“McNerney ends up with safer district than before,” Mitchell’s firm tweeted, after McNerney announced his candidacy in his new district. “Wow! How did he do that?”

When approached by ProPublica about his work on influencing the 2010 redistricting process, Mitchell did not deny it. Indeed, he defended it.

Mitchell insisted that the Commissioners knew that some testimony was fabricated by outside groups:

“Paul Mitchell, the consultant whose work had such a large impact on the commission’s decisions, said voters benefited from the work done by him and others deeply involved in the process. The commissioners, he said, “knew some of the testimony was being fabricated by outside groups. But what were they to do? They couldn’t create a screen of all testimony and ferret out all the biases.

Mitchell said. “My only regret is that we didn’t do more.”

So the questions now are: Do the LBIRC citizen commissioners know what their consultant Mitchell likely knows about the individual-benefit political engineering of the ringer maps and attendant testimony by a political consultant? Is he assuming they know or does he know that at least some know? Or does Mitchell see, or want us to see, Allen’s gerrymandered Chico-friendly map as creating a “better map”?

In other words, have Mitchell and Allen manipulated, via insider and/or external pressure, yet another group of citizens, most of whom only want to do what the people voted for—finally to redistrict through a truly independent process, free of politicians self-serving influence?

ProPublica: How Democrats Fooled California’s Redistricting Commission: To get the districts they wanted, Democrats organized groups that said they represented communities but really represented the party.

Summary of the ProPublica piece.

Class action lawsuit brought on behalf of all Black City employees moves forward

October 27, 2021

A class action lawsuit (view the Complaint here) by current and former Black employees of the City of Long Beach—Christopher Stuart, Eric Bailey, Deborah Hill, Sharon Hamilton, and Donnell Russell Jauregui—is now set for an initial hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court on December 8, 2021, according to court documents recently filed.

The case name is Christopher Stuart, et al. v. City of Long Beach.

The suit alleges that Long Beach “is far behind peer municipalities in releasing hiring, pay, promotion, discipline, and termination data by race and other protected classifications in order to name the problem [systematic racism].”

It further alleges:

“In fact, the City continues to systematically subject Black employees to unequal pay on the basis of race and color by (1) paying Black employees less than similarly-situated non-Black employees, (2) hiring Black employees disproportionately into lower-paying classifications, levels, pay steps, occupational job categories, and groups compared to non-Black employees; (3) disproportionately rejecting Black employees’ reclassification and out-of-class pay requests compared to non-Black employees; and (4) disproportionately hiring and keeping Black employees as Non-Career employees and/or unclassified employees. This list is not exhaustive.”

Factual allegations in the suit include, “altering the eligibility requirements, including the benchmark for passing exam scores, to favor non-Black employees” and “preventing Black employees from applying through tap-on-the-shoulder hiring practices.”

In perhaps the suit’s most explosive allegation, a white City supervisor named John Black is accused of being “openly racist against Black people” and implying that “it was honorable to be in the Ku Klux Klan” while passing over Black workers for promotion to promote less qualified employees.

The suit moves to its Initial Status Conference hearing after both sides lodged successful peremptory challenges against two successive judges handling the case.

The current judge assigned is Judge David Cunningham III, an African American former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, former board member of the Los Angeles Urban League, and former member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Equity Oversight Panel.

The case was reported on by the Los Angeles Times and other outlets when first filed last June.

Plaintiffs are represented by the firm Medina Orthwein LLP, while defendant City of Long Beach is represented by the locally well-connected firm Keesal, Young & Logan (whose principle Samuel “Skip” Keesal is a longtime political donor to Long Beach elected officials). The Long Beach City Attorney’s office routinely outsources litigation.

City Attorney to retire, establishment pick to replace him already endorsed

October 15, 2021

View the BREAKING NEWS report at LBReport.com: https://www.lbreport.com/news/oct21/mcint1.htm.

Draft maps of Long Beach’s new city council, state legislative, and congressional districts published

October 14, 2021

Council district visualizations — Draft Plan A, one of a number of new drafts for the commission to consider.

The Long Beach Independent Redistricting Commission (LBIRC) has received drafts of Five Plan Maps (each with two slightly different versions) for council district boundary redistricting from the contracted consultant Redistricting Partners. The Five Plan Maps were produced by the consultant based on input from all the commissioners at the October 6, 2021 LBRIC meeting.

The commissioners’ individual wish-list input for the maps from the October 6th meeting was based on months of testimony from Communities of Interest and hundreds of community-submitted maps. Those hundreds of community maps follow the Five Draft Maps in the Redistricting Partners released map packet (view them here as Draft Plans A-E).

Draft Plan A, one of a number of new drafts for the commission to consider.

The Charter specifically prohibits taking into account where current council representatives live in considering boundaries. While the released maps’ exact detailed streets are hard to see, it appears various of the plan maps do change districts for a few council representatives including Price, Zendejas, Uranga, Austin, and Richardson.

The first Five Plan Maps, Plan A, B, C, D, and E in the packet that was released late Wednesday, October 13^th are followed by almost 600 pages of other maps submitted by the community.

However, it is the Five Plan Maps that the Commissioners will concentrate on at the next LBIRC meeting on Wednesday, October 20, 2021. At that meeting, the Commissioners are scheduled to choose three maps to move forward for a legally required public comment phase. If the Commission fails to select maps to move on, it will restart the current 3 maps approval public feedback phase. and push the final map approval closer to the required legal deadlines in December.

Regardless of how the October 20th meeting plays out, the current Five Plan Maps show that this inaugural Commission is setting a precedent by embracing its “Independent” moniker.

The Five Plan Maps include major boundary changes the Commissioners asked to be included in the draft maps: sharing responsibility for the airport (now exclusively in the 5^th District) with other noise impacted council districts; moving CSULB with Puvungna and student voting populations in the dorms into the 4^th District; creating a single council district with the majority west of the Los Angeles River/710 corridor, and consolidating the Cambodian business districts along with Anaheim and PCH into one council district.

Timeline of Events

Wednesday, October 20 – Draft Maps Selection

· The Commission will select three of the draft maps (including any revisions) for public feedback and further review

Wednesday, October 27 – Community Feedback Hearing

· Members of the public will provide testimony to the Commission on the final three draft maps

Wednesday, November 10 – Proposed Final Map Selection

· The Commission will select a final draft map to move forward for adoption

Thursday, November 18 – Final Map Adoption Hearing

· The Commission will vote on the final map

Long Beach’s Congressional, Assembly, and State Senate district boundaries will have big changes

This week the California Citizens Redistricting Commission (CCRC) released “visualization” maps for Los Angeles County’s Congressional, Assembly, and State Senate districts. The maps show that the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbor and adjacent areas will most likely be unified for state legislature and Congressional districts.

The “visualization” maps are draft hypothetical districts that were drawn with preliminary input from the CCRC Commissioners to the consultant map makers. The visualizations are part of the review of potential options. The Los Angeles County visualization were released for the CCRC’s Southern California-centered meetings this week.

It becomes clear from the visualizations, and the names given to them, that the Commissioners are interested in more of a grouping with common central geographical features than the former prevalent mostly north-south alignments. As an example, Long Beach’s state districts are grouped in the “Harbor” grouping. Other groupings include the “Gateway” cities, “South Bay”, “LAX” and “South LA”.

The current State Senate District 33 represented by State Senator Lena Gonzalez currently runs North-South:

Current district of State Sen. Lena Gonzalez.

Current LA County Senate Districts based on 2010 Census

The CCRC visualization map calls for a “Harbor” centered Senate District taking in the coastal parts of the current State Senate Districts 33, 24, and 35 along the coast (plus Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands) with a small portion of Orange County:

The CCRC visualization map for the State Assembly district is similar:

The CCRC visualization maps also call for a “Harbor” centered Congressional District going from a small portion of coastal Orange County to Palos Verde taking parts of the current 33rd, 43 and 47th Congressional Districts:

Current L.A. County Congressional District maps based on the 2010 Census:

CSULB agrees to permanent protection of Puvungna lands in historic court settlement

September 17, 2021

Courtesy of LB4D News

A resolution to the longstanding controversy over the ancient indigenous site known as Puvungna has finally been found.

The Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation – Belardes and the California Cultural Resources Preservation Alliance have announced a legal settlement with California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) that provides “permanent protection to Puvungna”. Puvungna is a multi-acre, listed historical and cultural site located on the CSULB campus.

The legal settlement is the end of the lawsuit over CSULB’s 2019 dumping of debris from the construction of the new Parkside North student dorms on Atherton Street. The Indigenous People and their allies argued that the university acted improperly when it dumped the 6,400 cubic yards of construction dirt and debris on Puvungna.

The settlement requires CSULB to file and record a restrictive covenant on the land. The Declaration of Restrictive Covenant will be attached to the land binding the university and any future owners of the land to its restrictions. The settlement agreement calls for the Declaration of Restrictive Covenant to be filed within 10 days of approval of the settlement agreement by the court.

Restrictions include a prohibition on the university from developing or damaging the land. Other restrictions included are prohibitions on:

constructing temporary or permanent structures or improvements (such as parking lots, classrooms, or retail buildings);
depositing construction debris or materials;
installing landscaping other than certain native plants;
applying Roundup or similar pesticides to the land;
storing or staging construction equipment;
parking vehicles;
operating motorcycles, dirt bikes or mountain bikes;
operating heavy machinery;
or installing improvements that restrict or prohibit access to California Native American Tribes and affiliated groups using the land for culture-related activities.

The settlement agreement also includes allowing tribal groups to use Puvungna for their ongoing traditional activities and access to perform ongoing maintenance, health, and safety issues and for addressing the construction debris that were dumped on Puvungna.

The agreement also requires the CSU System to establish, eventually, a conservation easement over the site. That easement would supplant the restrictive covenant and would shift care of the land to a manager agreed upon by the parties to the settlement.

Finally, the settlement agreement requires CSULB to pay $180,000 in legal fees to the attorneys of the Indigenous People in the court case.

Rebecca Robles the Culture Bearer – Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation released this statement:

“We look forward to the restoration of our sacred Puvungna. This is a new era. It is a time of healing, a time of social justice for Acjachemen and Tongva people, cooperation among Tribal relatives and our allies. We look to the future to continue our culture and sacred traditions and fulfill our promises to the coming generations.”

The settlement agreement appears to be the final chapter in the long battle of the Indigenous People over the Puvungna lands. The construction dumping lawsuit came just as the Indigenous and African American “land back” movement started to become national news.

The first “Indian Wars” over Puvungna started as CSULB’s desire to build a mall on the land in the late 20th Century.

Round two of the battle started with the latest CSULB 10-year Master Plan that had CSULB hiring a consultant for the proposed development of Puvungna.

Then came the construction dumping on Puvungna after CSULB claims of “consultation” with some CSULB Indigenous faculty members. Protests erupted, including in front of CSULB President Jane Close Conoley’s home.

The lawsuit followed as CSULB continued missteps, including at one point referring to Puvungna as “our land”.

In an acknowledgment that the university had been on the wrong side of history, as the settlement negotiations in the lawsuit began, Dr. Conoley released a video offering to protect Puvungna for the next 10 years. That offer was rejected by the Indigenous People.

Next the California Native American Heritage Commission voted to start an investigation into the Puvungna construction dumping.

On the wrong side of history and with a long record of cultural missteps, CSULB it appears is finally ready to make things right.

For more information see the following:

Long Beach census numbers point to likely council district boundary changes

September 7, 2021

Courtesy of LB4D News: THE TUESDAY REVIEW

The Census data’s various citywide gains and losses in council districts likely point to a scenario of major adjustments to the nine Long Beach City Council Districts boundaries. Those likely adjustments will come from a domino effect across the city when the legally required population balancing and needs of various Long Beach Communities of Interest are taken into account.

The prospect of those major adjustments came late last week in a Census data report the Long Beach city staff released about the Long Beach numbers from the U.S. 2020 Census. The report was compiled by Redistricting Partners, the consultants hired to advise the new Long Beach Citizens Independent Redistricting Commission (LBCIRC).

The Redistricting Partners report is on the LBCIRC meeting agenda for this Wednesday, September 8, 2021.

The 2020 Census data released in the report last week was from the first release of the 2020 Census data that is known as the “Legacy Data” format[i]. The data shows the population of Long Beach grew from the last Census in 2010 to the 2020 Census by 4,466. That growth number equates to a single percentage of a point in growth for a 2020 total city population of 466,740.

Every 10 years the Census data is used nationwide to adjust (officially called “redistrict”) various political borders to balance the populations as close to equal populations as possible. This is done to ensure the legally mandated “equal representation”. In Long Beach, the LBCIRC is tasked with drawing the boundary lines to balance the populations for the nine council districts using the Census data.

Dividing the total 2020 Long Beach population of 466,740 by nine (the number of council districts) gives the 2020 Census “ideal” number of the total population (not just voters) for each council district at 51,860.

The Redistricting Partners Long Beach Census data report called Existing Districts: 2020 Census (Legacy) shows the 1% city population gain, plus a wide range of population gains and losses across the city’s nine council districts’ current boundary lines.

The task of adjusting the council district lines is more complicated than just adding the 4,466 citywide growth because each of the council districts had a variety of losses and gains that will need to be balanced.

Further complicating the redistricting process for the LBCIRC will be the need to take into account the report’s data addressing the 1965 Voter Rights Act’s ethnic and racial numbers of three “protected” population classes; Asian, Black, and Latino (the Census does not use the Latinx label).

Based on the 2020 Census data presented below, it appears that the current council lines will require major movement to correct the evident data issues.

Big picture Census takeaways for Long Beach

The 2020 Census data shows District 7 had the largest population increase with a growth of 2,834. That is a 5% gain in growth over the 7^th District’s 2010 population.

District 5 had the second-highest growth in population at 2,045, a 4% increase. District 5 as currently configured is also closest to the 2020 ideal number of 51,860. The 5th District 2020 Census population is 51,900, only 40 over the required ideal 2020 number making the district nearly statistically perfect.

District 6 had the biggest loss in population, 2,174. That is a 4% loss in population over the 2010 number.

District 4 remained the most stable for gains and losses with only a 48 person increase, statistically a 0% change.

The table on Census population changes by Council District from the released report

In total, two districts lost population, and seven had population gains. Council Districts 1 and 6 both lost

In total, two districts lost population, and seven had population gains. Council Districts 1 and 6 both lost population. Districts 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 all gained population (the complete numbers for all data categories from the report are provided by LB4D for each district at the end of The Tuesday Review).

The redistricting laws allow a 10% wiggle room from that “ideal” population number of 51,860 for a council district’s actual numbers. That wiggle room is known as “deviation”.

With the widely varying losses and gains spread throughout the city’s council districts, the data deviation for the city is at a legally unacceptable 14.7% deviation from the ideal population number of 51,860 for each council district. The distinct deviations range from the 6^th District’s deviation of 8.9% below the ideal number to the 7^th District’s deviation of 5.8% above the ideal number:

The table on Census population deviations by Council District from the released report

The above chart illustrates the challenge of balancing the council districts’ lines. Just to fix the 14.7% population deviation will create a domino effect in each adjoining district as populations are balanced in a neighboring council district.

Data on adults eligible to vote, the CVAP

The voting populations data for the racial and ethnic subgroups that resulted from the 1965 Voting Rights Act are also broken down in the report for each council district. The Long Beach three Census data populations are Asian, Black and Latino. Those populations are reported by the total population of each group. Data for each of the three groups is further reported by the Citizen Voting Age Populations (CVAP)[ii] or the population over 18 in each group who are eligible to vote.

The CVAP is useful in illustrating the potential voting power of protected Census groups. While this valuable information has been often cited in voter suppression court cases, it has limited use in the actual redistricting planning.

The Long Beach Redistricting Partners report notes this about the growth patterns of CVAP in the three protected classes:

“Overall, Adult Citizen [CVAP] growth was 7% among Latinos, 1% among Asians, and there was a loss of 3% among African Americans. Most significant change was the double-digit Latino CVAP growth in Districts 8 and 9, and a shift in two districts, 1 and 9 to more than 45% [CVAP] Latino”

The ideal council district number total ideal population of 51,860 is a total population number, not just voters. The CVAP is a demographic tool that uses the yearly American Community Survey (ACS).

In its Long Beach report, Redistricting Partners breaks the CVAP down by census group and council district:

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CVAP chart from the Long Beach Redistricting Partners Report

It appears that the CVAP information chart (above) labeled “Current ACS” is from the 2015 – 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) numbers.

According to the Census Bureau, the CVAP report will no longer be produced after the 2015-2019 American Community Survey (ACS).

Based on the Redistricting Partners Report data of total population and total CVAP below is the total percentage of all eligible adult voters for each district. The percentages compiled by LB4D from the CVAP report data are for the population over 18 years old of all three census groups plus the percentage of the rest of the population called “other” which is comprised of whites and other smaller Census groups.

The data provides a snapshot of the age divides in each council district. For example, Council District 1’s data shows a total population of 47,384. The CVAP shows a total population over 18 and eligible to vote for District 1 at 25,480. Therefore the data shows, 53.7% of the total population of District 1 are CVAP- or adults eligible to vote.

Total CVAP for each Council District:

District 1: 53.7%

District 2: 70.7%

District 3: 81,1%

District 4: 68.9 %

District 5: 73.5%

District 6: 56.2 %

District 7: 65.9%

District 8: 62 %

District 9: 55.6%

LB Asian Census data presents challenges

With the leaders in the Long Beach Cambodian community having a goal of the Long Beach Cambodian population being concentrated into one district, the “Asian population” data as presented in the Redistricting Partners 2020 Census report presents a challenge to that goal.

What the report currently does not show is the Census data on the diversity in the “Asian population” and the self-identifying race, ethnicity, or national origin of Asians from the 2020 Census.

The report shows one “Asian population” number for the entire city at 59,286. It also reports the “Asian population” number by council districts.

The report’s Census data lacks the breakdown of the “Asian population” between various ethnic groups: Cambodian number, Filipino number, Korean number, Vietnamese number, etc. from the self-identifying part of the Census.

The report’s data does show that Long Beach’s all-encompassing total “Asian population” of 59,286 is widely dispersed across Long Beach.

Using the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s definition, the Census Bureau defines Asian as:

Asian. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. This includes people who reported detailed Asian responses such as: “Asian Indian,” “Chinese,” “Filipino,” “Korean,” “Japanese,” “Vietnamese,” and “Other Asian” or provide other detailed Asian responses.

Starting with the 2010 Census, the Census Forms were updated to help capture the diversity inherent in the general terms for “Latino” and “Asian” with self-identification. It includes five write-in examples for Southeast Asians including Cambodians:

In 2020 the Census Form kept the Asian self-identifying question which gives 10 options that include two write-in options that narrow the Southeast Asian examples to three including Cambodian:

It is assumed that Redistricting Partners will use the Census data formated on the Census Buearu’s website to provide the self-identifying Cambodian numbers for Long Beach and where they are located. For now, it appears the prevailing idea to unify the Cambodians just by unifying the blocks around the Mid-Town Business Improvement District (also known as Cambodia Town Business District) into one council district will not produce the numbers the Cambodian leadership wants for a majority Cambodian district.

Previous Census data from the 2011-2016 American Community Survey Census Data, and the 2020 data that shows the 6th District has lost population.

The census tracts with the most Cambodian residents; Retrieved from the 2012-2016 5-year American Census Survey. – courtesy Creative Commons from Wikipedia

The data from the 2015-2019 American Community Survey (ACS) will be used to create what is most likely the last CVAP report.[iii]

The Cambodia Town Business District (aka Midtown) is along East Anaheim Street mostly in the 6^th District and partly in the 4^th District.

Midtown BID or Cambodia Town- courtesy of the Midtown BID

However, unifying the Cambodia Town Business District as part of a new Cambodian majority council district by taking the 4^th District portion and the blocks surrounding the district does not currently appear as a way to achieve that goal of a unified Cambodian majority council district. In fact, the Redistricting Partners report on the 2020 data shows that the total Long Beach “Asian population” is disbursed widely and not clustered around the Cambodia Town Business District.

The data from the five years 2011-2016 American Census Survey also shows the Cambodia Town area is 60% Latino:

Racial demographic of Cambodia Town in Long Beach, CA. Retrieved from 2012-2016 5-year American Census Survey – courtesy of Creative Commons from Wikipedia

The data from the 2011-2016 American Census Survey also shows the Cambodia Town area has over 80% renters which is a more transient population:

This bar graph compares homeowners and renters in Cambodia Town and Los Angeles County, Retrieved from the 2012-2016 5-year American Census Survey. – courtesy of Creative Commons from Wikipedia

Unlike the 2020 Census data on the Latino numbers citywide, the 2020 Census data appears not to support a Cambodian majority population district.

The 2020 Census data shows that the 7^th District has by far the largest total “Asian population” with 12,513 (22.8% of the district population) followed by the 6^th District with 8,947 (18.9%) and the 4^th District with 7,601 (14.8%). The current 6^th District does share borders with both the 7^th and 4^th Districts.

The 5^th, 8^th and 9th have the next three largest “Asian populations” accounting together for a total of 33% of the entire Asian population. None of those three districts share a border with the 6^th District or are near the Cambodia Town business district. The Asian population in those three districts is assumed to be widely dispersed.

LB Data on Latino and Black populations

Also widely dispersed is the city’s Black population, The council district with the largest Black population is the 8^th District with a population of 10,136 or 18.7% followed by the 9^th District with 8,445 or 15.5%. The 8^th District’s Black CVAP is 8,023 or 23.8%. The 9^th District’s Black CVAP is 6,958 or 22.9%.

The 3^rd and the 5^th Districts are the only two districts with less than a 10% Black population. The 3^rd has 3.7% and the 5^th has 3.8% of the city’s Black population.

The 9^th District has the largest Latino (the Census does not use “Latinx”) population with 34,187 or 62.6%. Of that population, 14,646 are CVAP or 48% of the voting population in District 9.

Two other council districts are majority Latino districts:

District 1 with a Latino population of 28.118 which is 59.3% of the district’s population. The CVAP Latino population is 11,419 or 44.8% of the district voters.
District 6 with a Latino population of 26,436 which is 55.9% of the district’s population. The CVAP Latino population is 11,419 or 41.4% of the district voters.

While not an outright majority Latinos make up the largest percentage of the population subgroups in Districts 4, 7, and 8.

Summary of Census data on all LB Council Districts

Below is a LB4D data summary by each council district of the data presented in this posting. Note that the data is for the current council district lines. Based on the 2020 Census data, it appears most likely that the current council district lines will require movement.

District 1= 2020 population 47,384

LOST population: 1,733 = 4% loss

Current boundries are 4,476 short of the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = -8.6%

Latino = 59.3%

Asian = 7.3%

Black = 14.9%

Whites & others = 18.5%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 53.7%

District 2 = 2020 population 51,558

GAINED population: 326 = 1% gain

Current boundries are 302 short of the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = -0.6%

Latino = 39.6%

Asian = 8.9%

Black = 11.7%

Whites & others = 39.8%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 70.7%

District 3 = 2020 population 52,328

GAINED population: 997 = 2% gain

Current boundries are 1,457 over the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = + 2.8%

Latino = 20.1%

Asian = 8.0%

Black = 3.7%

Whites & others = 68.2%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 81.1%

District 4 2020 population 51,504

LOST population: 48 = 0%

Current boundries are 356 short of the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = -.07

Latino = 39.6 %

Asian = 14.8%

Black = 10.6%

Whites & others = 35 %

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 68.9%

District 5 2020 population 51,900

GAINED population: 2045 = 4% gain

Current boundries are 40 over the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = .01%

Latino = 26%

Asian = 10 %

Black = 3.8%

Whites & others = 60.2%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 73.5%

District 6 2020 population 47, 270

LOST population: 2174 = -4% loss

Current boundries are 4,590 short of the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = -8.9%

Latino = 59.9%

Asian = 18.9%

Black = 14.7%

Whites & others = 10.5%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 56.2%

District 7 2020 population 54,847

GAINED population: 2834 = 5% gain

Current boundries are 2,987 over the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = +5.8

Latino = 39.6%

Asian = 22.8%

Black = 14.5%

Whites & others =23.1%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 65.9%

District 8 2020 population 54,332

GAINED population:1323 = 2% gain

Current boundries are 2,472 over the 51,860 target

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = + 4.8%

Latino = 48.8%

Asian = 13.2%

Black = 18.7%

Whites & others = 19.3%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 62%

District 9 2020 population 54,628

GAINED population: 800 = 1 % gain

Current boundries are 2,786 over the 51,860 target

Population needed for 51,860 target = + 2,768 total

Deviation percent from 51,860 target = +5.3%

Latino = 62.6%

Asian = 10.2%

Black = 15.5%

Whites & others = 11.7%

Percent of population that is eligible to vote = 55.6%

____________________________________

The Redistricting Partners report is on the LBCIRC meeting agenda for this Wednesday, September 7, 2021.

[i] The Legacy Data format is similar to a raw data dump that releases the official Census data in zip files. Data specialists, such as Redistricting Partners and state agencies can use the zip files to start extracting the information they need before that same data is posted on the Census Bureau website. That September release is the exact same data, but in a more user-friendly form on the Census website.

[ii] There has been controversy with the CVAP and Pres. Biden issued an Executive Order that effectively ended the Post-2020 Census CVAP Special Tabulation and other citizen-centered tabulations. The last CVAP will be issued using American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates using 2015-2019 data.

[iii] “The Census Bureau suspended all work on the Post-2020 Census CVAP Special Tabulation on January 12, 2021 following the Executive Order on Ensuring a Lawful and Accurate Enumeration and Apportionment Pursuant to the Decennial Census.” – US Census Bureau

Editorial: A Conspiracy of Silence to Prevent Police Reform?

September 22, 2021

Did you know that Long Beach’s biggest opportunity to participate in police oversight reform is tomorrow night?

You can be forgiven if you missed the insert in your City of Long Beach water and gas bill, never spotted the ads on the sides of Long Beach Transit buses or bus stop benches, did not come across the local news outlet city-placed ad, and even escaped the mayor’s mass email on the topic (even if you are signed up for these frequent announcements and your spam filter always waves them right through to your inbox)—because none of those things happened.

Long Beach is undergoing its first significant police oversight reform process in three decades, and Long Beach does not want you to know about it. At least not very many of you.

Why would that be?

After all, one can hardly imagine a lack of interest if the residents of Long Beach did know about it.

Protesters in the wake of the George Floyd murder filling the streets of downtown Long Beach on May 31, 2020.

Nearly a year and a half ago, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets to protest LBPD practices. Whether it was a newfound awareness, perhaps spread online and by the various Black Lives Matter and other police reform groups, or the result of long-remembered or recent personal experience, suddenly the multitude spoke with their feet.

They condemned the police, as well as the mayor (as they made clear, in front of his condo, a few days later), city council, and city hall establishment behind the police, and they did so in numbers never before seen for a protest in Long Beach.

Ironically, the outpouring of emotion and anger that afternoon and evening overwhelmed the police, who for hours made almost no attempt at crowd control. The lack of order allowed exploitative elements to transform what had been a peaceful protest, during daylight, into looting and lawlessness after the sun went down and an unenforceable curfew order went into effect.

And yet, even as typical roles reversed, the police having utterly lost the upper hand, our police department continued to demonstrate why it had come under scrutiny in the first place. Rather than stopping the looting, the destruction of innocent small businesses, just feet away from their positions downtown, the police chose to focus their rubber bullets, also known as “less lethal rounds”, on the peaceful at the remaining focal points of protest at Pine Ave. intersections.

They even targeted a prominent radio journalist as he interviewed a protestor.

The rage at the city establishment went on for days, as more and more became aware of the tens of millions in payouts for wrongful death settlements for OIS (officer involved shooting) incidents in recent years (which is nothing new here).

Indeed, while stats emerged that Black residents were disproportionate victims of LBPD violence, memories of abuse across racial categories rose back to the surface. The inexplicable killing of Douglas Zerby, an inebriated white man riddled with 12 rounds while sitting on his front stoop, had long ago demonstrated that some LBPD officers were not fit for duty.

Awareness of abuse and corruption in local government tends to wax and wane, and over the subsequent days awareness was on the rise. A member of the city’s police oversight commission, the CPCC (Citizens Police Complaint Commission), Porter Gilberg addressed a protest and declared police oversight in Long Beach to be an utter “farce”. If you have not seen Gilberg’s categorical dressing down of the theater of the absurd which is the Long Beach police oversight commission, please read it. It shows how your city hall works: The appearance of reform is inevitably just a veil to conceal a system rotten to its core.

That reform last occurred over thirty years ago when the voters of Long Beach passed Prop. 1 on April 10, 1990, creating the Citizens Police Complaint Commission. That vote followed a year and a few months after police abuse activist Don Jackson, a Black man, had his head shoved by LBPD through a plate glass window one night, with NBC television cameras secretly rolling. The footage made for national news and was replayed constantly, resulting in charges for the officers.

And here we are again. Why does it take a national news incident or protests so massive they equal the population of a small city to move this city? Why must decades go by before we begin a hollow process lasting a year or more, until most have forgotten and long since assumed the city would do nothing?

A generation or so ago the pattern was no different than today. Then, city hall clearly intended Prop. 1 to quell public outrage, but it made sure to write a provision into the law to protect itself. The commission it created, the CPCC, would not have the final say on its own decisions. That authority would remain with the city manager, who quite literally could make any allegation, even if unanimously sustained by the commission, disappear with the flick of a pen, never to be spoken of again, the CPCC’s findings never even to be aired publicly.

After the Floyd protests, this decades-long, never ceasing pattern—the Long Beach way—has persisted.

Under the influence of our all-powerful police union, which picks and chooses winning and losing candidates with massive campaign spending, the Long Beach City Council has truly only pantomimed reform. They could not help revealing their true aim, very much short of the reform mark, in the very name of the process they enacted: the so-called ‘Framework for Reconciliation’ seemed to draw inspiration from the ‘truth and reconciliation’ commissions movement begun in South Africa after apartheid. Yet a crucial component stood out like a missing thumb: the truth-seeking and truth telling part of the process.

How can one reconcile parties divided by injustice before one has exposed the truth of that injustice? Only in Long Beach could we so blithely skip over that part of the equation.

Tomorrow, we will do the same. Again.

Tomorrow evening at 6:30 p.m. at Browning High School (2180 Obispo Ave., Long Beach) is the one opportunity afforded the residents of Long Beach to gather in person and share their outrage, their stories of police abuse, their feelings about the insufficiency of their police oversight commission, and their desire for change and reform—like getting a commission that is actually independent, that cannot be silenced by city management, that has a budget to hire its own investigators and counsel, that actually exercises subpoena power and interviews officers for a change, that is composed of commissioners who are not routinely intimidated into silence by city hall any longer—in a forum specifically for that purpose, in over thirty years.

And they, the residents, the people, the outraged, will not be there.

Just as they were not there at the first of these two ‘listening sessions’ being conducted for the CPCC reform process. Tomorrow night is the second. The first was held last Thursday evening on Zoom. Many of the handful of thirty or so attendees at that were city staff or employees of the consulting firms, Polis and Change Integration, hired by the city. One of the few minority voices heard during that session, noted that he was seeing “a lot of white faces”, which he felt was not bad in and of itself but was clearly not representative of the Long Beach community.

Why wasn’t the full community there? Why won’t it be there tomorrow? Not because tens of thousands, who were willing to march, no longer care.

They won’t be there because their mayor and city hall don’t want them there.

They won’t be there because they don’t know about it to be there.

They won’t be there because their city hall chose not to tell them.

They won’t be there because that would invite the truth, which Mayor Garcia and city hall have sought to suppress and avoid.

They won’t be there because the truth would upset the police union.

They won’t be there because the police union buys local politicians. It buys them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in glossy campaign mailers, the way you buy lettuce at the grocery store.

But that does not mean you should not be there, if you are reading this. In fact, it means that you must be there to speak about the police, the need for true oversight, the need for retraining and community-oriented policing, and the farce that is the Long Beach way of manipulating its residents into hearing no evil and seeing no evil (except, of course, that which the powerless lone individual experiences at the hands of the system) and thereby into mass silence.

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