03/25/05

LC050325

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The long-awaited plan for expanding LAX is finally approved, but
does bigger necessarily mean safer?

Kim Day>> A less dense situation is not as tempting to a
terrorist. Terrorists are looking for the big bang.

Denny Schneider>> If anything happens there, it's the
communities that will be devastated, not necessarily the
airplane itself.

Val>> And the, with tongues firmly in cheek, these actors poke
fun at all things Latino. They're using laughter to change
perceptions and open minds.

It's all next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> The bigger the project, the longer it takes. So no
wonder it's taken years for a modernization plan to be developed
for LAX. But a milestone happened earlier this year when the
Los Angeles City Council approved an eleven billion dollar
renovation. So what changes can we expect of LAX? Kevin Smith
fills us in.

Kevin Smith>> Lines, lines and more lines. For many passengers
traveling through LAX, the waiting has become unbearable.

[Film Clip]

Craig Jackson>> It's hit or miss. You can't predict it. Some
days it's really, really bad and it's also no particular time of
day. So it's hard. You just have to make sure you get here
really early.

Kevin Smith>> Much of the waiting time comes from heightened
security after 9/11, but that's true everywhere and still a
recent study showed the wait at LAX is third longest in the
world.

>> "The chair now recognizes Ms. Hahn."

Kevin Smith>> Now the Los Angeles City Council has lined up as
well behind an eleven billion dollar master plan designed to
improve passenger convenience, airport security and airline
safety, a plan that Kim Day, Executive Director of the authority
that runs the airport, says is long overdue.

Kim Day>> This is monumental. This is a real milestone for
this airport. If we do nothing, this airport will basically
shut down eventually because the ground transportation gridlock
will basically make it impossible for you to come in to the
airport. And as we get towards that point, your experience as a
passenger is just going to get worse and worse every year.

Kevin Smith>> But the ambitious plan has many opponents,
including the County Board of Supervisors who have vowed they
will sue to block it. Foes like Westchester resident, Denny
Schneider, favor a regional solution, modest improvements at LAX
coupled with expansion at other area airports.

Denny Schneider>> The analogy that I would use is, if you have
a toilet that's broken, you don't replace the house and that's
essentially what they're trying to do here. This is not a case,
as far as we're concerned, of updating to make it more
effective. What we're concerned with here is the fact that
they're expanding the airport here in preference to the ability
to expand it in the other places.

Kevin Smith>> Despite Mayor Hahn's efforts to get the plan off
the ground, it had stalled last spring. Then City Councilwoman,
Cindy Miscikowski, came up with the idea that eventually took
flight: splitting the massive LAX modernization into two phases.
Her solution?

Cindy Miscikowski>> Why don't we Green Light and make on a
faster track those projects that have more consensus. So let's
get those projects off the drawing board, approved and
processed.

Kevin Smith>> The so-called Green Light Projects with a price
tag of three billion dollars would begin by mid-2005. More
controversial Yellow Light Projects costing another eight
billion dollars would be studied further. Opponents remain
skeptical.

Denny Schneider>> There is a strong disagreement that there are
two phases in reality because, when they have approved the plan,
they have approved the entire plan and the projects that they're
starting with lead to the others.

Kim Day>> "And now you're seeing the most southern runway
here".

Kevin Smith>> The Green Light phase will take about ten years
to complete. One of the first projects will address airline
safety, moving the southernmost runway so planes that have
landed won't get too close to planes taking off, as they
sometimes do now.

Kim Day>> "You'll also return your car to this area."

Kevin Smith>> A centralized car rental facility will be
constructed next to eliminate all the rental car vans that now
constantly circle the terminals.

Cindy Miscikowski>> Right now, if we only did that, we would
save one million car trips a year into and around the central
terminal area.

Kim Day>> "This is the existing Green Line station."

Kevin Smith>> The Green Light Project could also bring more
riders to the Green Line. The plan calls for construction of a
transportation hub at the intersection of the 405 and the 105
Freeways where the Green Line ends. Shuttle buses would also
unload there and parking would be ample. A people mover, a type
of monorail, would carry people between the remote locations and
the central terminals.

Cindy Miscikowski>> So we will cut down by a large volume the
number of passenger vehicles going through. That's good for
traffic, it's good for air quality and it's also good for
security.

Kevin Smith>> The eight billion dollar Yellow Light phase,
which was deferred, has generated far more controversy. It
would tear down existing passenger Terminals 1, 2 and 3 and
replace them with new terminals. Most radically, all passenger
check-ins and screening would move to a new off-site facility, a
ground transportation center, or GTC, located a mile and a half
away from the terminals in Manchester Square. One object of the
modernization plan is to make sure that un-inspected vehicles
and luggage don't make it too close to heavily-populated central
terminal areas like this. Rather the intent of the plan, if
it's passed in its final form, is to move all vehicles away from
the terminals and to disburse security checkpoints over a much
broader area.

Kim Day>> If something were to occur, there's less density, so
there'd be less fatalities. Related to that, a less dense
situation is not as tempting to a terrorist. Terrorists are
looking for the big bang, so if you spread people out and you
don't give them a target of a density of people, then perhaps
they'll go someplace else.

Kevin Smith>> But nearby residents are adamantly opposed to the
proposal.

Denny Schneider>> If anything happens there, it's the
communities that will be devastated, not necessarily the
airplane itself.

Kevin Smith>> Officials insist that no local tax dollars will
pay for any of this. The airport authority says it will pick up
the tab by issuing its own bonds and from increasing fees
charged to vendors, rental car companies and the airlines
themselves, fees that will be passed on to customers.

Kim Day>> There is no -- I'll say this one more time -- there
is no city money involved. There's no taxation involved. In
fact, even if we were to fail on our bonds, the city is not
poised to step in.

Kevin Smith>> Predictably, the strongest objections center
around increased traffic, noise and pollution.

Denny Schneider>> If we assume that there is a limitation at
LAX now, then the plan that they're doing even with the Green-
Lighted projects could make it even worse.

Kevin Smith>> Right now, about sixty-five million passengers go
through LAX every year. The plan aims to cap the number of
passengers at around seventy-eight million a year by limiting
the number of gates. Still, plan supporters empathize with
opponents who want more air traffic diverted to other airports.

Cindy Miscikowski>> If we have this focused on 78.9 million
airline passengers, we know the region is really going to grow
to over a hundred million very, very quickly. We've got to take
that slack up or that capacity up elsewhere. It's not going to
be LAX.

Kevin Smith>> Meanwhile, the airport has reached an agreement
with several communities, including Inglewood, to spend five
hundred million dollars on soundproofing of homes and other
improvements in exchange for promises not to sue. While even
the Green Light Projects must await federal approval, relief for
long security lines is already underway.

Kim Day>> We are taking all of that huge baggage screening
equipment that we put in the lobbies post-9/11 and we're now
taking it out of the lobbies. We're going to put it down on the
tarmac where the baggage gets sorted to go on the different
planes.

Kevin Smith>> And come spring, LAX will add more lanes at
security checkpoints that are really congested. But those are
minor steps compared to the approved master plan which, at least
for now, is ready for takeoff. I'm Kevin Smith for Life and
Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> The history of African-American freedom is one of
America's most dramatic stories from slavery to emancipation to
the ongoing fight against discrimination. But now one
provocative black thinker says it's time for a whole new stage
to begin, one that's not based on the idea of oppression. Her
name is Debra J. Dickerson. She's a Harvard-educated lawyer and
journalist. Her book is called "The End of Blackness". I
talked with her at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los
Angeles. Now you've said some pretty provocative things that go
a little bit even beyond that point. You've said, for example,
"Now blacks are the white supremacists." What does that mean?

Debra J. Dickerson>> You know, I wrote this book very
pugnaciously and very ferociously because I really wanted to
jolt people out of their comfort zones. I needed to be jolted
out of my comfort zone and I did that by writing this book.
Some of this is just an attempt to get us to look at things
that, on the surface, seem like ugly and uncontemplatable and
really are not once you sort of peel them away. What I mean by
that is, this notion, this implicit, unstated notion or sort of
the black conversation about the problems we're facing, that we
put white people into situations where they're completely
irrelevant and we keep them at the center of our decision-making
and of our agenda-setting.

Val>> Give me an example.

Debra J. Dickerson>> One example is when I took my nephew to be
on the basketball team at his black Catholic church. When the
lay minister, not the white priest --it's an inner city Catholic
church -- when the lay minister is talking to them -- this is
his pep speech to them, a bunch of ten year old black kids. You
know, telling them that they were going to face all this racism
from the white churches and they were going to be cheated and
people were going to be mean to them and basically telling them,
you know, you're going to lose your games, but you know what,
that's okay.

Now who thinks white people are like super-humans in that
situation? You know, they're always plotting against us,
they're always out to get us, and they're always going to win.
So isn't that like sort of what the Klan thinks? He's teaching
these kids, you know, paranoia and a weird sort of ego centrism,
but he was also more importantly teaching them to accept defeat.

That's why that statement is on the back, "Does racism work for
you?" Racism works for that guy because all he has to do is
focus on the evil of white people and he never has to find a way
to motivate these kids to go out and -- because they're going to
face all sorts of obstacles in their lives. They're poor. They
go to substandard schools. You know, racism, I would argue, is
not the biggest obstacle facing them.

So rather than teach these kids how to look inside themselves
and find that stand-up spirit that's going to get them through
these situations that he and I both agree they're going to face,
no, he was telling them to accept your loser status. So that's
what I mean by some of us being the ultimate white supremacist.
We appear to think white people are somehow super-human and that
they're relevant in every situation when they're not.

Val>> You draw a lot on W.D. Dubois and others who have really,
you say, hit the right nerve way back in history.

Debra J. Dickerson>> Right. And it's telling that I had to go
back a hundred years and more in the case of Frederick Douglass
to figure out how to be black in 2004 because I wasn't getting
it today.

Val>> What message did he have that you think works better for
today?

Debra J. Dickerson>> Their message is a message of
transcendence. Here are the principles that are transcendent,
that are not time and place specific as opposed to you can't
fight for a segregated army, that sort of thing. Especially Dr.
King was talking about not a struggle between black and white,
but a struggle between justice and injustice. That's a crucial
difference because white people are not America. Black people
are not America. All of us together are America and to sort of
frame it as a struggle against white people is, again, white
supremacist, you know.

Frederick Douglass who was a fugitive slave was beyond all this
race stuff. I mean, he was totally trans-racial and he was
looking toward the time where we were through with all of this.
And the contribution that black people make to that is to be
willing to participate in a conversation that isn't just about,
you know, the struggles of black people. So I had to go back in
time to figure out -- and I went back to those things to make my
peace because I figured all those classical documents, those are
these eloquent denunciations of white people and racism. So
those things will comfort me and I'll be able to, you know, like
be prepared to lose like this minister was doing and I'll have
these wonderful high-flowing phrases to do it with.

Absolutely not. These documents turned out to be intra-communal
critique, almost all of them. It was like, of course, there's
racism -- duh. The issue is, what is our response to it? The
response, to be timeless, to be transcendental, to translate the
way that the goals of the movement translated all over the
country such that you had Chinese kids in Tiananmen Square
quoting Dr. King. You know, that minister is never going to be
quoted anywhere outside of his own church except to condemn him.

What they were saying and what they pointed out to me was that
these messages are for everybody. This isn't just how white
people need to live. The standards of these guys applied to
everybody. Dr. King wasn't just lecturing white people. It's
about humanity. It's about justice. It's not about exalting
black people over white people. So it seems to me that's where
we've lost our way and that's why those thinkers in those books
have stood the test of time.

That standard -- I'm sorry I did it because those are really
hard standards to live up to and they make it impossible for me
to support O.J. thinking that he was guilty and say, well, white
people have done that so much and they've gotten away with so
much and see how you like it. That's not our true moral and
intellectual legacy. My father fought in World War II for a
country that completely segregated him. Was he an Uncle Tom?
He volunteered. He wasn't drafted. He island-hopped with the
Marines in World War II.

So for me to stand outside of that and to sort of go I'm better
than America, I'm mad at America, I'm going to be this black
nationalist who constantly sees himself at war with America, to
me it's a spit in the eye of the previous generations that held
on and expressed themselves and did their best, no matter what,
even for a country that segregated them because to have done
otherwise would to have been truly subhuman.

Val>> A lot of people say, well, I'm a successful black, middle
class professional and, no matter how much I achieve, when I
walk down the street, people still see me as black.

Debra J. Dickerson>> I find that notion that your actual
accomplishments, the person you actually are, a doctor, a nurse,
a professional person, can be completely obliterated by some
random, you know, pimply-faced teenaged white woman who clutches
her purse when you walk by. But it doesn't change the fact that
you actually are this professional person. Why should this
person get to define your reality? Again, it's this notion of
white supremacy. I throw that in there to startle people out of
this mode because it strikes me as a really illogical thing to
say.

What is the significance of what some random white person may or
may not be thinking in your life? It doesn't change the fact
that you are who you are and your accomplishments remain what
they are. You know, the movement couldn't make people love us.
It could just make people leave us alone. That has to be enough
because, if it's about making people love you, then that's a
problem you have, you know? That's not the other person's
problem. That's your problem.

That's about your sense of self. That's about wrapping your
identity around things that are not transcendental. That's
about craving white approval and reassurance that you're really
equal, you know? Either you're free or you're not. Either
you're equal or you're not. Deciding that everybody white is
out to get you or is even noticing you is both paranoid and
egocentric and we need to move beyond that. It's a choice.

Val>> Debra Dickerson, you are going to get, I'm sure, a lot of
response if you haven't already from this book. I want to thank
you very much for your very gutsy opinions.

Debra J. Dickerson>> I guess I'm not smart enough to keep these
things to myself (laughter), but I know I'm not alone. Thank
you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> Is it good entertainment or is it just playing off of
stereotype? In either case, the theatre production of
"Latinologues" is hitting a funny bone so much so that it's
being produced time and time again with different actors
stepping into the roles. Hena Cuevas went to the Coronet
Theatre to find out what's behind the appeal of "Latinologues".

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> The single pregnant girl from the Bronx, the
dignified Miss East L.A.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Or the Border Patrol Agent.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> This is where some of the biggest Latin names
come from. Edward James Olmos and Esai Morales are only two of
the hundreds of actors who've performed the more than fifty
monologues. "Latinologues" is the product of Rick Najero,
actor, producer and writer of "Latinologues".

Rick Najero>> And the show is very diverse. We go from
Chicanos to Cubanos to Puerto Ricans.

Hena Cuevas>> Najero was born in San Diego, the son of Mexican
immigrants. He says that growing up in two separate cultures
inspired him to create "Latinologues".

Rick Najero>> We see people, especially Latinos because a lot
of times they're working class. We don't know their stories
underneath and we don't see them as human beings. We see them
as occupations. I think that's one of the lessons of
"Latinologues" and done with humor.

Hena Cuevas>> It's the imperfection of the characters that
attracted Cuban actor, Rene Lavan.

Rene Lavan>> The show has heart that shows characters that are
not victims, who do not see themselves as victims.

Hena Cuevas>> Lavan was named one of People in Espanol's
magazines twenty-five most beautiful people in 2001 and played
the older brother in "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights".

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> You use a lot of stereotypes in your monologues.
Do you think there's a danger in using those stereotypes?

Rene Lavan>> Yeah, there is that satire element to it, but, you
know, if you can't laugh at your own shortcomings, then, you
know, I think we tend to take ourselves a little too serious
sometimes. You know, we laugh at our shortcomings and, at the
same time, there is a message of hope.

Hena Cuevas>> One of his characters is Fidel, a Mexican getting
ready to cross the border.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> We've all seen the sign along the highway and
probably never noticed that she is wearing heels. It's these
observations that Najero uses to open eyes and minds.

Rick Najero>> "Bam, get their eyes. Bam, get each person."

Rick Najero>> We show characters, warts and all. Sometimes
we're called the equal opportunity offender because we sometimes
do that.

Hena Cuevas>> Has anybody ever been offended?

Rick Najero>> Normally, the people that are most offended are
the stereotypes (laughter). It's funny. A guy showed up in a
red velour jacket, gold pinky ring and gold teeth and he's like,
"Let me tell you something. I'm a little offended that you use
accents. I want to show our people without accents up there.
Don't do no accents. It's like too stereotypical to have an
accent." I'm like, excuse me, you got an accent, and the pinky
ring and the velour jacket some people might call stereotypical,
and he was more offended.

Hena Cuevas>> Another skit features student activists who are
testing the crowd to find out if they're "real" Mexicans. The
one Litmus test for a true Mexicano is what they think of Puerto
Rican singer, Ricky Martin.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> It's the twisting of our perception, going beyond
what we see on the surface, that allows Najero to send his
message.

Rick Najero>> We'll start the first image as stereotype, maybe
a gangbanger type guy, a Cholo. He's on the phone and he starts
in talking to someone. You don't know who it is.

[Film Clip]

Rick Najero>> It's the beginning of taking a stereotype and
turning it upside down to say that underneath that stereotype is
a complex human being.

Hena Cuevas>> And then, there's a Dominican janitor who loves
to clean things, proud to work at the World Trade Center. Amid
the jokes, he tells how he lost his wife on September 11.

Rene Lavan>> You can hear a pin drop in the theatre when I do
the monologue because it's such a story of, you know, a person
who's there cleaning. You know, no one cares how many times you
go by the hallways and, you know, they don't realize that that
person has a story.

Lina Acosta>> The stereotype grabs you and then we go, okay,
now you're listening. Now here's what I have to say.

Hena Cuevas>> Lina Acosta has been with the show since 2002.
She's also worked at other productions like the independent film
"Real Women Have Curves".

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Still, her biggest challenges are the characters
that spring from Najero's imagination.

Lina Acosta>> You can play them up here because they are,
they're funny, but there's all this other like so many layers to
these monologues.

Hena Cuevas>> Her favorite is Rachel, the pregnant single
mother from the Bronx who says she's had an immaculate
conception.

[Film Clip]

Rick Najero>> Sometimes an Anglo won't laugh at first, but
seeing Latinos laughing around them is like, hey, you mean I can
laugh? All right. Yeah, you can laugh.

Hena Cuevas>> Why do you think "Latinologues" has been so
successful?

Rick Najero>> It's funny, bottom line. I really think that's
been a big part of it. It's funny. It's not preachy. It's all
the things that so many shows are. When I deal with ethnicity,
a culture, a lot of times I'm going to give you the best lesson
of your life. You need to hear this story. It's going to
educate you. And it's a feeling when an audience is watching it
like, yeah, I should see this. Oh, those poor Latinos. Those
poor, poor Latinos. Then you've got the other Latinos like this
is all climbing over the border, a lot of that, and this is
really a celebration.

Hena Cuevas>> And just like he recommends at the end of the
show, if you're Latino, tell your relatives. If you're Anglo,
then tell your employees.

Val>> "Latinologues" is being performed at various places
around Southern California. For details on dates and locations,
you can go to their website. And that's our program. I'm Val
Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching.
Hasta Luego.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

He didn't even know what ChoicePoint did until he got a letter
in the mail.

>> "We have reason to believe your personal information may
have been obtained by unauthorized third parties and we deeply
regret any inconvenience this event may cause you." Twenty-five
years down the drain of trying to do everything right to protect
myself.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.