05/18/05

LC050518

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's an historic victory for Antonio Villaraigosa and the Mayor-elect wasted no time in laying out his priorities.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "It means working every day to ensure that children can play in their own neighborhoods without the fear of gun and gang violence. It means waking up every single morning thinking about how to bring high-quality jobs to Los Angeles."

Val>> And then, they seem to move with no effort, but being a modern dancer in Los Angeles is one tough job.

It's all straight ahead 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>> Los Angeles has a new mayor, the first Latino in more than a hundred years. He is Antonio Villaraigosa and, as Toni Guinyard tells us, the second attempt to win the mayor's seat brought him a victory.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "I've said to people I'm an American of Mexican descent and I'm proud of that, but I intend to be a mayor for all of Los Angeles."

Toni Guinyard>> In his first public appearance, in his first news conference as Mayor-elect of the city of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa appeared before cameras and reporters visibly exhausted, but savoring victory. Voters made history by electing Villaraigosa the first Latino mayor to lead the city of Los Angeles since 1872.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "You all know that I love Los Angeles, but tonight I really love Los Angeles."

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Well, I was quite surprised at the margin of victory of Antonio Villaraigosa.

Toni Guinyard>> Political analyst, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> This goes beyond the symbolic victory of a Latino politician becoming mayor of the nation's second largest city, becoming almost instantaneously a major player on the national scene.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "So I am very honored and humble. I'm not frankly that concerned about being a national leader. I ran for mayor. I want to be mayor of the city of Los Angeles. I want to be a leader here."

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Now Villaraigosa has to prove himself as a communicator and as someone who can govern to the satisfaction of Los Angeles voters. That's the key.

Toni Guinyard>> But the designation of being elected Los Angeles's first Latino mayor in more than one hundred years brings with it expectations and pressure.

Richard Alarcon>> With the historic nature of that accomplishment will also come the scrutiny. We have had a conversation about how important it is for him to make this a big tent and bring everybody in.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Oh, boy. This man is going to have pressure on him from almost every community in the city. There will be pressure on him from the Latino community to sort of produce for the Latino community. There will also be some pressure from the black community. Black voters proved critical not only to Villaraigosa's victory, but Hahn's defeat.

>> "A lot of people would like to have African-Americans and Latinos at each other's throats. That's not going to happen. It's not going to work. We're going to be together. Antonio Villaraigosa is going to lead us. We are going to be united."

Toni Guinyard>> Race clearly played a role in this election. So often throughout the campaign, Villaraigosa was described as a coalition builder and, in the hours after the polls closed, you heard the phrase repeated time and time again, reinforcing that image and reputation.

Bernard Parks>> "You've seen coalitions that didn't exist before, but we've also seen a dynamic individual that's going to bring the energy, the knowledge and the charisma to make this city feel like it's one."

Richard Riordan>> "Antonio, by working with the best and the brightest people, is going to make this city a safer city. He's going to improve transportation and he's going to improve the economy."

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. It doesn't matter whether you grew up on the east side or the west side, whether you're from South Los Angeles or Sylmar."

Harold Meyerson>> "I think here tonight in Los Angeles for the first time, you got a different configuration in which the Latino population is at the center of the new regime. But as a very good coalition builder, Antonio Villaraigosa has put together a coalition that includes a good deal of the African-American and the white communities as well."

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> It is a great symbolic victory not only for the Latino community and the growing Latino political crowd in this state, but in terms of voters of a multi-ethnic, diverse, energetic community saying ethnicity isn't what we judge our candidates on.

Toni Guinyard>> Bebitch Jeffe says it's impossible to talk about the Villaraigosa victory without talking about voter ethnicity or coalition building and, when it comes to coalition building, it must cross not only racial but also political dividing lines drawn during the campaign. One-time mayor hopeful, Senator Richard Alarcon.

Richard Alarcon>> Some of the animosity remains for quite some time and sometimes forever, but in fact, when it comes to issues affecting Los Angeles, you have to work together.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> I think that also Antonio Villaraigosa understands the need to keep Jim Hahn and his constituency in the loop happy. There's going to be some --

Toni Guinyard>> -- why? Why does he have to do that?

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Because he has to govern and politically he needs to make it impossible for anybody to look at him the way opponents looked at Jim Hahn and say this guy is vulnerable. I'm going to go for it. The day Villaraigosa is elected, he begins his campaign for re-election.

Toni Guinyard>> And one day after the election, he is already on the move, meeting and greeting students at the Urban League Automotive Training Center in South Los Angeles, his visit preceding his first news conference, coming just hours before Mayor James Hahn publicly conceded defeat, only after reminding the city of his accomplishments.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> It is important for a mayor, yes, to move and deliver on his promises, but it is also important for a mayor to keep voters informed, to explain what's going on and perhaps why there's nothing going on in a particular area. That's where Jim Hahn stumbled.

Toni Guinyard>> A stumble bringing what had been a political winning streak to an end.

James Hahn>> "Well, yeah, I guess you're right. They didn't have concession speeches when I was running for class president. I lost that one too."

Toni Guinyard>> Through it all, Mayor Hahn is keeping his humor.

James Hahn>> "Once you recognize that you're a public servant, that means you've got somebody else as your employer. An employer gets to make the hiring and firing decisions and I accept that decision."

Toni Guinyard>> Comments marking the end of one chapter in Los Angeles city politics, comments reflecting the start of another.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "I accept this victory knowing that God is good, our city an incredible place to be, a city of hopes and dreams and a city whose better days are here to come."

Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

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

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Val>> California got some good news last week. The Pentagon announced which military bases would be closed or realigned and California came away relatively unscathed. We will lose about two thousand jobs. Compare that to more than ninety thousand jobs in the 1980's and 1990's. And no one is more relieved than the people at the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

There are forty-five hundred employees, civilian and military, at the Los Angeles Air Force Base. They will all be keeping their jobs. John Parsons is a local city councilman and a member of the task force that organized the efforts to save the base. John Parsons, you can declare victory, in a sense, you and your task force, because the Los Angeles Air Force Base is not going to be closed. Didn't even lose one job.

John Parsons>> Certainly, for this round, we can feel good about what's happened, but it's not over yet. We still have to -- the process goes before the commission. We're prepared for that. We're prepared for people to still try and steal the Los Angeles Air Force Base away from us.

Val>> Now what do you think did it? Because in the 1980's and 1990's, California was hit really hard. More than fifty percent of all the jobs that were cut in the military were in California. This time, it's only about eight percent. What's the difference? What happened?

John Parsons>> Well, I think a big part of what happened is the huge effort that we mounted that we haven't really had to do in the past. This round was presumed to be much bigger. It got down-scaled. I think the down-scaling helped us a lot, but I think that we had such a huge effort. All of our California delegation in Washington, D.C., the state legislators, the Governor, our local elected officials and all of our local businesses really pulled together and helped us a lot. We were able to hire some very smart lobbyists both locally in the state of California and in Washington, D.C. and that helped out a lot too.

Val>> What kind of impact does the Los Angeles Air Force Base make on this area and, therefore, what kind of difference does it make that it's staying open?

John Parsons>> Well, the first thing we talked about is the impact that the Los Angeles Air Force Base has on national security. It's absolutely tremendous. The space is the ultimate high ground. Because of the Los Angeles Air Force Base, we control the ultimate high ground and, in the military, that's a big thing.

Now obviously, to us locally, it is also very large because this is the anchor to the aerospace business in California which is really grown out of the South Bay area, out of Los Angeles County, and all over the West Coast. And because the Los Angeles Air Force Base started here in 1954, fifty years worth of growth has really been an important part of our quality of life in Los Angeles County.

Val>> But it's not a typical base. It doesn't have a runway, it doesn't have planes, it doesn't have, you know, military paraphernalia. It's, what, mainly research or missile system research?

John Parsons>> A lot of research, but the most important thing to us is the procurement. This is where they issue all the contracts out of. Eight and a half to ten billion dollars annually. There is sixty billion dollars in open contracts that are controlled through the Los Angeles Air Force Base right here. It's an office complex and office complexes look like easy things to move, but what's not easy are the people. So along with the procurement goes all the development and that's what we do here in the South Bay area, in El Segundo and all throughout the region with all of our aerospace companies in this area.

Val>> So it affects not just the people on the base, but all its contractors and a lot of private sector businesses and companies that get contracts from the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

John Parsons>> The private sector is huge, but it goes beyond that. How the money turns over and the economy is tremendous. We have fifty thousand jobs that are tied to the Los Angeles Air Force Base. That's eight billion dollars just in Los Angeles County. On a state level, it's one hundred twelve thousand jobs and sixteen billion dollars in the economy.

Val>> That are tied to this base in some way or another?

John Parsons>> That are tied to this base, right. And those are the jobs directly and indirectly because, obviously, the people that live in the community are spending that money in the community and that money flows through the community, so it's a tremendous impact. Now that's just on the economy. On the local governments and on the state governments, that's also huge. There is three hundred million dollars just in state income tax that have generated through the contracts that go through the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

Val>> Now this is just one base, but there are other bases in California that were hit hard. In particular, Ventura? The naval base in Ventura?

John Parsons>> That's right. The Navy Base, Ventura County was hit pretty hard. Corona was hit pretty hard. Some of the reserve sites were hit pretty hard. As a net, California did pretty well. The big difference this time is that we were very united. In previous rounds, we weren't united, so I'm really proud of the effort that has been pulled together on all levels of government and throughout the industry in California.

Val>> Nevertheless, the navy base in Ventura, I think they lost more than fifteen hundred jobs. Norco out in Corona lost about eight hundred jobs. What does the commission look at? Why do they decide who loses jobs and what should be shrunk?

John Parsons>> Well, the process that the commission is going to go through is one of analyzing whether or not the Pentagon followed the rules correctly. So they're going to look to see if all the data that was collected was analyzed and that that was done per the eight criteria that were established by the Pentagon and approved by Congress. Obviously, those bases will make the argument that it wasn't done correctly and they will try and get off the list. I believe it was 1995 -- it may have been 1993 -- Point Magoo or Port Hueneme, one of those two bases, was on the list before and they were able to get themselves off the list, so I'm sure they're very prepared to make that argument again.

Val>> So this is quite a process because the Pentagon makes the initial recommendation, then another commission looks over exactly how the Pentagon made the decision and tries to appeal and tries to get bases off and on and so forth. Then finally, Congress has to approve the final base closure list, right?

John Parsons>> Right. The interesting thing is, the way the process has been set up previously and continues to be, for Congress it's an up or down vote. Either you vote for or against the list, but you can't change it. And from the commission, the list goes to the president.

Val>> So you've got a ways to go.

John Parsons>> We do.

Val>> You've got to keep your task force working.

John Parsons>> We are working. Our Steering Committee met again this morning. The list came out on Friday and we're meeting on Monday morning. We're prepared. We have a lot of excitement because we're successful so far, but we're not letting our guard down.

Val>> John Parsons, thank you so much for meeting us out here at the Los Angeles Air Force Base and thanks for your work.

John Parsons>> Thanks, Val.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> She has said that art is worth struggling for and struggle is the word when it comes to keeping a modern dance company alive in Los Angeles. She is Donna Sternberg and she and her company are now celebrating their twentieth anniversary. Vicki Curry visited the modern dance troupe as they rehearsed for their performance.

Vicki Curry>> Donna Sternberg believes in the power of dance. Despite twenty years of hard work keeping her small company alive, she believes.

Donna Sternberg>> In this day and age, there's not all that many people that are interested in movement for movement's sake. I really think that movement by itself is a communicative medium and that it can bypass a lot of things that, when you speak verbally, kind of get in the way.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Yet Sternberg admits that, of all the arts, dance is often the hardest to understand.

Donna Sternberg>> To see bodies just moving without words, without any explanation, it's like what is this?

[Film Clip]

Donna Sternberg>> Most people don't even know what modern dance is. They think it's club dancing, strip dancing or some kind of amorphous, expressive via tree dancing. And then when you try to explain it, it's difficult to articulate what is modern dance.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> So Sternberg lets her work speak for itself and encourages people to listen by giving lectures and demonstrations.

[Film Clip]

Donna Sternberg>> I am really interested in de-mystifying the choreographic process and showing people that it really is about what you, when you see my work, what do you get from it? Not what my intent is, but what do you receive from it?

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Donna Sternberg's movement is somewhat unique for a medium-minded city like Los Angeles.

Donna Sternberg>> We do straight-out dancing. We don't do theatricals, we don't do mixed media stuff. We're pretty dance-oriented. My style tends to be very big movement that's a dance. When I start a new piece, I try to do something movement-wise or use different kinds of movement that I haven't used before and challenge myself.

Vicki Curry>> Since starting the company in 1985, Sternberg has created over fifty-five works, including three full evening length pieces.

Donna Sternberg>> The process of beginning a new piece is so exciting because it's just like a brand new slate and the possibilities are just endless. My inspiration is from everywhere and everything. I never know what it's from. It can be from -- I've done pieces based on paintings of artists. I've done pieces from political ideas. I've done pieces from being in nature. I never kind of know what's going to attract me.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Finding dancers is especially challenging for Sternberg. Most dance companies in Los Angeles hire dancers on a project-by-project basis, but Sternberg asks her dancers to make a one-year commitment to the company.

Donna Sternberg>> We have a steady group of dancers and we work throughout the year and I think that enables us to develop a cohesive kind of style together and then have an incredible group of dedicated dancers and you know they're not there because the money is huge. This is their passion and they're willing to dedicate a huge amount of time to do it.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Donna Sternberg has plenty of other challenges to face: lack of funding, rehearsal space and community support. So why has she kept going after all these years?

Donna Sternberg>> I ask myself that all the time (laughter). I think it's because making dances makes me feel the most alive. The point is that you get to create and creating, as far as I can see, is what we're on the planet to do.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Donna Sternberg and dancers will be performing their twentieth anniversary performance this Saturday evening. You can go to their website or give them a call for details. They're performing at the Assistance League Playhouse in Hollywood and there will be a pre-performance discussion at 7:00 p.m.

Val>> You can tell a lot from a family about the contents of its garage and, every weekend, the contents from thousands of garages are spread out on lawns and sidewalks in garage sales. That inspired Life and Times commentator, Cris Franco, to do a little bit of suburban archaeology.

Cris Franco>> Aside from an afternoon of Botox injections, there is nothing more Southern Californian than a garage sale. So like a modern archeologist, I went to go visit a few of these front yard bazaars to see what they said about our "life and times".

We're a very hopeful nation, as reflected by all the exercise equipment for sale. First we hope that this gizmo will help us lose weight and then we hope that somebody else will buy it from us.

There are tons of old toys. Oops, at a Los Angeles garage sale, nothing is ever referred to as old. It's "vintage", or a "collectible" or a "classic".

It's a sad day when a man sells his Barbie Dream House. I should know.

I don't know why people buy old clothes. Why would I wear someone else's ill-fitted, fading t-shirt when I can just wear my own ill-fitted, faded t-shirt?

And a garage sale brings out the window dresser in all of us. Look at how creatively this gate becomes a clearance rack. Looks like the clothes all tried to get away and they got all caught up in the electrified fence. "Nothing escapes the gate of doom."

This woman, Kathy, she has my memories in her hand. Long before there was a war between the blue states and the red states, there was the war between the Blue Stamps and the Green Stamps.

Security isn't a big issue at most yard sales. Winona Ryder could easily abscond with this big-button phone or this complete set of dishes. However, with Uncle Bob standing -- or rather sitting -- watch, I had to pay a whole dollar for this album. It was an impulse buy. I have no idea who Freddy Quinn is or why he's flying in a plane. I mean, for a dollar, how bad can an album be?

[Film Clip]

People who are moving off and have big ticket items for sale like furniture or appliances. But you know, not everything is for sale. Mary wouldn't sell her dolls and what motivates most merchants? Money.

This is Susan, the self-proclaimed garage sale queen, totally organized with signs and purchase conditions. She makes about four hundred dollars per weekend. Susan and hubby are a very happy couple and why not? They've got a tree that grows dresses.

And P.T. Barnum? He was right. Some people will tell you the tallest tales to sell you their junk -- or collectibles. The seller of this head said it was a magic talisman bringing great luck to whomever owned it and rubbed its head. Right. Who was crazier? Her or the nut that paid her a dollar for it? I'm feeling lucky.

Val>> Oh, save that for me, Cris. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

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 --

One man's dream took shape in the outskirts of Santa Barbara County.

>> This is a beautiful monument to kind of a fevered mind. You know, the guy let nothing stand in his way. He just went out there and built and built.

Val>> So why was this dream abandoned? That's next time on Life and Times.