06/30/05

Val Zavala>>  Tonight on Life and Times --

A man's home may be his castle, but what if the ground it sits on is needed for a new school?

Jim McConnell>>  We need to establish that we have a higher public good that is to build schools, to relieve overcrowding, get kids back into their neighborhood in school and to exercise what really is the most solemn power that any government agency has, and that is the power to take private property for that higher public good.  That's what we call eminent domain.

Val>>  And then, movie fans may flock to theaters on this long holiday weekend, but what will they see?  Our FilmWeek critics review the options.

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>>  Would you be willing to sell your home or your business for the sake of a new school?  Well, that's what thousands of Angelenos are being asked to do.  The LAUSD is terribly overcrowded and it has to build new schools, so do property owners have a choice in the matter? Sam Louie takes a closer look at the LAUSD construction boom.

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>>  On June 22, the ribbon was cut in East Los Angeles for Rowan's new primary center.  The school is part of a construction boom by the Los Angeles Unified School District. In fact, LAUSD will be building schools at an unprecedented rate between now and 2012.  Jim McConnell is the Chief Facilities Executive for LAUSD.

Jim McConnell>>  We will build a total of sixty schools by the end of 2005. That's in four years, we will have built sixty schools, about sixty thousand new school seats. To put that in perspective, sixty thousand seats is Dodger Stadium.  You know, go to Dodger Stadium and look around. That's sixty thousand seats. We're going to do that three times over to relieve overcrowding in Los Angeles.

Sam Louie>>  McConnell says the district has too many students and not enough seating for them.  The district needs two hundred thousand more seats to accommodate the 750,000 student population. To bridge the gap, the district must build schools at breakneck speed, an average of twenty-two schools a year for the next seven years.

Jim McConnell>>  These are neighborhood schools that are safe, modern, comfortable and great environments in which to learn.  It's important because they relieve schools that have been overcrowded for two or three decades.

Sam Louie>>  The school district's plan to build one hundred sixty new schools carries a price of nine billion dollars, but there's another cost that's harder to quantify and that's the impact on businesses and homeowners forced to move to make room for a new school.  So far, school officials estimate more than fifteen hundred families and businesses have been bought out by the district.  About half of the property owners agreed to sell and move, but the other half were forced to leave by eminent domain court proceedings.

Jim McConnell>>  We understand the difficulty that we put people through when we do this.

Sam Louie>>  Eminent domain is the law that allows the government to take private property for such public benefits such as roads or schools, though the government must offer just compensation.

Jim McConnell>>  We need to establish that we have a higher public good that is to build schools to relieve overcrowding, get kids back into their neighborhoods in school.

Sam Louie>>  But some people who must surrender their property worry about the district's power.

Eduardo Garcia>>  We feel like David and Goliath.  Here's Plaza Community Center and we've got all the services that serve our families, and here's Los Angeles Unified School District which is a gigantic entity.

Sam Louie>>  Eduardo Garcia is the CEO of Plaza Community Center in Boyle Heights.  It's a nonprofit agency that offers low-income families here childcare, domestic violence prevention and other social services.

Eduardo Garcia>>  Considering that we're here where we serve approximately close to fifty children at any one time, we have a waiting list of about another hundred for another year and a half, so the children here are waiting to be served.

Sam Louie>>  But in February of 2003, Garcia received a letter notifying them that their property is needed for a new high school.  The community center will have to find a new home.

Eduardo Garcia>>  It's not as easy to uproot us here and put us somewhere else. What do we do with the needs of the community in the area that we've been serving?

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>>  Garcia grew up in Boyle Heights and understands the challenge facing school officials, but the challenge he now faces is finding a new location near the people they help.

Eduardo Garcia>>  Our goal is to remain close by.  Our funds are tied to serving this particular community. This community has particular childcare needs, child development needs.

Sam Louie>>  Garcia says the school district is offering to help them find and pay for a property at another site.  There's just no guarantee that it will be as close to its current location.

Maria Cirrillo>>  I live here for four years and support my kids. I live with my three kids.

Sam Louie>>  The school construction boom is also ousting residents. Maria Cirrillo is a single mother living in an apartment building in East Los Angeles.  She and a dozen other residents will have to move out to make way for a new elementary school.  The school district has offered to give her a rent subsidy for Section 8 government housing, as well as pay for relocation costs, but Maria doesn't like the idea of government-assisted housing.

Maria Cirrillo>>  I hear that they don't have good buildings and they don't have good neighbors.  They are noisy.

Sam Louie>>  For Maria and other tenants, they have no choice but to eventually move.  They are relieved to hear the school district plans to give up to four years' worth of rent subsidies.

Jim McConnell>>  We think it is a higher public good that these schools get built. They have to get built.

Sam Louie>>  The district has made numerous adjustments to handle overcrowding. Thousands of students are bussed hundreds of miles each day to less crowded campuses.

Jim McConnell>>  In 2001, when we started this, sixteen thousand kids got up earlier than they should have to every morning.  They walked to their neighborhood school, but they didn't go to school there.  They got on a bus and got bussed an hour or an hour and a half to somebody else's neighborhood because of overcrowding.

Sam Louie>>  Many schools like Rowan Elementary have switched to year-round schedules with multiple tracks, but that can result in students getting seventeen fewer days of instruction each year.

Jim McConnell>>  And that's really the crisis.  Over the course of a student's K-12 experience, that's one full year that you didn't spend in the classroom.

Sam Louie>>  John Goldin, who has been teaching for thirty-two years, says it's about time his students enjoy some of the basics of a decent campus.

John Goldin>>  Grass in East Los Angeles is a rare commodity.  Here we have grass and, over at the other school, kids play soccer on the hardtop.  Our kindergarten yard doesn't have these beautiful things like we have behind us.

Sam Louie>>  But others who have to make room for the new schools are not looking forward to the upheaval.  At the Plaza Community Center, Garcia wonders about the parents who rely on them for support and services.

Eduardo Garcia>>  Will they have to travel further?  Will they have to pay more?  Will they still see the same kinds of services that they've seen over the years here?

Sam Louie>>  There are a lot of unanswered questions, but what is certain is that many property owners will face relocation as ground is broken on more schools.  The current building project is in the first of three building phases, so that means more property owners and tenants will find themselves in the same position as Garcia and Cirrillo, making a personal sacrifice for the sake of school children. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.

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>>  Tomorrow morning, Los Angeles's new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, will be inaugurated.  He's drawn national attention as Los Angeles's first Latino mayor in a hundred thirty-three years.  But magazine covers won't make his job any easier.  I talked with him about how he plans to tackle Los Angeles's biggest problems. I caught up with Villaraigosa at Plaza de la Raza in East Los Angeles where they were celebrating the opening of a Chicano art exhibit.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  "In many ways, their art reflects this growing sense of ourselves. . ."

Val>>  It was a warm evening, but Villaraigosa was dressed impeccably in a suit and he was quick to point out before our interview started that, contrary to the article in the Los Angeles Times, the suit is not an Armani.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  I don't have any Armani suits.

Val>>  No what?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  There's no Armani suits.

Val>>  I wondered about that.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Ridiculous.

Val>>  After that issue was settled, we got into a more serious conversation.  Now there are all sorts of things you could focus on, but tell me, at the end of four years, if you could hear people say, Antonio was a great mayor, but he really made a big difference in -- what?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Our schools.  I think the most important challenge that we have in this city and in fact around the country is what we do about improving urban schools and certainly Los Angeles is one of them.  A school district where more kids are dropping out than graduating. A school where sixty percent of the Latinos and fifty-seven percent of the African-Americans are dropping out. A school district where many kids who graduate can't read and write.  So I'd like that to be something that people write about.

Val>>  But, of course, the mayor doesn't really have any power over the schools.  The school district is a completely different entity from the city of Los Angeles. What can you do?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  You may not have control, but you can have an impact. You have a bully pulpit, you have an opportunity to engage your community.  The people are ready.  They want to do something about these schools.  They want a leader who rallies them around the idea that we need more in the way of authority for parents and teachers to make decisions on school sites.  We need smaller schools.  We need to create better synergies between parks and libraries and schools and create community centers.  We need to do something about the dropout rate and the truancy rate in the city of Los Angeles. Those are all things that you could do without having control or oversight, and certainly things that I intend to speak to and try to have an impact on.

Val>>  Now you've also said that you're going to unite this city, but what does that really mean?  You know, should we all get together in the Staple Center or learn to speak Spanish? What does it really mean?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Well, let me tell you what it means. I said it's a great city and that's what Los Angeles is.  Los Angeles is the city of America's hope and its dreams.  It's the city of America's future.  It's the place where we come from every corner of the earth here to live out the American dream.  It's the place where people throughout the United States come to reinvent themselves and create a new life for themselves. In a great city, what I've said is that a great city has to be a place where we're growing together, where we're prospering together.  A great city can't leave so many communities behind.

So what bringing people together means is, you know, only together can we begin to take on the challenges of turning around our schools, getting traffic moving again, addressing the issue of public safety, of growing the economy.  It means this diverse city, which is our strength, has to begin to talk to each other and work together and take on these challenges.

Val>>  But how does that actually happen?  Talk to each other?  I mean, a lot of people from the west side have never even been, you know, west of the 5, so how do we talk to each other?  Where do we start?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  You engage people around the idea that, as I said, a great city can't be the homeless capital of the United States, that a great city --

Val>>  -- so are you like the Ambassador between all these groups?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Well, what you are is a connecter, a bridge. You're someone who advocates for the city and for the incredible diversity of the city, but also for the need for us to connect better and to work together to take on these challenges.

Val>>  And then, of course, the single biggest frustration of every Angeleno is traffic. Is there really anything that can be done?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Of course, there is, but nothing we do around traffic can we do without sacrifice and investment.  What I've said from the beginning is, why we need leadership, is because we need someone to talk straight with us.  Everybody complains about traffic as they get in their single-passenger automobile and go two blocks to the market.  We're part of the problem and we're part of the solution.

So if we want to do something about traffic, we're going to have to change our patterns.  We can't all get in our car at the same time in the morning and leave at the same time in the afternoon and wonder why we have gridlock. We can't all buy our kids a car for graduation and wonder why, the following fall, there are so many new people in cars and why the gridlock has gotten worse.  So what do we do?

We've got to rethink our housing and transportation patterns, create opportunities for density along light rail lines, housing, mixed-use development so people are living closer to their jobs, what's called smart growth.  We've got to focus on changing patterns and incentivizing employers to go to flexible work schedules, incentivizing them to get their employees to use public transit.  You know, the leaders are going to have to lead by example and, from time to time, get on a light rail line or a bus and show people that, you know, we can do that once in a while.

We're going to have to invest in public transit. You've heard me say many times that this is the only great city in the world that doesn't have a public transportation system to match our greatness.  So, yes, we do need a subway that goes all the way to the ocean.  We do need to have a public transportation system that can get you to your job, that can get you to the places that you want to visit, a place like this wonderful Plaza de la Raza, a place where we're having an exhibit of Chicano art, a place where you can go anywhere in the city on public transit.  That's not something we're going to do overnight or even in my four years, but what you need is leadership that's got a vision for the future and putting a plan together and getting consensus around those things.

Val>>  Final question.  All these things take money.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Yes, they do.

Val>>  And just in the paper today, they predicted a shortfall over the next four years of close to a hundred million dollars.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Actually, it was close to three hundred million dollars.

Val>>  Three hundred million dollars.  That's a lot of money.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  A lot of money.

Val>>  So?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Well, one of the things I've said, too, is that we've got to live within our means, that we can't continue to spend beyond what we're bringing in.  We've also got to grow the economy.  You're going to see me focus on biomed and biotech, focus on entertainment, focus on alternative energy industries.  We've got to grow this economy, bring in good jobs. With those good jobs, you bring in revenue and then you can provide more services, invest in infrastructure, do the kinds of things that we need to do to get Los Angeles moving again.

Val>>  Well, you've taken on a big job, but thank you very much. Congratulations.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  I'm excited and I'm excited to be here at this Chicano art exhibit as well, an opportunity to see the great talent in this community. I've said that the arts are important because -- you said how do you bring people together?  One of the ways to bring people together is through the arts.  One of the ways to bring people together is to connect us with art and music and culture and --

Val>>  -- and food (laughter)?

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  And food (laughter).

Val>>  Antonio, thank you so much, again, for your time.

Antonio Villaraigosa>>  Thank you.

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John Rabe>>  Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times.  I'm John Rabe of 89.3 KPCC filling in this week for Larry Mantle.  We're going to start with the big blockbuster, "War of the Worlds", which is based on the H.G. Wells novel.  It's directed by Steven Spielberg and it stars Tom Cruise.

[Film Clip]

John Rabe>>  Joining me this week are Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com.  Jean, what did you think of "War of the Worlds"?

Jean Oppenheimer>>  Well, I think the opening thirty, this film is one of the most exciting, engrossing, frightening forty-five minutes that you are likely to spend in a movie theater this entire summer.  The special effects in this film, I think, are really spectacular.  I mean, they're really totally convincing and they sort of combine with the live action. You can't tell where one starts and one ends.  Having said that, however, I have a couple of problems with this movie.

There's a great buildup of tension and suspense at the beginning.  I mean, this whole first third of the film.  But you need to de-accelerate then as you get towards the end to sort of more gradually present the solution to whatever the problem is in the film. I think this helps the audience figure out what's going on as well as to absorb what's going on emotionally and I think this film just ended too abruptly, even though it follows the book.

My second complaint is that the references to the September 11 terrorist attack are very apparent.  That's fine.  I like the subtext.  But there's just so many of them, particularly one, that I started to think that the whole film was going to be a metaphor for 9/11.  When it veered off and went into more straight science fiction, I was sort of like, wait a minute, what does this have to do with 9/11? So it took me out of it a bit.

John Rabe>>  Henry, what did you think?

Henry Sheehan>>  Well, there's an inbred difficulty in trying to shoot a story that's been shot before and, in any case, comes from a classic work of fiction. I think, given Spielberg's work on this, it might be an insurmountable problem (laughter). He's basically taken the story that was the way it was done in the 1950's movie version and layered over it the story of a father having a troubled relationship with his two children, Tom Cruise playing the father.

Now if you need an invasion of killer aliens to awaken you to the fact that your relationship with your children is not what it could be, you're probably in such a hole with them that even the destruction of the earth is not going to help it that much.  Yet the whole film becomes a kind of therapeutic episode in the life of this dockworker and his two kids and it's not really believable. He's also conceived the movie as a series of discreet action pieces which prevent any continuity emotionally or action-wise from building, so I thought the film was pretty mediocre.

John Rabe>>  Our next film is a National Geographic nature documentary. It's called "March of the Penguins".

[Film Clip]

John Rabe>>  Henry, what did you think of "March of the Penguins"?

Henry Sheehan>>  Well, this is a marvelous documentary about the most interesting characters, Emperor Penguins from Antarctica who every fall jump out of the ocean and march seventy miles to their breeding ground, have their eggs and then the males and females alternate with making the seventy mile trek back again to the water to eat and then coming back to raise the chicks. It's just marvelous. I know it sounds pretty dire, all these walks through the Antarctic snowscape with blizzards and sub-subzero temperatures, but these Emperor Penguins have such marvelous personalities, individually and collectively, and to see them strung out against the mountainous snow marching in file to the ocean and back again, it's a miraculous sight.

John Rabe>>  Jean, what did you think?

Jean Oppenheimer>>  I couldn't agree more.  This is an amazing documentary.  I mean, to me, it's a must-see.  It's better than "Winged Migration" was, which essentially just followed the birds as they were flying.  Whereas here, I mean, these cameras get up right into the faces of the penguins and right to where the little babies are being born. I mean, it's amazing.

I would really love to see a film about the making of this film because the cinematographers and director were at the Antarctic for thirteen months, I think it was, without being able to leave at all, and how they shot this, and how they got these shots, and how they just draw you into it.  It's just marvelous. I mean, I've seen it twice and I probably will see it several other times.

John Rabe>>  Our next film is also a documentary, but it's from a very different environment.  It's about a dance phenomenon in South Los Angeles and it's called "Rize".

[Film Clip]

John Rabe>>  Jean, what did you think of "Rize"?

Jean Oppenheimer>>  I was sort of mixed on it, actually. I mean, it's really interesting to see.  It's about something called krumping, which is as you suggested, this new dance that they're doing that was sort of born in South Central Los Angeles.  It's really a kind of athletic frenzied movement, but it's sort of a form of emotional release mixed with social protest. For these kids who created it, it's an alternative to gang and street violence and allows them to turn their anger and despair into sort of a more artistic expression.

It was started by a man who we know in the film as Tommy the Clown who, after the 1992 riots, started dancing to let out his sort of rage and frustration.  From that, he developed a clown character and started taking it around and performing at birthday parties for kids and it became very popular and a bunch of other kids started this in their different sort of krump troupes and different clowns around.  It's an amazing kind of dancing.  What I would have liked, however, would be to see them rehearsing a bit more.  I mean, what we see is a finished product. I'd like to see how they went about choreographing their work or trying out different moves, so that's the one thing that I really missed.

John Rage>>  Our last film this week is a dramatic love story from director, Sally Potter.  It stars Joan Allen and it's called "Yes".

[Film Clip]

John Rabe>>  Henry, yes or no?

Henry Sheehan>>  Well, I say in between somewhere.  This is a cross-cultural romance between a high-powered biologist with a Northern Irish background played by Joan Allen who's in a failing marriage to an English politician, Sam Neill.  One day at a hotel dinner, she meets the chef played very well by Simon Abkarian who is in exile from Beirut.  He charms her and they begin an affair because they really have in common their kind of exile from this Holy War society, so that gets them off together.

The problem with the movie is that it becomes too general.  The social causes begin to outweigh the personal causes, a very common mistake in films, and it's kind of too bad to see this one fall victim to it.  The other big problem is the dialog is all in iambic tetrameter which is really -- writer-director, Sally Potter, this is a terrible, terrible idea.  I mean, you have couplets like "I was a doctor with a knife, I cut the flesh to save a life."  This stuff is very hard to take seriously.

John Rabe>>  That's it for another edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm John Rabe of 89.3 KPCC with Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back next week.

Val>>  And, of course, you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek every Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC public radio.  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 --

It's tough to eat healthy in a fast-paced, fast food world, so how do you get kids to love salads?

>>  Is it they easy, they ask me?  Absolutely, it is not.  Well, why do you need to do it?  Shame on you if you don't because it's exposing kids to a nutritional aspect that they otherwise would not be able to have been exposed to.

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