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Life & Times Transcript
07/14/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Low-paid soldiers are an easy target for payday lenders, but they risk more than just a paycheck. Major General Mike Lehnert>> If a Marine is shown to be fiscally irresponsible, their ability to be able to get a security clearance is going to be much less and, at that point, it is now part of his career dead-end for him. Val Zavala>> And then, it's a simple device that could change the lives of thousands of women. Why a local group is sending solar stoves to Darfur. It's all coming up next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> Would you believe that some lenders charge more than four hundred percent for a short-term loan? And not just to you and me, but to our troops, enlisted personnel, American soldiers. It's become a real problem on our military bases. Sam Louie has the story. Sam Louie>> Camp Pendleton, home to the largest Marine Corps Base in the world. It stretches twenty miles between San Clemente and Oceanside where Marines train for combat. But there are dangers for these troops that many are not trained for. It has nothing to do with fighting a war. Instead, it's a battle against the temptation to take out a payday loan. Major General Mike Lehnert says Marines are getting sucked into a vortex of spiraling debt from payday lenders. Major General Mike Lehnert>> The highest density of payday lenders that we see are in California and the highest density within California are around Camp Pendleton, specifically Oceanside, California. Sam Louie>> The payday lenders offer an easy way for people to take out a low short-term loan with limited paperwork, but their fees can be extremely high. In California, the maximum annual percentage rate allowed is close to four hundred sixty percent. In Oceanside alone, there are sixty-eight payday lenders. Military officials feel they're aimed primarily at young soldiers with limited financial literacy. Major General Mike Lehnert>> That is a group of parasitic bottom-feeders that are taking advantage of a vulnerable population whose business is to defend our nation's freedoms, and it is a shameful thing. Sam Louie>> Payday lending sprouted in the 1980s with bank deregulation which allowed banks to move away from giving out small loans. In its place came the payday lenders. Here in California, there are close to twenty-five hundred payday loan stores. In comparison, that's more than the total number of McDonalds and Burger King restaurants in the state. The lure of quick cash is often too hard to pass up. The military estimates that twenty percent of active duty personnel were payday borrowers last year. They're also three times more likely to go to a payday lender than civilians. Sergeant Antonio Jordan is a former payday lender customer. Sergeant Antonio Jordan>> Basically, I found out about it just driving down the road. It said two hundred fifty-five dollars instant cash. I really didn't know much about it at the time, so I just figured, okay, they might help me out for this pay period. Sam Louie>> For taking a two hundred fifty-five dollar loan, Sergeant Jordan had to pay back three hundred dollars at the end of two weeks. That fee was forty-five dollars. What he didn't realize was how much the APR was. Sergeant Antonio Jordan>> The first time I got one, I did not really pay attention. I was like, yeah, okay, sign on the dotted line, sign the paperwork. Then when I came back, I'm like what? Is this even real? Four hundred fifty-nine percent interest? What? How can you pay that? Sam Louie>> That's right. Four hundred fifty-nine percent based on a complicated formula that few people can understand. For Sergeant Jordan, a family man with a wife and three kids, the debt grew as he continued to borrow from different payday lenders. Sergeant Antonio Jordan>> You got this debt with these payday lenders and then you got car payments, you got to put groceries in your refrigerator, you know, you got the insurance to pay on your car and other expenses that you have. So, yes, it kind of gets in the way. Sam Louie>> Eventually, Sergeant Jordan was carrying four loans with a balance of twelve hundred dollars. He realized he needed help and went to his commanding officer. Sergeant Antonio Jordan>> Bad news don't get better with time, so basically what I did was step up and told him what the situation was. Sam Louie>> His debt was eventually paid off by the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society, but there are thousands of others afraid to come forward. Pride is partly to blame, but so is the risk of a Marine losing his security clearance. Major General Mike Lehnert>> If a Marine is shown to be fiscally irresponsible, their ability to be able to get a security clearance is going to be much less and, at that point, it is now part of his career dead-end for him. Steve Graves>> Here's Camp Pendleton, an outline of it, and the little yellow squares are all the payday lenders that are in this neighborhood. Sam Louie>> Geography professor Steve Graves at Cal State Northridge decided to investigate. He studied payday lenders in twenty states covering more than fifteen thousand zip codes. Steve Graves>> The first thing I found was that the military bases indeed were targeted by the payday lending industry. Sam Louie>> That's because military personnel make great customers. Steve Graves>> They have a steady job. Their employer is a well known entity. They don't get paid much, so they are living check to check and they are likely to have unexpected expenses. Sam Louie>> Graves says payday lenders also make customers feel comfortable. Steve Graves>> They do a really good job of marketing to the people and make them feel friendly and as if there's no shame at all in taking out a loan, so they do a good job. Sam Louie>> But the industry disagrees that it targets the military or any other sector of society. Natasha Fooman is with Advance America, the largest payday lender in the United States. Natasha Fooman>> Well, the military is an extremely small percentage of our customers. Basically, it's about two to four percent of our entire business. Sam Louie>> Fooman says the growth of payday lenders, now at twenty-two thousand nationwide, is proof that customers appreciate their product. Natasha Fooman>> Many banks are not in the business of loaning money for this short amount of period as a payday loan. Sam Louie>> But she does acknowledge that debt can be an issue for some customers. Natasha Fooman>> We have a very small percentage of people that can abuse any form of product, whether it be a payday loan or a credit card or a mortgage. Sam Louie>> Another practice that critics find troubling is what's known as a rollover, basically borrowing from a different payday lender to pay off an earlier loan. Major General Mike Lehnert>> We'll see individuals who will go to six or eight or ten payday lenders over a space of a week and continue to try to roll these loans over. Sam Louie>> But California privacy laws prevent loan stores from checking on a customer's rollover status. It's one of a number of changes the military is asking the state to make. Military officials would also like to see the APR in California slashed from four hundred fifty-nine percent to thirty-six percent. Some states have banned payday lenders outright and others have significantly lowered the maximum APR. Natasha Fooman>> It would be difficult to operate that way in the state of California. Major General Mike Lehnert>> Most people would acknowledge that a thirty-six percent return on your investment is a pretty good rate of return. Sam Louie>> How this controversial issue is resolved remains to be seen, but Professor Graves feels we're likely to repeat history unless there's more reform. Steve Graves>> Our great-grandparents and our grandparents used to have payday lenders. They were called salary lenders back at the turn of the century. They became such a problem and a flashpoint for urban unrest. So many people were heavily in debt with no way of getting out that state legislature and the United States Congress stepped in and said this is illegal. Sam Louie>> In the meantime, the military is now warning its soldiers about another survival skill they need. That's how to budget their paychecks and live within their means. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> How can people here actually help protect women who are being raped more than a half a world away? Well, a group of synagogues got together and came up with a way to help protect the victims of the genocide in Sudan. The violence in Darfur has killed half a million citizens. Another two million people have fled to refugee camps, women and children living in dire conditions with little food or medicine. They're forced to leave the relative safety of the camps and venture out to gather scarce but valuable firewood and that is when the attacks happen. Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> The women that are being raped are women twelve years old and older. These are female children who are being raped, together with their mothers and grandmothers. Val Zavala>> Janice Kamenir-Reznik is with Jewish World Watch. She helped found the coalition to end gang rape in Darfur, and how are they doing it? With these: simple heating devices called solar cookers. Janine Blessing>> It's like when you had a cereal box game as a kid. You know, Tab A, Slot A. The most high-tech element was this clothespin and you -- Val Zavala>> -- put that under there to hold it. Janine Blessing>> Yes. You put your rice in your water and put the lid on. Val Zavala>> It has to be a black pot. Janine Blessing>> It has to be a black pot to absorb the heat. Set it in a bag. Val Zavala>> Yes, believe it or not, these cookers are preventing the rape of scores of women in the Iridemi refugee camp. At the camp, firewood is used not just for cooking, but to sell to others. It's a valuable commodity that women will risk their lives for. Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> After a lot of conversation and negotiation and discussion, we came up with the notion of trying to convert an entire camp. Janine Blessing>> To cook some rice, it usually takes an hour to an hour and a half. Val Zavala>> Your basic recipe? Janine Blessing>> Rice and water and open up the bag. Val Zavala>> So it's really hot in there. Janine Blessing>> It's very hot. You'll see that I have a glove. You could not touch this without oven mitts. Here is your pot, okay? And there's your rice. Val Zavala>> Suad Mansour was born in Darfur. She works with international organizations in the field of women's development. She has visited the refugee camps and has heard the stories of the rapes. Suad Mansour>> One of them at the time, I personally witnessed it. Nine women went outside to collect firewood and they get raped. Val Zavala>> All of them? Suad Mansour>> Yes. Val Zavala>> And they managed to make it back to the camp? Suad Mansour>> For two days, women didn't come back to their homes and their relatives start looking for them. At the end, they found them in a soldier's camp and, after they raped them, they kept them and told them that, from today, you have to be our wives. Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> Most of our western solutions like advocacy for the women or rape crisis counseling to try to bring birth control into the camp, those were just not practical solutions for the situation. We just can't go into those camps and provide those kinds of western kinds of solutions. The society and the culture is very different. Val Zavala>> Now have you seen these stoves that they're sending over there? Have you seen them in use? Suad Mansour>> I saw them today here and the demonstration of it. Really it was so great an opportunity for them and I think that they not only reduce the incidents of rape, but also create a new opportunity for women maybe involved in other issues that empower them, so I really appreciate the idea. Janine Blessing>> The feedback from the women in the Iridemi camp is it frees them up to do many other things. It eliminates the danger of fire for their children. It gets rid of the smoke and fire which is so dangerous. Val Zavala>> Of course, it's really clean. Janine Blessing>> Which is really dirty. Then they can cook it by putting that in there instead of tending fires and tending cooking. They walk away and come back and it's done. Val Zavala>> And when they're finished? Janine Blessing>> And when they're finished -- Val Zavala>> -- it just folds right up. Janine Blessing>> It folds right up. Val Zavala>> That is so simple. Janine Blessing>> You can take it home. Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> Imagine in these very hot climates the women having to sit in front of these hot burning fires to cook their food and breathing in all the fumes and the danger of that. Also, when you're cooking with wood, you have to be there all the time and make sure it doesn't burn, whereas with solar cooking, it's slow cooking and they don't have to be there governing it the whole time and stirring it. You leave it alone which frees you up to give you a lot more time to go earn money or to otherwise be resourceful and do other things with your time. Val Zavala>> So the government doesn't acknowledge these rapes? Suad Mansour>> The government discourages anyone not to talk about rape and, if you talk about rape, you get arrested. Val Zavala>> Is that true? Suad Mansour>> That is true and that is why people are afraid and women are afraid to talk they raped, but most of them keep silent. Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> Systematically, when they do go out of the refugee camps, they are raped by the janjaweed who are the militia. They're called "evil men on horseback" like modern-day Cossacks, the militia of the Khartoum government who destroyed these peoples' lives, raped the women, branded them. Val Zavala>> Branded them? Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> Branded them. So after they are raped, they are cut on their thigh and it's a stigma, for them to be stigmatized. Val Zavala>> The coalition to end gang rape in Darfur has already sent three hundred fifty stoves to Iridemi refugee camp in Chad. Their goal is to send ten thousand more so that every household can have two. The cost? About fifteen dollars each, including the shipping. Janine Blessing>> You can do two things. You can send them a stove -- Val Zavala>> -- okay. Janine Blessing>> And that's wonderful. That's going to save a life. Val Zavala> Ready-made like this? Janine Blessing>> Right. But what's mainly being done is we are sending them the materials. Val Zavala>> Oh, I see. Then they cut the pattern? Janine Blessing>> They cut the pattern. They use a glue and apply the reflective surface and then they train other people in the camp in how to use it. Val Zavala>> Oh, that's great. Is it cheaper to send the raw materials? Janine Blessing>> Oh, yeah. Val Zavala>> So you think it will work? Suad Mansour>> Yeah, it work and I have experience about it before because, at the time I was in Sudan, I worked for organizations that introduced this stove for displaced women. Me, personally, I have been given one stove and I teach women in the camp how to use it. Val Zavala>> You yourself? Suad Mansour>> Myself. Val Zavala>> And do they like them? Suad Mansour>> Yes, they like them because they reduce -- not only protect them, but also in terms of money because even if they reduce thirty percent of the use of firewood, that saves money for them. Janice Kamenir-Reznik>> We are going to propose to take this solution much bigger than Jewish World Watch, to World Bank and to the United Nations and to all of the very large relief organizations that need to be attending to the health and safety of the women. Val Zavala>> If you'd like more information on the project, go to their website at jewishworldwatch.org. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> She's a classic patron of the arts, but her taste is anything but classical. It's contemporary. Specifically, contemporary music like Philip Glass and John Cage. Why such unusual taste? Vicki Curry sat down with Betty Freeman to find out. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> This piece of music is named Freeman Etudes. Composer John Cage wrote it for one of the most influential people in music you've never heard of, Betty Freeman. She's a patron of contemporary music and, over the past forty years, she's made more than four hundred grants and commissions to at least eighty musicians. Betty Freeman>> Oh, I support it, but I also love it and I don't understand why everybody doesn't. Everybody that I read about or that I know about is an avid collector of contemporary art, but very few people have that same response to contemporary music. Now why is it, I can't figure out. Vicki Curry>> Betty Freeman has always loved music. She studied classical piano as a child, but it was the music she heard in college that changed her life. Betty Freeman>> I went to school in Boston and I went to all the Koussevitzky concerts at the Boston Symphony and he played a lot of contemporary music. I went in every Friday. Tickets for students were seventy-five cents, I can remember. I became passionate about contemporary music. Vicki Curry>> It was a private passion at first. Freeman used her family money to collect art. Artist David Hockney even captured her image in the painting, "Beverly Hills Housewife". Then one day in 1961, a friend in the art world asked her to contribute to the legal defense of a composer named LaMonte Young. Betty Freeman>> So I sent a hundred dollars and I didn't get anything in return. When he got out, he sent me a collection of his records which I listened to and was fascinated. He's somebody who can play one note for four hours, but it's what he does with this one note, with the overtones and the undertones and how he combines it. I became a fan and I'm still a fan all these years. Vicki Curry>> She started working on a concert series at the Pasadena Art Museum and met the composer, Harry Partch. Betty Freeman>> So for the next ten years, I worked almost exclusively with Partch until 1974. I made a movie on Partch. [Film Clip] Betty Freeman>> I got his opera produced at UCLA. It took two years to push that through. I bought his house with him in Encinitas. I loved him and loved his music. Vicki Curry>> It was through Harry Partch that Betty Freeman discovered another passion: photography. Betty Freeman>> I would take still photographs and I'd never taken any, so Partch's assistant, Danny Mitchell, had a camera. He'd set it for me and he'd focus for me on the stage on Partch and on the players and all I had to do was push the button. The pictures came out wonderful. I still use them for exhibit, they're so good, so that started me off. Then I started photographing the composers whose music I liked. [Film Clip] Betty Freeman>> I never asked them to smile because it's very artificial because, when somebody takes my photograph, I put on a smile. I really do, but what I'm really searching for in a photograph is something inward, their inward personality as I sense it to be, and I usually try and wait for them. Usually it happens when they're talking to somebody else or when they're working at their desk and they get that expression when they do go inward and that's when I photograph them. Vicki Curry>> But her love of photography never took away from her support for contemporary music. Betty Freeman>> All my favorite composers were poor. All of them were poor. Steve Reich was driving a taxi for a living. So was Philip Glass in New York driving a taxi. They all were teaching or struggling. Cage was terribly poor. Everybody was in need of money, so I gave just money grants. Then in the 1980s, it changed because they began to get performances and get paid a little bit. They didn't need the money for a living, but what they needed it for, which I realized, one thing was for performances that had to be subsidized, which I did whenever I could, and CDs. As their records went out, they got more performances from the records. That's when I began to commission pieces. Vicki Curry>> Freeman has supported almost everyone of note in the new music world. John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle, Virgil Thomson, Lou Harrison and, one of her favorites, Helmet Lachemann. Betty Freeman>> He's a very difficult composer. He's actually involved in the spaces between notes, not the notes themselves. [Film Clip] Betty Freeman>> I never asked them what they were going to write. I just gave the commission on what I heard as they were planning to write something, but I never asked them what it was for or how long it was for or what instruments it was for or whether it was going to be -- it was completely up to them. I never entered into that ever. So I didn't have many masterpieces, but that didn't matter. That wasn't the purpose of it. The purpose was to keep things going in the contemporary music world wherever I could. Vicki Curry>> And she sure kept things going not only with her grants, but with a series of musicales she hosted in her Beverly Hills home. Betty Freeman>> I remember walking in here in this living room and saying to myself, "Gee, I wish there was someplace I could hear some good contemporary music" because there wasn't any for me in those days. I looked at this living room and said, "Well, I'm the logical person to do it because I have the means to do it and the desire to do it." We had five or six or seven every year with two composers always. Always an established composer and an upcoming composer, not a known composer, but a young composer, and we did that for ten years. People were exposed to contemporary music for the first time, to really good contemporary music. I'm absolutely convinced and have absolutely no doubts about it that, in fifty years, people won't talk about the three B's, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. They'll talk about the three B's as the great composers today, a Birtwistle, a Boulez and a Beriot. Vicki Curry>> With a champion like Betty Freeman, the contemporary music of today will be the classical music of tomorrow. I'm Vicki Curry for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> 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. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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