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Life & Times Transcript
11/29/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Nature didn't create it and neither did man, so why all the effort to save the Salton Sea? Rick Daniels>> It's a special place on the planet. It's something you can see from space. It is on every map. It's on the globe you have at home. Danny Gomez>> It's actually a really rich area. I've never been in an area with such a diversity of anything, certainly the number of birds. Val Zavala>> And then, remembering best-selling author, Bebe Moore Campbell, and her love for the South Central neighborhood that inspired her. It's all straight ahead 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. With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. Val Zavala>> It had an unnatural birth and now it's facing a near certain death. I'm talking about a fascinating place called the Salton Sea about two and a half hours east of Los Angeles. Over the last century, it has struggled with high salt levels and algae and the question is, should it be saved and, if so, how? As Roger Cooper tells us, officials are intense on bringing new life to this accidental ocean. Roger Cooper>> Just south of Palm Springs in the middle of the desert, there's a major feature of the California landscape, a giant body of water they call the Salton Sea. Rick Daniels>> It's a special place on the planet. It's something you can see from space. It is on every map. It's on the globe you have at home. Danny Gomez>> Basically, it goes on forever. You actually lose sight of land because of the curvature of the earth. It's that long. Laura Washburn>> It's thirty-five miles long and then nine to fifteen miles across in certain places. Roger Cooper>> But as big as it may appear, all is not well. Many believe the Salton Sea is dangerously close to becoming a dead sea. Among them, Rick Daniels who heads the Salton Sea Authority. Rick Daniels>> The Salton Sea will be dead in the next seven to ten years. By dead, I mean there will be no fish. The salinity will have increased so high, the algae growth will have gotten so bad, the hydrogen sulfide buildup will be so bad, that we will end up with no fish. Two hundred million dead fish. When the fish are gone, the birds are gone. Over four hundred species of birds live in and around the Salton Sea. Roger Cooper>> To fully appreciate what's at stake here, it helps to go out on the sea in a propeller-driven airboat. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> Despite the grim prognosis, the Salton Sea is teeming with wildlife. Thousands and thousands of birds, including pelicans, use the Salton Sea as a critical stopover on the Pacific flyway. [Film Clip] Laura Washburn>> So as an ecosystem, it's just an amazing place. Roger Cooper>> Laura Washburn speaks for the Salton Sea Coalition made up of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, that are trying to save the sea. Laura Washburn>> It's one of the last places in California where birds can go. We don't have ninety percent of the wetlands that we used to have in California. Jack Crayon>> The thing about the Salton Sea, though, is that it's irreplaceable. Roger Cooper>> Jack Crayon studies the sea as a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. Jack Crayon>> American White Pelicans. It's one of the hallmark species of the Salton Sea, if you will, one of the birds for which, if this goes away, they've got some problems. Roger Cooper>> But there are signs that the sea could be heading for extinction. A decade ago, an outbreak of botulism caused the largest die-off of White and endangered Brown Pelicans ever recorded. Fish by the thousands die on a regular basis when nutrients from agricultural runoff feed blooms of algae leading to a deadly drop in oxygen levels. So what's wrong? What's killing the Salton Sea? Jack Crayon>> The simple answer is that this lake has no outlet. The water that comes in is perfectly good water, but it evaporates and it leaves behind the nutrients and the salt that are dissolved in the water. Al Kalin>> It's about twenty-five percent saltier than the Pacific Ocean. Roger Cooper>> And it may get worse. Al Kalin is a second generation farmer who works with the Imperial Valley Farm Bureau. He warns that, as more of the Colorado River is diverted to San Diego, the less water runs into the Salton Sea, and that exposes even more salt-encrusted playa. Al Kalin>> If nothing is done and the sea continues to go down, it will create thousands and thousands of acres of salt playa that has the potential to be the number one dustiest place in the whole United States. Roger Cooper>> The fear is that dust storms driven by desert winds could one day envelop the entire area. Rick Daniels>> We can't have those problems created here next door to a three billion dollar tourism of the area called Palm Springs. Roger Cooper>> So what might be done to save the sea? After a two-year environmental study, state water officials have put forth ten plans for public comments, only one of which will be recommended to the state legislature. The Salton Sea Authority supports the plan that would develop the area. It calls for building a dam across the sea. The dam would support recreation and housing in the north and wildlife habitat in the south. Rick Daniels>> We'll bring three million new eco-tourists to this area for bird-watching, canoeing, kayaking, sailing, wind-surfing. Roger Cooper>> But farmers oppose such development, saying it would require too much water. Al Kalin>> One of the plans calls for recreation and housing being the key to the plan. We don't know that there's going to be that much water. Roger Cooper>> The Imperial Valley Farm Bureau has different ideas. It backs the plan that would create concentric lakes. Al Kalin>> We feel that has the best possibility of saving the habitat and improving water quality and improving air quality. Roger Cooper>> But those who favor development say the concentric lakes plan is just a way for farmers to grab water. Rick Daniels>> And to dry this area up for the prosperity of other communities as opposed to retaining it for our economic prosperity, we here think that's a bad idea. And the only beneficiary of that are the farmers who've sold the water and now live in La Jolla. Roger Cooper>> As for the environmental groups, they say not one of the plans has all the answers, especially when it comes to dust. Laura Washburn>> What you see here of the shoreline will become exposed. What's under there is this salty silt that then becomes almost like talcum powder and it blows in the air as a very small dust. It lodges in your lungs and causes breathing problems and asthma. Roger Cooper>> In the end, what will be lost if the Salton Sea disappears? A big part of Norm Niver's life. Norm has lived right beside the sea for thirty years. Norm Niver>> It's so beautiful. It's so quiet. The birds wake you up. I get up in the middle of the night and look outside there and I see a thousand White Pelicans sitting right off my dock looking at me. Roger Cooper>> Danny Gomez with the Sonny Bono Wildlife Rescue sees it too every day from his airboat. Danny Gomez>> It's sort of surprising what's out here. I don't think a lot of people -- you know, you hear a lot of things about it. Bird disease and fish die-off and the smell and everything else, but it's actually a really rich area. I've never been in an area with such a diversity of things in it, certainly the number of birds. Roger Cooper>> And so a big sea with big problems now awaits a big decision in Sacramento. Fixing the Salton Sea could cost billions over the next seventy-five years. Rick Daniels>> It's an ecological disaster in the making. If actions aren't taken, it's beginning in the next year. Roger Cooper>> At the Salton Sea, I'm Roger Cooper 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>> He insists he's not a racist and yet, when Michael Richards started hurling slurs at African Americans in a comedy club recently, you have to wonder. Just what is racism these days? Is it an act, a deed? What if our thoughts are racist, yet we never express them? For a spirited discussion, we brought three people together around the kitchen table. Web television host and writer, Pearl Junior; conservative Tamon Pearson from the Southern California Republican Club; and Joe Hicks of CommUnity Advocates. Our segment, The Kitchen Table, is funded by Ralph Tornberg. Joe Hicks>> I gave a speech the other day at a local university and it was a graduation class. There was a young black student in class who in essence said to me that he thought that racism is as bad today as it's ever been. Pretty bad, but that today it was in his mind that something had become a matter of thoughts being underground, thoughts being covert, and that was as damaging as the old kind of racism that I was then feeding back to him and trying to get his reaction. He maintains that it was. I guess my question to you is, is that the condition today? What is the case of racism today? Is it a matter of mental thought or is it a matter of deeds that are actionable, that you sue people for? Is that where we actually are in today's society, how racism manifests itself? Pearl Junior>> I think the final phase of equality is in our minds, okay? We broke down legal barriers. Slavery is over. Jim Crow is over. We can sue people. You're absolutely right. But I think right now there is still a lot of psychological racism that goes on as far as inferiority and superiority complexes. Joe Hicks>> We hear a lot about people complaining about, you know, I got in this elevator and this old white lady got in and she looked at me and she clutched her purse. She thought I was going to steal her purse. Do we care? Does it matter what she thinks? You know you're not going to rob her, so what does it matter? Tamon Pearson>> I don't think it matters to me at all. She might not have been clutching the purse because I'm black. This is what happens when you start getting into peoples' thoughts. I'm six foot one. I'm about two hundred and something pounds. A little four foot eleven lady in the elevator may be intimidated because I'm a man standing behind her rather than me being black. I think when we start trying to get into peoples' thoughts and what they're thinking, there are no more lynchings, there are no more hangings, we're not being beaten to death for whistling at white women and we still get our jobs and, when we don't, we sue them and we do what we do. It's not even close. Pearl Junior>> Okay, but statistically, white on black hate crimes are still leading in hate crimes in this country according to the United States Census Bureau, so there's still a lot of hate crimes that are going on, but is the media suffocating that and not really talking about it and ignoring it? Joe Hicks>> But there really aren't a lot of hate crimes, Pearl. Hate crimes in proportion to the major categories of crime are miniscule. I guess my question here is should this notion of, if racism isn't manifesting itself in ways you can touch, see, feel, taste, and it's been our perception of what white people are thinking about us, shouldn't that then instruct some kind of change in terms of the activities of the NAACP, you know, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, et al? Should that not then result in some new way of viewing where we are in society in terms of this swing of progress on racism? Tamon Pearson>> Well, because if they view it differently, that would mean they'd be cutting out their meal ticket. You have to at least continue to let people continue to think that there are problems like hangings and lynchings. We were talking today about a gentlemen who we saw suing the Los Angeles Fire Department for racial discrimination because, when he was being hazed, they put dog food in his food. Joe Hicks>> $2.7 million dollars to brother guy. Tamon Pearson>> And he said that it was a racial thing. Now the last time I checked in the history books, I don't remember anything about us eating dog food. I don't remember Alpo being part of the whole lynching process. Joe Hicks>> I know, but is it a sign of progress, though, that we're talking about racism in these kind of terms as opposed to, you know, people being prevented from getting jobs or people prevented from renting -- not saying that these things don't ever occur, but -- Pearl Junior>> -- well, they just did a survey. Like Chenequa Jenkins. She might not get a call-in for an interview because her name is Chenequa, okay? So they still say there's very ethnic names. They did another survey that, when you call on the phone and you sound very black, that was another test that they did, and the black people didn't get called in. So there is still a lot of racism there and to think there isn't is to me naïve and silly. Tamon Pearson>> Now I think that there's been a lot more progress than you're letting on. The fact that a Chenequa was kept from getting a call-back is one thing, but when you have players in the NBA making eighty million dollars and they claim racism because they have to actually have a dress code and this is comparable to -- Pearl Junior>> -- I think they should have a dress code (laughter). Tamon Pearson>> I don't remember any players making eighty million dollars -- Joe Hicks>> -- you can set that straight, yeah. Tamon Pearson>> You can put me on the plantation, yeah. Pearl Junior>> Right, exactly. But what you have to remember is that there's only four hundred twenty-three jobs with NBA players. Joe Hicks>> That's true. Pearl Junior>> Just because eighty percent of them are black does not mean the entire black population is bawling like that. Tamon Pearson>> I agree. Pearl Junior>> We're still in poverty. We still have single parent households. We still have a lot of social issues that no one in power except for, in my opinion, Bill Cosby, is talking about. Joe Hicks>> But the last time I checked, the majority of black Americans are middle class or better. Am I right? Pearl Junior>> No. Tamon Pearson>> We're doing much better. The black income has never been higher. We have more black -- Joe Hicks>> -- statistically, that's true. Tamon Pearson>> Statistically, there are more black small businesses right now. There are more black homeowners and there are more black men, actually for the first time in a long time, who are actually staying with their women. Pearl Junior>> No, that's not true. I'm going to tell you the truth. Tamon Pearson>> These are all true. Pearl Junior>> In the 1960s, eighty percent of our children were born in wedlock. Right now, it's down to thirty percent of our children. We have to really study and we have to research what's going on to know what's going on. We have serious, serious issues in the black community and everybody wants to sugarcoat them. There's a lot of psychological stuff that's going on where we don't think we're good enough. Joe Hicks>> Of course, of course. But the question is, again, back to the basic question. You know, the racism that we struggled against for years was a very concrete kind of thing. And now we're talking about, you know, what's inside peoples' heads. I'm still back to this. I'm going to hammer this home. Isn't a sign of progress? I tried to get this young man to at least acknowledge that somebody getting lynched from a tree, the devastation that that provides for a family and for a community, and somebody getting in an elevator and thinking, well, what's this woman thinking about me? Am I going to steal her purse? These are very different kinds of things. Tamon Pearson>> It is different. Joe Hicks>> Which means that this nation has fundamentally changed a great deal and shouldn't we be acknowledging that? Pearl Junior>> I think it's just twisted, okay? Right now, instead of the white man lynching us, we're killing each other like crazy. We are becoming our own worst enemies, you see, so it's a different form of racism that's coming from the media and giving us images of ourselves not to use -- Joe Hicks>> -- but that's not racism, Pearl. That's cultural dysfunction. That's another whole question we could get into for like hours. Pearl Junior>> But aren't we American? Joe Hicks>> Of course. Bill Crosby has addressed it directly. A number of people have addressed it. John McWaters addressed it directly. Ron Williams addressed it directly in his book. People are addressing it and they're saying these are issues. Instead of people talking about the racism and what's existed, let's look inward at the black people and say what's causing these afflictions and how do we deal with them? Pearl Junior>> But it's media images and we don't own our images. Tamon Pearson>> But the fact that we're talking about NBA players and we're dealing with jobs that people have and we're dealing with these things rather than dealing with people being buried in shallow graves just goes to show that there has been progress. Joe Hicks>> All right. We got to wrap it up and we got to get out of here. This has been fun, guys. We got to do it again. We could do this for hours, but we'll be back. 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>> This week we lost an important African American voice, best-selling novelist Bebe Moore Campbell. She died of brain cancer at age fifty-six. Campbell wrote "Singing in the Comeback Choir" and "What You Owe Me" and she delved into social issues, personal struggles and life in the African American community. We thought this would be an appropriate time to look back at a tour that Bebe Moore Campbell gave us of South Central Los Angeles where she drew much of her inspiration. Bebe Moore Campbell>> I live in South Central Los Angeles, and more specifically, Viewpark, Baldwin Hills area of South Central. On some levels, whatever most people think about South Central is pretty much characterized by some sort of fear. Either it's kind of scary or it's really scary to most people, and it's false. South Central is a lot more than what makes the six clock news. My affluent hilltop neighborhood is the South Central most people don't know about. The residents are well educated professionals who are predominantly black, but also white and Asian as well. There are breathtaking views and truly architecturally beautiful homes and lovely gardens. >> It's wonderful and we're right here in the center of Los Angeles, but each home is so very different and you really don't have that sense. Bebe Moore Campbell>> My most recent novel, "Singing in the Comeback Choir", examines a middle class woman's need to stay connected to the community she grew up in. "Lindy was right," Maxine thought. "I am the one with the problem. I've been gone so long that I don't fit in here anymore. I stopped loving where I come from." The idea for "Singing in the Comeback Choir" began with my own ambivalence toward my old community in north Philadelphia. I've seen it disintegrate. I've seen what unemployment and drugs have done to that community and it's not a pretty picture. And there's a part of me that doesn't want to go back there and doesn't want to see it and there's a part like Maxine that I want to embrace the entire community and sort of give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But despite the breeze and the beauty, many people are deterred from getting to know my community because of the stigma attached to South Central. It's true. Crenshaw is the Chesterfield of the boulevard. Viewpark's eastern border has a strong flavor and if you inhale too sharply, you may choke. If you need hair, this is the place. Crenshaw is the wig shop capital of America. Tacky perhaps, but still there's a vibrancy that I like. I've gone to other places that are pretty. There are prettier boulevards in Los Angeles, but they don't feed me. I need a certain rhythm in my life. I need some vibrancy. I need some growing every once in a while. It can't be too quiet now. In Crenshaw, you will get some volume and I like that. >> Exactly, And I appreciated that. Bebe Moore Campbell>> Whenever I do a reading, one of the questions I'm most often asked is what inspires me. My husband Ellis and our two children, Maia and Ellis III, deeply affect my creative perceptions And my novels are formed by memories, values, imagination and my community. "Shanice went out the door and down the steps zigzagging her way across the street as she attempted to navigate the pot holes, the wide cracks that ran the length of the block." [Film Clip] Bebe Moore Campbell>> I love to stroll through the Leimert Park Village and hang out with artists and poets. I never know what I'll discover there. Congo Square offers art books and jewelry downstairs. Upstairs currently there's a wonderful exhibit of first edition books from Harlem renaissance writers. The exhibit is a companion piece to the Harlem Renaissance Art Exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Further down the street, jam sessions draw musicians and music lovers of all races. [Film Clip] Bebe Moore Campbell>> In every novel I have ever written, there has always been a church. For twelve of the fourteen years I've lived in Los Angeles, my husband and I have been members of First African Methodist Episcopal Church. [Film Clip] Bebe Moore Campbell>> Not that long ago, for black folks going to church was a chance to dress up, to be called Mr. or Mrs. and get back some of the dignity that was stolen during the week. All the religious philosophies such as Buddhism appeal to me, but I continue to need both the joyous celebration that I find in the traditional black church, as well as its unconditional acceptance of not only me, but all people. In that, it was a lot like the world that I want my books to help create. You know, if what I do and what I write helps people to be one percent less afraid of where I live and have managed to stay alive for fifteen years, then I'm doing a good job. Val Zavala>> Bebe Moore Campbell died at her home in Los Angeles at age fifty-six. Hena Cuevas>> And now for a Life and Times update. Last October, we brought you the story of Los Angeles police officer, Kristina Ripatti. Ripatti was shot on June 3 by a robbery suspect and was paralyzed from the chest down. Kristina Ripatti>> Basically, my whole core abdomen here is just like a noodle. I have no support and, if I fall, I just fall forward. Hena Cuevas>> Her husband, Tim Pearce, a police officer, was one of the first to arrive at the scene. They also have an eighteen month old daughter. They were living in this two-story house which made it difficult to move around. But last month, the ABC reality show, "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" surprised them with a vacation. While they were away, they tore down their home and built them a brand new one. The two-hour special airs December 10. Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, 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. With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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