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Life & Times Transcript
12/19/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- On one side, fasting workers. On the other, hotel owners digging in their heels. Why the struggle over a living wage? Gary Toebben>> The business community is united in feeling that the City Council overstepped its bounds when they passed this ordinance. Vivian Rothstein>> If the businesses were doing what they should be doing for our community, none of this would be necessary. Val Zavala>> And then, to some people, it's synonymous with the Ghetto. To others, it's home. A look at how a century has changed South Central. These stories and more 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>> It's the latest battle between labor and corporations, the fight over a living wage, and the battlefront this time is twelve hotels near LAX. The city of Los Angeles has ordered them to pay their workers a living wage. The hotels pushed back and some workers staged a week-long fast. How did all this play out? Toni Guinyard has our story. Isabel Brentner>> And I like my job. I like my job. That's why I'm there. Toni Guinyard>> For seven days, they camped outside the Westin Hotel near LAX, eighteen hotel workers fasting, only drinking water, making a statement in a very public protest designed to draw attention to their battle for a living wage. Joining the fast, hotel workers already making more money than the living wage would give them. Darian Judeh>> I get paid about $11.50 and that is not enough. Isabel Brentner>> Now I'm making $10.38 this year, but last year when they give me my raise, they give me like $.25 and all those years, they give you like $.05, $.10. Toni Guinyard>> Hotel lobby assistant, Isabel Brentner, and hotel customer service agent, Darian Judeh, took part in the fast. It began just two weeks after the Los Angeles City Council passed a living wage ordinance targeting twelve hotels along Century Boulevard. Isabel Brentner>> They don't take care of the people. They think we are the machine and we can do everything they want to do. We are human beings. Toni Guinyard>> Human beings who, under the ordinance, would be paid between $9.39 an hour with health benefits or $10.64 an hour without benefits. Workers staging the fast say they represent the thirty-five hundred airport area hotel workers who stand to gain from the ordinance. Isabel Brentner>> And they come to say thank you for doing this for us. They know we are together and they know we want to fight together. Darian Judeh>> It's very frustrating for me for a college student that wants to get a degree and I've got to work one or two jobs just to pay for my rent. Toni Guinyard>> Well, some would say just get another job. Forget this job at the hotel. Darian Judeh>> Get another job? Forget this job and run away to what? Another job that's going to abuse me? It doesn't change. My philosophy is you've got to face the problems here and now and, if you don't, it's never going to change. One injustice is injustice for all and that's the way I look at it. Toni Guinyard>> And it's how you look at it that colors your view of this living wage fight. The ordinance extends the city's living wage mandate to businesses that are not under contract to do business with the city. Cindy Boulton is General Manager of the Radisson Los Angeles Airport Hotel, one of the hotels targeted by the ordinance. Cindy Boulton>> You know, a few years ago when they invoked the living wage, the government basically said it's only going to be government-run facilities or contractors who subcontract or get contracts with the city. They will be under the guidelines of the living wage. Ultimately, that's not what's happening here. Clearly, as it relates to these twelve hotels and to think that it's only going to be targeted to these twelve hotels and this isn't going to spread and set the precedent to go throughout the whole city of Los Angeles, I think that would be very unrealistic. Toni Guinyard>> The business community has launched its own campaign to get the ordinance repealed. They want to put the living wage issue on the ballot. Gary Toebben>> We have to collect forty-nine thousand signatures in order to put a petition on the ballot so that this can be voted on May 15. Toni Guinyard>> Gary Toebben is President and CEO of the fifteen hundred member Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Gary Toebben>> The business community is united in feeling that the City Council overstepped its bounds when they passed this ordinance. This is a slippery slope that businesses feel is destined to apply to many more businesses than twelve hotels on Century Boulevard. Cindy Boulton>> If this is really about lifting people out of poverty, if this really about ensuring that there's a fair compensation practice as it relates to these twelve businesses and everything else of that nature, why is that, if we enter into a collective bargaining agreement, we then would be exempt? Toni Guinyard>> There is a clause in the ordinance that exempts the hotels from adhering to the living wage if they enter into collective bargaining agreements. Federal law states that workers have a right to organize and join a union, and the effort to unionize the hotels is at the center of a long-running and contentious dispute. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> Is this an issue of the living wage or is it an issue of organizing unions of the hotels? Vivian Rothstein>> Well, I think it's an issue of raising standards. If conditions were fine, there wouldn't have been this movement over the last two years of religious leaders and workers and community leaders and educators to try to change these deplorable conditions on Century Boulevard. If the businesses were doing what they should be doing for our community, none of this would be necessary, but when they don't, then the people themselves rise up. That's what a democracy is all about. Gary Toebben>> This issue is not about how much you pay your people. It is about government overstepping its bounds and extending its reach to businesses that heretofore it has never reached out to touch and regulate. Toni Guinyard>> In the final hours of the final day of the hotel workers' fast, there was little sense of victory, just more conflict and accusations that signature-gatherers working on the referendum were deceiving voters into signing. Isabel Brentner>> They're lying. They're lying to the people to sign. They're paying -- I don't know how much money they pay to the people who do that. Toni Guinyard>> The signature-gatherers? Isabel Brentner>> Yes. But this is not true. They're lying. Toni Guinyard>> California Assembly Speaker, Fabian Nunez, shuttling between fasting workers and hotels after twelve hotel workers, union organizers, were fired. Fabian Nunez>> You can't take action against a worker simply for wanting to be in a union. If they didn't do anything wrong, you've got no right to fire them. Toni Guinyard>> The defense of the living wage ordinance and the hotels workers extending from day to night. Janice Hahn>> I absolutely think that we have a right to say that the hotel workers who are working in these hotels on Century Boulevard that benefit from the Los Angeles International Airport, we actually do have a right to say they should be making a living wage. Toni Guinyard>> With elected officials on hand, the fast was broken seven days after it began, bread and juice dished up by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the man who signed the living wage ordinance coming face to face with the very people who stand to benefit from it. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa>> "So our city has said we want to honor work and say to the people who work hard in these hotels who benefit from the engine that is LAX that they be able to have a decent wage and health care." Toni Guinyard>> A very public protest completed, the hotel workers heading home, knowing they are at the center of a fight that is far from over. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> Late last week, the operator of the Four Point Sheraton announced that it will pay its workers a living wage and the CEO encouraged other hotels to follow suit saying, "You're on the wrong side of the issue. Get on board." As for the twelve workers who were fired, they've been rehired with back pay. 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>> Former president Jimmy Carter has taken a lot of criticism for his latest book. In it, he faults Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. But Carter doesn't stop there. Carter says the current Bush administration has abandoned its responsibilities. His views are presented in his book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid". I talked with President Carter about how he sees the United States role in the Middle East. Mr. President, thank you so much for joining us. You spoke about the Unites States role and, in your book, you're critical of the role that the United States is currently playing. You said it's basically abandoned its role as a peace broker? Jimmy Carter>> It has. Ever since Israel was founded, you know, every president, every administration, has been fervently dedicated to finding peace for Israel. In the last thirty years or so, there has been failed peace talks between Israel and her neighbors. I conducted peace talks between Israel and her major neighbor that had warred against Israel four times in twenty-five years. That is Egypt. I considered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, not a word of which has ever been violated. All of the other presidents have done the same thing except this one. There hasn't been a single day of peace talks since Bill Clinton left office. He tried, but in the last almost six years, not a single time has any effort been made from Washington to bring the Palestinian leaders and Israeli leaders to the negotiating table and offer our good services to let them reach an agreement. Val Zavala>> And why is that? Are we just distracted in Iraq or is a conscious policy? Jimmy Carter>> I really believe that this administration, more than any other in the past -- I'm not criticizing their right to do so -- have cast their lot exclusively with the Israeli point of view. This has not been the case under George Bush, Sr. who was very fervent in his demands that Israel quit building settlements on Palestinian lands. As a matter of fact, under his administration, his and James Baker, the United States government withheld seven hundred million dollars from Israel because they were using the money to build settlements. That's United States grants and loans to Israel. He really tried the best he could to bring the two together. In fact, they orchestrated peace talks in Madrid, Spain where, for the first time really, the Palestinians and Israelis came together to try to find peace talks. That was George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton did the same thing. Ronald Reagan fully supported the results of my Camp David Accord for the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and demanded that Israel quit building settlements on Palestinian lands, but this administration has not done so. But the Hamas leaders have said they fully support peace talks between their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Prime Minister of Israel. They've also said publicly that, if those peace talks are successful and the peace agreement is submitted to the Palestinian people and they approve it in a referendum, Hamas will accept it. But there's not a day of peace talks, to repeat myself. When President Bush first became president -- I'm not singling out President Bush for criticism -- but he and Ariel Sharon announced that the Palestinian elected leader, Arafat, was not suitable as an interlocutor or a representative of Palestinians in peace talks. So the United States and Israel kind of hand-picked Mahmoud Abbas and President Bush called him the voice of reason among the Palestinians as Prime Minister. All of us thought that immediately peace talks would commence. They didn't for three years. Then Arafat died and Mahmoud Abbas was elected president finally. I was over there. We helped conduct the election. Everybody thought that, now that he's president, peace talks would start. They still haven't started. Val Zavala>> You've been dealing with Middle East issues for so long. You are deeply spiritual, a Christian yourself. Would you consider the Holy Land still holy after all this bloodshed? Jimmy Carter>> Well, something can be holy and still troubled. I'm a Christian. Jesus Christ was holy, but he was troubled and he was afflicted with controversy and conflict and persecution. In my class yesterday, in my little church in Plains, I pointed out that the primary covenant consummated between God and human beings was with Abraham. He said that Abraham's descendants would inherit the blessings of God. Of course, his first child was by a slave, an Arab slave, Ishmael. His second child, obviously, was by his own wife, Sarah. They are descendants of Abraham. Then when Christ came, the early Christian church members who were Gentiles asked St. Paul and others if they qualified to be blessed with the covenant between God and Abraham. Paul pointed out yes because God's blessing on Abraham was not because he was circumcised. He wasn't circumcised until later. Not because he was a Jew. It was because he had faith. So anyone who has faith in God through Jesus Christ and a Christian is also part of the children of Abraham. They're the ones now who live in the Holy Land, as I describe it. In the book, I explain this. What I describe it is the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and between Egypt and Lebanon. Everybody that lives in that area who are Christians, Muslims or Jews are children of Abraham and I'm sure that God wants to see peace and reconciliation among his own children. Val Zavala>> President Carter, thank you so much and, God willing, that will happen. Jimmy Carter>> I hope so too. Thank you. I enjoyed it. Val Zavala>> Few places in Los Angeles have undergone such dramatic changes as South Central Los Angeles and now that change can be seen in the work of seven prominent black photographers who've turned their cameras on churches, parks, street corners and more. It's a major exhibit at the California African American Museum. It's called "Intersections of South Central". Vicki Curry takes us there. Vicki Curry>> Most people have never been to South Central, but they've heard of it, and not in a good way. Lester Sloan>> Well, South Central is synonymous with a dysfunctional society all over the world, you know. Anywhere you happen to see black people having to live and work, that was South Central, you know. So Inglewood became South Central. The Crenshaw District became a part of South Central. It became an expression you use for distribution or the places where people of color live. It's presented in one way to the public, but there's much more to it. Vicki Curry>> This exhibit is trying to take on the misconceptions about South Central and show the real people and places. "Intersections of South Central" pairs historical photos with images of the same location as it appears today. Lester Sloan>> It's our responsibility to reinterpret this community because it wasn't always like that. Vicki Curry>> Lester Sloan is one of seven photographers who set out to reinterpret South Central for this exhibition. The project started with the Automobile Club of Southern California and its archive of historical photographs. Matt Roth>> The Auto Club engineers went everywhere in Los Angeles looking for traffic problems, so the collection doesn't just have the famous places of Los Angeles. It's got places like you've seen on the walls, 68th and Hoover, 112th and Central. And we wanted to reflect on these landscapes because we're talking about basically a working class neighborhood. It grew up around railroad tracks and factories and it has this reputation of being this horrible place. Without denying the horrible things occur, the reality of the community is not represented. Vicki Curry>> The Auto Club teamed up with the California African American Museum and a number of other local photograph archives. They then asked photographers to use the historic images as a jumping off point to look at South Central today. Matt Roth>> They'd either grown up there or worked there as a professional. Chris West>> And we knew that we wanted to tether the contemporary photography to the historic. We wanted to give them some license to really be creative and be artistic and do something different. Matt Roth>> We got to see these visual thinkers respond not only as far as images, but to the contemporary landscape. We were actually asking them to go with an open mind and open eyes and bring impressions back based on this background research that we had done about the history of the place. Vicki Curry>> Lester Sloan jumped at the chance to be creative, a rare treat after twenty-five years of photojournalism at Newsweek. Lester Sloan>> I covered this South Central usually in times of crisis, you know. I mean, when there was a riot or what have you, I came here as a photographer. But there was never any context. There was never any history. It was just the event, you know. I knew nothing about the community, but as I got involved in the program and the project, I started to see the whole picture. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Lester, this is one of the places you were asked to photograph? Lester Sloan>> Right, right, right. Wrigley Field. I think it went out of business in the late 1960s or early 1970s, something like that. It was the first field for the Los Angeles Angels. Now the only part of Wrigley Field that's left is what they call Little Wrigley where the youngsters play. I think it's the southwest corner of 43rd and Avalon. There's a senior citizen center which is why that image is there. This is like a field of dreams. This is the future right here, not only reading the headlines in the Los Angeles Times. This is an example of a photograph we were given from the archives. We were told to go back to this location and photograph what's there now. Vicki Curry>> And this is the intersection of Central and 32nd. Lester Sloan>> Central and 32nd, yeah. Vicki Curry>> And it's always been little businesses? Lester Sloan>> It's always been little businesses. In the day, they were black businesses. Now they're Latino businesses, but they're businesses. And, you know, you have people of all colors going to these stores. I mean, the black now support the merchants who are Latino and it's business as usual. I wanted to have all the people represented photographically just showing the difference and how the neighborhood is changed and who's occupying these stores now. [Film Clip] Lester Sloan>> I was getting that photograph of a shot on Central and 43rd Streets. It showed the Dunbar Hotel in the background and just the community as it existed in the 1960s. That neighborhood now which is, like I said, one block from the Dunbar, now mostly Latino. There are no black businesses there today. What I was trying to show was how it's changed. I was trying to find a man who looked like he would be the age of that young man out there in that photograph and grown up. This is just a guy hanging out. I picked up a newspaper. The paper in the community used to be the Sentinel and now it's a newspaper called Hoy, I believe. He's holding up a headline of Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about the border. I thought, what better way to illustrate the transition in this community? Vicki Curry>> Transition is a common theme in the exhibition. South Central has changed a lot over the years. It might still have a certain reputation, but these days, an increasingly diverse group of people call it home. Lester Sloan>> There are very proud people in this community, you know, who, good or bad, it's where they live. I guess this exhibition, this project, was a way of sort of bringing things back into focus. I mean, what is South Central? What was it then and what is it now? It's a way of putting South Central on the map as a part of all of Los Angeles. Val Zavala>> "Intersections of South Central" will be up through April 28. For more information, you can go to their website at caamuseum.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>> When it comes to Christmas lights, who could do a better job than the company that keeps our lights on all year? Well, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is putting on its Annual Holiday Light Festival. It draws tens of thousands of visitors and just that many cars. So to save you the traffic hassles, we sent a camera there. Kim Hughes>> Hi, I'm Kim Hughes. I'm with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. We're here at the Annual Los Angeles DWP Holiday Light Festival. The festival keeps growing every year. We're expecting close to six hundred thousand visitors this year. It gets pretty busy, but we have a lot of options for visitors that want to enjoy the festival. They can certainly take a car and we would recommend Mondays through Thursdays to try to beat some of those crowded lanes of cars. We also offer free shuttle service every single evening so that visitors can come, park at the Los Angeles Zoo parking lot, take one of the shuttles, be nice and cozy and enjoy it with your family. Also, a lot of visitors like to come and park at the zoo and walk the festival. In fact, if rumor has it, it's a great first date night or a special romantic evening to bring someone and hear the holiday music and stroll. It's just a little, somebody said, romantic, so that's something else people can enjoy and do. [Film Clip] Kim Hughes>> Well, it's certainly become a tradition. We hear every year of families that have brought their children and come every single year. Also, I think it brings the city together. It's an activity that one can enjoy. It's free. One could come many times. Also, I think we are able to, in one spot, celebrate the uniqueness and diversity of Los Angeles. Many of the displays depict those landmarks that make Los Angeles truly someplace special, whether it's City Hall, the Vincent St. Thomas Bridge, the Hollywood Bowl or Venice Beach. All those things are brought together right here. So even if you tend to stay in your neighborhood, you can come to the festival and get a true flavor of all of Los Angeles. [Film Clip] Kim Hughes>> Oh, the best part is to see the smiles. Children just are mesmerized. Again, there's over a million lights. I think, also, the holiday music brings that kind of sparkle and people kind of rekindle the child in all of us. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> This Holiday Light Festival will be up at Griffith Park through December 30. 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. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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