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Life & Times Transcript
3/16/07 Announcer>> Coverage of Town Hall Los Angeles speakers on Life and Times is made possible by a grant from the Boeing Company. Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- It's your money, a deposit paid on every bottle and can you buy in California, so why don't you get it back? Kreigh Hampel>> If the bottles and cans just end up going into the landfill, they get buried and there's no way to redeem that money at the end of their life. So they're simply buried treasure. Val Zavala>> And then, gang violence, immigrant marches and the fight for a living wage. Sounds like current news, but it's straight out of history. 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>> Don't throw away those cans or bottles. They're worth more than ever before. That's right. Recyclers are, in a sense, getting a raise and why is that? Because the state-run recycling program has ended up with a surplus, believe it or not. How did that happen and what does it mean for you? Toni Guinyard has our story. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> Empty cans and bottles. You can look at them one of two ways, as trash or as cash if recycled. But the truth is, only sixty-two percent of beverage containers purchased in California are actually being recycled. The rest are ending up in the dump. Bridgett Luther>> The only thing we know that helps people to recycle more is to increase CRV. Toni Guinyard>> Bridgett Luther is Director of the California Department of Conservation and those three letters she mentioned, CRV, stand for California Redemption Value. That's the deposit we pay every time we purchase beverages in most aluminum, glass or plastic containers. Bridgett Luther>> So you're paying four cents for anything under twenty-four ounces is your CRV and eight cents for anything over twenty-four ounces. But if you take that same container back to the recycling center, you're going to get a nickel for the small one and a dime for the large one. Toni Guinyard>> When California first started the recycling program in 1986, the refund for small bottles and cans was only a penny. Burbank resident, Nicholas Nappi, remembers how it was then collecting bottles and cans and hauling them to the neighborhood store. Nicholas Nappi>> I'd take my wagon. I'd go to the neighbors and get bottles of Coke and, you know, Nehi, all kinds of soda. You'd get a couple of cents for them and you'd buy some candy. Toni Guinyard>> We have come a long way since then. It's estimated that some one hundred sixty billion containers have been recycled over the past two decades here in the state of California and the increase in the California Redemption Value is expected to encourage people to consider recycling. Hope McAloon>> You know, everybody does this. There are people, I think, who are really dedicated to the environment, who really care, and then there are people who want to make a little money off it. Kreigh Hampel>> I love to see the deposits go up because the recycling rates have traditionally gone up every time that increases. Toni Guinyard>> Kreigh Hampel is recycling coordinator for the city of Burbank's recycling center. Here we get an up close look at what the public doesn't normally have a chance to see, the journey those bottles and cans and other recyclables take. What isn't dropped off by the carload -- Hope McAloon>> It's all walks of life. You know, I see Mercedes and BMWs as well as, you know, the people who push carts around and come in with their carts from the supermarkets. Toni Guinyard>> -- is collected at curbside and trucked in. Everything gets sorted. Kreigh Hampel>> The plastic bottles, the glass bottles, the aluminum cans, newspaper, cardboard, all those things. Toni Guinyard>> Eventually ending up in bales ready to be shipped out for processing into recycled goods. As big as this operation seems, when it comes to bottles and cans, consumers in California are still throwing money away. Kreigh Hampel>> The trail of money is that, when you buy bottles and cans at the stores, the stores collect that money and send it into a state fund. Now if the bottles and cans just end up going into the landfill, they get buried and there's no way to redeem that money at the end of their life, so they're simply buried treasure and it's lost revenue in the terms of plastics, glass and aluminum, but the revenue is just sitting in state funds not being returned to people. Bridgett Luther>> So every couple of years, people decide that fund has gotten too big and that we need to do something with it. This year, the governor decided to give consumers an incentive. Toni Guinyard>> Incentive in the form of the increased refund on bottles and cans. Bridgett Luther>> Last year, Californians recycled 12.4 billion containers. In the twenty years that we've been running this program, we've recycled enough materials to fill up I-5 fourteen feet high. So we have cut a lot of resources out of landfills, but we need to recommit ourselves. Toni Guinyard>> Sometimes it takes transplants to California to remind us of the value of recycling. Teri Maier>> We're from Louisiana, so we don't have these great opportunities to have recycling at your fingertips. They don't recycle like they do here. Toni Guinyard>> This is Teri Maier, wife, mother of three and dedicated recycler. Teri Maier>> They don't recycle like we do here. They don't have the programs and giving people incentives to recycle. Toni Guinyard>> The Maiers no longer rely on curbside recycling. The family started a nonprofit, funded with money raised from the refunds of bottles and cans. Teri Maier>> Sometimes we average roughly a good thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a month of recycled materials that are being donated to Mac's Project. Toni Guinyard>> Mac's Project, Make Another Child Smile, was born after Maiers' middle child, Mackenzie, was diagnosed with cancer at age four. At the time, Maiers' oldest daughter had the job of collecting recyclables at home. Teri Maier>> She was in charge of making sure all of the bottles and cans got into the container and, if she wanted extra money for her allowance, then she would take those containers in and would cash them in. She would average about ten dollars a month. Toni Guinyard>> After Mackenzie's health improved and she got out of the hospital, it got Maier thinking. Get more people to pitch in and she could raise funds to help kids with cancer and their families. Teri Maier>> We are now in lots of places in town. We have over thirty families recycling for us. We've got five schools recycling for Mac's Project and probably about fifteen to twenty businesses are recycling for us. Toni Guinyard>> This small idea built on pennies and nickels and dimes, those CRV refunds, is now large enough that the Los Angeles Conservation Corps sends a truck to the Maier home each week to pick up bag after bag of empty bottles and cans. Teri Maier>> And it just adds up, so every little bit counts. That's what we want people will realize. No matter how big or small, it counts. And when you group it together with lots of numbers, then the accumulation of volume is where it makes a difference. It's like with everything in life. Everybody likes win-win-win situations and I think that's what we have here. It's a win-win situation. We're helping the environment and we're collecting cans and we're being able to use those funds to help, you know, families that are battling cancer with their kids. Toni Guinyard>> And for those who believe redeeming the CRV amounts to nothing more than pocket change and isn't worth the effort -- Nicholas Nappi>> They're mistaken because it is worth it. I mean, if you can get something and also help the environment or whatever it is and you pick up a few dollars yourself, I think it's more than worth the time and effort and it's not that hard to do. Toni Guinyard>> And until June 30, the beverage container deposit you pay at the store will remain at four cents for small containers and eight cents for large, but -- Bridgett Luther>> Starting July 1, you'll be paying in a nickel and a dime and you'll be getting back the same nickel and dime. It's not a tax. It is, in fact, a fee. You can go get your money back. A lot of people don't. Toni Guinyard>> Leaving two-fifths of beverage containers sold in California ending up in the landfall. Kreigh Hampel>> So it's not just, you know, the traditional soda pop bottles that we had when we were kids. Now it's all sorts of other drinks that we come to form habits around and we're not recycling those. Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> If you'd like more information on recycling, you can go to the website of bottlesandcans.com or you can call the Department of Conservation at 1-800-RECYCLE. 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>> You've probably heard the term "media consolidation". That's the trend where more and more TV, radio and newspapers are owned by fewer and fewer big corporations. Clear Channel, for example, used to be limited to forty radio stations. It now owns twelve hundred. Is that a good thing? Not according to New York University sociologist, Eric Klinenberg. He's written a book about how media consolidation has hurt local news and community services. I talked with Klinenberg who was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. Why should people care? We have more choices than we ever had ever. Why should we be worried about who actually owns what we see or hear? Eric Klinenberg>> Well, the problem is, even though you can get access to the BBC, to the news from South Africa, to the weather in Rio de Janeiro, I'm concerned about whether you're getting enough local news and information, whether you can find out what's happening in City Hall, if there's a polluting corporation in your neighborhood, whether you get the information reporting you need to know, whether you can still get the sounds of your city when you turn on the radio. What I've found in the five years that I've spent talking to people throughout the country is a real concern about the lack of local voices and information about the places we live. Val Zavala>> What's the cause of that? Eric Klinenberg>> Well, one of the big changes in the industry in this big consolidation story is that whether it's radio or newspaper, we've seen chain owners replace local owners of our stations or our newspapers and the result is a kind of severing of this relationship between the media company and the communities that they serve. Actually, Los Angeles is an important story in this respect. The story of the Tribune Company which is based in my home city of Chicago taking over the Los Angeles Times, I think, has been a horror story. A number of people in this city, I know, are concerned that the Tribune just doesn't have the local commitment to sustain the quality journalism that a city like Los Angeles deserves. Val Zavala>> What situation is Los Angeles in in terms of media consolidation and ownership? Eric Klinenberg>> Los Angeles is interesting. It's technically illegal for a company to own a newspaper and a television station in a given city unless they get special permission to do so from the government. The Tribune got that for Los Angeles. Val Zavala>> The Tribune owns both Los Angeles Times -- Eric Klinenberg>> -- and KTLA. This is a new thing. The Tribune acquired the Los Angeles Times in 2000 from the Chandler family. The Times Mirror was a locally owned and operated paper. It was not a perfect paper, but it was a paper that was unmistakably part of Los Angeles. It was a paper with a deep history to Los Angeles. I think the reporters who are left at the Los Angeles Times could tell you -- Val Zavala>> -- because it had a lot of cutbacks? Eric Klinenberg>> They're ambivalent about the Tribune. I mean, the Tribune has fired about two hundred fifty reporters from the newsroom that was almost twelve hundred when they took over. You know, two editors of the Los Angeles Times have gone, either resigned or lost their jobs, because they were so upset at what the Tribune Company from Chicago was doing to their newsroom. Val Zavala>> They were going to want to fire more people basically. Eric Klinenberg>> Look, the Los Angeles Times is a precious resource. It's vital for cities to have good newspapers that are really covering their communities. Los Angeles is an incredible city. It's going through amazing changes and record levels of immigration. A cultural economy is booming here and people in Los Angeles need to know what's happening where they live. I think people here are experiencing the hard way the real dangers of consolidation when a distant corporate owner like Tribune from another city thousands of miles away comes over and takes your hometown paper. You might find that you're not getting your hometown voices, you're not getting your hometown news. This is a story we're seeing throughout the country. Val Zavala>> It's very likely that the Los Angeles Times, the Tribune Company, will sell the paper again, so it could go back to local hands. In other words, their experiment in whatever they wanted to do didn't work. Eric Klinenberg>> It's questionable whether the Tribune will actually sell the Los Angeles Times. Although the company has been on auction, the managers in Chicago have not received bids that they think are adequate. There are a lot of people in the city of Chicago who are convinced that the Tribune managers are doing everything they can to hold on to the corporation. They're reluctant to let go and, frankly, the Tribune managers have seen what happens when a newspaper company thousands of miles away takes over another paper. They don't want that to happen to their city of Chicago and their paper. So it's an open question. I think the people of Los Angeles would be better served by a local owner. I hope that the city of Los Angeles gets one. I'm just not convinced that's what's going to happen. Val Zavala>> What about things like the internet or whatever? There's a lot of different ways these days to get information on what's happening around the corner or in City Hall. Eric Klinenberg>> Well, in my book, I actually interviewed some of the people who are doing the best local websites or people who do great blogs, people who are trying to think, well, how can we use new technologies to do innovative local reporting? What they all said to me is, "Eric, the work we do is totally dependent on newspaper journalism actually. We get our story ideas from newspapers. We might interpret or push a story in a different direction, but we don't have the resources to go out and dig up the stories. We'll never do investigative work. We can't have a beat system. We depend on newspapers." So I think we do ourselves a disservice when we say that the internet will replace all these old media. We need them working together. The danger is that, in our enthusiasm for the online stuff, we'll take the old media for granted and we'll eviscerate the institutions that provide reporting, that provide local music, that help us kind of get that local cultural stuff from the ground where it can be difficult to see up into the air. Let's remember that this is message of "Fighting for Air". The airwaves, when we talk about broadcasts, the airwaves are public property. It's a public resource like the national parks. The deal in this country has always been that corporations and public organizations that use the airwaves make a deal. In exchange for getting that space, they provide public service programming. They serve the public interests during ordinary times. They do community programming. They provide news. During disasters, they're there with the information that we need to stay safe. That contract has been broken. Val Zavala>> Are there really cases where media ownership has made a difference? Eric Klinenberg>> Actually, just five years ago this year, in Minot, North Dakota, there was a train that derailed while going outside of town. It spilled two hundred forty thousand gallons of anhydrous ammonia which is a highly toxic chemical. The chemical formed a big cloud, a poisonous cloud, that floated into the town and penetrated the homes of fifteen thousand people in town. We've been trained over a lot of years to turn on our radios and get emergency information. Well, in Minot that morning, the dispatchers weren't able to get through to the emergency broadcaster. It was one of six stations owned by Clear Channel Communications. They own all of the non-religious commercial stations in town and they had gotten rid of the local talent and replaced them with all this automated content. There was no one to answer the phones. There was no one in the studio station on alert. The result that morning to the viewers tuning into their radios to find out how to stay safe was that they were getting Big Country, they were getting Alternative Rock, they were getting Easy Listening, smooth-talking DJs, nothing that would help them. I think today, after a decade of extraordinary consolidation of ownership, Americans need to be asking themselves if their broadcast system is really providing them with the news they need during crises or during normal times. Val Zavala>> What can people do about it? What can we as consumers do about it this consolidation? Eric Klinenberg>> Well, this is the second story of "Fighting for Air". It's about the millions of Americans who are already doing things to try to create a better media system in this country. Americans are going online. There is Free Press, which is a new media form of organization. You can check them out at freepress.org. They have a whole set of programs that people can enlist in. There are letter-writing campaigns to the FCC and Congress to try to do something to prevent our nation's big media companies from growing even bigger. I actually liken the media reform movements to the environmental movements forty years ago. We're just waking up to the idea that, hey, we don't have to just accept this stuff. It's not natural. We can actually take back our airwaves and have a better media. Val Zavala>> The book, again, is "Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media" by Eric Klinenberg. If you'd like more information about Town Hall Los Angeles events and speakers, you can go to their website at townhall-la.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>> How is it that Los Angeles came to be the center of the immigrants' rights movement? Well, of course, we have millions of immigrants here, but that's not the whole story. It actually began back in the 1970s when minorities and labor unions came together to claim political power. Now a new documentary captures the dramatic events of Los Angeles's history from the triumph of Los Angeles's first Black mayor in 1973 to the victory of Antonio Villaraigosa. The documentary is called "The New Los Angeles" and it begins with the story of Mayor Tom Bradley who led Los Angeles for an unprecedented twenty years. Tom Bradley>> "Tonight was the fulfillment of a dream, the impossible dream." Val Zavala>> Maria Elena Durazo is a long-time labor leader who plays a prominent role in the film. Maria Elena Durazo>> Working people made the history of electing Tom Bradley and making the changes in this city and electing Antonio Villaraigosa. With all due respect to our prominent political figures, had it not been for the day-to-day struggles of organized communities, of organized workers, we would not be the greater city that we are today. Val Zavala>> Kerman Maddox, also featured in the film, is an expert on Los Angeles politics. Kerman Maddox>> Tom Bradley is the only mayor we've had, Val, who's been elected to five four-year terms. He served from 1973 while I was in high school to 1993. It never happened before and it will never happen again. Tom Bradley>> "This is not just a victory for Tom Bradley, not just a victory for the campaign, but a victory for progress, a victory for our children. Thank you very much." Val Zavala>> The film looks at how multi-racial coalitions were crucial to Bradley's and later Villaraigosa's victories. Kerman Maddox>> The time was a watershed moment for the city of Los Angeles because they proved to the rest of the nation that an African-American could be elected mayor in a major city that did not have a predominant Black population. >> "Every day I clean fifteen rooms. In each room, this is what I do. I make the beds." Val Zavala>> The film documents the effort to organize immigrant workers. Maria Elena Durazo>> "We had to make a change in Los Angeles that would connect the struggles, that would be bigger, that would be progressive, that would change the landscape, change the politics, just change the way that workers and working families were treated." We would not be doing the things that we're doing today had it not been for the last twenty to thirty years of real organizing in our communities. That set the tone so that, today, we have community benefits agreements. If there is going to be economic development, then working people have to benefit. Val Zavala>> Lyn Goldfarb produced and directed "The New Los Angeles" as part of a four-part PBS series on California and the American dream. Lyn Goldfarb>> We are the largest majority-minority city in the country and we are also, you know, in the forefront of political change from the living wage legislation, which is guaranteeing more than a minimum, almost twice the minimum wage, for workers in Los Angeles. When I learned how immigrants have played an important role in electoral politics, it doesn't matter whether you can vote or not. Miguel Contreras>> "We have the best army of activists. Many of them are immigrant workers." [Film Clip] Miguel Contreras>> "A lot of them come out and walk streets with us to make sure to get out the vote. They don't have to be citizens to help get out the vote. What matters is that they care about this country." Val Zavala>> The documentary includes an interview with late labor leader, Miguel Contreras. His widow, Maria Elena Durazo, has succeeded him. Maria Elena Durazo>> Having lived so much of that myself, having lived so much of that with my husband, it's a real tribute also to his role and I'm glad to see a film that shows what Miguel did for Los Angeles and that it won't be forgotten. Val Zavala>> When they started the project, the filmmakers didn't know that, in 2005, Angelenos would elect their first Latino mayor in more than a century. It gave an unforeseen ending to "The New Los Angeles". Antonio Villaraigosa>> "Our purpose is to bring this great city together. Our purpose is to draw fully and equally on the rich diversity of all our communities and neighborhoods." Val Zavala>> Do you think that it was harder to govern Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, or is it harder to govern Los Angeles for Villaraigosa today? Kerman Maddox>> I think it's more difficult for Villaraigosa today because we have so many wedge issues. There's so much tension between the ethnic communities. When Tom Bradley was elected, he was trying to develop Los Angeles as a major city. You didn't have the tensions that we have today and, if so, they seemed to be below the radar. Also, you didn't have the 24-7 news cycle. So there are a lot of things we did in City Hall that, frankly, never leaked. The problem nowadays is, with a twenty-four hour news cycle, people want information and they want it now. People also want solutions and they want them now. So I think the challenges for Villaraigosa are greater and the tension that exists in communities are greater. Plus, the resources in government, Val, are not there today as they used to be in the 1970s and 1980s. Fernando Guerra>> "If you fast-forward America, it will -- I mean, it's a demographic reality that it will be majority-minority. What that means is that white Anglo Saxon, Protestant and Catholic, the Europeans, will be less than fifty percent of the population. How Los Angeles responds to the incredible immigration and diversity that exists is going to be a model for the United States. How we create a stable transition is critically important to the incorporation of immigrants and minorities into the political, social and economic system of the United States." Antonio Villaraigosa>> "Together, we can make a difference, to make this city the city that it can be." 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. 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. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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