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Life & Times Transcript

5/10/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Casinos are raking in big bucks for some California tribes. Should they be allowed to expand?

Senator Sheila Kuehl>> I think the people in California were thinking, "We really want to help these tribes get on their feet." Well, we've done that big time. I mean, they're now billionaires, a few of them, but the other tribes that they were supposed to help aren't benefiting from it.

Val Zavala>> And then, want to take in a movie this weekend? Our critics tell us if this week's new films are fit for mom.

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.

Val Zavala>> Do Indian casinos need more slot machines? Well, according to a handful of wealthy tribes, yes. And they are pushing for a bill in Sacramento that would allow them to add tens of thousands of them. But as Roger Cooper tells us, despite the clout of Indian contributions in Sacramento, this bill could face some tough opposition.

Advertisement>> "California and California Indian tribes. Together we soar."

Roger Cooper>> It's a major television ad campaign aimed at the voters of California.

Advertisement>> "Governor Schwarzenegger and California Indian tribes have reached historic agreements that bring California hundreds of millions of dollars a year."

Roger Cooper>> Paid for by the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the ads have a clear purpose.

Advertisement>> "Tell your legislator that California's future depends on it."

Roger Cooper>> The compact is an agreement hammered out between the governor and five Indian tribes and it's all about this familiar sound.

[Film Clip]

Roger Cooper>> Slot machines. Under the proposed compact, these tribes would be allowed to more than triple the number of slot machines they can operate. Here at the twenty-seven story Morongo Casino west of Palm Springs, the number of slots would jump from two thousand up to seven thousand five hundred, making it among the biggest gambling floors in the nation.

Robert Martin>> "I urge you to ratify these compacts without further delay so that California can receive the new revenue that these compacts would bring."

Roger Cooper>> Morongo tribal chairman, Robert Martin, appeared before a State Senate hearing. The compact would deposit up to twenty-five percent of the revenue from the additional slot machines into state coffers.

Robert Martin>> "If these compacts had been enacted last August, hundreds of millions of dollars would already be coming into the state's general fund. Every day that passes without these compacts taking effect cost the state another million dollars."

Roger Cooper>> Last month, the State Senate approved the additional slots for these gaming tribes. But things may not go as smoothly in the Assembly where there is greater opposition to the compact.

Advertisement>> "Don't let special interests stand in the way."

Roger Cooper>> And that's why the eagle has been flying across our television screens. Among the opponents is State Senator Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat from Santa Monica. She voted no in the Senate, arguing that a few tribes have gotten rich, but haven't shared the wealth.

Senator Sheila Kuehl>> You know, when we originally supported Proposition 1A, I think the people of California were thinking, "We really want to help these tribes get on their feet. They haven't had a fair chance and this would be a good way for them to bring education, to bring transportation, to bring a good style of living to the tribe." Well, we've done that big time. I mean, they're now billionaires, a few of them, but the other tribes that they were supposed to help aren't benefiting from it.

Waltona Manion>> Well, that would be factually inaccurate.

Roger Cooper>> A spokesperson for the Morongo Tribe begs to differ. Waltona Manion says that tribes with casinos have gone to the aid of non-gaming tribes.

Waltona Manion>> Since the compacts were negotiated, the tribes have paid in hundreds of millions of dollars into a fund that was set up by the state. Now it is true that, once those funds were paid to the state, there was a serious delay in the state's distribution of those funds to the non-gaming tribes.

Roger Cooper>> Manion argues that the gaming tribes have been good members of the community and good business people and ratifying the compact is crucial to them.

Waltona Manion>> This is a part of guaranteeing a future for their children and for their grandchildren and it's also a logical next step for them in terms of building their business.

Roger Cooper>> Perhaps the strongest opposition to the compact comes from a labor union. Unite HERE is a hotel and casino workers union that wants to organize Indian casino workers. The tribes say that union organizers are already free to come onto casino property and talk to workers, but Jack Gribbon of Unite HERE says that cameras are watching.

Jack Gribbon>> We have refused the tribe in terms of their request that we talk to workers in their casino under their surveillance cameras so they can find out who talks to the union so they can put a bull's-eye on that worker's back and make sure they can make an example of that worker that, if you talk to the union, you're in trouble. So, no, we're not going to do it their way. That's not appropriate.

Roger Cooper>> But Manion says that the tribe is not anti-union and questions why Unite HERE hasn't talked with Morongo workers.

Waltona Manion>> What Morongo stands squarely behind is the right of the employees to choose and to do so by secret ballot so that their decision is private just like any election is in this country and they are dedicated to that. So to suggest that the employer would intervene is just factually wrong.

Roger Cooper>> Senator Kuehl has other concerns. She thinks the compact should spell out more benefits for workers.

Senator Sheila Kuehl>> They claim sovereignty. They don't have to pay minimum wage. They don't have to do other things required by state law. It's not enough. Let them put the protections in the compacts.

Waltona Manion>> Well, that would suggest that they don't have a track record. In the case of Morongo, Morongo has an excellent track record. Their employees are the most well-compensated in the industry. They have one hundred percent health care coverage not only for the employees, but their families. They have 401(k)s. These are people who are well taken care of and are very committed to working for Morongo, so I would say that the worker protections are in place.

Roger Cooper>> Unite HERE says that, if the Assembly approves the compacts, it will have a long-term impact on the ability to organize.

Jack Gribbon>> Well, these compacts go on for twenty-three years if they're ratified. If this issue isn't solved before they're ratified, it will not be solved for twenty-three years. The fastest-growing service sector in the industry in our state, a wash in cash, and the engine behind that are these workers. For them to not have the right to organize for twenty-three years is outrageous.

Roger Cooper>> As for the television ads, the Morongo Tribe is spending an estimated twenty million on the television campaign. This, together with other political contributions last year, make Indian tribes one of the most powerful political forces in Sacramento. Kuehl thinks that the tribes have become too powerful and some in Sacramento fear that, if the Assembly kills the compact, Indian tribes would retaliate. How? By fighting a ballot proposition that would lengthen the terms of state legislators.

Senator Sheila Kuehl>> I just don't think that either the Senate or the Assembly should be threatened by this kind of money. It's just egregious that they have so much to spend. It's egregious that they can put money into campaigns when they're declaring that they don't have to follow state law on anything else. I just think they got too big for their britches.

Roger Cooper>> But Manion says that Native Americans have the same rights to participate in politics as any other American citizens. She says that tribes are simply working to maintain the enterprise that has lifted them out of poverty.

Waltona Manion>> Most of their populations were moved to the point of decimation specifically because of state policy. This is a state that once paid bounty on Indian body parts and displayed them at state fairs. It is, I think, up to the Indians to say when enough is enough and what these tribes are committed to is their economic survival and their ability to provide a future for their children and their grandchildren.

Roger Cooper>> The vote on the tribal compact is still weeks away. It will be a week of intense lobbying and members of the Assembly will have to determine if the eagle is soaring or flying out of control. 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>> You may not realize that here in Los Angeles and throughout California there were lynchings and plenty of them. More than three hundred fifty. And very few details were known about most of the lynchings until now.

Near Los Angeles City Hall, for example, an American Indian was lynched. He had killed his sister and mother, he was mentally disabled, he was hanged without a trial. This is just one of hundreds of cases that Ken Gonzalez-Day has researched.

Gonzalez-Day is actually an art and photography teacher at Scripps College, but while he was researching historical images of Mexicans, he encountered lynching photographs. That led to six years of meticulous research culminating in a book called "Lynching in the West". We went to several sites where these vigilante hangings took place. So now we're on the corner of Alameda and Aliso right by the federal prison. What happened here?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> This was the site of a lynching in the 1850s of a young Mexican boy. He was accused of stabbing a woman named Frau Leck, or Mrs. Leck, who had a shop there. Basically the crowd assembled, grabbed the suspect, proceeded to stab him several times, put a rope around his neck and then dragged him up to the corner, this intersection, where they stabbed him and lynched him.

Val Zavala>> So they dragged him right here?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> Yes.

Val Zavala>> And hanged him right at the corner there?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> That's right. The sheriff's office would have just been two blocks down the other way. So again, the main point is that there was the opportunity to have the legal system step in and they chose not to.

Val Zavala>> Of the three hundred fifty-two lynchings in California, most of the victims, a hundred thirty-three, were Mexicans. The second largest group was Anglo, followed by Native Americans and Chinese. What is now the Chinese American Museum was the site of a Chinese massacre in 1871.

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> It all started with a battle between two rival gangs over a Chinese prostitute. In the battle, one of the gang members managed to shoot an Anglo sheriff and, of course, that was very upsetting to the community. So that started about six p.m. By nine p.m., there were over six hundred men surrounding this building in this block.

Val Zavala>> So the mob descended and what happened?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> Once they surrounded the building, it was nighttime. Of course, there were no street lights at that point. They started slowly tearing apart the adobe little by little that about nineteen men were hiding inside of and basically pulled them out one by one, eventually hanging fourteen of them from various things around the area, the youngest being, I think, a fourteen year old boy and the oldest being a community doctor.

Val Zavala>> There's another facet of Ken Gonzalez-Day's book. These historical photographs look simply like trees or a telephone pole. In fact, in the originals, there were bodies hanging from the branches. Gonzalez-Day removed them digitally. I asked him why.

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> I wanted to create a project as a work of visual art that would allow the viewer to consider this history without re-victimizing the bodies. I had no interest in either producing or selling or in any manner benefiting from the exploitation and sort of the distribution of images of lynched Mexicans or lynched persons of any race. There's quite a growing market and growing interest in lynching photography, as surprising as that may seem. Often you will find the prices --

Val Zavala>> -- you mean nowadays?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> Nowadays on eBay. Basically prices can be over a thousand dollars per image.

Val Zavala>> So we're on Hill and the 101 is right there and downtown is right across the freeway. This is Fort Moore Hill where how many lynchings happened?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> There were seven lynchings, all Latino persons and, you know, persons of Mexican descent. Basically all at the top of the hill. They would be taken from the old plaza just down the hill and brought up to the top.

Val Zavala>> They'd be dragged up to the hill and hanged?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> Uh-huh.

Val Zavala>> And what kinds of things did they allegedly do? Was it minor things or murders or what?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> There were various things. Most of them were accused of murder. Like one case, the person's trial was going to be moved to a different court and, before they were sent off to the port at San Pedro, the community decided not to let them have a fair trial somewhere else and so they sort of intervened. So a lot of it was sort of stepping in at some point and trying to take over the legal process because all of these people were having legal trials or were in the midst of them.

Val Zavala>> So some of them were executions and some of them were what you call lynching, but how do you distinguish between the two?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> The distinction is whether it's court-ordered by a jury of one's peers and one has all the legal rights afforded us by the Constitution. A lynching is where the community doesn't particularly like the conclusions of the court. Oftentimes, they would intervene and sort of change the outcome.

Val Zavala>> And executions often had scaffolding and officials in attendance. Lynchings did not. Lynchings in California went on for more than eighty years. Then in the 1930s, a debate developed between those for and against the practice.

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> There were really very serious arguments about why one would go one way or the other. Obviously, the mark of civilization was one of them. Wanting to encourage people to come to California and help the state grow led people to want to advocate for a legal system. People don't want to come all the way and invest their money into a place where there's going to be no guarantee of private property.

Val Zavala>> In California, the last public lynchings took place in 1935 in San Jose. Two men were hanged for allegedly kidnapping and killing another man. Eight thousand people attended.

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> It was announced, they say, on the radio ahead of time and people really came from quite far. The town square in San Jose had cars lined up, they say, for several miles.

Val Zavala>> If it was such a spectacle and it was so "popular", why did it all of a sudden stop?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> The main reason most people write about is this thing called the Second World War and the holocaust. The idea that one community was killing millions of another community was very, very distasteful for Americans and the thought that Americans were doing this to other Americans eventually began to enrage people.

Val Zavala>> Now they have a monument here to water and power and all sorts of discoveries and innovations. Is there any monument at all to lynchings outside of the one at the Chinese American Museum?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> No, there are no recorded state markers for lynching anywhere in California and of any of the three hundred fifty-two cases. Actually, there's only one. There's one near Sacramento.

Val Zavala>> Just one?

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> Yes.

Val Zavala>> For three hundred fifty-two lynchings.

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> That's correct.

Val Zavala>> Well, Ken, thank you very much for all your hard work and a really insightful look at a dark history.

Ken Gonzalez-Day>> Thank you so much.

Val Zavala>> Ken Gonzalez-Day got word recently that his book, "Lynching in the West: 1850 - 1935", has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in History.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is the family drama, "Georgia Rule". It puts together the actresses Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman and Lindsey Lohan. The movie is directed by Garry Marshall from a script by Mark Andrus.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media and Lael Loewenstein of Variety. Lael, what did you think of "Georgia Rule"?

Lael Loewenstein>> Well, Larry, like many other people, I was misled by the marketing campaign which portrayed this film as kind of a feel-good, female bonding film in the mold of films made by Garry Marshall including "Pretty Woman" and "Runaway Bride" and "The Princess Diaries".

Marshall's made a tradition of these sort of Cinderella stories where a wayward heroine gets her act together and shapes up and is redeemed by the end of the film. This is a very different kind of movie and it has a lot darker themes.

There's some material that's really disturbing, touching on alcoholism, child abuse, things that are just really inappropriate for a kind of family style comedy. It is rated "R", but the marketing really pushes you to think that this is a much more upbeat film. Even though the actors are good and there are some great actors and actresses in the cast, I thought it was really disappointing.

Larry Mantle>> Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I agree. I think that the blame for what I consider an extraordinary misfire has to be shared between both the screenwriter and the director. But I think the real culprit is the concept of the story which, as Lael suggested, is a drama-comedy in which there are revelations about alcoholism and accusations of sexual abuse of the most, you know, unforgivable kind. These are followed by essentially pratfalls and the clunkiest kind of humor. I mean, this is not black comedy. It's just bad comedy.

Larry Mantle>> So the tonal disconnect is pretty big.

Jean Oppenheimer>> Yes, really bad. I really think that's the biggest problem. I also had problems with the Lindsey Lohan character in that she elicits no sympathy. She's self-centered, she's manipulative, she's an exhibitionist, she's destructive of everybody around her, but we are not shown the other side of her that presumably is more appealing to make us care about her. So consequently we don't.

Larry Mantle>> Next up is the comedy, "The Ex", starring Zach Braff and Amanda Peet.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "The Ex", Lael?

Lael Loewenstein>> Wow, another huge disappointment. Great cast including Zach Braff and Amanda Peet, Mia Farrow, Charles Grodin and you've got this really lame premise of Zach Braff as a new dad who moves his family off to Ohio from New York City so that he can work for his father-in-law where he finds himself very quickly the rival for his wife's affections with her ex-boyfriend played by Jason Bateman who's wheelchair-bound.

There's a lot of really bad humor at the expense of the Bateman character, really distasteful, and certainly if I was disabled, I would be very offended. As a film fan, I'm also very offended because it just wasn't funny. It was really poorly done, very flatfooted, a waste of tremendous amount of talent. Just really offensive overall.

Larry Mantle>> Our third film this week is the documentary, "The Hip Hop Project". It's directed by Mark Ruskin.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of the documentary, "The Hip Hop Project"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I think it's terrific. This documentary shines a light on a young man named Chris "Kazi" Rolle who really deserves all the attention and credit that I hope this film gives him. He was a young man. He was abandoned by his mother as a child. He grew up on the streets and then he decided to join a thing called Art Start which is a sort of educational, I don't know, support group in New York City that was founded by a man named Scott Rosenberg.

Kazi was very interested in music and he began to see how music could really, in a sense, offer an outlet for troubled kids as it had for him. He becomes a director of this and what we see is him with the kids who are all teenagers from the New York area. They're profiles of the kids who really tell very painful stories about having, you know, alcoholic parents or drug-addicted parents or that they were unwanted.

Kazi wants them to really rap about what is in their lives and, you know, to turn away from all the violence and gangs that a lot of the rap music is about. I also think that the film was just visually really beautiful, highly stylized, gritty, beautiful, just a very good film.

Larry Mantle>> Sounds terrific, Lael. Do you agree?

Lael Loewenstein>> Yeah, a really fine documentary and gorgeously presented. I mean, they alter the film stock in such a way that there's these very saturated colors and it's almost slightly kind of decelerated at times and accelerated at others. It's got a great look to it which really works, of course, with the material.

This story of this young man, Kazi, is very inspirational and the fact that he just takes such an interest in these young people that he's using art and music as a way to get them off the streets, to motivate and inspire them to make something of their lives in the tradition of a film like "Colors Straight Up" or another documentary like "Born Into Brothels". It shows how art and self-expression can help under-privileged people to make something of themselves.

Larry Mantle>> Good soundtrack as well?

Lael Loewenstein>> Yeah, really good. Really good documentary altogether.

Larry Mantle>> Finally this week, the family drama, "American Pastime". It tells the story of a Japanese American family who are interned during World War II.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "American Pastime", Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, this is a really heartfelt film and I think one of the pluses is the great dignity that the director and the writer and the actors bring to the story. I think, unfortunately, that it suffers from a somewhat clich�d story line in that you have an interracial romance and also even the very dignity that the Japanese American characters face their unjust imprisonment with. It's all true, so it saddles being inspirational and being clich�d.

The director/co-writer is a man named Desmond Nakano and I think he has a very interesting background in terms of the films that he has written. He did "Last Exit to Brooklyn" which is completely different from this kind of film. The acting was fine overall. I particularly thought that Masatoshi Nakamura was good as the father. So I think it's an appealing film. Not a great film, but a good film.

Larry Mantle>> That's it for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC for our critics, Lael Loewenstein of Variety and Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media. Please join us again next week for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> KPCC public radio broadcasts a longer version of FilmWeek on Fridays at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching.

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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