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Life & Times Transcript

10/4/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

How scary is life in southern California? Look what it's doing to our kids.

Carrolle Simien>> They have symptoms of fearfulness and helplessness and horror because of traumas that they may have experienced in the community.

Val Zavala>> And then, corporations, corruption and Clooney. Our critics look at the three C's of "Michael Clayton".

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>> Post traumatic stress disorder. We usually associate it with troops coming back from war, but now researchers are finding it in a very different population: school children here in southern California. Many of them have witnessed accidents, domestic violence, even murders and now the question is how do we treat them? As Toni Guinyard tells us, PTSD is very different when it impacts children.

Toni Guinyard>> Throughout southern California neighborhoods, children and teenagers are being forced to deal with tragedies.

Davetta Campbell>> It's like violence, a fight or gunfire or shooting or something.

Toni Guinyard>> Mental health professionals say that what kids are witnessing in the streets or even at home is taking a toll, resulting in an increasing number of children being diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.

Carrolle Simien>> They have symptoms of fearfulness and helplessness and horror because of traumas that they may have experienced in the community. They can be real or actual.

Toni Guinyard>> Carrolle Simien began seeing young clients with symptoms associated with PTSD long before the mental health community acknowledged it as a diagnosis for children in 1980.

Carrolle Simien>> They may have difficulty just getting themselves to school during the day, getting up, getting dressed, getting out. They could have sleep disturbance and, with PTSD, you generally do have dreams or maybe flashbacks of traumatic events that were life-threatening or they witnessed something that was potentially life-threatening to themselves or others.

Toni Guinyard>> Simien works for the Kaiser Permanente Watts Counseling and Learning Center, a facility that has been serving the community forty years. Retired founder and director Wilfred "Bill" Coggins was there from the beginning in 1967 when the center was housed in a prefab building. The structure has been relocated once and transformed twice. It now sits on the corner of 103rd Street and Success where Coggins spearheaded the treatment of mental health issues in this community.

Wilfred "Bill" Coggins>> There's a lot of conflict. There's a lot of violence. There's a lot of threat of violence. And there are a lot of younger people who are disturbed like that in a violent way.

Toni Guinyard>> Life and Times got a glimpse of the violence some children see when we interviewed then fourteen year old Franklin Arburtha in 2005. He witnessed the murder of a neighbor on Skid Row.

Franklin Arburtha>> He just started stabbing and stabbing her. Everyone just circled around her like it was a movie or something. No one tried to help.

Toni Guinyard>> He was inspired to make a documentary.

Wilfred "Bill" Coggins>> I think that we have to develop more sensitivity about what kids deal with and have to face every day.

Carrolle Simien>> We need adults to know that, you know, children aren't little adults. They are indeed children. They need direction.

Wilfred "Bill" Coggins>> I think that mental health issues within the school system as well as mental health issues within the community, of course, are often minimized or perhaps not even recognized.

Toni Guinyard>> The impact of trauma on students is finally being recognized, but it's happening slowly. Los Angeles Unified School District crisis counseling and intervention services field coordinator, Pia Escudero.

Pia Escudero>> In Los Angeles in certain areas, we have found that about thirty percent, one out of three, have symptoms of PTSD.

Toni Guinyard>> In 1997, the LAUSD began collaborating with the RAND Corporation and the UCLA Health Services Research Center. They developed an intervention program initially designed for ten to fifteen year olds called CBITS, an acronym for Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools. CBITS is evidence based, meaning it has been shown through scientific studies to produce consistently positive results.

Pia Escudero>> Many of our students that have PTSD or have symptoms that interfere with their learning are really flying under the radar. They're hidden in plain sight in our classrooms.

Toni Guinyard>> The school district wants to take a public health approach by first getting parental permission to screen every student, identify those impacted by traumatic events, and provide them treatment in a series of ten group sessions.

Pia Escudero>> They had seen people being shot at, they had lost loved ones, so our research partners helped us to start asking questions about how many students have had violent events and also about their symptomology. What are their symptoms? Are they sleeping well at night? Are they able to concentrate?

Toni Guinyard>> Over thirty thousand surveys were distributed to middle school students, kids who are only eleven years old and in the sixth grade. Of those who responded, ninety percent said that they've been exposed to some form of community violence. Just being exposed to community violence does not lead to an immediate diagnosis of PTSD. Students are screened using a seventeen question assessment.

Pia Escudero>> We ask students, "Have you been in a serious accident where you could have been badly hurt or could have been killed"? "Has anybody told you they were going to hurt you?" "Have you seen someone else being told they were going to be hurt?"

Toni Guinyard>> The screening takes about twenty minutes.

Pia Escudero>> Based on the yes and no answers, we can tell you whether a student has had an experience that is a traumatic event or something that could be something that we need to explore further.

Carrolle Simien>> They tend to bring out fearful interactions with peers, fearful interactions in the community, not having an adult that they can take their issues to.

Toni Guinyard>> You're worried about them.

Carrolle Simien>> Yes, yes, but I think there is hope.

Toni Guinyard>> A few blocks away, we found signs of hope. That's where we met a young woman with her mother.

Patsy Cole>> The violence, the gangs I knew she was afraid of, but I've always taught her to be encouraged no matter what she sees.

Davetta Campbell>> I focus on school. It's just like an educational life-changing decision for me. So I have to make that choice. Either deal with what's going around in my environment or drop out and, you know, become what my environment associates and peers do.

Patsy Cole>> I mean, she's been through a lot. Peer pressure, I mean, just depressed. I mean, she's been through the whole nine yards.

Davetta Campbell>> It was tough. It was tough, but I did it. I graduated with a 3.5, so I did it. I came out of there pretty good (laughter).

Toni Guinyard>> Now the goal is to ensure even the smallest of students have a fighting shot at success no matter what they may be exposed to. Vikki Franklin is the preschool manager at the Watts Counseling and Learning Center.

Vikki Franklin>> I'm a living example. I lived here. I grew up here. I walked these streets. I'm back giving to the community after receiving my Masters degree to come back and give to them, you know, what someone gave to me. I want these children to know that there is hope. Because they're in this community, because they see violence and abuse in the community, doesn't mean that this is the way their life is going to be.

Toni Guinyard>> Just by virtue of growing up in an urban community and perhaps one day witnessing a traumatic event doesn't mean they'll ever show symptoms of PTSD, but researchers know that it's possible and they're continuing work to find ways of helping students help themselves deal with life in the city. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> So what do you think of PTSD in children? You can post your comments on our blog. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog.

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 could easily win the prize for the most corrupt politician in modern times in the Los Angeles area, but chances are that you've never heard of him. He's Albert Robles and the good news is that he's doing time behind bars, but not before gaining almost complete control of a small town and robbing it of millions. How did he do it? His story is fascinating.

From 1997 to 2000, Albert Robles was Treasurer of Southgate, a small town that straddles the 710 Freeway. Over those years, Robles managed to drain the city coffer of millions, smear the reputations of upstanding citizens and import a brand of sleazy politics that works in Mexico and worked for a while in Southgate. No one knows the wild story better than writer and reporter Sam Quinones. First of all, what's Southgate like?

Sam Quinones>> It's a working class town, about a hundred thousand people. It was a white suburb for many years and then, in the 1980s, became essentially Latino.

Val Zavala>> Tell us about Albert Robles.

Sam Quinones>> He was a son of a Mexican immigrant. He became City Treasurer, but really what he learned to do in Southgate was use Mexican political tactics and strategies to control the Mexican immigrant population politically in Southgate.

Val Zavala>> At first, this UCLA graduate was seen as a bright and up and coming City Councilman, but Robles proved to be incapable of compromise. And when he didn't get his way on the City Council, he ran for Treasurer and started taking revenge.

Sam Quinones>> He controlled the City Council. He had three allies who would do pretty much his bidding. With that, he attempted to kind of transform and take full control of city government, drain city resources, drain city budgets, which he did, and all for his own benefit.

Val Zavala>> Flyers started appearing in voters' mailboxes, always aimed at Robles' enemies. This one shows a fake drunk driving ticket and claims a candidate was an alcoholic. This one says a candidate fathered a baby girl, then abandoned her for a Norwegian bombshell, all lies.

Sam Quinones>> The most notorious really is that he accused one man of being a child molester and said that he had been arrested for child molestation at a birthday party in his pool. Utterly untrue. That man really had to leave town. It was an outrageous thing and still years later --

Val Zavala>> -- the man who was accused of child molestation had to leave town?

Sam Quinones>> Right, because --

Val Zavala>> -- He didn't sue him for slander or something?

Sam Quinones>> Well, they couldn't really quite prove that it was him. On the other hand, I think there's really no doubt in the minds of everybody that there was one guy doing this.

Val Zavala>> With his own people on the City Council, Robles started manipulating the city budget, inflating his salary, hiring staff he didn't need, using city money for Tony Robbins seminars and buying property in Mexico and, of course, buying people off.

Sam Quinones>> He would also give away real police badges. He had a big fight with the police. He gave away real police badges to secretaries, to other lawyers and so on. I mean, it was a brazen display of corruption, the kind of which you haven't seen in this era since probably like the 1930s.

Val Zavala>> Over time, Robles became more profane and threatening. He called fellow politicians a pig and a rabid dog. He threatened to have some of them shot. Insiders realized that Robles was a corrupt, out of control bully, but Robles was able to manipulate the average voter, positioning himself as a friend to Mexican Americans and luring them in.

Sam Quinones>> One of the things he began to do also was to give away stuff at election time. He started with a hot dog and a soda at the 7-11. That was one of his first times. He gave away plants the next time.

The time that I met him, he was in this parking lot over here. He had an enormous toy giveaway at Christmas. He was giving away three or four thousand toys at a time, had clowns, had hot dogs. Where all the money for this was coming from, no one really knew. But he understood that, in this area, there was a huge number of new immigrant voters.

Val Zavala>> That's what I was going to ask. Didn't the people get wise to this after a while?

Sam Quinones>> After a while, they did. That's why he's no longer in power. But for a long time, they simply responded as they would have in Mexico and voted against the guy who they thought certainly must be a child molester because it said so on a piece of paper or in favor of the guy who would give them toys and so on because that's kind of what the party that ruled Mexico for seventy-one years had done repeatedly, associated election with gift-giving.

Val Zavala>> He even went so far as to raffle off a house.

Sam Quinones>> He was a guy who understood that Mexican immigrants were kind of -- even though they're economically here and working and integrated, politically they were neophytes. They were novices.

Val Zavala>> Then finally in 2003, a coalition of seniors, police officers, business people and Mexican immigrants launched a recall campaign. Robles and his allies were ousted. The votes were eight to one against them.

Sam Quinones>> He's now serving ten years in federal prison for corruption.

Val Zavala>> Did he actually go on trial or did he plea bargain?

Sam Quinones>> No, no. He had a long trial in which they brought out all kinds of new things that had not really come out before, the amount of money he used from city coffers to pay kind of kickbacks, the amount of money that he spent on lawyers. He kicked ten million dollars or something like that over to local attorneys.

This is a city that, before that, had never had more than like a million dollar legal bill. In two years, they ran up a ten million dollar legal bill, a lot of which was to pay for his own defense in various things and to kind of get lawyers on his side and pay them off for certain things. One law firm in Los Angeles in particular has had to give a chunk of that money back to the city.

Val Zavala>> What law firm is that?

Sam Quinones>> Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton.

Val Zavala>> Really? That's a well-known law firm.

Sam Quinones>> Right, of course.

Val Zavala>> Given current migration patterns, Quinones says that sagas like the Southgate story may be repeated in other towns.

Sam Quinones>> The reason is, Mexican immigrants have kind of spread to small towns like Southgate. Again, they are economically very integrated in this country, but politically they're still neophytes very often and they're going to places that have never had a large group.

Most immigrants in the history of our country have gone to the big cities, Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco. Mexican immigrants are unique in that they're in large, large numbers going to small towns in the south and in the mid-west, California.

Val Zavala>> And those small towns are vulnerable to these kinds of characters.

Sam Quinones>> And also the folks who move to them --

Val Zavala>> -- are vulnerable to manipulation.

Sam Quinones>> They're not interested in politics. They just want to work. On the other hand, the problem is that Southgate showed that you can't not be interested in politics. You have to or you're going to get taken.

Val Zavala>> You're going to get taken big time.

Sam Quinones>> And that's exactly what happened here in Southgate.

Val Zavala>> What's Southgate like now? What do you think its future is?

Sam Quinones>> Southgate is wonderfully boring (laughter). It's a town that has come back from bankruptcy. It's a working class town. He took it to the verge of bankruptcy. No way it should be bankrupt. There's a lot of car dealerships, a very nice mall. It generates a lot of income, but he drained it.

So Southgate has really gotten back to the issues that any city should be dealing with which is, you know, potholes, issues at the time, development, all that kind of stuff, and less with loopy mailers and attacks on character that no politician, particularly no small town politician, should have to deal with.

It's become a rather boring town. Much to the credit of the current City Council, they've come back from bankruptcy and are now heading away from the precipice that Albert Robles took them to.

Val Zavala>> Well, it's a lesson learned, but a very important one.

Sam Quinones>> Absolutely, for the entire country really.

Val Zavala>> Sam Quinones, thank you so much for documenting that really fascinating story.

Sam Quinones>> My pleasure. Thank you.

Val Zavala>> The full story of Albert Robles can be found in the book, "Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration" by Sam Quinones.

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.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film features George Clooney as he stars as an attorney, Michael Clayton, who tries to fix the messes that his clients leave for him. He has a crisis of conscience along the way. "Michael Clayton" is written and directed by Tony Gilroy who did the scripts for the "Bourne" films.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com and Claudia Puig of USA Today. Claudia, what did you think of "Michael Clayton"?

Claudia Puig>> I thought it was powerful and unsettling. I thought it was a real adult thriller. It begins in a very unnerving way in which you hear this rambling stream of consciousness monolog and the visuals aren't quite matching and you're sort of set off kilter and it continues in that vein. It is a thriller, but it is less a thriller than I think more of sort of a multi-dimensional character examination.

George Clooney is excellent. There are three really, really good performances. Tilda Swinton who's always good, Tom Wilkinson who's always good, and George Clooney, arguably doing the best work of their careers, I believe. I won't try to give away too much of the plot because it does twist and turn a lot. But I found it very intelligent. It kind of harked back to the 1970s films like "Network" or "All the President's Men".

Larry Mantle>> Wow, high praise. What did you think, Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, I thought the problem with it being a character study is that Clooney was playing a type, the street-wise fixer who's working at a white shoe law firm, you know, and how they use him and how he fits in or doesn't fit in.

I think also when you're watching this film, it gives you an appreciation for the fine work, I mean, detailed work that you have to do on, say, the Grisham thrillers to make them work and how you need a top-notch director. You need that complex plot which you didn't get here.

You know, Tony Gilroy, the director, is a veteran screenwriter. He wrote the "Bourne" films, but this is his first directorial assignment and he really shoots it like television. It really looks like a television movie and perhaps that's where it should have gone, right to television.

Larry Mantle>> The latest comedy from director and writer Wes Anderson is "The Darjeeling Limited". The film is shot in India and stars Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. Schwartzman co-wrote the screenplay.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Henry, what did you think of "The Darjeeling Limited"?

Henry Sheehan>> I saw very little of it. I thought this Wes Anderson's new film is just terrible. It's about three brothers on a train trip through India trying to re-bond with each other and find out something about the important parts of life and things like that.

You know, the expression "Life is a train", is an expression. You know, you're not supposed to literalize an expression or a metaphor. As soon as you do that, you're in big trouble and that's what this movie is, in big trouble, because it just says that life is a train.

The three performances are very weak, especially Owen Wilson I thought was very bad here. Adrien Brody was probably okay. There's a little tone of sexual imperialism in that an Indian character, a woman, just falls crazily, sexually head over heels with one of the white guys for no apparent reason.

Larry Mantle>> Claudia?

Claudia Puig>> (Laughter) I didn't think she fell that crazily. I think she just kind of enjoyed the train ride and there she was and there he was. I didn't look at it that way. But I liked it more than Henry did. I was really sort of entranced with the setting in India. The colors were very vibrant. The look of the film was in many ways better than some of the writing, I'll agree.

I did like Adrien Brody. His soulful face was sort of appropriate to the spiritual journey that they were taking. It's not up to the standards of "Rushmore" or Wes Anderson's first film, "Bottle Rocket". It is better than "Life Aquatic" which I think was the Nader of his career.

Henry Sheehan>> (Laughter) Some measurements.

Claudia Puig>> However, I liked it more. I found the whole setting intriguing and there were some kind of quirky, offbeat lines. His humor is very eccentric and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I didn't mind it nearly as much as you did (laughter).

Larry Mantle>> The latest film from the highly prolific and very diverse director, Ang Lee, is "Lust, Caution". It's gotten a lot of attention for its NC-17 rating. The film stars Tony Leung and Tang Wei as a pair of lovers who are on missions in World War II Shanghai.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Lust, Caution", Ang Lee's latest. What did you think, Claudia?

Claudia Puig>> Well, Ang Lee is one of my all-time favorite directors. I think he is probably one of the most brilliant directors working now and he is also a director whose work is so incredibly varied, probably more so than any living director. Having said that, this is not my favorite of his works.

I think that it was beautifully mounted. I think it evoked the era powerfully. I think the performances ultimately left me feeling a little -- there was something lacking. I didn't feel a sense of emotion. Even though there are some very explicit sex scenes, I didn't get a sense of the passion.

Tony Leung is an official in the Japanese public government set in Shanghai. A young actress played by Tang Wei in her first role sort of sets out to play his mistress essentially to convince him, but she's playing a role. She comes alive when she's on stage and we get that sense and she's lacking some passion in her life.

So by taking on this very dangerous role as his mistress, she's probably more alive than she's ever been. However, I don't feel that a lot of this is communicated. It was in the book. It's a wonderfully written book by Eileen Chang. But I just felt that ultimately I felt unengaged. I didn't feel like it really was as moving as I wanted it to be.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> I thought it was a very cold film and I think that's its primary failure. It's almost like one of these old William Wyler movies in which, you know, every move is detailed, but somehow there's no commitment to the characters. There's no commitment to the emotion. Everything seems to be going on behind a piece of glass.

You know, you just can't quite reach what's going on. It's too meticulous. It's finicky. It's fussy. I think that's the main problem with the movie. Also, the plot is quite contrived and the only way to get beyond that is by heating it up, is by being emotional. So the first fault leads to the second fault and I really have to say that this is a very disappointing movie.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Claudia Puig of USA Today and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Please join us again next week at this same time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> For a longer version of FilmWeek, tune in to NPR station KPCC Fridays at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow.

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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