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Life & Times Transcript
11/21/07 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 a city with a sparkling reputation, but what happens when you dig a little deeper? Christopher Vicino>> Suspects are running in packs, sometimes robbing single males on the street, sometimes just attacking them. Some of the motives have been race and, as I have said earlier, we are prosecuting those cases as hate crimes. Val Zavala>> And then, more than times are achangin' in a new film about Bob Dylan, and it's a case of cold feet. Will our critics warm up to "Margo at the Wedding"? 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>> Pasadena seems to have it all. Great museums, colleges, architecture and, of course, a vibrant downtown. But it also has something that many of us can't see -- growing tensions between two minority groups, blacks and browns, and that tension has surfaced in a series of attacks on Latino men. So what's behind these attacks and how is the city responding? Sam Louie went to Pasadena to find out. Sam Louie>> It's the site of the annual Tournament of Roses Parade full of pageantry, elegance and stars, a showcase for the quintessential southern California city, Pasadena. But there's another less rosy view of this affluent city of a hundred forty-five thousand and its popular revitalized downtown. Over the past couple of years, tensions have been growing between black and brown and it's documented in a series of crimes targeting Latino men, many of them immigrants. Christopher Vicino>> In 2005 and 2006, we noticed a trend of suspects attacking single males in the evening hours. Sam Louie>> Deputy Chief Christopher Vicino says that there have been seventy-five cases of young African Americans targeting Latino men. Christopher Vicino>> These suspects were young adults running in packs, sometimes three or four, sometimes as many as a dozen, sometimes robbing single males on the street, sometimes just attacking them. Sam Louie>> While no one has been killed in these attacks, police say that they have led to some serious injuries and hospitalizations. Some of these attacks are being prosecuted as hate crimes. Christopher Vicino>> These attacks have been termed "sock on Mexicans". The Pasadena Police Department does not use that term. We have found that that term is demeaning to the victims in these cases and we prefer not to use it. We've termed these as youth street attacks. Randy Ertll>> I think they're easy prey. A lot of times, they're just trying to make a living and then they get out of work. A lot of times, they get paid in cash and a lot of times the gang members know that, so they take advantage of them. They beat them and rob them. Sam Louie>> The root cause of the attacks is a shift in Pasadena demographics. Over the last twenty years, statistics from the United States Census Bureau show that the influx of Hispanics here in Pasadena has nearly doubled to thirty-three percent. Meanwhile, the African American population has dwindled to fifteen percent and some believe this disparity is causing a racial rift in this city. Randy Ertll>> Some people do feel that, because of the shift in demographics, the growth of the Latino community, it is perceived as a threat. There's a backlash like an anti-immigrant backlash. Sam Louie>> Randy Ertll is the Executive Director of El Centro de Accion Social, or Center for Social Action. It's a nonprofit agency dedicated to promoting cultural understanding in Pasadena. Randy Ertll>> When anything happens, when there are crimes or injustices, yeah, we do have to denounce them. We have to speak up. Because if we don't speak up against them, then we're complacent and, in a way, accomplices too to hatred, so we can't stay mute. Sam Louie>> Ertll believes that there's been many more victims, but the attacks go largely unreported. Randy Ertll>> I think that the victims stay quiet because they feel raped, like physically and emotionally. Sam Louie>> So what's being done about these troubling revelations? First, El Centro is speaking out, refusing to stay quiet. Second, it's looking for ways to ease black-brown relations. It has partnered with the city and the NAACP to think of ways to reach Latino and African American youth. Randy Ertll>> We decided to come together to denounce that kind of hate crimes for mainly the community. That’s the point that we really wanted to get across to our young kids or young adults, that no hate crimes are tolerated. Sam Louie>> It's a message they'll have to convey in the midst of change. With more Latino families moving in, African Americans are feeling the competition tightening for entry level jobs. Joe Brown>> It's caused a lot of friction. It's causing a lot of friction because African Americans, because their ancestors or their families grew up here, they don't feel there is a place for them any longer here in this city. Sam Louie>> Joe Brown is the President of the Pasadena branch of the NAACP. He's also a long-time thirty-year resident of Pasadena. Joe Brown>> The war that we see here in this community is war on economics. Many of our African Americans and Latinos are involved in the lower rung of the employment opportunities here in this city. Unfortunately, most of the African Americans are having to move out to places like Rialto, San Bernardino County. Sam Louie>> To combat this war on economics, Brown urges the young to stay in school and get a good education. Joe Brown>> Gangs are not the answer whether it's in this city or any other city. The answer to the plight that is in many of the communities all over the country is educating yourselves, by getting to move into some entrepreneurship that does not involve selling crack and cocaine on the street corners. Sam Louie>> Brown also challenges business leaders to take a more active role in programs for minority youth. Joe Brown>> We need to have many of our entrepreneurs who are already in this city to begin to step up and give some of these young people an opportunity, to train them, to mentor them, on what it will take to be successful in that arena. Sam Louie>> Education and vocational training are long-term goals. Joe Brown says that there's a more immediate need for the two groups to get to know each other better and that's what's happening here at the Villa Parke Community Center in northwest Pasadena. It's a gym where African Americans and Latinos of all ages have a place to work out, lift weights and train for boxing. Fausto De La Torre>> We all care for one another. We all cheer each other on. We all embrace each other. We make family-oriented programs so that everybody feels safe and wants to come here and enjoy themselves. Sam Louie>> Fausto De La Torre is the boxing instructor. He grew up in northwest Pasadena and is deeply concerned about the rash of racial attacks in his old neighborhood. Fausto De La Torre>> It saddens me to hear that because, if you look around, we have a lot of immigrants here that come. Sam Louie>> Fausto credits the family spirit here for building bridges between black and brown. Fausto De La Torre>> We open the doors to let people know that we can come together. We can put these gloves on. We can have a sparring session, but we still embrace and still love each other. Joe Brown>> These are just facts of life. One ethnic group is coming in that's more dominant than the other. We need to learn how to communicate with each other. Sam Louie>> As for the attacks on Latino immigrants, police have cracked down. They've made twenty-three arrests and, so far this year, the number of attacks on Latino men by blacks has been cut in half. But law enforcement is just one part of the solution. Community leaders know that solving the deeper problem will take even more time and effort. Randy Ertll>> There are social issues like in certain areas of Pasadena, especially the northwest, that need to be addressed, you know, like in terms of poverty, crime, gangs. That's sort of like the invisible part. It's there, it's a reality, and we can't deny it. Sam Louie>> I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> So what do you think of racial tensions in Pasadena? 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>> Corporations are not people. That's the myth that economist and writer, Robert Reich, would like all Americans to understand. And if corporations are not human beings, then we certainly can't expect them to be kind, generous and ethical. And, he says, corporations certainly do not have a conscience. That's a key point in his new book, "Supercapitalism". Reich is a well-known NPR commentator, former Secretary of Labor, and now a professor at Berkeley. He spoke recently at Town Hall Los Angeles where I talked with him about this new era that he calls supercapitalism. It seems obvious that we live in a supercapitalistic world, but you mean something rather specific, right? You mean a certain brand of capitalism? Robert Reich>> I mean, Val, a sort of capitalism that we've never seen before that is turbocharged and global, where competition between firms is intense and where we as consumers and investors really have never had as much choice and as much value. We're very powerful as consumers and investors. The problem is, as citizens, we are less powerful than we used to be. Val Zavala>> Do the two exclude each other? Robert Reich>> Well, they didn't use to. I mean, during the not quite golden age between 1945 and 1975 when almost everybody's incomes went up together as the economy grew, we talked about democratic capitalism, with a small "d". We assumed that capitalism and democracy were hand in glove and they couldn't have one without the other. We sold the world basically on the notion that our brand of democratic capitalism was the alternative to soviet communism. "Follow us", we said. Well, we assumed that, if we spread capitalism around the world, democracy would follow. But if you look at China today, you see that it's possible to have a hot bed of capitalism without democracy at all. Even here in the United States, arguably, we have less democracy than we used to have. Val Zavala>> But right now, there is in our society a kind of attitude that corporations are evil, that the bad guys are the ones that, you know, are causing pollution, child labor and so forth. We have to slap them on the wrist and make them behave. Is that the answer? Robert Reich>> No. In fact, I wrote this book in part to disabuse ourselves of that kind of simplistic thinking. Corporations are doing what they're doing because we as consumers and investors are demanding better and better deals. And because of globalization and technology, the internet, for example, we have the power as consumers and investors to get better and better deals. Companies have to give us good deals or they will not survive, so they are outsourcing and pushing wages down and using child labor abroad or they are polluting the atmosphere. They will do everything they can to get us and keep us unless there are laws preventing them that say, no, that's not going to be allowed. Val Zavala>> But don't you think that, you know, corporations like Wal-Mart should just out of sort a moral responsibility provide health care or not use child labor? Can't we expect that of corporations to have a conscience? Robert Reich>> That's the problem, Val. Corporations are not people and we assume that, when we talk about corporate social responsibility, corporations are moral creatures. They aren't. In fact, corporations don't have minds. Corporations are just pieces of paper. They're contracts. Everybody working for the corporation, including chief executives and everybody else, are trying to get and keep consumers and investors in a highly competitive atmosphere. We can't blame corporations because we can't blame pieces of paper, just as we can't criminalize them and we should not even try. We should not give them political rights in the democratic process because, again, they're pieces of paper. The idea that companies are people has caused so much misunderstanding. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote the book is to make sure we understand that, if we just push companies to be socially responsible or try to, we're going to get nowhere. What we have to do is work on making the political process responsive to us. Get democracy to work for us. Get money out of democracy. Put a wall up between supercapitalism and democracy. Val Zavala>> Some people are going to be very surprised to hear you, in a sense, let corporations off the hook and not hold them to a high moral standard. You believe they should behave better, but your prescription for getting them to behave better is what? Robert Reich>> Well, I draw a distinction between the capitalist game in which every corporation and every executive and everybody in the corporation is trying to attract and keep customers and investors on the one hand, and the rules of the game on the other hand. Now if we are talking about changing the rules, that is, a higher minimum wage or companies have to provide health care or companies cannot use child labor abroad, well, that's the political process. That's how we address those requirements. In every one of us, there is a consumer and investor trying to get the best deal. There's also a citizen inside of us and there is some tension between the consumer in us and the citizen in us. We want the best deal as consumers. The citizen in us says, well, wait a minute. We don't like the social consequences of some of those great deals. The place we address that conflict is called democracy. Val Zavala>> So you're saying, if we are going to improve the world whether it be environmentally, economically, inequality is getting worse and worse, that the place to do that is not to hammer on the CEO's door, but to go to Washington. Is that what you're saying? Robert Reich>> Well, I'm saying that hammering on the CEO's door is not going to have any effect at all. Even if somehow Wal-Mart was shamed into providing higher wages and better health care for employees, for example, resulting in prices being higher, well, consumers then would go to a Wal-Mart competitor that did not provide the high wages and -- Val Zavala>> -- because there's always going to be someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to offer the lower prices? Robert Reich>> Exactly. In a super-competitive, supercapitalist world, there is always going to be some rival in the market that's willing to undercut somebody else. Val Zavala>> Well, how about these good corporations? You know, the ones that have the wonderful -- the Ben & Jerry's and the ones that have the great reputations for doing well and doing good? They've proven that they can do both, right? Robert Reich>> Mostly public relations. For example, take Ben & Jerry's. I think Ben & Jerry's is a nice company. They don't advertise the fact that they are providing the richest premium ice cream that is clogging our arteries and probably the least healthy thing that we can possibly eat (laughter). Or take Starbucks. They claim to be doing wonderful things for the rainforests and for their employees. Val Zavala>> Right. Fair trade coffee or -- Robert Reich>> -- they don't advertise the fact that actually they've had some serious labor problems. The National Labor Relations Board is not at all happy with Starbucks. I'm not blaming these companies. In fact, this is not about blaming companies at all. Quite the opposite. It's about not believing the public relations, not believing that companies have souls and are moral, understanding that companies will do whatever they can to improve the bottom line. And the only thing to stop them is laws and regulations that we as citizens impose. Val Zavala>> Robert Reich, thank you so much. Wonderful ideas and let's hope we take them to heart. Robert Reich>> Thank you, Val. Val Zavala>> Robert Reich was a guest of Writers Bloc and Town Hall Los Angeles. If you'd like more information on future events, you can go to 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. Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. We're here a night earlier than usual so you can enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow. Tonight our first film is "August Rush" directed by Kirsten Sheridan, starring Jonathon Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell and Freddie Highmore. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com, and we are very glad to welcome for the first time Wade Major of boxoffice.com and of CityBeat. We begin with "August Rush", Henry. Henry Sheehan>> "August Rush" is about a passive-aggressive, disingenuous twelve year old, although we're supposed to think he's cute as heck, who is a musical prodigy living in an orphanage. More than a prodigy, he has magical skills. With his teeny tiny little hands and no musical training whatsoever, he can play any instrument imaginable and he's going to use the music he plays to find his parents, but neither of whom knows he's even alive. They're played by Keri Russell and Jonathon Rhys Meyers. While Keri Russell acts with her hair, the two of them also act with their lips. You can tell how distraught or moved they are by how close their open lips are to each other. You can use calipers to gauge the emotional temperature of this movie. Larry Mantle>> Wade? Wade Major>> I'm inclined to agree. I think one musicalized version of "Oliver" is enough, and this is certainly not a good one. Freddie Highmore is very Oliver Twist-like as he falls in with this group of urban urchins run by Robin Williams as this very weird post-modern Fagan who has all kinds of strange ideas about music and its coalescence with the universe. The film was directed by Kirsten Sheridan, daughter of Jim Sheridan, and she really doesn't exhibit her father's chops here. She co-wrote "In America" which got an Oscar nomination, but here she seems kind of lost in a lot of ethereal ideas about music and what it means to be a prodigy. You know, if people want to see a great movie about a prodigy, there was the Swiss film "Vitus" which was released earlier this year that starred a real prodigy as a prodigy. That film got it right. This film, he seems almost more like some kind of new age autistic child than a prodigy. Larry Mantle>> An all-star cast heads "I'm Not There", a look at the life of composer-singer Bob Dylan. Todd Haynes is the director. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Henry Sheehan, what did you think of "I'm Not There"? Henry Sheehan>> Well, I was very mixed on it. I don't have any strong feelings about Bob Dylan one way or another and, in this movie, Todd Haynes uses I believe it's six actors including Cate Blanchett to play Dylan at different stages in his life. It's actually not as far-fetched an idea as you might think because he's trying to investigate personas and to see how Dylan used these personas to present himself, to hide himself, or maybe even to fool himself. You know, this is a great concept. It's on the execution where I think the film stumbles. It seems that Haynes fell in love with certain parts of the movie more than others, especially the Cate Blanchett series which follows Dylan in his visit to England in the 1960s. Blanchett gives a very actorish, showy performance. It's fairly irritating. But Heath Ledger and some of the others do a very good job. Larry Mantle>> Wade? Wade Major>> I think I liked it a little bit less than Henry. I kind of find it to be a magnificent mess, in a way. It's extremely well-crafted, but not very enjoyable to watch. You feel sort of like you're being tormented by the craft at times. It's a gimmick. It's a little bit of a parlor trick to have all these different actors playing facsimiles of Dylan, but it never really convinces you that he's got a handle on Dylan. You come away sort of feeling like Dylan is just as cryptic as ever, but I've watched somebody give me their impression of it. Todd Haynes, I think, identifies with Dylan on some level. He's kind of that illusive outsider in Hollywood that Dylan was in the music industry. You can't really peg him down. You can't really pin him. What kind of films does he do? But I don't feel that he really synthesizes with Dylan. He seems to want to find out more about himself and I think he's left with more questions than answers. Larry Mantle>> Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale" was a favorite of critics as well as art house audiences. He's followed it up with "Margo at the Wedding". It's another family drama starring Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Wade, what did you think of "Margo at the Wedding"? Wade Major>> Well, I didn't think much of it, but I also didn't think much of "The Squid and the Whale" which was Noah Baumbach's Oscar-nominated previous film. The problem that I have with this film is the same that I had with "The Squid and the Whale", which is that he writes characters who say everything that they think and the things that they think aren't very palatable things. You wind up with this universe populated by very dislikable characters who really never hold back and they don't resemble real people in any way whatsoever. They're in your face in a way that I find to be very disingenuous as well as dislikable. That being said, if you are a Noah Baumbach fan, if you did like "The Squid and the Whale", you may find this enjoyable. You may like what Nicole Kidman does here. It's certainly different from what she's done in her last several films, particularly the very misguided fur. So I would say that it's a mixed bag. Larry Mantle>> Henry? Henry Sheehan>> Yeah, I don't think it's very mixed. I think it's just bad. Baumbach has this Manichean view of the people in his life because this is very clearly a semi-autobiographical film just like "The Squid and the Whale". There, he pilloried his father. Here, his mother comes in for a beating. That's Nicole Kidman. I didn't like her performance at all, but I don't think it was her fault because she wasn't really playing a character. She was playing a stereotype of the bad mom and also the kind of uptight sister, you know. Jennifer Jason Leigh is playing like the natural woman. I think Jennifer Jason Leigh actually comes off well because she always come off well. Jennifer Jason Leigh, I think, is a real movie actress. You can't really tell that she's acting. She just kind of saunters onto the screen and there she is. But that was all her because Baumbach here gets a boring performance out of Jack Black, which I think takes a particular kind of bad talent. Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Wade Major of boxoffice.com and CityBeat, and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Please join us again next week, Thursday night, for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times. Val Zavala>> For a longer version of FilmWeek, tune in to KPCC public radio Friday at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. 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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