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Five SoCal Must-Reads: New California Writing & More

By Zach Behrens
December 13, 2011
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A big picture look at the region:

  • Water rates around the region are being increased. The San Bernardino Sun rounds up the increases around its namesake county, and L.A.'s proposed increase is on deck at the city council, says the L.A. Times.

  • Author Ben Ehrenreich shares perspective on the Occupy Los Angeles movement. One thought: "[Preserving order, regardless of how unjust and repugnant it may be, is] what [cops] did a century ago, a few blocks north of City Hall in La Plaza Olvera -- before Olvera Street became a flauta mecca for tourists, the plaza was L.A.'s first 'free speech zone' -- in the so-called Christmas Riot of 1913, in which the LAPD charged an IWW gathering, killing one protester and injuring many more." More at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

  • Bloggers, bloggers! They're all over the place! The New York Times's "Room for Debate" is asking the question, "are all bloggers journalists?" Kelli L. Sager, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, chimes in with The Problem With Pre-Internet Laws.

  • The Federal Transit Administration on Monday released a civil rights review of Metro, finding deficiencies in five of their 12 requirements. Coverage and analysis can be read at LA Streetsblog, L.A. Times and Metro's own blog, The Source.

  • The anthology, New California Writing: 2011, is now out and High Country News asks, "What, then, does a book focused on California offer to those who live outside the Golden State?" Luckily, we already live here and KCET regular DJ Waldie has the last piece in the book.

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Photo by Renee Rendler-Kaplan via KCET's Southern California Flickr pool.

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