Family affair in runoff election - Broadcast Interactive Media

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A6 Thursday, May 12, 2011 Inglewood/Hawthorne/Gardena/Lawndale Wave • Southwest Wave/Southwest Topics/Angeles Mesa & Tribune • Central News/Southside Journal/Compton/Carson/Wilmington Wave GUEST EDITORIAL To compete on a global scale, our kids require year-round education BY LZ GRANDERSON As a nation, either our kids are getting dumber or everyone else’s are getting smarter. American 15year-olds ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math in a study of students in 34 nations and nonnational regions. The Program for International Student Assessment study, coordinated every three years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, definitively shows U.S. students are no longer ready to compete against the world’s brightest. Which brings me to this: Why are we still giving them the summer off? As it stands, only eight of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries that took part in the study in 2009 have a lower high school graduation rate than we do. It’s so bad in some schools, educators have a nickname for them: dropout factories. That’s a national crisis with a potential for significant economic impact. The organization estimates that by boosting our scores for reading, math and science by 25 points over the next 20 years, the United States would gain $41 trillion over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010. As cash-strapped as we are, can we really afford to leave that kind of money on the table? Instead of year-round school as curiosity, I think it’s time it becomes a government-enforced standard. Remember recently when the nation got all in a tizzy after the International Monetary Fund reported China would pass us as the world’s largest economy in 2016? Well, considering Shanghai ranked No. 1 in the education report, that shouldn’t really surprise anyone. To make matters worse, our kids have no idea just how far behind they really are. When the results of the test were released in the winter, Arne Duncan, U.S. Department of Education secretary, pointed out that despite not being in the top of any of the subjects tested, “U.S. students express more self-confidence in their academic skills than students in virtually all OECD nations. This stunning finding may be explained because students here are being commended for work that would not be acceptable in high-performing education systems.” It’s as if the United States were cast in one of those clich Hollywood movies as the 29-year-old dumb and balding jock who still wears his high school varsity jacket. Cutting into summer vacation won’t solve all our education problems — most research points toward the quality of the teacher as the biggest influencer — but more class time could help. At 180 days, we have one of the shortest school years of the countries tested. South Korea, for example, has 220 school days, and a No. 2 ranking in math. Finland is first in math and science at 190 days. Then there’s this: Harris Cooper, a summer-learning expert at Duke University, pored over a century’s worth of data and found that each summer, our kids lose about a month of progress in math and that low-income students lose as much as three months’ worth of reading comprehension. Again, that’s each summer. More than a month of teaching time at the beginning of the school year is spent re-teaching the stuff our kids forgot over the break. This may be one of the reasons why the report suggests Finnish 15-year-olds are one to two years ahead of our kids in math and science. Now I hear the cry from some who say “Let our kids be kids,” but what does that mean today? The reason for summer vacations in the first place was that little Johnny was needed in the fields to help the family during growing season. Today more people live in cities than they do in rural areas, and that farming structure has been obsolete for some time. If our kids aren’t working on the farm all summer long, what are they doing? Wa t c h i n g T V ? Playing video games? Getting into trouble? Heck, a lot of our kids’ summers and holiday breaks are already structured around Amateur Athletic Union practices and tournaments. Why is it so wrong to suggest structuring the summer around more education, especially when the amount students receive is no longer enough to keep them competitive on the world stage? In July 2008, then-Sen. Obama suggested American children should learn a second language. That was met with a great deal of criticism, as if being bilingual and more educated was somehow un-American. You want to know what’s un-American? Not being innovative. Refusing to think outside the box. We used to be a nation of entrepreneurs and trailblazers, but now we’re just dogmatic consumers. We want problems to be fixed but we don’t want the solution to be an inconvenience. So we look for silver bullets, which in our culture usually means tossing more money at things. But guess what? We spend on average about $30,000 more per student than the other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, yet the best we can do is middle of the road. Since when did chanting “We’re No. 25!” become acceptable? Today, if you want to keep your child in a learning environment during the summer, you most likely have to pony up hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to enroll them in a program or two. Families who can’t afford to do that depend on scholarships or programs funded by government grants or corporations. If you grew up poor like me, and no extra income was available for transportation to those programs, you simply stayed home and watched TV every day for hours. In retrospect, I would have been better served being in school. I would imagine teachers wouldn’t be thrilled to give up their long vacation. And the athletic apparel companies that enjoy the income Amateur Athletic Union summer leagues generate wouldn’t like it much either. Nor would the colleges and universities that rake in extra cash brought in by hosting summer programs. But the biggest obstacle to reevaluating summer vacations is probably our love of the familiar. As humans we are naturally averse to change and the end of summer vacations would greatly alter the way we’ve done things for more than 100 years. But what terrible thing would happen if we made the entire year part of the education process, with mini-breaks sprinkled throughout? Year-round schooling would not be repealing the child labor laws of 1938 and it won’t force kids to lose their childhood. But it would give our young more of a fighting chance. The world is getting smaller, the world is getting smarter and if you look around you’ll see when it comes to education, we’re no longer basking in the glow of superiority. We’re wallowing in mediocrity. And our kids don’t even know it. Granderson is a CNN contributor. L O S A N G E L E S W A V E EDITORIAL Photo by Chuck Conder/CNN Orange County Republican official Marilyn Davenport (above, speaking in front her Fullerton home) ignited a racial firestorm last month when she circulated a crude e-mail depicting President Obama and his family as monkeys (inset). Incidents like these demonstrate how far America has to go in addressing racism. Fifty years after the Freedom Rides, race remains central to national dialogue As Americans continue debating the effects of racism on modern life in the U.S., many agree that we’ve yet to become a “colorblind society.” BY KHALIL ABDULLAH NEW AMERICA MEDIA WASHINGTON — During a week when the national media are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides and the progress made since then against racial bias, concerns persist about deep-seated racism in the United States. Recently, for example, leaders of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation were faced with accusations that their $75 million initiative to address structural racism in America was unnecessary. They answered their critics during a forum on race and racism hosted by the Hudson Institute. Quoting author William Faulkner, Kellogg Foundation President Sterling Speirn told the audience that structural racism in America continues to affect people of color. “The past is not dead. The past isn’t even in the past. The past is alive now,” Speirn said at the forum last month entitled “Race and Racism in America: Are We Now a Colorblind Society?” Gail Christopher, the Kellogg vice president overseeing the foundation’s “America Healing” initiative, said, “Racism is a set of beliefs that helped to shape this nation. To suggest that centuries of institutionalizing those beliefs could suddenly be eradicated in less than 75 years is, I believe, simplistic, misguided, naïve at best.” But the foundation has come under attack by some critics, who contend that structural racism — race bias ingrained in institutions, policies and attitudes — is no longer an obstacle for people of color in the United States. They call for evidence that such barriers still exist. Others, who also largely reject the argument that 400 years of U.S. history has resulted in systemic or structural barriers, insist that any obstacle related to race, should it exist, can be overcome by individual endeavor and anti-discrimination laws. A Wall Street Journal editorial by Harvard University’s Stephan Thernstrom decrying the Kellogg initiative partly led to the Hudson Institute’s decision to host the forum. Joining Thernstrom on the panel were Speirn, Christopher and political consultant Ron Christie, author of “Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur.” The panelists all said the United States is not yet a colorblind society, and they agreed that their point of divergence was on how to achieve it. Their comments, however, exposed wide philosophical differences. Christie, an African- American, said he was especially concerned that America was “self-segregating” again. He believes that a flourishing “cult of ethnicity” emphasizing origins through hyphenated identities was counter productive in reaching an ideal where “we cherish our American citizenship.” Thernstrom ceded that America’s past was once shaped by a caste system based on color, but he said the election of President Barack Obama was one of many indications of the capacity of the American people to look past race. Stating that “a member of the White House is a member of the [once] untouchable caste,” he stressed that the 2008 election shows how far America has come. Also, Thernstrom cited the growing number of Blackand-White friendships and the increased rate of interracial marriages as confirmation that America is at a very different place than when, as he put it, “the very heart of the caste system was sexual fear. Black men were lynched for even looking at White women in the wrong way.” One audience member commented afterward that Thernstrom was disingenuous in citing statistics on racial intermarriage as a fundamental shift in attitudes on race and culture. The person pointed to the 2006 election when the GOP ran an ad in Tennessee pandering to racial fears in the White community. It inferred that the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., an African-American, was having sexual relations with White women. “The ad was successful, I might add,” the attendee said, noting that Ford lost the election after the ad boosted turnout for his White opponent. Thernstrom not only recoiled at the notion of the existence of structural racism but took exception with the construct of White privilege. “I can’t really find out quite what White privilege is and how you know it when you’ve identified it,” he said. In response, the Kellogg Foundation’s Christopher noted a 2002 Institute of Medicine report revealing how African- Americans and members of other ethnic groups seek medical treatment for the same conditions, but are treated differently. She said White privilege is rooted in a mythology, which “suggested that the less pigmentation you had, the higher up you were on this hierarchy of race.” Science has long since proved that color is only skin deep, Christopher said. But racial differences are still manifested in U.S. society, not only in the unconscious actions of many individuals, but also in fields as diverse as medicine, education and employment. “The systems that evolved from that mythology are alive and well,” Christopher said. “That’s what we mean by White privilege.” Yet, it was Speirn’s depiction of White privilege that drew the most audible reaction from the audience: “I love it when Chris Rock and others, you know, ask White people how much we’d have to pay them to be born a person of color in the United States. It was $50 million.” Speirn asserted that one goal of the Kellogg Foundation’s America Healing grants initiative is to enable communities “to have courageous conversations about race and historic and structural racism, and current racism.” He noted that William K. Kellogg founded and endowed the foundation with wide latitude to determine its initiatives, as long as it addressed the needs of vulnerable children, not regardless of race, poverty or other social barriers — but because of those factors. Christopher said America Healing encompasses far more than just a Black-White paradigm. She cited a California community including Whites, Hispanics and Blacks that used its Kellogg grant to delve into the reasons for its poor access to quality food. The researchers found that individuals doing the same job for the same employer were “paid differently by race,” directly diminishing their purchasing power for food and other necessities. Christopher said that although America is not consciously racist, “our culture is racialized and our systems reflect that.” She emphasized that the America Healing initiative is ambitious in scope, encompassing concern for Native Americans, African-Americans, European Americans, immigrant children. Observing that “the data would suggest we’ve made dramatic progress as a nation,” she added, “the data would also suggest that we’re at risk.” At the conclusion of the panel presentation, Christopher took a moment to answer the question, “What does success look like?” She reflected, “When all the nuanced histories of the diverse groups that helped to build this nation are part of the school curriculum, and residential segregation is no longer the norm,” she said. “When poverty is no longer racialized in this country and a child’s race is no longer a major predictor of his future.”
Inglewood/Hawthorne/Gardena/Lawndale Wave • Southwest Wave/Southwest Topics/Angeles Mesa & Tribune • Central News/Southside Journal/Compton/Carson/Wilmington Wave WAVE PUBLICATIONS Thursday, May 12, 2011 A7 L O S A N G E L E S W A V E VOICES Unlocking Rosa Parks’ other struggle BY GARY L. FLOWERS Traditionally Black History is presented with accounts of luminaries such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Gabriel Prosser, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. In nearly every instance the narrative is narrowly offered, and skewed to heroics of Black men. Mrs. Rosa Parks is no exception. To read most history textbooks students have been fed fiction as to who Mrs. Parks was and how she came to be the Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. I vividly remember learning the limited lesson that Mrs. Parks was a “poor seamstress who was simply too tired to move to the back of the bus”, as racially segregated laws required in most American cities, from 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case) to 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education court case). In reality, Mrs. Parks was no “shrinking violet” in response to racial segregation. First, Rosa Parks sought to attend, and completed college at the Philander School, which was a training ground for activists who wanted to challenge “Jim Crow” laws. Secondly, after finishing her studies, Mrs. Parks returned Landmark’s departure grim news in Leimert Photo by Gary McCarthy Asked about the closure of Lucy Florence Cultural Center, Laura Hendrix, vice president of the Leimert Park Merchants Association, said, “I feel that every business that comes here is a plus, and every one that leaves is a negative.” CENTER from page A1 ents are pretty much retired and I run the business,” he said, adding that “their lawyers are handing the matter.” Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the eviction, the owners of businesses that line either side of Degnan Boulevard — commonly referred to as Leimert Park Village — are coming to terms with the financial and cultural implications of the departure of a popular gathering place. One such business owner is Sika — his adopted Ghanian name — whose namesake store sells African jewelry, art, sculptures and fashion. Speaking in general terms about what he sees as the transactional relationship between landlords and tenants, “at the end of the day, if you don’t pay your rent, you’re going to be evicted,” said Sika, 70, who has operated the business for the last 20 years. All told, Sika painted a bleak financial picture for the area that may get worse without the anchor of the renowned cultural center. “On my side, we’ve got about 20 stores, but only QUOTED to her home of Montgomery, Alabama and immediately challenged the racist voting laws of Alabama by applying for the right to vote. In 1943 and 1944, Rosa Parks was told she failed the voting examination. In 1945, Mrs. Parks not only memorized the questions, but the answers to the exam repeated them to voting officials. As a result, she passed and was granted her right to vote in Alabama — 20-years before African-Americans could vote via the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and 10 years prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Moreover, Mrs. Parks intentionally chose to be a part of history. Rosa Parks was elected to serve as the Secretary of the Montgomery Chapter of the NAACP. As such, she regularly met with Attorney Fred Gray (lawyer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) to strategize on challenging racist laws. In fact, James Blake, the bus driver on whose bus Mrs. Parks refused to move was well known within the Black community of Montgomery as a virulent racist, who regularly verbally insulted African-Americans, particularly Black women. Rosa Parks deliberately chose the exact bus and the date (December 1, 1955) to enter the annals of world history. eight are functioning. On the other side, there are only two in operatioon,” he explained. “That’s too many stores that are dormant. We even have one lady that’s been paying rent in memory of her sister who died 20 years ago. The store has never been open since her sister died in 1992. “I don’t know the lady ... but please relinquish the store. We realize you love your sister dearly, but let go — we’re trying to build a neighborhood here. It’s a beauty salon … the equipment in there is [outdated]. Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable founder Earl Ofari Hutchinson, whose group has held its meetings at the former cultural center for the past four years, lamented its passing. “I think the closing of Lucy Florence is a major loss to the community for two reasons,” he said. “Firstly, when you look at Leimert Park, we have struggling businesses there and that was an anchor with the roundtables, the political, social and cultural events … the plays and musicals … were all a major draw. However, one major role Mrs. Parks played in history has not been sufficiently revealed until recently in the form of the book, “The Dark End of the Street,” (2010) by Danielle McGuire. Due, in part, to male dominated civil rights historians the role of Black women has usually been relegated to secondary status. In her book, Ms. McGuire exposes wide-spread cases of rape by White men of Black women, few of which went to trial, and despicably even less resulted in conviction. All- White juries from 1896 to well into the 1960’s simply refused to honor justice and convict Whites of crimes against Blacks (Let me not mention the “legal” rape of Black women by White “Founding Fathers” such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and others). In one particular case in 1944 a young, married African- American woman named Mrs. Recy Taylor was walking home from church with family members on a dark road when a car full of White men slowly passed and returned. At gunpoint, Mrs. Taylor was taken and gang raped by 6 of the 7 men. Like countless Black women raped by White men prior to the 1960s, Mrs. Taylor was let go by her captors and “It was not just an African- American owned social and cultural business, but also internationally known and people came from all over. Secondly, we’re losing so many of our institutions … Black-owned and Black-managed institutions. You see it in the arts, in business and so many places.” In terms of the economic implications of Lucy Florence’s departure, Hutchinson doesn’t believe it is a death knell for the village, but predicted that it will have a “damaging” effect. “It brought so many people into the area,” he said, “and many of them stayed around and shopped at some of the other businesses and integrated themselves into the social and cultural life of Leimert Park.” Activist Najee Ali, who was recently released from prison and was welcomed home with a celebration held at Lucy Florence, called it a “cornerstone of the village” and called on African-Americans to support their own businesses. “It was one of the most important businesses, along with Eso Won Books, that actually drew peo- threatened by death if she told. Unlike most, she immediately and courageously told her family and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Mrs. Parks was assigned by the NAACP to investigate the rape case and organized a portion of the Black community to call for the rapists to stand trial. She won the battle of bringing the men to court twice, but all-White juries never convicted the rapists. Nonetheless, Mrs. Parks’ organizing skills and activism led to a network of community organizers upon which the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful. Who knew? Actually, many historians knew of Mrs. Parks’ work on the Recy Taylor case but declined to write about such due to the violence of rape, and the need to first dismantle racial segregation via federal legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act; the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. America cannot move “beyond race” until our nation moves into a frank discussion of the lasting effects of the false notion of White supremacy. Flowers is an NNPA columnist. ple to the community,” Ali said. “Leimert Park is going to continue to look like a ghost town if Black people don’t support our businesses. It’s no one’s fault but our own — yet we always want to complain about what we don’t have.” Laura Hendrix, vice president of the Leimert Park Merchants Association, agreed. “I feel that every business that comes here is a plus and every one that leaves is a negative,” said Hendrix. “It will have a ripple effect on the community and that’s not healthy. We need more businesses here to bring in the people. We especially need more restaurants, but it’s difficult for them to make it here, because people with money don’t come into this area.” Hendrix revealed that she tried to convince the owner of Inglewood’s popular Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen to open in the village. “He said it would be too hard,” said Hendrix, “and there’s not enough foot traffic.” “This nonpartisan legislation is intended to promote two outcomes: the registration and hopefully, the participation in government of eligible voters. It is estimated that more than one million people in Los Angeles County are eligible to vote but are not registered to do so, and having an online process would be an important means of encouraging these citizens to vote. Online voting is an environmentally responsible process; it would save the County significant amounts of money by reducing the processing of paper-based voter registration forms. But most importantly, it has the potential to invigorate participation in our democracy.” — Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, explaining his work to urge his colleagues to state legislation to authorizing counties to develop electronic voter registration systems. Under the bill, eligible voters would be able to electronically submit an affidavit of voter registration on an official county web site, provided the county in which the individual resides has opted to comply with specified provisions. The bill does not amend or alter existing criteria for voter eligibility. Voters would still be required to have a valid California driver’s license or state identification card and reside in the county in order to electronically register and vote online. The Soulvine By Betty Pleasant FOOTBALL COACHES MEET — This weekend looms large for football and the African-Americans who love it: The Urban Football Coaches Association is coming to town and bringing with it legendary Black football coaches, chief among whom is John Wooten, who is considered the architect of the NFL’s Rooney Rule that requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations opportunities. The 74-year-old Wooten, who is constantly consulted on who in football should get what job, now serves as chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an organization that advocates for racial diversity in sports. (Frederick “Fritz” Pollard was the first Black NFL coach. He coached the Akron Pros in 1921.) Two full days of activities have been planned for the association’s 20th anniversary observance here, starting with honors generated by Councilman Herb Wesson at Friday morning’s City Council meeting, followed by a meet-and-greet at the Crenshaw Mall, then a reception Friday evening in the Grammy Museum at LA Live, where Wooten will present awards to Dorsey High School graduate Hue Jackson, head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and to Juan Castillo, defensive coordinator of the Philadelphia Eagles and the second highest ranking Latino coach in the NFL. Saturday will be devoted to a day of NFL coaches’ clinics and NCAA workshops in the Marriott Hotel at LA Live and will feature Black NFL coaches Ron Prince, Chris White, Greg Williams and Kirby Wilson, as well as Castillo. Black NCAA coaches from six schools will present workshops, including Mike Johnson, offensive coordinator at UCLA. GOTCHA, CVS! — This is interesting. State Attorney General Kamala Harris announced that a settlement was obtained last month with the CVS drugstore chain for its having overcharged the state’s Medi-Cal program for prescription drugs. CVS is a monster. It has gobbled up every piece of retail property standing in some communities. Los Angeles is home to wall-to-wall CVS. Just in my neighborhood, in one year CVS took over our landmark and very popular Long’s Drugstore, which was older than I am; it took over Michael’s, our only and hence, very popular home decorating store, which was almost as old as I am and it took over the Border’s Bookstore, which was where I bought all my books and stuff! And this is just in my little neck-of-the-woods and does not include the CVS that had already popped up on nearby streets. And they have the nerve to overcharge taxpayers for poor folks’ medicine! I never go to any CVS for anything; the sight of them makes me sick because I hate them. But I digress. Our wonderful Kamala Harris said CVS will reimburse California more than $1.76 million as part of a $17.5 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and nine other states. “CVS chose to short-change taxpayers and undermine our health care safety net with these actions. We are all better off now that this deception has been uncovered,” Harris said. She ought to shut them down. They’re evil and they’re taking over the planet. STATE BUSINESS — Assemblyman Steve Bradford’s bill to reduce recidivism, AB 1384, passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee this week. The bill would allow the courts discretion to expunge misdemeanor convictions where a person has not been sentenced to probation. Bradford feels his bill would provide an incentive for people convicted of low-level misdemeanors to stay out of the criminal justice system by giving them the opportunity to find work and housing and reintegrate into society. Assembly Speaker John Perez has reappointed William A. Burke, husband of retired Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, to the California Coastal Commission in a seat he has held since his first appointment to it in 2002. Burke’s new term will expire in May 2015. COUNTY BUSINESS — On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors passed a motion, introduced by Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Don Knabe, supporting efforts to reform California’s redevelopment agency laws by strengthening their accountability for the production of low-to-moderate income housing. The motion places the board in support of SB 450, sponsored by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), which would, among other things, require redevelopment agencies to spend at least 70 percent of lowto-moderate housing funds on production, rehabilitation or the preservation of housing for extremely low to low-income households. “The motion also reaffirms the board’s commitment to improving the administration of redevelopment agencies, as their wholesale elimination as proposed by the governor appears stalled in the Legislature,” Ridley-Thomas said. COMMUNITY BUSINESS — The Fix Expo Rail Campaign is holding an organizing meeting Thursday, from 6:45 to 8:30 p.m., to get the community’s ducks in a row for next week’s confrontation with the MTA Board about the Crenshaw subway’s remaining issues. The meeting will be held in the U.S. Bank’s Community Room, on the corner of Crenshaw and Slauson, at which residents will be educated and energized about their demands that a Leimert Park Village Station be included along the subway route and that the final mile of the subway be constructed underground. The decision on these two demands will be made by the MTA Board on May 26. African-American parents, students and activists are currently at odds with the Los Angeles Unified School District about reform plans under way at two schools with large numbers of Black students: Westchester High and Henry Clay Middle schools. People are particularly distressed about the school district’s proposed conversion of Westchester into a full magnet school and about the LAUSD school board’s decision to turn Clay over to those Green Dot charter school system people. The Coalition for Black Student Equity will host a community meeting Saturday with LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy to address concerns about the future of these two schools and district plans to increase Black student achievement in the public schools. The meeting will be held at Southside Bethel Baptist Church, 10400 S. San Pedro Ave. beginning at 10 a.m. It seems Fran Jemmott, the renegade president of the embattled United Homeowners Association, resigned Monday, giving rise to the hope that the rest of the ousted UHA officers will go away too, that their various lawsuits will be settled and that this organization will function like it has some sense, for a change. NATE HOLDEN SEZ — “The developers want city taxpayers to float a $350 million bond to finance the construction of AEG’s downtown football stadium. Recently, I testified before the City Council’s ad hoc committee on the stadium and I asked the question: ‘When would the developer advance finances to support the project?’ I got no answer. Instead, I was told that AEG would provide a ‘letter of credit,’ the same as it did for the construction of Staples Center. I raised questions about the legitimacy of AEG’s letter of credit at that time and I still have questions. I tell you, the letter of credit is not worth the paper it’s written on. Initially, the city demanded and won a $76 million letter of credit to guarantee repayment of subsidies for Staples Center. I am ashamed to say that in April 2003, the City Council was influenced and pressured to rescind the action requiring the letter of credit and they let AEG off the hook. The proposal for Staples Center was shameful then and the proposal for Farmer’s Field is shameful now. Ultimately, the taxpayers would be responsible for paying the $350 million bond; therefore, they should have a say in it and should have the right to vote on it.”
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