Republicans in liberal enclaves (finally) have a vote, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi's tells his story and Angels stadium turns 50
Arab-speaking student removed from flight: 'I couldn’t do anything except to — honestly — to cry'
UC Berkeley student, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was escorted off his flight to Oakland earlier this month, after a female passenger reported him for speaking Arabic on the phone before takeoff.
Makhzoomi hails from Iraq and was talking to his uncle who still lives there.
Once he was off, an airline staff member asked Makhzoomi why he was speaking Arabic on the plane. He soon found himself in front of FBI agents.
KPCC listeners shared on facebook how they think the situation should have been handled:
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi joined Take Two to share more details from the incident.
What was going on in your mind in terms of striking a balance between standing up for yourself, but not getting yourself into trouble?
“Under Saddam Hussein we always [kept our mouths shut.] And it’s time not to do that here because I know that here our rights [are respected] by this country. When I said ‘this is what Islamophobia got this country into,’ [it was because] I felt that somehow I was oppressed. First, they pulled me out of the plane; then they didn’t allow me to go back. They got my bag. They questioned me as if I had a second bag on the plane, until the moment when they started to search me in front of everyone and asking me if I had a knife that I might want to [cut the police officer with] … It felt very strange, but I couldn’t do anything except to — honestly — to cry … There was nothing else to do. I couldn’t do anything.”
Eventually, the FBI was brought in. You were released, but at that point, your airplane had left … What did the representatives at Southwest Airlines [say to you] after they determined that you were not in fact a threat?
“Nothing. They refunded my ticket. The FBI agent advised me to apologize, and I told her ‘I’m sorry, my dignity comes first.’”
Apologize for what? Do you know?
“For what I have done.”
What did they say you did?
“They told me that — you know — next time you don’t need to speak on your phone. Just close your phone and just stay there. You don’t need to speak. Just stay there and buckle your seat … And they advised me to put this behind me and to apologize.”
How are you feeling about this country at this point, given everything that you’ve been through?
I’m not going to give up. I’m going to fight. I’m going to fight the fight, I am going to graduate, I am going to stay, and I’m going to graduate and get my masters degree from here. I’m not going to let [a few ignorant people] change this country — to change the face of this country — because this is not America … “
Press the blue play button to hear the full interview.
This post has been updated.
Republicans hidden in liberal enclaves could swing presidential race
New York holds its primaries, today, and like California, it's considered a very blue state.
But hidden inside left-leaning bubbles are some influential Republicans who could decide the outcome of the GOP primary.
Politico's Shane Goldmacher joins Take Two on how Republicans are courting some of its isolated members in enclaves from Berkeley to the Bronx.
Researchers try to build an accurate marijuana sobriety test
Come November, Californians may be voting on whether to legalize recreational marijuana and there's a lot to consider on that front, including issues of public safety, like driving.
We have tests in place to determine whether someone has been drinking too much alcohol to drive, but what about driving while high?
Turns out that's a bit trickier to measure, but that's not stopping a group of researchers at UC San Diego from trying. Associate physician Barth Wilsey is involved in the project and he joins Alex Cohen for a discussion on the matter.
Ecuador earthquake: How Mercy Corps is aiding the recovery effort
Over 600 international rescue teams are assisting in Ecuador's relief effort, following the earthquake that claimed more than 400 lives this past weekend.
Mercy Corps is one of the groups that has rushed to help the country. Two emergency response specialists arrived in the country on Monday.
Christy Delafield is a spokesperson for Mercy Corps, who is helping coordinate the efforts from Washington DC. She joined host A Martinez with the latest updates.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
UCLA project maps LA’s indigenous communities
L.A. is home to one of the largest populations of indigenous people in the United States. That includes those who are native to Southern California and indigenous peoples who have relocated here.
Yet many of L.A.’s indigenous peoples find that awareness of their communities can be lacking among the general population.
“As a teenager I got really frustrated when people would ask me ‘Where are you from? What’s your heritage?’ and I would tell them, and they would know nothing about the indigenous people of this area. A lot of our own people didn’t even know,” said Craig Torres, a member of the Tongva community. His ancestors, sometimes called Gabrieleño, were native to the L.A. basin before European settlers arrived.
Since the Tongva people have never been federally recognized as a tribe, they have no reservation, no official cultural center, and only scattered resources for preserving their heritage. That lack of access to accurate information about L.A.’s Native American communities sparked an idea with a group of researchers at UCLA.
“Really what we wanted to do is create kind of a virtual world where people would have access to the different-layered indigenous L.A.,” said Mishuana Goeman, a member of the Tonawanda band of Seneca Indians, and a professor at UCLA.
Goeman and other faculty and student researchers are developing a new educational website called Mapping Indigenous LA. The site aims to be a comprehensive resource for information about L.A.’s indigenous groups. Goeman and the rest of the team collaborated with community members to piece together L.A.’s history told from the indigenous perspective.
“When we’re looking at everything around us in L.A., everything is fenced off, has boundaries, people own this, people own that,” said Desiree Martinez, a Tongva community member and an archaeologist. “But for native communities, when we look at the land, it’s all connected. So we’re trying to document the way native people look at the land.”
The site points out some L.A. places that indigenous people see differently, like the area of downtown L.A. where indigenous slaves were once traded, or Kuruvunga Springs near UCLA, which was once the center of a thriving Tongva village.
“Those places have been excavated archeologically, but you have to know where to find that information,” said Wendy Teeter, curator of archaeology for UCLA’s Fowler Museum and another researcher for the Mapping Indigenous L.A. project. “Los Angeles’ history really needs to be given back to people and we need to have those first-person stories from the communities talk about why these spaces are important and not to be forgotten.”
The site launched in October and is still in development, but the project goes beyond just information about the Tongva, Chumash, and other Southern California indigenous communities.
Los Angeles has become home to American Indians from across the country, as well as indigenous peoples from Latin America and Pacific Island nations, who relocated here voluntarily or through displacement over many generations. Goeman said each of those communities has its own history within L.A.
“That’s something we wanted to get at: how do you begin to make a place? It’s not like when you get here you forget all your old world.”
Goeman said the researchers are happy to provide the platform and hope community members will come forward to tell their own stories.
The site illustrates those stories through interactive maps, timelines, digitized historical documents, links to other educational resources, and video interviews with community members. Goeman and her team said most of this information was publicly available before, but it has never been conveniently compiled in one place. The team hopes the website will become a trustworthy resource for information that has been vetted by the communities represented.
Goeman said a major goal of the Mapping indigenous L.A. project is to get across the idea that indigenous communities are not a thing of the past in California. In fact, census data shows the state has the highest number of residents with American Indian or Alaska Native heritage in the country—over 700,000.
“If you’re there being presented with a live, living person, it really gets past that stereotype that Indian people are dead or still dying,” Goeman said. “What people don’t realize is we’ve actually increased in numbers, and we’ve increased in knowledge and we’ve increased in the recovery of our languages through revitalization, and that’s kind of what we want to show, that vibrancy.”
The 50th anniversary to Angel Stadium of Anaheim
50 years ago today, Angel Stadium of Anaheim was officially opened.
Since then it's gone through two name changes, hosted three all-star games and has been known for having a nice big "A" just outside of the park -- As you can imagine, Take Two's A Martinez is quite partial to the landmark.
Nathan Masters is a historian at the USC Libraries and the host of "Lost LA" on KCET which tells the story of forgotten parts of Los Angeles history.
He joined Martinez in studio to discuss Angel Stadium of Anaheim on its 50th anniversary.
The Angels actually used to share Dodgers Stadium -- referred to as Chaves Ravine Stadium for the Angels's home games. This was not an ideal situation for them, says Masters.
"They were essentially second class citizens there. They were paying rent to the Dodgers."
In addition to that, Dodgers Stadium was designed to emphasize the strengths of the Dodgers: Spacious foul territory to make things easy for ace pitcher Sandy Koufax and with speedy infielder Maury Wills. That meant the Angels weren't put into a position to win in their own supposed home games.
As they looked for a new home, the Angels considered many places.
"Long Beach almost secured the Angels," Masters says. "But they insisted that the Angels rename themselves the 'Long Beach Angels.' [The team] didn't want that. They looked to Orange County and the city of Anaheim was fine with the name 'California Angels,' so they moved there."
When ground was finally broken for what would become Angel Stadium of Anaheim, its surroundings were very barren. Orange County was mainly known for agriculture: cornfields, orange groves and berry farms.
But Masters says that stadium signified a rapid development for the OC, along with a few other developments.
"Soon came the Santa Anna freeway, the opening of Disneyland. All of a sudden, Orange County was this major suburb of Los Angeles. The Stadium's construction kind of reflected the fact that Orange County had arrived."
After securing countless memories for Southern California baseball fans, it's hard to think of the Angels anywhere else. But there are still other nearby cities that are trying to lure the Angels away from their 50-year-old home. So will the Angels remain at the Big A for another half a century?
"As a native son of Anaheim, I kind of hope that it does!" Masters says. "I know that renovations will have to be made, but I hope they keep [Angel Stadium]."
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound and Konono No. 1
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. This week music journalist Steve Hochman joins A Martinez with a list of new songs from some artists who've been around for a while.
Artist: Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble
Album: “Sing Me Home"
Home? It’s where displaced Eastern European Roma musicians jam with American singer Rhiannon Giddens on the folk-jazz blues “St. James Infirmary.” It’s where Sarah Jarosz sings Pete Seeger’s “Little Birdie” accompanied by Chinese musicians. It’s where Bohemian composer Dvorak’s interpretation of an American spiritual is sung by banjo player Abigail Washburn, both in English and Chinese. Or where this album’s opening track, “Green (Vincent’s Tune), takes us, a trek starting on the Mongolian Steppes and then goes, well, everywhere at once, as directed by Chinese composer/pipa player Wu Man with arrangement by Russian-born New Yorkers Ljova and Johnny Gandlesman and featuring a truly global cast of folk and classical artists, including the adventurous vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.
Cello star Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Ensemble in 2000, with Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor (master of the kamancheh, a Persian fiddle played upright) his core collaborator and a vast international roster enlisted to explore the intersections of fluidly migrant cultures, ancient and modern.
This album, a companion to an upcoming documentary, “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble,” by “20 Ft. From Stardom” director Morgan Neville, expands the concept with some stunning results. What could have been a gimmick — a variety of guest singers and players placed into consciously juxtaposed contexts (think of how the guests approach grew tired over a series of albums by the Irish group the Chieftains) — proves anything but.
Rather, “Sing Me Home” is a vivid portrait of the modern world in which home is not a fixed point, and at times avery elusive concept, a world in which the notion of where we are and the notion of where we’re from are often in conflict. And with it, the notion of who we are. But the rich possibilities of this outweigh the conflicts.
Longing and belonging. Those are the dancing partners here, as in much great music, not to mention literature, through the ages.
While Ma, understandably, gets top billing, the Silk Road project has always itself been a fluid entity, building on strengths and chemistries of its various participants. This particular dance was choreographed, if you will, by producers Johnny Gandlesman (violinist of the groundbreaking Brooklyn Rider string quartet, itself a longtime core part of Silk Road) and Kevin Killen (who as producer and engineer has long worked with U2, Elvis Costello, David Bowie and many others). And in their hands, while the concept is key, it is always subservient to the music.
Artist: Alarm Will Sound
Album: “Modernists”
What Beatles song would you say is most unlikely to be covered by another artist? Probably the same one that routinely comes on top of “least-favorite Beatles songs” surveys — or even “most-hated Beatles song.” And yet in the last few years this writer has seen two different attempts at live renditions of “Revolution 9,” the polarizing-at-best musique concrete experiment by John Lennon and Yoko Ono featured on the so-called “White Album.” Both were as part of complete performances of that album, one by a group of kids studying at a School of Rock facility (spirited), the other by a duo mixing electronics, sampling and live processed vocals (rather impressive, it turned out).
But here it turns up in a seemingly very unlikely “classical” context, tackled by the chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound, always known for coloring outside the lines. Though maybe not really unlikely at all. Ono, of course was already a respected music/art modernist, a colleague of John Cage, well before she even met Lennon. And Lennon had already shown influence of Stockhausen and others in various tape loop and cut-up forays as he and his fellow Beatles sought to expand the concepts and language of pop music.
The thing here is that Alarm Will Sound does it without tape manipulation or electronics or sampling, but rather in an arrangement by horn player Matt Marks transcribes the sound collage into “real,” presumably replicable, performance, from simulated “backwards” sounds to the “block that kick” chants. And, of course, the somberly intoned “Number 9… number 9… number 9…”
This is not a novelty and certainly not a joke. AWS is neither mocking Ono and Lennon nor laughing at them. Laughing with them, maybe. It certainly sounds like they had a hoot performing it. But what the group is doing is presenting “9” as a true work of modernism, in the context of an album celebrating the very concept, this piece leading off an impressive array of “serious” works from respected composers. At the other end is a closing rendition of “Poeme Electronique” by Edgard Varese, a routinely controversial, challenging composer of the mid-20th century (and a favorite of Frank Zappa). Again, AWS strips it down to “acoustic” components, rendering a very warm, still-ear-turning performance — even the notorious sirens that feature in the original are simulated here with strings and voices.
Artist: Konono No. 1
Album: “Konono No. 1 Meets Batida"
The who of “Konono No. 1 Meets Batida” is interesting enough — the leaders of Kinshasa’s Congotronics movement, in which highly rhythmic, metallic Congolese rhythms were run through distortion-prone, jury-rigged amplification on the rough streets of the embattled city, have collaborated with a Portugal-based rising-star on the Euro-electronica scene. The where, though, may be what made it more than a mere bit of dance music tourism. This album was made not in Kinshasa, but in Batida’s Lisbon garage studio. And it sounds like it was quite the party — a raucous, joyous time with collaborative spirit free-flowing. It’s as if that garage was something a temporal bubble in which two nations, to cultures, not just co-existed, but combined.
Konono’s rise to international attention came in 2004 via “discovery” — a few decades into the ensemble’s existence — by French producers who brought in some European sensibilities, and there have been various remix projects along the way. But this new project takes the music to new places. The tracks here shift in the balance of the Congolese and European sounds, such highlights as “Yambadi Mama” leaning more to the former, “Kisumba,” with some nicely applied dub techniques, more to the latter. But the secret is that the latter always seems to exist to enhance, and never subsume, the former.
Not that the Konono sound is subsumable, the metal tongs of the electrified likembes (thumb pianos) plunked in complex polyrhythms, can transform any setting in wonderful ways— as has been demonstrated clearly with past collaborations with Bjork and Herbie Hancock. But Batida, born in Angola before being raised in Lisbon, comes in with what seems an innate feel for what spaces to fill and what to leave alone. The tracks wind and flow, each track feeling like it’s just a small slice of what could have extended on for hours without losing a bit of the exhilaration. And it’s not hard to imagine that’s exactly how it was in that Lisbon garage, as in the streets of Kinshasa, the party going on all night as if in a Konono world of its own.
The Brood: How connecting with nature benefits families and kids
This Friday is Earth Day.
It's a perfect opportunity to get your family out and about in nature. But Earth Day is just one day. What about working the great outdoors into your life on a more regular basis?
Writer Richard Louv has the prescription for it in his new book titled "Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life."
The book includes 500 activities for families to connect with the natural world and combat what Louv calls "nature-deficit disorder."
Interview highlights:
What is 'nature-deficit disorder'?
It's not a known medical diagnosis. Maybe it should be, but it isn't yet. But it is a way to talk about what we've all sensed has been going on for a couple decades which is the disconnection of children from the natural world and the effects of that which I think affect, certainly the studies back this up now, affect mental health, physical health, cognitive development, the ability to be creative and to learn.
What happens when you take nature away from kids?
Personally I believe that the senses atrophy. I think that there's more likelihood of attention-deficit disorder. Certainly the studies at the University of Illinois connect that to time spent in nature, that those symptoms can be relieved or reduced with just a little bit of time in the natural world. Even a walk through trees in an urban setting can help.
The scientists who study the human senses no longer talk about five senses, they talk conservatively about 10 senses, and as many as 30 human senses. But we spend most of our days trying to block out as many of those senses as we can. Certainly our kids do. We're creating environments at school and at home in which our kids are spending more and more of their time connected to screens and spending that energy blocking out their senses. That to me is the very definition of being less alive.
How can families inject more nature into their lives?
Some tips:
- Crying baby in a restaurant? Take them outside and find a tree. Get close to the bark and touch it and they'll calm down immediately
- Go to a park with your kids, lie on your backs and look up at the trees and just "bliss out"
- Go camping in your backyard
- Take a "belly hike"-- you literally get down on your stomachs and you go as slow as you can through the yard or through an area in the woods under the trees and you look to see what you find
- Live in an urban area? Put on backpacks and take a hike through your neighborhood to look for nature
- Use your "snake tongue," "deer ears" or "owl eyes." It's a way of mimicking other creatures to excite the senses
- Use a compass to rediscover the fine art of finding your way
Have your own tips? Submit them here.
What are the benefits?
These small activities matter hugely. Yes, we're enriching our children's lives when we give them the gift of nature, but we're [also] creating memories for them and ourselves.
One of the problems is that people think of nature as a 'nice to have,' as extraneous, but when you begin to think about it as something that will develop your child's cognitive functioning, their ability to learn, their creativity, as well as their physical health, their mental health. When you begin to think about it in that way, then it becomes a real enrichment.
To hear the full interview with Richard Louv, click the blue player above.
The national book launch for "Vitamin N" is Tuesday, April 19th at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA. Find more information here.