KCET and PBS announced they'll be merging Wednesday, Mandarin robocalls are targeting Southern California, judge orders more DACA applications be accepted.
What DACA decision means for students today and Democrats tomorrow
A federal judge decided against the Trump administration Tuesday, giving renewed hope to Southern California's undocumented youth.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, allows certain young people to live and work in the U.S. legally.
In a blow to President Trump, who has long railed against the DACA program, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said the Department of Homeland Security had failed to provide an adequate rationale for why the program is unlawful.
— 89.3 KPCC (@KPCC)
In a blow to President Trump, who has long railed against the DACA program, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said the Department of Homeland Security had failed to provide an adequate rationale for why the program is unlawful. https://t.co/T3IaFH6m2d
— 89.3 KPCC (@KPCC) April 25, 2018
The court ruled the administration had failed to adequately explain why DACA is unlawful and gave the White House ninety days to either make a sufficient case for limiting DACA, or start accepting new applications.
For students, today
A chance at stability
A reinstatement of DACA would provide a much needed sigh of relief to Southern California's thousands of undocumented young people. "It means more time to invest in their education and allows them to not be detained and deported," said Abel Valenzuela, Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Immigration Policy at UCLA. "Its a a huge way for students who are in a precarious and difficult situation to find stability and that space to focus on their studies."
Yes! Daca is still alive
Federal judge issues strongest order yet backing #DACA calling the @POTUS attempts to end the program, "arbitrary," "capricious," "virtually unexplained" and "unlawful."@DHSgov has 90 days or he will enter an order reinstating DACA in its entirety. https://t.co/j13hctSYE9
— ellerryan (@EllerRyan) April 25, 2018— Raul Preciado (@rpreciado320)
Yes! Daca is still alive #DACA https://t.co/CwYsXzpD9q
— Raul Preciado (@rpreciado320) April 25, 2018
UCLA has been focused on educating prospective undocumented students still in high school about their scholarship and legal options, and is prepared to ramp up an awareness campaign as the future of DACA is finalized.
"It opens the door for a new cohort of young immigrants who have been here for many years to apply for work authorization and focus on school, securing economic stability for themselves and by extension, their families," Valenzuela said.
UCLA is moving ahead as though the Trump the administration will be unable to justify its argument to the court. "We want to be ahead of the ball and have a process in place so that students can start taking advantage of this window."
Valenzuela is advising the undocumented students he works with to begin their end of the work; "start looking at the applications, start getting paperwork together, to be on the lookout for different workshops."
For Democrats, tomorrow
If the Trump administration cannot convince the court that the DACA rollback is justified, political scientist Louis DeSipio says that Democrats could benefit — especially in this election year.
"I think this is an advantage for the Democrats because it keeps DACA, which is a program that's viewed very favorably by a wide swath of the electorate, including independents and Republicans, in the political debate," DeSipio said. "So in these swing districts, in the moderate districts, Democrats will be able to hammer their opponents — particularly their incumbent opponents for the failure of the House of Representatives to come up with a legislative solution, which is what everybody sees is the real need in this area."
What will the LAFC do to the Figueroa Corridor?
The Los Angeles Football Club or LAFC is the new kid on the local sports block. They may be Major League Soccer's rookie team, but they're already doing better than their cross-town rival the LA Galaxy.
This Sunday night, their shiny new stadium opens up in Exposition Park — within spitting distance of USC and the Coliseum, and a short drive from Staples Center.
Could the addition of LAFC cement the Figueroa Corridor as the sports, entertainment and cultural hub of the city?
Andy Kamenetzky thinks so:
It could mean very good things. I attended USC from 1990 to 1994... and that was well before Staples Center even existed, much less the LA Live Plaza. At the time, Downtown had the reputation of basically offering nothing: there were not a lot of modern shops or restaurants, nobody really wanted to live there... the more immediate association with Downtown LA was actually Skid Row, and it was unimaginable in the 1990s or even the early 2000s what Downtown LA would eventually become.
According to a 2017 Los Angeles Times article, the construction that Downtown LA is undergoing right now — it's the most since the 1920s. And I think [the Staples Center] played a role in the revitalization of the area surrounding USC. There's far more retail surrounding the campus than when I attended stores and restaurants, and I think that all began with Staples opening its door in 1999.
How SoCal's bright colors made KPCC listener Ranjana feel at home
NO PLACE LIKE L.A. IS OUR SERIES THAT ASKS L.A. TRANSPLANTS AND IMMIGRANTS: "WHEN WAS THE MOMENT YOU FELT THAT LOS ANGELES WAS TRULY HOME?"
THIS IS THE STORY OF Ranjana Kishore IN Arcadia WHO'S ORIGINALLY FROM Southern India.
I moved here in 2002 for my first job. Where I come from, the colors, the sights and the sounds are very bright.
The gulmohars, also known as the flame trees, they have these bright red canopies.
So when I first interviewed here for my job I had some extra time, so I was walking on Lake Avenue in Pasadena.
I suddenly looked up and I saw the purple of the jacaranda trees in Pasadena. They sort of reminded me of those trees back home. They had these bright, light purple canopies.
Also, the bright orange-yellow of the bird-of-paradise flowers and the red roof tiles, the citrus scent in the air – just these bright colors reminded me of home.
It just came to me that this was home.
Here's what the KCET/PBS SoCal merger means for local viewers
KCET, the independent public television station serving the Los Angeles area, and PBS SoCal announced an agreement Wednesday morning to merge the two entities.
It's a momentous shift for the public media landscape in L.A. and Orange counties. KCET decided to part ways from the PBS network back in 2010, due to financial concerns, and the Huntington Beach-based KOCE became the PBS flagship station for the region.
.@kcet + @pbssocal are merging! Excited to combine PBS SoCal’s beloved @PBS programming & community engagement excellence with KCETLink’s passion for creating smart, original #publicmedia content, and reach new audiences with innovative approaches! #SouthernCalifornia #pubmedia pic.twitter.com/cSytJUueRV
— KCET-TV (@KCET) April 25, 2018
KCET Board of Directors Chairman Dick Cook will serve as Board Chair, and PBS SoCal President and CEO Andrew Russell will be President and CEO of the new group. It will be governed by a 32-person board of trustees composed of the 14 members from each of the boards of KCET parent company KCETLink and PBS SoCal, as well as four new board appointees.
Cook said over time the channels' schedules will evolve but all the shows viewers have come to expect from these stations will still be available. Viewers will still be able to tune in for both PBS programming and local favorites like Lost LA and SoCal Connect from KCET, he said.
[The merger is] giving us the flexibility of being able to put them on both stations. You're also going to see more things that we're going to be able to do, telling more stories that matter, not just in Southern California but this is going to become a huge production hub for the entire country in public media.
This merger is a chance for growth, not cutbacks Russell said. Now the two organizations combined will have about 130 employees but over time they hope to add jobs, he said.
There's not a lot of overlap in our operations. We [PBS SoCal] have built a lot in our early education and we've done a lot with community engagement. And KCET really built out local production and digital so those are strengths that we'll be mashing together and then building from there.
That combination of two local media organizations with complimentary strengths was what made KCET excited about the idea of the merger, Cook said.
PBS SoCal first reached out to KCET about possible partnerships, Russel said, and the merger came out of those earlier discussions. It's a chance for both organizations to better serve their viewers and create a new model for public media organizations across the country, he said.
This is a time of incredible media change. This is a time of great community need for media and together we're going to be much more effective at that, be able to grow and build a center of innovation for public media.
Officials say a new name for the organization will be announced with the closing of the deal, which is expected to be completed in the first half of this year.
Watch out, Chinese speakers, you're the target of a new phone scam
读中文版点这里
Chinese speakers are the target of a new phone scam sweeping the country. Victims get an automated message from a woman speaking in Mandarin who claims to be from the Chinese Consulate.
The voice warns that if action isn't taken – either to pick up a package from a consulate office, or to give personal information to a phone operator – then your rights to travel abroad to and from the U.S. will be in jeopardy.
"They're trying to capture people's credit card or bank account information or their sensitive personal information," warns Patti Poss with the Federal Trade Commission. "Do not respond to these scams. If it came through the phone, hang up."
Who is the target?
You do not have to speak Chinese to get these phone calls.
But Poss warns that scammers will cast a wide net among consumers in hopes that one will fall for their tricks.
Probably the best 'customer' for a scammer is someone who's caught off guard when hearing from a person claiming to be an official or authority figure.
Who is behind the scam?
The FTC does not currently know who is the culprit behind these calls.
But this call is very similar to others that the FTC is tracking, where scammers will impersonate official agencies to steal personal information or more.
What should you do if you get this call?
Hang up. Do not respond to it.
Visit the FTC's website to file a complaint, too.
"We don't respond to every report that we get, but that information goes into our [database] which is used by law enforcement all over the country," says Poss.
If you still believe you need to reach the Chinese consulate, don't respond to the automated message – just call the consulate's L.A. office directly at (213) 807-8088 or visit their website.
Improv, drugs and a gopher: The making of the comedy classic 'Caddyshack'
The movie "Caddyshack" is now a comedy classic, but it wasn't exactly a hole-in-one when it was first released. And the story behind the story of how the underdog hit was made is its own comedy filled with almost as many shenanigans as the film itself.
The original idea for the film came from Brian Doyle Murray, one of the movie's writers, said Chris Nashawaty, author of the new book, "Caddyshack - The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story."
Doyle Murray and his younger brother, actor Bill Murray, worked as caddies during the summer as kids, which was the jumping off point for the movie's story, Nashawaty said. But that was just the beginning of a pretty crazy film making process.
The script that was never finished
The three writers of "Caddyshack" -- Doyle Murray, Doug Kenney and Harold Ramis -- all had strong backgrounds in improv comedy, so they weren't concerned about having every scene completely finalized before filming, Nashawaty said.
Many of the scenes in "Caddyshack" were changed during filming or completely improvised which leads to the film's hilarious, but somewhat random story line.
“No one scene in Caddyshack makes sense with the previous scene. It just feels, you know, made up on the spot, which in a lot of ways it was," Nashawaty said.
Bill Murray, in particular, improvised many of his scenes in the film. His famous 'Cinderella story' speech was, in fact, completely improvised and done in a single take.
"They would just leave blank chunks in the script that said, 'Bill riffs here,'" Nashawaty said.
Action?
The cast and crew of "Caddyshack" may have had experience with improv, but they weren't exactly seasoned filmmakers.
Harold Ramis was in the director's chair for the first time when he directed Caddyshack, and one of the lead actors, Rodney Dangerfield, had very little on-camera experience.
When it came time to film Dangerfield's first scene, it became clear he was not a movie pro, Nashawaty said. When Ramis called 'Action,' to start that first scene, Dangerfield didn't react. Ramis asked him if everything was alright and Dangerfield said yes, so the director called 'Action' again, but still nothing. So Ramis told the actor, "When I call action, that's your cue to come in and do your lines," to which Dangerfield replied, "You mean do my bit?"
From then on, Ramis yelled "Rodney, do your bit," instead of "Action" to cue Dangerfield's scenes, Nashawaty said.
Scenes, drugs and rock and roll
It wasn't just experience that stacked the deck against the "Caddyshack" crew. There was also a serious drug use problem during filming.
The movie was shot in Davey, Florida, in the 1970s. At the time, Florida was a gateway for drugs like cocaine to enter the U.S., Nashawaty said, so these were wild times and many of the cast and crew were pretty wild characters themselves.
"These people partied very, very hard. It's amazing when you think about it that they managed to make a movie at all to be honest with you," he said.
Gopher to the rescue
Once filming was finished, it was time to edit the footage that had been shot into a movie, and that's where "Caddyshack," once again, found itself hitting a roadblock (or a sand trap).
Due to all the improvising on set and the constant changes made to the script, the movie's many scenes didn't connect up.
So one of the producers came up with an idea to make the gopher, who was then only in one scene, the through line. The crew had to beg the studio for more money and go back and shoot more gopher scenes, but it all turned out in the end, Nashawaty said.
"It actually ended up being the thing that saved the film," he said.