Today we'll take a look at California Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State address with KPCC's Julie Small, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and more. Then, Part three of our series on bilingual education profiles two families with different experiences when it comes to teaching their kids two languages. Ben Bergman reports on Syrian-Americans in the OC who are working to help refugees in their homeland, and much more.
Analysis of Gov. Brown's State of the State address [full video]
California Governor Jerry Brown delivered his third State of the State address since he's taken office. His speech outlined an ambitious and optimistic policy agenda for California.
We carried his address live and then got analysis with KPCC's Julie Small, Adolfo Guzman Lopez and Daniel Schnur, the Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.
Here is his speech in its entirety:
Bilingual Learning: Two different families, two different experiences
All week we've been looking into bilingual immersion programs. As KPCC's early education reporter Deepa Fernandes has shown, language programs are growing in popularity all over California. In her final report, she profiles two Latino families who tried bilingual education, with vastly different results.
The quest for a secure US-Mexico border
Many conservatives see the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as clear evidence that border protection is failing. They argue that before the immigration system can be reformed, the border needs to be secured. From the Fronteras Desk, Michel Marizco looks at what that really means.
LA Lakers underperform this season despite big expectations
The Lakers started the season with big expectations. The team had added arguably the NBA's best center in Dwight Howard and one the greatest point guards of all time in Steve Nash, and, of course, they still had Kobe Bryant.
But the Lakers havent performed as well as expected. The team has lost 10 of their last 12 games and this morning, found themselves closer to last place than a playoff spot with less than half the season left to play.
Here to help us untangle this purple and gold drama is Andy Kamenetsky, longtime Lakers reporter for ESPN and the LA Times.
Jan Perry draws on LA City Council experience in mayoral run
Jan Perry's favorite spot in the city is at the corner of Slauson and Compton avenues. It’s the unlikely site of a seven-acre, man-made wetlands park filled with flora and fauna, including a children’s garden and hiking trails. That’s quite a transformation from its original use as a storage yard for the Department of Water and Power.
That’s been the storyline of Perry’s 12 years on the Los Angeles City Council: taking neglected or underutilized sites and turning them into community assets. For most of her tenure, Perry’s Ninth District covered downtown and much of South Los Angeles. She’s pro-business and pro-development. Her tenure has overseen the revitalization of downtown, including construction of the L.A. Live complex.
“The thing that L.A. Live embodies is the catalytic, large investment to show to smaller investors [and] small developers [that] downtown is a good place to be," said Perry during an interview in her City Hall office. "We’ve put our stake here and you should follow and that’s why it was important. It’s a foundation upon which to build."
The councilwoman used downtown projects to spur economic development in the poorer parts of South Los Angeles. New construction projects often included affordable housing units. Developers were told to hire construction workers who lived in the district. Opportunities like those will now be few and far between, since the city’s recent redistricting process severed South L.A. from most of downtown.
"The difference that boundaries make is where the dollars can be invested," Perry said. "So now South L.A., the southern part of the former Ninth District, has no middle-income community to leverage for investment in the lower income portion of the district."
Redistricting displayed Perry’s strengths and weaknesses in a way that few other political events had. In the fall of 2011, Perry publicly accused her colleagues of making backroom deals to name a new city council president and skew the redistricting process. Her frankness ended up hurting her. When the new council district lines were approved, Perry — who lives downtown — was drawn out of her own district.
Perry later apologized for her indiscretion. Undaunted, she launched her campaign for mayor, banking on her upfront approach to governing.
"What she cares about publicly, she cares about privately," said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association, who has known Perry for more than 20 years.
Lopez says Perry will frequently call her to find services for the mentally ill and handicapped people she meets along Los Angeles and San Pedro streets downtown. She describes a time when the councilwoman personally sought out a place to store the wheelchair of a man who was taken to the hospital by paramedics.
"Those are the things over the years that I know and that I hold in my heart — that have no exposure. But this is the depth to which this human being cares about other human beings," Lopez said.
The Ninth District has long been viewed as a seat of black political power. Jan Perry is African-American, as were her predecessors, Rita Walters and Gilbert Lindsay. But the district's population is three-quarters Latino. Fewer than 20 percent of the area’s residents are African-American. One observer says politics in the district aren’t based on ethnicity.
"Skin color, the ethnicity, the religious beliefs of a person are far less important than their ability to cue into those needs and work as hard as they can on a daily basis in City Hall to get that job accomplished," said Joe Hicks, vice president of Community Advocates, an organization that works to improve race relations in L.A.
Lopez added that Perry decided to run for mayor so she could continue to address the needs of Angelenos — this time throughout the city.
"Her only reason for running is because she believes that she can do the best job of taking this city and taking it on its next chapter and that's what she really believes and that's the only reason she wants to serve the city of Los Angeles," Lopez said.
That could carry Perry to the mayor's office, despite stiff competition from Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel.
"I don’t hold myself in comparison to anybody else," Perry said. "When I have an opportunity I take it and I run with it full throttle until I have to stop."
RELATED: Who Will Be L.A.’s Next Mayor? AirTalk’s 2013 Live Mayoral Debate
City Hall Pass: LA Mayor race
Take Two's ticket to all the latest political news coming out of downtown Los Angeles. This week, KPCC's political team of Frank Stoltze and Alice Walton talk about the leading candidates for mayor and the upcoming mayoral debates.
RELATED: Who Will Be L.A.’s Next Mayor? AirTalk’s 2013 Live Mayoral Debate
Pentagon lifts ban on women in combat
It's a landmark moment for women in the military. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday is expected to formally announce that he's lifting the ban on women in combat.
The move will open up hundreds of thousands more front-line jobs to women, and allow female soldiers already on the front lines to receive recognition for their service.
Major Mary Jennings Hegar is one those women who has spent time in combat zones. We spoke with her last November, when the ACLU of Northern California sued the Pentagon on her behalf.
As US stays out of crisis, local Syrian-Americans help refugees
The United Nations estimates that the death toll from the Syrian crisis has surpassed 60,000. Four million people inside the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, and up to one million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries could need help during the first half of this year.
The U.S. government has largely stayed out of the crisis, but that hasn’t stopped two people in Orange County from getting very involved.
When Omar Chamma traveled recently to the Syrian-Turkish border, he packed 19 bags of food and medical supplies – enough to incur $1600 in excess baggage fees on American Airlines.
He also carried $250,000 in donations to buy more supplies when he arrived. It was his seventh trip in a year.
"Every time I fly out of Istanbul, I say, ‘This is my last time. I’m not going to go back again,’" Chamma said. “But then I think about what I’ve seen, the desperation in their eyes. And every time I go back, there is no one there to help them.”
Chamma isn’t a doctor or an aid worker. He invests in real estate, and apparently, he's very good at raising money. He estimates he’s collected more than $1.5 million – mostly from Syrian friends – to help refugees.
That money buys blankets, sleeping bags, kids’ shoes, medicine and hundreds of boxes of sutures. That’s because Chamma saw refugees rolling up plastic bags to try and stitch their wounds.
“They have no bandages, no medication, and no antibiotics,” Chamma said. “I went to a house one day and there were 55 people living in one, two-bedroom home, with no doctors. Most people coming through the border are severely injured civilians from bombings or shootings or they’re burn victims.”
"Not every wife would support their husband going into a war zone"
Chamma is a native of Damascus. He moved to the United States to study engineering at Louisiana State University in the 1980s. That’s when he met his future wife, Mavis Benton Chamma. Now, she reluctantly sees her husband depart every few weeks.
“Not every wife would support their husband going into a war zone, don’t get me wrong," she said, sitting next to her husband in their Fountain Valley home. “Every time he goes I just leave it to God. If something is going to happen, at least I know he’s doing what he believes in.”
Mavis Chamma said that as hard as it for her and their three children, she knows why her husband has to go.
“I’m from Louisiana,” she explained. “If somebody was invading Louisiana, I’m going to go there,” she said.
Omar Chamma used to visit his uncles, aunts and cousins in Damascus before the war. He worries that if Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad wins the conflict, he will never be able to see them again.
“If the regime will succeed there is no way I can go visit this country anymore and the close family I have there will be in danger,” Chamma said. “This brutal regime will not stop until somebody stops them.”
Silverado Canyon woman backpacked to border to help
Chamma said dozens of other Americans have traveled to the border to help. One of them is Sama Wareh, a 29-year-old artist who lives in the Santa Ana Mountains.
Her parents are from Damascus, and before the war, she visited her cousins in the capital city many times. In November, Wareh backpacked – by herself – to the same border town of Reyhanli that Chamma goes to.
She sold her motorcycle and her paintings to pay for the trip – and raised thousands of dollars from friends.
“My thinking was that if there are thousands of refugees in Turkey right now and more are crossing the border every day, there have to be a lot that are not in the refugee camps that no one knows about, so my whole thing I was going to look for those people,” Wareh said.
She found plenty of people who needed help. She took them grocery shopping, bought them blankets and heaters, and paid their rent. When we met in Newport Beach, next to the gallery where she works, Wareh was wearing her usual wardrobe: a cowboy hat that covered her hijab, and western boots.
She wore the same boots when she went to the Syrian border. Only then, she slipped in a knife for security. She didn’t have to use it and she never crossed over to the Syrian side, because of a promise she made to her parents.
“They were like, ‘Please! We’re already terrified you’re going by yourself,’” she recalled. “‘Just at least don’t go into Syria.’ Everyday people would tell me ‘I can get you and in and out and it will be safe’ and it was hard to tell them ‘No, I promised my parents I couldn’t do it.’”
Wareh is planning a return trip to the Syrian border, and this time she will make no such promise to her parents.
Omar Chamma is preparing for an eighth trip, at the end of the month.
LAUSD teacher accused of molesting 20 kids
A former 4th grade teacher at George de La Torre Elementary school was arrested yesterday and charged with 15 counts of "committing lewd acts and continual sexual abuse of numerous students."
The teacher, 57-year old Robert Pimentel, is accused of sexually abusing at least 20 children and one adult at the school over a 7-month period dating from September of 2011 to March of 2012.
The LA Unified School District says they became aware of the sexual abuse allegations in March and began their investigations immediately. Both the principal of the school and Pimentel resigned in April before the district was able to fire them.
KPCC reporter Brian Watt joins the show to talk about the case.
Oakland residents work to help end gun violence
The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut has opened a new national dialogue about guns and gun violence. In some communities people are trying to push the idea that gun violence is a public health emergency. Mina Kim reports from Oakland