How can the Orlando shooting alter the conversation around gun control in the election? Islam and the LGBT community, Angelenos react to Orlando events.
How the Orlando shooting will alter the conversation around gun control in the 2016 election
The shooting in Orlando raises, once again, the question of gun control.
The tragic massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, is the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. In addition, this attack on the LGBT community is unprecedented.
For a closer look at the impact of this shooting, and how it could alter the conversation around gun control in the 2016 election, Adam Winkler spoke with Take Two's A Martinez. He's a professor at UCLA's school of law and the author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America".
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
On the Lot: a sequel wins the box office, a visit to Skywalker Ranch and celebrating composer John Williams
Every week we talk about the business of Hollywood with
, entertainment reporter for the LA Times.
Last week we talked about the state of sequels in Hollywood. This week 'Conjuring 2' won the box office, and in a summer of disappointing sequels, one with very high expectations opens on Friday -- 'Finding Dory:
Recently Rebecca Keegan went up to the Skywalker Ranch as director Andrew Stanton was putting the finishing touches on the Pixar film, and she found out why he took so long (13 years) to follow up 'Finding Nemo.'
And the foreign box office is more important to Hollywood every day. But the fate of a particular movie this weekend shows just how differently movies can perform in the US vs abroad.
'Warcraft,' which bombed here in the US, set a record in China this weekend:
And finally we talked about legendary composer John Williams. And how, for the first time in its 44 year history, the American Film Institute gave Williams its coveted lifetime achievement award.
School for hard knocks: learning the basics of stunt driving
At Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond, Calif. race cars speed up and down a backdrop of barren desert.
Tumbleweeds speed by too.
In the back of all this hustle, is a separate track filled with old Chevy Caprices – each a different color – burning rubber on the track.
Veteran stuntman Rick Seaman is hollering into a walkie talkie.
"Show me the money, show me the money. More on that juice earlier, keep that back end from coming around."
Seaman is teaching his students to slide through a ninety degree turn to a full stop. They know if they did it wrong when they hit the orange cones. And they do.
Seaman has been doing stunts for half a century, making his debut in a low-budget crime drama, Fireball Jungle. He went on to show off his skills in movies like Repo Man, The Naked Gun, and 21 Jump Street
And for 20 years, Seaman has been teaching others the basics of skidding, turning and generally bending a car to your will. Some come with hopes of driving in movies, others are just civilians looking for some fun. Pretty much anyone with three grand can learn to feather the e-brake, create a juicy lift, and ride the slide.
Gloria O’Brien is one of Seaman's instructors. She worked as a stunt woman from 1994 to 2011. She says 20 years ago, when she started, the Hollywood landscape was different for women and minorities.
"Definitely, it's way better now then it used to be," she says. I had a friend of mine tell me I didn't have the right to do stunts because I had children."
Along with the excitement, there's the pay, and it can be pretty good. About $900 per day. That can mean fifty-thousand per film if a person works a 12-week shoot.
Of course, it means risking life and limb, but for folks like Rick Seamans and Gloria O'Brian, and for many of their students, the money to be earned is just gravy. The real reason they do stunts is because, for them, there's no better way to have fun.
What can the US do to prevent homegrown terror?
Investigators today are still working to determine what led to the shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning.
FBI Director James Comey held a press conference where he said it doesn't appear that the attacks were planned by a terrorist group and that the gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, had "strong indications of radicalization."
Mateen pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a call to 911 during the shooting, but President Obama said today there's no clear evidence that Mateen was directed by ISIS to conduct the attack.
The President added that it appears Mateen was inspired by extremist information he found online, and that the shooting he carried out was a case of "homegrown extremism."
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Tom Sanderson, Senior Fellow and Director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Clinton, Trump share plans for combatting homegrown extremism
Speaking from the White House just hours after the deadly attack in Orlando, President Obama delivered a message of unity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArkIHIyAkdY
But with just seven months left in his presidency, it's likely that any changes to gun laws and a long-term plan for combatting homegrown extremism will fall on the lap of his successor.
Monday morning, presumptive presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump shared their views on homegrown extremism on national television.
For a deeper look at how the presumptive presidential nominees plan to combat terror at home and abroad, Take Two spoke to Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. Zelizer is also the author of the book, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress and the Battle for the Great Society."
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
LA developing national model to help LGBT foster kids
Juana Zacharias is 18, and she's like other teenage girls her age.
She loves make-up, has a closet overflowing with cute clothes and talks about how to date a Latina like her ("Just give us the password to your phone and a bag of hot Cheetos, we’ll be totally good.")
But Juana isn't like most girls – she’s trans. She is also a foster child who lives at a group home in Oxnard with five other kids.
She's one of over 400,000 foster children in America. In Los Angeles, 20 percent of those kids identify as LGBT according to UCLA – which is double the rate of LGBT kids outside the foster care system.
Juana spent the last seven years in the system, herself, after her father passed away and her mother rejected her, moving from group home to group home.
"My first group home I didn’t identify as a transgender because I was scared," she says. "All my girl clothes? I kind of made them into guy clothes."
Experts say it would be better if foster children like Juana lived with foster parents.
"You need to go home to Thanksgiving. You need somebody to take you to the dentist or the airport," says foster care expert Khush Cooper.
But kids like Juana had problems finding parents – sometimes even group homes – who are accepting.
"The probation officers even said to me it’s hard to find a placement for you because you’re transgender. A lot of people don’t want transgenders," says Juana.
Los Angeles has been testing out ways to change that, but the future of those programs is uncertain.
What social workers don't know about LGBT kids
California lawmakers passed a law in 2012 that requires providers and caregivers to complete training in LGBT cultural competency.
Locally, L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl spearheaded a year-long effort to examine what workers could do better, too.
"We are never going to be perfect about it. Somebody is always going to say something stupid," she says, noting that county workers can let their personal views about LGBT people interfere with their work. "It’s a very large workforce and we do everything we can to tell them professional, equality, fairness."
One of the things that workers should be doing is noting whether a foster child identifies as LGBT.
There’s even a line for it on one piece of paper work during the intake and placement for a child: form 709 for the L.A. Department of Children and Family Services. In an ideal world, LGBT kids are placed with parents who say they’re accepting.
But it's not frequently filled out.
"Lots of times, social workers don’t know so they leave it blank or think they already know so they’ll just fill it in," says Sari Grant with DCFS.
Grant believes it's not out of malicious carelessness, however, but because workers may feel uncomfortable asking a young child if they are gay or transgender. It would also be inappropriate to guess a child's identity based on mannerisms.
There is no guarantee that a child would feel comfortable sharing this information with a social worker, either.
Developing models and tactics for employees could be important and helpful.
"You’ve got to learn things like not say, 'So, do you have a girlfriend?'" says Grant. "Instead say, 'So are you seeing anyone you might be interested in?'"
"This is something we never even thought about very often."
Even if a social worker knows a kid is LGBT, the child might not be matched with accepting foster parents; there is a critical shortage of foster parents in L.A. County.
"If we have a kid, we’re lucky we have a placement," says Grant, "so it might not be the ideal placement."
That's where teaching existing foster parents and workers out there come in.
"The lack of knowledge is why these kids are not getting homed. People are afraid of what they don’t know," says foster and adoptive mother Lana Freeman.
Her view on LGBT kids changed over 20 years ago.
"I adopted a child myself – a baby – and he grew up gay," she says. "I’m a preacher's kid. I struggled. I really struggled."
Freeman spent time researching how to best raise and support her son – it's not very different than raising other children, she says – and now works with National Foster Parent Association to help educate others.
But Los Angeles is the first county in the nation to develop an official model on teaching the basics of LGBT children.
It was possible through a $13.3 million grant to the Los Angeles LGBT Center from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Center created the RISE program, in which trainers address groups of workers and prospective parents.
One exercise, for example, teaches how a child can feel alone and vulnerable when coming out. Instructors will also explain that there's a disproportionate rate of suicide and depression among LGBT children.
"The goal is to find the common value that will help them look at their child in a different way," says Sarah Vitorino who conducts RISE trainings.
The minimum state-required training per year is just 60 minutes, however, and passing isn't a requirement to be certified either – just attendance.
"The backseat is the most popular seat for the most resistant people," says Vitorino. "They’ll kind of have their arms folded and kind of refuse to participate."
The federal funds for these training sessions has also run despite an increasing demand among private and local agencies to train staff and parents.
But foster care experts agree that the Los Angeles effort could be a model for the nation if the programs continue.
"If you can make your system hospitable for a 14-year-old male-to-female African-American transgender who’s got mental health issues, you can make your system hospitable to anyone," says consultant Khush Cooper.
Carson group seeks birthright citizenship for American Samoans
American Samoa is unique among U.S. territories — people born there are not automatically granted U.S. citizenship. A group in Carson, which is home to some 60,000 Samoans, has been pushing to correct what they see as a historic wrong.
The Samoan Federation of America has asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn a law from the early 1900s that denies American Samoans birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court turned them down.
David Savage, who covers the Supreme Court for the L.A. Times, has been watching the case and joined the show to discuss what's going on.
Interview Highlights
Why are the rights of American Samoans different from other U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and Guam?
Well this is a long history, it goes back about a century. In the late 1800s after ... the Spanish-American War, U.S. took control of the Philippines and a series of new territories. The question immediately arose: 'OK, what about the people in these new territories? Do they have full constitutional rights, or something less?" And essentially the Supreme court said in a series of cases that they do not have full rights and it's sort of up to Congress to decide, and somewhere along the line, most, Congress has granted full citizenship to people in Puerto Rico, to people in Guam, but American Samoa was sort of left out.
Why were the U.S. and the American Samoan government against this appeal to overturn the status of Samoans?
Well, I think for two different reasons. The solicitor general's office, part of the Obama administration, seemed to basically take the view and the briefs that for a very long time ... it's been sort of understood that congress can set different rules for people in the territories, and they basically said to the court, "You ought to stay out of this, leave it up to Congress. Congress could change this if it wants to, so just stand aside." Now, the Samoan government made a somewhat different argument, same bottom line — they said that "the people of Samoa are happy with this situation. We elect our own representatives on Samoa and we have a distinct national culture."
There is a sizeable American Samoan community here in Southern California. Are you hearing anything from them?
There are a number of people in Southern California who were very anxious for the court to take this... they did lose in two lower courts — a federal judge ruled against them, the court of appeals in Washington basically said we should leave this to Congress. They were hoping all along the Supreme Court would be ready to finally take up the question and decide, "Does the Constitution give citizenship to every person born on American soil," but as I say, unfortunately, it may have arrived at just the wrong time for the court to take up that kind of question.
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
This post has been updated.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the Philippines. KPCC regrets the error.