S. Korean president Park Geun-Hye meets with Brown, Villaraigosa; Why are there so few Asian Americans in LA politics?; Are there really 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US?; Lawmakers and unions speak out against Koch brothers' interest in LA Times; Picture This: Donna DeCesare gets inside the world of Central American gangs; 405 Freeway construction running overbudget, behind schedule, plus much more.
S. Korean president Park Geun-Hye meets with Brown, Villaraigosa
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye is visiting the US for five days. Today she is scheduled to meet with California Governor Jerry Brown and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at the Mayor's residence in Hancock Park.
For more on President Park's visit, we're joined now by Grace Yoo, executive director of the Korean American Coalition.
Why are there so few Asian Americans in LA politics?
When L.A. voters go to the polls later this month, they could be making history. That's because, if he's elected, candidate John Choi could be the first Asian-American elected to the city council in 20 years. But even then, he'd only be the second ever to hold a seat on the council.
In a city where 1 in 8 people are Asian-American, why is it hard for them to have a permanent place at LA's political table?
"Our communities are very geographically dispersed," says An Le, director of community engagement at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. "We don't make up enough of a voting bloc in one council district to have one dominant Asian-American candidate that can win a race in the city."
Michael Woo, however, became the first and only Asian-American to overcome that barrier. He served on the council from 1985 to 1993, and his advice to future politicians is to follow his lead: rely on the diversity of your district.
"An Asian-American candidate who wouldn't have the benefit of the majority ethnic constituency in the district at least has a better chance in an area where there is no single ethnic group that dominates the local politics."
For more direction on how to gain more seats, Asians might want to look at Latinos in LA. It took them generations to attain and retain local power.
Edward Roybal was the first and only Latino on the council from the 1950s to 1964. Then, it took another two decades for another Latino to get back on: Richard Alatorre in 1985.
It wasn't until the 1990s that Latinos found a consistent place in city hall, says Lisa Garcia Bedolla, professor at UC Berkeley and author of Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles.
"Part of it was simple demographics. You had huge population growth from 1970 forward," says Bedolla. That includes the number of Latinos immigrants becoming naturalized, the increasing number of their children reaching the voting age, and challenges to gerrymandering which kept communities split up by district lines.
These are all challenges for Asian-Americans to consider, says Le, but there's the problem that, "we're still new at this."
For example, to get out the vote during the last election, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center organized a 13 language phone bank. And even then, they needed to be sensitive about the historical tension between the communities, such as the Japanese and Koreans.
"We don't have enough of a population to be successful in a race like [Council District 13]," says Le, "unless you can build a multi-racial coalition that is diverse but have shared values and can win an election."
EVENT: Tonight, we'll take a closer look at how Latinos and Asians are gaining ground, what priorities unite or divide them, and the impact Asian and Latino Southlanders may have on the regional politics scene.
It's free tonight at 7:30p at the Crawford Family Forum. RSVP HERE.
Lawmakers and unions speak out against Koch brothers' interest in LA Times
Imagine that the Los Angeles Times is owned by the famously wealthy, and very conservative, Koch brothers. Rumors of their interest in buying not just the Times, but the parent Tribune Company, have been roiling for weeks.
Now, a coalition of labor groups has sent a letter to the current owners, asking it not to sell the newspaper company to the Kochs, and some prominent state lawmakers are also warning it would be a mistake.
Andrew Beaujon covers media for Poynter Online. He joins the show with more on what a possible sale to the Koch brothers would mean to southern California's largest newspaper.
Are there really 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US?
Eleven million. That's the estimated number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, and its become the most-cited statistic in the immigration reform debate. But how did we even arrive at that figure, and is it even accurate?
From the Fronteras Desk, Adrian Florido took a closer look.
Picture This: Donna DeCesare gets inside the world of Central American gangs
Warning: Some images are graphic in nature.
Central American immigrants flooded into the United States throughout the 1980s and '90s after fleeing brutal civil wars. Though the States provided a safe haven from the systematic violence of places like El Salvador and Guatemala, many of these new Americans carried with them the trauma of the violence they witnessed back home.
Award-winning photojournalist Donna DeCesare spent years traveling to Central America — El Salvador in particular — to capture the lives of those affected by civil war. She witnessed the aftermath of a government firing squad enforcing a curfew, the execution of Jesuit priests and images of young children unfazed by the violence around them.
RELATED: KPCC's AudioVision has more photographs from Donna DeCesare
Later, DeCesare focused her lens on Los Angeles, a city where many Central American immigrants settled after fleeing war, and found that the scars of their youth translated into their new lives as Americans. These conflicts and their aftermath are the subject of DeCesare's new book, "Unsettled."
DeCesare joined the show to tell us how her work took her from the war zones of Central America, to the ganglands of Los Angeles, starting with her first trip to El Salvador in 1987.
Interview Highlights:
On why she decided to focus on El Salvador:
"I had covered conflicts in Northern Ireland, I'm part Irish, i'm Italian. I was doing a story for a newspaper in Ireland and met some Salvadoran refugees who were living in sanctuary in Berkeley, California in 1984. That's what got me really interested in El Salvador. I thought, I really should go there."
On the image of Esperanza, the 3-year-old with a pet pigeon (Image 1):
"This was a moment that occurred when I was talking to her grandmother. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the child was jumping on the bed. The door they lived in a very tiny apartment in Watts, and the light was flooding in and I thought I saw out of the corner of my eye a gun on the bed. That alarmed me. She was jumping, and as she went down on the bed the gun got closer to her from that movement and then she grabbed the pigeon that was in their house. She told me afterward that the pigeon was named Giovanni for her uncle who was paralyzed in a drive-by shooting. But she also asked me if I wanted to see the other guns. And I said no."
On the image of the young girl and the man killed for violating curfew (Image 2):
"That was the morning after and that man, according to the people who I had talked to, had been killed by a military death squad the night before. That little child standing there looking down the street, I think what got me most about it was the expression on her face, there's a kind of wary look on her face. Not a shocked look, so she's already seen a lot of death, so that's first of all what that tells me, but that she's more concerned about what's happening out of the frame than what's actually in front of her. It makes you feel that there's a sense of danger still. That she's concerned about what else might happen."
On the most shocking thing about photographing child soldiers:
"That there were child soldiers in the insurgency wasn't so shocking, children were orphaned and often if their parents were killed by the army, the only family they would have were the guerillas. To see children involved was tragic, but it wasn't surprising to me as to see children involved in the army. These were young boys who hadn't joined voluntarily, they'd been taken off of buses. One child came up to me and told me that his mother must be worried about him because he never came home from visiting his grandmother."
On Frankin Torres, an LA gang member from El Salvador:
"Franklin grew up in a very, very conflicted area of El Salvador, and his mother decided for his safety that they should leave. So they went to Los Angeles, and when he got here, he said when he went to school he got made fun of, he came to school in a white shirt, tie, his mom dressed him up the way kids in El Salvador dressed in their very best. The kids at school made fun of him. He was living in a neighborhood where gangs were very prevalent and he ended up joining the 18th Street Gang."
On how young Salvadoran immigrants in LA are carrying the scars of war:
"Many of the children who came here witnessed human rights abuses, some of them saw their own parents killed in front of them, sometimes they had histories of being involved as child soldiers as well. So that traumatic legacy is something that people carry with them. Anyone who experiences war carries the impact of that for the rest of their lives, but the kids didn't have anyone they could talk to about this stuff, and most of the parents didn't want to talk about it. So it was among themselves, the gang members together, that was the place where it was safe to talk about their experiences to each other. Many of the kids that I met when I started doing this work were that first generation who had experiences of tremendous childhood trauma."
405 Freeway construction running overbudget, behind schedule
For most Angelenos who commute, snarled traffic is a daily reality. For Westsiders, construction work on the 405 Freeway has made things especially gnarly for several years now.
The freeway work was supposed to be done, but now it looks like brake lights ahead for a good while to come. The LA Times is reporting this morning that the project to widen the freeway is running at least a year behind schedule. The delays are costing big money, and it's not clear who is going to pay for them.
LA Times reporter
wrote the story, and she joins us now.
How does the latest 'Great Gatsby' film compare to the classic novel?
Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel "The Great Gatsby" hits theaters on Friday. It's at least the fourth screen version of the classic book, and our friend David Kipen of the lending library Libros Schmibros was lucky enough to catch it last night.
City Hall Pass: Money in the mayoral election, District 13 debate and more
KPCC's political team Frank Stoltze and Alice Walton join the show for a regular roundup of the latest political news.
Former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado blasts Gov. Brown's prison policy
Yesterday, in Sacramento, former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado launched a campaign to overturn Governor Brown's prison policy. For more on that and some interesting revelations about campaign funding here in California, we're joined by John Myers, political editor at ABC News 10 in Sacramento.
In 'Aroused,' porn stars reveal the intimate details of their off-screen lives
Photographer Deborah Anderson has made a name for herself shooting pictures of celebrities such as Elton John, George Clooney, Cindy Crawford and the singer Pink. But recently she turned her lens to stars of a different sort: adult film performers.
While the 16 women she shot for this project were having their hair and make-up done, Anderson spoke with them about how they got into porn and the joys and challenges of their work. Those interviews can be seen in the new documentary, "Aroused."
Deborah Anderson joined us to talk about her project and what surprised her most about these women.
Interview Highlights:
On what surprised her most about the women she shot:
"These women are like you and, I but they've chosen a path that you and I possibly would not do and they have no regrets…and the continual thread was the loving of their jobs. They don't have a pimp, they don't have the seedy dark alleys where they make these films, they have agents they're reputable, and there all so tiny. A lot of the new girls, they haven't had any augmentations to their bodies, the natural look is very much in. Gone are the days really with fake lips and the big boobs, and the sort of exaggeration of the woman."
On the health risks in the porn industry:
"One of the girls, Teagan Presley said, 'How many times have you gone into a bar and you met somebody that you liked, and you kissed them, and possibly took them home and had a one night stand, and you didn't use a condom? How dangerous is that? At least we as a group of performers know who we're having sex with and we know that we've all been tested, so we feel that in some way possibly we're promoting safer sex, because we're taking care of our bodies.'"
On what surprised her from her interview with adult film actress agent Fran Amador:
"Everybody has a viewpoint, she sees it from where she's standing because she's been around it for so many years. She even says in the movie that she feels bad she doesn't agree with these woman making money having sex on camera, then who is she to be supporting that industry? And another veteran said to her 'well if you weren't doing it someone else would be and they probably wouldn't care as much.'"
On photographing the actresses naked:
"I thought it would be easy, I love to shoot nudes, but these girls are so used to having their peacock feathers out that trying to have them come inward and touch upon their sensuality and not their sexuality was the challenge."
On the double standard of looking down on porn stars:
"Well you know most people watching porn and they want to be entertained by porn, may be educated by porn and then they won't really want to talk about it at the dinner table, they don't really want to mention that they know these girls. I realized this in having many a dinner prior to shooting in telling people friends colleagues and such that I was doing this project there was so much negativity with women. It was just an interesting take to get these girls to express themselves knowing that they're telling me straight, and I don't think that we should look at any of these women and judge the choices they make just because they're doing something we wouldn't do. I allow myself to express that maybe it's time to stop pointing the finger and take a look at ourselves."
Cabin where Christopher Dorner died becomes a 'must see' attraction, memorial
The manhunt for ex-LAPD cop Christopher Dorner ended three months ago. But many issues remain unresolved. We've now learned who shares the $one-million reward, but what will happen to the cabin near Big Bear where Dorner died during a confrontation with police?
RELATED: LAPD manhunt: The search for alleged cop killer Christopher Dorner
KPCC's Erika Aguilar discovered it's turned into an unofficial memorial.
The delicate task of tracking the elusive California mountain lion
Now for the final installment of our series on wild animals in Los Angeles. First, reporter Jed Kim examined how we’re dealing with a growing coyote population. Then, he took a look at what that growth means for the age-old struggle between coyotes and roadrunners. Today we follow researchers as they attempt to catch and examine an elusive mountain lion.
They’re known by many names: cougar, puma, panther. Whatever you call them, there’s no bigger cat in California than the mountain lion. But being the top predator is no guarantee of success, especially as the human population grows.
RELATED: Check out KPCC's AudioVision blog for more photos of this story
Studies have shown that humans are the main cause of death for Southern California’s mountain lions. Researchers are tracking the lions to see how we can change that, but first they need to catch them.
Carole Bell is the manager of the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve. Right now, she’s deep in the woods of the reserve, slicing into the stomach of a deer to prepare a meal for a mountain lion. Bell and other researchers set the roadkill deer out yesterday, and last night, trail cameras showed a hungry lion had taken the bait. Now, they’re cutting open what’s left to get to the really tasty bits.
"This is going to entice them inside the trap. We want it to look good," said Bell.
She and the other researchers are whispering, because they know that mountain lions tend to stay near their kills. They don’t want to scare one away while they’re setting up the trap.
It’s mountain lion season for UC Davis’s Wildlife Health Center. Over the next couple months, scientists will be tagging and putting GPS collars on as many of Southern California’s wild cougars as they can. Bell works for the Nature Conservancy, which is a partner on the study. The field lead is Winston Vickers, a veterinarian with the Wildlife Health Center. He’s helped perfect this method of capture.
"So it seems to generally work. We’ll see. Since this individual has been caught before, she may decide she doesn’t want to do that again. But we’ll see," said Vickers.
Vickers checks every part of the setup. He climbs in to see if he can feel the bars. He trips the door to see that it’s working. Finally, he’s satisfied.
"It’s looking good. They’ve done a very good job," said Bell.
Today, they’re after a female cougar that they’ve caught before – mountain lion F-95. She’s already got a GPS collar on her, but it’s set to fall off soon, and they need to replace it. The collars provide critical data on lion movement and behavior, but GPS collars can only tell so much. Captures are rare chances for hands-on checkups, and for F-95 that’s especially important, because she has a kink in her tail. Bell pulls up pictures of it from field cameras.
"See her tail? It’s definitely not that sweeping tail of a regular, normal mountain lion. It does have a defect in it," said Bell.
That defect may have been caused by an injury, or it may be a sign of something worse; Tail kinks are hallmarks of inbreeding. Among other things, the Wildlife Health Center is studying the genetic health of this mountain lion population, which is effectively separated from other populations by I-15 and other highways.
“What we know is they are more restricted genetically – there’s less diversity in this population than in other mountain populations nearby," said Vickers.
They don’t know what F-95’s tail means yet, so they want to get a closer look at her. The team keeps tabs on the trap with a handheld receiver that’ll notify them once it’s sprung. They check the signal every 10 to 15 minutes over several hours. There are a couple near misses, but finally, at midnight, a small group heads in to check whether she’s actually in the cage.
It’s close to 1 a.m., and the woods are now pitch black. The only light comes from headlamps the researchers are wearing. As we make the final climb to the site, Vickers turns around and gives us the thumbs up. She’s in the cage. He pulls out his phone to share the good news with the others.
It takes about half an hour to get back and set up the staging area. It’s a large tarp with medical equipment and tools holding down its edges. When they’re ready, Vickers loads sedative into a syringe at the end of a long jab pole, and then, two of them head towards the cage. F-95 has been calm up until this point.
But as they approach her, she begins to lose her cool. Vickers's companion acts as a distraction while he eases up from behind. He slides the pole in between the bars, and then jabs.
The sedative acts quickly, and she’s down within a few minutes. They carry her over to the staging area, where Vickers sets a timer. They know they have to be done and away from her within an hour. It’s a flurry of activity: some team members measure her tail and limbs while others monitor her vitals. Finally, they switch out her GPS collar.
She looks healthy and strong, which is great, but it becomes a little problematic. She’s coming back too quickly, and they still have to weigh her. They decide it’s better to call it rather than give her more sedative since they've gotten most of what they need.
They heft her onto the carry tarp and walk her out a couple hundred yards away.
Everyone else heads back to start packing up. Vickers stands alone, watching her from a distance. He’s making sure she comes through ok – that she wakes up and that nothing attacks her while she’s still out of it. Over the next year, they’ll use satellites, computers and trail cameras to keep track of her. For now, he’s using his own eyes.
Teen app developer helps TV fanatics avoid spoilers
West Coasters are always in danger of seeing spoilers of their favorite TV shows on Twitter, but a new app, Twivo, allows you to block tweets about your favorite shows until you're ready to watch them.
What's even more of a revelation is the app's developer: 17-year-old Jen Lamere of Nashua, NH.
Lamere recently won a Boston hackathon that she entered with Twivo. She has already been approached by tech company Furious Minds with offers to help her develop and distribute the app.
Dinner Party Download: Pizza Compass, defensive nannies and Captain Blood
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party podcast and radio show.
On tap this week:
When you really need to located the nearest pizza joint
The Pizza Compass app, available now, uses a slice of pizza to point you in the direction of the nearest spot to grab a slice.
UK nannies being trained in the arts of stunt driving, self-defense
Nannies for the rich and famous are undergoing training in defensive driving techniques and self-defense to help fend off potential paparazzi and kidnappers.
History: The day Captain Blood tried to steal the Crown jewels
Amazingly, Blood was pardoned either because he was so damned charming, or because he was actually in cahoots with the King — who planned to pay off his debts with the jewels. He became a folk hero and was so notorious as a trickster that when he died people demanded the corpse be exhumed to prove he was dead.