Happy Memorial Day! Today we'll look at the cost and limitations of the California health insurance exchange; California bill regulating ocean trash dies in Assembly without a vote; Long Beach Cambodians remember those they lost in the Killing Fields; Finding peace and quiet in South LA can be a challenge, plus much more.
The cost and limitations of the California health insurance exchange
In just 218 days, the new health insurance exchange is available for millions of California. That's the official countdown you'll find at the website of Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange.
Late last week, Covered California announced just which insurers will be participating and how much their plans will cost. Reporter Chad Terhune has been covering this for the LA Times and he joins us now.
Cambodian Americans remember those they lost in the Killing Fields
Many Americans spend Memorial Day visiting the graves of those who died while serving their country, but many Cambodian Americans are remembering loved ones. For the California Report, Doualy Xaykaothao has the story from Long Beach.
Memorial Day for Cambodian veterans took place last month on the 38th anniversary of the rise of the Khmer Rouge. This communist regime took control of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, killing an estimated 2 million men, women and children.
“We try to teach the new generation to remember, to understand, but they are more American,” says 67-year-old Kanno Nuon, a survivor of the Cambodian Genocide.
He escaped to Long Beach three decades ago, but back in Cambodia, under the Khmer Rouge, he worked in a labor camp for three and half years. During this time, he says, he witnessed executions, torture, and he himself nearly starved to death.
“That time [was] very hard for me,” Nuon says. “I still remember everything about my hard time with the communists.”
Bryant Ben, president of The Killing Fields Memorial Center in Long Beach, says many decades have past, but for him, he remembers everything as if it took place yesterday.
“The picture you see here is my oldest brother,” says Ben. “His name is Sarun Ben.”
The brothers were imprisoned in a makeshift Khmer Rouge labor camp, at a temple in the Cambodian countryside. The last time the brothers saw each other, Ben was about to have rice soup for lunch. His brother managed to get close enough to slip him some anti-diarrhea pills.
“He came, sneak behind me, he gave me some medicine,” Ben recalls. “He said this is all, that’s what he has, take care of yourself, he told me ’take care. ’” That was the last time Ben heard from his brother.
Among those on the regime’s hit list were intellectuals, college students like Ben and his brother. During an interrogation, Ben lied about his studies. His brother Sarun did not. The Khmer Rouge killed Sarun, and would also execute Ben’s father, four of his brothers and sisters.
“I really don’t know about the genocide, “says Jenna Koy, a senior at Long Beach Polytechnic High School. “Cause my Mom doesn’t tell me about it, and my grandma don’t want to tell me about it. They probably don’t want us to know how their lives used to be in Cambodia. I just don’t ask them.”
But during an informal teach-in at Long Beach City College, Koy learns why some first-generation refugees have difficulty talking about their past.
Guest speaker Victory Heng explains that he used to tell people the Khmer Rouge killed his father, but for the first time, he admits before an audience of several hundred people that his father actually committed suicide.
“No, my father was not a coward, “Heng says. “My father was a hero, and a preserver of our lives.”
Sarah Pol-Lim, executive director of United Cambodian Community, organized the event, in part because she says studies by the Rand Corporation showed Cambodian refugees still struggle with major depression and an unusually high rate of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The ripple effect of that PTSD doesn’t [just] go to [the] second generation,” Pol-Lim says. “It will go to [the] third, fourth generation, if we never talk about it.”
Another guest speaker, Judy Green of Temple Israel, shares her experience as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. As a child, Green says, she knew little about the Holocaust, but she felt the absence of her grandparents.
“So I asked my Mom, what happened to my grandparents,” Green says. “And my mother’s face turned in such a way that I never asked my mother that question again.”
More than three decades years later, Green’s mother slowly began to talk about the day when her father was taken away by Nazi soldiers, and never seen again.
“It is a long time before you can begin to come close to conversations where there’s great pain,” says Green.
But those conversations, Green adds, start the process of healing a community that has lost so much, and so many.
California bill regulating ocean trash dies in Assembly without a vote
If part of your memorial day plans include a trip to the beach, please make sure not to leave any trash behind. Thousands of pounds of garbage wind up in the Pacific ocean every week, and things often get worse on holidays.
Assembly Bill 521, which would have required manufacturers to be responsible for keeping most common plastic junk out of state waterways, died Friday in the state Assembly without even a vote.
Liz Crosson, executive director of LA Waterkeeper, joins the show with more.
Iraq War 10 years later: Former Iraqi translator makes a new life in Glendale
When Tariq Abu Khumra gets lonely, which happens a lot, sometimes he turns to soft Arabic music to try and feel more at home.
His apartment in Glendale is about 7,600 miles away from his home town of Baghdad.
He's here because, after working with two units of the U.S. military as a translator, it's too dangerous for him to stay in Iraq.
Iraqis angry at his work with the U.S. military marked his car window with a red "X." He survived a car chase.
He was lucky. Among the victims of the war are hundreds of Iraqi translators who died as a result of their work with the U.S. military.
Fearing for his life, Abu Khumra applied for a Special Immigrant Visa to come to the U.S. The process took nearly two years.
RELATED: The Iraq War: Southern California looks back after a decade
"Without doing all of this, I would have been somewhere in the basement of some house in Iraq or just might be killed somewhere," he said, flipping through a massive stack of visa paperwork he keeps in a drawer in his apartment.
Congress originally authorized 25,000 Special Immigrant Visas for Iraqis who worked for the U.S. military. But so far only 22 percent of the visas have been distributed, according to the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.
A long line of Iraqi translators continue to wait for their paperwork to be processed. The project estimates the average wait time for eligible Iraqis and Afghanis is about two years.
“People underestimate just how much these interpreters are on the line of battle,” said Katherine Reisner, National Policy Director for the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. "They’re doing this all for a country they’ve never seen."
For Abu Khumra, life in Southern California means no longer having to fear for his safety. Unlike his life in Iraq, there are no military check points, and his apartment has one lock to bolt instead of three. But when he hears a noise in the middle of the night, Abu Khumra still he has to remind himself where he is — Glendale, not Baghdad.
Harder than they imagined
He's safe. But he's also alone. And, like many immigrants, he's found life in America harder than he imagined.
His one bedroom apartment is modest. In it, he keeps photos from home, his guitar, his Xbox and his most prized possession: An American flag covered with signatures from the troops he accompanied into the streets of Baghdad. He hung it over his bed.
One signature reads, "Tariq, thank you so much for all your dedication and hard work, good luck, Major Smiley." Another: "Tariq best wishes and thanks, Col. Janice King."
Abu Khumra landed a job within a month of arriving in Southern California last summer. But it didn’t pay much and, after a disagreement with his boss, he had to quit.
Now he spends several nights a week taking computer programming classes at New Horizons in Burbank.
His counselor, Jose Gonzalez, said one complication is his college education. Abu Khumra has two bachelors' degrees — from schools in Iraq.
"Because [employers] don't recognize other countries' degrees, they won't know how to validate," Gonzalez said. "How can they get transcripts? How can they break down and give details of exactly what they learned? So I think that’s the obstacle."
Abu Khumra wants to work at Google or find a similar high-paying job. In Iraq, he worked for Microsoft after his job with the U.S. military ended.
"I try to work as hard as I can, but it really gets me exhausted sometimes. I’m getting a lot of white hair," he said with a laugh.
So far, none of his other family members have been able to secure visas to move to the U.S. He worries that his family is still in danger because of his work for the U.S. military. He doesn't know when he'll be able to see them again.
He speaks with his relatives over Skype at least three times a week. They discuss car bombings and other firefights in their Baghdad neighborhood. All of this leaves Abu Khumra with a lot of guilt.
"It’s very difficult to have somebody behind," he said. "I wish nothing was going to happen to them but ... you never know."
Picture This: Photographer David Gilkey on capturing the Iraq War
Along with the thousands of soldiers who deployed to Iraq in 2003 were hundreds of journalists. Almost 800 members of the media embedded with the military during the initial invasion.
The formal practice of officially tying journalists to a particular military unit was new in those days, and it gave the media unprecedented access to the unfolding warfare at the front lines. Photographer David Gilkey was there for the Detroit Free Press.
RELATED: The war in Iraq: A decade later
Gilkey remembers spending countless hours waiting in the the Kuwaiti desert before being whisked across the border in to Iraq. He joined Take Two to share with us the story behind some of his images from the front lines.
Interview Highlights:
On how he had to prepare for a possible chemical attack:
"That was the 800-lb gorilla everybody was afraid of, weapons of mass destruction. They were even afraid that it was going to be launched or mortared — rounds containing Sarin gas or Mustard Gas — before they'd even entered Iraq. So the training really every day was how fast you could deploy that gas mask…It was almost to the point of comedy, trying to get these suits on. It was 2-3 times a day a whistle or a horn would sound and you had to within under a minute try to get the pants, the top and this gas mask on."
On how covering Iraq was much different than other war zones:
"I'd covered wars in the Balkans and other places around the world, and [chemical war] was certainly something that never occurred to you. Also it certainly seemed like a much more awful way of being injured or killed, and I think because we were practicing it every day, that became the routine, obviously somebody was very, very concerned that that was probably going to be the first thing that we had to deal with, some sort of attack involving gas, or who knew? But this gear is next to impossible to put on in under a minute let alone five."
On heading into Iraq embedded with soldiers for the first time:
"You could hear a few gunshots going off and it smelled like war. It had that Cordite smell, because it had just been hit with rockets and mortars. I literally went around the vehicle the wrong way, and the first Sergeant turns and goes 'Hey, the guys went the other way.' So I'm walking off, to catch up with them. I hear 'Hey! Don't forget you signed the waiver!' So a very light moment, but signing that waiver became sort of the running joke. The waiver that basically excuses the government, look you get killed or maimed, we're going to help you off the battlefield to a point, but you signed the waiver and you knew this was dangerous. It's technically called a 'hold harmless agreement.' As serious as everything was that was going on and the fighting and the fact that you were standing in what will be a very historical moment, that lighthearted sort of toss from the guy who's become a very good friend now. 'You signed the waiver,' became the running motto for the next month."
On photographing graphic scenes of dead soldiers:
"When you talk about pictures of dead bodies it becomes even more sensitive when you're talking about dead American soldiers. That's still a very sensitive topic. I think it takes years before pictures of Americans that are killed in action become OK to look at. That said, showing, in this particular case, a dead iraqi solider with a Bradley fighting vehicle behind it, it's important to understand that this is the business of war. War is people get killed, they get horrifically maimed and that is what happens when you prosecute something like this. I think people need to see it, I don't think they need to see it every day, I don't think they need to see things that are completely grotesque...People need to see what the consequences are to an action like this, and it's the fact that people get killed."
On The Lot: What's hot at Cannes, Jerry Lewis, dueling sequels and more
The air kisses got a little steamy in the French Riviera yesterday. The Cannes film festival awarded its top honor to "The Life of Adele," a sexually graphic film about a romance between two women.
Here to tell us more about what's hot at Cannes and more tinsel town news is LA Times reporter Rebecca Keegan.
DJ Kid Koala spins back into the music scene with '12 Bit Blues'
Musician Eric San — better known as DJ Kid Koala — is one of the most influential and well known-members of the scratch DJ scene. San has composed songs with the band The Gorillaz, performed with Jack Johnson, and has performed at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, typically a more traditional venue.
San talks with us about his brand new album “12 Bit Blues” which is a combination of old jazz songs, original music and beats all mixed live.
Interview Highlights:
First can you explain a little about the technique of the scratch DJ?
“If I had to break it down to its most simple form, all scratching is a combination of rubbing the sound back and forth, and cutting the sound on and off with the volume lever essentially. With that combination of things you can create many different rhythms and pitches that is what I have been practicing for the past 20 years. Anyone can do it, the first scratch you learn is the baby scratch. The volume is up and you just rub the record back and forth.”
Are your turntables different than just a normal at home turntable?
“Yes, these are professional directive turntables. They don’t have the belt underneath them they have a very strong magnet and motor so that even if you are scratching and putting a lot of weight on the record you are not slowing down the platter. If someone was trying to do this at home with their normal turn tables it would sound different... but my first maybe year and a half of practicing was off flexi records.”
Where did the scratch DJ scene really come from?
“Grand Wizard Theodore is credited as the originator of the scratch in the 70s, so then he was practicing this back spinning technique so he had his headphones on one ear like we do right now. The story was his mom was calling him for dinner and he didn’t want to lose is place, so he just kept rubbing the record back and forth to keep his place and while he was hearing this he was listening to his mom in one ear and the sound in the other ear. The next show he did he integrated that sound, the crowd went wild, and that was that.”
One of the older songs you have done people will probably recognize, “Moon River,” what made you decide to do that song?
“My mother has always been my number-one fan, but her comprehension of what I do technically or musically soars over her head. At one point a few years ago, all the kids have moved away she said, 'It's your father and my 30th wedding anniversary and we wanna bring the family all together.' So I booked a show, just so someone would fly me to Hawaii, knowing that the whole family would be there. I knew she would be at that show, so I said I’m gonna do something special for her, so I picked “Moon River” because it was her favorite song.”
How do you deal with people who say the song is fine as it, and ask why does this have to happen?
“It doesn’t. I think in terms of my personal education on an instrument it’s sort of the challenge of seeing if I can find a way to play turn tables and in that case finding a way to bend tones and notes on records to follow a chord cycle or to emote something.”
What is special about the limited edition CD cases for your new album “12 Bit Blues?”
“The first round of the album is packaged with a science kit. A cardboard gramophone that you can fold up, you fold up the ampliphone and the base, and it comes with a little four-inch flexi record, all you need to do is get a pin or a needle and use that as the stylus and you basically have a little cardboard gramophone.”
You kick off your tour tonight, what can people expect?
Well the '12 Bit Blues,' the equipment is vintage, a lot of it older than me, I felt that to do the live show instead of going with the high tech light show that would soar over people's head I wanted to think of an old school way to present this, oldest technology I can think of, which was dancing girls and puppets. A kind of vaudeville show, a variety show that sort of I can play some of this music but there is a lot of spectacle around it.”
You can see Eric San, DJ Kid Koala, tonight at the first show of his album tour. The concert is at the Echoplex in Echo Park.
Finding peace and quiet in South LA can be a challenge
South LA has one of the highest population densities in the county, and as more people get squeezed into an urban area, the less room there is to breathe and relax.
Not having a place to escape can sometimes lead to real health problems. KPCC's Jose Martinez reports.
'Heat' examines the effect of heat on humans and the world at large
Writer Bill Streever's new book "Heat: Adventures in the World's Fiery Places," looks at the effect of heat on the human race and on the world at large.
Streever traveled throughout the world to experience the effect of heat in its many forms firsthand. We'll talk to him about the book, and his thoughts on global warming.
A look back at America's first Memorial Day
It’s about as American as apple pie. The official kickoff of the long summer. As American as a cookout with hot dogs and hamburgers.
Almost as American as Independence Day, but where July 4th commemorates our victory over the British, Memorial Day, as it was first observed, remembered the dead of the Civil War. And there were a lot of them to be remembered: upwards of 600,000.
Charles McGuigan has the story of the first Memorial Day.
Beer brewers team up for Homefront IPA, benefitting military families
This past weekend saw the release of Homefront IPA , a new ale made by nine different microbreweries across the country. All proceeds go to Operation Homefront, a non-profit that provides emergency financial help to military families.
As an India Pale Ale, this brew would pair nicely with Indian curries, BBQ and this particular IPA might go down nicely while watching today's game between the Dodgers and the Angels.
Here to explain is Kris Ketcham, brewing manager Stone Brewing in San Diego, which is making the beer.
Joe Mantegna on bringing 'Glengarry Glen Ross' to the stage
Tonight at UCLA's James Bridges theatre, Joe Mantegna and Richard Dreyfus will take to the stage in a stripped-down production of David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross," by LA Theatre Works
The play is about four Chicago real estate agents willing to lie, cheat, bribe, and steal. They'll do just about anything to close a deal.
Actor Joe Mantegna knows the material well. He won a Tony for his 1984 Broadway performance of the "Glengarry Glen Ross" character Ricky Roma. During a break, Alex had the chance to sit down with Mantegna and ask him what he loves about playing this sleazy, smooth-talking salesman.
Performances run May 16-19 at UCLA's James Bridges Theatre. The production is by LA Theatre Works, and find out how to attend here.