What Black Lives Matter movement means in Los Angeles, how Millennials are altering the parenting landscape, the state of teens and distracted driving.
The Black Lives Matter movement in Los Angeles
It's been a contentious week for L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.
He was confronted by an angry group of protesters Monday evening during a town hall meeting at the Holman United Methodist Church in South Los Angeles. Members of the group Black Lives Matter stood up and turned their backs on the mayor as he spoke to hundreds of attendees.
Activists with the Black Lives Matter movement in Los Angeles say they're doing what it takes to bring attention to the challenges facing the city's communities of color, particularly in South Los Angeles.
Melina Abdullah is an organizer for the Black Lives Matter movement and the chair of Pan-African Studies at Cal State L.A. She was at Monday's town hall meeting. Abdullah joined the show to explain what activists wanted from the mayor.
Alex Cohen: I know that there a number of things that you’ve been asking for, but at the top of the list -- as you were having the demonstration there at the church -- what specifically was the message you most wanted Mayor Garcetti to hear?
Melina Abdullah: Well what we began with is that we wanted this to be a true dialogue and engagement with the community, rather than — kind of — a stump speech made to the community, and so that is what we were pushing for there. We negotiated a community-driven town hall back in July, but that’s not what we got on Monday night.
Alex Cohen: Melina, with all due respect, I’ve talked to plenty of people who happen to be black and who share many of your frustrations. They’re not appointees of the mayor, but they have real concerns about the way you’re going about this. Do you have any concerns that -- in trying to mobilize -- that you may be creating riffs and fractures within L.A.’s black population?
Melina Abdullah: Well I think one of the things that you should note — and I definitely invite you to come next time — is that there were no previous risks and fractures. These risks and fractures are being exacerbated by the mayor, who benefits from the black community being divided. More than two-thirds of the audience — and if you look at the raw footage, it can be verified — were actually supportive of what happened, were actually engaged at some point with what happened. And so it’s really important that we understand that.
Alex Cohen: We’ve been talking mostly about the mayor, but as you’ve mentioned, you have very serious concerns about what’s happening with the LAPD, and I agree, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be worked through, but we should also note that the LAPD has added more foot patrols in the wake of the Ezell Ford shooting, there are a number of community policing efforts underway in places like Watts. Do you see anything positive here? Is LAPD getting anything right?
Melina Abdullah: Well when we think about the police commission’s attempt to drown out and shut out dissenters, I think that it shows that it’s not moving in the right direction. When we think about the recent killing of a 30-year-old mother of two, Redel Jones, who was shot — by witness accounts — in the back, and nothing has even been said about her killing, I don’t think we’re moving in the right direction. When we think about the fact that 18 folks thus far and this year have been killed by LAPD, I don’t think we’re moving in the right direction. And so what we wanna encourage LAPD to do — and for Mayor Garcetti to lead — is a reimagining of public safety … We know what works is intervention, prevention and community resources, and so we’d love for our city to move in that direction.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
NOTE: During the interview, Alex Cohen stated that Black Lives Matter activists grabbed Mayor Eric Garcetti’s microphone during the Monday town hall meeting. There is a dispute about this detail, and we are awaiting confirmation from the mayor's office.
Millennials have been helicoptered and over-scheduled. How will they parent their kids?
In this day and age where every joyous moment of life must be shared with the public via the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, some couples are now going to extraordinary lengths to tell the world they're expecting.
Parents today, it seems, are taking the whole parenting game up a level. That's one of the takeaways of a recent piece in TIME titled "Help! My Parents are Millennials!"
Katy Steinmetz, San Francisco bureau chief for TIME, joined Take Two to talk about what sets the millennial parenting style apart.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
Who are we talking about when we say "millennials"?
Generations are always squidgy things in terms of a start and a stop date. For a long time, we've been looking at them in 20 year spans, and so the easiest dates for millennials are born around 1980 to 2000. But there's some economists that will argue that the millennial generation, or this cohort, starts as far back as '76 and goes as late as 2003 or 2004. And there are others who argue that because generations historically have been defined so much by how technology has changed, and because technology is changing so much faster, that we should in fact look at the millennial generation as one cohort born in the 80s and a totally separate one born in the 90s. But to be inclusive, for our piece, we interviewed parents who were born in the very late 70s to the 90s.
How many millennial parents are there?
At this point, we know that millennials represent more than a quarter of the population in America, that's more than 80 million people. And at least 22 million of them, that's about a quarter, are parents.
What stood out to you from the millennial parents you spoke with?
One thing that I heard again and again was 'What works for my family might not be what works for your family.' It's very much this open-minded, tolerant idea about parenting that comes, I think in part, because millennials more than other generations have fewer ideas about what a family has to look like. This is not "Father Knows Best," 2.5 kids kind of generation. This is blended families, this is single moms, this is single dads by choice, this is stay at home dads. There is a huge movement to say, "OK we're open to anything." And then you give them the Internet, which has unprecedented levels of information and opinions and experts on it, and so that can make for a very overwhelming dynamic.
Where do you see this going in the future?
This generation of kids growing up now is going to be the most ethnically diverse generation we've ever had. They will have, I believe, even fewer expectations about the role that the mom or dad has to play, and so I think inevitably they're going to carry with them this millennial spirit of being a little more liberal probably, open-minded, tolerant, seeing self-expression and having a unique identity as the highest possible values.
To hear the full interview, click the blue player above.
State of Affairs: Short-term rentals, 'sanctuary cities,' and term limits
On this week's State of Affairs, city-by-city efforts to regulate short-term rentals, the 'sanctuary city' controversy, and a possibly very long term for California's new assembly speaker.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Communication at USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy
- Scott Shafer, Senior Editor for KQED's California Politics and Government Desk
To combat human trafficking, Sheriff shifts tactics
L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell announced his department will no longer arrest children on prostitution charges.
In a letter to his staff, he wrote: "We must remember that children cannot consent to sex under any circumstance."
McDonnell said instead, it's time these children are referred to as victims and survivors of rape.
"The use of inappropriate terminology, whether intentional or inadvertent, can foster distrust, anger, and resentment, and can also harm those whom we are committed to protect," McDonnell said in the statement.
Capt. Merrill Landenhein, head of the county's newly formed human trafficking bureau, tells Take Two's Alex Cohen that in the past a child was detained and taken into sheriff custody.
Now, Landenhein says, the county will use a first responder protocol which will provide victims with an advocate to help ensure mental and physical health, and housing.
"So when we contact a victim, we treat them as a victim of rape," he says.
The new policy also calls for the Sheriff's department to shift victims from jails to foster care.
But the Los Angeles Times reports that Philip Browning, Department of Children and Family Services Director, said his department is not fully prepared to house and treat victims of child sex trafficking.
Writer Abi Morgan on the women who inspired 'Suffragette'
The new film "Suffragette" is set in Great Britain in 1912 when women known as "suffragettes" campaigned for the right to vote.
Sometimes that campaign turned violent, as demonstrators tried to make their demands heard. Protestors were frequently jailed and when they refused to eat, they suffered brutal force feedings behind bars.
The Suffragette movement has rarely been depicted in film, beyond one tune sang by the mother character in "Mary Poppins," which is partly what inspired Abi Morgan to write the film.
As far as who inspired the characters themselves, some are based on real-life historical figures, but others, like the main character Maude (played by Carey Mulligan) are fictional composites.
Morgan says that of all the research she did, what she found most inspiring were the accounts of a group of working class women who worked in a laundry.
"So many of the things they talked about, the working conditions, the sexual violence and abuse at home and at work, custodial rights over their children, equal pay, felt [like] very 21st Century issues," Morgan says. "And so I found myself drawn more and more towards looking at the foot soldiers and using historical events really as the kind of markers, and sort of colliding fact with fiction."
To hear the full interview, click the blue player above.
Don Mattingly is out as Dodgers' manager
After five years, Don Mattingly is out as the manager of the Dodgers.
While the team and Mattingly have yet to confirm the news, several media outlets are already reporting it's a done deal.
For a look at why and who could replace him, ESPN reporter Mark Saxon joins Take Two.
Update 12:40 p.m.: Mattingly confirmed in a statement that he has parted ways with the team. Read the full story here.
The Wheel Thing: How often does distracted driving endanger your life?
In just one hour observers witnessed 12,000 cases of distracted driving at school intersections throughout the state of California.
It's National Teen Driver Safety Week, but a number of studies show teens, and in fact, all drivers, still aren't driving all that safely. Today, on The Wheel Thing, our regular discussion about personal transportation, we focus on distracted driving.
Joining Alex Cohen to talk about the latest research is OC Register motor critic
.
To hear the entire conversation click on the audio embedded at the top of the post.