Health care for 9/11 responders, Tesla's software update for its self-driving vehicles, a new collaboration between trans activists and the California Restaurant Association.
Hillary Clinton isn't the first candidate to face scrutiny over health
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was supposed to be in California this week. Her itinerary included a fundraising concert Monday with k.d. lang in San Francisco; she was set to appear in LA at a lunch with singer Lionel Richie at the home of Seth McFarlane, and a dinner at the Beverly Hills home of Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller.
But the candidate's trip to the Golden State is now off after she fell ill with pneumonia.
For a look back at how health issues have affected presidential campaigns, Take Two spoke to Julian Zelizer, professor of history at Princeton University.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
What all businesses can do to be trans-friendly
Major corporations like Nike and NASA have taken steps to welcome transgender people into their workforce.
Now many smaller businesses are moving in this direction, too.
"Trans people can be great employees, and companies don't want to lose those employees by having a workplace that's not welcoming," says Carolyn Weiss, president of Transgender Business Services.
Weiss formerly worked for the city of Los Angeles for 32 years. A trans woman herself, she had a positive experience transitioning in the workplace.
However, she says she's met trans people who have been harassed at work, demoted or let go from their job.
Weiss now consults with companies around Southern California looking to develop LGBT-inclusive policies.
"They recognize that a significant part of their workforce will possibly be transgender in the future," she says.
Part of the shift in employer mentality on LGBT issues can be traced to the Obama White House, says Barbara Spotts of NASA's Diversity and Inclusion Program.
"To be honest with you, the road was a little easier with that kind of support," she says.
NASA crafted its own guidelines in 2009 because it wanted to demonstrate its commitment to a diverse workplace. It has been credited for having one of the best trans-inclusive policies by the Los Angeles LGBT Center's Trans Economic Empowerment Project.
"There were a lot of, for lack of a better word, nasty-grams at first," says Spotts of other employees who protested.
But she says the number of religious objections by those employees have dwindled as NASA educated its workers on LGBT sensitivity.
Weiss hopes to make similar strides with employers big and small in Southern California with her new e-learning course. She educates them in certain key areas like the usage of correct pronouns, creating a defined bathroom policy and discouraging harassment.
"Trans people are in the workplace and they could be the person in the next cubicle," she says. "Being respectful of other people is a basic thing that people expect at work."
California, restaurant group to partner in nation's first largescale transgender jobs program
California is now home to the nation's first ever large-scale program to help transgender people find jobs. The goal of the new California Transgender Workplace Project is to eat away at the unemployment rate for trans people, which is twice the rate of other Americans. The numbers are even worse for trans people of color.
The project will place trans job seekers into entry-level positions at restaurants throughout the state, in collaboration with the California Restaurant Association.
As an incentive to owners and managers, the first 60 hours of a new hire's wages will be paid for through a $150,000 grant from the California Workforce Development Board.
And this is all because of Michaela Mendelsohn, a trans woman who's employed trans people at her restaurants for years.
"The customer’s always right...unless they attack you personally."
The El Pollo Loco at South Western Avenue and Venice Boulevard was all hands on deck one recent afternoon. Even though the lunch rush ended hours ago, workers were frantically running around filling orders, chopping onions and searing hundreds of pieces of chicken.
Three of those workers rushing behind the counter were trans, including Delaney Martinez.
"I feel like it's a supportive atmosphere," she says. Small gestures like being called what she wishes, instead of what may currently be on official documents, meant the world to her.
"I'm able to have my name tag as I wish, and I just feel more comfortable," says Martinez. "With being comfortable, I can give better service."
This restaurant is the first El Pollo Loco owned by Michaela Mendelsohn. She opened it in 1988, and it's one of six locations she currently owns in Southern California.
Mendelsohn says she fosters an atmosphere in which she backs her trans employees despite what customers might say.
"You know you always hear the thing, 'The customer’s always right'?" she asks. "In my restaurants, the customer’s always right unless they attack you personally."
"The word’s just gotten out that I’m a trans owner supporting trans people."
Mendelsohn transitioned in 2005, taking a year away from work and without saying a word to her employees or other franchise owners.
"They thought I was dying of cancer because they just assumed, ‘Well, he just disappeared. He’s sick,'" she recalls.
When she reintroduced herself to her staff and colleagues, she braced for the worst. All she got was love.
"The franchisees basically lined up for hours to give me a hug and wish me well," Mendelsohn remembers of the first conference as Michaela with other El Pollo Loco franchise owners.
At a holiday party for her own staff, she didn't hear a nasty remark, either.
"I’m the boss, so no one’s saying it to my face," she smirks.
She was the only trans person in her restaurants for years, however, until 2012 when she hired her first trans employee.
That person told Mendelsohn of the troubles she had securing entry-level jobs at many places. She was mysteriously told during interviews that there were no open positions, and recalled how hiring managers would laugh or scoff when she entered the room.
Mendelsohn was profoundly affected, and began collaborating with the Los Angeles LGBT Center and the TransLatin@ Coalition to find other out-of-work trans people and to offer them jobs.
"The word’s just gotten out that I’m a trans owner supporting trans people," she says, estimating about 8 to 10 percent of her 150 employees are trans.
How Caitlyn Jenner and NC's bathroom bill helped Mendelsohn's cause
Mendelsohn batted around the idea for years of how to expand the success of her work into something bigger.
She got that chance this year when the public awareness of trans issues grew to an all-time high, both with the transition of Caitlyn Jenner and the acrimonious fight over North Carolina's law that restricted which bathrooms trans people could use.
So several months ago, Mendelsohn met up with her colleagues at the California Restaurant Association, one of the biggest state industry groups for restaurants.
At a hotel bar, she chatted up her longtime friend and head of the association, Jot Condie, about the difficulties that trans people face in the work world.
She also invited him to meet with trans people at the Los Angeles LGBT Center who were desperate for a job.
The effort paid off.
"I considered myself as a person somebody who had my head in the sand when it comes to what they’re really going through," says Condie. "This is a civil rights issue."
Then Mendelsohn floated her ambitious idea to Condie: Help her back a jobs program that would secure trans people jobs at restaurants. The benefit to owners and managers would be a new worker, which are in desperate need right now because of a nationwide labor shortage.
"It's tougher than in the past 12 years to find employees," says Mendelsohn. "We can’t afford, as restauranteurs, to exclude qualified employees."
She also collaborated with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the TransLatin@ Coalition and more organizations to be a part of this program.
Now, she just needed to sell other restaurants on the idea, too.
Restaurants' first taste of the new program
The Western Foodservice and Hospitality Expo is one of the biggest trade shows in the country for restaurants, with more than 10,000 attendees at this year's event in late August at the L.A. Convention Center.
The California Restaurant Association sponsors the expo, and it used the gathering as an opportunity to host the first of six seminars for its members interested in the program.
Restaurant owners and managers would need to attend at least one of the sessions being held throughout the state in the coming months.
They'll learn how to apply, the issues that trans people face in the workplace and how to support their trans staff – call it "Trans 101."
"Trans people are vulnerable when we come into the workplace," explained Drian Juarez from the Los Angeles LGBT Center to the room. "If somebody makes fun of us, we may not have the wherewithal to stand up for ourselves because we don't want to jeopardize our jobs."
Not everyone believes it's the right thing to do right now, however.
Expo attendee Grant Theim said he believes everyone should have a right to a job no matter who they are, but that other Americans might not be ready for this idea.
"I still think that there’s a majority of people out there that might have a problem with being served by somebody that’s transgender," he says.
But Mendelsohn told the seminar that her restaurants are a good example of how that's not necessarily true.
"The customer compliments on our transgender employees started coming in. Lots of compliments," she says, "and our stores have consistently climbed in sales."
Drian Juarez also says that a growing number of industries are welcoming trans people into their workforce, and are writing LGBT-friendly guidelines into their HR handbooks.
"You will always have people who don't like trans people for whatever reason," she says, "but it's not about changing that person. It's about getting them to a place where they understand that when you're at home you can believe whatever you want. But when you're in the workplace, you will follow the law and treat everyone with respect."
Mendelsohn and the association say they hope their effort will convince other industries around the country to follow their lead, and that it will be a great encouragement for trans people to head back into the job market.
"I promise a trans person a level playing field," says Mendelsohn. "I don't promise them a bed of roses. They're going to need to work hard like everyone else."
Learn more about Michaela Mendelsohn at MichaelaSpeaks.com. She owns the El Pollo Locos at:
- 1545 S. Western Ave, Los Angeles
- 3750 West 5th Street, Oxnard
- 7851 Foothill Blvd, Sunland
- 5050 Kanan Road, Agoura Hills
- 1722 S. Victoria Ave #A, Ventura
- 17240 Saticoy Street, Van Nuys
Inmates strike over poor wages
Last week some prisoners in California and across the U.S. announced a strike over poor wages for the work done in prison.
That includes jobs like cooking and dishwashing. But what are the rules around working for inmates and how has it changed over the years?
For a look at some of that history, Alex Cohen talks to Karamet Reiter, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Law at the University of California at Irvine.
Tesla Autopilot 8.0 may have prevented fatality
Earlier this year, the driver of a Tesla Model S died while using the electric car company’s Autopilot semi-autonomous driving feature. The driver, Josh Brown, was traveling on a divided highway in Florida when he crashed into a tractor-trailer that made a left turn in front of his car. The Model S failed to brake.
On Sunday, Tesla introduced an update to its Autopilot system that may have prevented that fatal crash. Called Autopilot 8.0, the new system could cut accidents in Tesla vehicles by more than half compared with current system, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Even when the Autopilot feature is turned off, the car will automatically brake if it senses an impending collision.
At the center of the update are various improvements to the radar system built into every Tesla Model S and Model X since October 2014. In previous versions of Autopilot, radar served as confirmation of what had been detected by the system's primary sensor, which was a camera and image processing system.
The problem with that camera system is that it needed to be able to identify what an object was before it could react to it, and it couldn't always identify objects accurately. That seems to have been the problem with the Autopilot fatality in May because the system couldn't distinguish between the white side of the big rig and the bright sky.
Musk said "it's very likely" Autopilot 8.0 would have either prevented or mitigated the crash that killed Josh Brown because the new system "would see a large metal object across the road."
The advantage of making radar the primary system is that it can detect anything that's either metallic or dense, Musk said. It can also see through rain, fog, snow and dust. The disadvantage is that radar has difficulty sensing things that are "large and fluffy," he said.
It's updated software that allows the radar to access far more information about each object it's encountering. It assesses what's happening with the car ten times each second to figure out if an object is moving or stationery to help determine the probability of a collision and react, if necessary, by automatically braking.
With Autopilot 8.0, the radar can also bounce a signal under the vehicle that’s driving in front of the Tesla to determine the situation two cars ahead and react more quickly.
Other Autopilot improvements include a system that prevents the driver from re-engaging Autosteer if he ignores repeated audible warnings to put his hands back on the wheel three times in an hour. If so, the Autosteer feature will only re-engage after the driver has pulled over and parked.
While Autopilot "does not mean perfect safety," Musk said, it "improves the probability of safety... Perfect is the enemy of the good."
There has been one fatality in a Tesla with Autopilot engaged in 200 million miles of driving; the U.S. average is one fatality in 89 million miles of driving.
Tesla Autopilot 8.0 will be available in one or two weeks.
Sue Carpenter is co-host of SCRP's mobility series, The Ride.
Investigative reporter uncovers sex abuse and trafficking on CA pot farms
The green hills of Northern California are home to the top marijuana-producing region in the state.
It's a place known as the Emerald Triangle. And its rugged, forested mountains form a picturesque backdrop.
But the remote farms also have a darker side: as a place where an informal workforce, made up mostly of women, is vulnerable to sex abuse and trafficking.
Shoshana Walter, a reporter with The Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal, joined Take Two to discuss her reporting.
To hear the full interview, click the blue player above.
What the pho? Cooking video has critics steaming
Last week, Bon Appetit released a video titled "PSA: This is how you should be eating Pho." Chef and restaurant owner Tyler Akin, who is not of Vietnamese descent, explained his set of rules to getting the most out the soup in the two-minute video:
The internet's reaction was swift and angry. Many were outraged a non-Vietnamese chef was giving out guidelines on how to eat the culture's iconic dish. Bon Appetit has since released two apologies. The latest one, released on Saturday reads in part:
"...the video sparked a debate on the issue of cultural appropriation in food, a topic that has deservedly received ample discussion lately...As editors, we failed. And for that, we are truly sorry..."
Nguyen Tran of L.A.'s Starry Kitchen and Button Mash spoke with Deepa Fernandes on this issue from the perspective of a Vietnamese-American and a restauranteur.
Interview Highlights
Let's set the table here, for those who don't know, what is Pho?
"Pho is a Vietnamese soup that actually originated in Northern Vietnam. It's stewed overnight, it usually has beef knuckle and oxtail and other things like that and there's different variation than that. It's really light and clear and it's delicious. It's actually a breakfast food that's another thing people don't know...it has rice noodles and the northern version has nothing but meat, noodles and the soup. But then it moved to the south where they added all the vegetables and that's where you got the cilantro and the bean sprouts and everything else. Then it came here and it adopted jalapenos which isn't indigenous to Vietnam and it's just delicious, light and just really hearty and also nourishing..."
Why did it strike such a chord in the Vietnamese community to have a non-Vietnamese chef explain how to eat this dish?
"Everything stems from the title. It was the title and the white face and "How to eat Pho." And that struck a chord with a lot of people...you know a lot of terms I saw were 'whitesplaining' and 'Columbusing' and it hit a chord with me because when I was kid and I was about seven or eight years old...I went to a white friend's house and at one point they were like 'Hey, do you like put the bowl up to your mouth and scoop it up, like that's gross.'
So it was whitesplaining, it was...why would you put a white chef with the title 'how to eat Pho'?
"I wouldn't say that...I think it's the way they edited him. He was actually really sincere, I thought he was going to be a lot more 'Look, this is how you eat it. This is who I am. I'm the expert.' He isn't. He doesn't actually say Pho is the new ramen, it's the title. The only thing I cringe with, I actually befriended him over this because I felt really bad for him, is the twisting and twirling of the noodles and...He put that up there as an explanation of how to eat Pho if you don't know how to use chopsticks, but the way he was edited it was not put out that way. I blame, and they took the blame too, I blame Bon Appetit for editing him that way and they basically threw him under the bus."
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Answers have been edited for clarity.
This post has been updated.