Calfornia files a lawsuit over DACA, are telethons actually effective? How earthquake forecasting may be California's best bet against 'the big one.'
How strength in numbers can help California's DACA lawsuit
California is taking on the Trump administration in the courts — again.
State Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a lawsuit Monday over President Trump's decision to end the DACA program. Minnesota, Maine, and Maryland have also signed onto the action.
The suit alleges the administration violated recipients' right to due process.
California joins 15 other states (along with Washington, D.C.) who have joined to bring legal challenges to the DACA decision.
UCLA professor of constitutional law Adam Winkler says when states file separately, there could be power in numbers:
This is not uncommon. With the travel ban, we saw a lawsuit that was filed on the East Coast. We saw some that were filed on the West Coast. Part of this is that the courts have allowed a single federal district court judge to enter in an injunction that stops a law from applying nationwide. And this was a relatively new development. That's what happened to the Obama administration, and we see that the states want to bring a few different suits in a few different courts, so they're perhaps more likely to get a judge to side with them.
Press the blue play button above to hear Adam Winkler's analysis of the suit.
How good are telethons at raising money?
The total carnage of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma has yet to be determined, but scores of people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged.
So tonight, an hour-long telethon, "Hand in Hand," broadcasts tonight from Los Angeles.
A star-studded cast including Beyoncé, George Strait, and Ryan Seacrest will come together to raise money for those affected.
"They kind of activate feelings that help us imagine ourselves as a community more than we would get in an every, kind of mundane experience," says Kevin Gotkin, a communications researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who's looking into the effects of telethons, dance-a-thons, fundraiser marathons and more. "Especially after disasters, there's a special aura that telethons can offer to folks because they are ways we think of ourselves as helping each other."
Telethons reached their heyday in the 1960s when the late Jerry Lewis perfected the art form with, "The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon."
But that was also in an age when watching television was an event for families to gather around.
Over time, it became less cost-effective to host a telethon because of the rising price to organize one and the declining viewership out in America.
"Now, most professional fundraisers are not looking to telethons to raise money," says Gotkin. "They're looking to social media, text messaging, a viral fundraising campaign like what we saw with the ALS ice bucket challenge."
It can be just as easy to donate to a campaign through a click on Facebook, or reaching out to an organization directly.
"There's not much ceremony around that, and in some senses, people would say that there shouldn't be much ceremony," says Gotkin. "But there's also value that many people derive from being able to ritualize their donation. And that's what the ceremony of telethons really offer."
Listen to the interview using the audio player above.
Cassini's last gasp is a unique chance to understand Saturn's atmosphere
The hidden history of queer Chicanos in LA
Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration between museums, galleries, arts organizations and more throughout Southern California.
Organized by the Getty Museum, this year's theme features work that connects Los Angeles with Latin America.
KPCC will be featuring many of the exhibits throughout the run.
The history of LGBT people in Los Angeles is incredibly rich.
In 1950, activist Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society to fight for gay rights. The nation's first large-scale and documented protests happened here in 1967 at the Black Cat Tavern. And the Metropolitan Community Church, the nation's first LGBT-inclusive congregation, began holding services in 1968.
But less is known about the history of LGBT people of color during these same years.
"In many ways we're only starting to understand the breadth of queer history in Los Angeles," says David Evans Frantz, curator at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at USC.
Those stories are in the spotlight at "Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.," now on exhibition at MOCA Pacific Design Center.
"These works have not found their way into collections and archives," says Frantz. "They mostly resided with family members and friends and lovers waiting for someone to come along to show interest and dig into the histories."
Only now is there dedicated scholarship and research to this field, adds co-curator Ondine Chavoya, professor of art and Latino/a history at Williams College.
"There wasn't a critical mass of historians doing this work asking these questions, and interested in these communities and their intersections with broader queer history," he says.
Here is a sampling of what's on display:
Photographer Laura Aguilar
Chavoya: Laura Aguilar is a photographer here in Los Angeles. This is from her Plush Pony series, a documentary photo series that she staged on-site [in the early 90s] at a lesbian bar in the El Sereno neighborhood of Los Angeles. She created a studio in the bar to document and create these portraits of these queer communities that formed there. ... It meant at this time, there were still brown lesbian bars that one could go to. This bar no longer exists as a result of gentrification as we've lost so many of our gay friendly and queer spaces.
T-shirts by Joey Terrill
[NOTE: This next piece contains offensive language]
On display is also a t-shirt from the artist Joey Terrill. On the front are two derogatory terms in Spanish for gays and lesbians. Next to it is this photo from when they were originally worn.
Chavoya: This is a photograph from the Christopher Street West gay pride parade in 1976 with Joey Terrill, the artist himself, and a group of friends wearing these t-shirts in the gay pride parade. It's working to reclaim these pejorative terms in Spanish. This is also very much about creating a space for Chicanos in these early gay pride parades in L.A.
Frantz: One of the reasons this works to the cultural history of the moment is that the bar Studio One, which was the most-known gay disco in the 1970s in Los Angeles, was often protested for discrimination against black and brown men and women. It often required these individuals to have three forms of identification to get into the bar. It also speaks to racism within the gay community at the time and the kind of dire need for artists and community members to create space for queer Chicanos.
The window displays of Mundo Meza
Mundo Meza was a renowned, central figure for queer Chicanos in the 1970s and 80s before passing from complications to HIV.
He frequently collaborated with Simon Doonan on a series of window displays for the store Maxfield Bleu in West Hollywood, sometimes with grotesque or risqué imagery like taxidermy animal heads on mannequin bodies.
Could examining smaller quakes help forecast bigger ones in California?
One thing that makes earthquakes so scary? You never know when one might occur.
Scientists have been trying to come up with ways to predict quakes for decades, but a true solution has been elusive for just as long.
Now, there's a new approach that looks at smaller quakes as a way of forecasting bigger ones. It's a system almost perfectly tailored to the Golden State, due to our geographical placement along the San Andreas fault.
Morgan Page is with the U.S. Geological Survey and an author of a new report that looks at how earthquake forecasting can help improve earthquake resilience.
When Page spoke to A Martinez, she was at Southern California Earthquake Center's annual meeting in Palm Springs. One of the hot topics being discussed? Earthquake forecasting.
Although it sounds similar to what earthquake prediction might be, it's not. Page was quick to clarify that.
"As seismologists today, we try to avoid what we call the 'P' word, prediction, because with it, comes the expectation that we can really precisely tell people when and where a big earthquake is going to occur.
We can't say, 'At exactly noon tomorrow, this event is going to happen.' But that doesn't mean we don't know anything. We know a lot about which areas are more likely to have a big earthquake and we know a lot about which times are more dangerous relative to other times, based on seismic activity that's happening."
To hear more about how earthquake forecasting works and how seismologists hope to implement it as a tool in the future, click the blue play button above.
Can California learn anything from the deadly Mexico quake?
The death toll from the deadly earthquake in Mexico has reached to nearly one hundred people, with more confirmed victims in Oaxaca and Chiapas.
And Mexican officials have described it as the largest earthquake to hit the country in the last 100 years.
But many experts believe that it could have been much worse, especially in nearby Mexico City.
Some point to a similar earthquake that hit the country in 1985, Mexico was able to rebuild and better prepare for earthquakes. So what kinds of things did Mexico do to improve earthquake readiness and can Los Angeles learn anything from it?
We’ll talk about it with Kenneth W. Hudnut, Science Advisor for Risk Reduction for the US Geological Survey.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Syd tha Kyd, Odesza and DVSN
Tuesday Reviewsday is our weekly new music segment, and this week Morgan Rhodes join A Martinez to talk about the latest releases.
Here are her picks.
Syd tha Kid
Album: Always Never Home
Song: Moving Mountains
Coming off the heels of her impressive solo debut, FIN, Odd Future's Syd has returned with a new offering, Always Never Home, to give us our latest dose of future soul goodness.
ODESZA
Album: A Moment Apart
Across the Room (feat. Leon Bridges)
Ethereal and more curated that 2014's "In Return", the new project from Odessa is sure to engage fans outside dance music.
DVSN
Album: Morning After (release date 10/13)
Song: Mood
Toronto native DVSN (pronounced like division) has a new offering that is a lot like his first, synthy, sexy and falsetto laced.