Tag Archives: Homeless People

Homeless Issues

Reverend Andy Bales Of Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission Is Consulting With Donald Trump’s Homeless Hit Squad — Approves Of Their Disdain For Harm Reduction — Wants To Call Out The National Guard — Says That Trump Can’t Possibly Be Planning To Carry Out Sweeps To Relocate Homeless People — How Is He So Sure, You’re Wondering — Because — There’s No Place To Put Them If They Were Relocated — How Can Trump Be Planning To Relocate The Homeless If There Is No Place To Relocate Them To — That’s It — That’s His Argument — Feel Better Now That You Know Trump Isn’t Planning To Relocate Homeless Human Beings Into Concentration Camps Because There Aren’t Any? — Me Neither

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Reverend Andy Bales, CEO of Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission, has recently been dragged pretty thoroughly on social media for his unconscionable collaboration with hired killers sent by Donald Trump to implement what is sure to be an appalling and probably genocidal plan for some kind of final solution to this City’s inability to house its residents as well as his tone-deaf support of the very worst local psychopathic housedwelling politicians.

His responses as far as I have seen have been mostly of two types. First of all he denies that Trump wants to put homeless human residents of Los Angeles into concentration camps even though there actually aren’t that many people that Trump doesn’t want to put into concentration camps and the list, along with the capacity of the camps, grows larger each day. Second he accuses everyone who criticizes him of being gang-affiliated drug/sex traffickers who oppose the Trump/Bales plan because it’s likely to cut into their gangs’ drug/sex profits.

And I don’t have much to say about the second trope other than the really obvious “EEW GROSS pls shut up pls!” But it turns out that there is something important to say about the first. Yesterday, Friday, November 22, 2019, Bales appeared on KNX Radio and was interviewed by Charles Feldman and Mike Simpson about his collaboration with Trump. You can listen to the whole segment here, and there is a complete transcription below. But Feldman and Simpson asked him about the concentration camp thing.

Simpson asked in particular about concerns that “the police could be used, that there would be like a roundup. What do you say when you hear people say those things?” And Bales has a reason to doubt that Trump is going to round people up and put them in camps. It’s a stupid reason, but it is a reason. And it’s not at all reassuring. The reason, says Bales, that Trump is not going to round up homeless people and put them in camps is that there are no camps. That, he says, is our problem, that we don’t presently have camps:

… where would we take anybody? If there’s a sweep, where in the world would anybody be taken? We have to create places to take people and that’s the problem right now in Los Angeles. We do not have anywhere to take people who want to seek shelter. You have to create the shelter first and then you’ll have a place to take people.

Which of course speaks reassuringly to neither the abject depths of Trump’s evil nor the sanity of Bales himself. Possibly Bales is confusing concentration camps with houses, but we can be sure that Donald Trump and his minions aren’t. And obviously there actually are concentration camps. And even if there weren’t, building them isn’t ever the problem. They can be built fast.

Turning one part of the human race into raw material for jobs programs for another part is a core component of precisely the kind of populist fascism that Trump exemplifies. The best possible interpretation of Bales’s collaboration with Trump is that he’s blind to the fascism and the worst is that he’s complicit with it for his own purposes. Neither is good.
Continue reading Reverend Andy Bales Of Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission Is Consulting With Donald Trump’s Homeless Hit Squad — Approves Of Their Disdain For Harm Reduction — Wants To Call Out The National Guard — Says That Trump Can’t Possibly Be Planning To Carry Out Sweeps To Relocate Homeless People — How Is He So Sure, You’re Wondering — Because — There’s No Place To Put Them If They Were Relocated — How Can Trump Be Planning To Relocate The Homeless If There Is No Place To Relocate Them To — That’s It — That’s His Argument — Feel Better Now That You Know Trump Isn’t Planning To Relocate Homeless Human Beings Into Concentration Camps Because There Aren’t Any? — Me Neither →

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Homeless Issues, Miscellaneous

Emails Obtained From Creepy Zillionaire Haven Calabasas Show That They Appear To Have One Homeless Resident And The Entire City Government Follows Him Around And Calls The Cops On Him Daily — Because He Walked By The High School — Or He Walked By A Lemonade Stand — Or He Walked By Someone’s House

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WARNING AND DISCLAIMER: I’m just going to tell you right up front that there is actually no point whatsoever to the post you’ve just started reading. It’s really nothing more than a heap of anecdotes strung together without so much as a smidge of narrative synthesis interspersed with pointless sarcasm, signifying nothing. But that’s the content you’re here for, innit?!

I recently got a bunch of emails from the formerly unincorporated white supremacist mountain stronghold known as the City of Calabasas as part of my ongoing investigation into those terroristic antihomeless West Valley vigilante Facebook groups you’ve been reading so much about, most recently in L.A. Taco, where just today the incomparable Lexis-Olivier Ray published another excellent piece on the subject. And specifically into rogue cop Sean Dinse, who has some kind of relationship with Calabasas Mayor Pro-Tem1 Alicia Weintraub.

Calabasas being the creepy little backwater bastion of white privilege that it is, I got the usual braindead pushback to my request at first with Alicia Weintraub claiming that she didn’t possess any emails between her and Dinse but, and this is essential advanced CPRAlogical praxis, of course I hadn’t asked without knowing from other sources that, in fact, there were such emails. So after a surprisingly minimal amount of argument the City admitted that they’d made an unintentional error, which is what public agencies call it when they lie and then get caught, and agreed to produce. And they did produce. And you can look at a selection of the produced material here on the Internet Archive.

And there’s no bloody shirt to wave here, none of the supervillain stylings so characteristic of the City government of Los Angeles. What we find instead is a bunch of small town politicians with too much time on their hands and too little of substance to occupy them. And, it appears, one single unhoused resident that they all follow around and discuss with one another.

Now he’s walking by a school! Now he’s carrying stuff! Now he walked past my Ring camera! Just look at the video! Now he walked down a street! And worst of all, now he walked by my kids’ lemonade stand! And they were terrified! THAT IS ABSOLUTELY FRIGHTENING!!! And, you know, it is absolutely frightening. But not for the reasons these people think it is. Read on for some stills from that terrifying Ring camera video!
Continue reading Emails Obtained From Creepy Zillionaire Haven Calabasas Show That They Appear To Have One Homeless Resident And The Entire City Government Follows Him Around And Calls The Cops On Him Daily — Because He Walked By The High School — Or He Walked By A Lemonade Stand — Or He Walked By Someone’s House →

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Homeless Issues, LAPD

Anti-Homeless Vigilantism Proponent — Associate Of Heavily Armed Thugs — And Fascist Street-Fighting Beerhall Hooligan Cosplay Enthusiasts — Joel Glucksman — Who Jokes In Public About Tasing Human Beings Before The Police Show Up — See This Terrorist’s Buddies Strutting Around On His Company’s Own Damn Video — Menacing Homeless Human Beings On A Public Street — With Guns — And Other Tools Of War — This Is A Guy Who Has More Damn Nerve Than Most Of The Internet Lawyers Who Threaten Defamation Lawsuits Cause Their Sad Little Feelings Got Hurt

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post stated that Joel Glucksman appears in the video. Glucksman claims that he does not appear in the video and I have no reason to disbelieve him. They are employees of Iron Delta Security, and he’s part owner of that firm, so I’ve rewritten this post to reflect that information and I apologize for my error.

Maybe you’ve been following the story of anti-homeless vigilante activity in the San Fernando Valley, coordinated through private Facebook groups and condoned and assisted by active and retired LAPD officers. It was heavily covered last week, and here’s a list of some of the most notable reports:

★ West San Fernando Valley Residents Take to Facebook To Stalk, Harass and Terrorize the Homeless with Help From Current And Former LAPD Officers. — Knock-LA.com

★ LAPD Involved in Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Groups — KTown For All

★ Two Anti-Homeless Facebook Groups Count L.A. Cops Among Their Members — LA Magazine

★ Exposés on “Crimebusters” Lead to Investigation of LAPD SLO’s — Valley News Group

And subsequent to this wave of exposure there was the predictable backlash from the homeless-hating vigilante housedwelling Facebook warriors who, like all of their ilk, cannot stand having the caustic contents of their seething ids exposed in public and then mocked. I’m sure you can imagine all the idiotic Internet lawyerisms about defamation and lawsuits and et-freaking-cetera. I won’t bore you with it here.
Continue reading Anti-Homeless Vigilantism Proponent — Associate Of Heavily Armed Thugs — And Fascist Street-Fighting Beerhall Hooligan Cosplay Enthusiasts — Joel Glucksman — Who Jokes In Public About Tasing Human Beings Before The Police Show Up — See This Terrorist’s Buddies Strutting Around On His Company’s Own Damn Video — Menacing Homeless Human Beings On A Public Street — With Guns — And Other Tools Of War — This Is A Guy Who Has More Damn Nerve Than Most Of The Internet Lawyers Who Threaten Defamation Lawsuits Cause Their Sad Little Feelings Got Hurt →

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Downtown Center BID

Brookfield Property Partners Assistant Security Director Paul Burr Refers To Human Beings Forced To Sleep On Grates For Warmth In The Rain As “Zombies” — Because He’s A Hate-Spewing Psychopath — And Downtown Center BID Associate Director Of Operations Jorge Castro Accepts The Phraseology And Sends Out The Security Forces — Because It’s Not Enough For These People That They Own Enough Property In Los Angeles To Provide A 150 Square Foot Apartment For Every Homeless Person In The City — Not Enough That Their BID Lets Them Wield Government Power As A Personal Weapon — They Also Have To Openly Express Their Utter Dehumanizing Contempt For Their Victims — And No One Involved In The Process Says Anything At All About It

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Brookfield Property Partners is yet another faceless bunch of zillionaires who own everything while so many have nothing. According to Forbes Magazine they own 8.3 million square feet of commercial property in Downtown Los Angeles, including a building at 333 S. Grand, right there in the good old Downtown Center BID, which evidently has some grates in front of it.

And on December 6, 2018, around 4 or 5 a.m. when it was raining and foggy and cold, evidently some homeless human beings slept on those grates, presumably trying to stay alive by staying warm. But according to Paul Burr, assistant director of security, in an email he sent that day to Jorge Castro of the BID they ” made the shuttle workers very uncomfortable”. So he asked Castro to arrange for “a patrol to rouse them at that time and get the area clear”

And Castro did as he was asked to do, forwarding the email on to Adrian Marquez, the BID’s director of safety services, and Marquez, by return email, agreed to the plan. That’s an ordinary story, repeated many times every single day of every single year in Los Angeles and everywhere else in the world where zillionaires and their victims are forced to exist in close proximity.

It’s also not a surprise to see hateful zillionaires using language associated with disease, inhuman mindless predators, infestation, and so on, when they’re talking about human beings who happen to presently not have an indoor place to live. The subject line of Burr’s emails is a particularly graphic but sadly not unusual example of this: “Zombies on our Grates”.

It’s not even surprising to see BID staff ignoring Burr’s dehumanizing language. But that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. BIDs are public agencies.2 They’re funded with public money. The City of Los Angeles allows them to wield municipal power uncontrolled in any practical sense by political processes. And all that public power, all that public money, is in this instance in the hands of the Board of Directors of the Downtown Center BID, guided by its chair, Brookfield senior vice president Robert Cushman.

So what we have here is an organization, Brookfield, whose local boss, Robert Cushman, controls vast amounts of public money and power, most of it spent in opposition to homeless human beings forced to live on the streets by the very economic policies that Brookfield thrives on, employing people who, as revealed by their unselfconscious language, don’t think of those homeless people as human beings at all, let alone as equal citizens of the City of Los Angeles, but rather as mindless inhuman disease vectors.

These are the people that the City of Los Angeles chooses, by a process guaranteed and likely intentionally designed to promote white supremacy, to spend our money, to wield our power, against us, people who live here.. I do not, will never, understand how anyone thinks this is OK. But you knew that, I’m guessing. Read on for a transcription of the entire conversation.
Continue reading Brookfield Property Partners Assistant Security Director Paul Burr Refers To Human Beings Forced To Sleep On Grates For Warmth In The Rain As “Zombies” — Because He’s A Hate-Spewing Psychopath — And Downtown Center BID Associate Director Of Operations Jorge Castro Accepts The Phraseology And Sends Out The Security Forces — Because It’s Not Enough For These People That They Own Enough Property In Los Angeles To Provide A 150 Square Foot Apartment For Every Homeless Person In The City — Not Enough That Their BID Lets Them Wield Government Power As A Personal Weapon — They Also Have To Openly Express Their Utter Dehumanizing Contempt For Their Victims — And No One Involved In The Process Says Anything At All About It →

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Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Council, Public Records Act Pragmatics

City Of Los Angeles Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act — In Particular CD11 Has Ignored My Requests For Months On End — Has Blown Through Their Self-Imposed Deadlines — And Are Likely Doing So To Hide Their Complicity In Planter-Placing In Venice — I Am Seeking Emails Between CD11 Staff And Angry Housedwellers — Twitter Blocks And Mutes — And Constituent Communications Done Via The “Romulus” Platform — Read The Masterful Petition Here! — And Confusion To Our Enemies!

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Everybody knows about those damn planters in Venice, but we’re just beginning to learn the depth of the City’s complicity with the angry housedwelling planter-placers. And fairly recently I obtained some emails that proved that Mike Bonin’s staff, if not Bonin himself, have been very complicit indeed, which led me to file a complaint with the City Ethics Commission against one of them, Taylor Bazley.3

I obtained those emails by accident, in response to a request to the LAPD that I made for a fairly different reason, but I have actually been trying to get planter-related stuff from CD11 at least since December 2018 and have been completely, utterly, thoroughly, and even literally ignored by Mike Bonin’s staff since then. They have not produced a single record in response to my requests.

And, as you surely know by now, the legislature has left the people of California only one remedy to enforce their rights under this law, and that is to file a petition asking a judge to order the neglectful ones to get it together and comply. So that, this very day, is what I did with our friends at CD11. You can get a copy here, powerfully written by the incomparable Anna von Herrman, and there’s a transcription below.

Basically there are three classes of requests. First I asked for emails between CD11 staff and various suspects in the planter-placing and other anti-homeless psychopathy with some names culled from especially angry NextDoor comments. These included both Mark Ryavec and George Francisco.

Next, as part of a series I was working on at the time, I asked for a list of all official CD11 Twitter accounts and also lists of users blocked or muted by those accounts. And finally, I asked for data from CD11’s use of the so-called Romulus Constituent Services software, which someone had told me Bonin used to talk to people outside of more predictable channels like email.

This last request Krista Kline, Mike Bonin’s deputy chief of staff in charge of something shady, refused to fulfill, claiming that it was “overly voluminous,” and the others she initially promised to produce records in response to but then did not.4 All of this material is of great, practically incalculable, public interest with respect to not only the planters but also for understanding how the City decides which encampments to sweep, and many other things besides. So stay tuned for updates on events, and read some lengthy selections from the petition below.
Continue reading City Of Los Angeles Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act — In Particular CD11 Has Ignored My Requests For Months On End — Has Blown Through Their Self-Imposed Deadlines — And Are Likely Doing So To Hide Their Complicity In Planter-Placing In Venice — I Am Seeking Emails Between CD11 Staff And Angry Housedwellers — Twitter Blocks And Mutes — And Constituent Communications Done Via The “Romulus” Platform — Read The Masterful Petition Here! — And Confusion To Our Enemies! →

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Homeless Issues, Venice

Secret Emails From The Venice United Google Group! — Basically Just More Casually Racist Homeless-Hating Potty-Mouthed Rage-Rants From The Usual Privilege-Drenched Genocidal Venice Housedwelling Psychopaths — Like Sam Awad — Klaus Moeller — Nikoletta Skarlatos — Travis Binen — Who Says Mike Bonin Tempts Kids To Become Homeless In Venice With By Offering Them Free Food And Services — Therefore Venice Homeless Should Be Forcibly Relocated To Lancaster — And Deeply Profoundly Unfathomably Inscrutably Mean-As-A-Damn-Snake Carol Reynes Thinks She Wins The Argument By Saying Venice Is So Bad It Looks Worse Than Mexico — And Senior Lead Officer Kristan Delatori’s Response To This Hateful Madness — Not An Entirely Appropriate 5150 Hold On The Housedwellers — No, She’s All Like Thanks Housedwellers I’ll Be Out Tomorrow To Arrest More Homeless!

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Maybe you’ve seen all those mass-manufactured reactionary anti-homeless self-pitying NIMBY yard signs in Venice lately, the garbage-brained slogans on which I won’t dignify by repeating here. And maybe you’ve heard of some of the shadowy little unincorporated associations responsible for them, like e.g. Venice Totalitarianism Unleashed or Venice Snakeholders Ass Sociation or Humane-Kill Homeless Shelters Now! and so on. And one of these creepy little Kool-Aid drinking societies is known as Venice United.

And this particular gang of fauxhemian housedwelling facists has some kind of Google Group which seems to be top secret although maybe I’m just not searching for it right. And one thing they do in their creepy little secret society is send really angry and really crazy emails to one another. And for whatever reason they send copies of them to City officials.5 And that makes them subject to the California Public Records Act.

And that loveliest law is how I obtained this set of absolutely astonishing emails, already described in sufficiently lurid terms in the title, which, in case you’re wondering, is why I have called you all here today. And my freaking goodness, they’re literally batshit insane.6 Even when compared with some of the known masters of the genre, e.g. Anthony Kilhoffer, genocidal anti-homeless psychopath and certified Grammy-winning genius. Or that twisted gang of grinning killers over in Hollywood who want to starve the homeless into oblivion.

Or Carlos Torres, who thinks this blog ought to be shut down until I learn how to be nice to him and his homeless-hating friends. Or this other gang of rage-driven physically violent Hollywood housedwellers consisting of Ferris Freaking Wehbe7 and a bunch of his closest vigilante8 asshole buddies. Even when compared to the Venice planter-placers there’s no question who the magic mirror thinks is the craziest of them all, it’s these folks, and it’s. Not. Even. Close.

And please read the whole spool, because I’m not going to be able to transcribe them all. See evidently famous makeup artist Nikoletta Skarlatos screaming at Venice in all caps to RISE UP AND MIKE BONIN BEWARE! And heavily-armed ice-cream peddler Klaus Moeller and his housedweller dog whistles about Mad Max on the streets of Venice!

And other such freakish lurkers in the emotional ruins of the formerly paradisiacal former slum-by-the-sea! Like for instance LAPD Senior Lead Officer Kristan Delatori listening to these mouth-slaverers, taking them seriously, telling them that she never gives homeless human beings permission to be on sidewalks. Scandalous.

Also, due to exceptionally idiotic redactions, I really can’t transcribe the recipient lists, and those are really freaking crazy in themselves, including like every reporter in the world. But there are definitely some transcriptions below, mostly of the choicest, most kookiest stuff, so read on!
Continue reading Secret Emails From The Venice United Google Group! — Basically Just More Casually Racist Homeless-Hating Potty-Mouthed Rage-Rants From The Usual Privilege-Drenched Genocidal Venice Housedwelling Psychopaths — Like Sam Awad — Klaus Moeller — Nikoletta Skarlatos — Travis Binen — Who Says Mike Bonin Tempts Kids To Become Homeless In Venice With By Offering Them Free Food And Services — Therefore Venice Homeless Should Be Forcibly Relocated To Lancaster — And Deeply Profoundly Unfathomably Inscrutably Mean-As-A-Damn-Snake Carol Reynes Thinks She Wins The Argument By Saying Venice Is So Bad It Looks Worse Than Mexico — And Senior Lead Officer Kristan Delatori’s Response To This Hateful Madness — Not An Entirely Appropriate 5150 Hold On The Housedwellers — No, She’s All Like Thanks Housedwellers I’ll Be Out Tomorrow To Arrest More Homeless! →

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Homeless Issues, Lawsuits

Rex Schellenberg v. City Of Los Angeles — In September 2018 Carol Sobel Filed Yet Another Federal Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles — Alleging Summary Confiscation And Destruction Of The Property Of An Elderly Disabled Homeless Man — And Seeking An Injunction Against These Practices — For Some Reason This Has Not Been Covered At All In The Media — Read The Initial Complaint Here

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On September 3, 2018 Carol Sobel filed suit in federal court against the City of Los Angeles, alleging that Rex Schellenberg, a homeless man living in the San Fernando Valley, stepped away from his property briefly only to have it confiscated and much of it destroyed by the LAPD and LA Sanitation personnel. I can’t find anything about this case in the media, in contrast to Sobel’s other pending case on the matter, Mitchell v. City of LA, which is covered extensively. You can read and get copies of the pleadings here on Archive.Org. I’ll update the collection as more stuff is filed.

The facts of the case are simple. Schellenberg, an elderly man homeless in Los Angeles for more than twenty years and disabled as well, lives in the San Fernando Valley. In July 2017 he left his property momentarily unattended to visit a convenience store and employees of the City of Los Angeles summarily confiscated and destroyed Schellenberg’s neatly stored possessions. In its monumental decision in Lavan v. City of LA, the Ninth Circuit had this to say about this practice:

As we have repeatedly made clear, “[t]he government may not take property like a thief in the night; rather, it must announce its intentions and give the property owner a chance to argue against the taking.” This simple rule holds regardless of whether the property in question is an Escalade or [a tent], a Cadillac or a cart. The City demonstrates that it completely misunderstands the role of due process by its contrary suggestion that homeless persons instantly and permanently lose any protected property interest in their possessions by leaving them momentarily unattended in violation of a municipal ordinance. As the district court recognized, the logic of the City’s suggestion would also allow it to seize and destroy cars parked in no-parking zones left momentarily unattended.

As with all of Sobel’s writing, the initial complaint makes compelling reading. You can get a copy of the PDF here, or turn the page for a transcription of selections.
Continue reading Rex Schellenberg v. City Of Los Angeles — In September 2018 Carol Sobel Filed Yet Another Federal Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles — Alleging Summary Confiscation And Destruction Of The Property Of An Elderly Disabled Homeless Man — And Seeking An Injunction Against These Practices — For Some Reason This Has Not Been Covered At All In The Media — Read The Initial Complaint Here →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles County Government

In 2017 Kerry Morrison — Whose Experience Of Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Mainly Of Illegally Locking Up Homeless People In Hollywood — Was Asked By County Mental Health Staff To Name Potential Commissioners — Among Others She Identified Steve Seyler — Whose Experience With Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Of Bossing A Heavily Armed Gang Of Thugs In Hollywood Responsible For Incarcerating The Homeless At An Astonishing Rate — And Who Doesn’t Even Live In L.A. County, For That Matter

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As you’re surely aware, our old friend Kerry Morrison has managed over the last twenty two years to position herself as some kind of neutral expert on homelessness in Los Angeles and thereby to be appointed to all kinds of influential positions even though actually, as executive director of the Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance, she earns her salary by overseeing the arrest of homeless residents of Hollywood at an astonishing rate as part of her ultimate goal of moving them out of her BIDs by any means necessary.

For instance, as a result, former CD13 rep Eric Garcetti felt free to appoint her to the LAHSA Commission and subsequently to the Prop HHH Citizens’ oversight committee.9 The fact that Kerry Morrison is a politically viable candidate for such appointments despite the fact that her positions differ not at all in any pragmatic way from those of e.g. open advocate for violence, slavering anti-homeless psychopath, and manifestly unappointable-to-anything Mark Ryavec shows the disheartening extent to which she’s managed, through deception and the inattention of journalists to BIDs in Los Angeles, to maintain her public image as some kind of local Mother Teresa figure.10

Kerry Morrison’s genius for reputation-laundering reached a kind of apotheosis in 2016 when she wangled herself a Stanton Fellowship, which is some kind of grant awarded by the Durfee Foundation11 to “allow leaders to test a hunch,” whatever that means.12 And regardless of what it means to the Foundation, it’s also very convenient for Ms. Kerry Morrison as yet another way to fail to acknowledge her paymasters at the BID.13

Given all this it was no surprise to discover that in 2017 Kerry Morrison somehow found her way onto something called the Los Angeles County Mental Health Commission‘s Ad Hoc Committee on LA County’s Board And Care System. When I learned of this in February, naturally I went ahead and sent a CPRA request to the County for all relevant emails. After an astonishing level of obstructionist shenanigans14 they finally released some subset of what I asked for, and you can read the whole set here on Archive.Org.

One moderately interesting item lurking amongst the chaff is the actual report prepared by the Ad Hockies. It’s mostly expected platitudes and stuff, though. The most interesting part is that, as discussed above, Kerry Morrison gives her institutional affiliation as “Stanton Fellow 2016-17” rather than as something honest like, e.g., queen homeless killer for the HPOA.

And there is a lot to write about in this set of records, but the text for today’s sermon is this June 12, 2017 email from Kerry Morrison15 to her gang of yes-people on the Hollywood 4WRD mailing list16 asking if any of them want to be appointed to the County Mental Health Commission. Turn the page for links to the emails, transcriptions thereof, and some commentary!
Continue reading In 2017 Kerry Morrison — Whose Experience Of Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Mainly Of Illegally Locking Up Homeless People In Hollywood — Was Asked By County Mental Health Staff To Name Potential Commissioners — Among Others She Identified Steve Seyler — Whose Experience With Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Of Bossing A Heavily Armed Gang Of Thugs In Hollywood Responsible For Incarcerating The Homeless At An Astonishing Rate — And Who Doesn’t Even Live In L.A. County, For That Matter →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Council

How Carol Schatz’s Former Event Planner Joella Hopkins Relies On Her Life-Long Experience Of Watching WWE Wrestling With Her Dad To Inform José Huizar’s Homelessness Policies — Which Essentially Amount To Using HHH Money To Build Housing So The LAPD Can Start Arresting Every Homeless Person In Sight Again — Cause Cops Aren’t Mental Health Workers, After All, They Are Arresters!

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José Huizar was scheduled to speak at yesterday’s South Park BID board of directors meeting, so off I went to record the goings-on for history’s sake. The entire video is here on YouTube and Huizar starts here. His remarks were even more devoid of content than usual, although I’ll have something to say about them soon.17

The CM was, however, late to the meeting, leaving his brand-new Downtown District Director, Carol Schatz’s former event planner, the one and only Joella Hopkins, CSEP, CMP, MBA, to extemporize for a surprisingly long time, starting here. As always there’s a transcription after the break.

The focus at first was on homelessness. In particular on the usual story about how essential it is for the City to build enough housing so that the LAPD can start arresting every homeless person in sight. She then moved on to what she characterized as “a rise, a more blatant rise in public safety issues with transients or mentally ill assaulting our residents on the street.” And while Joella Hopkins’s remarks are usually weird, her remarks here were even weirder than usual.

Of course, this “rise in public safety issues” is a favorite narrative of our City’s zillionaire elite when it comes to repressing the homeless of Los Angeles. Usually they don’t bother with evidence, but Joella Hopkins, to her credit, her shame, something, did at least try to support the claim, seemingly justifying it with this cryptic remark: “… if you guys are on social media …”
Continue reading How Carol Schatz’s Former Event Planner Joella Hopkins Relies On Her Life-Long Experience Of Watching WWE Wrestling With Her Dad To Inform José Huizar’s Homelessness Policies — Which Essentially Amount To Using HHH Money To Build Housing So The LAPD Can Start Arresting Every Homeless Person In Sight Again — Cause Cops Aren’t Mental Health Workers, After All, They Are Arresters! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

An Interesting Example From Wilshire Center Showing How Eric Garcetti Used The BID To Supply A Tame Businessperson To Speak For Herb Wesson’s Proposed K-Town Homeless Shelter — Revealing At Least One Of The Ways In Which The City Of Los Angeles Relies On BIDs To Manufacture An Appearance Of Community Support For Its Projects — Did I Mention The City Told The BID A Week Before They Told The News Media And Asked The BID To Keep Quiet About It?!

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It’s been clear for a long time now that one of the uses that the City gets out of BIDs is to encourage them to lobby it, thus creating an appearance of community support for projects that the City intended to do all along. It’s easy to see the results of this process at any City Council meeting where a bunch of BIDdies line up to speak in favor of random proposal X that they don’t have any organic reason for caring about.

However, it’s not so easy to see the lead-up to the lobbying events. Obviously City officials are reluctant to release the evidence, and perhaps the BIDdies are as well.18 That’s why today’s documents are so very interesting! The emails I’m presenting are part of a larger release from the Wilshire Center BID, and you can get the original MBOX file or PDFs if you prefer here on Archive.Org.

The story is about the by-now famous homeless shelter proposed for Koreatown by CD10 repster Herb Wesson. The world found out about this project on May 2, 2018 at a joint press conference held by Wesson and Eric Garcetti, as Gale Holland explains in this characteristically excellent story in the Times.19

But amazingly, City staffers told the BID about the proposal on April 26, a full week before anyone else knew. BID board members were asked to keep quiet about it and also to propose a businessperson to speak at the May 2 press conference in support of the shelter. Real Estate zillionaire Mike Hakim volunteered himself to speak at BID director Mike Russell’s request but was, it seems, ignored by everyone, no doubt due to his shady, universally hated skyscraper project in Koreatown.

Instead, Mike Russell nominated Greenbridge Investments flunky Brenda Arianpour, a real estate zillionaire whom Russell misrepresented as a small business owner. After thorough vetting by Garcetti’s communications flacks, Arianpour was chosen to speak in favor of the project. Although not, of course, to speak in her own unscrutinized words. Garcetti’s flacks were sure to discuss “talking points” with her in advance.

The emails by which this was arranged are linked to and transcribed below.
Continue reading An Interesting Example From Wilshire Center Showing How Eric Garcetti Used The BID To Supply A Tame Businessperson To Speak For Herb Wesson’s Proposed K-Town Homeless Shelter — Revealing At Least One Of The Ways In Which The City Of Los Angeles Relies On BIDs To Manufacture An Appearance Of Community Support For Its Projects — Did I Mention The City Told The BID A Week Before They Told The News Media And Asked The BID To Keep Quiet About It?! →

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