California’s Prisons: Fighting Crime, or Causing It? In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California’s prisons were so overcrowded that the state was actually violating the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling was based on the prison system subjecting inmates to the physical and psychological harm that arises when people…
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What Police Should Be Doing For Us—Not to Us
What Police Should Be Doing For Us—Not to Us Last week Vincent Warren, executive director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, put the practice of Stop and Frisk in perspective: Speaking to Los Angeles residents gathered at Community Coalition’s headquarters on South Vermont Avenue, he invoked the memory of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed…
Continue ReadingL.A.’s New Budget: Who’s in the Driver’s Seat?
L.A.’s New Budget: Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? At the beginning of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s first of three presentations on the future of city budgeting last Thursday, Rick Cole, Deputy Mayor of Budgeting and Innovation, compared Los Angeles to a luxury vehicle—to make a point about the administration’s new approach to allocating funding. Taking a…
Continue ReadingCreating a Level Playing Field for the Past 20 Years.
Creating a Level Playing Field for the Past 20 Years. April 29, 1992. On this day, four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of brutally beating Rodney King, leading to unprecedented violence that boiled over as thousands of the city’s residents took to the streets in seething protest. A lesser known fact: Also on April…
Continue ReadingPoverty Is Rising… So Should Our Taxes.
Poverty is Rising… So Should Our Taxes. Here’s a staggering statistic: According to a report released last fall by the Southern Education Foundation, nearly half of students in the U.S. public school system can now be described as low income, based on data collected in 2010-2011. And it’s only getting worse. The ranks of America’s…
Continue ReadingJerry Brown Wants To Save For a Rainy Day? Well, It's Here.
Jerry Brown Wants To Save For a Rainy Day? Well, It’s Here. In some ways, Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget for the new fiscal year sounds … well, sound. After all, who can argue with tenets such as “paying down debt” and “saving for a rainy day”? Especially when his administration has projected increases in the…
Continue ReadingRepower LA
Repower LA Three years ago, the city vowed to end its dependency on coal —a major air and water pollutant that results in severe asthma and even cancer—but cleaner energy sources are expensive to sustain. SCOPE and long-time ally LAANE, saw the potential for a three-fold solution: By harnessing the energy of environmental groups, organized labor, and…
Continue ReadingIncreasing Tax Revenue
Increasing Tax Revenue For the past 20 years, SCOPE has fought for new job creation models in Los Angeles. But there’s now a critical need to require everyone to pay their fair share of taxes so that those programs can become a reality, and government can do its job. This includes ensuring public safety, providing…
Continue ReadingGreen Retrofit
Green Retrofit Since it was first built in 1926, the Los Angeles Central Public Library has posed challenges for the city. The massive expanse of concrete and steel didn’t include routine safety features such as proper heat and smoke ventilation. Nor was it designed to endure long-term environmental effects. But for the LA Apollo Alliance,…
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