Did You Know?

By Ann Nye —

 

 

The California Democratic primary for the 2022 midterm elections will be June 7, 2022.  Hard to believe, but it’s less than a year from today.  LOTS OF WORK TO DO!

 

Back-story of our June 13 program speakers — Back in mid April, I heard Al Muratsuchi on NPR talking about his bill AB 279 on senior residential care facilities.  It’s not every day that I hear our 66th assemblymember speaking on the radio; so I thought that this bill must be pretty important.  I mentioned this to Leslye Borden, founder of Handmade Especially for You [www.handmadespecially.org], who I’ve been volunteering with for the last 10 years.  Handmade Especially for You provides handmade scarves to shelters who support victims of domestic violence.  Over the years, Leslye has shared the landmark cases her son, Matt Borden, has been litigating including the one we’ll hear about today on nursing homes dumping their patients.  I thought if Al Muratsuchi could talk about his bills it would be wonderful if Leslye’s son Matt could talk about his nursing home cases.  I asked Leslye and her husband Phil if they thought Matt would be willing to talk to our club and they said OF COURSE.  It hadn’t occurred to Leslye that our meetings are still virtual and this wouldn’t be an excuse for Matt to fly down from the San Francisco area for a visit.  Once I lined up Al Muratsuchi to speak, I emailed Matt and of course cc’ed Leslye to let him know we weren’t just some dubious Dems club.  Matt did say yes and said he is very familiar with Al Muratsuchi’s bills and that he works with the CA Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) advocates, who also helped Al draft his bills.

 

Easy Reader’s three-part series by Mark McDermott on The Second Life of Bruce’s Beach is an excellent read of the history of Willa and Charles Bruce’s purchase of oceanfront land between 26th and 27th Street in Manhattan Beach on February 15, 1912, ten months before the city was incorporated.  They told the LA Times shortly after obtaining the property that they had a vision for the property as a respite for Black folks during an unjust time, “a little breathing space at the seaside where they might have a little holiday.”  Links to the first two parts of the series are provided below:

Part 1 of 3:  https://easyreadernews.com/the-second-life-of-bruces-beach/

Part 2 of 3:  https://easyreadernews.com/what-happened-at-bruces-beach/

 

Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, who represents District 70, which includes Long Beach, Signal Hill, San Pedro and Catalina Island, hosted a virtual town hall June 10 focusing on the DDT chemical waste in local waters off the coast of California.  The Long Beach chapter of the Sierra Club, Scripps Institution at UC San Diego, California State Long Beach Shark Lab and Heal the Bay all spoke at the event.

The recording of the town hall is available on Asm PatrickODonnell’s facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AssemblymemberPatrickODonnell/videos/826272688308118/

After watching the video and especially CSULB Shark Lab Director, Chris Lowe, I finally understood the difference between the current revelation of the DDT deepwater dumpsite and the long studied DDT [Montrose] superfund site study on the PV Peninsula continental shelf and slope.  Montrose Chemical Corporation released DDT and PCBs from the late 1950s to the early 1970s and a lot of sediment is covering their contamination.  Whereas, the thousands of containers found in the DDT deepwater dumpsite are exposed and it’s been reported the dumpers punched holes in the containers to make them sink.