PV Dems June 25 Meeting
The theme for this month’s meeting: Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction?
Join us for our in-person June club meeting. PLEASE NOTE, this meeting is a week later due to Father’s Day. Our meeting starts at 2:30 pm, but join us at 2 pm to chat with other Democrats.
We are meeting in-person at the Peninsula Center Library Community Room. Zoom access will be provided for those who cannot attend in-person.
Our featured speaker is Alex V. Barnard, an assistant professor of sociology at New York University, is the author of Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness (expected to be published Sept 2023). He is often quoted in the LA Times about new legislation, like state Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman’s SB 43, which expands the criteria by which people in extreme psychological distress can be detained against their will.
Joining us to speak is Ronson Chu, Senior Project Manager for Homeless and Senior Services at the South Bay Cities Council of Governments (SBCCOG), who is responsible for coordinating the South Bay regions homeless response. Ronson prioritizes the funding for innovative programs in the South Bay, like the Homeless Court Program, a pilot program that launched in Redondo Beach in 2020, and Client Aid, which supplies motel vouchers, transportation and back rent to prevent evictions. He’ll be sharing his experience working to house the mentally ill and creating the support programs to keep them housed.
January 6th – A Conversation with Rep. Adam Schiff
TO REGISTER for the June 24th event at the Depot, 9:30-11am, PLEASE contact Carmen Schaye at 310-863-5358 or Carmenschaye@gmail.com
Volunteer at the PV Democrats Table at the PV Peninsula Street Fair
PV Dems will be hosting a table from 10 am to 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday, June 10 and 11, at the PV Peninsula Street Fair. This is a great opportunity to spread the word about our club!
To sign up to volunteer, contact Connie Sullivan, pvedems@gmail.com
PV Dems July 16 Picnic
Mark your calendar! We will be hosting our Annual Picnic and Board Installation, 5 – 7 pm, on the lawn of St Luke’s Presbyterian Church, 26825 Rolling Hills Rd, RHE. Featured speakers, entertainment, and pre-ordered box dinners available!
Confirmed speakers: Congressman Ted Lieu and TUSD board member Betty Lieu, LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn, LA County Sheriff Robert Luna, Assembly member Al Muratsuchi, LA County Assessor Jeffrey Prang, PVE Treasurer Kate Greenberg, RPV City Council members Eric Alegria and Paul Seo, PVLD Board Trustee Zoe Unno.
Order form for box dinner by Lunada Market and Deli to be posted on PV Dems website. Or, feel free to bring your own food.
BEVERAGES for all attendees are included. Choices will be: Lemonade, Unsweetened Iced Tea, Water, Flavored Soda Water, Diet Coke, and 7UP.
Please feel free to BRING LAWN CHAIRS (or Blankets) as the number of chairs/seats provided by the church is limited.
May Meeting Report – Get Activated: How You Can Make A Difference
By Nancie Silver —
The Palos Verdes Democrats met in person and on Zoom on Sunday, May 21. Five speakers shared their inspiration and experience about becoming active in issues important to them. The speakers were John Pickhaver, Tanya Taylor, Paul DiCarmine, Kylie Murdoch, and Kay Jue and you can read more about their backgrounds at https://pvpdemocrats.org/event/pv-democrats-may-meeting-4/. If you missed the May 21 meeting, I encourage you to watch the presentations, as well as the interesting Q & A that followed.
I found each of their stories engaging and recognized that what they all share is that they were moved by something in their lives, and they took a first step to do something about it. They didn’t know where that first step would lead, and they didn’t know if they would be successful. But they allowed themselves to be inspired to act and they learned as they went along. We are all capable of doing good in the world, and I encourage each of you to continue to be involved in whatever capacity you can.
For more information about some of the topics discussed at the May meeting, see the links below –
Sweat Equity Alliance (SEA) – https://www.seachangenow.org
Black in Mayberry – https://www.blackinmayberry.com
Juneteenth event – https://blackinmayberry.org/events/juneteenth-2023-el-segundo/
Reasonable Parents of Palos Verdes is a private group on Facebook (ask to join the group) – https://www.facebook.com/groups/reasonableparentsofpv
Third Way Social Policy – https://www.thirdway.org/issue/social-policy
The Speaker of the State Assembly has the authority to appoint members to California State Boards and Commissions. To view the list of boards and commissions, visit https://speaker.asmdc.org/speaker-appointments
Visit the Post to watch the video
PV Dems Board Election Results
By Carol Moeller —
Nominating Committee members Mehran Moshfeghi (Chair), Fraser Perkins and Carrie Hart recruited the Slate of Officers and Standing Committee Chairs listed below for the 2023-2024 year. Following the guidelines of our club bylaws, the slate they recruited was advertised to our members well within the timeline prior to the May meeting to give members a chance to nominate others. No additional nominations were received.
Voting took place both in-person as well as virtually via Zoom, and the result was a unanimous endorsement of the slate. Members needed to have been a PV Democrats’ member since Feb 1, 2023 to have been eligible to vote. After noting the absence of a Membership officer, Larry Donahue stepped up and volunteered. Thank you, Larry!
Visit the Post to view the slate.
LACDP May Meeting Report
By Jon Munoz —
The LACDP meeting held on Tuesday, May 9 was light on major news. The endorsement process for the Council District 6 special election took place. CD 6 includes San Fernando and Sun Valley. There was no consensus on either of the two candidates therefore there is no LACDP endorsement. In other news, the Restore 24 fundraising initiative was discussed. The goal is to secure five additional congressional seats in California.
CADEM Convention NEWS
By Connie Sullivan —
This past weekend the California Democratic Party (CADEM) held its organizing convention in downtown LA. They hold two conventions in a two-year period, one is an organizing convention and one is an endorsing convention.
This was a sparsely attended (only about 2/3 of the delegates showed up) but highly spirited convention. People were very eager to meet in person again. The party scene at the hospitality suites in the evening was crowded and almost jubilant. But there’s real work that happens at the convention, too.
The main purpose of an organizing convention is to elect regional directors and caucus chairs. Additionally, at this convention we elected the party Secretary and party Controller, as vacancies in these positions occurred mid-term.
The party Secretary race was a highly contested race between interim Secretary Diana Love and challenger Gracie Torres. Love had been appointed to fill a vacancy last July, with the understanding that she would need to be elected at this convention to complete the four-year term vacated by Melahat Rafaei.
Voting was conducted electronically instead of in person, as it was done in the past. This avoided the two-hour plus line to vote in past elections, but the electronic voting was not without glitches. Most of those were worked out in the troubleshooting suite, but some people had gone home intending to vote from there and then encountered problems. They did not drive back downtown to troubleshoot the problem, understandably. This needs fixing for future elections.
Torres is a sitting water board director who is also running for Riverside County Supervisor currently. She and her activists were very visible and vocal in the hallways of the convention, while Love chose to campaign in the background. In the end Love won with 1127 votes to Torres’ 976.
The Controller’s race was a foregone conclusion with Carolyn Fowler winning with 1911over her opponent Glenn Glazer with 118. Glazer had told everyone to vote for Fowler.
Both Love and Fowler are from LA County. So, there are three Southern California officers (Chair Rusty Hicks, Secretary Love and Controller Fowler) and two Northern California officers, Vice Chairs Betty Yee and David Campos.
Six of the 22 Regional Director positions were contested. Our Region 18 race was not contested, so the new Regional Director, yours truly, didn’t have to campaign at the convention.
Book Review – The Courage of Compassion: A Journey from Judgment to Connection
By Robin Steinberg, Founder of the Bail Project
Reviewed by: Ann Nye —
Robin Steinberg, asks us to consider the question, “What if your entire life were defined by the worst thing you ever did?”
Robin shares her path as a public defender working within a systemically flawed criminal justice system. She asks us to “imagine what it would be like to be in the other person’s place and the journey that could have brought them there.” The lives and stories of the “unlovable” people she defended taught her that the key to compassion is the “courage to be vulnerable and not closed off to the suffering of another person.”
You learn about her clients – a rapist who is accused of rape who’s not a rapist, a person who is accused of sexual molestation who’s not a molester, evidence that is planted, police who lie about their interrogations and fabricate confessions, and that there are no “Perry Mason moments in real defense work.” There are also cases where the defendant is guilty of horrendous crimes like murder and needs to be held accountable. In these cases, Robin shows us how you can view a person who has committed a horrendous act yet deserves a chance for rehabilitation.
At Berkeley in 1975, Robin began realizing she didn’t want to throw stones at the system from the outside, but to make systemic change on the inside. In the fall of 1979, she decided to go to law school. I “traded my tie-dyes and peasant skirts for pants and blazers and began classes at NYU School of Law.” One summer she interned at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. The case she worked on was like a movie scene “right out of To Kill a Mockingbird.” They ended up winning the case, where a win was life in prison versus the electric chair. However, all that brilliant advocacy was overshadowed afterwards by her traumatic encounter with Morris Dees, the social justice icon and founder of SPLC. Robin’s experience wasn’t unique, either, and she learned a hard lesson, that she would need to create a “supportive haven for women in this profession.” Note: SPLC’s sexual harassment and racial discrimination in the workplace continued for decades – Morris Dees didn’t get fired until 2019.
Visit the Post to read the entire review.
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