Building Down
[Re: “Killing the Messenger,” Oct. 13] As a Los Angeles County employee for almost twenty years and as an office steward for SEIU Local 660, I don't find it in the least surprising that Ms. Belardes finds herself being punished for speaking out. Many employees in my own district office refuse to complain officially about anything, no matter how bad or how illegal for fear that they will be branded “trouble-makers” and find their opportunities evaporating because of it.
I do find it surprising, and greatly heartening, that CityBeat found the story worth mentioning. More public awareness of just how wrong things can go is the most certain method of getting protection for employees who are brave enough to speak out. Thank you for being willing to report the usually invisible news of what can happen to workers who attempt to improve safety in their workplaces.
Annie Gabston-Howell
Long Beach
Andy's Prayers Answered
Although Andy Klein thinks there are too many local film festivals [Re: “Festival Fatigue,” Oct. 13] I'm sure that even he, like everyone else, has long wondered why there are no horror-themed film festivals sponsored by an online tabloid during Thanksgiving Day weekend. Happily, this glaring omission has now been rectified! On the evening of November 26, the HollywoodInvestigator.com will screen the winners of its Tabloid Witch Awards at Loscon 32, L.A.'s annual science fiction festival, at the LAX Marriott Hotel.
Thomas M. Sipos
HollywoodInvestigator.com
Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory
Since I saw punk explode in those heady days of '77, I sympathize with Erik Himmelsbach's disenchantment with its surprising yet unsurprising corruption by the “Sellers' industry” [Re: “The Scum Also Rises,” Oct. 6]. Like the kid in Almost Famous, I believed rock music was everything, especially when punk arrived just in time to counter its creeping stagnation via superdupergroups like Boston, Firefall, Styx, and Foreigner.
Like Himmelsbach, I was one of the few kids at Belmont High hep to punk. I bought the vinyl (even – I'm sorry – the Rotters' “Sit On My Face Stevie Nix”), and hopefully turned at least one person on to not only punk but its weird sisters Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, and Alternative TV's LP Vibing Up The Senile Man. Being an L.A. punk chauvinist, I saw every band imaginable, from Castration Squad to Vom to Hal Negro & the Satintones. I was among the first kids thrown out the door during the infamous Elks Lodge Massacre (I ran home in time to hear an LAPD watch commander inform Rodney Bingenheimer on KROQ that the kids were responsible for all the chaos), and finally ended my concert-going after a Swans/Sonic Youth gig at a downtown waterhouse aggravated by tinnitus. By that point I'd matured, and the grind of daily life finally took precedence over the music, though I've continued to keep in touch with it as best as I can, feeling a little sadder with the demises of 3/4s of the Ramones, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Black Randy, and too many others to mention.
Mick Farren can theorize about where punk began, but I'm not really sure it matters, as there're too many trails to follow. (Farren forgot Gene Vincent, the Phantom's “Love Me,” and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy's “Paralyzed.”) The main thing is punk exists, and, like any other form of music, individuals just have to separate the wheat from the chaff for themselves. I cringe when Blink-182 disses Fugazi for not charging higher ticket prices. I'm dumbfounded by teens wearing Exploited T-shirts who've never heard an Exploited song. I've been stymied by a “hip” couple who thought Green Day and the Offspring invented punk, saw my X shirt, then asked: “Are they supposed to be a group?”
My worry about the Darby Crash bioflick is whether he'll be admired for his music or for his vices and choice to suicide himself to “advance his legacy.” When John Lydon asked “Ever feel like you've been cheated?” at the Pistols' '78 Winterland show, maybe he was onto something without realizing it. Imagine a TV announcer booming, “Anarchy – It's not just for breakfast anymore!”
JAMES NOLAN
LOS ANGELES
Time for a Rematch?
Isn't it fantabulous how Governator Ah-hold is counting on voters hypnotized by his celebrity, who are either too lazy or don't have enough time to pay attention to details, to vote for his propositions? Come on! Anybody with half a brain knows special interests have always been the rich, big business, and other politicians. Arnie is strategically redefining special interests as teachers and firefighters, little people without the monetary clout or power to bob his tail! For a guy who's accepted more special interest dollars (after boasting that he wouldn't) than his predecessor after running him out of office on a rail for doing so, this is proof that hypocrisy really is the greatest luxury. Like George W. Bush, Arnold's displayed top-notch acumen when it comes to his personal business. Also like Bush, he's shown himself to be guarded, inept, and bullheaded at solving California's numerous political and social woes. You know damn well he'll never repay the millions he promised and then took back from the school system. I've heard there's a petition going around to get a recall on the ballot to depose the Big Schwarz. Maybe Gary Leonard would consider running again?
Otis Mouse
Bellingham, Washington
Choosing Blame
If a business was allowed to sue for slander or libel, the LAPD would sue L. Wallace Pate (and probably win) for her comments [Re: “3rd Degree,” Oct. 13]: false arrests, perjury, obstruction of justice, witness intimidation, prostitution, drug possession, bribery, “set-ups,” sexual harassament, filing false police reports, subornation of perjury, sending innocent people to prison on a regular basis, racial profiling, and civil rights violations. It is very easy to make such scurrilous, completely unsubstantiated allegations, and Ms. Pate did not provide any specific examples with dates, locations and names, which she should easily be able to do with all of these crimes supposedly being committed on a regular basis by LAPD officers. It appears as if she is engaging in “police profiling.”
Two things she said were contradictory and further tend to cast doubt upon her veracity, or at least upon her supposed sources. She said that cops pressure women into having sex with them or else they would get them evicted from the projects, but she then said that “Some of the girls would have sex with them in exchange for money or drugs.”
If the officers were able to coerce these women into having sex to avoid eviction, then why would those same officers have to give them drugs or money? If all these officers are such heinous criminals as she is alleging, does it make any sense that they would give away their drugs and money when they had absolutely no reason to?
As for the “myth of violence” in Watts she mentioned twice, the recently published statistic for the nearby city of Compton with its 54 murders so far this year, and the four Areas in the South Bureau of the LAPD with their 193 murders this year through October 15 proves that violence in that area of L.A. County is certainly not a myth. Compare that to the much larger Valley Bureau of the LAPD which has had only 37 murders so far this year in the West Valley, Devonshire, Foothill, and Van Nuys areas combined. And if there is a “myth” of violence in Watts, shouldn't the LAPD get the credit for there not being any violence? Or does she only want to blame the police department for all the social and criminal ills down there?
And as for her parting comment that “we want strong cops who … can really mentor the kids” – since when is it the police department's job to mentor children? After all, it is no secret that the vast majority of black children grow up in a matriarchal society without ever knowing their father or having any sort of male role model or discipline, which is not the fault of the police department, although LAPD does have programs to reach out to some at-risk youths. But Ms. Pate seems to want to blame all of the problems in South Central on the LAPD, and not where it belongs – on the people who live there.
Rodney Gregson
Northridge
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Published: 10/27/2005
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