• A Los Angeles, les habitants sans papiers terrifiés par les rafles : « Je pensais qu’ils cherchaient les criminels »
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/06/11/a-los-angeles-la-peur-des-rafles-je-pensais-qu-ils-cherchaient-les-criminels

    A Los Angeles, les habitants sans papiers terrifiés par les rafles : « Je pensais qu’ils cherchaient les criminels »
    Par Corine Lesnes (Los Angeles, envoyée spéciale)
    Elle est prostrée, sur un banc de Grand Park, à l’écart de la manifestation. Noemi Ciau est sans nouvelles de son mari depuis déjà plus de vingt-quatre heures. Jesus Cruz a été arrêté, dimanche 8 juin, à la station de lavage auto de Westchester, près de l’aéroport de Los Angeles, où il travaillait depuis dix ans. Elle n’a pas encore prévenu le dernier de leurs quatre enfants. Sur la pancarte que quelqu’un a donnée à la mère de famille, il est écrit que la police de l’immigration (ICE) n’est pas la bienvenue à Los Angeles, ville de près de 4 millions d’habitants, dont une moitié de Latino-Américains, et que « nul être humain n’est illégal ». Elle porte le panneau, à l’envers, mécaniquement, tête baissée. « Je voudrais juste savoir où ils l’ont emmené », murmure-t-elle.
    Jesus Cruz, 51 ans, vivait à Los Angeles depuis trente ans. Il était environ 15 heures, dimanche, quand un véhicule banalisé a déposé les agents de l’immigration à la station de lavage. Sept employés ont été emmenés. Noemi Ciau n’ignorait pas que le gouvernement de Donald Trump avait décidé de s’en prendre aux sans-papiers. Elle n’avait jamais vraiment eu de craintes pour son mari, malgré son absence de papiers en règle. Elle pensait que la police « cherchait les criminels ». Ce même dimanche, Arturo Vasquez, 48 ans, faisait laver sa voiture dans un autre car wash, à Culver City. Il n’y travaillait pas, il n’était qu’un client. Il a été arrêté devant ses enfants. Avant d’être menotté, il a demandé à l’un de ses fils, Brian, 16 ans, de lui promettre de s’occuper de son frère et de leur mère. Deux jours plus tard, la famille ne savait toujours pas où il était détenu.
    Au cinquième jour des raids de la police de l’immigration dans l’agglomération de Los Angeles, le scénario est devenu familier. Des habitants, établis de longue date dans une ville qui se fait une fierté de sa diversité, sont brusquement séparés de leur famille, victimes d’un système qui a toléré leur présence pendant des décennies sans parvenir à une régularisation de leur situation, faute de consensus des responsables politiques.
    Sans prévenir, l’ICE débarque à l’endroit ciblé, parfois dans des véhiculés banalisés, pour éviter que sa présence soit immédiatement relayée sur les réseaux sociaux. Ces derniers jours, elle s’est attaquée aux stations de lavage de voitures, confirme Flor Rodriguez, du Clean Car Wash Worker Center, une association qui lutte contre l’exploitation des quelque 10 000 carwasheros de Los Angeles.
    La police de l’immigration est aussi intervenue dans une bibliothèque à Whittier, dans le sud-est de la ville, et dans des entreprises. La chaîne de magasins de bricolage Home Depot est l’une de ses cibles. Les journaliers ont l’habitude de s’y regrouper pour trouver du travail. Selon The Wall Street Journal, c’est Stephen Miller, architecte de la politique d’expulsion de Donald Trump, qui leur a conseillé de viser cet établissement populaire parmi les ouvriers de la construction.
    La Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights a recensé des opérations dans une maison de retraite, une boutique de donuts ou la fabrique de vêtements Ambiance. A l’école élémentaire Gratts Learning Academy, dans le quartier de Westlake du centre de Los Angeles, la rumeur a couru d’une rafle imminente, des véhicules de police ayant été aperçus sur un parking voisin. Les parents se sont dispersés, les enfants sont restés désemparés. La population est terrifiée, s’est désolée Karen Bass, la maire démocrate de Los Angeles : « Les gens ne savent pas s’ils doivent aller travailler, aller à l’école. » Le gouverneur démocrate de Californie, Gavin Newsom, a dénoncé, lui aussi, la cruauté des rafles. « Ils ont arrêté des cuisiniers, des couturières, des laveurs de vaisselle. Ils traumatisent nos communautés, s’est-il indigné. Cela semble être [leur] but. »
    La maire de Los Angeles, Karen Bass, lors d’un rassemblement organisé contre les raids de la police de l’immigration à Grand Park, Los Angeles, le 10 juin 2025.
    La police a annoncé que 45 personnes avaient été arrêtées dans la journée de dimanche. Lundi, cinq raids ont eu lieu. Les ONG de défense des migrants estiment à une centaine le nombre d’interpellations depuis le 6 juin. Un bilan plutôt maigre, compte tenu des moyens déployés. Lundi, le Pentagone a chiffré à 134 millions de dollars (117 millions d’euros) le coût du déploiement des 700 marines dépêchés de la base de Twentynine Palms, dans le désert californien.
    La Californie a été le premier Etat à se déclarer en totalité « sanctuaire » pour les migrants, un terme correspondant à une politique de protection codifiée par la loi sur les valeurs californiennes de 2017. Elle limite la coopération entre forces locales et agences fédérales pour les expulsions, sauf pour crimes graves. Les migrants en situation irrégulière se sont habitués à une réelle impunité concernant leur situation administrative. Ils paient des impôts, leurs enfants sont, pour la plupart, américains.
    Les descentes de police ont créé un choc encore plus important qu’ailleurs, comme en témoigne l’ampleur de la mobilisation pour faire reculer la police. Lundi, la municipalité de Glendale, au nord de Los Angeles, a préféré résilier un contrat qui la liait depuis dix-huit ans avec l’ICE pour héberger des migrants en attente d’expulsion. Les responsables scolaires ont, eux, annoncé qu’ils allaient protéger les écoles à l’approche des cérémonies de fin d’année.
    Grâce aux réseaux sociaux, les images circulent ; choquantes, comme celle d’une future mère bousculée par un policier ; déchirantes, comme celles montrant des mères de famille refusant de toutes leurs forces de monter dans les véhicules policiers. A chaque fois, le contraste est saisissant entre les migrants, désarmés, en tee-shirt, robe, sandales, et les agents de l’ICE en tenue de combat. La mission a changé, a dénoncé Karen Bass. « Au début, il était question de criminels violents, de trafiquants de drogue. Je ne sais pas comment ça peut coller avec ces images que l’on voit maintenant de gens courant sur les parkings de Home Depot. »
    Au début de sa campagne d’expulsion, la Maison Blanche estimait avoir marqué des points dans l’opinion en montrant des « criminels » menottés par-delà leurs tatouages, accusés d’être membres de gangs vénézuéliens. Aujourd’hui, elle risque d’en perdre avec ses rafles organisées devant les établissements scolaires et les magasins de bricolage.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#politiquemigratoire#ICE#expulsion#californie#etatsanctuaire#doit#sante

  • #los_angeles. Rivolta contro le #deportazioni
    https://radioblackout.org/2025/06/los-angeles-rivolta-contro-le-deportazioni

    È cominciata venerdì scorso la ribellione contro le deportazioni di massa volute dall’amministrazione Trump. I militari hanno effettuato rastrellamenti nelle strade, nei supermercati e nelle fabbriche della metropoli più ispanica degli States. La risposta poliziesca alle proteste è stata molto violenta con impiego massiccio di proiettili di gomma e lacrimogeni. Almeno 56 persone sono state […]

    #L'informazione_di_Blackout #rivolta_a_los_angeles #Stati_Uniti
    https://cdn.radioblackout.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-0-09-rivolta-los-ang-mazzonis.mp3

  • Ein Besuch in der Villa Aurora: Heiner Müllers Schreibmaschine ist noch da
    https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/literatur/ein-besuch-in-der-villa-aurora-heiner-muellers-schreibmaschine-ist-

    Auch in Los Angeles kennen sich die Taxifahrer schon lange nicht mehr aus. Keim Wunder bei der miesen Bezahlumg.

    16.1.2025 von Peter Wawerzinek - Der Berliner Schriftsteller Peter Wawerzinek war einst zu Besuch in Los Angeles und erinnert sich.

    Von Vermont/Sunset aus mit dem Bus zwei, rät die Serbin, die mit uns Rolltreppe fährt. Die Zeit wird knapp. Wir wollen zur Villa Aurora, müssen dem Taxifahrer beim Navigieren behilflich sein. Was der alles wissen will, bevor er uns chauffiert. Den Bezirk, die Straße, Hausnummer, das soziale Umfeld, wen wir wählen würden, wenn wir Amerikaner wären.

    Derweil tickt die Taxiuhr, fünf Dollar wie weggeblasen, ehe er versteht. Wir reden uns die Münder fusselig: Lilo praktiziert in der Villa Aurora. Künstler-re-si-denz. Ort der Be-geg-nung, des An-den-kens. Zuflucht. Verfolgung. Naziregime. Feuchtwanger. Hat „Jud Süß“, „Die Jüdin von Toledo“ und über Goya geschrieben, fand Stalin akzeptabel. Ist über Marseille, Spanien, Portugal in die Vereinigten Staaten emigriert.
    Bücher, nichts als Bücher

    Ich sage dem Taxifahrer, dass ich es mehr mit Marta Feuchtwanger habe. Hat ihren Lion in Frauenkleidern aus dem Männerlager Saint Nicolas entführt. Ist erst auf Drängen von Willy Brandt wieder nach Deutschland eingerückt. Hatte Angst, einem die Hand geben zu müssen, der ein Nazi gewesen war. Der Taxifahrer ist zufrieden. Wir zahlen. Er rauscht ab.

    Die Villa Aurora im Feuerinferno von Los Angeles: Julia Franck, Lutz Seiler & Co. erinnern sich

    Wir stehen vor der Aurora-Villa. Lilo führt uns durchs ganze Haus. Das fast römische Bad. Die Deckentäfelung. Der Fenster-Ritter. Glas in Bleifassung. Speisezimmer. Schreibstube riesengroß. Schreibtisch in der Mitte des Raumes. Sie da, er dort. Die Treppen. Einzelne Einzelzimmer. Die Großküche. Der Kühlschrank. Büsten, Bilder, Dokumente. Plätschernder Brunnen. Originale Möbel. Schöne Terrasse. In allen Räumen allüberall: Bücher und nix als Bücher. Heiner Müller hat hier seine Schreibmaschine stehen lassen. Mausgrau ist sie, rauchfleckig. Wird ihm zu schwer gewesen sein. Nun ist sie ein Museumsrelikt wie die Dartscheibe, die hinten und vorne je mit dem Bildnis von Adolf Hitler versehen ist. Welchen Treffer mag der Brecht gelandet haben?

    Wir sitzen dann mit Ausblick auf Garten und Meer auf dem großen Balkon. Ist richtig Wildlife um uns angesagt. Ein winziger Kolibri. So dick wie eine Hornisse. Und in der Nacht heulen die Kojoten, sagt Lilo. Wir rauchen und reden und trinken guten Kaffee. Und ein munterer Specht gesellt sich hinzu, trommelt mit dem Schnabel einen Begrüßungs-Abschieds-Takt. Auf geht es zum Hotel, dann ans Wasser. Fotos von uns mit Sonnenuntergang im Rücken. Ja, doch ja. Unglaublich. Wie schnell die Sonne einfach so ins Wasser tropft.

    Der Schriftsteller Peter Wawerzinek veröffentlichte u.a. die Romane „Rabenliebe“ und „Schluckspecht“. Er war 2012 Stipendiat am Oberlin College in Ohio und damals in Los Angeles zu Besuch.

    Villa Aurora
    https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Aurora

    Die Villa Aurora war das Domizil des Schriftstellers Lion Feuchtwanger und seiner Frau Marta Feuchtwanger während ihres US-amerikanischen Exils. Sie steht im Westen von Los Angeles in Pacific Palisades und dient seit 1995 als Künstlerresidenz und Kulturdenkmal des deutschen Exils in Kalifornien.
    Villa Aurora (2017)

    Bei den Waldbränden in Südkalifornien im Januar 2025 war das Schicksal der Villa im Palisades-Feuer tagelang unklar. Glücklicherweise habe der Komplex offenbar „keinen Schaden genommen. Eine detaillierte Schadensbewertung mit Blick auf die Inneneinrichtung und die Folgen der Rauchentwicklung steht noch aus“, teilte der Verein Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House am 11. Januar 2025 mit.

    #USA #Los_Angeles #Pacific_Palisades
    #Taxi

  • Joan Didion and Mike Davis understood LA through its fires. Even they couldn’t predict this week | Adrian Daub | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/11/joan-didion-mike-davis-los-angeles-fires
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/32e458c2ab5567492f2cb10058e919aff93468cc/0_310_5422_3254/master/5422.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

    Adrian Daub sur les incendies de Los Angeles au travers de la relecture de deux livres importants sur la régularité des incendies lors des épisodes Santa Anna.

    Fire is an inextricable part of the region’s identity, as the writers knew. But the way this divided city burns has been transformed
    Sat 11 Jan 2025 19.00 CET

    Talking about fire and Los Angeles is an exercise in repetition. Southern California does have seasons, Joan Didion once noted in Blue Nights, among them “the season when the fire comes”.

    Fire in Los Angeles has a singular ability to shock, with its destruction that takes “grimly familiar pathways” down the canyons and into the subdivisions. The phrase comes from the writer and activist Mike Davis’s 1995 essay The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, and it is as true for the fires as for our talk of the fires. Even our reflections take on that grim familiarity: we cite Didion citing Nathanael West. We fall in with the great writers of this great city who are always so ready to judge it.

    LA’s fires are usually interpreted as a verdict on LA. Eve Babitz tells the story of the silent film star Alla Nazimova, who had to save her possessions from a fire and decided to rescue none of them: “It’s a morality tale,” Babitz says, “of the unimportance of material things, though there are those who will say it’s about how awful LA is.” Davis was different: in books such as City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear and Dead Cities: And Other Tales, he defended the city and its people, reserving his indictments for the forces of untrammeled capitalism and white supremacy that had molded it into near-uninhabitability. He read the city as a sign of what was to come, leery of a world that had assigned this complex, maddening, beguiling place “the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism”.

    Davis wrote The Case for Letting Malibu Burn under the impression of the conflagrations of the late fall of 1993 – including one in Topanga Canyon that dived down the hillsides towards Malibu, and one in Eaton Canyon that ripped through Altadena. Two places, that is, that are aflame this week again.
    Didion smokes on porch overlooking beach next to man and girl
    Joan Didion, right, with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter Quintana Roo Dunne in Malibu in 1976. Photograph: John Bryson/Getty Images

    And yet, without much changing, much has changed.

    #Adrian_Daub #Los_angeles #Joan_Didion #Mike_Davis

  • Un avion-citerne du Québec endommagé par un drone à Los Angeles _ Stéphane Bordeleau

    Un des deux avions-citernes CL-415 que le gouvernement du Québec a envoyés en Californie pour lutter contre les feux de broussailles a été cloué au sol jeudi après avoir heurté un drone civil au-dessus du brasier de Pacific Palisades, dans le comté de Los Angeles.

    L’appareil qui peut transporter près de 6000 litres d’eau a subi des dommages importants à une aile et ne peut voler jusqu’à nouvel ordre, a déclaré à Radio-Canada Josée Poitras, porte-parole de la SOPFEU.

    On parle d’un drone qui s’est logé sur une partie de l’aile d’un des avions-citernes. Personne n’a été blessé et l’atterrissage s’est fait sans problème. L’avion est cloué au sol le temps de réparer le tout.

    La suite : https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2131793/feux-foret-avion-citerne-quebec-drone

    #drone #Los_Angeles

  • Let Malibu Burn: A political history of the Fire Coast, Mike Davis, 1996.
    https://la.indymedia.org/js/?v=cont&url=/news/2007/10/208946.json

    Fire in Malibu has a relentless, staccato rhythm. The rugged coastline is scourged by a large fire, on average, every two and a half years, and at least once a decade a blaze in the chaparral grows into a terrifying firestorm consuming hundreds of homes in an inexorable march across the mountains to the sea. In one week last month, 10 homes and 14,000 acres of brush went up in smoke.

    And it will only get worse. Such periodic disasters are inevitable as long as private residential development is tolerated in the fire ecology of the Santa Monicas.

    Make your home in Malibu, in other words, and you eventually will face the flames.

    Shangri-la

    From the very beginning, fire has defined Malibu in the American imagination. Sailing northward from San Pedro to Santa Barbara in 1835, Richard Henry Dana described (in Two Years Before the Mast) a vast blaze along the coast of Jose Tapia’s Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit. Despite (or, perhaps, because of) Spanish prohibition of the Chumash and Gabrielino Indians’ practice of annual burning, mountain infernos repeatedly menaced the Malibu area throughout the 19th century. During the boom of the late 1880s, the entire ex-Tapia latifundium was sold at $10 per acre to the Boston Brahmin millionaire Frederick Rindge. In his memoirs, Rindge described his unceasing battles against squatters, rustlers and, above all, recurrent wildfire. The great fire of 1903, which raced from Calabasas to the sea in a few hours, incinerated Rindge’s dream ranch in Malibu Canyon and forced him to move to Los Angeles, where he died in 1905.

    #Santa_Ana #Santana #urbanisation #Californie #incendies #feu #histoire #Los_Angeles #Mike_Davis #histoire

  • Visual explainer: why are the LA wildfires so bad?

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/fire-map-la-palisades-explainer?CMP=share_btn_url

    Santa Ana winds, drought and a hotter planet have helped exacerbate the Palisades, Hurst and Eaton fires in California. Even in a state that’s become grimly accustomed to severe conflagrations, the rapid surge of wildfire that has torched the Los Angeles area has been shocking, triggering mass evacuations that have left behind charred suburban homes.

    #climat
    #feux
    #États-Unis
    #Californie
    #Los_Angeles

  • Los Angeles Officials Made the Horrific Fires So Much Worse | The New Republic
    https://newrepublic.com/post/189997/los-angeles-fire-fighting-budget-wildfires


    Des catastrophes pas si naturelles.

    Los Angeles authorities have evacuated some 30,000 people as of Wednesday, as flames tear through the Pacific Palisades, threatening more than 10,000 homes. And even though the fires are literally in its own backyard, Los Angeles hasn’t exactly prioritized its ability to respond to the fiery devastation.

    The city’s 2024–2025 budget slashed about $17.6 million from the fire department, while increasing the budget for the city’s police force by $126 million, according to figures from the Los Angeles City Administrative Office.

    Exactly why the fire department was deprioritized amid escalating wildfire seasons is unclear, but the unfortunate budget decision comes at a time when state firefighting reserves are also facing the heat. Depending on the year, low-wage incarcerated inmates compose somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the firefighters with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection—but their ranks within the reserve have been drained by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Los Angeles Times.

  • Cities are pushing back on AI-powered software used to raise rents - Los Angeles Times
    https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2024-12-16/ai-software-rental-market-essential-california

    Sur les algorithmes de maximisation des loyers (pour les propriétaires) qui sont dans le collimateur des pouvoirs publics US.
    Question : comment faire appliquer une interdiction de ces outils qui est pourtant votée par la ville de San Francisco.

    The rise of (and backlash to) AI rental software

    It’s no secret that California’s lack of affordable housing and the slow pace of solutions to the decades-in-the-making crisis continue to crank up the pressure on renters.

    According to some critics, there’s a more recent contributor to rising rents: algorithmic software that some landlords utilize to set prices.

    Popular software from Texas-based company RealPage offers AI revenue management that gives real estate owners suggestions on how much to charge for rent “to maximize their revenue potential.”

    The company also sells an AI tool to screen would-be tenants and “more accurately [select] the most appropriate residents for your property.”

    ProPublica previously reported that the company was using private data to recommend rents and discourage landlords from negotiating prices individually with renters.
    Several people hold up small signs with a frowning emoji and the words “The rent is too damn high.”
    Audience members hold up signs at an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting in April.
    (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

    Now the feds are looking into RealPage’s practices.

    The U.S. Department of Justice, along with California and seven other states, sued RealPage in August, alleging that the company took part in a pricing alignment scheme “that increased their rent revenue across the board, enabled by the illegal sharing of confidential pricing and supply information.”

    “RealPage replaces competition with coordination,” the lawsuit states. “It substitutes unity for rivalry. It subverts competition and the competitive process. It does so openly and directly — and American renters are left paying the price.”

    The alleged price fixing affected renters in markets throughout California, according to state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who singled out multifamily buildings in many Southern California counties.

    “Anticompetitive agreements are illegal, whether done by a human or software program,” Bonta said in a news release at the time. “Every day, millions of Californians worry about keeping a roof over their head and RealPage has directly made it more difficult to do so.”

    Some L.A. tenant advocates say the company is partially to blame for the region’s homelessness crisis.

    “Large corporate landlords have used RealPage to collude and inflate rents, affecting not only their own tenants who pay sky-high rents, but also all tenants who have to look for a place to live in a rental market shaped by that collusion,” Rose Lenehan, an organizer with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, told me.

    RealPage has contended that the nation’s well-documented lack of affordable housing is the true source of high rents and accused the media of publishing “false and misleading claims” about the company.

    “RealPage is proud of the role our customers play in providing safe and affordable housing to millions of people,” RealPage Chief Executive and President Dana Jones said in a statement. “Despite the noise, we will continue to innovate with confidence and make sure our solutions continue to benefit residents and housing providers, alike.”
    A For Rent sign posted outside a home
    (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

    Some Golden State cities aren’t waiting on the feds to push back.

    San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a nation-first ban on algorithm-based property management software, including RealPage’s.

    Bans are also being floated by leaders in San Jose and San Diego.

    In September, L.A. City Councilmember Heather Hutt introduced a motion that would require the city’s housing department to report on how many individual landlords and property management groups are using algorithm-based software to set rents, as well as the “feasibility of instituting a ban.” That motion was referred to the council’s housing committee but had not been placed on the agenda as of last week.

    It remains to be seen if federal case will proceed under a Trump presidency.

    Under President Biden, antitrust actions ramped up as the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission took significant action against major industries including Big Tech, the financial services industry and pharmaceutical giants.

    But the incoming Trump administration could have a cooling effect on litigation and prosecutions for antitrust law violations, experts say, similar to what we saw during Trump’s first term.

    On a related note, RealPage said it received notice earlier this month that the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division had closed a criminal probe into the company, though that was separate from the civil lawsuits that were filed and still active.

    “We remain unwavering in our belief that RealPage’s revenue management software benefits both housing providers and residents and that the remaining lawsuits are based on misinformation and baseless allegations,” the company said in a statement.

    #Intelligence_artificielle #Loyers #Los_Angeles #San_Francisco

  • L.A. Times Owner Plans ‘Bias Meter’ Next to Coverage - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/business/media/la-times-owner-bias-meter.html

    Katie Robertson

    By Katie Robertson
    Dec. 6, 2024

    Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, said on Thursday that he planned to introduce a “bias meter” next to the paper’s news and opinion coverage as part of his campaign to overhaul the publication.

    Dr. Soon-Shiong, who in October quashed a planned presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris from The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board, said in an interview that aired on Scott Jennings’s podcast “Flyover Country” that he had begun to see his newspaper as “an echo chamber and not a trusted source.”

    He previously said he planned to remake the paper’s editorial board and add more conservative voices. He has asked Mr. Jennings, a CNN political commentator and a Republican strategist, to join it.

    Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought The Times in 2018, said on the podcast that he had been working with a team to create the so-called bias meter using technology he had been building in his health care businesses.

    On news and opinion articles, “you have a bias meter so somebody could understand, as a reader, that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he explained in the interview. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias, and then that story automatically — the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story, and then give comments.”

    He said he planned to introduce the tool in January.

    Dr. Soon-Shiong’s latest comments set off immediate pushback from the L.A. Times Guild, which represents journalists at the paper.

    “Recently, the newspaper’s owner has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples,” the union’s leadership said in a statement on Thursday. The union said all Times staff members abided by ethics guidelines that call for “fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue.”

    Harry Litman, a senior legal affairs columnist for The Los Angeles Times’s Opinion section, announced Thursday that he was resigning from the paper because of recent actions by Dr. Soon-Shiong. “I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons,” he wrote of his resignation in a post on Substack.

    “My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong,” he said. “Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump.”

    A Los Angeles Times spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    #Journalisme #Milliardaires #Los_Angeles_Times #Déontologie

  • En 1972 il avait tout compris : Fritz The Cat
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmK3PrGAdxk


    Attention aux niouze de radio :-)

    Fritz the Cat (film)
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_the_Cat_(film)

    Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film focuses on its Skip Hinnant-portrayed titular character, a glib, womanizing and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, and the free love movement, as well as serving as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.

    #USA #Israel #New_York #Los_Angeles #cinéma #animation #bande_dessinée

  • Study details ‘transformative’ results from L.A. pilot that guaranteed families $1,000 a month

    Some of L.A.’s poorest families received cash assistance of $1,000 a month as part of a 12-month pilot project launched nearly three years ago. There were no strings attached and they could use the money however they saw fit.

    Now, a new study finds that the city-funded program was overwhelmingly beneficial.

    Participants in the program experienced a host of financial benefits, according to an analysis co-authored by University of Pennsylvania and UCLA researchers. Beyond that, the study found, the initiative gave people the time and space to make deeper changes in their lives. That included landing better jobs, leaving unsafe living conditions and escaping abusive relationships.

    “If you are trapped in financial scarcity, you are also trapped in time scarcity,” Dr. Amy Castro, co-founder of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research, told The Times. “There’s no time for yourself; there’s no time for your kids, your neighbors or anybody else.”

    The Basic Income Guaranteed: Los Angeles Economic Assistance Pilot, or BIG:LEAP, disbursed $38.4 million in city funds to 3,200 residents who were pregnant or had at least one child, lived at or below the federal poverty level and experienced hardship related to COVID-19. Participants were randomly selected from about 50,000 applicants and received the payments for 12 months starting in 2022. The city paid researchers $3.9 million to help design the trial and survey participants throughout about their experiences.

    Castro and her colleagues partnered with researchers at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health to compare the experiences of participants in L.A.’s randomized control trial — the country’s first large-scale guaranteed-income pilot using public funds — with those of nearly 5,000 people who didn’t receive the unconditional cash.

    Researchers found that participants reported a meaningful increase in savings and were more likely to be able to cover a $400 emergency during and after the program. Guaranteed-income recipients also were more likely to secure full-time or part-time employment, or to be looking for work, rather than being unemployed and not looking for work, the study found.

    “Instead of taking the very first job that was available, that might not have been a lasting, good fit for the family, [the participants were] saying, ‘Hold on a minute, I have a moment to sit and think and breathe, and think about where I want my family to be,’ ” said Dr. Stacia West, also a co-founder of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research.

    In a city with sky-high rents, participants reported that the guaranteed income functioned as “a preventative measure against homelessness,” according to the report, helping them offset rental costs and serving as a buffer while they waited for other housing support.

    It also prevented or reduced the incidence of intimate partner violence, the analysis found, by making it possible for people and their children to leave and find other housing. Intimate partner violence is an intractable social challenge, Castro said, so to see improvements with just 12 months of funding is a “pretty extraordinary change.”

    People who had struggled to maintain their health because of inflexible or erratic work schedules and lack of child care reported that the guaranteed income provided the safety net they needed to maintain healthier behaviors, the report said. They reported sleeping better, exercising more, resuming necessary medications and seeking mental health therapy for themselves and their children.

    Compared with those who didn’t receive cash, guaranteed income recipients were more likely to enroll their kids in sports and clubs during and after the pilot.
    LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 28, 2023 - Martha Lopez Dubon, 39, spends a light moment with her daughters Sofia Fuentes, 6, left, and Lizzy Fuentes, 9, while waiting for customers at The Dubon Store in Los Angeles on December 28, 2023. Lopez is a recipient of the Basic Income Guaranteed: Los Angeles Economic Assistance Pilot, or BIG: LEAP. Lopez, an immigrant from Honduras who began selling clothing in the street at the beginning of the pandemic. When Lopez started receiving the $1,000 payments from the BIG: LEAP program in February 2022, she used half to pay rent. She saved the other half, with the goal of opening her own clothing store which she now operates. In 2022, the city of Los Angeles launched the Basic Income Guaranteed: Los Angeles Economic Assistance Pilot, or BIG: LEAP. Through the program, 3,200 low-income people received monthly payments of $1,000 - and there were no restrictions on how the money could be spent. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    Los Angeles resident Ashley Davis appeared at a news conference Tuesday about the study findings and said that her health improved because she could afford to buy fruits, vegetables and smoothies. Before, she was pre-diabetic and “my cholesterol was going through the roof,” Davis said.

    “I was neglecting my own needs,” said Davis, who described herself as a single mother of a special-needs child. She switched careers and is now studying to be a nurse, she said.

    Abigail Marquez, general manager of the Community Investment for Families Department, which helped oversee BIG:LEAP, said she’s spent 20 years working on various anti-poverty programs.

    “I can say confidently that this is by far the most transformative program,” Marquez said.

    BIG:LEAP was one of the largest of more than 150 guaranteed-income pilot programs launched nationwide in recent years. The program was funded through the city budget and included $11 million that city leaders moved from the Police Department budget in response to nationwide protests after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

    Despite the positive research findings, programs like BIG:LEAP have raised concerns among some taxpayer groups.

    “It’s simply wrong for the city government to take tax dollars earned and paid by people who are trying to pay their own bills and transfer that money to other people chosen by the government to receive it,” the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. said in a statement. “Guaranteed-income programs are appropriately funded voluntarily by charitable organizations and foundations, not forcibly through the tax code.”

    Councilmember Curren Price, whose South Los Angeles district includes some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, introduced a motion Tuesday to continue a version of the pilot with a focus on people in abusive relationships and young adults in need of mental health and emotional support.

    Price said he would contribute $1 million toward the next phase from his council funds. Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez also pledged $1 million.

    Beyond that, it’s not clear where the next round of funding would come from. Price expressed hope the city would continue to support the effort through the general budget.

    “I don’t know how realistic it is that it’s going to be $40 million again,” Price said. “But I think it’s realistic that we could receive something.”

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-31/study-details-what-happened-when-la-residents-were-guaranteed-1000-dollars-

    #revenu_de_base #rdb #revenu_universel #ça_marche #pauvreté #efficacité #Los_Angeles #USA #Etats-Unis #lutte_contre_la_pauvreté #argent #temps

    ping @karine4

    • Report: Landmark guaranteed income program in City of Los Angeles produces “overwhelmingly positive” results

      Groundbreaking study demonstrates impact of direct cash over a 12-month period, showing increased ability of recipients to exit intimate partner violence, decreased food insecurity, and improved quality of life across a number of additional domains.

      Philadelphia, PA — City of Los Angeles residents who received $1000 monthly cash payments for a year as part of the Basic Income Guaranteed: Los Angeles Economic Assistance Pilot (BIG:LEAP) program reported positive trends in financial well-being, food security, intimate partner violence, parenting, sense of community, and reduced fear of community violence.

      “BIG:LEAP participants experienced overwhelmingly positive outcomes with the infusion of unconditional cash,”write the authors of a new report produced by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2), in partnership with The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health.

      The program provided a guaranteed income (GI) to 3,200 households living in deep poverty within Los Angeles, California, the second largest and most unaffordable city in the country. Implemented by the city’s Community Investment for Families Department (CIFD) and supported by the city’s general fund with investments from local council district leaders, BIG:LEAP serves as an example of a government-led direct cash program executed at a large scale with public resources and infrastructure.

      According to the report’s authors, BIG:LEAP marks a number of milestones — the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of unconditional cash positioned to determine how much change can occur in recipients’ lives within a 12-month period, the largest GI study that has concluded since the U.S. government’s experiments with income tax in the 1960s and 1970s, and the first GI study since the 1970s to consider intimate partner violence and community violence.

      “The City of Los Angeles is working urgently to provide Angelenos with economic opportunities and resources in our efforts to alleviate poverty throughout L.A. These are encouraging results and I’m looking forward to expanding this program in more stable economic times. We must continue to implement creative solutions to the challenges we face and I look forward to continuing that work with locked arms,” says City of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

      Michael D. Tubbs, founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI), says, “Every day, folks are working hard and doing their part, yet still falling short. Guaranteed income gives them the flexibility to meet their families’ needs and the stability to reach for a better future.” MGI is a coalition of over 125 mayors committed to advancing a federal guaranteed income.

      Part of a series of CGIR publications collectively named The American Guaranteed Income Studies, the report found that despite extreme financial pressures and profound effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, recipients benefited from GI in several ways over the duration of the program:

      - Improved safety and autonomy — GI recipients reported reduced severity and frequency of intimate partner violence (IPV), with recipients using GI to prevent and exit circumstances of IPV.
      - Strengthened sense of community — GI recipients were considerably more likely to report reduced fear of neighborhood violence and increased positive interactions with neighbors.
      - Improved financial well-being — GI recipients demonstrated a significantly increased ability to cover a $400 emergency compared to the control group.
      - Enhanced food security — GI recipients showed a notable decrease in food insecurity and an increase in health-promoting behaviors.
      – Increased enrichment for children — Compared to those in the control group, parents receiving GI were significantly more likely to maintain their children’s extracurricular activities and reported more time for parenting.

      “In Los Angeles, a city of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, the opportunities for upward economic mobility can seem out of reach,” write the researchers, Drs. Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim, Amy Castro, Stacia West, and colleagues. “BIG:LEAP, the largest GI program at its time of launch, represented a bold and significant investment to provide economic security and a solid foundation for mobility to a diverse group of caregivers with children.”

      Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price proposed the pilot in 2021. “Through this program, we witnessed transformation beyond measure. BIG:LEAP didn’t just help Angelenos address health issues, school expenses, childcare, or emergency needs; it empowered participants to start businesses, move into their own homes, and reclaim hope from despair,” says Price. “The undeniable impact of programs like BIG:LEAP speaks volumes—it has the power to rewrite destinies and is vital for a brighter future.”

      Adds Council President Pro-tem Marqueece Harris-Dawson, “The BIG:LEAP program offers significant change for some and life-altering benefits for others. The data underscores its effectiveness and success in improving health and wellbeing, and stability for all who participated.”

      To qualify, participants were required to be at least 18 years old, have at least one dependent within the household or be expecting a child, be financially or medically impacted by COVID-19, and fall below the federal poverty threshold. Researchers measured participant impact against a randomized control group of 4,992 other residents who did not receive payments, though both study groups were compensated for completing surveys and interviews.

      One participant commented, “[BIG:LEAP] saved my life really … I’d probably be living on the streets. I probably would have had my kids taken … it gave me a sense of security instead of always wondering if I’m gonna be able to get money for the next meal.”

      The researchers say the study’s “remarkable” results suggest GI programs could serve as critical and commonsense approaches to supporting families and communities. “As the country, led by individual municipalities and innovative … leaders, moves toward shoring up the porous social safety net, GI appears to be an effective strategy to promote overall health and well-being,” the authors write.

      About the Center for Guaranteed Income Research

      The Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) is an applied research center specializing in cash-transfer research, evaluation, pilot design, and narrative change. CGIR provides mixed-methods expertise in designing and executing empirical guaranteed income studies that work alongside the existing safety net. Headed by its founding directors, Drs. Amy Castro and Stacia West, CGIR is housed at the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

      About Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2)

      For more than 110 years, the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) has been a powerful force for good in the world, working towards social justice and social change through research and practice. SP2 contributes to the advancement of more effective, efficient, and humane human services through education, research, and civic engagement. The School offers five top-ranked, highly respected degree programs along with a range of certificate programs and dual degrees. SP2’s transdisciplinary research centers and initiatives — many collaborations with Penn’s other professional schools — yield innovative ideas and better ways to shape policy and service delivery. The passionate pursuit of social innovation, impact, and justice is at the heart of the School’s knowledge-building activities.

      https://sp2.upenn.edu/report-landmark-guaranteed-income-program-in-city-of-los-angeles-produces
      #sécurité_alimentaire #alimentation #autonomie #sécurité #bien-être

      #rapport

    • #Center_for_Guaranteed_Income_Research

      The Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) is an applied research center specializing in cash-transfer research, evaluation, pilot design, and narrative change. We provide mixed-methods expertise in designing and executing empirical guaranteed income studies that work alongside the existing safety net. CGIR’s team, headed by its Founding Directors, Dr. Amy Castro and Dr. Stacia West, led the design and research for the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), and currently serve as the centralized research partners for Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI). Dr. Castro and Dr. West have 20 combined years of experience in research, advocacy, and social work practice on economic justice, asset building, and cash-transfers.

      https://www.penncgir.org
      #justice_économique

    • Première phrases :

      On peut de moins en moins affirmer que Blade Runner est de la science-fiction. Ce film a évolué de la science-fiction vers une sorte de réalité. […] Je crois que Blade Runner a visé juste.

      MAIS OÙ SONT LES PUTAINS DE BAGNOLES QUI VOLENT EN 2023 ?

  • A Los Angeles, la maison individuelle, un modèle même pour les sans-abri


    Une allée de maisons dans le Tiny Home Village du quartier de Westlake, à Los Angeles, le 19 juillet 2023. Le site accueille des personnes sans-abri. Il est entouré d’une palissade pour le protéger des regards de l’extérieur. SINNA NASSERI POUR « LE MONDE »

    « Los Angeles, rêve d’architecte » (3/6). La Cité des anges compte 42 000 personnes sans abri, dont une petite partie est relogée dans des bicoques de 5 mètres carrés. La nouvelle maire a fait de leur hébergement sa priorité, mais la tâche s’annonce rude, dans une ville où les logements sociaux n’existent pas.

    Au cœur de Westlake, quartier populaire et à majorité latino du centre de Los Angeles, une cinquantaine de minuscules maisons ont été installées sur une parcelle en lisière d’un parking. C’est un village pour #sans-abri. Une palissade empêche de voir l’intérieur. Ailleurs, on suspecterait une activité honteuse ou secrète. Mais, à Los Angeles, la moindre terrasse de café est bardée de rouleaux de barbelés, les galeries d’art prospèrent à l’ombre des hangars, les villas aux façades aveugles signalent la richesse des propriétaires. La clôture est signe de distinction.

    « Elle garantit la sécurité des habitants, assure Deborah Weintraub, l’architecte en chef de la ville qui pilote ces Tiny Home Village qu’on voit fleurir depuis deux ans en différents points de la ville. L’autre jour, l’un d’eux m’a lancé : “Ça y est, on a notre propre gated community [quartier résidentiel fermé]. C’était une blague, mais il y avait une pointe de fierté dans sa voix. »

    D’un village à l’autre, le design peut varier, mais le modèle est le même : des bicoques en plastique préfabriquées, 5 m2 de surface, un ou deux lits à l’intérieur, une tablette et une grosse poubelle pour ranger ses affaires. Les douches sont collectives. Conçus pour des séjours de trois ou quatre mois, ils sont une alternative aux grandes tentes et petites chambres d’hôtel qui résumaient, jusque-là, l’offre d’#hébergement_temporaire de la ville. « Le but est que les gens se stabilisent pour évoluer ensuite vers un logement permanent. » A Westlake, les maisons sont blanches, mais le sol est bariolé, ainsi que les tables de pique-nique et leurs parasols. « La couleur, c’est la meilleure manière de faire quelque chose avec rien, se félicite Michael Lehrer, l’architecte du lotissement. C’est l’idée du sigle Hollywood planté sur la colline, qu’on voit de très loin dans la ville : quelque chose de très simple, avec un impact très fort. » Il part du principe que les résidents apprécieront.

    Risque de récidive

    Les couleurs s’adressent aussi aux riverains, souvent hostiles à l’implantation de populations défavorisées : c’est le phénomène nimby – pour not in my backyard, « pas dans mon jardin ». Tout, dans le projet, vise donc à le rendre acceptable : l’implantation sur un terrain inexploitable, le faible coût des maisons (10 000 dollars, soit un peu plus de 9 000 euros), le caractère démontable de l’ensemble… « On vend le truc comme provisoire, explique l’architecte. C’est plus facile à pérenniser quand les gens ont vu que ça se passait bien… »

    Dans le village de Westlake, les journalistes n’ont pas le droit de parler aux résidents. La visite se fait en compagnie d’un employé d’Urban Alchemy, l’ONG chargée de la gestion du site. « Ne vous fiez pas à l’entrée ultrasécurisée : on n’est pas en prison, ici ! », claironne-t-il. Les résidents sont libres d’entrer et de sortir à leur guise, mais, à l’intérieur, il y a des règles. Pas de drogue. Les armes, que chacun dans ce pays, sans-abri ou non, a le droit de posséder, doivent être déposées dans un casier à l’entrée. Prise de tension et de température toutes les heures, y compris pendant le sommeil. Et toutes les demi-heures pour ceux qui souffrent d’addictions sévères. « C’est pour leur sécurité, se défend le guide : on ne veut pas se retrouver avec un mort ! »

    Les règlements varient d’un village à l’autre, nous assure Deborah Weintraub, pour qui ces villages « ont le mérite de sortir les gens de la rue ». L’expérience a toutefois prouvé que, sans accompagnement médical, sans prise en charge psychologique, le risque est fort qu’ils y retournent vite. Ce n’est pas en trois mois qu’on guérit d’une addiction aux opiacés, ni des dommages causés par des années à vivre dans des cartons.

    Une tâche immense

    Karen Bass, maire démocrate de Los Angeles depuis près de neuf mois, a promis des solutions plus durables. Originaire de la ville, cette femme noire a centré sa campagne sur la crise des sans-abri et y consacre en 2023 pas moins de 1,3 milliard de dollars, soit 10 % de son budget. En juin, la municipalité avait déjà acheté des dizaines d’hôtels et de motels pour reloger 14 000 personnes. Des critiques ont fusé pour dénoncer une politique du chiffre au détriment de l’accompagnement ou de la prise en compte des cas individuels. Mais la maire assume : « On ne peut pas se permettre d’attendre l’étude qui détaillerait le plan parfait. On fabrique l’avion alors qu’on est déjà en vol. »
    https://www.lemonde.fr/series-d-ete/article/2023/08/10/a-los-angeles-la-maison-individuelle-un-modele-meme-pour-les-sans-abri_61849
    https://justpaste.it/aizca

    #pauvreté #logement #U.S.A #Los_Angeles

  • Interview : ‘Nightcrawler’ Director Dan Gilroy Talks Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Elswit & Sociopaths
    https://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/interview-nightcrawler-director-dan-gilroy-talks-jake-gyllenhaal-robert-e

    29.10.2014 by James Rocchi

    Interview: ‘Nightcrawler’ Director Dan Gilroy Talks Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Elswit & Sociopaths

    Writer and director Dan Gilroy speaks in a manner in which ideas, facts and concepts come tumbling out, his train of thought speeding fast but never in danger of going off the track. The credited screenwriter on films like “The Bourne Legacy,” the long-forgotten “Freejack,” the family-friendly heroics of “Real Steel” and the grim fairy tale “The Fall,” Gilroy makes his directorial debut with “Nightcrawler.” Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the film depicts the rise and fall of Lou Bloom, a self-motivated striver who bootstraps into a freelance job filming the car crashes and crime scenes of L.A. at night for the local news channels that thrive on blood and bad news (our review).

    Gilroy spoke with The Playlist about what cinematographer Robert Elswit (“There Will Be Blood,” “Boogie Nights”) brought to the film, the economic realities behind the Lou Bloom character, Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance and the film’s depiction of the dark dream of L.A. that still feels real and fresh.
    Popular on IndieWire

    I’m not from here, but I live here— and I’m so used to cliché Hollywood landmarks— and I love how much this film is about the open-all-night, strip-mall, come-in-through-the-loading-dock L.A. Is telling the story of Los Angeles as a real town part of making this film?
    Yeah, in the sense of not going for landmarks that you typically see; we studiously avoided those. I find Los Angeles to be a place of great physical beauty, in which you have the oceans and the mountains and there’s a vertical sense and a desert light that you can see forever.

    When I sat down with Robert Elswit, who lives in Venice, we talked about shooting Los Angeles in a way that traditionally you don’t see, which is that most films look at L.A. in a desaturated way, going beyond the specific locations you were talking about: Desaturated, and they focus on cement and the highways and the concrete —downtown is prominent.

    We studiously avoided shooting downtown; it’s the easiest place to shoot, they will give you a permit there in a second, but we didn’t want to shoot there because everyone shoots down there. Just like we didn’t want to shoot at Hollywood and Vine, just like we didn’t want to shoot the big landmarks.

    We wanted to show the functional side of the city, the strip-malls and the sprawl and the size of it —it just seems to go on forever, but hopefully we also wanted to catch some sort of physical beauty, that at night there is this clarity of light and you can see long distances. So we used great depth of field in the shots rather than soft focus, and we tried to get wide angles as much as possible. Sometimes we were down to 14mm lenses to really make it wide angle, because in an equation sense, the character of Lou is like a nocturnal animal that comes down out of the hills at night to feed. Jake would call him a coyote. That’s sort of the symbolic animal; that’s why he lost all the weight because coyotes are always hungry.

    So Robert Elswit and I were always looking at it as almost like an animal documentary. The landscape that the animal moves through is physically beautiful, even though that might not be the term that you would use to describe our film. I found it beautiful, in the sense that you can see far and the neon lights sort of popped out, and the yellow sodium vapor lights really gave it an interesting sort of glow, so we’re trying to make it look beautiful.

    When Michael Mann was shooting ”Collateral,” they asked him “Why digital?” And his answer was “Because digital picks up 80 different colors in what film reads as ‘black.’” Was that part of the decision to go with video at night?
    The real reason why people are going with digital is that it’s extraordinarily mobile and it’s cheaper and it has a great image, and you just can’t beat it at night. It’s puling in variations of colors, it’s pulling in lights from 40 miles away —a candle would be seen.

    Robert Elswit used the Alexa digital to shoot at night, but we shot our daytime scenes on [35mm] film. And that was a choice that Robert wanted … because he is an extraordinary proponent of film, and when you listen to Robert speak, you realize the level of technology that film has achieved, and the quality of image [that film provides] is a far superior image ultimately under the right circumstances than digital. It’s just not used as much anymore for practical reasons.

    What I love about Lou is that he feels like if you shoved the Great Gatsby under a rock and just fed him self-help books and other forms of bullshit for 50 years, and then saw what crawled out. Where did that whole “achiever” element of Lou’s personality come from?
    I had heard about the nightcrawling world, and I’m very aware that there are tens of millions of young people around the world who are facing bleak employment prospects. Italy has 45% unemployment under 30 —it’s insane. So [I was exploring] idea of a desperate younger person looking for work

    I stared to think about the character, and that he didn’t have to be classically heroic. He could be an anti-hero. I stared to think of the anti-hero; I think you have to be careful and aware that you don’t want it to be a reductive study of psycho-babble. You are looking for something more. You want the audience to connect in a way that goes beyond a just sort of a pathological study. The idea of a character who had an implied back story of abuse and abandonments; I pictured him alone as a child, and all he had was his computer and he was going on his computer a lot surfing —this is the back story. And in his desperate loneliness and probably raging insanity, the precepts of capitalism became a religion to him. If you only had [one] direction to climb, which is up, then to have a goal would give sanity. I imagine he started to scour the internet for self-help maxims and aphorisms, and Forbes 500 corporate-HR manual speak. I believe he’s an uber-capitalist, and capitalism is a religion, it’s a religion that gives him sanity and which ultimately drives him insane and pushes him over the edge. Its’ a mindless pursuit of a goal that can never be achieved. That ultimately leaves only a hunger, which goes back to the coyote —this perpetual hunger that can never be satiated.

    The whole Zen thing of that wanting is to suffer, which capitalism never seems to get, because all capitalism is wanting.
    It’s the perpetual spirit of poverty. I don’t know another system other than capitalism, maybe some mixed socialism thing. I wouldn’t want to hazard what the better system was, but I think we’re entering into this period of hyper free-market [capitalism] that’s becoming very much like the jungle, in which it is acceptable that the weak perish at the hands of the strong, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And I feel like the world as I see it —and this is a personal film on a lot of levels— has been reduced to transactions, and that Lou thrives in that world because that’s the only thing that has any relevance to him. And we approach it as a success story of a guy who is looking for work at the beginning and is the owner of a successful business at the end, and the reason I approach it that way is because I didn’t want at the end for the audience at to go, “oh, the problem is this psychopath!” I wanted the audience to go “maybe the problem is the world that created and rewards this character.” Maybe it’s a larger question.

    I keep thinking of “Broadcast News.” There’s that quick line of “you can get fired for that!” and Hurt replies “I got promoted for that!” Everything that Lou does which he knows is wrong, he gets promoted for and gets more success from.
    That context has to do with human manipulation, and manipulation in the news now is rewarded to some degree. Edward R. Murrow is doing pirouettes in his grave right now at the concept that now journalism is now not only manipulating but being driven by that [kind of manipulation].

    The phrase that I love that news people keep coming back to in the film to talk about the kind of stories they want to highlight is “urban crime creeping to the suburbs.” It’s so sanitized, it just suggests geographic creep, but that’s not what it is at all.
    No. On a specific level, it’s bullshit jargon hiding something truly terrifying. It’s perpetuating the myth and the horror that minorities are dangerous. And if you live in a suburban area regardless of your race, you are in danger from these desperate unwashed people who are going to creep over your hedge and somehow harm you and steal your car. That’s the true tragedy of this narrative that’s being presented by the news, when people then go to sleep and wake up in the morning and get in their car, and they encounter “a minority,”or someone who would fall into the category of that narrative of the “urban person.” You don’t approach them in an open, friendly and harmonious way. You look at them as instantly threatening and dangerous.

    And I don’t want to tie it into current top-level stories, but what happened in Ferguson and what’s happening in other cities, where a black person standing alone is perceived and treated as dangerous, and in New York City they are frisked in such outlandish statistical numbers: I feel that there’s a pervasive, fearful narrative that’s being projected on all of us to create negative consequence.

    When capitalism becomes dog eat dog, the problem is a) who wants to be a dog? And b) who wants to eat one?
    Right, you’re going to be one or the other. And Lou is someone who has made peace with it and understands it and has no emotional attachment to thwart him or to slow him down. I find much of my energy in a day is worrying about people I love or myself. I wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and find myself worrying about myself and friends and stuff and people I’ve encountered. Lou is unencumbered by that, and it gives him great ability to focus in and hunt.

    I know actors often do this, for their character, “I wrote 8 pages of backstory.” Do you write backstory, or do you just let it happen?
    I wrote no back-story for Lou.

    There’s a scene where he’s interviewing Rick for the position, and Rick says “yeah, I’m homeless,” and out of nowhere Lou asks “do you trick?” and he’s very insistent about it. It just filled my mind up with possibilities for Lou …
    When I wrote that moment, because I had no back story, I was definitely trying to imply that Lou had tricked, and that tricking to him had no emotional weight whatsoever. It was something he had done to survive, and he doesn’t live in the world that we live in, in the sense that we put moral judgments on things or we’re burdened by the acts we do. Lou’s like an animal —you do what you need to do to survive, and then you just move on. That was supposed to be in there, and hopefully open up the door that you could look at and say “oh, that’s something they’re revealing about the character.”

    The film uses the language of cinema to get you on Lou’s side; early on, you see him have an altercation with a stranger … and then Lou walks away bearing his victory trophy, with us never seeing the stranger again.
    We wanted the audience to have empathy for the character —and yet we start the movie in a way that he’s doing an act of violence. And that was a little nerve-wracking. I knew it was important to show that side of the character right up front, to not hide that: to put the meat on the table and say “this is somebody who’s dangerous.” But it became a challenge to try and win them back, so in the salvage yard scene, the next scene, he’s so earnestly looking for work, and he’s so polite and so respectful and he so wants a job that I felt those two things opened up a gulf in the audience. The audience is going “oh, at first he’s a criminal … wait a minute, he’s also a young man looking for work, and he seems earnestly responsible …”

    So [we wanted] to keep the audience on their toes about the character. Jake and I never wanted to supply answers for the character; I always imagined the character has a big question mark on his forehead that only gets bigger as the film goes along, so that at the end, you’re even more baffled: what makes him tick? “What Makes Sammy Run?” That’s a great title, and that really sums up that element where in some ways we’re crossing over to this territory: what makes this person tick? And I believe what makes him tick is that —and he feels that it’s okay by the cues and signals he’s received from society— he’s stripped away all emotional connections and looks at the world as a business transaction. And that the bottom line is the only thing that’s important, and if you pursue that, you will be rewarded and loved.

    …And if you were wrong about the bottom line being the only thing that’s important, you wouldn’t be being rewarded.
    I believe —and when I was writing this film, I firmly believed— that if you came back in 10 years, Lou would be running a multi-million dollar, multi-national corporation. Lou would do better in comparison between himself and a corporate head who broke the company apart and put 40,000 people out of work and then went off to build an 8,000-foot square home and wound up on the cover of BusinessWeek Magazine…

    …For increasing shareholder value.
    These attributes are celebrated, and I believe Lou is a small fish compared to other people. And I believe Lou is will do well and thrive when the movie ends.

    It’s the reverse of a canary in a coal mine: The better he does, the worse trouble we’re in.
    Absolutely. I believe it’s only the stupid sociopaths that are caught, and I believe most sociopaths are insanely brilliant in deciphering what human cues need to be manipulated, and the sociopaths know people like lions know gazelles; they know every weakness, they know every smell, they know every element that can be manipulated … and Lou understands people and knows how to do that.

    How tricky was it when you have to shoot Lou shooting news footage?
    It wasn’t difficult in the actual shooting of it, but it became difficult, because usually when we’re shooting over Lou’s shoulder, we’re shooting at the little viewfinder on the camera, and that’s the one time we went soft-focus. We wanted people to focus on that viewfinder, we wanted people to lean in and go “what is that image? What am I looking at?” And that became difficult in post, because sometimes the image that we were shooting didn’t translate practically, and we had to do CGI sometimes, so putting the images in the little viewfinders became an issue.

    But the choreography, the sightlines of the whole Chinese restaurant sequence, and the fact you have to do stunts and effects at a 60-foot remove … that had to be a very tough night.
    It was a very tough night, because we had to practice that in rehearsal, where we had to understand what you could see and what you couldn’t see from our point of view of over Lou’s shoulder, because you’re not in it. You’re spending a lot of money and big stunts are going off, we’re breaking glass, and you’re definitely wondering. We practiced it, though; we measured it out and recreated everything on a soundstage. Robert (Elswit) exactly replicated all the cameras, and he would look and we would shoot and he would say “yes, I can see the gun” —when the guy pulls the gun out from under the table— Robert would say, “yes, from 75 feet away and with this lens, I can see the gun, so we’ll go with that. And we’ll go with this lens for the cops coming in.” We had to plan all that out; that was hard.

    Is this more specifically a movie about media everywhere, or could it only happen in L.A.? Could you have done an East Coast version?
    No … they have nightcrawlers in other urban markets, but they’re not as predominant and prevalent; they’re mostly found in L.A. for a couple reasons. One, at 10 o’clock at night, the local TV news stations let their union crews go, because they get double-time, so there’s a void. Secondly, Los Angeles has enough crime to sustain a good healthy stringer-slash-nightcrawling market, and some of the smaller markets don’t have that. And third, there’s a very large population here of people who watch TV. All those things intersect; you can find some nightcrawlers in other cities, but not to the extent we have them here.

    Really brief question: What are the best movies about media no one knows about?
    Well, there’s one I love which is not dissimilar in terms of tone: “Ace in the Hole” with Kirk Douglas. And I think it says a lot about what people will do to get a story and how you can manipulate a story. Obviously, “Network” —which is probably one of the great films of all time. “Broadcast News” is another one about journalism that I love. “To Die For,” with Nicole Kidman, is great —her desire to be a part of news, how she uses news to further her career and how it can drive you insane. I love that movie.

    Is it a not-great thing that we’re living in an age where people learn how to be human from electronic media? Is that perhaps not to our overall benefit?
    It’s not to our overall benefit, because the internet is a wonderful purveyor and supplier of reams of information, but it rarely gives you any indication of how to use that information or certainly how to interact with people socially. There are websites that do that, but people who are on a search for information don’t often stop at the door and say “how do I use this information?” It’s scary! Information is a powerful tool, and if you don’t get the instruction manual that came with it, it can have negative consequences. And it does, in Lou’s case.

    “Nightcrawler” opens Oct. 31.

    #cinéma #capitalisme #USA #Los_Angeles #crime #télévisin #news

  • The Radical Imagination of Mike Davis
    https://jacobin.com/2022/11/mike-davis-southern-california-capitalism-struggle

    When Mike Davis died last month, he was a celebrity, but hardly one drawn to his effervescent fame. City of Quartz, his surprise bestseller, won him an international audience in 1990. Davis later reported himself “utterly shocked” by the book’s success. Thereafter, he might have spent decades on the lecture circuit, but Davis plowed ahead, turning out one volume of Marxist-inflected social criticism after another, often contemplating an amazingly disparate set of apocalyptic challenges: climate change, world hunger, viral pandemics, and the rise of homegrown fascism.

    Je vous propose de lire l’extrait suivant de son introduction dans City of Quartz. On y découvre une comparaison statistique qui en dit long sur l’intensité de la violence à laquelle sont exposés les classes populaires du pays qui se réserve le droit exclusif de faire valoir ses intérêts manu militari .

    Homicide is still the largest single cause of death for children under eighteen in Los Angeles County. Years ago, I used the Sheriff Department’s ‘gang-related homicide’ data to estimate that some 10,000 young people had been killed in the L.A. area’s street wars, from the formation of the first Crips sets in 1973—4 until 1992. This, of course, is a fantastic, horrifying figure, almost three times the death toll of the so-called ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland over a roughly similar time span. It is even more harrowing when we consider that most of the homicides have been concentrated in a handful of police divisions. Add to the number of dead the injured and permanently disabled, as well as those incarcerated or on parole for gang-related violations, and you have a measure of how completely Los Angeles – its adult leaderships and elites – has betrayed several generations of its children.

    Cette brève mise en relation nous fait comprendre que ces films dits de suspence comme The Warriors et Assult on Precinct 13 constituent effectivement des reconstitutions dramaturgiques de la réalité vécue par nos amis étatsuniens.

    The Warriors
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warriors_(film)

    Assault on Precinct 13
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_on_Precinct_13_(1976_film)

    On trouve les oeuvres de Mike Davis chez notre vendeur préféré de livres anglais et dans les bibliothèques clandestines de l’internet. Cet auteur exceptionnel nous indique toujours le chemin vers une compréhension des conditions d’existence sous l’impérialisme

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Davis_(scholar)

    Books
    Nonfiction

    Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class (1986, 1999, 2018)
    City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990, 2006)
    Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (1998)
    Casino Zombies: True Stories From the Neon West (1999, German only)
    Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. Big City (2000)
    Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (2001)
    The Grit Beneath the Glitter: Tales from the Real Las Vegas, edited with Hal Rothman (2002)
    Dead Cities, And Other Tales (2003)
    Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, with Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew (2003)
    The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu (2005)
    Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class (2006)
    No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border, with Justin Akers Chacon (2006)
    Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (2007)
    In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire (2007)
    Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism, edited with Daniel Bertrand Monk (2007)
    Be Realistic: Demand the Impossible (2012)
    Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory (2018)
    Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener (2020)

    Fiction

    Land of the Lost Mammoths (2003)
    Pirates, Bats, and Dragons (2004)

    #USA #Los_Angeles #violence #jeunesse #marxisme #sciences #guerre

  • Book Review Roundtable: Fragments of the City: Making and Remaking Urban Worlds
    https://urbanpolitical.podigee.io/52-fragments_city_review

    In this episode moderated by Nitin Bathla, the author Colin McFarlane discusses his recent book Fragments of the City with the critics Theresa Enright, Tatiana Thieme, and Kevin Ward. In analyzing the main arguments of the book, Theresa discusses the role of aesthetics in imagining, sensing, and learning the urban fragments, and the ambivalence of density in how it enables and disables certain kinds of politics. She questions Colin about the distinctiveness of art as a means to engage and politicize fragments, and how can we think about the relationships between fragment urbanism, density and the urban political across varied contexts. Tatiana analyses how the book journeys across a range of temporal scales of knowing fragments from its etymology to autobiographical experiences of (...)

    #urban,political,book_review,mcfarlane,fragments,city
    https://main.podigee-cdn.net/media/podcast_13964_urban_political_pdcst_episode_769948_book_review_rou

    • Fragments of the City. Making and Remaking Urban Worlds

      Cities are becoming increasingly fragmented materially, socially, and spatially. From broken toilets and everyday things, to art and forms of writing, fragments are signatures of urban worlds and provocations for change. In Fragments of the City, Colin McFarlane examines such fragments, what they are and how they come to matter in the experience, politics, and expression of cities. How does the city appear when we look at it through its fragments? For those living on the economic margins, the city is often experienced as a set of fragments. Much of what low-income residents deal with on a daily basis is fragments of stuff, made and remade with and through urban density, social infrastructure, and political practice. In this book, McFarlane explores infrastructure in Mumbai, Kampala, and Cape Town; artistic montages in Los Angeles and Dakar; refugee struggles in Berlin; and the repurposing of fragments in Hong Kong and New York. Fragments surface as material things, as forms of knowledge, as writing strategies. They are used in efforts to politicize the city and in urban writing to capture life and change in the world’s major cities. Fragments of the City surveys the role of fragments in how urban worlds are understood, revealed, written, and changed.

      https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520382244/fragments-of-the-city

      #villes #urban_matter #fragmentation #fragments #livre #marges #marginalité #Mumbai #Kampala #Cape_Town #Los_Angeles #Berlin #Dakar #Los_Angeles #Hong_Kong #New_york #matérialité
      #TRUST #master_TRUST

      ping @cede

  • #Black_Panthers (1/2)

    L’#histoire captivante de l’une des organisations les plus subversives et controversées du XXe siècle. D’inspiration marxiste-léniniste, les Black Panthers s’imposèrent comme une alternative radicale au mouvement des droits civiques porté par Martin Luther King. Mêlant archives rares et nombreux témoignages, une plongée coup de poing au cœur du « #Black_Power ».

    Oakland, #Californie, 1966. Un an après les #émeutes de #Watts, à #Los_Angeles, deux étudiants, Huey P. Newton et Bobby Seale, fondent un collectif d’#autodéfense pour surveiller les actions de la police dans le ghetto noir. En devenant, la même année, un mouvement politique de libération afro-américaine, le Black Panther Party (BPP) se fait le porte-voix d’une communauté brutalisée dans une Amérique dominée par les Blancs. D’inspiration marxiste-léniniste, l’organisation s’impose comme une alternative radicale au mouvement des droits civiques porté par Martin Luther King. En parallèle à ses « #programmes_de_survie » (petits déjeuners gratuits pour les enfants, dispensaires…), elle revendique un penchant pour l’insurrection. Slogans, coupe afro, poing levé : les Black Panthers ouvrent un nouvel imaginaire de lutte pour la communauté noire. Le FBI, effrayé par l’aura du mouvement, y compris auprès de la jeunesse blanche, intensifie le contre-espionnage. L’arrestation de Huey P. Newton, mis en cause dans l’assassinat d’un policier, déstabilise l’organisation. En 1968, en réaction au meurtre de Martin Luther King, son porte-parole #Eldridge_Cleaver refuse de se rendre après un duel avec la police. Il s’exile à Alger et y crée la section internationale du parti.

    « Give More Power to the People »
    De son avènement au cœur des sixties à sa chute impitoyable, le réalisateur Stanley Nelson retrace l’histoire captivante et méconnue des Black Panthers. Luttant contre la suprématie blanche et le capitalisme, ses membres ont marqué l’imaginaire collectif par la radicalité de leur militantisme, leur rhétorique à la fois agressive et fédératrice mais aussi leurs codes vestimentaires et leur manière révolutionnaire d’occuper l’espace public. Au son seventies et groovy du titre « Give More Power to the People » des Chi-Lites, ce documentaire restitue la beauté rageuse du mouvement sans occulter ses tourments et parts d’ombre – violence et bataille d’ego – au moyen d’archives colossales et d’interviews fouillées de militants, d’agents du FBI ou d’historiens. Il rappelle aussi que son point de départ – la violence policière – est toujours d’actualité.

    https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/098427-001-A/black-panthers-1-2

    #insurrection #violence #auto-défense #violences_policières #avant-garde #Oakland #oppression #apparence #image #Black_is_beautiful #look #médias #aide_sociale #auto-défense_armée #COINTELPRO #BPP #FBI #machisme #genre #journal #Martin_Luther_King #Algérie #mouvements_de_libération #Huey_Newton #Bobby_Seale

    #film #film_documentaire #documentaire

    ping @karine4 @cede

  • Seeing red: racial segregation in LA’s suburbs | Essay | Architectural Review

    https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/seeing-red-racial-segregation-in-las-suburbs/10042749.article

    The urbanisation of Los Angeles racially segregated its citizens through ‘redlining’ policies, an urban violence that perseveres today

    Only a few years after the 1965 Watts Riots, British architectural critic Reyner Banham declared his great and controversial love for LA in the influential 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. In it he writes: ‘the language of design, architecture, and urbanism in Los Angeles is the language of movement … the city will never be fully understood by those who cannot move fluently through its diffuse urban texture, cannot go with the flow of its unprecedented life’.

    #architecture #urban_matter #los_angeles #ségrégation_raciale #racisme

  • Cruising Van Nuys Boulevard In The Summer Of 1972 In Stunning Black And White Photos By #Rick_McCloskey

    In the #Los_Angeles suburb of San Fernando Valley, Wednesday night was cruise night. A long stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard would be packed with kids and cars from all over Southern California – the place to show off your ride.

    In the summer of 1972, photographer Rick McCloskey went to Van Nuys to shoot this series of photographs, the culture on the boulevard had become an amalgamation of various lifestyles, automobiles, and very different looks and styles. The tribes included surfers, low-riders, muscle cars, street racers, and even “retro” styles from the 1950s. McCloskey’s photos offer a fascinating portrayal of the young people, their cars, and iconic backgrounds; a world that has long since vanished.

    https://designyoutrust.com/2020/05/cruising-van-nuys-boulevard-in-the-summer-of-1972-in-stunning-black-

    #Californie #Etats-Unis #photo

  • Est-ce que le #covid-19 sauve des vies ?
    http://carfree.fr/index.php/2020/04/06/est-ce-que-le-covid-19-sauve-des-vies

    Question polémique sans doute à l’heure où de nombreuses personnes meurent de ce virus, mais qui mérite d’être posée quand on constate la chute drastique de la #pollution de l’air Lire la suite...

    #Fin_de_l'automobile #Pollution_automobile #air #chine #los_angeles #microparticules #milan #NO2 #paris #santé #trafic

  • Anti-eviction map

    The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is a data-visualization, data analysis, and #storytelling collective documenting the dispossession and resistance upon gentrifying landscapes. Primarily working in the #San_Francisco_Bay Area, #Los_Angeles, and #New_York_City, we are all volunteers producing digital maps, oral history work, film, murals, and community events. Working with a number of community partners and in solidarity with numerous housing movements, we study and visualize new entanglements of global capital, real estate, technocapitalism, and political economy. Our narrative oral history and video work centers the displacement of people and complex social worlds, but also modes of resistance. Maintaining antiracist and feminist analyses as well as decolonial methodology, the project creates tools and disseminates data contributing to collective resistance and movement building.


    https://www.antievictionmap.com
    #cartographie #cartographie_critique #cartographie_radicale #évacuation #résistance #gentrification #urban_matter #USA #Etats-Unis #histoires #histoire_orale #solidarité #logement #habitat #décolonial
    ping @karine4 @cede