Yaroslavsky Weighs In on Recall Fever Among Voters

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Director of the Los Angeles Initiative Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to Politico about growing efforts to recall elected leaders in California, starting with Gov. Gavin Newsom. Five previous attempts to recall the governor have failed. Now, voters unhappy with Newsom’s handling of the pandemic are again seeking to remove him from office. While there have been 179 recall attempts in California since 1911, only 10 have qualified for the ballot. Recently, virus fatigue has strengthened interest in recalls among disillusioned voters stuck at home, and many elected officials are becoming the targets of recall efforts. “I think COVID is one of those issues, and criminal justice is one of those issues, where everybody has an opinion,” Yaroslavsky said. He explained that law enforcement issues and pandemic restrictions have created distinct camps of Californians who “have been cooped up in their houses for a year” and are refusing to wait until 2022 to hold their representatives accountable.

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Ong on Increasing Asian American Representation in Biden Administration

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Director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Paul Ong spoke to NBC News about his hopes for increasing Asian American representation in the Biden administration. The White House announced the creation of a new position, Asian American and Pacific Islander liaison, to ensure that the community’s voice is further represented and heard. Details of the duties and responsibilities of the position have not yet been announced, but Ong said the liaison will be effective only if given direct access to key decision-makers in the administration. In addition, he said, a staff is needed to ensure coverage of vital issues to the AAPI community, including education, civil rights, the economy and housing. “Appointing an AAPI liaison could be one of the much-needed solutions to ensure fair and adequate AAPI participation in the administration, but it is critical that the role is impactful and not window dressing,” he said.

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During the Pandemic, More Seek Shelter in Public Transit Systems

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A Transit California article put a spotlight on research from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies that showed a noticeable increase in people seeking shelter in public transportation stops, stations and vehicles during the COVID-19 pandemic. A team led by Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris surveyed 115 transit agencies to produce a report investigating the intersections of the pandemic, transit and homelessness. Over half of the agencies said that they see at least 100 unhoused individuals per day on their systems, while 14 agencies reported 500 or more. “Homelessness in transit environments is a major challenge in the U.S. and in Canada, but especially in California,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. She noted, however, that the absence of reliable data makes it difficult to measure the magnitude of the problem. Loukaitou-Sideris’ team will continue its research into policy solutions to help people experiencing homelessness.

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Diaz on Selection of Filipino American Attorney General

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A Los Angeles Daily News article on the nomination of Assemblyman Rob Bonta as California’s next attorney general included comments from Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin. Bonta’s nomination completes a trio of high-profile appointments by Gov. Gavin Newsom. He tapped former Secretary of State Alex Padilla as the first California Latino to serve in the U.S. Senate. He picked former Assemblywoman Shirley Weber as the first Black secretary of state. And he selected Bonta as the first Filipino-American to be California’s top law officer. “I applaud Gov. Gavin Newsom for making California a model for the country in how to rectify the willful neglect of growing and youthful communities of color who are left out of key decision-making positions across our most fundamental institutions by sending the first Filipino to lead the nation’s second-largest Department of Justice,” Diaz said.

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Umemoto’s Team Addresses Language Barrier in Vaccine Access

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Urban Planning Professor Karen Umemoto spoke to KCRW about the website Translate COVID, which provides information about COVID-19 in over 60 languages. Launched in May 2020, the site has been updated over the past few months with vital information about vaccination rules and eligibility. “We noticed that there was a lot of translated material beginning to come out from the CDC and local health departments across the country, but there was no central or easy-to-use site that consolidated all of that information,” Umemoto explained. “There’s so much misinformation on social media and especially within immigrant networks.” Umemoto, director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, worked with the Fielding School of Public Health to aggregate information from vetted sources and organized it on the website. “More recently, we noticed that there was a lot of misinformation about the vaccines that would likely cause some vaccine resistance, so we put together an FAQ that will soon be in 20 languages,” she said.

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Newton Weighs In on Efforts to Recall Newsom

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Lecturer Jim Newton spoke to the Washington Post about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approach to handling the COVID-19 pandemic. After winning the 2018 election with 62% of the vote, Newsom is now facing a recall effort caused by frustrations about his approach to the pandemic. In March 2020, Newsom announced a statewide stay-at-home order, which would be followed by a year of closing and reopening. “As it wore on, he seemed more vacillating, that there seemed to be a sort of uncertainty about how quickly to move to reopen,” Newton said. “It felt like the voices pressing for opening were starting to get to him.” However, Newton acknowledged that the circumstances were unprecedented. “I don’t know that he could have done it perfectly and I don’t know that there was a perfect way to do it,” he said. “He’s managed to be a little bit between the extremes and a little bit disappointing to people in both camps.”

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Report Highlights Pandemic’s Racial Disparities

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A San Diego Union-Tribune article cited a report by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy and Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) that highlighted the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Latinos and other minorities in California. Latinos account for nearly half of the San Diego County residents infected by COVID-19 in the past year, but only 1 in 5 people vaccinated so far are Latino. CNK Director Paul Ong authored the report, which found that “Blacks and Latinos in California were more than twice as likely to have trouble making monthly rent payments than white people.” The report also pointed out that 23% of those who could not pay rent in the initial months of the pandemic were Black and 20% were Latino. “These systematic racial or ethno-racial disparities are the product of systemic inequality,” Ong wrote. “People of color, low-income individuals, and those with less education and skills are most at risk.”

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Manville Imagines Post-Pandemic Work Life

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville was cited in a Bond Buyer article about how work patterns, commutes and transportation will look after the pandemic is over. The San Diego Association of Governments is drafting its 30-year transportation plan, but some experts are hesitant about investing in transportation projects due to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. At a SANDAG board meeting, a panel of experts debated how long it will take for work patterns and traffic to return to pre-pandemic levels. While some firms will continue to offer work-from-home opportunities, Manville said he believes that “work patterns will largely return to how it was before the pandemic, as will traffic patterns.” He noted that it didn’t take long after the shutdown in March for traffic to return. “Though Zoom is great, so many companies have mentioned that it’s the unplanned interactions between employees that generate the best ideas,” Manville said.

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Asian American Businesses Hit Disproportionately Hard, Ong Finds

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A report co-authored by Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, was featured in a CNN article about combating anti-Asian hate and racism. Asian Americans have been the victims of verbal, physical and economic attacks across the country. One study found that anti-Asian hate crimes have more than doubled during the pandemic. Ong’s report, a collaboration between the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, summarized the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian Americans. The report explained that Asian American businesses felt the economic impact of the pandemic earlier and more deeply than others because of xenophobia and racialized blaming. “Unemployment severely impacted the more disadvantaged Asian Americans,” Ong wrote. While many businesses have struggled during the pandemic, discrimination has exacerbated the impact on Asian American businesses.

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It’s Like Reliving History, Yaroslavsky Says

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Thirty years after the video of the brutal police beating of Rodney King went viral, Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to USA Today about the killing of George Floyd and the jarring similarities between the two events. A group of white police officers who beat King in March 1991 were acquitted the following year by a mostly white jury in Los Angeles, prompting massive unrest and calls for social reforms. At the time, Yaroslavsky was a Los Angeles city councilman. Last year, Floyd’s death in Minneapolis prompted protests led by the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, and the police officer involved is now on trial for murder. “What happened that instant, on that sidewalk, at that moment, that was not a one-off. It’s a story that has replayed itself for decades, over and over again,” Yaroslavsky said of Floyd’s death. “When I look at what’s happening in Minneapolis, I see L.A. in 1992, so it’s like reliving history again.”

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