My photographs from the clean-up scene Wednesday morning at Occupy L.A. More inside, the last one a shot from Sunday night's general assembly. All by Iris Schneider.

Earlier images of Occupy L.A. by Iris Schneider. Here and here

Once there was a somewhat skeptical UCLA fan. He had gone to school when the team was pretty good. He had seen his shares of highs and lows.

The skeptical UCLA fan went to his local market back in September and saw that they sold novelty tortilla chips in his school's colors. So he bought a bag.

There might be 8 million stories in the naked city, but there are more than 312 million in the United States. StoryCorps wants to hear all of them.

Radio documentarian David Isay (is there a better name for a guy whose job is producing oral histories?) and a host of individual and foundation supporters have built StoryCorps into a Library of Congress archive and a grass-roots movement to get Americans talking to each other. StoryCorps spreads the word--its mission and your recorded stories--with the help of NPR, which airs excerpts of conversations participants have given permission to share.

Through a handful of permanent recording booths throughout the country and a mobile studio housed in an Airstream trailer, people memorialize pieces of a life with the help of trained facilitators. Angelenos are telling tales at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until Dec. 18, the latest of several such L.A. visits since going mobile in 2003. Local NPR affiliate KCRW is airing bits of these oral histories Monday and Wednesday afternoons.

Weegee's plastic lens turned on Elizabeth Taylor circa 1950..

Here's a riddle from the art world: Who was part huckster, part experimental trailblazer and part social commentator, lampooning society's adoration of celebrity, but longing to be one at the same time? Warhol, you say? No, turns out it's Weegee, the cigar chomping photographer — aka Arthur Fellig — who fled New York in 1946, where he made his reputation as a chronicler of the night, of crime scenes and the spectators who gathered to watch, to turn his sights on Hollywood.

Claiming he was "through with the newspaper game," after selling the title of his book of New York photographs called "The Naked City" to a producer who turned it into a movie, he was drawn to Hollywood. But, as the sweeping show currently up at MOCA proves, Weegee was a lot more complicated than we thought.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

• Los Angeles Press Club honors Hugh Hefner at its Fourth Annual National Entertainment Journalism Awards dinner at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel
• Victoria Patterson speaks at Gustavo's [ Arellano] Awesome Lecture Series at Fullerton Library about her new novel, This Vacant Paradise. 6:30 PM
• Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra hosts "Austria a la Carte" at the Austrian Consul's residence in Brentwood.
• Author Richard Polsky converses with Shepard Fairey about Polsky's book, The Art Prophets: The Artists, Dealers, and Tastemakers Who Shook the Art World, at Book Soup. 7 PM

• The Spa Less Traveled: Discovering Ethnic Los Angeles, One Spa At a Time editors read their book at Vroman's. Oh, and happy 5th birthday to Prospect Park Media. 7 PM
• Pasadena Children's Guild hosts its 44th Annual Snow Ball Preview Party and Auction at the Castle Green in Pasadena. 6:00 PM. Event continues with a brunch and holiday boutique at the same location on Saturday.
• Filmmaker Wim Wenders discusses and signs Places, Strange and Quiet at Book Soup at 4 PM.
• Randall Robinson discusses his novel, Makeda, at Eso Won Books at 7 PM.
• Soil Desire People Dance performance starts at The Velaslavasay Panorama. Continues to Saturday. 8 PM

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich speaking on Saturday at Occupy Los Angeles, outside City Hall.

This weekend, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, visited Occupy LA and spoke to a small crowd gathered on Spring Street shadowed by City Hall's American flags. It was exhilarating to hear someone who had been in Washington's inner circle speak honestly about bringing fairness, compassion and equality back to the American economy and thereby restore the principles of our democracy and of capitalism itself. "Capitalism cannot function when so much wealth goes to the top," he said. It's one thing to walk through the Occupy LA camp and see statements like that scrawled on a cardboard sign, but quite another to hear someone of Reich's background—as Clinton's Secretary of Labor and a respected teacher and writer—state it.

Reich started his talk by thanking everyone from the Occupy LA movement, and urging them to give themselves a pat on the back. "Because of you, people in this country are beginning to discuss issues that have been avoided for years...Nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside of Washington are mobilized, energized and organized to make sure that good things happen," he said.

Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a professor of economics at Harvard and Brandeis and has published 13 books on the economy. He knows this stuff. And like a patient and wise educator, he told the crowd: "Let me tell you the facts. And we've all got to make sure we have the facts together because they are the truth and we've got to speak the truth over and over and over again."

"This economy is richer than it has ever been but we are cutting education, child welfare services, getting rid of teachers. They are saying we can't afford it. We CAN afford it. Our economy is twice as large as it was in 1980 but wages have stagnated for 3 decades. Where did the money go? To the top 1%. This is not class warfare. Our system has gone out of balance. We have to save the system from itself...It is not just our economy that suffers with these inequties. It is also our democracy that suffers."

He named individuals like the Koch brothers as some who have benefited from this inequity. "Our democracy is too precious to allow it to fall into the hands of a few people who are usuing their fortune to pollute and corrupt American democracy."

It was shocking and refreshing to hear someone who knows the economy and the way our government works--or doesn't--speak so plainly. He went on to name some other culprits who have helped get America where it is today: the Supreme Court, whose recent decision about campaign finance, namely that corporations can be treated like people when contributing to political candidates, has done its part to send our democracy down the wrong path. "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas and Georgia start executing corporations," he said.

After his rousing, validating speech—in which he told the occupiers that, while the Occupy movement may not be a movement yet in terms of defining its' demands and refining its methods, it is "motivated by a moral vision of what America could be. There is a powerful and indestructible moral vision underlying this movement"—he lingered to chat and debate with individuals in the crowd, signing autographs but mainly talking economics and solutions and commiserating with beleaguered veterans of our country's current economic woes.

He said one of his great regrets in life is that he failed to get the endorsement of the Democratic party in 2002 when he attempted a run for Governor of Massachusetts against Mitt Romney. "I would have beaten the pants off him," he said.

And perhaps changed the course of our upcoming Presidential election.

Sadly, only a smattering of the occupiers gathered on Spring Street to hear these words. Many others probably did not even know he was speaking, or chose instead to hear the speakers from the south steps advocating the benefits of hemp, or engage in small debates on communism vs. democracy, or just hang out and enjoy a beautiful California Saturday.

Journalists are an arrogant lot.

Not that that's a bad thing. See, sometimes people need to be told what they need to know. A fair, functioning society depends on its members having the information they need to make smart choices and hold powerbrokers accountable. A healthy culture cannot thrive on a media diet of the Kardashians, Tebowing and the McRib.

Some journalists are too arrogant, but they're not the reason newspapers are dying. The reason, at least one really big reason, is that not enough newspapers are owned by locals of the market they serve. The reason is remote corporate masters who place profits so far above public service that the people in the executive suites think good journalism is giving people what they want. What about what they need?

In light of this week's announcement, I worry about my friends who still work at my former place of employment. The editor of the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times warned that as many as 20 more editorial staffers will be cut loose early next year from the newspaper with the fifth-largest circulation in the U.S.

I worry about readers who still depend on careful reports framed in useful context, readers who want to be informed citizens who exercise their franchise, readers who care less about "trending" than about "news."

Today, the L.A. Times published a report on the op-ed page headlined "Didn't anyone edit this?" Its point was to assure readers that although errors will always find their way into the paper -- hey it is a deadline business -- every story is edited. But I worry that a paper capable of posting big circulation numbers might forget about readers who also expect it to retain a staff big enough to be able to pay attention.

Los Angeles Times Nov. 5, 2011 page A8
Employer confirms settlement in '99 Case
... Cain spoke to a Washington convention of conservative activists, giving no indication that he was distressed by the allegations.
So far, there has been no indication the allegations have harmed his campaign, which says donations have risen this week. ...

Los Angeles Times Nov. 5, 2011, page A9
Cain links latest controversy to race
But now that his campaign is floundering due to the emergence of sexual harassment allegations made when he ran the National Restaurant Assn. in the 1990s, Cain has advanced the idea...

Friday, November 4, 2011

• Dick Howard and Martín Plot discuss "Democracy in America" as part of the new West Hollywood Lecture Series curated in partnership with CalArts at the West Hollywood Library, City Council Chambers, starts at 7 PM
• "Antiquity in the Twentieth Century: Modern Art and the Classical Vision" symposium starts at the Getty Villa and continues to Saturday. 10:30-5 PM
• Los Angeles Transportation Club hosts its 88th Annual Installation Dinner at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach.
• Lupus LA hosts its Ninth Annual Hollywood Bag Ladies Luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
• La Luz de Jesus Gallery 25th Anniversary Celebration Part 11 with Mark Mothersbaugh, Mark Ryden, and many, many others. 8 PM
• Designer Alber Elbaz visits Lavin Store in Beverly Hills tonight.
• Night & the City: LA Noir in Poetry, Fiction, & Film events at Beyond Baroque: Raymond Chandler and his Los Angeles Legacy at 7:30 PM and A Night with James Ellroy, live and in person, at 9:30 PM. Venice

• SNL's Molly Shannon signs new book, Tilly the Trickster, at Barnes & Noble at the Grove. 1 PM
• Los Angeles Police Foundation hosts its True Blue Gala at L.A. Live.
• American Indian Arts Market at Autry National Center 10 AM -5 PM.
• Friends of the Los Angeles River benefit hosted by the LA Weekly at its LA 101 Music Festival at the Gibson Ampitheatre, Universal City.
• Leslie Klinger discusses Before Dracula: History of Vampire Literature at Brentwood Branch Library. 2PM
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art honors John Baldessari and Clint Eastwood at its inaugural Art and Film Gala.
• Seth Rogen, Adam Arkin and others host Exceptional Children's Foundation's Fourth Annual Art Sale Fundraiser at Downtown Art Center Gallery. Los Angeles. 6 PM