Dangerous Ideas

It’s sad when people who build a place get pushed around and eventually can’t afford to live in the neighborhood they made a desirable destination. CJWP has been involved in the effort to get low-income housing reinstated at the Pacific Renaissance Plaza. Many of the people who were displaced were elderly, disabled, poor, and/or monolingual. Their homes at PacRen were important not only because they were affordable housing, but because they were in the heart of Chinatown, where they could see doctors, friends, and others who speak their language. The tenants’ battle has made some great progress, but it’s a complicated situation. From the Oakland Tribune:

The city purchased the space — plus 50 affordable residential units — for $40 million as part of a settlement agreement to end a drawn-out lawsuit with developer and owner Lawrence Chan.

The city hopes to retain the 50 affordable units, but needs to recoup its expenses — not only the $40 million but also several million dollars in lawyers fees, said Carl Chan.

The article talks about how some commercial tenants hope to buy the property but that it might be hard for them to compete with large developers:

If they go with the highest bidder — (possibly) an outsider with deep pockets — rent will increase and we cannot afford to stay here, said Wong, who hopes the city will give current tenants a chance to buy the property, even if they are not the highest bidder.

Wong and others point to Lawrence Chan as an example of an outsider — a Honk Kong-based developer — who doesnt have the communitys interest at heart. The business owners — many of whom own and work at their shops six or seven days a week for long hours and are familiar with the community — want to keep the plaza a vibrant center of Chinatown.

Just in time for the holidays, Monster Cable laid off employees and outsourced their jobs overseas. These employees have worked for Monster Cable for years and are mostly immigrants. The Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) is organizing a protest to crash their holiday party at 1 p.m. Friday (today!). Details from their mailing (reformatted):

MONSTER CABLE’S HOLIDAY PARTY ACTION! FRI, DEC 22ND AT 1 PM IN BRISBANE —————————————-

Last weekend, over 100 laid-off Monster Cable workers and their community supporters held a press conference and holiday march for justice, delivering candy canes to major electronics retailers who carry Monster Cable Products, such as Circuit City, Cambridge SoundWorks and Guitar City for them to call on CEO Noel Lee’s “holiday spirit” to fairly resolve the concerns of laid-off workers. Thank you for all that came out - but its not over, we need YOUR help for our next important action before Christmas.

Noel Lee, the CEO, is having a holiday party at his factory in Brisbane this Friday, December 22nd at 1 pm and we want to crash it! Since Monster Cable Stole the workers’ Christmas, its time to crash his Christmas party. It will be FUN! In the holiday spirit, we will sing Chinese and English Christmas carols and give a nice Christmas gift and card to Noel Lee!

We know the holidays are near and that everyone is very busy this time of the year, but this is the final action before Christmas. Please make it to this important action, details are below: >

• Date: Friday, December 22, 2006
• Time: 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Place: Meet at Bayshore Blvd & Geneva Ave (in Daly City near Brisbane) - we will shuttle people over to the location - Please Call 510-449-1172 if you arrive later.

BACKGROUND On Oct. 20, 2006, Monster Cable Products, Inc. laid off over 120 production workers from their Brisbane facility, outsourcing their jobs to low-wage labor overseas to increase profits. The company is a highly profitable company which sells high end audiovisual cables, home theater equipment, etc. The laid-off workers are mostly monolingual middle-aged Chinese, Vietnamese, Latino, and Eastern European immigrants who worked an average of over 8 years and as many as 20 years for the company. Laid off workers want a just severance as with previous laid off workers and want the company to address their long term unemployment issues by contributing to a Community-Worker Transition Fund. Last year alone, Monster Cable’s estimated sales were over $300 million dollars.

*MAJOR RETAILERS THAT CARRY MONSTER PRODUCTS*

• Best Buy
• Home Depot
• Radio Shack
• Frys Electronics
• CompUSA
• Target
• Circuit City
• Cambridge SoundWorks
• Guitar Center
• Apple Store

The new year looks like it’s going to be bringing long lines. Matier and Ross report that Bay Area bridge tolls are increasing, and a lot of people are going to be surprised. This will be a bummer for people used to paying $3 going through the tolls, but it’ll be bad for everyone since it’ll probably slow traffic down considerably. FasTrak users will get a discount and will get to wait a little less, so if you drive over any Bay Area Bridges, now’s a good time to get FasTrak if you don’t already have it. And, of course, take BART when you can.

I just learned that Pom Wonderful needlessly kills animals for marketing. They pay labs to create health problems in animals then to feed them pomegranate juice to see if they get better. What the heck?!? How is this a good idea? I used to think that Pom was a cool alternative juice company, and now I’ve found out they’re worse than mainstream companies like Welch’s and Oceanspray (which used to fund animal testing but have since seen the light). Another reminder that just because something’s sold in natural foods stores doesn’t mean that it isn’t evil. Caring Consumer/PETA have a page up that lists juice manufacturers that don’t experiment on animals.

Next time I got to my local grocery store, Rainbow Grocery, I’ll ask if they’ll consider pulling Pom until the company reconsiders. If people complain, maybe they’ll realize this was an incredibly bad move.

Turns out the U.S. leads the world in incarceration. That’s both in number of prisoners kept and also the highest ratio of prisoners to the general population:

A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people – or one in every 32 American adults – were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.

Other countries are able to keep their numbers lower partly because of less severe laws, but also because they tend to emphasize treatment instead of incarceration for drug offenses.

It’s another sign of our punishment culture … In California, we have things like Three Strikes. We seem to like punishing people after the fact more than we like investing in preventing crime in the first place. It would be great to see a report detailing the cost differences (both money wise and social) between punitive laws and preventive programs.