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Tag Archives: Los Angeles
Degrading black professors
Depicting a black professor as a gorilla being sodomized by his white supervisor was just the beginning. Sign my petition calling on California’s attorney general to investigate systemic racism at UCLA.
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Dr. Christian Head was a respected surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). But because he is black, Dr. Head was the target of blatant discrimination — including a public presentation that featured an image depicting Dr. Head as a gorilla being sodomized by his white supervisor.
Dr. Head fought back. After more than 100,000 people signed a petition supporting him on Change.org, his lawyers were able to secure a landmark settlement from UCLA. But Dr. Head was far from the only faculty member to experience racism at UCLA.
In fact, a shocking new study reveals that the problem is extremely widespread. As a national board member of the NAACP who lives in Los Angeles, I am abhorred that a prestigious public university like UCLA would turn a blind eye to the systematic degradation of its non-white faculty members.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the recent campus-wide study of racism at UCLA — led by former California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno — said that UCLA regularly ignored complaints about discrimination and retaliation. One Latino professor reported being called a racial slur by a colleague in front of his students. He says he was told that reporting what happened to him would only “cause more trouble.”
Since UCLA refuses to take action to address systemic racism on campus, it’s time for Attorney General Harris to step in.
As a strong woman of color in California leadership, Attorney General Harris is uniquely positioned to take swift and decisive action to address UCLA’s pernicious culture of discrimination. I know that if thousands of people sign my petition, Attorney General Harris will respond, just as a petition created key pressure to enable Dr. Head to win his settlement from UCLA.
Thank you,
Ron Hasson Los Angeles, CA
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3.1 Million Jobs
Republicans Keeping Millions of Americans Unemployed
The GOP’s austerity spending cuts and strategy of government-by-crisis are hurting the economy in a real and tangible way. As the infographic below explains, Republicans and the policies they support have killed or put at risk 3.1 MILLION jobs since 2010.
Check it out.
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John Ridley ~~ Toronto: John Ridley Talks Plans for L.A. Riots Pic
September 6, 2013 | 06:22PM PT
Dave McNary Film Reporter@Variety_DMcNary
Scribe behind ‘12 Years,’ ‘All Is by My Side’ works with Imagine on film about 1992 L.A. crisis
Dave McNary
Film Reporter@Variety_DMcNary
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Screenwriter John Ridley immersed himself in the 1800s for “12 Years a Slave” and dove into the 1960s rock scene for Jimi Hendrix biopic “All Is by My Side” (pictured above), both playing in Toronto.Meanwhile, he’s ready to focus on 1992 Los Angeles as he tries to get his “L.A. Riots” script off the ground with Imagine Entertainment.Both Toronto films were in production during the late spring last year, with Ridley directing “All Is by My Side” in Dublin and consulting on the script while shooting on Steve McQueen’s brutal epic “12 Years” took place in New Orleans. “That was a little tricky,” Ridley recalls.
A fan of Hendrix since high school, Ridley years later discovered the Hendrix song “Sending My Love to Linda,” about fashion model Linda Keith, who heard Hendrix perform in London in 1966 and played a key role in encouraging his career.
Ridley, whose writing credits include “Red Tails” and “Three Kings,” did a 2010 show about “Sending My Love to Linda” for National Public Radio and then decided to do the feature independently.
“I knew it would not be a studio script,” he notes. “If Paul Greengrass and the Hughes Brothers are having problems, then it’s not going to happen for me.”
Outkast’s Andre Benjamin, who stars as Hendrix, learned to play like the maestro — left handed with a right-hand guitar strung upside down — to boost the authenticity of the film. Ridley looked to model the Hendrix pic on singular biopics like “Sid and Nancy,” Lenny” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter” — films that tell stories that transcend the artifice of the performance.
Ridley’s also been working on rewrites of his “L.A. Riots” script with Justin Lin attached to direct. He’s hopeful that “12 Years” and “All Is by My Side” can generate enough success to push “Riots” toward production.
“It was a Black List script that I wrote on spec and sold in 2007 before the world changed financially,” Ridley notes. “I feel like we’ve got to make this happen now. People often think that it was limited to Rodney King and Reginald Denny, but there are so many other interconnected stories.”
Two decades after the fact, Ridley remains amazed that Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and LAPD chief Darryl Gates had not talked for a year prior to the April 1992 riots, which left 45 people dead.
“It was a systemic meltdown,” Ridley notes. “The city and how it functions is the primary character of the film.”
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