Assembly District Election Meetings (ADEMs) are biannual caucuses where each Assembly District elects fourteen delegates to represent their district in the State Democratic Party Conventions and Executive Meetings. These delegates make up roughly one-third of the 3300 total Democratic Party Delegates and are supposed to represent their community’s interests.
Voting progressives into the State Party is an important way to make change from inside the party. Delegates vote on party leadership, the party platform, and local/statewide endorsements.
In AD52, we need working people who are members of the community to represent our interests and bring new and fresh voices to the party. This is why PANA endorses this slate and encourages you to vote for these progressives.
Project Room Key is not a solution to the crisis of housing affordability. Repeal Ordinance 41.18 and stop the criminalization of un-housed Los Angeles civilians.
March 13, 2022
Progressive Asian Network for Action (PANA) opposes the current plans by Los Angeles City to sweep unhoused residents from Little Tokyo’s Toriumi Plaza and to encircle the public space with fencing by March 17.
Nationally, PANA believes that real long term solutions to the housing crisis can only happen with a massive green jobs program centered on low-income housing and infrastructure. PANA also supports efforts to accelerate complimentary local initiatives to address the housing affordability crisis, such as the establishment of Pubic Banking, transparency regarding where Measure HHH funding has gone and a repeal of measures criminalizing the un-housed (Ordinance 41.18).
Sweeps that confiscate and destroy un-housed peoples’ personal belongings and offerings of temporary shelter such as Project Room Key (term-limited to 90 days and operated with draconian restrictions) are not the solution to the widespread crisis of lack of safe, truly-affordable housing in the city.
Elected officials must be held to a higher standard than taking measures that criminalize residents living in public spaces. Furthermore, fencing off public spaces is a non-solution that contributes to the overall degradation of our communities. Forcible removal of houseless residents from one part of the city to another, and limiting proposals to ones that restrict personal freedom only creates more problems, including the exacerbation of mental and physical trauma and disruption of supportive community relationships.
The proposed sweep is part of the dedication by LA City Council to avoid moving towards permanent solutions to the lack of adequate housing for the un-housed. LA City Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas introduced a substitute motion on June 30, 2021 to pass policies to criminalize homelessness in Los Angeles, Ordinance 41.18. The law targets the simple acts of sitting, sleeping, and lying in public. It is a law that purposefully targets people who are poor and unhoused. Concilmember De Leon, the current City Council representative of District 14, which included Little Tokyo, supported the passage of 41.18 to codify the criminalization of un-housed people in Los Angeles. This law should be repealed.
Councilmember Kevin De Leon, the current City Council representative for City Council District 24 has ordered the sweep to be completed by March 17. We call upon him to do better for the sake of Little Tokyo and the City as a whole. Let’s move to real solutions, not sweeps that
merely exacerbate the problem and cause harm to residents of the city.
This push and pull between rich and poor countries, between large and small, extractive economies and the rest, has been a hallmark of each COP negotiation to date. But youth in bigger and more polluting countries are acutely aware of the consequences, and many feel a visceral urgency to halt the climate crisis.
“This could truly be our best last chance,” said Ema Govea, who marked her 18th birthday in late October in Washington by beginning a hunger strike in front of the White House. She was one of five young Americans who decided climate change warranted such an extreme form of protest.
The strikers had wanted President Biden to pressure Democrats in Congress to pass the full scope of his climate agenda. The U.S. government owes strong climate action not just to Americans but to the world, Govea said. The countries gathered for COP26 are well aware that the United States is the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases.
Here are youth activists’ demands at COP26:
Limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius
Hand over the $100 billion in climate financing promised to developing countries, and
Immediately halt new fossil fuel projects.
More Coverage by The Nation
Youth Activists Fight for Their Future at COP 26
On emissions targets, on funding to developing nations, and on phasing out fossil fuels, youth are demanding that COP26 deliver.
The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new research.
The richest 10% of the global population, comprising about 630 million people, were responsible for about 52% of global emissions over the 25-year period, the study showed.
Such a concentration of carbon emissions in the hands of the rich means that despite taking the world to the brink of climate catastrophe, through burning fossil fuels, we have still failed to improve the lives of billions, said Tim Gore, head of policy, advocacy and research at Oxfam International.
“The global carbon budget has been squandered to expand the consumption of the already rich, rather than to improve humanity,” he told the Guardian. “A finite amount of carbon can be added to the atmosphere if we want to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. We need to ensure that carbon is used for the best.”
The top 1 per cent by income of the world’s population account for about 15 per cent of emissions, according to UN data. That is more than double the share of the bottom 50 per cent.
Saturday, September 15, 2018: Activists share details about the disproportionate pollution faced by Asian American, Pacific Islander, Black and Brown communities in Southern CA and other issues of Environmental Injustice, linking them to the larger problem of the Global Climate Crisis.
Some significant and key points from the new Green New Deal registration. Each slide plays for approximately 10-12 seconds, so pause as you like to read each one of them.