Sea Change Radio Alex Wise

Roman Polanski’s classic 1974 film, “Chinatown,” which laid out a fictional account of California’s north-south water wars, turned out to be quite prescient. This week on Sea Change Radio, we welcome Katie Licari of Afro LA, who breaks down the ongoing tale of Los Angeles water and the impact this never-ending thirst has had on two very rural regions of California - Inyo and Mono Counties. We learn about the colonialist history of LA water rights and look at the monopolistic grip the LA Department of Water & Power holds over these counties.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Katie Licari (KL) | 00:20 - DWP has changed the rules where you can't transfer the leases more than once. If Mike Allen wanted to sell his business, the next person would have to walk away and bulldoze that business to the ground, without any chance of recouping their cost.

Narrator | 00:40 - Roman Polanski's classic 1974 film Chinatown, which laid out a fictional account of California's North South Water Wars, turned out to be quite prescient this week on Sea Change Radio. We welcome Katie Licari of Afro LA, who breaks down the ongoing tale of Los Angeles Water and the impact this never-ending thirst has had on two very rural regions of California Inyo and mono counties. We learn about the colonialist history of LA water rights and look at the monopolistic grip, the LA Department of Water and power holds over these counties. I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Katie Licari. Katie is a reporter for Afro LA. Katie, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Katie Licari (KL) | 01:47 - Hello. Happy to be here.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:49 - So you are in the midst of writing a multi-piece series for Afro LA, which is being syndicated on other platforms as well, like The Guardian about Los Angeles's "local" water politics, which are occurring around 300 miles away from Los Angeles. Why don't you explain the situation that exists in Inyo County and then what drew you to this project?

Katie Licari (KL) | 02:18 - I would love to. So essentially, Los Angeles gets its water from a handful of sources. They get their water from Metropolitan Water District,  which provides water from the Colorado River and the state water project up north. And then, uh, they all, and most of Southern California does get their water from metropolitan. That includes Orange County, Riverside County, San Diego County as well. But Los Angeles is very unique in that it also gets water from the Eastern Sierra, which is, up in Inyo and Mono County specifically. So water that falls to the west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, you know, kind of by like Sequoia National Park, Yosemite, that area goes into the state water project, and then all of Southern California gets use of that. But anything that falls to the east of the Sierras becomes the property of Los Angeles. And how Los Angeles secured those water rights was in the early 19 hundreds. They bought 90% of the privately available land in Inyo county, and 30% about 30% of the land in Mono County.

Alex Wise (AW) | 03:30 - It took a lot of foresight, if you think about it, this is over a century ago, and Los Angeles was not like some huge metropolis. But this was a brainchild of Mulholland, is that right?

KL | 03:41 - Yes. This was a brainchild of Mulholland. A lot of Los Angeles boosters, including the o or sorry, the Chandler family from the famously known as owning my previous employer, the Los Angeles Times, helped boost the need for this aqueduct to compete with San Francisco, which was also looking for its own water source. They ended up damning up part of Yosemite National Park, the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir, in order to gain their water. But through these land deals, Los Angeles was able to beat San Francisco to the punch for water availability and was able to grow more rapidly as a result. 

AW | 04:22 - So I interrupted your chronology that you were layi

With summer heat fast-approaching, it's a good reminder that the planet's oceans are warming fast too. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Elizabeth Alberts, a senior staff reporter at Mongabay about coral bleaching. We discuss how coral bleaching affects marine life, learn about bleaching events, and look at the various ways that coral reefs react to warming sea temperatures.  Then, we re-visit part of our 2023 conversation with Jeff Stoike, of Blue Action Lab, as he describes his organization’s efforts to protect fragile aquatic environments.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Elizabeth Alberts (EA) | 00:16 - It's a ray of hope. So maybe something can be done with using this coral or figuring out, you know, what makes this coral special. Like what are the elements of this coral that, that make it so resistant to heat?

Narrator | 00:30 - With summer heat fast approaching, it's a good reminder that the planets oceans are warming fast too. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Elizabeth Alberts, a senior staff reporter at Monga Bay about Coral Bleaching. We discuss how Coral Bleaching affects marine life, learn about bleaching events, and look at the various ways that coral reefs react to warming sea temperatures. Then we revisit our 2023 conversation with Jeff Stoike of Blue Action Lab as he describes his organization's efforts to protect fragile aquatic environments.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:18 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Elizabeth Alberts. Elizabeth is a senior staff writer at Mongabay and works on their ocean desk. Elizabeth, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Elizabeth Alberts (EA) | 01:30 - Thank You. Thanks for having me.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:31 - So we're talking to you from outside of Brussels, Belgium, is that correct?

Elizabeth Alberts (EA) | 01:35 Yes.

AW | 01:37 - So you don't have a lot of coral reefs close to Belgium, but it's one of the issues that you've been covering quite effectively for Mongabay. I'd like to discuss this piece that you wrote last month entitled "Global Coral Bleaching now underway looks set to be largest on record." It seems like this is the new normal, kind of like breaking heat records. We're going to see a lot of these type of stories, unfortunately. What are some of the areas that you, as a science reporter are looking at to see where the needle is moving and, and what are some of the big events that environmentalists should be looking at when they analyze the coral reef system In our, in our oceans?

EA | 02:22 - Well, we should just be looking at ocean heat, uh, I mean ocean heating and see temperature rise and Coral Bleaching is just a result of, of these, this rise in global temperatures, which has been, you know, it's, it's it's sea temperatures have been going up every year. This year there is a dynamic with, or there has been since last year with a, with the El Nino climate pattern, and it's causing all sorts of fluctuations and just crazy temperatures. So what's happening now is the fourth Global Coral Bleaching event. And, um, yeah, it's not looking good. I mean, you can look at  the NOAA bleaching alerts there, and, and you'll, you'll see a lot of the, the really dark red, uh, they have different levels for the type of bleaching, uh, or, or not the bleaching. It actually measures the, the seat, um, the temperature of, of the sea. So it doesn't necessarily mean that bleaching is happening there, but there's usually it means there's a very strong likelihood that bleaching is happening there. And then if you look at another tool called the Allen Coral Atlas, they use another way of measuring Coral Bleaching, which is measuring whiteness. And if you look at these maps, the reason I'm talking about this is because if you look at these maps now, it's just everywhere. It's absolutely everywhere. There aren't a lot of, well, there are some places that are,

Globally suicide accounts for about 20% of all gun-related deaths. But in the United States, the country with the highest per-capita civilian gun ownership, over 60% of deaths from firearms are suicides. What accounts for this disparity? And why do efforts at gun reform continue to fail in this country? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with an attorney leading the charge for smarter, saner gun laws in the U.S. Robyn Thomas is the Executive Director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. We take a look at trends over the past few years, examine disputes over the interpretation of the Second Amendment, and discuss the persistent political standstill which seems immune to tragedy.

Narrator  0:02  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Robyn Thomas  0:17  Look at the average family or community in Texas. They're not so concerned about having access to assault weapons what they'd rather have is their children safe at school. And if the messaging is done right in a way that people understand this isn't a choice between all or nothing. This isn't about, can you have guns or no guns? It's about can we implement the kinds of common sense regulations that will make our children safer and doesn't change people's ability to go hunting or sports shooting or whatever it is, that's really important to them.

Narrator 0:47  Globally, suicide accounts for about 20% of all gun related deaths. But in the United States, the country with the highest per capita civilian gun ownership, over 60% of deaths from firearms are suicides. what accounts for this disparity? And why do efforts at gun reform continue to fail in this country? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with an attorney leading the charge for smarter saner gun laws in the US. Robyn Thomas is the executive director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. We take a look at trends over the past few years, examined disputes over the interpretation of the Second Amendment and discuss the persistent political standstill, which seems immune to tragedy.

Alex Wise  1:57  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by my friend Robyn Thomas. She is the executive director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Robyn, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Robyn Thomas  2:06  Thank you so much for having me, Alex.

Alex Wise  2:08  So explain what the mission of the Giffords Law Center is, and maybe the evolution of the organization. It's a fairly newly dubbed nonprofit, correct?

Robyn Thomas  2:19  Yeah, the origin story goes back about 28 years, in early July of 1993, there was a mass shooting at a law firm in downtown San Francisco, the law firm of pet and Martin. And following that tragedy, the legal community in the city of San Francisco, many of whom had lost friends and colleagues decided to get together and do something about gun violence. So they formed what was then called the legal community against violence. And the mission was to corral and inspire the involvement of the legal community in the United States to help and to support the movement to reduce and prevent gun violence. Initially, they focused on what was then a federal assault weapon ban, which they succeeded in helping to pass in 1994, unfortunately, that sunset, and expired in 2004, and was not renewed, but they did have early success in accomplishing what they set out to do. And once they accomplish that, they turn their attention mostly to California laws, and then eventually to other national laws to try and create a model here in California, of what comprehensive thoughtful gun regulation could look like. I'll skip over some of the early work that they did in the successes they had, California has the strongest gun laws in the country, in large part due to the work that was done by the organization over the last now almost 30 years. And it really has created a model that other states have then stepped up to rapidly try and replic

This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with Middle East expert Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. In this episode, we talk about some of the problems presented by certain trigger words when discussing Israel and Palestine and look at the handling of recent campus protests by police and college administrators. Then, we revisit part of our 2022 conversation with Prof. Cole to examine environmental and energy-related issues in the Fertile Crescent.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Juan Cole (JC) | 00:19 - I don't see how anybody can investigate what's been going on in the Palestinian West Bank since 1967 and not come to the conclusion that this is an, is an apartheid arrangement.

Narrator | 00:33 - This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with Middle East expert Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. In this episode, we talk about some of the problems presented by certain trigger words when discussing Israel and Palestine and look at the handling of recent campus protests by police and college administrators. Then we revisit part of our 2022 conversation with Professor Cole to examine environmental and energy related issues in the Fertile Crescent.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:05 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Juan Cole. Juan is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. Juan, welcome back to Sea Change. Radio.

Juan Cole (JC) | 01:26 - Thank you so much.

Alex Wise (AW)  | 01:27 - Let's talk about the language for a second, because I think there are these trigger words like anti-Semitism and genocide, and Zionism, which can be in the eye of the beholder used either as a cudgel, a pejorative, but also a compliment. There's a lot of wiggle room within these words, and I think they're, they're lightning rods for a lot of misunderstanding. For example, what you just said, if somebody is protesting what's happening in Gaza, does that make them anti-Semitic, some people would say, yes. You talk about Trump. There's that refuge that they constantly seek in victimization, right? He's always the victim when he's in court. He wants to be a martyr, even though he's, he's led one of the most privileged lives anyone can possibly consider. Antisemitism is also, it's used to be victims when there's not necessarily anybody being victimized in this sense, except that you happen to be Jewish and you disagree with me. It's difficult because I want to respect the people who have had to deal with a lot more antisemitism than me, for example. But I can't help but draw some parallels with the MAGA victimization and some of American Jewish people who are very quick to assign this term to people. And on the flip side, I think genocide is a trigger word, like apartheid was, it's not necessarily inaccurate, but it's a trigger word because people think, "oh, well, genocide is.. that's the holocaust. That's not war." It definitely can incite, escalate the rhetoric, I think sometimes unfairly and to a level that I think is counterproductive. 

Juan Cole (JC) | 03:17 - You're right, these words, are not used in the same way by everybody. And the differences in nuance can cause problems. There are people who would say that Zionism is a settler colonial ideology. And if you identify as a Zionist and you're identifying with, with a historic wrong, I think for a lot of American Jews who say they're Zionists, what they mean is they're proud of Albert Einstein, and they're proud of the accomplishments of, of the Jewish people by saying they're Zionists. They don't mean that Itamar Ben-Gvir is allowed to invade a Palestinian's property in the West Bank and usurp it. 

AW | 04:00 - I think it's such a hard word to generalize. I just have family members, for example, who might think they're Zionists because they think that Israel has a right to exist versus somebody who thinks that Israel has a right to the whole...

Pro-Palestinian student protests are erupting on college campuses all over the country, often resulting in aggressive responses from local law enforcement. This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part discussion with noted Michigan University history professor and Middle East scholar, Juan Cole. We look at the Israeli attacks on Gaza, discuss the unrest it has caused on campuses around this country, and examine how the right-wing parties in both the US and Israel are trying to leverage the conflict to their own benefit.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Juan Cole (JC) | 00:19 - So they're weaponizing their position in Congress to attack, uh, the university presidents, and also they're in some ways in cahoots then with some of these very wealthy donors who are also donors to their campaigns, to use their political position to curb freedom of speech for Americans.

Narrator | 00:40 - Pro-Palestinian student protests are erupting on college campuses all over the country, often resulting in aggressive responses from local law enforcement. This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part discussion with noted Michigan University history professor and Middle East scholar, Juan Cole. We look at the Israeli attacks on Gaza, discuss the unrest it has caused on campuses around this country, and examine how the right-wing parties in both the US and Israel are trying to leverage the conflict to their own benefit.

Alex Wise (AW) | 02:25 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Juan Cole. Juan is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. Juan, welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

Juan Cole (JC) | 01:36 - Thank you so much.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:38 - I've really wanted to speak to you for quite some time. I wanted to get your perspective on the college protests that are stemming from the Israeli Hamas conflict. First, why don't you, if you can summarize these college protests and, and it's a tough question because there's a wide range of not only the scope of these protests, but on the clampdowns from campus to campus, but maybe for people who haven't really been following in that closely, kind of fill them in on what's been happening around the country in the last month or so.

Juan Cole (JC) | 02:11 - The protests are a response by these undergraduates, mainly undergraduates, to the ongoing Israeli military campaign against Gaza. I think the young people on campus are, are living this war in a way that their elders are not. They've seen the war unfold daily on their phones. They see the horrible clips of wounded, civilians, displaced people, health problems, uh, that have been imposed by the war, on TikTok, on, uh, on Instagram and, and so forth. They follow news clips on BBC and so forth. And the elders don't, I mean CNN and other major US cable news outfits, you couldn't accuse them of ignoring the war, but they haven't covered it intensively. I watch a lot of cable news, and as far as I can tell these days, it's all about Trump's trials and these inside the beltway panels that discuss things endlessly, you don't see very much news from the front.

Alex Wise (AW) | 03:22 - It's expensive to cover. It's a lot cheaper to just have a panel of people talking about Trump. 

JC | 03:27 - It's for their bottom line. Also, you know, the, the corporate news is selling advertising. I mean, it's selling us toilet paper and fast food. And you have to wonder whether scenes of, uh, wounded babies covered in flies from Gaza is, is actually going to, uh, is help their bottom line. And, uh, I think there are a lot of reasons for which they simply haven't covered this, uh, story in any intensive way. And of course, they can't with their own reporters. And that's another, uh, problem for them is, is a news organization. You get caught, you know, sometimes if you depend on somebody else's feed,

How do you think your life would be different if you had spent your first five years as an adult incarcerated? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Kevin Ortiz, a progressive political activist in San Francisco whose life was very nearly derailed by a run-in with the police when he was 19 years old. We hear Kevin’s story, learn how the nonprofit SF Pretrial helped him out, and get some first-hand insight into a legal system that is tilted against young men of color. Then, we hear an excerpt from our 2022 discussion with San Francisco Public Defender Peter Calloway.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Kevin Ortiz | 00:14 - No system's perfect, right? But if we're going to look at the overall successes of people being able to get connected, and through SF Pretrial, able to come out of it with secure jobs, housing, drug rehabilitative services, and then social emotional supports, right? And then being able to go back into being successful citizens, then that's a model that we should be actually continuing to expand funding for and not underfunding it or cutting funding to it.

Narrator | 00:40 - How do you think your life would be different if you had spent your first five years as an adult incarcerated? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Kevin Ortiz, a progressive political activist in San Francisco whose life was very nearly derailed by a run-in with the police when he was 19 years old. We hear Kevin’s story, learn how the nonprofit SF Pretrial helped him out, and get some first-hand insight into a legal system that is tilted against young men of color. Then, we hear an excerpt from our 2022 discussion with San Francisco Public Defender Peter Calloway.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:30 - I'm joined on Sea Change Radio by Kevin Ortiz. Kevin is the president of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club. Kevin, welcome to Sea. Change Radio.

Kevin Ortiz (KO) | 01:42 - Hey, thanks for having me on. 

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:44 - Why don't you start us off, Kevin, by giving us your backstory and how you encountered legal troubles as a younger man. 

Kevin Ortiz (KO) | 01:53 - Yeah, definitely. So maybe diving a little bit backwards, um, so I, I just turned 30 when I was 19 years old. I was in a much different place than I'm at now, and so I, you know, was kind of in the party scene drinking a lot more than I should have been. I think, you know, at the time I was also doing drugs, and so it was a different kind of lifestyle that I was living to where I currently am. And so I went out to a club event when I was like 19. I think I was 19 and a half when the incident happened. And so, you know, on 22nd admission for an 18 plus event at that time. And, um, you know, I stumbled out of the bar, right? And, you know, intoxicated, being underage, um, there was already a situation that was going on at that time. And so, you know, I kind of stumbled into it as I was trying to jaywalk across the street. Police stopped me, immediately arrested me because they had so seen that I was intoxicated. And from there I got slammed on the back of a police car. And, um, at that time, you know, I had a little bit of a motor mouth . And so, um, you know, I got into a verbal altercation with the police while I was basically getting handcuffed and arrested. And so I got hogtied thrown right back in the, the back of a police vehicle. Uh, you know, it got taken back to the Mission police station, which is about, it's five blocks away from, um, you know, where the incident happened, about actually a block away from where I lived at the time. And so I experienced what we would now describe as police brutality. I was, you know, basically, you know, as I was getting taken outta the car, hogtied talking a lot of smack. And so from there I basically, you know, ended up getting, you know, like I got beat up on.

 AW | 03:31 - And you were initially just arrested for jaywalking?