In spring 2021, unauthorized operators crashed two drones in a patch of protected estuarial wetlands near Southern California’s port complex where elegant terns were nesting on sandy soil. Thousands of spooked terns abandoned their nests and scattered. Some resettled on a barge carting rocks off shore. When the terns began to hatch on the barge later that summer, many chicks taking exploratory steps tumbled off its steep sides into the water. Unable to fly or clamber back onto the barge deck, the chicks drowned and washed ashore, prompting local outcry and a rescue effort. A California Department of Fish and Wildlife officer said that the event represented “a full generation of birds not established.”

Elegant terns are designated as “near threatened” by U.S. environmental regulations that date back to the 1970s. Meanwhile, the Southern California port complex, the largest in the U.S., is an emblem of oil-driven growth and globalization. But while these two forces—environmental protection and petro-capitalism—seem to be at odds with one another, the tern catastrophe is an example of how measures to protect wildlife are carefully calibrated to exist alongside commercial shipping, petroleum, and military uses of the coastline. Rather than a brake on economic growth, environmental conservation in coastal California has come to play a key role in making it possible.

Elegant terns are black-hooded, slim white birds with scythe-like wings that give them agile flying capabilities. Like many other birds, these terns depend on stopover points in Southern California as they traverse the Pacific Flyway, a migratory route extending from Alaska to Patagonia. Terns favor sandy nesting areas in close proximity to ocean, estuary, and brackish waters where they can dive for small fish to feed young.

Historical ecologists estimate that the estuaries of the Los Angeles coastline once totaled between 15,000 and 18,000 acres. But by the 1980s, 90% of California’s wetlands had been sacrificed to oil development, military uses, agriculture—and the ports. Even the ecological reserve where the terns were nesting, Bolsa Chica, is far from an unspoiled idyll. It was formerly used as a gun club, for oil drilling, and for army installations; it is surrounded by active and idle wells and has a pipeline running through it; and adjacent wetlands were oiled in fall of 2021, when a cargo ship’s anchor struck and dragged a pipeline on the seabed.

The Southern California port complex—two contiguous but separately administered ports about 20 miles south of downtown L.A., one belonging to the city of Los Angeles and the other Long Beach—is one of the ten largest container ports in the world. Far from L.A.’s image of palm trees, Hollywood, and recreational beaches and boardwalks, the port’s shoreline is an industrial mega-site, where the same estuarial ecology in which the terns nest has been subjected to an intense modernization project. The marshland was hardened into cement docks that flow into intermodal infrastructure, connecting ships to the rail and freeways that move goods to distribution centers; the shore was also filled with petroleum infrastructure that connects ships and offshore drilling to inland refineries.

Oil fueled this growth. Los Angeles and Long Beach tapped rich coastal oil fields near the harbor after 1920, and over time, port and municipal managers decided to invest their revenues into expanding the complex, dredging deep channels in the harbor silt to allow the passage of large ships. Cargo movement reached stratospheric heights in the 1990s, when a high volume of Chinese imports began to come ashore. U.S. consumers who recognize that many of their goods are made in China may not realize that these items traveled to their homes via the Port of Los Angeles.

Concurrent with this rise of offshored manufacturing and development of logistics techniques to manage a skyrocketing volume of goods movement, the U.S.’ environmental regulatory apparatus came into being. After environmental outcry starting in the 1960s, the government began to require wildlife surveys for infrastructural projects that might impact air and water quality or endangered species. As mitigation measures for such projects, wetlands areas are sometimes created or restored in exchange for permits for new industrial activity, including oil drilling.

The requirements for biological surveys and air and water quality monitoring have meant that since the 1970s, environmental management is incentivized to sign off on the continued operation—and even expansion—of the logistics industry and petroleum development. Funding and logistical support for conservation occurs alongside the ports’ unquestioned pursuit of year-over-year growth. Some habitat management and wildlife rescue here is even funded by forces like the petroleum industry that inevitably cause harm to landscapes and wildlife.

Conservation’s entanglement with industry means that “disaster” scenarios are part of normal operations, rather than anomalies. The terns’ 2021 nesting catastrophe was not an isolated event. Similar incidents also occurred in 2006 and in 2007: nesting terns had taken up residence on barges in the Long Beach harbor, and many chicks drowned in 2006 when harbor operations spooked the birds. This prompted discussion over building an artificial sandy island to provide expanded habitat for the terns to nest in. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected the proposal, saying it was too pricey. A Bolsa Chica Reserve manager said, “The reason we want to [restore more habitat] is these terns keep wanting to nest in the port.” With limited coastline, especially in and around San Pedro Bay, there is intense competition for space between industrial operations and wildlife habitat.

The climate crisis and its associated mass extinction event are intensifying choices between habitat and industrial land use. But the situation is more than a simple competition for space. Fossil fuel-driven heating stresses wildlife, leaving species with even less capacity to absorb habitat loss. The terns are a perfect example: where they can nest is sensitive to movements of fish; warming oceans make access to the southern California coast even more important to their reproduction than it once was.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has committed to a plan to conserve 30% of land and marine areas by 2030. But what will happen to the remaining 70% of California? It’s important to think about how to regulate non-conservation areas, too. Ideally, the 30×30 plan would be accompanied by a commitment to not relegate any land or marine space to being a “sacrifice zone” privileging industrial activity. Animals and people are adaptable—and do not necessarily need “pristine” conditions for living. But they do need enforced standards that allow them to perch comfortably and breathe easily.

To protect human and animal life alike, we have to confront the zero-sum logic where goods movement crowds out space for flourishing life. The first step should be rethinking the very concepts of “wild” and “developed” spaces alike, with the aim of finding a path to an economic future less dependent on both unsustainable “growth” and sacrifice.

The post What Environmental Conservation Looks Like at America’s Biggest Port appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

May 2013: CMA CGM Dalila, offshore of Yokohama, Japan

The flat sea glimmers like a disco ball and it’s warm enough to sit outside without a puffy coat. All day long there have been whale sightings. … WHALES! The watchmen called me in the gymnasium where I was playing ping pong with Ian and Cloyd, crewmembers from the Philippines. WHALES! Each time I’d race to starboard or port side and scan the sea, squinting for a splash of a fin or tail. Finally this evening I saw the whales on port side, basking in the warm, peach light of the sunset. We saw two that floated like black logs along the calm surface. And another on the starboard side, the perfect outline of a tail descending into the deep.

In 2013, I quit my publishing job in New York City to travel around the world as a passenger on container ships. My trip was generously supported by a fellowship from my college for recent graduates who demonstrated a “strong desire to travel and a deep love of beauty.” I planned to talk to crews, communities, and organizations involved in maritime shipping, and to raise awareness of the industry’s rising social and environmental impact. In truth, my motives were far more selfish. I was in awe of container ships, and drawn to the unpredictability of the ocean. I was also compelled to do something a little reckless, just for me. Mostly I wanted to be far away.

I had been living two separate lives for some time. In my hometown of Seattle, I was a mostly closeted version of myself, so as not to bring any embarrassment or discomfort to my devout Greek Orthodox family. In New York, there was another version of me, figuring out who I was and what I wanted out of an adult romantic relationship, and on the verge of falling in love with a woman. I hoped that time on a big, slow-moving boat might give me space to reimagine how I would navigate the future.

A view of Marsaxlokk Port, Malta. During her journey, the author often walked around the ship, past rows of multicolored containers. Courtesy of author.

July 2013: Westport Business Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It is 12:25 in the morning and I am waiting in an empty business center in Port Klang. It’s a cement box of a building with scuffed walls, cold metal chairs and tiny television sets playing American westerns. … I’m not certain I am where I’m supposed to be. Hopefully my ship will arrive in the next hour and I can begin the immigration process and board the boat before sunrise. Earlier in the day I was told it would be here at 8 p.m., and then later, 11 p.m. When I arrived at 11 p.m., I was told the boat would not be here until 1 a.m.

As a passenger on a container ship, you are the least of anyone’s concern—insignificant in comparison to the millions of dollars’ worth of cargo on board. There is a lot of time for quiet reflection—with no cell service and only intermittent access to email. Days are punctuated by mealtimes but are otherwise entirely free of programming. On the ship I had a surprisingly spacious cabin with a double bed, desk, loveseat, and coffee table, my own bathroom, and one porthole looking out over the containers. I spent my mornings reading on the couch or writing diary entries at my desk. Sometimes I took a break to climb the several stairs to the bridge, where officers and crew take turns manning the ship, to stare out at the sea or pester whoever was on watch with questions.

In the afternoons I could walk around the perimeter of the ship, past the rows and rows of multicolored containers, a half-mile distance around. After lunch, I often slept. Some afternoons I ran on the ancient treadmill in the “gymnasium,” a small room with some athletic contraptions from the ‘80s. Or I’d play ping pong with any off-duty crewmembers.

The officers were from the countries where the ships were flagged—in the case of this trip, France and Germany. The crew were mostly from the Philippines, but there were others from Romania, Russia, and Kiribati, an island I had never heard of. All of the officers and crew that I met were men.

July 2013: CC Rigoletto, Straits of Malacca

There is one other passenger on board, Victor from Sweden. It’s so cute because no one has really introduced themselves to us, but nearly everyone we’ve passed lets us know that there is a barbeque on deck tonight. They are roasting a whole pig and there will be tiger prawns and merguez sausages as well! This will be the last barbeque for a while because we will be passing around India and it is the monsoon season. I think they are going all out for the occasion. Every day the menu is posted on a printout taped in the stairwell to the mess hall. And every day someone pastes up a different photo of a scantily clad female celebrity between lunch and dinner. Day 1: Cameron Diaz. Day 2: Christina Aguilera. Ironically, the steward also includes on the printout the name of the saint who is celebrated each day.

Before my trips I had assumed I would be one of few women, if not the only woman, on board. I was careful in my dress not to invite any unwanted attention. And when asked, I avoided all conversation around my personal and romantic life—I certainly never revealed that I was dating a woman. One day I was playing ping pong with one of the officers, and he asked me why I never wore skirts—then jokingly threatened to steal all my trousers while I exercised so that I’d have to wear a skirt to dinner.

In some ways, the journey amplified my inclination to hide and my growing frustration with the disconnect between how I presented myself to people of my past, and to strangers, and who I really was. Even thousands of miles away from everyone I knew, with the entire space of the ocean and the anonymity of an experience unshared, I was still building a wall. I had the courage to do so much alone, and yet even alone I didn’t have the courage to be me.

One remarkable day—the day we sailed through the Suez Canal in the first hazy blue light of dawn—the beauty of the experience was punctuated by an email from my family. They were planning a wedding for my sister, a big fat Greek wedding, and I just couldn’t be happy. I was mourning the love and support I feared I would never receive from my parents, and felt guilty for my lack of joy for a sister I loved so much. Waves of anger and jealousy and anxiety swelled up so strong that I felt sick to my stomach. That day, I vowed not to be the same when I returned.

Elena Legeros aboard the CC Rigoletto on the Straits of Malacca, during a barbecue on deck with the ship’s crew. Courtesy of author.

August 25, 2013: MSC Uganda, offshore of Boston, United States

Today will be my last day aboard and it could not be a more glorious day. There isn’t a breath of wind and the sea is a shimmer like static on a deep blue TV screen. We are ahead of schedule and at midday we came to a complete halt in the middle of the ocean and I went outside to suntan, taking dips in the pool of icy seawater. Every time I go outside I sniff to see if I can smell the smell of the Cape. My phone is getting intermittent service and I can hear the Boston-based coast guard over the radio in the wheelhouse.

It’s been nine years since my voyage. In that time I’ve moved from New York to Seattle to Los Angeles to San Francisco. I married the woman I love, and we’ve had two children together. We recently decided to move our family to Long Beach, where we rented an apartment that looks out over the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the two largest ports in the United States. Long Beach drew us for a variety of reasons, but I was excited to be so close to the container ships.

These days I feel rooted on land and glad to be close to my family—the one I grew up with and the one I’m building. I don’t feel the pull to venture far away, but I love to see the ships in the harbor, to think about where they came from and where they’re going. Sometimes I check online to see what they’re carrying and the route they’ve taken. I think about the officers and crewmembers on board and how long they’ve been away from their families. I’m reminded of my smallness, both relative to the size of these ships and the expanse of the world they sail. But I’m reminded of strength, too: the strength I found in the middle of the ocean, not in the face of any danger or adversity but with the space and time to discover it fully.

The post Where I Go<span class="colon">:</span> A Big, Slow-Moving Boat appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It’s 1986, and I’m 11 years old, living on the north side of Long Beach. My TV has two dials and two telescoping antennas. I randomly turn on Channel 9, where a Los Angeles Lakers game is playing (back when games could be seen for free). I watch as Magic comes down on a fast break in Inglewood, looks straight southeast at me in Long Beach, and then throws a no-look pass to James Worthy streaking down the right side of the court for a swooping dunk.

A few plays later, Magic—somehow both the tallest player on the court and the best dribbler—rebounds the ball, and in three dribbles, covers the entire court. When he is cut off on his drive, he disappears, spinning full speed the other way in a balletic pirouette and laying the ball up in a swish as soft as a fireman handing a baby off to her mom.

Immediately, I said to myself: I want to do that.

I had no business falling in love with basketball the way I did. My family of five were refugees from Vietnam. We didn’t do after-school activities, summer camps, or organized sports. My brother was a visual artist. My sister played piano and was a good student. No one played sports. Heck, no one even watched sports. But after witnessing Magic orchestrate that ’86 Lakers fast break like a symphony of bodies, I meekly asked my dad for a hoop in our driveway.

I was shocked when he agreed. But of course, he did it in the most Vietnamese of ways. He built the court himself, buying a rim, attaching it to a backboard of scrap wood that he had cut himself, and mounting it to our garage with two Frankenstein-like steel bolts. Little did I know that that orange ring and cheap backboard would develop a 34-year-and-counting relationship with the game.

I’m not sure there’s a more meritocratic place in the world than a basketball court. As a person of color in America, you are judged every day. There’s a long list of places you will discover you are not welcome. But on the court, at least in good games with knowledgeable players, you earn your place. As a 5’7” Vietnamese American in a game of giants, I learned this in spades: If you can play, you can play.

Amidst the squeak of rubber sneakers and the chatter of trash talk, basketball is actually a silent language. A small ripple of your fingers says “I’m open” without announcing it to the world. A subtle head nod signals a stealthy cut to the basket. A thumb point and a smirk mean “This guy (or girl) can’t guard me.” Off the court, I associate the game most with the sound of life-affirming laughter. Have there ever been more fun and shenanigans than on the long bus ride home after a far-off tournament? I mean, who knew you could grow lifelong friendships by insulting people’s mothers?

I didn’t need youth park leagues, YMCA games, or travel ball to learn how to play. I had older cousins, and they taught me the game. They played with great skill and the even greater ferocity of fatherless Vietnamese boys whose dads had died during war. They took me to play pickup games against older players from the get-go. My first “coaches” were the grown-ass men whom I competed against.

Beginning in high school, I had quality coaches, all Black men, who not only taught me the skills and strategy of the game but also—because I was often the only Asian kid in the gym—the confidence and moxie needed to be on the court.

You would think that playing in the basketball hotbed of Southern California—and at two high school programs (Long Beach Jordan and Long Beach Poly) that featured dozens of future college and professional basketball players—I found my greatest competition in organized high school or travel ball games. While those games featured talent and skill, the most intense games I’ve played in my life were actually pickup games. Having played all over the world, including at famous spots like Venice Beach, UCLA Men’s Gym, and MacArthur Park in Oakland, I’ve found pickup games all have the same thing in common: No one wants to lose. The reward for winning is not a trophy, it’s that you get to keep playing. There’s no better feeling than leaving a court after holding it all night and having guys beg you to stay so they can keep trying to beat you. (Winning a few games, scoring on a local, and getting a dap afterward at the most well-known outdoor court in the world, Rucker Park in Harlem, is a close second, though.)

I live in Torrance now, where I’ve coached a number of my two sons’ basketball teams. It’s endearing to see preschoolers try and dribble a ball that seems half their size. I also love hearing “Hi, Coach” from former players in the neighborhood, and I’ve saved every card thanking me for teaching the game with joy and positivity. (I promised myself I would never yell as a youth coach and I’ve kept that promise: One, it’s not a good look. Two, it doesn’t work.)

Author Ky-Phong Tran (top row, right) gives back to the game by coaching the next generation of basketball players (including his son) on the FOR Razors based in Torrance, California. Courtesy of the author.

For two years, my oldest son has played on a year-round team I coach in a historically Japanese, and now predominantly Asian American, league. I was hesitant to make such a big commitment at first, but the allure of coaching the same players year after year convinced me to sign on. There are ten third-grade boys on the FOR Razors, some skilled enough to make three-pointers and perform crossover dribbles, and some who struggle with layups and catching the ball. Coaching the games is enjoyable but the true thrill I get from it is seeing them improve and develop at their own rate. A game where all the boys score at least one basket is my favorite.

The team, once a group of strangers, has become a community. When we unite our ten families for holidays, birthdays, and big NBA games, we number at least 41 people. As a Vietnamese American who was estranged from most of his family back in Vietnam, the parties give me a sense of all those epic family gatherings I missed out on due to war and history.

Now in the midst of a global pandemic and recession, our leagues, games, and tournaments have all been suspended. We tried Zoom practices, but they left me feeling empty. A few weeks ago, we started running together to boost fitness and camaraderie. Lately, we’ve begun socially distant shooting competitions.

In Los Angeles County, basketball has been effectively shut down since March. Gyms are shuttered and the rims have been taken down at the parks. But I’m fortunate to have a driveway hoop. It is an expensive splurge with a huge glass backboard and breakaway rim that I imagine my father would have both admired and disapproved of.

In addition to missing the game and my team, I’m also struggling with the everyday challenges we all are currently facing. I’m stressed to the joints worrying about my wife who used to work from home in a quiet and orderly house. I’m worried about my two sons’ virtual schooling and their social isolation. I wake up in the middle of the night grinding my teeth, thinking of the challenge of teaching my own high school English students from afar.

When it all gets too overwhelming, I go to the driveway and shoot the rock. Of course, I am biased, but shooting a basketball could be the most perfect of human movements. When you do it correctly, the ground and your body and the ball and the rim and the ground again, become an arc, a splice of the most perfect shape in nature, the circle. When the ball swishes through, you are a rainbow, your pot of gold the satisfaction that your actions have met your ambitions.

Go try it. Find the rim with your eyes. Square your shoulders. Raise both arms up as if in prayer. Let the energy build from your toes and flow through your body. Release the ball from your fingertips like a wish onto the world. And remember: Shooting a basketball is a promise to yourself, and to do it right, you have to follow through.

The post Where I Go<span class="colon">:</span> Growing up Under the Rim appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

During my sophomore year at Poly, I found out I was pregnant. When I told my family, they were so disappointed. My family was just barely holding it together. My dad was out of work then, and my mom is disabled by a brain tumor. They had moved to Long Beach as refugees in 1979. They had only escaped from Cambodia because my grandpa, who still bore the scars of an explosion that blew up his friend, had a hunch one night that the Khmer Rouge would be coming. He urged my family to leave and we later found out he was right because the Khmer Rouge did show up in their hometown the next day. Living in Long Beach is not easy—half the Khmer families here live below the poverty line. But it’s hard to say that we have it that bad because of what our families had to go through just to stay alive.

My family had big plans for me—they wanted me to graduate from high school, get accepted to college, and pursue a career. Because of the high percentage of teen pregnancy and high number of teen mothers in my city, they feared that I would become another statistic who wouldn’t finish high school. They always envisioned me reaching higher than they did. My parents insisted that I get an abortion but I decided to keep my baby. Because I went against their decision, I was kicked out of my house and lived with my aunt for a while.

Even though I felt so tired due to my pregnancy, I woke up everyday with the mindset that going to school was still my goal. I believed in this before I got pregnant and quitting was never an option. I had a lot of self-discipline—at one point I was planning to join the military—but I had trouble going to school and being pregnant at the same time. At first, I started missing school once a month for prenatal appointments, and during my last trimester, I was missing school once a week to make my appointments. I had to catch up on so many assignments. I was frustrated and stressed out about how much time I wasted waiting in line at city offices to submit all kinds of paperwork, including my application for Medicaid. I never regretted being pregnant, but I never expected it to be such a hassle to get the health care I needed when I needed it most.

In Long Beach, teen pregnancy is actually really common. The rates are much higher here than the average across the state. In California, the pregnancy rate for girls ages 15 to 19 is 37 babies per 1,000 young women. In 2007, Long Beach teens gave birth to 53 babies per 1,000 young women. In some neighborhoods, the rate was 69. And once you’re someone who needs help in Long Beach, resources can be hard to get: You can’t always count on family savings since a lot of people are low-income; the houses are often already crowded. Teen mothers struggle going to school because they don’t have a babysitter or can’t afford childcare.

About 2 months before I got pregnant, I had joined Khmer Girls in Action (KGA), the 18-year-old Long Beach non-profit that highlights the voices of Khmer youth and organizes for social change in the community. I first saw KGA at the Khmer New Year’s Day parade in Long Beach. The girls were chanting and wearing matching T-shirts with the lotus logo and they looked so cool.

The reason I joined was that I was looking for something life-changing for me, people in my community, and future generations. I heard KGA helped others find themselves and become leaders. Joining KGA felt like home, only more comfortable. At the meetings, which took place in KGA’s office, near Cambodiatown, there were snacks, chairs, music, and people who were supportive of each other. With 20 other girls, I took part in the Young Womyn’s Empowerment Program. We talked about what society assumes about us and what our parents put on us. My family expected me to cook and clean and stay at home in the traditional way, and through KGA I started understanding that other young women had the same kinds of struggles going on in their families. I saw the things that were wrong in the community that we needed to make right. I came to see myself in many of the other Cambodian-Americans we were working to help—people who are young moms, low-income, or dealing with something that you wouldn’t know on the surface.

I was the only KGA member at the time who was pregnant so not a lot of the other young women knew exactly what I was going though. But they showed support for my decision in keeping my baby. KGA was my family then because they were loving and showed affection in a way that my own family at the time could not. I grew up in a household where you couldn’t talk about your problems. And by talking with other women at KGA, I understood why my family and I could not relate—I realized that it was really hard for my parents to show affection and love because of the way they grew up. Sometimes it was easier for them to express anger than other emotions.

With help from KGA, I did finish my sophomore year. They listened to me cry and pour out my stories; they checked that I completed the courses that would be needed to qualify for admission to the University of California and Cal State system. They still gave me opportunities to be a leader—like emceeing lunch rallies—when I felt many people had stopped believing in me.

A few months before the baby was born, my father accepted the fact that I was going to give birth. My parents got along really well with Danny, my boyfriend, and he moved in. In 2014, I gave birth to my son. Over that year, I had really matured as a strong mother and a strong woman. My son’s arrival changed my dad’s perspective and he became supportive. Finally, things seemed to be falling into place. At a KGA event in May 2014, I shared a poem that I dedicated to Danny.

I had no idea that a year later I would be up on the same stage at another KGA event sharing another poem dedicated to Danny, but this time he wouldn’t be in the audience. Just three weeks after the birth of our son, my boyfriend was killed in a car accident and my life changed again.

KGA was supportive throughout the loss. They reached out to me and asked me what I needed. They were understanding of my schedule and continued to believe in my leadership. I emceed another lunch rally and even got elected secretary for Youth Organizing Long Beach, a club run by the Children’s Defense Fund that works to empower young people.

As I grieved—without access to a professional mental health counselor—I came realize how many other teens were struggling as much as I was. I helped plan a “wellness week” when we collected over 1,500 student surveys on health needs. We found that three out of four of my classmates were dealing with stress and anxiety. Forty-two percent suffered from depression and half the students wanted mental health services. Nearly 70 percent needed physical health care, including information on subjects like safe sex, acne, and weight loss. We asked them if they’d go to a clinic with “teen-only” hours and about half the students said they might. I don’t think students’ health issues should be a barrier to our success in school.

Now I’m starting my senior year and my son is 16 months old. I stayed in school and now I want to go to a four-year college and become an occupational therapist. My motivation is my son, and the desire to be someone who gives back to other people, helping people without expecting anything in return. Long Beach is not an easy place to live, but we can make it better for students by giving them the resources to help themselves and each other, and to stay in school.

The post Stress, Pregnancy, and Grief Shouldn’t Limit Success in School appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This month, we marked the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the most enduring policy success of the Great Depression, the program that reduced poverty for millions of older Americans.

But all that came two years after a retired doctor in Long Beach looked out his window one morning in 1933.

Since leaving the practice of medicine, Francis Townsend had become a not-very-successful, quite eccentric entrepreneur.

His next career was inspired when he looked out his window and watched three older women rummage through a trash can, searching for food beneath his window.

The sight enraged him. So he wrote a letter to the editor of the Long Beach Press-Telegram recounting the episode and his reaction to it.

“A torrent of invectives tore out of me, the big blast of bitterness that had been building in me for years,” he wrote. “I swore, I ranted, and I let my voice bellow with a wild hatred I had for things as they are.” He told the paper that at that moment, he had vowed to his wife that he would shout, “‘Until the whole country hears.’”

Townsend’s letter went on to condemn the ravages of the Depression and the cruelty of elder poverty. And then he made a fateful suggestion: The country should establish a new national retirement program that would both stimulate the economy and eliminate poverty for older Americans.

It was not surprising that such a suggestion would come from California, which had doubled its older population between 1920 and 1930. And it was appropriate that the idea emerged from Long Beach, where a third of the population was elderly.

In his book Endangered Dreams, California historian Kevin Starr described “the Long Beach elderly” of that time as “living on fixed incomes in simple cottages”:

[T]he majority of them folks from Iowa and elsewhere in the Midwest had come to Southern California to enjoy a simple life of church going, potluck suppers and checkers in the park …The Depression destroyed their plans as pension trusts shrank, or, in some cases, as they went under entirely … Fully 50 percent of the elderly in America were in need of some form of outside aid if they were to make it through the slump.

I know this history because I am a Southern California organizer and a policy wonk who has worked on issues impacting seniors in this country for over 30 years. This month, I am proud to be participating in events celebrating Social Security’s 80th birthday.

The program’s humble beginnings, with that letter, are a marvel. But the program is even more so. That rate of elder poverty has since dropped from 50 percent to nearly single digits. Life expectancy has gone way up. Americans can expect to age with dignity.

Over the decades, Social Security has grown beyond Dr. Townsend’s visions to cover disabled workers, as well as surviving spouses and children. And for all the criticism from skeptics about the program’s finances, reports show that Social Security is solvent and will be able to pay full benefits for a very long time. Today, it has a surplus of more than $2 trillion.

The history of Social Security itself suggests that bold changes in the program—perhaps even including its expansion in a time of government budget cuts—may be more viable than cynics assume.

What’s most remarkable about Townsend’s letter is the breathtaking speed of what happened next. The doctor received such an outpouring of support and shared outrage that he devised what he called the Townsend Plan.

Townsend laid out his plan in a series of additional letters to the newspaper. The substance was simple. He called for a $200 pension to everyone over the age of 60, funded by a 2 percent sales tax on all business transactions. Recipients, who had to be fully retired and without a significant criminal record, would be required to spend every cent of these monthly allotments. At the time, $200 a month was sufficient for a middle-class lifestyle. Thus the plan would be a major step in bringing people over 60 out of poverty while stimulating the national economy.

Less than four months after the letter to the editor’s publication, in January 1934, Townsend and a colleague incorporated an entity called Old Age Revolving Pensions, Limited. Eight months later, the first Townsend Club, an entity to support the plan, was organized in Huntington Park, California. By January 1935, a half million Americans had joined Townsend Clubs across the country, generating $1 million in dues and donations. That same year, Townsend made the cover of Time magazine. And a newly elected congressman from Los Angeles introduced legislation to implement the Townsend Plan.

There was more than one movement that pressured the Roosevelt Administration to create the program. And the president had been clear as far as back as 1932 that a program of social insurance for seniors was one of his goals. But history is clear that the Townsend movement was a key force in making it happen.

The passage of Social Security did not end Townsend’s movement for retirement security. Ultimately, over 2.1 million people joined more than 7,000 Townsend Clubs throughout the country. The vibrancy of the movement was so strong that in 1936 the clubs delivered petitions to Congress with 10 million signatures to back higher benefits for Social Security.

Townsend himself saw his plan as more than a retirement or stimulus. He wanted to organize and inspire the country to collective action. In an April 1935 letter to the Townsend Clubs, he outlined their primary goal–”enactment of the Townsend Plan into law”—then added, “The secondary purpose of Townsend clubs is a desperate fight to continue the democratic spirit and form of government in these United States.”

This mix—of urgency for passage in the now, and a long-term commitment to vibrant democracy—was the most profound feature of this movement led by a doctor from Long Beach. It is why Townsend succeeded. The Long Beach origins of Social Security are a reminder that grassroots organizing, for all its difficulties and challenges, is both possible and imperative if you want to change the world outside your window.

The post How a Long Beach Doctor Created Social Security appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Since its founding in 1897, Long Beach has long been a sanctuary city for dreamers and cast-offs: young Iowans seeking warmth; oilmen drilling for wealth; navy sailors heading out for adventures; blacks escaping Southern racism; gays and lesbians building a safe haven; and refugees fleeing war in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Unlike other Los Angeles cities that consume their history in an ouroboros-like cycle of drywall redevelopment and garish Mediterranean villas, Long Beach doesn’t just remember its past—it survives because of it.

We remember through traditional means, like our 50-year old Long Beach Historical Society and the iconic Acres of Books, once the largest used bookstore in California. We also remember through our architecture (the downtown Pike rollercoaster bridge), our murals (dozens bombed across town), and of course, our music (Snoop Dogg and Sublime).

However, we also remember in a more corporeal way. The walls of the Long Beach Clothing Company store in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood are lined with hundreds of photographs of people tattooed with “Long Beach” or “LB” on their bodies. I particularly love the ones of local iron tattooed onto local flesh: the underappreciated Vincent Thomas Bridge spanning a man’s chest and the British ocean liner Queen Mary moored to a torso.

Civic pride tattoos are not rare, but in Long Beach, like most everything else here, they have a rich past. A few blocks away from the bustling Aquarium of the Pacific and surrounded by modern apartment buildings is a small corner shop located at 22 Chestnut Place: Outer Limits Tattoo. Before that, it was Bert Grimm’s World Famous Tattoo where, since 1927, thousands of sailors from the now-shuttered Long Beach Naval Shipyard were tattooed. Black-and-white photographs of tattooed sailors, restored original artwork, and a backroom museum of tattoo guns and needles make it obvious that renowned tattoo artist and current owner Kari Barba deeply respects the locale’s history. Together, the shops are the longest-running tattoo parlor in the United States.

“Tattoos are proof of our existence,” said Shay Bredimus, a gallery-represented visual artist and painter who also has tattooed at Outer Limits for six years. As we spoke, he worked on a gothic tattoo of the skull-like hill Golgotha, the site of Christ’s crucifixion, on a man’s inner arm. “In the modern age, they are one of our last rites of passage, an agreed-upon blood ritual.”

Unknown to most, Long Beach sits atop the United States’ third largest domestic oil field. And it is sinking. Every day, thousands of gallons of oil are pumped from beneath the city. To replace those gaps in the ground, engineers pump water back into the ground, preventing the city from collapsing onto itself.

My city hasn’t always been so lucky. More often, it has collapsed, sometimes to be rebuilt again, sometimes not. During the riots in 1992, army trucks rumbled down the streets and my neighborhood burned. In the “hot summer” of 1998, 11 were killed in a vicious interracial gang war. But sometimes the change is good and peaceable. In 2014, the city elected its first Latino and openly gay mayor.

Amidst so much turmoil and impermanence, I understand that we have to store our memories on the most intimate of place of all: our bodies. We remember with our tattoos, our history inked permanently into our skin. As my tattoo artist Aleks Figueroa of Dream Jungle Tattoo said, “Tattoos make the world less impermanent.”

A few hours after my visit to Outer Limits, as I wandered around Signal Hill, which has one of the best views in Southern California, I crossed paths with three Cambodian-American young men. They had a mix of street art and Khmer iconography tattooed on their arms, stomachs, backs, necks, and even their heads. I could not take my eyes off them. One had an image of a stone Buddha head etched into his neck. Another’s entire left arm was a tribute to Kobe Bryant.

I introduced myself with the universal city greeting, an upward head nod. The leader of the group, it turned out, was Chanthy Sok, a.k.a. CS, a local rapper who is leading a Long Beach rap renaissance called the Cambo Movement. He invited me to his North Hollywood recording studio and then later said this about his tattoos, the temples of Angkor Wat and “Made in Cambodia” inked across his stomach.

“Growing up in Long Beach, we used to be despised for being Cambodian. I used to ask myself, ‘Why can’t I be something else?’” he told me. But while serving almost 10 years in prison, “I studied up about my people. We weren’t just the victims of genocide and the Killing Fields. We weren’t barbarians and jungle people. It took a strong civilization to build Angkor Wat. My tattoo is about redemption. After all those years of hating myself, I owed it to myself.”

CS’s new tattoo also covers up a tattoo of his old gang affiliation; it’s both facade and symbol of rebirth.

My family moved to North Long Beach in 1979. We were refugees from the Vietnam War. In addition to the traditional trials and tribulations of having immigrant-refugee parents (poverty, cultural differences, language difficulties), my family faced additional trying circumstances. For most of my life, both my parents had been disabled by strokes, my dad when I was just a teen and my mom in 2005, a month before I turned 30. In some way or another, I had been responsible for their care for almost three decades. My mom passed away in 2009 and my dad followed four years later. They are both buried in Long Beach, a few blocks from where we replanted our roots.

My two tattoos memorialize both of them. My mom’s signature is inked onto the inside of my left forearm in a graceful calligraphy that resembles Arabic writing. It’s to honor my life as a writer and all the times my mom read to me—in English—after an exhausting day of work. My dad’s paratrooper wings from his service in the South Vietnamese military adorn my right inner forearm. His body was broken for so many years that I wanted to remember him young and strong, jumping ably from helicopters and airplanes.

When we fled Vietnam, my mom was already six months pregnant, physically lugging me across time zones and borders. In his new American life my dad, a former schoolteacher, sold furniture and worked at a construction company. My mom toiled as an office clerk and manicurist. It was not glamorous work, but they did what they had to provide food and shelter. As they carried me, I now carry them.

My tattoos also link my parents to their kin. When my first son was born, I brought him into the world with my mom’s name there by his side. In a few weeks my second son will be born, and I will welcome him into the world with arms bearing both his grandparents’ memories. When I teach my sons how to shoot a basketball or read a book to them, they will see those same tattoos and ask them about them. Then I will tell them about their grandparents.

The post Tattoos Are Proof We Exist appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This tradition of addresses—of officials, by officials, and mostly for officials—begs the question of what would happen if you let citizens define the condition of their communities instead. Would that generate fresh ideas about how to tackle the biggest challenges?

Long Beach Rising!, a civic engagement program run by a collection of local organizations, is trying to answer that question. On a recent Wednesday evening, the “People’s State of the City,” now in its 4th year, drew more than 450 people from across Long Beach to the auditorium of Stephens Middle School. Residents turned up to meet their neighbors. There was a mixer, with tables and food, held outside the school beforehand, and then everyone headed inside to listen and learn what’s going on in their city.

The theme of this year’s meeting was “Halfway Home, A Long Way to Go.” Speakers noted improvements in Long Beach, but acknowledged threats from inequality, violence, and environmental problems, like the ones posed by the extension of the 710 freeway. There was no big formal speech by any one person, but there were presentations hosted by representatives from more than a dozen local organizations on the wellbeing of Long Beach.

Anakbayan Long Beach, a Filipino rights organization, presented a video with accounts from residents of Long Beach’s 7th District who are concerned about violence in their neighborhood and the impending closure of an important charter school. There was also a theater performance that examined the challenging lives of hotel workers. It was clear these issues resonated with other citizens, as the crowd stood up to cheer, and tears streamed down the faces of some people in the audience.

Each year, the Long Beach People’s State of the City has grown. For many Long Beach residents, the event was the first time they have encountered a comfortable environment to learn about what’s going on in their communities—and to get connected with resources they might need.

The post A City that Doesn’t Leave Politics to the Politicians appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Yes, I understand the appeal of the park, an oasis of greenery nestled between an aqueduct and the 605 freeway on the outskirts of Long Beach. Youth soccer teams practice in the park, the nearby high schools use it as a space for activities, the city holds frequent events there, and rather recently a dog park has been fitted into it. It’s been a staple of the community for as long as I remember, so you’re guaranteed to see an old friend upon each visit.

Still, I can’t stand it.

The hatred began around the time that my family got our second dog, giving us a pair of miniature pinschers: Minnie and Tinkerbell (for the record, I had no say in naming either of them). Both dogs were unruly, so my mother decided it was time for training. She had been walking Minnie in El Dorado Park for years before Tinkerbell showed up, so she decided it would be a good place to implement the training she was learning from an obedience class. Seeing as how it wasn’t plausible to train two dogs at once, she enlisted me to train Tink while she trained Minnie.

We took the dogs to class once a week, and on the off days, walked them in the park, trying to get them to heel, sit and stop on command. It was an impossible task. These dogs were out of control, and I was convinced that no amount of training would fix that. But my mother insisted. And so I walked Tink through the park for months, alternating between calming tones and screaming at her to cooperate. I was offered no reward, no allowance, no incentive other than avoiding punishment for disobeying my mother’s wishes. It was one of the most frustrating things I’d ever had to deal with and I began to resent having to do it every day.

My resentment spread to other parts of my life. In those early teen years, I was a part of a rather competitive club soccer team. I loved my teammates and coach; even practicing twice a week with them was a joy. That was until the off-season when a third practice was added simply for conditioning so we could stay in shape until next season. These were two-hour sessions of complete hell, and of course they took place in El Dorado Park.

By the time I reached high school, I would shudder upon hearing the name of the park. When I decided to try something new and join the cross-country team (probably a bad idea since I don’t like running), I quit after a week—when I realized that the squad would train in El Dorado Park.

So I did all I could to remove any and all traces of El Dorado Park from my life, and I felt fine. I moved away to college in another state, assuming the park and I were done with each other.

Instead, I keep getting pulled back. The blame falls on those I love. My family, for reasons that defy my understanding, is obsessed with El Dorado. Every time I visit home, someone—mother, father, one of my three sisters—suggests visiting the park, and despite my objections, the suggestion is acted upon. We play Frisbee in the park, we play soccer in the park, and we walk our (now, mercifully, only one) dog in the park. All of these activities should be fun on their own, and I always adore spending time with my family, but for some reason when any of this is done in El Dorado Park, I abhor any and all of it. Walking along the perfectly paved path through the tall trees and abundant grass, and around the central lake where children feed ducks, is simply infuriating.

I understand that my loathing is irrational. My blame is misplaced. And so I feel bad about hating El Dorado Park, which makes me hate the park all the more. Maybe someday I’ll conquer my feelings for the park. But right now, I’m fuming as I write this down.

The post My Version of Hell Is a Park in Long Beach appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Maybe that’s because they aren’t looking hard enough. Hidden in plain sight between an ad-hoc oil field and the Pacific Coast Highway, a nondescript Long Beach hotel holds a twice-monthly “Zydeco Night.”

Zydeco is a Louisiana Creole jazz music style with a matching eccentric dance that’s a little too swinging to be called folk and a little too folky to be called swing. Following the quick rhythm and bold chords of the music, dancing zydeco requires a blithe and loose spirit. Though the combination of a trumpet, accordion, washboard, drum set, and violin could assault the ears, those instruments, when put together right, are the perfect accompaniment to hopping and twirling your partner around the dance floor.

Growing up in Chicago, I took piano lessons, played violin in my high school orchestra, and attended the occasional street festival. But like most city kids north of the Mason-Dixon line, my knowledge of the Gulf Coast and its music was limited. All of that changed during a memorable spring break in New Orleans this past March.

I spent an evening at “Rock and Bowl,” a combination bowling alley-dance floor featuring a local zydeco band. The feeling was electric. Energy radiated from every corner of the room as at least 50 couples crowded on the floor, jumping and jiving in partnership with the musicians.

It was a blast, but I had little reason to believe that zydeco would follow me back to Los Angeles, where I attend college. Missing New Orleans, however, I did a late-night Google search and learned about the zydeco event at the Best Western Golden Sails in Long Beach.

I lured my friend Frank into joining me one Sunday with half-baked promises of fully-baked gumbo—hoping that I had not been deceived by blog posts alleging to the presence of this Louisiana staple. Thanks to a misdirected turn on the 405 by my travel guru Siri, we arrived almost an hour late; to what, though, we weren’t quite sure.

From the parking lot, the Best Western Golden Sails looked as barren and culturally devoid as one would expect, especially on an early Sunday evening. With few patrons in sight, even in the lobby, we began to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. However, the encouraging smell of simmering meats accompanied by the faint pulses of horns and drums directed us onward. We followed our ears (and noses) to the PCH Club, the hotel’s venue for Grateful Dead tribute bands, and sure enough, a good old-fashioned zydeco dance.

Greeting us at the door were two ladies donning large cowboy hats and speaking in accents so deliciously thick they could turn a fish tank into a crawfish boil just by asking nicely. Poised by the entrance—blessed deliverance—were two slow-cooking vats: one with rice, the other with the promised gumbo. Next to it sat the ever-necessary Louisiana hot sauce. Though Frank and I were initially skeptical of this Los Angeles version of gumbo, our fears were assuaged while our taste buds were massaged.

The band was onstage and well underway with their jamming and hollering. The instrumental staples were all present: a drummer, a trumpet, a violin. The main singer played an accordion while shouting out food throughout the songs: “Jambalaya!” “Étouffée!” A boy no older than 10 was invited up onstage to accompany the band on the washboard, the apron-style instrument hanging down to his knees. While he clearly had limited washboard experience (or any sort of rhythmic experience, for that matter), that wasn’t the point.

The crowd included people ranging in age from 8 to 80. Some played pool or sat at the bar noshing on Southern cuisine—though most livened up the dance floor in pairs or solo. Couples who had clearly taken lessons repeated their practiced sequences across the dance floor (and tried in vain to stay on beat), while less trained dancers just hopped back and forth to the music. Frank and I toyed with the idea of joining the dance to give the other couples a run for their money. Before we could make any moves, however, we were intercepted by two regular attendees, who insisted on taking us for a spin on the floor.

There are as many ways to dance to zydeco as there are ways to play it, though the one taught to me by this very nice (albeit very drunk) woman followed a side/step/side/hop pattern that kept us in constant motion. Once I got the hang of the basic movement, the real fun started. For thrills, I would spin her around while side-step-siding. Occasionally I would change out the hop with a little dip, causing her to blush a shade similar to the Louisiana hot sauce (though it was probably less about me than the wine). Frank, however, was in desperate need of rescue as his partner seemed more preoccupied with where she was placing her hands than her feet, so I eventually cut in to remind him that he “owed me a game of pool.”

Before we headed out, we were corralled for a little more gumbo and conversation by a welcome committee of ladies in cowboy hats, one of whom we learned was from Mamou, Louisiana, about 150 miles inland from New Orleans. “Mamou is the real place to spend Mardi Gras,” she told us. Her brother, it turned out, was in the band. They had been bringing this musical (and culinary) extravaganza to the Los Angeles area for years. When we asked for her name, she replied: “You can call me whatever you like, just don’t call me late for dinner!” (Though it sounded more like: “Ja ca’ cahl meh whate’a’ jou like, jus’ dun’ cahl meh la’e fo’ dinuh!)

The event at the Best Western Golden Sails is just one small crawfish in a surprisingly large “Zydeco in Los Angeles” pot, one of our new friends told us. Southern California hosts several huge zydeco festivals in the summer, which we were advised to check out.

And so, as we headed into the Long Beach sunset on the Pacific Coast Highway, we decided we just might have to do that. After all, there are few places in Los Angeles, let alone the country, where so many people can experience such an intimate experience. In a city with more than a dozen freeways and a few million people, finding a corner with good food, music, dancing, and people is like a diamond in the rough—or rather, a diamond in the bayou.

The post Where Can You Dance to the Washboard in L.A.? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The post Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.