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OCCUPY THE LEARNING GARDEN Occupy Venice reaches out to the Learning Garden at Venice High School and takes over a large plot to develop as a vegetable and medicinal herb garden. The Learning Garden was launched in March of 2001. Since then it has quickly become one of the country’s largest and most successful school gardens. The Learning Garden is a model example of how school gardens can transform the lives of students and teachers and the envi...ronment of their community. For several years, many groups worked with the high school horticulture program to transform the 60,000 foot plot of land into a garden, but due to lack of stronger community support it remained mostly an eyesore filled with trash, overgrown with weeds, and a magnet for vandalism. Today, the agricultural plots are filled with organic food grown by the high school students. Health-related classes such as tai chi, qigong, and natural food cooking are offered on its large stone patio. The garden has a large medicinal plant section for educational purposes, a pond with a water garden and waterfall, and a California native plant and cacti garden. A community garden is tended by local volunteers, and numerous groups and organizations use and support the garden. Since the first groundbreaking ceremony, The Learning Garden has received ongoing support and assistance from many generous benefactors and hard-working volunteers. As some of you may know, The Learning Garden has been generous enough to offer Occupy Venice the opportunity to outreach to the community through a fantastic garden plot. We are currently working to help them prepare their medicinal garden for re-planting, in the hopes that it may once again be used to teach our community about the importance of naturopathic and herbal medicine. PLEASE COME JOIN US THIS SUNDAY AS WE CONTINUE TO BUILD THE GARDEN AND THE COMMUNITY WHICH SURROUNDS IT! Learning Garden DVD http://tlgdaily.blogspot.com/2012/03/learning-garden-dvd.html ******************************** OCCUPY 3RD AVENUE - FROM TREASURE TO TRASH - Close to
100 people gathered on 3rd Ave at Rose Ave in Venice on Thurs. Feb. 16,
2012 to protect the rights of homeless people to sleep on the sidewalk
from 9:00 pm - 6:00 am - as stipulated in the Jones Settlement
(allowing homeless individuals to sleep on the sidewalk).
Frome that initial gathering, people "occupied" 3rd Ave on a nightly basis for the next 3 weeks, creating porta-potties for humans and their pets, planting decorative vegetation and generally trying to make it a livable environment. Until: LAPD arrived on Wed. March 7, 2012 with no warning, to "sweep" their belongings into sanitation trucks, destined for the trash heap. This video depicts some of the activities on 3rd Ave during this brief occupation. ********************************
Venice Town Hall: Silicon Beach – Thursday, April 12
 The Venice Neighborhood Council and Venice Chamber of Commerce have set a new date for the Town Hall Meeting discussing the impact of Silicon Beach business development on Venice. The meeting had originally been scheduled for February 23, 2012, and was postponed to give the sponsors more time to attract additional participants and better publicize the meeting. The new date is Thursday, April 12. Confirmation of the venue is in process, and will be announced as soon as it is confirmed. ********************************
Rosendahl Gives Status Report
to Venice Chamber of Commerce City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose 11th District includes Venice, talks to the Venice Chamber of Commerce on a wide range of issues. By Paul Chavez | Patch Los
Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl gave an update on local issues
to members of the Venice Chamber of Commerce that included new
initiatives to clean up the 3rd Avenue homeless enclave on a weekly
basis and provide safety helmets at the Venice Beach skatepark.
About 40 members of the Venice chamber and their guests listened to Rosendahl's status report on Venice during a luncheon Wednesday held at the upstairs banquet room at Danny's Deli. The councilman said a weekly cleanup will take place on 3rd Avenue between Rose and Sunset avenues, which has become a gathering place for the homeless. A Bureau of Sanitation crew earlier this month cleaned up the street near Gold's Gym, Digital Domain and newcomer Google in an action decried by advocates for the homeless. Many homeless people said their personal belongings, including food, clothes and money, were thrown away without notice and they later were allowed to retrieve their trashed belongings. Rosendahl said the homeless would be notified before the weekly cleanups occur. He also said police would be more vigilant about enforcing laws against public drinking, drug use and public defecation and urination on the block-long stretch of 3rd Avenue. "That's the direction we're going," Rosendahl said. "We want to do it with dignity. The truth of the matter is that it's a public street for public use and it isn't one's space for private use." Rosendahl also told the audience that the recently approved amendment to the Ocean Front Walk ordinance was the city's third attempt to regulate the boardwalk. "This one, we've got our fingers crossed," Rosendahl said. "We're calling it a park, which it is. You can't be sleeping in there from midnight until 5 in the morning. We've seen a dramatic improvement on Ocean Front Walk and more improvement on vending issues." The boardwalk has seen less commercialization on its westside and the ordinance also provided a means to deal with the homeless on the boardwalk, Rosendahl said. Rosendahl also said he's looking for a nearby facility to provide transitional housing for about 30 people until they can find permanent housing. The councilman also said the oversized vehicle signs that have been put up in some Venice neighborhoods have dramatically reduced the number of vehicle dwellers in Venice, which at one point had 250 campers parked overnight on neighborhood streets. He also reported that 30 people who had been living in their vehicles have been moved into housing by the nonprofit group People Assisting The Homeless, which has a contract with the city through 2012 to help vehicle dwellers find housing. In other developments, Rosendahl during a question-and-answer session said he's been worried about children not wearing helmets at the Venice Beach skatepark, which is one of three skateparks in his district. The Venice Beach park has deeper bowls and is more of a safety issue, Rosendahl said. He said his office has released $25,000 for skatepark operators to install a helmet rack for youths using the skatepark. Rosendahl also said he was in favor of parking solutions for Abbot Kinney Boulevard that could include a structure capable of holding 150 cars in the current 50-car lot behind Hal's Bar and Grill. He also said that Westminster Avenue Elementary School's parking lot also may be used to relieve parking congestion. He also noted the transformation of Rose Avenue, which includes the Whole Foods Market and the new housing and shopping complex at the old Pioneer Bakery site in the 500 block of Rose Avenue. "Venice is on the rise and it continues to be an eclectic, historic, inspirational spot for the whole world," Rosendahl said. "We have more people who walk that beach than any other beach on the planet." Patch <><><><><><><><><> |
<><><><><><><><><> GOOGLE IN THE NEWS:
That's why I was so shocked to learn that Google was a major sponsor of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference. Not because it's conservative - but because the conference is giving a platform to white nationalist and anti-gay bigots. Growing up in the South, I've spent my life hearing stories from my parents about the cruelty of living under Jim Crow laws that limited their movements and their opportunities. They were terrorized by fear, hate and racism which barred them from visiting certain areas of the city. Even a simple trip to the grocery store could be filled with degradations both big and small from people who saw my family as second-class citizens. The retrogressive ideas of the CPAC speakers show a level of intolerance that is not only disturbing but potentially destructive. Why would Google want to use its corporate dollars to support hate? This year's CPAC features a man named Peter Brimelow, who publishes a website called VDARE. Brimelow will speak on a panel which claims that "the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity." VDARE is named for Virginia Dare, the first white child whose birth was recorded in the United States. Here's a sample of the kinds of things VDARE publishes: "America was defined — almost explicitly,
sometimes very explicitly — as a white nation, for white people, and
what that means is that there is virtually no figure, no law, no
policy, no event in the history of the old, white America that can
survive the transition to the new and non-white version. Whether we
will want to call the new updated version ‘America’ at all is another
question entirely." "Jewish activity collectively, throughout
history, is best understood as an elaborate and highly successful group
competitive strategy directed against neighboring peoples and host
societies. The objective has been control of economic resources and
political power. One example: overwhelming Jewish support for
non-traditional immigration, which has the effect of weakening
America’s historic white majority." "What race realists find most infuriating about
the liberalism of the last half century is not just that it has lost
its instinctive appreciation for the culture and people of the West but
actively, viciously attacks them. Whites are doing something no other
people have ever done in human history. Our rulers and elites welcome
replacement by aliens, they vilify our ancestors and their own, they
sacrifice our interests to those of favored minorities, and they treat
the entire history of the West as if it were a global plague of rapine
and exploitation. This is a disease that is killing us, and we must
fight it head on." And it's not just VDARE. The panel is being led by white nationalist conference is being chaired by Bob Vandevoort, a former leader of Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance, a midwestern white nationalist group (http://www.chicagoamren.com). Vandevoort's former group is closely associated with the Conservative Citizens' Council, which sprang from the White Citizens' Councils of the 1960s that terrorized civil rights workers in the South. CPAC is also giving a platform to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. FRC has repeatedly equated homosexuality with pedophilia, and Perkins has said that gay people lead a "death-style," not a lifestyle. At the same time that CPAC gives a platform to these figures, it banned GOProud, an organization of gay Republicans. And Thursday night, CPAC's organizers refused to repudiate Brimelow's presence at the conference. Google has lost my trust by contributing to this conference. To get it back, the company must immediately repudiate Brimelow and Perkins' bigotry, and donate $20,000 - the sum it donated to CPAC - to causes that advance tolerance and equality. Go here to sign the petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/google-dont-sponsor-bigotry
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