UCLA Community Moving Forward With or Without Chancellor Block

UCLA Graduate, Undergraduate, Staffm and Faculty Press Conference

Daily-Bruin: Not far from where they met only two weeks ago, a group of undergraduates, graduates and union representatives congregated at 3 p.m. to hold a press conference following a long-sought-after meeting with Chancellor Gene Block.

The meeting with Block was held earlier in the day at 11 a.m. It was organized after the UC-wide walkout that occurred on the first day of school, bringing more than 400 protesters from Bruin Walk straight to the doors of Murphy. A smaller group of about 30 attended the press conference.

Miguel Lopez said that Block may or may not be attending the town hall forum, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 20, 21 or 22. He still has to confirm.

Lopez said the students, faculty and workers would continue mobilizing, “with or without Block.”

Uh Oh, The Infamous LA River Gets a Makeover

Schaben / Los Angeles Times

ARC Compact for Racial Justice Phone Forums

I want to put a plug in for the Applied Research Center’s (ARC) new inclusive policy program, the compact for racial justice phone forums. ARC is a non-profit, non-partisan research and policy organization that critically analyzes the intersections of policy, the media, and race through advocacy, reports, and publishing the monthly magazine ‘Color Lines’. 

The phone forums provide participants an opportunity to dialogue about omnipresent policy issues with peers and social justice advocates. Specifically, justice advocates on the Compact Forum calls will track the first 100 days of the Obama administration and shape plans to influence policy affecting racial justice. In addition to engaging featured speakers, participants will share progress on local, state and national efforts, and join a call to action on key issues. Interested individuals must RSVP by the Monday before the call.

To register for the phone forums, please click here. To learn more about ARC, visit: www.arc.org.

Real Talk: Sex Ed in LA

Andreina Cordova, a 15 year-old Central American Paramount resident is defying abstinence only sex ed to counsel peers about the realities of sex in today’s society. She’s been attending Planned Parenthood sex education events since the age of 13. She had just finished eighth grade when she became one of the youngest students ever hired to be a peer advocate in a program whose goal is to reduce teen pregnancy and STD rates.

She has memorized pages and pages of information on sex education and sexually transmitted diseases. She’s ready to pass out cards from Planned Parenthood, listing services and clinics. She is also armed with condoms.

This makes you wonder about the failure of contemporary sexual educatioin programs to proactively inform students of safe sex methods, emotional preparedness, and disease and infections that are attributed to intimacy. Instead of keeping it real, accurate, and poignant, the Bush administration and many a conservative politicians throughout this state have bypassed safe sex methodology in favor of abstinence only ploys. Where has that brought us?

More than 360,000 adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease each year in Los Angeles County. In 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, 5,113 L.A. County girls younger than 18 gave birth — 3.4% of all births that year.

To circumscribe these rates, Audreina goes to the heart of the epidemic, South LA, with condoms and accurate information in hand. Now why can’t education officials and state politicans listen to what is at stake and pass proactive legislation like Mark Leno’s Assembly Bill 1511, instead of holding it in suspense?

Read more about Andreina’s one-person sex ed mission here.