03/29/05

LC050329

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Union workers take to the streets with a message for the
governor of California.

Michael O'Connor>> Well, come on, Schwarzenegger. What are you
doing? This is not the box office. You can't play with our
lives.

Val>> And then, a visit to one of Southern California's garden
spots where the rains deliver a bumper crop of color.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> He's picked a big fight this time. Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger has proposed initiatives that will impact
millions of state union workers. The governor says the changes
are mandatory if the state is ever going to get out of its
financial mess, but organized labor led by teachers and nurses
is fighting back. As Toni Guinyard tells us, this counter-
attack will put the governor's power to the test.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> A very vocal, very public fight is shaping up
between some labor unions and their members against Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger and his political reform plan.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "This place is in the grip of
the special interests and the people of California demand
reform."

Toni Guinyard>> In his state of the state address, the governor
indicated he was already anticipating a nasty fight.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "The special interests will
run TV ads calling me cruel and heartless. They will organize
huge protests all around the capital."

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> He's now getting what he expected.

Bill Buck>> We're going to hit Arnold every time he shows up
anywhere in the state of California.

Toni Guinyard>> A battle focusing on the governor's aggressive
fund-raising to promote ballot measures and the potential impact
the proposed initiatives could have. Schwarzenegger's plan to
change the state employee pension fund to a 401K style program
struck a nerve with some public employees.

Michael O'Connor>> I've been serving almost thirty years of my
life and the guys that are coming in to the fire service and
teachers and nurses are asking the stock market to entrust their
future? Well, talk to WorldCom and Enron and all those people.

Toni Guinyard>> The governor's changes to education funding and
his plan to tie teacher pay to performance rather than tenure is
getting a failing grade from some school employee union members
and teachers.

Steve West>> All of these people that support the community,
you know, that's who's getting hurt. That's the part that
really kills us the most, I think, is the people that are really
making the effort for the community are the ones who are getting
really hit by this.

Toni Guinyard>> But making the most noise is the California
Nurses Association. Its members lashed out when the governor
issued an emergency order to cut hospital nurse-patient staffing
ratios from one to six to one to five. His plan was to cut
costs and keep hospitals open. The union saw it differently.

Cheryl Obasih-Williams>> We need the ratios. We need safety.
We need a lot of things that he's just not providing. People
went to the polls to vote for him, to put him in the office, to
change things and he hasn't done anything, so I'm very
frustrated with him.

Toni Guinyard>> The nurses union sued and a judge ruled the
governor had no authority to overturn a state law increasing the
number of nurses in medical surgical wards.

Joel Fox>> This particular judge didn't agree with the governor
and that's been appealed.

Toni Guinyard>> Joel Fox is co-chair of Citizens to Save
California, a group formed to fundraise and help push
Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives.

Joel Fox>> We're basically in recall year two is the way I look
at it. The governor was elected. He got some things done. Now
he's pushing some more things through and I think important
changes.

Toni Guinyard>> Citizens to Save California hopes to raise
thirteen million dollars to qualify the initiatives it's
endorsed. Their biggest fundraising asset is Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

Joel Fox>> He is a terrific salesman and we're going to have to
count on that because his opposition, which has been shown to be
very vocal --

[Film Clip]

Joel Fox>> And very organized --

[Film Clip]

Joel Fox>> And has a great network that webs out across the
state of California, to counter that, we're going to need
somebody who can gather attention and can sell the product. In
this case, the product is reform.

Toni Guinyard>> And in this case, the salesman is the governor.

Joel Fox>> In this case, the salesman is the governor.

Jaime Court>> This governor is using his celebrity, his status
as an actor, to raise unimaginable sums from the biggest
industries in California and then sell their agenda at the
ballot box to the public as though it was pure as the driven
snow.

Toni Guinyard>> Jaime Court is President of the Foundation for
Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and the founder of arnoldwatch.org.

Jaime Court>> We face a governor who has raised eighty thousand
dollars per day from big industry groups and he replaced a
governor who was supposedly the model of cash register politics
and only raised thirty-six thousand dollars a day in his first
year. So Governor Schwarzenegger has raised more money in a
year than any politician in political history.

Toni Guinyard>> And he's poised to raise even more. A
Sacramento Superior Court judge has ruled politicians can raise
unlimited amounts of money to promote ballot measures. It will
take an estimated fifty million dollars to qualify the four
initiatives the governor has endorsed.

David Repogle>> He's not taking the issues to the people. He's
dumping the issues on the people. His issues, not ours. He's
turning a deaf ear to all that we stand for.

Toni Guinyard>> For every fundraiser, expect protests.

[Film Clip]

Joel Fox>> It's interesting when people get out there with
drums and bells and whistles. Are they trying to drown out the
opposition? Are they trying to prevent the speech of the other
side from being heard?

Toni Guinyard>> Do these protests make a difference? Do they
impact the governor in any way?

Joel Fox>> Well, from what I've heard from his staff, they're
not impacting him at all.

Toni Guinyard>> The demonstrations are timed to coincide with
the fundraising events and local evening news broadcasts.
Camera after camera after camera, concentrating on image after
image, our camera just another lens focused on some of the many
faces in the crowd, unable to fully capture the frustration --

>> "We're not going to take it anymore."

Toni Guinyard>> Or the barely contained anger.

Michael O'Connor>> Well, come on, Schwarzenegger. What are you
doing? This is not the box office. You can't play with our
lives.

Jaime Court>> He's vain. He wants to be loved. He wants to
get on TV and he wants to sell California on the Republican
agenda in a way they haven't been marketed before. He's all
about marketing.

Toni Guinyard>> Protest organizers are doing some marketing of
their own with their own brand of celebrity.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> From activist, Reverend Jesse Jackson, at a
demonstration outside a fundraising dinner at the Century Plaza
Hotel.

Warren Beatty>> "I'd like to be rooting for Arnold, but he has
to do something."

Toni Guinyard>> To actor and activist, Warren Beatty, at the
Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights fundraiser awards
dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Warren Beatty>> "Terminate those dinners with those brokers.
Terminate the collecting of out-of-state right wing money.
Terminate this totally unnecessary seventy million dollar
special election that you want to hold in order to divert the
public's attention away from the real problem, the budget."

Toni Guinyard>> The effort of nurses was cheered at the event.
The union is using the governor's words against him.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "Pay no attention to those
voices over there, by the way. Those are the special interests,
if you know what I mean, okay? (laughter)"

Malinda Markowitz>> He's very pompous. In one respect, he says
he loves the nurses, but then he calls us special interests
when, you know, he's taken millions of dollars from the
corporations.

>> This is not just a California fight. This is going to
affect, sooner or later, the rest of the country.

Toni Guinyard>> Why such a backlash?

Joel Fox>> Well, because they represent the status quo and the
powers that be in Sacramento, and the governor is trying to
shake up the status quo and trying to level the playing field
when it comes to power.

>> "I like Arnold."

Ron Bard>> "We're fans of the governor."

>> "We're fans of the "governator"."

Ron Bard>> "We think the governor is doing a tremendous job. I
saw him in Japan. He was over raising money in Japan and
driving business for the state of California. Arnold's an
amazing guy."

Toni Guinyard>> Different opinions about a governor determined
to bypass the legislature and reach the people through the
initiative process, a process that will pit his reform
initiatives against counter-initiatives.

Joel Fox>> The loudest noise of all are going to be the voters
marking their ballots come election day.

Toni Guinyard>> It's the one comment both sides may agree with.
Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Val>> She was an innocent school girl killed by a gang member's
stray bullet. Now the death of Deliesh Allen-Roberts is
renewing the call for a crackdown on gangs. It's a familiar
cry. In fact, two and a half years ago, reporter Gay Yee went
to South Los Angeles after the city had been dubbed America's
murder capital. In this story from the Life and Times Vault,
residents themselves say it will take more than police to stop
the violence.

Tony Wafford>> For crying out loud, kids that are two blocks
from each other are shooting each other.

Gay Yee>> Tolliver's barber shop lies along a quiet section of
Florence in South Los Angeles, but inside the talk is of
killings and responsibility.

Tony Wafford>> So when do you say to yourself I got to be
responsible for the stuff I do? I can't blame white folks for
everything. We're responsible for our liberation, right? So
when do you take some responsibility for your damn selves? See,
crack man don't give away crack. You got to buy that [blank].
He don't give it to you. The liquor store don't give up no
liquor. You got to buy it.

Gay Yee>> Tolliver's is in the LAPD's 77th Division where, so
far this year, there have been 117 murders, two-thirds of them
gang-related.

James Miller>> It's not a gang war where you can say it's gang
A against gang B. It's a large number of gangs that are all
fighting each other. I've had eighty gang-related homicides
that involved forty-six different gangs.

Gay Yee>> LAPD Captain James Miller runs the 77th Street
Division. It provided the backdrop this week for the
announcement of the city's new war on gangs.

William Bratton>> "Many of our gang units are not out there
when the problems are occurring. Some Saturday nights, there
are no gang units working in the city. That's going to end."

Gay Yee>> The rising number of homicides throughout the city is
clear, but what's not so clear, says Captain Miller, is
identifying the cause.

James Miller>> It's very difficult to really put a finger on
what is causing all of it. Some of it is narcotics, some of it
is old rivalries that have resurfaced. We've seen when some
people get out of prison that they try to re-establish
themselves or they tell the younger gang members that they have
to become more active and we see an increase in the violence in
those areas.

Gay Yee>> Back at Tolliver's, no one is waiting for the police
to end the violence. These men say it has to come from the
community.

Clyde Oden>> The police play a role, but they are not the
answer. The family and the church and the social structure are
the answers.

Allen Humphries>> These are our children, so that if the family
unit is strong and you're responsible for your children and I'm
responsible for my children, then that's stupid for children to
go on shooting each other.

Tony Wafford>> Because everybody doesn't have a mom or a dad at
home and some of the mothers and fathers at home probably aren't
worth listening to. I think it's incumbent upon us as a people
to reach out and reach across and do all that we can to help
these young people.

Gay Yee>> Barber, Eddie Ford, says it's time for the community
to help the police.

Eddie Ford>> Peoples of the day is not concerned. They'll see
a person jump in there and rob you and say I don't want to be
involved. Well, when the police come, he have nothing to work
with, see? So police can clean up a lot of things if the
community would help the police. The police is not a magician.

Gay Yee>> It's a view echoed by barber shop owner, Lawrence
Tolliver.

Lawrence Tolliver>> When I speak with someone in the shop, I
say we can no longer just sit back. That mentality of it's not
my responsibility or I don't want to get involved, that doesn't
work. You must get involved. And if it's caused you to be out
there a little bit, take a little chance, then so be it.

Gay Yee>> The LAPD says this is exactly what it wants. When
fourteen-year-old Clive Jackson was gunned down last month,
within hours someone called the police with a tip. Now they
have a name and a face to track.

James Miller>> The community has to say that they're tired of
it and that movement is growing in strength.

Gay Yee>> Miller says the way he can have the most impact on
crime in the 77th is to convince more residents they have a role
in doing something about it.

James Miller>> There aren't enough police officers. There will
never be enough police officers for us to do it where citizens
sit back and go I don't have any responsibility here, I don't
have to testify, I don't have to tell anybody what I saw.

Gay Yee>> Miller acknowledges that, in the past, the community
has had issues with the LAPD, seeing it as an occupying force,
but he says that will not be the case today, that the police
want the community's support as they go after criminals. Miller
looks to the future of the teenagers in the 77th Division's
Youth Explorer program as reason enough for everyone to want to
stop the violence. Gaylon Cowan is fourteen and in the ninth
grade.

Gaylon Cowan>> You see a lot of killing and everything. I just
pray. I pray every morning and I pray every night before I go
to bed that those things won't happen.

Gay Yee>> Though some community leaders have expressed
reservations about how the LAPD will carry out its mission to
stop the violence, Lawrence Tolliver says he is more than happy
to see the police.

Lawrence Tolliver>> See, a lot of times people perceive the
black community as not wanting police. That's not true. We
will work hand in hand with the police chief and the policemen
in our community because that's what we want. You know, who
wants to get out here and be looking around scared like an
antelope at a watering hole in Africa worrying about somebody
trying to shoot them or something? We don't want that. No one
wants that for their kids. No one wants that for their
families.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> It's sounds luxurious. A personal chef who will come to
your own home and cook meals to your specifications in your own
kitchen. Well, personal chefs are not just for the rich any
more. It turns out they're a very practical alternative for the
elderly, especially the disabled or those with special dietary
needs who can't get around in the kitchen anymore. This trend
was noted in an issue of the AARP magazine and I spoke with its
West Coast editor, Nancy Griffin, about the growing trend of
personal chefs for the elderly.

Nancy Griffin, there is a new trend among senior citizens to use
something that used to be reserved for the rich, and that is a
personal chef. What's going on?

Nancy Griffin>> Well, personal chefs come to your home and cook
you delicious dinners and wrap them up and put them in the
freezer and then you get to eat them at your convenience. You
just pop them in the microwave. The advantage of having a
personal chef is that you don't have to go out to dinner if
you're a busy person. You get to eat in the comfort of your
home and the chef will cook meals exactly according to your
dietary requirements and your taste buds.

Val>> In fact, those dietary restrictions are what is driving
the increased number of personal chefs. Older people need very
specific diets sometimes, low salt, whatever.

Nancy Griffin>> Yes. Personal chefs will cook in a flavorful
way without salt. Also, low fat, low cholesterol, low carbs,
anything you want. When people go out to dinner, very often
it's difficult to know exactly what's in the food that you have
ordered.

Val>> Very difficult.

Nancy Griffin>> So you get exactly what you want if you have a
personal chef.

Val>> So there are dietary needs, but also we have an aging
population and, as they get older, the kitchen isn't always such
a safe place and shopping physically is harder, right?

Nancy Griffin>> That's right, and the personal chef will go to
the grocery store for you, bring all the groceries to your home
and then usually the personal chef comes once a week, once every
two weeks, maybe once a month, and he or she gets to know your
kitchen and can work very efficiently in your kitchen, and the
elderly person doesn't have to risk is this the microwave or the
toaster oven or --

Val>> -- leaving the burner on.

Nancy Griffin>> Leaving the burner on, that sort of thing.

Val>> Now some people would say, personal chef? That's
expensive. How can elderly people afford that?

Nancy Griffin>> Well, personal chefs aren't cheap, but they
aren't any more expensive really than going to restaurants
unless you're talking about McDonalds. A personal chef will
usually charge somewhere between ten and twenty dollars for a
meal plus the cost of groceries. Usually a chef will make
twenty meals of one kind of meal when he or she comes to your
house and put them in the freezer for you.

Val>> In fact, your brother is a personal chef, yes?

Nancy Griffin>> Yes, he is, in Pennsylvania. He actually
several times a year will make meals for my parents who are
eighty-six years old in Massachusetts. We bought them a freezer
and they now always have a freezer full of delicious home-cooked
meals because my brother comes in and provides them for them.

Val>> Hopefully, they get a really good deal from your brother
(laughter).

Nancy Griffin>> They get an excellent deal, yes, a discount.

Val>> If you've never used a personal chef, how do you even
start? Where do you find these guys?

Nancy Griffin>> Well, you can go online at www.personalchef.com
and the APCA will refer you to a personal chef in your area.

Val>> Great. Nancy, thank you so much for your tip.

Nancy Griffin>> Thank you.


Val>> There is a colorful side to our record rainfall and that
is a bumper crop of flowers. Everything from azaleas to zinnias
are showing up and we thought it would be the perfect time to
open up the Life and Times Vault and revisit one of the
prettiest places in Southern California, Descanso Gardens in La
Canada. Patt Morrison is our tour guide.

[Film Clip]

Patt Morrison>> If you don't recognize this place, then you've
deprived yourself of one of Southern California's great gifts,
Descanso Gardens. It's not exactly a park nor quite an urban
forest, but more of a garden oasis. Within its 160 acres is an
abundance of flora as varied as the visitors who wander its
paths for the benediction of its sights and scents.

Descanso Gardens reversed the usual Southern California process
of turning the natural into the commercial. A man named
Manchester Boddy first cultivated camellias here and sold them
for corsages. It was only after he sold the land to the county
that it came into its own, part natural landscape, part
cultivated garden, a showplace in the foothills of La Canada
Flintridge.

Now roses are the chocolate of the floral word. Virtually
everybody loves roses. What is it that this rose garden tried
to create?

Richard Schulhof>> well, this rose garden is five acres and has
four thousand roses and what it attempts to do is a couple of
things. One, it presents the evolution of the garden rose. You
come through here and you see various exhibits about famous rose
breeders, the plants they brought to the gardening world, and
also the contributions of various countries around the world.
Belgium and Germany --

Patt Morrison>> -- I see Belgium and Germany co-existing in
their rose gardens, which would not happen politically.

Richard Schulhof>> That's right, that's right, but they're both
great countries for the production of new rose varieties.

Patt Morrison>> How is it that this is a good place for them?

Richard Schulhof>> Well, roses love sun, and this area gets a
tremendous amount of sun and also it has pretty good drainage.
So the combination of good drainage, sun, good irrigation and
feeding, you get bloom like this.

Patt Morrison>> It really was a very humble flower, was it not,
before something other than nature got hold of it?

Richard Schulhof>> Well, centuries and centuries of breeding.
But for me to look at one of the roses, one of the simple five-
petaled rose species, that's as beautiful as any of these
heavily doubled flowers.

Patt Morrison>> Is that like looking back in time at those
simple old roses?

Richard Schulhof>> In a sense it is, looking at the ancestors
of the plants that we see here.

Patt Morrison>> Now, I've been told this is the Persian Yellow
Garden and what it does is exhibit peaceful co-existence.

Richard Schulhof>> yes, yes. (laughter)

Patt Morrison>> (Laughter) How does that work?

Richard Schulhof>> That's well-phrased. One of the things we
try and do in our international rosarium is demonstrate for
people how you can combine other plants with roses. Perennials,
flowering shrubs, flowering trees, and what we have here are
three wonderful companion plantings for roses that stand up to
the severe heat of our summers.

[Film Clip]

Patt Morrison>> This is spectacular. There are hundreds and
hundreds of kinds of camellias here.

Richard Schulhof>> Yes, we have some 670 species and varieties
here going across a thirty-five acre oak woodland. And I feel
personally that our camellia forest is the most spectacular
camellia garden, certainly outside of the wilds of China.

Patt Morrison>> But this is the end of the season for
camellias. It looks like the rain has taken a bit of a toll on
them too.

Richard Schulhof>> Yes. This year, our season is extending a
little bit longer than usual, but typically the most spectacular
months are February, January and March.

Patt Morrison>> Now there's also a symbiosis here with the oak
groves.

Richard Schulhof>> Yes. Manchester Boddy, when he developed
the camellia forest, realized that the oaks provided ideal
conditions for the camellias, wonderful shade and a rich, rich
soil.

Patt Morrison>> So you have native California oak trees working
in sync with camellias, for the most part, from China and the
Far East.

Richard Schulhof>> Yes, that's the case. It was sort of a
juxtaposition of the native and the exotic.

Patt Morrison>> It's Pacific Rim. It's perfect. (laughter)

Richard Schulhof>> Yes. That's right. Exactly, exactly.

Patt Morrison>> Now I was curious about the oak trees because
what happened here years ago symbolizes how fire works in the
plant system.

Richard Schulhof>> Yes. In the late 1870's, a very intense
fire roared through this valley and wiped out most of what was
here. So most of the oaks you see today originate with acorns.
They germinated in the 1870's.

Patt Morrison>> They germinated in the heat.

[Film Clip]

Descanso is also home to a native plant garden. Now the great
patron saint of native plants in Southern California was
Theodore Payne, who was ...?

Richard Schulhof>> Yes, Theodore Payne was one of the great
horticulturists of the past one hundred years. He was a British
horticulturist who came to Los Angeles in the 1890's and devoted
most of his life to promoting native plants as garden
ornamentals. And very fortunately for Descanso, he was involved
in the creation of our native plant garden and, in fact,
contributed not only his vast expertise, but also many plants
from his garden and nurseries.

Patt Morrison>> And so we owe him something not only on behalf
of Descanso, but on behalf of the fact that native plants are
becoming more acceptable, more popular?

Richard Schulhof>> Absolutely. Theodore Payne was the pioneer
who really got California plants into California gardens.

Patt Morrison>> It isn't "Golden Pond", but pretty close.

Richard Schulhof>> No. This is Descanso's lake and we're
standing in our bird observation area. Because of the heavy
rains, a lot of the trees are generating tremendous new growth
and insect populations are rising proportionately, so we're
getting a lot of exciting bird sightings this spring.

Patt Morrison>> When people think of Descanso Gardens, of
course, they think of the flowers. But given how wetlands are
disappearing and groves are being plowed under and built upon,
this becomes more significant for the whole health of the
ecosystem.

Richard Schulhof>> It really does, and particularly for
migratory birds. Think about them passing through Southern
California. Where are they going to stop? Many of them stop
here and, gosh, do we enjoy them.

Patt Morrison>> I think part of the public enjoyment is that
here is a place where you can come and find some silence too.

Richard Schulhof>> Yes, yes, that's certainly the case.

Patt Morrison>> An other-worldly visitor to Southern California
might be forgiven for thinking our native plant is the freeway.
As concrete and steel grow where oaks and chaparral once
flourished, Descanso Gardens remains a kind of horticultural
museum, nature on the inside looking out, a wistful memory and a
green and budding promise.

Val>> For more information on Descanso Gardens, you can go to
their website or give them a call. And that's our program. I'm
Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

One city is putting out the welcome mat for seniors, but how
will they get them through the door?

>> It's great country here, you know. Especially you can go
shopping, you can go anywhere, you can drive anywhere. It's not
like Los Angeles.

>> There are restaurants, there are pharmacies. It's more of
an older type of downtown feel to it.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.