Flap’s California Morning Collection: October 17, 2011

On to today’s headlines:

Dan Walters: A state exodus would aid California recovery

The last big recession to hit California was in the early 1990s and largely centered in Southern California, as the aerospace industry was clobbered by the end of the Cold War.

Los Angeles County alone lost 437,000 jobs between 1990 and 1994, at least half of them directly tied to military spending. The result was a massive exodus out of the state.

Economists believe that at least 1.5 million Californians, and perhaps as many as 2 million, left the state, with defense workers and their families in the lead. As UCLA economist Jerry Nickelsburg put it: “As their economic opportunities diminished in Los Angeles, they packed up and moved to Texas, Massachusetts, Georgia, or wherever their skills were in demand.”

The exodus made recovery from the recession much easier, simply because it reduced the ranks of the unemployed by several hundred thousand.

By the late 1990s, California had largely rebounded from recession – only to see two other booms and busts in rapid succession, culminating in the current, even deeper recession.

Oddly, even though our economic malaise is worse than the one two decades ago, and appears to have more staying power, we have not seen the mass movement out of the state that we experienced then.

Why?

Teachers to join L.A. protesters

Prompted in part by a three-time South Bay congressional candidate, a group of Los Angeles Unified teachers plans to march to school district headquarters Tuesday in solidarity with ongoing protests on Wall Street and at L.A. City Hall.

“Occupy LAUSD” is the newest permutation of the Occupy movement that has gained steam – and media attention – over the past month since protesters took over Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district to express frustration with growing income inequality in the face of rising corporate profits.

Protesters with the Los Angeles branch of Occupy Wall Street began camping out Oct. 1 at City Hall, which has seen a densely packed tent city take over the surrounding lawn. Thousands marched through downtown over the weekend.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Los Angeles teachers – known for regularly donning red union shirts and mobilizing against school board actions – would want to join in the protest, especially since labor groups have begun to get support from Occupy L.A. and vice versa.

Budget cuts, closed school libraries, lost teaching jobs and the district’s initiative to let charter organizations run LAUSD campuses are among the teachers’ complaints.

Those frustrations have been articulated elsewhere – and well before what some are calling “the Occupation” began. But Occupy LAUSD organizers say they have common cause with a movement that conservative critics have termed an un-American call to class warfare.

“There is a natural linkage. The Occupy Wall Street movement is challenging corporatization of America, privatization of the public sphere, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing in our district,” said LAUSD teacher Marcy Winograd.

An antiwar activist who twice mounted challenges against former South Bay Rep. Jane Harman and ran last in spring’s primary against now-Congresswoman Janice Hahn and others hoping to succeed Harman, Winograd is one of two organizers of Occupy LAUSD. She was laid off from her job at Crenshaw High last year and is now substitute teaching in the school district.

Her collaborator is Jose Lara, a history teacher at Santee Educational Complex south of downtown and a member of the board of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Occupy San Diego protests go on

The Occupy San Diego protest against corporate greed carried on Sunday without any major incidents, San Diego police said.

The size of the downtown San Diego crowd fluctuated from several dozen to more than 100 people during the day.

Demonstrators also adjusted to the mandate by police late last week prohibiting all but one tent in the Civic Center Plaza, a stark contrast to the movement’s tent city that formed during the first week of the protest.

Protest signs continued to dot the downtown plaza with messages such as “Separation of Corporation and State” and “End the Fed.”

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