Peck Park Shooting —
Out of Tragedy: The Best and the Worst Three Stories, Nine Victims and H a One-Hammer By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
Top: Police section off a perimeter at Peck Park after a mass shooting on July 24. Left to right: Councilman Joe Buscaino, Sisters of Watts cofounder and chief operating officer Keisha Daniels, Capt. Brent McGuire of the LAPD Harbor Division. They all spoke at a July 26 town hall at Peck Park about the shooting. Photos by Raphael Richardson
Neighbors say Walker’s Cafe has unpermitted construction, owners say it’s just repairs p. 2
Get ready for the 33rd Annual Long Beach Jazz Festival p. 8
I heard similar testimony from witnesses of the shooting who showed up for the morning press conference on July 25 organized by Justice for Murdered Children, San Pedro/Wilmington chapter of the NAACP and community activist Najee Ali. So, what do we know about this incident?
Day of the Event
Sisters of Watts co-founder and chief
Climate Justice Concerns Echo in 710 Fwy Planning By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
On July 24, the world’s first named heatwave — Category 3 Zoe — hit Seville, Spain, with temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, signaling a new level of awareness of the tragic course the world’s climate is headed down. Los Angeles, with more than 2 million people considered “highly vulnerable,” is one of half a dozen cities poised to follow Seville’s example with a new life-saving alert system, but we’re farther behind many European cities when it comes to a deeper response: changing our built environment to a more climate-resilient mode. Triple-digits heat waves as far north as England blanketed Europe throughout June and July along with North Africa and the Middle East, bringing a wave of wildfires as well. In Portugal and Spain alone, deaths had topped 1,700 according to the World Health Organization, even before Zoe hit. East Asia and North America were hit as well, with persis-
tent triple digits in the Pacific Northwest. In the midst of all this, Joe Biden’s efforts to pass climate legislation were abruptly derailed on July 14, when West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin withdrew his support — highlighting concerns about inflation — only to reverse course 13 days later, announcing support for a renamed “Inflation Reduction Act” that contains $369 billion in climate investments — substantially less than the $555 billion passed by the House of Representatives last fall, a figure that was already a compromise. Using inflation first to kill climate legislation and then to sell it highlights a profound absurdity. Inflation today is a global phenomena, largely resulting from the pandemic and pandemics, in turn, will become increasingly common as a result of further global warming. The shifting of wildlife ranges “poses a measurable threat to global health, particu[See Climate, p. 8]
operating officer Keisha Daniels arrived at the park’s baseball diamond at 3 p.m. The softball game organizers were setting up, attendees were starting to take their seats in the bleachers. As Daniels recalls, “[July 24] was a peaceful Sunday afternoon at the park, with no conflict ... no strife. It remained that way until about 3:40 p.m., when shots rang out.” On her way to escape the gunfire, she encountered Officer Joshua Rodriguez and a gunshot victim who had crashed his dark colored Hyundai. Officer Rodriguez was one of the first two officers to arrive on the scene and was attempting to assess the situation. Rodriguez and Daniels pulled the victim from his car. Daniels told Rodriguez she knew CPR, and asked him for direction. Rodriguez asked her to perform CPR, while he did chest compressions on the victim to get him to breathe. “I did CPR until the paramedics came,” Daniels said. “The victim was alert and still breathing when the ambulance took him away.” She recalled that the entire time she was performing CPR, she was praying over the victim.
August 4 - 17, 2022
Jan. 6 Hearings end— Not with a bang, but a whimper p. 6
cidents, we also see the best in humanity.” McGuire made special note of news footage showing community members working together with law enforcement officers and emergency responders working hand-in-hand, lifting people on stretchers and bringing them to help, getting them aid; regular citizens, cops and firefighters giving CPR trying to help some of the injured victims in the shooting.
Real People, Real News, Really Effective
Councilman
arbor Division Capt. Brent McGuire of the Los Angeles Police Department made the trueist observation I heard throughout the entire July 26 Town Hall meeting about the Peck Park shooting two days earlier where two people were murdered. “In incidents such as these,” he said, “we sometimes see the worst in humanity, but also, as we have seen in these in-
[See Peck Park, p. 3] 1