Global Warming and the Republican Brain:The Biggest Threat to Our Future Page 5 Toll Drivers Join Teamsters Union Page 7 Panache: Actress Speaks on Balancing Family, Career, and Legacy Page 11
Grant Allows Research for Sustainable Fishing
Unite Against War on Women Rally Joins 54 Nationwide By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
By Zamná Ávila, Assistant Editor
B
[It’s] not that I’m not a feminist or pro-women’s rights, but you could only do so much. You’re a mom, you run a business, you have a dog, you have kid and all that other jazz. But this assault has been so intense and so non-stop (that) … I had to get involved. I can’t sit here and pretend this is OK. I mean, I have to explain to my 8-year-old son what the word slut means? —Sherry Ann Lear, Unite Against the War on Women. Lear, an environmental activist, has taken on a different form of activism, fighting for women. Photo: Terelle Jerricks
April 20 - May 3, 2012
Managing Fisheries/ to p. 3
The Local Publication You Actually Read
ob Bertelli lives on his boat on Terminal Island’s Fish Harbor. Since 1975, Bertelli has honed the skill of commercial fishing. “It’s changed a great deal since 1975,” Bertelli said. “It offered a good outdoor lifestyle and a fairly good living, and a tremendous amount of personal freedom.” When he first became a commercial fisherman he primarily did abalone diving in the Half Moon Bay area of Northern California. But since then, there have been a lot of changes in oceanographic conditions, which brought on changes in the fisheries in the past 30 years. From the mid-1970s through the 1990s, fishermen experienced a warm-water cycle along the California coast. The area has been impacted by the El Niño phenomena, a quasi-periodic climate pattern in which temperatures change on the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. Warm water cycles along with water pollution kill a lot of the kelp that along the coast. Sea urchins and abalones live on kelp. In the first few years of the millennium, the Pacific Ocean shifted into a cold water cycle, and as a result, kelp beds came back from Northern California to the Mexican border. “This is a good thing,” Bertelli explained. “It means that the animals that depend on that kelp bed for shelter and protection, and feed on the kelp, or the animals who feed on the animals who feed on that kelp are thriving right now. Some species do better in warm water, some species do better in cold water and some transition it very well.” When data is collected for the purpose of managing fisheries and the oceanic temperatures change from a warm water cycle to cold water cycle, many things change.
Sherry Anne Lear, a San Pedro resident and civil litigation lawyer, came to her awakening as a women’s rights activist when she saw colleagues defending Rush Limbaugh after his verbal assault on law student Sandra Fluke. Her activism had always resided in environmental causes. She’s a member of the Sierra Club and took part in the Beyond Coal campaign. She went to Washington, D.C. and helped organized the national rally to protest the British Petroleum’s oil spill. “That’s where my activism is,” Lear explained. “It’s not that I’m not a feminist or pro-women’s rights but you could only do so much.” But Limbaugh’s tirade and the reaction to it struck a chord with Lear. She’s now a co-chairwoman of Los Angeles Unite Against the War on Women, which has scheduled a rally for April 28—just one of 55 that will be taking place across the country that day. It will take place in downtown Los Angeles with speakers such as City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Jan Perry and comedian-activist Sarah Silverman. “When I heard people in my office defending Rush Limbaugh for calling that woman a slut and a prostitute... they thought he was being persecuted,” Sherry recalled. Lear was shocked that people she knew and respected weren’t fazed by Limbaugh’s comments and didn’t care that he called every woman in the United States who wants access to birth control pills a slut. “I’m a married woman and I’m on birth control pills mainly because of hormonal issues and that was what Sandra Fluke was testifying about. That people need this for medical reasons and to have her labeled that way, I was absolutely appalled.” The Unite Women Group draws from a wide base of supporters, from lifelong activists to young people involved in the Occupy movement. The National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood have gotten behind the nascent Unite Women movement. Like thousands of others across the nation, the Los Angeles rally organizers were formed through Edge of Outrage/ to p. 1 6