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Gustavo Arellano and I are Facebook friends — until, my guess is, about the moment that he reads the title of this post — but he is the only one of my Facebook friends on whose posts I can’t comment. I can like them, I can share them; I just can’t comment. If I could comment there, I would be posting this on Facebook to tell him what a whopping wanker he made of himself with his Saturday rant against the ACLU’s lawsuit against the City of Anaheim. But instead, this being the means open to me, I’ll share it with all of you.
Gustavo Arellano flat out does not understand how our legal system works — and is apparently sufficiently self-absorbed to either not know or not care that he doesn’t know. Here’s the bottom line, Gustavo: we have an adversary system, and when you write a complaint, you are not constructing a dispassionate recitation of all of the facts. You are trying to present allegations in a way that helps your case.
You know, it’s like when R. Scott Moxley slurps all over Steve Greenhut because of how much he hates unions — except that in legal advocacy, unlike journalism, you’re supposed to present only one side of the argument. After that, the opponent presents their side of the argument, and then eventually you’re supposed to hammer away from each side until some neutral fact-finder helps you get to the truth.
So the ACLU, noting that the Anaheim City Council has had a lot fewer Latinos and a lot more Anaheim Hillbillies than one might expect — no, it’s not “0% vs. 100%” for the past decade and no, it doesn’t have to be for the ACLU to win — files a lawsuit to require Anaheim to elect people to City Council from each of several districts within the city. That way, lower income voters with lower rates of participation — who tend to be Latino — can elect a Latino; the theory is that the presence of one or more Latinos from West or South Anaheim might leaven the otherwise Hills-centric perspective of the City Council. Not crazy, right?
The lawsuit talks about the history of white domination over Latinos in Anaheim. Gustavo proudly trumpets his column slamming ancient and long-dead Klan members — a real profile in courage — but then he says that the lawsuit distorts the past, because it doesn’t present both sides. Gustavo — it’s not supposed to!
A complaint is supposed to get you past the initial hurdle of stating a legally legitimate (called “prima facie”) case. That’s it. You don’t present both sides, you present your side. So when Gustavo says that the lawsuit “is a fascinating study in how the ACLU writes its cases: relying solely on the plaintiffs’ version of the story” it’s like saying that it’s “fascinating” that an alternative weekly carries many ads for apparent prostitutes in the back. No, it’s not so fascinating; it’s more like standard procedure that everyone in Law understands.
But Gustavo wants to rebut Amin David and Jose Moreno of Los Amigos — so let’s give him a shot!
He says that they want to (1) “rewrite the city’s racist history to not only overstate their case” and (2) whitewash their [own] convenient alliances with said racists in the past to make Latinos appear the perpetual victim of evil gabachos. OK, Counselor Arellano — let’s take on those arguments!
The lawsuit recognizes that one argument against the notion that whites have dominated Latinos within Anaheim politics is that in 2002 two Latinos were elected to City Council. It’s not a make or break issue for the case, but let’s go with it. The ACLU says (and I paraphrase) “hey, this was the first City Council election after 9/11, which led all sorts of people to love firefighters, and both of them were ex-firefighters.”
Counselor Gustavo has a blistering comeback to that argument: Chavez was still an active firefighter at the time of the election! Good arguing, Counselor! You (presuming that you’re right, and I don’t care enough to look it up) caught them in an error!
Of course the implication of your correction is that the fact that Chavez was an active firefighter makes it even more likely that people voted for him due to the emotional wake of 9/11, which means that there’s even more justification for dismissing the results of the 2002 election as an anomaly. Gustavo’s correction helps bolster the ACLU’s case. (We gabachos call that an “own goal,” Gustavo!)
In the very next paragraph, Gustavo kicks it past his own keeper again! I quote: “Anaheim didn’t just have “at least three councilmembers” who were Klan; there were four.” (My emphasis added.) ¡Oye, Gustavo! “Four” IS “at least three”! And furthermore, having had four councilmembers who were Klan rather than three once again strengthens the ACLU’s case!
Gustavo then points out some minor factual errors (I’ll just presume that he’s right about them) that are what we call collateral to the issue at hand — the equivalent of my handing him a ordered list of 200 reasons that Mitt Romney is a pendejo and his handing it back to me smirking saying that I’m wrong about #73, #119, and #182. Yeah, OK — that’s the adversary system at work; now it’s just a list of 197 reasons and I’ll have to dig up three more to get to a nice round number.
Gustavo, in other words, views the ACLU complaint through the lens of a Copy Editor — and while no one wants to make even minor errors in recounting a relevant history, the little bits of evidence he claims to refute are minor — at worst, about as bad as not understanding the meaning of “at least three.” They are not the sort of thing that undermines a lawsuit, let alone being — as he actually calls them — “hilarious mistakes.”
But then Gustavo goes in for the kill: “Far more nefarious is the ACLU’s attempt to erase the alliances Los Amigos and its favored politicians made with the city’s racists.” UH-OHH!!!
His first example: that Los Amigos-supported politician Loretta Sanchez supports immigration agents being in Anaheim’s jail. Well, I understand why they didn’t put in their complaint, but I have to say that it does bother me a little that … hey, what’s this next bit from his article?
“(Los Amigos did criticize Sanchez on this, it must be noted.)”
Well, yes, I do think that it must be noted, given that the point of this part of the article is to slag Los Amigos and it turns out that Los Amigos didn’t do anything there worth slagging after all.
After parsing an argument so thinly that one could read a Weekly article about Octomom’s vagina (and one can choose among several recent ones) through it, Gustavo goes in for the kill: Amin David and Los Amigos “made their peace” with former Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle when they were on the same side of the Gigante supermarket issue. And he doesn’t get that — yes, once again, his example helps the ACLU lawsuit.
Why did Amin David have to (I’m guessing) swallow his pride and make nice to Pringle to get something done for his community? Maybe it’s because Anaheim’s Latinos didn’t have the political power to get it done by themselves, despite their numbers, because they’re not influential enough within the city. Therefore, they had to go get help from a not-usually-sympathetic (or, as Gustavo puts it, “racist”) white politician who did have the power to get done what Los Amigos wanted.
In other words, having had to play ball with Pringle is a sign of political weakness — which is exactly what the ACLU’s lawsuit favoring district voting is supposed to help Latinos overcome. Maybe with a district system, David doesn’t have to make nice with Pringle under those circumstances.
(Oh, and by the way, the word “masterful,” which Gustavo says that David called Pringle can refer to a specific political battle, without being an overall testament to someone’s abilities. I can’t even figure out Gustavo’s point there; one can never compliment the canniness of one’s political opponents?)
Gustavo ends up with this bold statement:
“Anaheim wouldn’t be in the abysmal council situation it is today if Los Amigos hadn’t sold its soul for Pringle a decade ago. Betcha they won’t bring up that in court, or ever.”
Actually, it wouldn’t shock me if it did come up in court, because it testifies to political weakness unwarranted by the numbers. (Nelson Mandela, for similar reasons, had to seek and obtain the cooperation of apartheid South African leader F.W. DeKlerk in order to achieve his political goals. If South African Blacks had had the majority vote, Mandela wouldn’t have had to do so, right?) But let’s set that aside and consider two competing assertions:
(1) Anaheim wouldn’t be in the abysmal council situation it is today if Los Amigos hadn’t sold its soul for Pringle a decade ago.
(2) Anaheim wouldn’t be in the abysmal council situation it is today if the voting system allowed those in parts of the city other than Anaheim Hills to make their votes count, as would happen with district voting.
Though he might sound definitive and feisty, I’ll bet that Gustavo couldn’t defend the first statement, his statement, for more than thirty seconds under cross-examination. It’s just blather; he has no real way of knowing. It’s the kind of confident columnist yawp that sells newspapers (or, in the Weekly’s case, not sells, but….)
On the other hand, there’s a lot of careful analysis and political theory to suggest that the second statement is true. And that is why, whatever Counselor Gustavo thinks, the ACLU is going to win — although if Anaheim is smart, they will settle long before it goes to court. (A few historical mistakes in the complaint are not going to save them.)
So I score this match as ACLU 3, Arellano 0 — with all goals kicked into the wrong net by Gustavo himself.
[By the way, Gustavo apparently thinks that no one reads OJB, so if you’ve enjoyed this story (or even if you hated it) feel free to drop him a line and say so. To make sure that he opens the e-mail, give it some title like “Public Employee Unions Undermining Octomom’s Vagina.”]
sounds unnecessarily complicated.
I like your F the Police articles more.
Good analysis, I knew Gustavo was full of shit and now I know why.
actually, I tried to read the whole thing and I still do not know why he is full of shit. Can somebody please give us a summary. maybe a bar graph with levels of shit.
Try again after you wake up sober.
O.k. So he is a hypocrite for accusing others of complicity in political gamesmanship and hypocricy. You two would be perfect for the Santa Ana city council or any city council.
Expertly executed, bulldog counselor.
These guys, Gustavo and Moxley, huh? I’m the first to admit that they continue to do outstanding work on a regular basis. (I took back my “Riggy-fluffer” moniker from Arse-Caught a while back when he stopped jotting down Righeimer’s every utterance as gospel.)
But the things one notices most about these two guys, lately, is #1 their inexplicably THIN SKIN and inability to deal with or learn from criticism, and #2 their frequent flirting with becoming reactionaries – thoughtlessly parroting anti-union tripe without even trying to give the other side, and lashing out at the few folks who fight for equality and justice in this County, such as Los Amigos.
I’m not sure the Weekly is still the force for progress it once was, or I once THOUGHT it was when I was younger and less involved. I guess that’s a mantle WE at the Orange Juice have to grow into. I think we’re already half there actually. I just hope we’re as entertaining as they sometimes are.
They do write some great stuff. I’m completely shocked by the onion skin they show. Gustavo’s certainly entitled to offer a legal analysis smacking the ACLU and Los Amigos; but if you do that, you ought to have your act together — and he did not. It would be like my writing a piece criticizing your playing a Schoenberg piece because I found your playing to be atonal. What can you say but “it’s supposed to be, idiot!”
I haven’t yet written about Moxley uncritically reposting something from Greenhut — for whom I understand former OCW Editor Will Swiam now works at the Franklin Center. That was sad in multiple ways, but the reaction in the comments section was worse.
The Moxley thing was just his lazy blogging. He probably threw it together in ten minutes, thinking people would click on a food truck controversy that bashes liberals, and not bothering to offer even a balancing paragraph.
He sure knows how to push YOUR buttons though! Lame as it is for him to come back with “you hardly got any votes” in an uncontested primary you didn’t even campaign for. You need to just laugh him off after you make your initial criticism.
Actually, coming back with the truth and pushing him to greater heights of absurdity is less onerous and odious than you might think.
Swaim is working at the Franklin Center, now? Damn! First John Seiler and now Will Swaim. Looks like Greenhut is using Franklin Center donor’s dinero to give jobs to his unemployable friends.
Watch this space!
Yes, after Swaim first established his slavering anti-labor bona fides at length at the loathsome “Republic of Costa Mesa” … for (ostensibly?) no pay. (Or, under the table pay.)
Republic of Costa Mesa vanished into thin air. Not a trace of it left on the Internet.
Actually it’s still there, although the last post IS from March.
Meanwhile Swaim has started some inexplicable, and very amateurish, “progressive think tank” at http://www.thinktanktoday.org/. What is this guy up to?
THIS charmer from late May hasn’t gone anywhere – a “Letter From Little Wisconsin” to actual Wisconsin, on the eve of the attempted Walker Recall, commiserating from Costa Mesa with anti-worker Wisconsinites and urging them to stand firm: http://www.wisconsinreporter.com/commentary-letter-from-little-wisconsin-california
Greg, I agree…
It is a needless lawsuit. Or perhaps you are not aware that one of the top candidates for the Anaheim City Council this year is a Latino?
http://ocpoliticsblog.com/aclu-sues-anaheim-but-liberal-latinos-simply-cant-win-in-the-o-c/
If you think that the fact (if it is that) that one of the top candidates for Anaheim City Council in any given year is Latino is significant evidence that the lawsuit is “needless,” you clearly don’t understand it at all. Go find some attorney you trust who knows something about election law and who will give you the time of day to explain it to you.
Here’s a hint: the lawsuit doesn’t claim that Latinos will never win, which is the only thing that you’re disproving there.
Talk about impossible statements:
“Go find a lawyer you trust”……
I didn’t say “a trustworthy lawyer”‘ I said “a lawyer you [Art] trust.” Not necessarily the same thing.
Greg, how many jews are currently being represented in Anaheim? How many jews live in Anaheim? Go ahead and delete this type of comment again. signed, your favorite Occupier.
Greg, did I make any sense?
You’re actually asking a good question in some ways, although obviously you could ask the same question about Blacks, Armenians, Lithuanians, etc.
If Anaheim had a huge Lithuanian community, but had voting procedures that led to the result of far less Lithuanian representation on City Council that would be expected (and having at-large elections rather than ward elections is a classic way to do so), then a court would be justified in examining those voting procedures. Our country (like many others) has a long and sordid history of the majority gaming the rules of voting to the detriment of minority groups. There is established case law to guide courts in analyzing such cases.
You may argue, as some do, that the discrimination not about race or ethnicity, but is instead about wealth and social class. OK. In a situation where wealth and class are sufficiently well correlated with race and ethnicity — and that correlation does not have to be near 1.0 — discrimination by class has the effect of discrimination by race or ethnicity and the latter is therefore a legitimate basis for legal action.
One classic case of “correlated characteristics” is job hiring that makes upper body strength a determining factor. Men tend to have greater upper body strength than women; make upper body strength a hiring criterion and you can get away with discrimination according to gender.
What a court does in that situation is ask whether there is any compelling reason for using that criterion in hiring. Often, there isn’t — hiring on the basis of upper body strength is just a way to ensure gender discrimination. This is true despite the fact that some women have greater upper body strength than some men. It’s the overall effect on the population that matters.
In this case, a court will ask whether Anaheim has any compelling reason for using a voting system that keeps the minority of people residing in Anaheim Hills running the City. It doesn’t. (Making Disney Corp. happy is not a compelling reason for a voting system that has a discriminatory effect.) A democratic (small-d) system of governance in Anaheim doesn’t suffer by changing to a ward system of elections that ensures representation from across the city. The change leads to better representation of traditionally suppressed groups. A court will order the change.
Before you do something rediculous. Tell us. Why all the fuss about Mexicans, Hispanics? signed your favorite hispanic.
Because latinos make up over 50% of the population.
Anonster nailed most of the reason. The other part is that race and ethnicity, unlike wealth and (amorphous) social class, are what we call “cognizable” (things the court will agree to review) characteristics in a discrimination case. Mexcians, Hispanics, Latinos, etc. do suffer, overall, from less representation on Anaheim’s City Council than would be available in a ward system. In our nation’s history, those in the ethnic majority (that’s usually but not always white folk) have often tried to game the voting system to suppress minority representation. There’s a whole section of case law proving that. So, we in the majority have earned some suspicion — and this is what we get as a result.
Everyone from ACLU themselves to Pedroza is making too big a deal about race, when what this is is an effort to get people into Anaheim from other sections of Anaheim than just the wealthy hills. People who know how the latinos, blacks, middle easterners and poor whites live.
Art’s story as usual doesn’t make sense. It’s just about how “liberals” can’t win in Anahaim. However Art defines liberals. It’s just his favorite insult these days. He doesn’t explain the popularity of Lorri Galloway, who is only going due to term limits and will be back in a few years.
Are the DPOC really supporting Jordan Brandman? I hope not. THIS Democrat is backing two Republicans up there – the Labor (and Latino) Republican John Leos, and the honest independent Republican (like Mayor Tait) Lucille Kring. Plus the “Let the People Vote” movement, and the new Ward Elections.
The ACLU makes a big deal about race (rather than class) here because the law allows for redress of discrimination based on race (but not on class.) They’re correlated within Anaheim, so it doesn’t much matter.
The DPOC hasn’t endorsed yet, but I am confident that Jordan will get its endorsement. The power structure within the party rarely misses an opportunity to promote Jordan. You can think of it as a trade-off that leads us to also be able to endorse the likes of Al Jabbar and John Santoianni for Anaheim School Board (as I hope we will. And, if it didn’t look like we would, Jordan might not get endorsed. Horse trading!) It limits those of us who serve on the Central Committee; it doesn’t keep rank and file Dems like you from doing whatever you want.
Here’s the section of the DPOC By-Laws dealing with non-partisan endorsements:
In partisan offices, we literally can be removed from Central Committee for supporting a non-Democrat over a Democrat. (Republicans have a corresponding rule.) That’s part of what being part of party leadership entails. It’s not for everyone.
Well, yeah, that makes sense. The ACLU had to frame it in terms of race to make the lawsuit happen. But the real reason the current system is unjust and would be remedied here is geographic and economic. Someone should tell Gustavo that as well. And then white “reverse racists” can stop bitching as well because I’m sure a lot of them live outside of the hills.
“The real reason the current system is unjust and would be remedied here is geographic and economic.”
Don’t discount the ideology of racism. It is definitely a real reason and has been since the inception of this nation-state.
Oh K. Greg, this is what I wanted to get at. did not state it very clear. Why are you so sure that it is O.k. to cut out pictures of your burlap floor mat and put them on top of Gustavo’s head making him look like he is holding court for the Amistad slaves? Some people are very sensitive. Would you like it if somebody did a post with you and put a hitler mustache on it? People get very upset about associations.
Amistad slaves? I don’t get that … is this taken from a famous picture? I thought he was just sardonically making ‘Tavo a judge, to lampoon his lack of legal knowledge.
I was depicting Gustavo as a lawyer, not as a judge. There’s no truly distinctive dress for lawyers in the U.S. — we wear suits, as do lots of other people — so I went with a picture from the British system from which we derive our own, where last I heard barristers actually still do wear those wigs. No reference to Amistad or slavery is or was intended and I certainly hope that Gustavo didn’t jump to the same conclusion.
Read FFFF; I get the equivalent of the “Hitler mustache” treatment all the time. You learn to brush such things off.
To answer Vern’s question: no, it was just swiped from the Intertubes and turned into a derivative work compliant with Fair Use principles.
yes, and Alvarez was probably just asking if Chase was like Hitler for his lack of sympathy for the people.
*yawn* Is that really what you remember Claudia doing? Asking if Chase was “like Hitler?” I seem to remember her just making some stupid comment like “Even Hitler bla bla bla…”
And you somehow see in this simple photoshop some clue to “Amistad,” as though Greg’s calling Gustavo a slavery defender? And I’m ridiculous and naive to not see that?
Get a couple more hours sleep, double eye.
Yes, it is all clearly way too ridiculous.
Race is a protected class. Class is not a protected class. (Go figure) The ACLU is suing on the grounds of the former. It can’t on the latter. The problem is both intersect in terms of disenfranchisement. No one at the Weekly has gone on record opposing the creation of ward elections in principle. There has been analysis of how such can be politically manipulated by monied interests. And it will…
Reading the local history section of the lawsuit bring ‘hand-in-forehead’ moments and the fireman + 9/11 explanation for Chavez and Hernandez is one that shouldn’t be seriously subscribed to. The complaint could have been presented much, much better. I guess formulaic press write-ups of the issues at hand are preferred.
With race and class intersecting, it’s truly sad to see the ACLU on the other side co-signing greater plutocracy in the form of Citizens United. A Brennan Center for Justice survey shows that in the era of Super PACs, Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be discouraged from voting than whites.
On a last note, there was a recent, interesting FAIR article about new media and the same old lack of diversity. If there’s a lack of people of color representation in OC — and there indeed is — I’ve seen the very same problem here and throughout the blogosphere of OC’s online chattering classes. Recruit some new brownies!
Gabriel, because you now work for the Weekly I can’t take your assertions about the local history section of the lawsuit as gospel. Even if I grant you the Chavez/Hernandez examples in 2002, the balance of the evidence still points to a problem. You can quibble with details, but do you really want to assert that Latinos have a comparable chance of being elected in Anaheim as that of Anglos, especially those from Anaheim Hills? (We’ve just seen this afternoon some of the race problems in Anaheim burst into being front-page news.) What’s the rest of the basis for your assertion (as a non-lawyer, if I recall correctly) that the complaint could have been “presented much, much better.”
You don’t understand what happened in Citizens United. The case as presented was a fairly narrow issue about which reasonable people can disagree — and yes, the ACLU generally takes a maximalist position when it comes to First Amendment rights. Had the Supreme Court merely come out with a relatively narrow decision providing only the relief that the ACLU had sought, it would neither be surprising nor scandalous. What the Supreme Court did was to engage in amazing, astounding, stunning judicial activism, reaching out well beyond the issues at hand in the case to make a stupefyingly broad, reckless, and unjustified ruling. THAT was the scandal of the decision — and it was Justice Roberts’s doing, not the ACLUs.
OK, GSR (late of OJB) says that we aren’t brown enough. Anyone willing to volunteer to rectify that? If the price is that we can’t criticize Gustavo when he steps in a pile of dung like he did with this story, though, that price is too high.
I like Gabriel. He is the only one that sounds smarter than Greg. So did the ACLU defend Citizens United? Probably so that they could lobby and donate like a corporate entity? Did I misread all that?
Citizens United was like a fight over chalking where the ACLU wanted the Court to say narrowly “yes you can chalk” and the Supreme Court instead said “yes you can chalk because it’s always OK for anyone to put any substance of any kind anywhere in public and everyone just has to put up with it.” Don’t blame the ACLU for the Supreme Court’s unsolicited overreach.