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Issue # 29                                                                                  January 7, 2022

This Week's Highlights

  • Welcoming 2022: New Year's Resolutions
  • Inspiration: Amanda Gorman's New Day's Lyric
  • City Council Update
  • Editorial: It Can Happen Here
  • Report Acts of Hate
  • Help a Student: MB United Social Justice Scholarship
  • Local Events

For up to the minute updates, check out our social media!

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Welcoming in 2022 with New Year's Resolutions

“Although social change cannot come overnight, we must always work as
though it were a possibility in the morning.”

        --- Martin Luther King, Jr.              

Welcome 2022!  We hope the year brings with it health, success, joy and a return to what we once called "normal".  The past year brought many challenges, as will 2022.   And yet, we must continue to do our part to stay safe and healthy, wear masks, and be "COVID-conscious."  

Despite the past year's challenges, during the holiday season there were countless acts of kindness and generosity: local businesses, including Bella Beach, donated sales proceeds to local MB employees, the anti-hate sidewalk chalk event raised awareness and reinforced a sense of community, and many other acts of kindness were recognized by Mayor Hildy Stern through her Kindness Initiative.  There were numerous toy drives, food donations, and charitable opportunities to help others less fortunate.  These selfless acts show Manhattan Beach is a caring, generous community.  

Local businesses and their employees still need our generosity of spirit; this time, however, in the form of patience, kindness, and empathy.  Restaurants, grocers, businesses and healthcare facilities are short-staffed and struggling with supply-chain delays.  This means lines are longer, service is slower, and not everything is readily available.  Workers and caregivers are doing their best with what they have.  Kindness and patience will go a long way to put others more at ease.  As we enter into this new year, we have the opportunity to be our best selves, to smooth out the rough edges of the frustration we all feel, customers and servers alike.  Practice gratitude, tip generously, and remember to take care of yourselves.  

Patience and forbearance is required with our schools as well.  Parents are facing dilemmas about whether or not it is safe to send their children back to school. Know that these are trying times and MBUSD is doing all it can.  See Dr. Bowes' message regarding the return to school.  Information regarding vaccination clinics offered by Children's Hospital LA can be found in The Patch.  See, also, the LA County Department of Public Health Revised "Order of the Health Officer" Guidelines for Work and Community.

MB United has some New Year's Resolutions.  We resolve to:

  1. Advocate for Equity, Diversity, Social Justice, and Inclusion
  2. Advocate for those in our community who are unable to advocate for themselves
  3. Hold our elected officials accountable for representing their constituents and not their personal interests or agendas
  4. Share verifiable facts in our newsletter and social media communications
  5. Call out disinformation when we learn of it
  6. Make Good Trouble (thank you, John Lewis)

Please feel free to comment on these or suggest additional ones. 

Have a safe, healthy, happy new year!  

Poet Amanda Gorman's Words of Inspiration

Let National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's new poem, New Day's Lyric, be an inspiration for all of us in 2022.
 
May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.
This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.
What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.
Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.
We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

City Council Update

The City Council meeting scheduled for January 4th was canceled.  A Joint City Council/Parks and Recreation Commission, Library Commission and Cultural Arts Commission Meeting will be held on January 11th from 6:00 - 9:00 PM via Zoom (Zoom Meeting ID: 933 7620 0363). 

The next regularly scheduled City Council meeting will be on held on January 18th via Zoom.

Full Agendas and minutes for City Council meetings can be found on the City website. Visit manhattanbeach.gov or sign up for the Manhattan Beach Monthly Newsletter for more information.  

City Council General Info

  • Regular City Council meetings are routinely held at 6:00 pm on the 1st & 3rd Tuesdays of the month 
  • The public has two chances to speak at a City Council meeting: one during "public comments" at the beginning of the meeting, the other in public comments during the specific item
  • You can email all five Council Members at citycouncil@manhattanbeach.gov and cc the city clerk at cityclerk@manhattanbeach.gov
  • The agendas are posted on the Wednesday prior to each meeting here
COVID Resources and Information
Children's Hospital LA is offering a number of free family vaccination clinics.  Information can be found here.  See, also, the LA County Department of Public Health Revised "Order of the Health Officer" Guidelines for Work and Community" for the latest guidelines on work and community safety.  You may sign up directly with the County of LA to receive COVID and other public health and safety communications.
Editorial: It Can Happen Here 
There has been a lot of news recently about attacks on school boards across the country by groups seeking bans on books (aka censorship).  These attacks on our educational institutions are disturbing and these national movements are working their way insidiously into local communities. 

Maybe you think "this can't happen in Manhattan Beach."  Sadly, it not only can happen, but it is happening, as we have witnessed at many MBUSD Board meetings over the past several months.  The most recent and notable example was Councilmember Suzanne Hadley at the December 15th Board Meeting.  She introduced herself only as a resident and expressed that her trust in the School Board was "shaken" because of a link to a list of award-winning books on the Mira Costa Library website.  Councilmember Hadley said she objected to a book on the list because of profanity and use of "the c-word.”  She called for links to the book to be eliminated.  When an elected official promotes book banning and censorship, it is disturbing and dangerous.  

MB resident Allen Kirschenbaum spoke forcefully about this incident during public comments at the December 22 MB City Council meeting.  MB United reached out to him for permission to publish his comments in their entirety (see below).  Also in response to Hadley's behavior at the School Board meeting, MB resident Elyse Gura reminded the Council that they were bound by Council Rules of Decorum, which require that Council members promote mutual respect and civility.  Ms. Gura urged Councilmembers to "Be less concerned with drawing battle lines and more concerned with finding common ground." 

Click here to view the December 15th School Board meeting.  Ms. Hadley's remarks begin at the 31 minute mark.  The next regular MBUSD Board meeting will be on January 12th, and there is a budget workshop scheduled for January 26th.  

To read more about how national movements are making their way into local communities, see this NBC article, From the Capitol to the city council: How extremism in the U.S. shifted after Jan. 6 and this article entitled, "Who’s behind the nationwide attacks on local school boards over Critical Race Theory?" from Baptist News Global.   

It is happening here.

Public Comment by Allen Kirschenbaum
(City Council Meeting - December 21, 2021)

 

I am Allen Kirschenbaum.  Any and all quotes I attribute tonight can be confirmed by watching the MBUSD Board meeting of December 15th and going to minutes 31 to 34. Suzanne Hadley as a citizen appeared before the Board and her comments included that her “trust is shaken” in our School Board.  Ms. Hadley explained that her ‘shaken trust’ was due to a book on the Alex Awards list - linked to the Mira Costa library.  Again:  she was objecting to a book, that was recognized by a list, that was linked to the Mira Costa library.  She objected because:
  1. Costa students are minors
  2. It is an adult book
  3. It is not a good book or well written
  4. She counted 50 obscenities in the first 37 pages.
Ms. Hadley not only called for the book to be banned, but also said, “A better idea would be for our Board to not allow links to books with the c word in them.  The c word alone should be disqualifying for children.”  Ms. Hadley wants the right to censor material in the Mira Costa library.  In my opposition to censorship, let’s focus on the basics:
  • The list is the Alex Awards, sponsored by a division of the American Library Association.  Others listed have included “The House of the Cerulean Sea”, “The Nickel Boys”, “Circe”, and “Educated”. 
  • While high school students tend to be between 13 to 17 and considered minors, this is the time in their lives to read adult fiction and non fiction so that they can discuss the ideas safely with their parents and teachers.
  • Part of high school education is learning how to examine books and discuss perspectives on great fiction and non-fiction.
  • Authors D.H. Lawrence, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Eve Ensler all used the c-word in their literature. 
Ms. Hadley’s objection to a particular book is interesting because the book was on the 2019 Alex Awards list, not on the 2021 list.  Her objection may be tied to recent Culture Wars in Texas, where the book became controversial in September 2021.  At any rate, The Supreme Court ruled many times against governmental bodies including school boards exercising censorship of libraries.  It is a key part of the First Amendment.

Ms. Hadley’s motives should be questioned on two key points:
  1. As part of her erosion in trust, will Councilmember Hadley be requesting a “Motion of No Confidence” as she has previously done when other elected officials do not meet her standards?
  2. In demanding censorship of this book and any book with the c-word, is Councilmember Hadley willing to have the City of Manhattan Beach be sued by the ACLU or others for censorship?  She previously objected to City Council actions she felt could invite lawsuits.
I urge you to be aware of Ms. Hadley’s advocating for censorship, and do not support it.

Report Acts of Hate 

A number of hate crimes were committed in Manhattan Beach in 2021.  These ranged from anti-Semitic words etched into a dirty car window, to racial slurs hurled at a Black surfer, hateful graffiti at American Martyr's Church, and, most recently, anti-Semitic flyers posted throughout town.  We commend MBPD for their rapid response to these events but, sadly, perpetrators of most of these crimes have not been found. If you see something, say something.

211 LA provides hate crimes reporting for people of all ages in Los Angeles County.  Crimes can be reported to the Anti Hate Reporting Hotline for the County of Los Angeles (or by dialing 211 on your phone) Please also notify our local MBPD; they are hard at work every day keeping our community safe.

Help a Student: MB United Social Justice Scholarship 

MB United scholarships, in honor of Bruce's Beach, will be awarded to students who are committed to Equity, Diversity, Social Justice and Inclusion (EDSJI). One scholarship will be awarded to a graduating Mira Costa High School senior, and one to a senior from the Environmental Charter School in neighboring Lawndale.  

You can make a tax-deductible contribution to this scholarship fund through the MBX Foundation by clicking on this link. Alternatively, checks can be made out to MBX Foundation with the notation "MB United Bruce's Beach Scholarship" in the memo section and mailed to:

MBX Foundation
P.O. Box 1585
Manhattan Beach, CA  90267 

Thank you for your generous donations.

Upcoming Events

Check out the DIG MB Events Calendar for any upcoming local events.   Stay safe and please wear your masks indoors.  
MLK Dream 2022: Quest for Justice
(This weekend via Zoom!)
The Seventh Annual South Bay Interfaith MLK DREAM event, DREAM 2022: Quest for Justice, is being held this Sunday at 2:00 PM via Zoom. The annual event celebrates Martin Luther King and his quest for justice.  All are welcome to attend.  Registration is required.  Register at tinyurl.com/MLKDream2022.

Keynote speaker this year will be Professor Isabelle Gunning of the Southwestern Law School.  Other speakers include Dr. Derik Smith, Associate Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College and Imam Abdul Hafiz.  Kat Zimmerman of Temple Menorah will lift up the event with song and Ebrahim Arsalan will perform on the kora.

This interfaith event is sponsored by South Coast Interfaith Council, The Redondo Beach Center for Spiritual Living, Baha'i Communities of the South Bay and Temple Menorah. 
Volunteer to count those who are experiencing homelessness in Manhattan Beach. Register in advance by clicking here.
  • If you would like us to consider showcasing your event, send us an email at mbunited90266@gmail.com.
  • Interested in getting more involved with MB United?  Send us an email at mbunited90266@gmail.com and let us know what interests you.
  • If you were sent this newsletter by a friend, you can subscribe here
  • For previous issues and resources, click here

MB United is Denise Berger, Kim Brant-Lucich, Andy Caine, Jen Dohner, Taylor Gamble, Isla Garraway, Amy Howorth, Mike Jenkins, Laura Kainsinger, Anthony A. Lee, Amanda Park, Lana Rizika, Diana Skaar, Donna Thomas, Tyler St. Bernard, and April Wayland.
 
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