Please RT to let the new @LAWeekly owners and their public face @briancalle know that the city of Los Angeles will not tolerate their attempts to destroy one of its most important civic institutions. #BoycottLAWeekly 
Going to keep going here because I think it's important to keep highlighting how entrenched and pernicious the conservative consolidation of the media has become.
For much of its history, LA's print media was controlled and defined by the Otis Family, who for the first 70 years of the last century were fervently anti-union and ultra right wing conservative.
In 1910, attempts to unionize by LA Times workers were met w/ fierce resistance. Harrison Gray Otis, the paper's publisher was not only determined to crush their efforts, but all unions in the city, so that robber barons could mercilessly exploit the city work force.
That yr, the LA City Council unanimously banned picketing & "speaking in public streets in a loud or unusual tone."Penalties were 50 days in jail, fines or both. U472 union members were arrested but efforts succeeded. 13 new unions formed. Union membership rose almost 60%.
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The tensions ultimately led to a 1910 bombing of the LA Times, a heavily fortified building nicknamed "The Bivouac." It was called "the crime of the century" and helped sway public sentiment towards the millionaire conservative oligarchs running the city. Read City of Quartz.
Chinatown was fictionalized but based in reality. LA was controlled by a small cabal of real estate boosters, the Otis Family, and other self-interested rich white men only interesting in protecting their wealth & stopping the free exchange of ideas. So I guess like now.
The Riots didn't spring from nowhere. They came from a half-century of abuses started by William Parker, the first LA police chief to militarize the police & treat communities like enemy combatants. The conservative LA Times endorsed & abetted his reign. Read Joe Domanick's Blue.
When Otis Chandler took over as publisher of the LA Times in 1960, he modernized the paper & created the non-partisan Pulitzer-winning publication that thrived until the internet decimated the media, the Tribune Co. bought it and well, that's a longer frustrating story.
LA County is obviously massive. Beyond the Times & LA Weekly, it has historically been covered by papers that served each sub-region (Pasadena, the South Bay, the Valley, etc). Some were owned by the Times, but many were owned by small mid-sized corporations.
Over the last decade, the Southern California News Group purchased almost every every SoCal newspaper not owned by Tribune (I'm not calling it Tronc, sorry). Who was in charge of opinion and editorial for the SCNG? You guessed it, new LA Weekly frontman, @briancalle.
In his tenure, Brian Calle has attacked unions at every opportunity. He's taken constant shots at Obama & mocked his legacy, while promoting a hard right slant as much as possible. He fired every editor of the LA Weekly because they were union, and in the most cowardly fashion.
This is neither here nor there, but new LA Weekly henchman Brian Calle also might be the Shermanator from American Pie.
Why is this important? Not merely because Calle figures to use LA Weekly as a plaything for his dim cruel ideologies. But because he's also ceaselessly promoted his agenda at every publication in the Southern California News Group.
These are the pubs in the SCNG: The Daily Breeze (South Bay), Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Long Beach Press Telegram, LA Daily News (Valley), OC Register, Pasadena Star News, San Bernardino Sun, Whittier Daily News. Calle controlled the editorial board for all.
Who even owns the SoCal News Group? Well, first it's owned by Digital First Media from Denver. Who owns them? A hedge fund called Alden Global Capital. And who owns that? A Wall Street raider in his mid-70s named Randall Smith, who gives zero fucks about good local journalism.
Who is Randall Smith, the billionaire gutting, destroying & stripping these hometown papers for parts? He's so rich he spent $57 mill on 16 Palm Beach mansions in 2013 alone. These are the people controlling & destroying our media. Read this Nation story. thenation.com/article/how-ma…
It's time we take a stand & refuse to let greedy soulless billionaires destroy the free press & our communities. We watch this in the White House & in congress & it's infecting our backyard. We can't stop or get complacent. This matters too much. In the meantime #BoycottLAWeekly
