BECAUSE I SAID HI
It was probably three or four months ago. I get a random call from Dana Amihere of a news organization called Afro LA.
I typically try to dodge solicitations. But Afro LA calling an old white guy in the Eastern Sierra? Why? I was intrigued.
She tells me she wants me to publish a story (which appears on the front page this week).
The conversation goes something like this.
Me: So what’s the catch?
Dana: The only catch is that it’s gonna be long.
Me: So I spend a bit more on the printing?
Dana: Yes
Me: Ummm … Is the story gonna suck?
Dana (laughing): Of course not.
So what does a news organization which bills itself as “Unapologetic. Black. Los Angeles.” have to do with the Eastern Sierra?
As Dana explains, part of the mission statement talks about “how news may disparately impact L.A.’s most vulnerable groups.”
“This is about accountability,” she says. “And DWP is a powerful agency.”
So if somebody’s getting picked on, Afro LA is interested in the story. Even if the people getting picked on live 300 miles away.
Amihere grew up in central Florida. She moved to Los Angeles with her husband in 2018 to take a job in public radio.
She got fed up with that job by 2021. “I was tired of seeing how certain communities were represented,” she says. Too many stereotypes. Too cookie-cutter.
She founded Afro LA with a similarly disaffected journalist, Steven Smith. They were operational by February, 2023.
Amihere is a founder as well as an unpaid volunteer.
Katie Licari, who wrote this week’s story, was a student in the first journalism class Amihere taught at Berkeley.
“My students tend not to leave my life,” she says.
Which makes sense. Amihere is vivacious, energetic, relentless. Afro LA (afrolanews.org), a 501c3, relies on grants and donations. The proceeds are used to pay everyone else. Amihere pays her own bills teaching and freelancing.
I think she is a younger, better version of me.
There is hope.
Sahagun retires
So while there’s a new kid on the block in Afro LA, at the same time, one of the last members of the old guard has retired after 43 years at the LA Times.
But Louis Sahagun had even more years than that invested at the paper. When I spoke to him this week, he said he started at the Times as a floor sweep, the son of parents who hadn’t made it past the sixth grade.
But the Times was a fascinating, strange place. Even the blue collar guys were informed, erudite. They gave Sahagun a crash course in civics. And made him want to learn how to read and write.
Because he wanted to become his mother’s eyes and ears as a reporter. “It sounds corny, but it’s true.”
By the time of his retirement last month, “I felt like the last blue collar reporter at a major metropolitan daily.”
During his long run at the Times, reporting on the Eastern Sierra became Sahagun’s calling card. “I was a nobody from nowhere, and that worked to my benefit.”
He considers himself extremely fortunate to have been aboard the “Journalistic 747” from the ‘80s through the 2000s. The situation these days? He describes that 747 as being in “urgent descent.” (Probably made by Boeing.)
During his career, he estimates he had 4,000 bylines.
While he has no regrets really – “There’s nothing I haven’t written about in depth” – the retirement wasn’t entirely welcome. But “I couldn’t risk leaving a free ride [on the table in the form of a lucrative pension],” he said.
He then digressed. “In the old days, you could tell an editor to go f*%k himself” because there were a wide variety of news outlets. “But now, there’s nowhere else to go.”
So what’s a lifer to do?
Write a book, of course.
While tight-lipped on the subject matter, Sahagun says it will be a no-holds barred book about the Eastern Sierra. Non-fiction. “Now I can tell a few secrets,” he says.
Morse Code
The Sheet met congressional candidate Jessica Morse for breakfast last Sunday at The Breakfast Club in Mammoth (prior to Tim-bergate).
She laid out the roadmap for her race against incumbent Republican Kevin Kiley, whom she characterized as a “MAGA apologist.”
Though she was outgunned in the primary by 55-42%, she notes that in regard to runout, 200,000 more will vote in the general election
In 2020, the district only went for Trump by a single point.
Voter registration in the district tilts slightly Republican at 38-34 with the remainder expressing no party preference.
Morse’s big campaign issues are wildland fire and reproductive rights. She spearheaded the state’s woodland fire initiative as Deputy Secretary for Forest and Wildland Resilience at the State’s Natural Resources Agency.
The initiative provided $3 billion in funding over three years. She says this has brought $44 million to Inyo and Mono counties.
In year one, 1,200 projects were funded (like the Mammoth Donut Hole) and $1 billion was expended.
The result: She says we went from 2.5 million acres burned to 360,000.
She supports federally backed reinsurance to tackle the fire insurance (cost premiums skyrocketing) issue. This echoes Senate candidate Adam Schiff’s INSURE Act introduced earlier this year.
She says Kiley voted against the wildland fire initiative when he was in the state assembly.
And while Kiley says reproductive rights are a state rights issue, he voted for the National Abortion Ban and Life at Conception Act.
Kiley, it should be noted, did recently obtain $1.5 million in funding for two fire station upgrades in Southern Inyo.
Alice Piper
2024 marks the 100th anniversary of school desegregation in Big Pine. There is a ceremony scheduled this Saturday to commemorate the event. Time: 11 a.m. Location: In front of the Big Pine school.
In 1924, 16-year old Alice Piper won the right (via a California Supreme Court decision) to attend the new public school built in Big Pine.
Piper, a member of the Paiute community, sued to attend public school because back then, the Indian day school only went to 5th grade.
And there was archaic law which forbid Native students from attending the “white” school.
Six families were parties to the lawsuit.
The case was cited as precedent when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Jennifer Duncan, a volunteer at the Eastern California Museum in Independence, will be one of the speakers at Saturday’s event, which will feature a host of speakers, including Bishop Tribal Chair Meryl Picard and Congressman Kevin Kiley.
Duncan said she’s spent 200 hours researching Piper over the past 2.5 years.
Piper was born June 7, 1908.
The Big Pine school opened in 1921.
Piper won the right to attend in 1924.
So what happened during the intervening three years? I asked.
Duncan explained that the Indian day school needed a certain number of pupils to secure funding, so very likely, Piper was ‘held back’ and repeated 5th grade until she won the right to ‘graduate’ to the Big Pine school.
So she was a 16-year old 6th grader.
After 8th grade, she attended high school in L.A
The bulk of her career was spent as a schoolteacher at an Indian school in Carson City.
She retired at 60 and returned to the Owens Valley, where she obtained certification and worked as a Nurse’s Assistant at Northern Inyo Hospital.
She also worked in social welfare, foster care … hers was a life spent helping others.
A final salute to Bill …
From The Sheet’s coverage of Bill Walton’s visit in 2012.
“One of the most memorable moments of the evening came when he was trying to recall which teams played in the NBA Finals this past season. “It was Lebron, it was Lebron’s team versus … if it’s not the Celtics versus the Lakers, who cares?”
Walton, who had a speech impediment as a youth, said he was introverted and driven as a result; he let his basketball do the talking.
He eventually overcame his speech impediment … and it’s apparent that he’s been making up for lost time ever since – but when you’re as engaging and opinionated as Bill Walton, talk all you want.
For a man who’s had 36 lifetime knee surgeries, the fact that he’s willing to get on a bike to support Eastern Sierra Land Trust, volunteer at a basketball clinic at the local high school, and finally head over to the Booky Joint after his commitments for the weekend were fulfilled just so he could make an impromptu appearance in support of independent bookstores … thank you, Bill Walton. Come back any time.”
