Social Change

Members of the Ventura Ministerial Assn. and Project Understanding will join forces tonight during a town meeting in Ventura focusing on social change in response to the Los Angeles riots. A key component of the meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. at the Total Christian Life Center on Ventura Avenue, is how racism across Ventura County has prohibited some area residents from becoming fully integrated into society, organizers said.

Taylor Swift tops a year-end ranking of celebrity philanthropists tallied by DoSomething.org, an organization that rallies teens to get involved in social change. The 23-year-old pop-country singer and songwriter was cited on DoSomething's “Top Celebs Gone  Good of 2012” list for her $4-million donation earlier this year to create a new education center at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, “not to mention, her tremendous work for young people battling cancer, among many others.” DoSomething's citation also noted that earlier this month, Swift became the youngest recipient ever of the Ripple of Hope Award bestowed by the Robert F. Kennedy Center to community leaders who "demonstrate commitment to social change," according to the center's website.

Seeking to promote community-based leadership, the Ford Foundation will launch a $19-million initiative today to provide grants to people and organizations that are successfully tackling tough social issues. With two-year grants of $130,000, Ford's Leadership for a Changing World program aims to reward individuals who are making a difference but are not well known outside their communities.

Before the Esalen Institute, there was Michael Murphy's family's property, a choice chunk of gorgeous Big Sur, where, in 1962, Murphy (writer, seeker) and his fellow human potentialist Dick Price dedicated the Murphy land to the now 50-year-old center for personal and social consciousness-raising. Notables like Aldous Huxley, Abraham Maslow, Joan Baez and Henry Miller contemplated themselves and the world there. Esalen's scholarly social initiatives tend to get overlooked, while the touchy-feely stuff gets the attention.

Ray Hubbard, a pioneering television producer and broadcasting executive who believed the medium should be an engine for social change, has died in a Sonoma, Calif., hospital. He was 75. Hubbard, who lived in nearby Kenwood, died Dec. 27 after suffering from Parkinson's disease for 20 years, said his son Stephen, of Pasadena. As vice president for programming and production at Washington Post-Newsweek Stations Inc. in Washington, D.C.

An interfaith prayer breakfast marking the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be held Wednesday at 8 a.m. at Holman United Methodist Church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles. Speakers include the Revs. Aidsand and Betty Wright-Riggins, who will discuss the responsibilities of religious institutions in social change.

THE NEW Disney film "Glory Road" tells the story of a basketball game that put sports in the middle of the civil rights movement. But it also recalls a time when the ordinary actions of coaches could unwittingly transcend sports and make a mark on history. Key to the legacies of the two Hall of Fame coaches at the heart of "Glory Road" is how each dealt with the system of Jim Crow.

A foundation that specializes in making "seed" grants to experimental ventures for social change has given $240,000 to groups addressing problems underscored by the spring riots. The Santa Monica-based Liberty Hill Foundation made the grants through its Fund for a New L.A. The largest donation to the fund was $185,000 from Comic Relief. Other donors were the Jewish Fund for Justice, the McKay Foundation and the Urban Foundation of the First United Methodist Church.

And how do you spell relief? If all goes as planned, the first words that spring to mind could be NetAid.org, a recently launched Web site designed to end world poverty.

Jonathan Kozol wants his book to change the world. It's not an unusual--if usually hopeless--ambition. But Kozol is actually getting a chance--and a lot of help. Armed with copies of Kozol's "Rachel and Her Children," booksellers will meet with governors of more than 20 states today to urge them to take action against homelessness.

Re "A little less to chew on," Column, Nov. 28 One can only hope that Los Angeles County's efforts to reduce food consumption are as successful as two other notable public health successes over the last few decades (both recently reported in The Times): the efforts to increase seat belt usage and to curtail cigarette smoking. Such efforts require education, legislation, enforcement and social change. Changing food habits will probably be more difficult, but if there is the social will, it can be done.

Well, that didn't take long. Not even a month after the much-heralded accord in which North Korea agreed, among other things, to halt long-range missile testing, Pyongyang announced its intention to launch a satellite - with a long-range missile. This is, if nothing else, clever. The United States has put a lot of eggs into the basket of a denuclearization process and of improved relations supposedly inaugurated by the February nuclear deal. But if Washington stands by its position that this proposed satellite launch - a transparent ploy to test powerful rocket technology - would be a deal breaker, we'll be right back at square one. Pyongyang has us right where it wants us, in a sense, which shows again the bankruptcy of a policy designed to bargain for nuclear and missile concessions that the North is never going to provide.

- Morning fog weaves its way through colorful rows of vegetables, herbs and flowers as staff and apprentices gather at the center of the garden at Esalen Institute. It's 7 a.m. The freshly awakened faces sit calmly in a circle for a morning meditation, listening to the Pacific Ocean until the sound of chimes lets meandering minds know it's time to tend to the day's harvest. Bins of chard, arugula, parsley, radishes and carrots are picked, washed and delivered to the back door of the kitchen, roughly 1,250 feet from the field.

In today's hyper-speed world of technology entrepreneurship, David C. Bohnett ranks as a grand old man. Bohnett, 55, founded GeoCities, the pioneering social networking company that made his fortune, back in 1994 — virtually Internet prehistory. He took GeoCities public in 1998 and it was sold the following year to Yahoo for more than $3 billion in Yahoo stock. After 10 years of indifferent and shortsighted management, Yahoo consigned GeoCities to the Internet's memory banks by shutting it down in 2009.

Here is what "Mad Man" has wrought. (Never underestimate the power of a media-beloved period cable drama featuring beautiful people in beautiful clothes, no matter how few people actually watch it, to influence decision-making at a broadcast network.) "The Playboy Club," a tale of mob intrigue set in the original Chicago bunny hutch, premiered on NBC on Monday; "Pan Am," a sparkly and highly appealing international adventure series set around the late airline, takes off Sunday night on ABC. What these series have obviously in common is that they take place in the pre-psychedelic early 1960s, sometimes called "swinging," before the Kennedy assassination, the Summer of Love or the Days of Rage, between the introduction of the pill and the rise of Women's Lib — a time of hope and change, of the future shaking off the past but not yet shut of it. "Playboy" and "Pan Am" concern women in uniform, working for commercial icons of the era, who at some time during their shift will be called on to serve a drink, smile prettily, or be polite to someone who doesn't deserve it — and who are using what only looks like subservience as a path to self-empowerment and self-knowledge.

Robert Sklar, a film scholar known for bringing the insights of the social historian to understanding the history of American film, has died. He was 74. Sklar, who also was one of the original Rotisserie League fantasy baseball "owners" in the 1980s, died in Barcelona, Spain, July 2 after suffering head injuries in a bicycling accident, said Richard Allen, professor and chair of cinema studies at New York University. A professor in the department of cinema studies at New York University from 1977 until his retirement in 2009, Sklar was the author of books that included "City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield" (1992)

Timber interests at odds with environmentalists threaten to boycott Stroh's beer unless the brewer withdraws funding for an Audubon Society television program. Environmentalists say they will boycott Hawaiian-grown macadamia nuts, pineapples, coffee and sugar unless a geothermal project in a rain forest on the Big Island is scrapped. Moralists prod advertisers to withdraw support for prime-time TV shows deemed overly violent, profane or sexy.

Their babies are usually born prematurely and require long, expensive hospital stays. The newborns may have a wide variety of birth defects. If they make it past the critical first months, they face an uncertain future that may reveal learning disabilities, dysfunctional motor skills and mental retardation. These are the children of women addicted to drugs or alcohol. If these women are also poor--as many are--they have few options.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender senior citizens face myriad social and financial problems, and lawmakers could help them by altering Social Security and Medicaid rules, according to a national report being released Wednesday. The report, prepared by Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders, or SAGE, has been endorsed by major mainstream aging groups, including AARP and the American Society on Aging. "This is the first time that the heavyweights of the aging network are really embracing a comprehensive look at the needs of LGBT older adults," said Michael Adams, executive director of SAGE.

Pop music has rarely sounded more elegantly silky than when Sam Cooke sang "You Send Me," the dreamily romantic 1957 hit that first put the Chicago singer and songwriter at the top of the national sales chart and primed him for a key role as African Americans started to assert real power in the music business. That role was cut short when Cooke was shot and killed outside a Watts motel room in December 1964, a sad finale to a life that had been blessed with a remarkable musical gift.