“For the longest time, we used to joke that our biggest export was our fine California air,” Eric Caris, assistant director of marketing for the Port of Los Angeles, told White. Not anymore.

“From January to July, exports jumped about 23% compared with the same period of 2007 at the nation’s two busiest container ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach,” White writes. “But the export boom overshadows a deep pullback in U.S. consumer spending.”

Imports have declined so much, according to the Times, that “the twin ports are on pace to record their second straight year of declines in overall international trade. That hasn’t happened in at least 30 years, despite a handful of national recessions along the way.”

Closer to home, perhaps, Press-Telegram reporter Paul Eakins follows up on last week’s appearance at a closing-Main-Library discussion by Stevenson Elementary School students.

Two Stevenson students read statements protesting the city’s proposed library closure–to rebuild it/make it stronger some day, and somehow save an estimated $1.8 million in the Fiscal Year 2008-2009 budget–at that meeting.

And, Eakins reports, members of the Community Leadership Institute at Stevenson Elementary School, were out at Saint Anthony Church on Sunday morning, collecting signatures on a petition asking the city not to close the Main Library.

“The Community Leadership Institute, or CLI, trains parents at Stevenson–which at 515 Lime Ave. is just a couple of blocks away from the church–to organize themselves for the betterment of the surrounding neighborhoods,” Eakins writes.

“ ‘The main idea was that we as parents could solve the problems that our community faces,’ Esther Del Valle, one of the CLI leaders who got involved when her now-15-year-old daughter, Daleth Caspeta, had been a student at Stevenson, said in Spanish.”

News that Del Valle spoke in Spanish prompted frequent P-T commenter Robert J G Jackson Sr. to fret, “This article makes it seem that Del Valle has been a resident of Long Beach for years, and yet she conducted the interview in Spanish. Does this mean that many in the community speak Spanish only? Does this group or the school in question provide adult English classes for the large number of immigrants which the article says live in the neighborhood?”

So what if they do?

Community Leadership Institute’s petition is at least the second such petition that we’re aware of. The other–helmed by the Long Beach Public Library Foundation–has collected more than 4,000 signatures to date.

Writes Eakins: “Now, as the group takes on City Hall–though not alone, with other groups such as the Long Beach Public Library Foundation also fighting the Main Library closure–CLI organizers say this may be their biggest challenge yet.”

Tags: California, city hall, Community Leadership Institute, Eric Caris, Esther Del Valle, library petition, Long Beach, Long Beach Public Library Foundation, Main Library closure, Paul Eakins, Port of Long Beach, PORT OF LOS ANGELES, press telegram, Robert J G Jackson Sr, Ronald D. White, Saint Anthony Church, Southern California, stevenson elementary school, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas