Born July 28, 1901, Harry Bridges helped create the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the group which yesterday announced a tentative labor agreement covering all West Coast ports–including Long Beach–and 25,000 workers. But the best part of the day: seeing LB officials, from City Council (Dee Andrews and Maor Bob) to state Senate [...]

There will be other important demolitions in Long Beach.
But yesterday’s dismantling of the crime-ridden Avalon Motel came with a free Southern lunch, served after Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal clambered into the cab of a towering Caterpillar front-loader for a de-construction worker’s perspective, as the city struck down the blighted building.

There’s a bit of a twist in the only real Long Beach City Council race in the city, the Sixth District contest between incumbent Dee Andrews and challenger Ahmed Saafir.
Paul Eakins reports in this morning’s Press-Telegram that Andrews skipped last night’s NAACP candidates forum for school board and Sixth District candidates because of what Andrews [...]

This just in from LBPost.com: apparently, the two men in the one real Long Beach City Council race–challenger Ahmed Saafir and incumbent Dee Andrews, in the Sixth District–will face off in a candidates’ forum at 7 tonight.
They’ll be joined by two candidates in a different race–challenger Karen Thomas Hilburn and incumbent Jon Meyer, who are running [...]

Sixth District Councilman Dee Andrews had a fundraiser for his reelection tonight at the law offices of Keesal, Young & Logan, high above Ocean Boulevard–and the news was that less than two hours earlier, Andrews had secured a campaign endorsement from the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.

This week a new Best Buy opens at Marina Pacifica Mall, and ground-breaking is celebrated for a new Residence Inn down by the Queen Mary. How good is that?  Not as good as it could–should–have been, and not as good as city officials are trying to make it seem. Not since the City Council voted to give away millions of [...]

… BUT ALSO THE TRUTHS THE PAPER’S EDITORIAL WRITERS NEVER TOLD
Bill Pearl of LBReport.com breaks down, sentence by sentence, an editorial by the Press-Telegram that — depending on what you think of Long Beach’s once-great daily in these, its clearly diminished days — was either a pack of despicably calculated lies or a pathetic inability [...]

WHO DO YOU THINK WON THE NIGHT?
A row of men in very fine suits — representatives of the Port of Long Beach, including executive director Richard D. Steinke and Harbor Commissioners Mario Cordero, Dr. Mike Walter and Nick Sramek — sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the third row of the Long Beach City Council chambers last night.
They [...]

Thanks to the research of city staffers and the memories of two organizers, we’re learning about the field trips to Washington, D.C. which Congresswoman Laura Richardson spearheaded back when she was Long Beach’s Sixth District Councilwoman.

Help us remember the winners of the essay contest that Congresswoman Laura Richardson forgot
Here’s what we know:
Before she was a congresswoman, Laura Richardson was a state Assemblywoman, and before that she represented LB’s Sixth District–and there she helped organize essay contests for the city’s kids, including one offering a fabulous prize for the winners: [...]