Ask people in L.A., Madrid, Paris, London, Sydney, Berlin, New York and Singapore what they want from city government and you'll find the answers are similar around the world.
Better services, a fair share of services, empowerment, accountability.
That's the finding of a recent global study of those eight cities by Accenture management consultants.
If that sounds a lot like what drove the Valley secession movement a decade ago or what is stirring the citywide discontent today, it is.
Rick Orlov in the Daily News on Monday characterized the L.A. segment of the study this way: "Most Los Angeles residents love the city but are troubled by the high cost of living, the lack of government accountability and a widespread sense that no area is getting its fair share of services - the same sentiment that fueled the San Fernando Valley secession drive."
Orlov quotes one participant in the study as describing life in L.A. as "enjoyably frustrating," which certainly captures the experience of most of us succinctly.
Greg Parston, director of the Accenture Institute, said what was "surprising was that in every city there is an appreciation for the need for public service but also a sense that they want government to be fair...there is this sense that government services are more available to people with knowledge of the system."
OK, so what are we going to do about it? It should be clear by now that the power structure of L.A. has no intention of sharing power, that nothing is really going to change just because it's the right thing to do.
Power is going to have to be taken and the ordinary people across the city are going to have to organize and mobilize to do it.
Neighborhood councils, residents groups, civic and social groups of all kinds are going to have to talk a common language, find the common ground to develop an agenda and reach out to their communities to form an army of activists.
The mere existence of such a coalition will bring the political, business and labor elites to the table to talk about how to partner to solve the city's problems from gangs to traffic congestion.
So the point of what I'm saying, the point of what I'm trying to do, is this: It's up to each of us individually to get involved and do something about what's so frustrating about living in L.A.
It's not going to happen because the mayor wakes up and remembers what he believes in or because your council member gets speed bumps put on your street. It's going to happen because we seized the moment and created an alternative political force that had to be reckoned with.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
We get whom and what we vote for.
True, and most of the time there isn't much of a choice between or among candidates...if there's any choice at all.
We did have the opportunity to elect a much better candidate than Villaraigosa three years ago in Walter Moore, but he couldn't get an inch of newspaper space because he hadn't raised the amount of money to be considered a "viable" candidate. [waltermooreformayor.com]
When Dennis Zine ran for the City Council the first time, I swore I wouldn't vote for him, but the woman running against him was worse. The last time he ran, if I remember correctly, he ran unopposed.
We're left with very few options except to write letters and join neighborhood councilss. We'll see if those efforts prove fruitful when the next budget is approved by the taxers and spend mores.
There aren't too many of us 'old-timers' left to mobilize and march on City Hall, unfortunately! Most of the denizens of LA do not even speak English. As a lifelong resident of the Westside (seven decades), I am aghast at the Mexicanization of L.A.! We have imported a culture of crime and corruption so alien to the days of yore...how do We the People even attempt to take back our city when the elected officials are the gangbangers-in-chief? The city is being run by Banditos!
I made the effort to attend a couple of City Council meetings as an objective observer, and I can tell you first-hand that we citizens are just a nuisance to the crooks who sit on their thrones...while sneering, jeering, and ignoring their constituency! They have NO interest in our concerns! And they don't even attempt to give the impression that they care! It's blatant disregard!
I would be willing to join ANY group of concerned citizens to overthrow the current gang of 15 plus one who are destroying our once great city....but where do we start? We need organization...any thoughts? Forget the ballot box...voter fraud is rampant in LA!
The previous poster is right about the Bandidos having taken control of the city, although it sounds very un-PC, but they're the ONLY ones who are blunt, open, and unabashed about DEMANDING money and services for THEIR constituents above everyone else -- especially the westside, which pays the MOST taxes and gets the least back. The West Valley gets pretty close to what it puts in, and still has functioning schools for LOCAL kids, clinics and County hospitals, nice parks, libraries.
The Westside, being nearest geographically to the barrios and South L A, has been overrun for decates by busing, population and everything else. But that's not enough for Reyes, who as head of PLUM is on a campaign to demand that HIS constituents and those of his fellow Mexicans put taxpayer-subsidized housing INTO the westside, west of Pico/Robertson, to the ocean, and even in the west Valley. He attacks the westside at literally every opportunity in council, from discussing parks, to Martin Luther King day and "justice" meaning the illegals should move into Bel Air and the hills, to of course, housing.
The Hispanic and African-Americans also joined together attacking the westside on billboards, making these people preserving the city from all-out blight by a company like ClearChannel/CBS that isn't even paying its too-favorable deal brokered by its City Hall ally Rocky Delgadillo (L A Weekly's Christine Pelisek and Jill Stewart have the most details on this), out to be bigots preventing magnanimous ClearChannel from giving them money toward a park!
Bill Boyarsky had a piece last week in the Jewish Journal about this, pointing out that because it's NOT PC, the major media like the Times and the new PC, pro-illegal Daily News, won't touch this topic and are abrogating their duty to inform the public. (Zev Takes on the Developers -- but he talks about Reyes' open intent to put projects explicitly into Pico-Robertson, but Reyes has also himself mentioned all the hills.) Boyarsky is largely independent, so he can afford to stick his neck out -- a little bit -- to poke at the truth. (Just listen to Reyes, Cardenas etc. in Council Today talking about the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance, as "fairness" to their low-income people, although ti's fine and well that some billionaires can afford mansions. While there are good people on both sides of the issue, THEIR disagreement was about, how to tweak it to be MORE punitive of the "wealthy" arsas, by which they mean cottages in Laurel Canyon, too.)
Their areas already get far, far more in social services and school than they put in in taxes (which half don't pay), but that's not enough for them.
The racists anti Mexican tactics appearing in the above comments will not build a better L.A. any more than pre WWII Germany’s anti-Semitic tirades built a better Germany.
Almost 4 decades ago, the Los Angeles Office of the American Jewish Committee started a sub-committee concerning the relations between the Latino population and the Jewish community. There was in fact some overlap due to intermarriage and Mexican Jews, but for the most part the two communities were worlds apart. Independent of my involvement with the AJC’s efforts, I worked with an organization called Adelante. Their objective was also to help bridge the gab between the Mexican and Jewish & Anglo communities. We did a TV show in conjunction with the University of Judaism about pro’s and con’s of the incipient Affirmative Action programs and in 1971, I published an obscure article, Education and the Vato Loco, discussing the gaps between the Mexican and mainstream cultures.
With the institution of Affirmative Action, rational thought and analysis went out the window and the country entered into a mindless orgy of political correctness and racism (Mexican and Blacks were considered inferior and thus the only solution was to create a quota system independent of merit.)
The school district was heavily politicalized and the East Side of the LAUSD was “given” to the Mexicans in the myopic belief that if we gave the Mexicans the school district, we could keep them out of city and county government. That stupid, racist plan didn’t work too well. Not only are there lots of Mexicans in both governments, the East Side education never recovered. Non-Hispanic ethnicity became the criterion for chasing teachers out of East L.A. Cheating on the standardized tests became rampant in order to conceal the deterioration in educational achievement. Teachers who taught the values of an urban commercial technological society so that their students could have a chance in modern Los Angeles were labeled racists. I personally attended some of the District’s required sensitivity convocations where Anglo teachers were all officially labeled racists simply because they were Anglo. At that time, however, there were virtually no Mexicans in power. The destruction of the educational system in the East Side was engineered by primarily Westside Anglo and Jewish politicians in their endeavor to exclude Mexicans from political power.
I sketch this background to show that the fault does not rest, Dear Brutus, in the stars or in the Mexicans, but in ourselves. The majority community had the opportunity to educate the incoming immigrants in the commercial technological society so that they mastered the skills to fully participate. We are the ones who created Affirmative Action and we are the ones who abandoned the entire East Side in hopes that we could “contain” the Mexican political aspirations.
Today’s Westside problems do not come from anything the Mexicans have done. The problem is that Los Angeles is divided into 15 fiefdoms. One councilperson will not oppose the petty desires of another councilmember in order to guarantee the same autonomy within his/her own District. The councilmembers respond to the developers, not to the citizens.
It is not the fault of the Mexican councilmembers that the Westside traffic has become such a nightmare that the Mayor proposes turning Olympic and Pico into one way streets. The traffic problem was a direct result of corrupt councilmembers allowing their developer buddies to build whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and the city codes, ordinances and specific plans be damned. The so-called Westside Mafia was operating in the early 1990's. This unholy amalgamation of Westside developers, judges, lawyers and other power brokers has everything to do with the Westside’s problems. If you think the Mexicans are your problem, then you’re are being lead astray by racist scapegoating.
The problems of the Westside arise from the people who have held political power in the Westside for the past 40 years. If you want to do something effective, vote out the corrupt judges who rubber stamp anything developers want. Recently citizens did vote out Ditzi Janvas; perhaps the first judge voted out of office for gross incompetence in 45 years. Of course, Governor Schwarzenegger immediately re-appointed her to the same court position. How many Westsiders, who want to blame the Mexicans for all their problems, did anything whatsoever when the Governor re-instated one of the worse judges they city has ever witnessed? Did anyone who complains about Mexicans see any problem with the Governor’s overturning an election?
If the Westside wants to know why it has deficient infra-structure, it should ask its own princes who rule over the Westside fiefdoms.