Happy Bastille Day, Vive La Revolucion!
Two years ago today nearly 300 people from all over the city gathered on the City Hall lawn to stage a rally for better government and launch the Saving LA Project.
Our goal was to become an informal umbrella organization that would bring organizations and people together to challenge city policies and create a grassroots movement that could become a political force for reform.
We helped organize opposition to the solar energy fraud called Measure B, worked for the election of Carmen Trutanich for City Attorney and Paul Krekorian as Councilman from the Second District.
In some way we fell short of my expectations, in great part because of my limitations as an organizer and leader. But dozens of us have kept at it month after month, keeping up our efforts to show as many people as we could that the local issues that preoccupy them are part of a larger fabric of failure at City Hall.
This Saturday, a new movement SLAP helped spawn, LA CLEAN SWEEP (lacleansweep.com) will launch with a party at 1 p.m. at the Mayflower Club in North Hollywood. You can see the event flyer (CleanSweepLaunchFlyer.pdf), read our press release (CLEANSWEEPPressRelease.pdf) and information sheet for the media (LA CLEAN SWEEP INFO.pdf) or learn more by going to lacleansweep.com.
I hope you’ll pass this information on to others because it’s going to take the whole community working together to change the course of the city.
Clean Sweep is a political action committee that will work citywide to support a slate of candidates in the seven even-numbered Council seats up for election next March.
We need people regardless of ideology who are honest and open and have integrity and a commitment to serve the public interest, not the special interests. We need to end the sweetheart contracts and back room deals, the waste, inefficiency and bad management.
The principles of Clean Sweep and a draft platform were developed in a series of Sunday meetings by about 50 activists who met every other Sunday in the back room at Denny’s Restaurant in Glassell Park.
HERE”S WHAT WE STAND FOR, OUR CORE PRINCIPLES
1. Financial Responsibility
2. Safe Communities with Modern
Infrastructure
3. Proper planning for the future
4. Open and Honest Government
with Integrity
If any sitting Council members can demonstrate a record of true public service and respect for all segments of the community and a commitment to power sharing, we will gladly consider them for our slate.
If not, they are on notice that they will face fierce challenges from credible candidates who can raise enough money to be fully competitive.
We must hold the people responsible who have raised our rates, fees and taxes even as they created the worst fiscal crisis in the city’s history, even as they have made the situation far worse first by their failure to act in a timely manner and more recently by their failure to actually solve the crisis.
They are slashing our public services, closing libraries two days a week starting Monday, gutting parks programs, and all but eliminating effective planning and building code enforcement to protect our neighborhoods.
They are selling valuable assets, borrowing against the future, deferring costs in what will have a snowballing effect on the crisis with a $300 million deficit looming next year and a $1 billion deficit the year after.
It will only get worse unless we elect better people into office, people committed to a vision of a greater Los Angeles.
It will take the participation of thousands of concerned citizens to turn LA around with their hard work and their passion. It can be done.
LA has too much going for it to become a failed city like Cleveland or Detroit. But our infrastructure is old, our poverty rate soaring, our hopes for the future diminishing. It doesn’t have to be this way.
We need new leaders that will bring us together and work for the common good.
This is our city. We need to take power; they will never give it away.
Kick ass!
The Mayor is being investigated by 3 entities, LA City Ethics, DA’s Public Integrity and State Ethics. We have council morons who just don’t seem to get it nor do they care. We are in the worse financial crisis in the history of LA and they keep spending money and not collecting money owed. We have lame ass Controller. A lapdog Chief Beck to the Mayor. We have Trutanich who I use to like but since he caved and didn’t go after AEG I’m not so happy with him. Its time to get rid of all of them. “Credible” is the key word here. We don’t want just anyone running who will make a mockery of the process and just want publicity. There are a lot of talented, credible, active community members who work harder and do more then the jerks on council do. There are some who have not come out yet but we are waiting to help and campaign for you. Remember the David and Goliath story. Krekorian beat Chris Essel.
Si, se puede.
Ron! You — you ANARCHIST YOU!
Ron,
Clean Sweep’s success all comes down to its candidates.
You can have as many awesome ideals as you want, but unless your candidate is a living embodiment of these high standards, it’s more of the same.
That Lakers’-loving mayor… he too espoused wonderful things, and look where that got us.
Your candidates cannot be politicians, they cannot live in gated communities, they cannot waste millions of dollars to buy the voters…
Your candidates must be real people — parents, community leaders, folks who live and work and have a stake in our city’s future.
Otherwise, it’s gonna be business as usual… we may as well stick with LaBonge Bob Squarehead and the other craven, smiling puppets.
Just my two pennies worth.
LMG
Here’s my prediction. The candidates will be:
- White
- Conservative
- Rich guys living in suburbia who love to pretend they know what it’s like to be poor in LA (Hi Ron, Hi Walter)
- People who are too scared to venture East of the 110 unless they’re on their annual Disneyland trip
- People who think every Mexican who isn’t a dayworker or makes above 30k a year got there because they have ties to the Mexican Mafia
And you guys are still patting yourself on the back about Trutanich and Krekorian like they’re supposed to mean something?
Trutanich – hasn’t done anything except deadlock the controller, refuse a paycut, put a guy in jail with the most ridiculous bail in LA history, and go after drugs which will be legal after November anyway. But I guess his public outbursts, which usually have no legal or logical base to begin with, are supposed to make him some kind of special hero.
Krekorian – ummm yeah…this guy will forever be known as the guy who beat Essel… as opposed to something that’s actually substantial and policy related. Congrats, you voted a lame duck into office!
To: By Anonymous on July 15, 2010 9:28 PM
” Rich guys living in suburbia who love to pretend they know what it’s like to be poor in LA (Hi Ron, Hi Walter)”
If anyone has ever been to Ron’s house, they know that he lives in a modest home in a regular (not fancy) neighborhood.
Ron: Please keep a Thursday morning open in, perhaps, October, to talk to your favorite (Warner Center) Kiwanis Club.
I’ll contact you about that.
I know that you are aware that the DWP sends $$$ back to the City of Los Angeles (what was the number, $200 million a year?) even though it’s not supposed to collect surplus money. The recent flap about the DWP sending $71 million to the City so the City would approve a DWP rate increase is only the latest theft shown to be a lie.
But, have you considered the fact that the City of Los Angeles levies a sales or use tax of 10% on every dollar paid by DWP rate payers. If the DWP has funneled $200 million of “surplus” dollars to the City of Los Angeles this year, it means that rate payers have paid $20 million to the City for DWP services never rendered.
Interesting, huh?
Ron Guilbert
“If anyone has ever been to Ron’s house, they know that he lives in a modest home in a regular (not fancy) neighborhood.”
The guy lives in Woodland Hills. Second only to West Hills and Porter Ranch in terms of suburban seclusion. A far cry from the East Valley which is laden with crime. An even further cry from Metro where worse things are happening.
“The recent flap about the DWP sending $71 million to the City so the City would approve a DWP rate increase is only the latest theft shown to be a lie.”
That funneling of extra money into the General Fund that you’re complaining about – Ron is all for it. What happened was the DWP refused to hand over the $71 million, which was an 8 percent power revenue tax on top of that 10 percent utility tax. The logic was, why should the DWP be giving extra money to the General Fund when, as the request for rate hikes implies, they need the money for capital expenditures? Ron and the rest of his local media buddies spun the issue as DWP holding the city hostage and acted like that $71 million belonged to the city (it doesn’t). Patsouras even tried to sue the DWP for withholding that money and had he been successful, it would have given the city legal precedent to doubletax ratepayers. Notice how you never hear any complaining about DWP being a cash cow for the city on this blog anymore.