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.

Dressed appropriately for the occasion writer, performer and NPR commentator Sandra Tsing Loh, author of "A Year in Van Nuys" and public school advocate, speaks at the Saving L.A. Project's July 14th Bastille Day rally at City Hall.

KABC morning talk show host Doug McIntyre speaks to the Bastille Day rally at City Hall.

Green Dot Charter School head Steve Barr speaks to Bastille Day Rally

City Controller Laura Chick's remarks at the Bastille Day rally

Noel Weiss, an attorney long active in community affairs, speaks at the ralley

City Councilman Dennis Zine speaks at the Bastille Day rally

Clean money advocate Wayne Williams speaks to the Bastille Day rally

Videos by Michael Cohen

(This article was published Sunday in the Daily News.)

Taking back Los Angeles

Skeptical as he should be, Rob Eshman, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal, wrote a column  published online Wednesday under the headline Take back L.A. -- the theme of Monday's noon rally at City Hall -- based on the realization  that  "we're fast becoming a second-rate city."

Eshman observes "public safety is broken...education is broken...public health care is broken...transportation is broken...those Neighborhood Councils don't have enough power, the L.A. City Council and Board of Supervisors have too many constituents....."

He writes:

"Now there is a movement afoot to change that. The unlikely agitator is a middle-aged Jewish man in Woodland Hills, Ron Kaye.

"Kaye, the former editor of The Daily News, has put together the Saving L.A. Project (yes, SLAP). The idea is to inspire and empower citizen activists across the city to voice their anger at the way things are, and to come up with a "Contract for L.A." outlining a bold, future-oriented agenda for the city.

"The group will hold its first rally on Monday, July 14, at noon on the steps of City Hall. "People from around the city of Los Angeles will come together," reads the group's Web site, www.savingla.com, "to demand that our city leadership join the people in making Los Angeles a great city."

"I took issue with Kaye when he backed Valley secession back in 2002. It struck me as a misguided protest, whose end result would be to create another huge bureaucracy side by side with Los Angeles' existing one.

"But now I think he's onto something.

"'I came to the conclusion that the problem is us," he told me by phone. "We don't seize power. We let them use our money to run circles around us."

"'The Internet has leveled the playing field somewhat, helping citizens organize, spreading important local news in a town whose main paper has all but abdicated that role. Saving L.A. hopes to inspire "a lively public discussion," said Kaye, and stiffen the spine of leaders like Villaraigosa. "If we have enough energy and can define the agenda," he said, "maybe these people will do what they have to do."

"Monday, July 14, at noon Ron Kaye will be on the steps of City Hall -- mad as hell.

"I'll be there, too."

 

That's the slogan we've come up with for the Bastille Day rally at City Hall at noon July 14.

It is meant to launch a new era in L.A., to give birth to a democratic movement that empowers the people and the communities to solve the growing problems caused by a failing educational system and a failing government.

The battle for a greater Los Angeles will not be won through pleading for our leaders to solve the city's problems or through a series of reforms or at the ballot box.

It can only be won through people power. Thousands of people across the city have worked hard to make their communities better and become angry and frustrated by the lip service, the indifference, the arrogance, of a system taken hostage by special interests.

The Saving L.A. Project -- S.L.A.P. -- is organizing a rally for July 14, Bastille Day, the moment the French Revolution began, to launch a movement that will bring together people who love L.A. and want to see change. The protest will start at noon at the South Lawn of City Hall.

Already, people from San Pedro to Sunland-Tujunga and many neighborhoods between them have committed to come to the rally and dump their grievances at City Hall and demand redress.

It is the start of something big. In numbers there is strength and by forming a coalition of concerned citizens we can make a difference, something dozens of local community groups have been unable to achieve over decades of struggling.

Take Back L.A. -- Demand A Great City. That's the theme of the protest. And greatness is our goal.

Great schools where every child is given the opportunity to learn and realize their full potential.

Great neighborhoods, free of gangs and the constant menace of violence, where families can live in safety.

Great businesses that add to the quality of life and provide great jobs.

We must confront the traffic congestion now by finding solutions that give people the choice between walking, biking, busing or driving from place to place.

We must become partners in every development to make sure that every project enhances the quality of our lives.

L.A. is a great place and now it must become a great city before it is too late.

The path we are being led down is the road to ruin, a city of rich and poor. A great city is built around the middle class and offers opportunity to all to achieve that It is not built out of mansions in guarded enclaves and slums under the control of hoodlums.

The people of the city must become full partners with the government in deciding how L.A. moves forward and that can only be achieved by having the power to help or hurt our political leaders. For too long, developers, contractors and public employee unions have held all the power and the residents of L.A. are left begging for what they believe will protect or improve their lives.

The Saving L.A. Project will change that  by forming a united front. We don't have to agree on everything. We just need to support each other in our efforts to make our communities better and our city greater.

Come to the Bastille Day rally. Join hands with your neighbors. This is the birth of real democracy in L.A. where the people are the bosses and the politicians and bureaucrats are the public servants.

June 30 is the end of the six-month reporting period for candidates running in next year's city elections.

In an effort to scare away challengers, Antonio Villaraigosa has pulled out all stops to raise so much money from every quarter -- New York, Chicago, San Francisco, maybe even Israel -- that he's certain to haul in quite a bundle.

The one who guesses closest to the exact dollar amount the mayor has raised will win five coupons for double-doubles at IN-N-OUT.  All you need to do is sign up now (on the promo onthe right) to volunteer, participate or just stay informed about the Saving L.A. Protest at City Hall at noon on July 14, Bastille Day and email your guess to ANTONIOCASH@AOL.COM.

The deadline is midnight Friday June 27. All entries must include your email address and at least a first name. I'll be the judge (on this one you can trust me).

And just for fun go to Mayor Sam's blog and check out the brilliant campaign bumper stickers for possible mayoral candidates. For some reason, the only announced challenger, Walter Moore, is so far left out so check him out at his site.

I know now I will not be alone in a Bastille Day protest at City Hall.

So many others have stepped forward and said they too are fed up with the arrogance and failure of our city government that I know there will be a decent crowd at high noon on the 14th of July.

The question is whether there will be enough decent people to become an army that storms the bastille and shakes the foundation of L.A.'s corrupt political culture.

Saving L.A. -- that's the mission. Celebrating L.A. the place and demanding that it becomes a city, a real city where we all come together around a vision of something greater than ourselves, a great city.

We are at the tipping point. Too much greed. Too much poverty. Too many problems left  unsolved. Bad schools, over-development, traffic congestion, neighborhoods held hostage by gangs, official indifference to the values of the people, fragmented and weak communities -- L.A. teeters on the brink.

It doesn't have to be that way. We can have great schools and great neighborhoods, great streets and great parks, great busineses and great jobs. We can be greener and safer.We can be happier.

But we will never achieve that when all the leadership gives us is choices between paying twice for garbage collection or fewer cops, between power outages and water shortages and higher rates, between something bad and something worse.

City Hall has more than enough money to solve the city's problems. But too much is given away in sweetheart contracts and giveaways to developers and contractors for no purpose other than to maintain the system of failure. Too much is spent in ways that don't matter and too little on ways that would make our lives better and our communities more livable.

We need to spend our money smarter to create the kind of choices people want and the city needs. We need to raise the standards and create the kind of a city where we can choose to walk or ride a bike or take a bus or drive when we leave our homes to go to work or play. We need to able to choose between a good public school or a good charter school. We need good choices, not choices between the lesser of two evils.

The  leadership of this city is incapable of real change. It will take the people. It will take you to step forward and get the revolution started by joining the Saving L.A. Protest and make it a S.L.A.P. in the face of our elected officials, a wakeup call that the rules are changing, that the people are taking over.

I'm just a voice in the crowd. But people are stepping forward who have spent years working in the trenches to make their neighborhoods better, who know how to organize and make this happen. It will take more people to pull this off, to volunteer and turn this into something big and the start of something bigger.

So let me know if you're coming, if you want to help figure out how we make this protest a celebration of the spirit of L.A.'s people and their hopes for the future. We don't need to get mad to get even. We can come together and party and if there's enough of us there, they'll get the message.

This city belongs to you and me. So let's take our gripes and grievances down to City Hall and leave them there as a petition for redress. Every neighborhood, every group has their own set of issues, their own values. We don't need to agree on anything except our right to a government that serves us, not special interests, and our respect for each other's right to be empowered to affect public policy.

This S.L.A.P. in City Hall's face can be the beginning, the dawning of a new L.A. Come join the party!
 


 

To be perfectly honest, I never quite trusted Hal Bernson, the longtime councilman from the Northwest Valley.
For one thing, Hal admired his council contemporaries from his early years, men who engaged in more than a few visible deals that stunk. And for another, Hal had a few stinkers of his own.
Greasing the skids of government never has bothered me as much as nothing getting done that benefits the public. In that regard, Hal on a few occasions would challenge my criticisms with a lecture about how well the city operated to get done what people wanted. He was particularly eloquent when discussing the efficiency with which garbage trucks came by every week right on time and, he would note, it didn't cost homeowners a dime.
I bring this up in the context of my call yesterday that we protest the city's new policy of double taxation for trash pickup by going down to City Hall on Bastille Day July 14 and putting a bag of garbage on the steps as an act of civil disobedience. My good friend Teddy says we should call it the "L.A. Tea Party."
There's good reason to choose garbage as our symbolic tea. L.A.'s trash policy itself fails the smell test.