Recently in Community Activists Category

To a great extent, the history and development of L.A. is tied tightly to the Department of Water and Power.

From the days of William Mulholland and the takeover of the San Fernando Valley by the Chandler family and their pals and the "Chinatown" era through the formation of pubic employee unions to efforts at overdevelopment today, the DWP is at the heart of much of the story of how money and power have operated.

It's in that context that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa politicized the city's monopoly utility last December with the appointment of David Nahai as general manager and Raman Raj as chief operating officer. Nahai, as DWP commission president, had established his obedience while Raj had proved his loyalty to Villaraigosa and his close ally, DWP union president Brian D'Arcy, so well that he was fired from the utility back in 2001 because of it.

Back in December, the mayor was pushing for another round of water and power rate hikes. The DWP had become a cash cow for the city and the mayor needed cash.

The first sign of where his administration was going came early on when he could have rejected a contracted with D'Arcy's IBEW that contained an inflation escalator clause that could give the utility's highly-paid workers raises of up to 6 percent a year. So more money was needed to pay that bill, to fix the power system that was plagued by blackouts and to deal with a looming water shortage caused by plans to densify the city.            .

Nahai came in saying all the right things. He pledged "unprecedented transparency," according to a Daily News article at the time, in how the rate hikes would be spent, including an oversight committee to track the money.

"The people of Los Angeles deserve, and are entitled to, accountability," Nahai proclaimed.

It was the first of many incidents where Nahai showed a propensity to tell people what they wanted to hear regardless of the truth.

The truth was that early on he put representatives of Neighborhood Councils in their place. The NCs had negotiated a deal with DWP officials previously that gave them an oversight role but when they tried to exercise that authority with Nahai, he made it clear he would deal with the letter of the deal but not its spirit of citizen oversight and civic engagement.

There was nothing transparent in how DWP money was being spent in Nahai's promise to put $152,000 of public money into Raj's pension fund account -- a secret deal that only just came out and led to an explosion that made them both renounce the deal. And then there are the contracts DWP approved with Raj's former clients -- contracts the mayor said should be rejected last night.

A protest organized by talk show host Doug McIntyre and broadcast live on KABC 790AM drew several hundred people to Councilman Jack Weiss' Westside office in support of demands for a crackdown on illegal immigrant gangbangers.

Weiss ws nowhere to be seen. He was off dedicating a three-way crosswalk with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa while other council members -- like Bernard Parks talking about banning all smoking near any other person -- were doing their best to distract public attention from the Jamiel's Law controversy

Even in the face of the planned protest, Weiss, the wannabe City Attorney, who has kept Jamiel's Law bottled up in committee backed down and agreed -- after asked Chief Bill Bratton what to do -- to hold hearings on the proposal but not until October.

That leaves the mayor, police chief and most council members in the high-risk situation of trying to explain the next killing of an innocent person like Jamiel Shaw Jr. by an illegal immigrant gangbanger with a criminal record.

Jamiel Shaw Sr. and his wife Anita, a soldier just back from assignment in Iraq, and Danielle Bologna whose three family members were gunned down in the Bay  Area by an illegal immigrant gangster attended the rally after appearing in studio with McIntyre.

"Weiss has been put in the position of being held accountable," Shaw Sr. said in a television  interview.

"Since April he's being trying to hide it...The issue is are you for illegal alien gangbangers or against them.".

The Saving L.A. Project took some positive steps toward getting organized at a Town Hall Meeting Saturday at the Glassell Park Community/Service Center.

About 100 people from every corner of LA. attended and participated in various breakout groups dealing with various aspects of the organization: Advocacy, Outreach, Legal/Information, Truth Squads, Issues, Schools.

The group as a whole endorsed the Mission Statement articulated by Bob Gelfand, long-time San Pedro community activist:

The Saving L.A. Project (SLAP) opposes the undue influence of money in L.A. City Government decisions, expect the L.A. City Government to obey and enforce the law and to stop the common practice of lying to the public.

The group approved this by voice vote as well as me becoming honorary chairman while a process is put in place to create a board of directors and take other administrative steps.

There were two guest speakers, Soledad Garcia, head of the Neighborhood Councils' Oversight Committee on the Department of Water and Power, who reported on the good and bad of the Memorandum of Understanding with the utility, and Walter Moore who talked about his campaign for mayor and  how SLAP can pull community activists together and help defeat incumbent city elected officials in the upcoming elections. There also was an open forum

After the breakout groups reported back, there was a discussion to have another meeting or series of meeting around the city in early September.

"You got to meet Lucille Saunders."  I must have been told that half a dozen times in the past few weeks. '"She's the one who gets things done."

At the Saving L.A. Project's Bastille Day rally at City Hall I did get to meet Lucille and spend a few minutes with her. My wife spent a lot of time with her and told me later, "You've got to really meet Lucille. She's amazing."

Lucille Saunders, psychotherapist in private practice and longtime community activist, has taken a bead on the No. 1 problem in Los Angeles: Out-of-control development without a coherent plan for making the city better for its residents, workers or businesses.

She's found the fatal flaw -- and she's trying to drive a stake through the heart of City Hall's corruption.

What has been going on for years as anybody who has paid the least bit of attention knows is that our public servants have been selling out the public interest to developers.

What Saunders has found is that City Hall is violating state law and the city's own general plan for development -- and the violations have been going on for a decade.

Saunders and the La Brea-Willoughby Coalition she leads sued the city last month with the help of attorneys Sabrina Venskus and Emilee Moeller. They don't want money, only for the city to obey the law. Here is the suit, click on the link to download:
labrea.pdf.

"We will not be diverted from what we're asking. We will not be co-opted," Saunders told me."There's audits and procedures required by law that must be done... or the city cannot know whether developing is outpacing infrastructure. The city hasn't followed the rules since 1998."

If Saunders wins, we ought to build a statue to her on the South Lawn of City Hall.

Victory would mean the judge imposes a moratorium on city approval of zoning changes and changes to specific community or the general plans until the monitoring and reporting is completed. It also would force officials to sit down at the table of power with the people and figure out what kind of city this is and how the quality of life can be improved for all and make sure new projects enhance, rather than degrade, the urban environment or face the consequences with an increasingly organized and effective electorate.

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

For those who came from every corner of L.A. to City Hall on Monday, something good and positive happened at the Saving L.A. Project's rally.

There was a feeling of belonging, of being among people like yourself who care deeply about the community they are part of, of being among people who have worked long and hard to make their dreams come true and kept alive their spirit in the face of official resistance and the apathy of so many.

For a couple of hours, they felt hope that they were there at the birth of a movement that finally would bring to life the real spirit of the city -- the spirit of the freest place on earth, a place where dreams really can come true.

These aren't people who dream of wealth or glamor or stardom or the pleasure of libidinal excesses. Theirs are more mundane dreams: Good schools, safe streets, healthy neighborhoods, a good life for themselves and others.

There were in all 200 or so people there, 135 signed up to be part of this people's coalition. Most of the rest already were involved.

Here's how the Daily News, Times and City News Service covered Monday's Bastille Day rally, which also got coverage local radio and TV news shows.

"The political institution of LA is corrupt," Kaye told a sizable crowd yesterday afternoon. "We've got to take them down and be the boss."

The crowd, which was mostly white and middle-aged, clapped, cheered, and egged Kaye on to say some more. It was the first public rally for the former editor's brainchild called The Saving LA Project, and it showed, at the very least, that a groundswell of frustrated citizens were now willing to speak up, organize, and hit the streets. The politicians will be watching Kaye's follow through.

Daily News:

Ex-editor holds  fix-L.A. rally

The impetuous fool in me came out a while back and I declared publicly I was going to engage in an act of civil disobedience and carry a bag of garbage down to City Hall on Bastille Day and deposit it as an act of civil disobedience.

Foolish I might be but I'm a man of my word and on Monday I'll bring a bag of garbage and leave it on the steps of City Hall as a symbol of protest, an expression of my anger over soaring trash and other fees and the declining quality of life in the city I love.

I've learned since I made that declaration that we don't need acts of civil disobedience to change L.A. from a city rotting in the failure of its leadership to a city rising on the energy of its people.

The outpouring of support from hundreds of dedicated people from all over the city who have worked so hard for so long to make our community better has helped me to see the light.

We have the numbers. We have the knowledge and the skill. We have the leaders in community groups of one type or another to take power from the special interests without acts of defiance.

Nothing but greed holds the power structure together and it will crumble in the face of a united community. Our elected officials are held hostage by the unions, developers and contractors who flatter their delusion of self-importance with the money that keeps them in office.

From the Eastside to the Westside, from San Pedro to the Valley, I've heard over and over similar stories of frustration with our city government and our elected officials, and with their neighbors hiding behind indifference and ignorance.

The issues may be different in different neighborhoods, in different communities of interest, but the experience is the same. We get the runaround while special interests are buying access and favors.

It's time to put aside the differences and find the common ground that brings us together as people, as residents of L.A., as people who want a great city with great schools and great neighborhoods.

The power structure has used these differences -- race, class, needs, values -- to keep us separated and weak, begging for crumbs from the table of power while the insiders feast on the city's wealth.

We need to change the system. We need to seize power and make our government accountable to us, to do what we want.

There's only one way for this happen. It's through a community coalition that is united in support of each other, united in demanding openness, honesty, accountability and respect for the people of the city.

This is America and the basic civil rights of the ordinary men and women of L.A. have been trampled upon for too long. We have a right to own our schools, our neighborhoods and our city.

On Monday -- Bastille Day when the French Revolution began more than 200 years ago -- people from every part of L.A. are coming to City Hall at noon to Take Back Los Angeles -- Demand A Great City.

We don't need garbage to symbolize our frustration. We need each other.

We'll listen to each other's stories of the failure of city government to serve us and the failure of the schools to serve our children. We'll talk about overdevelopment and bad development, traffic congestion and poor public transit and we will open the dialogue on how to solve these and so many other problems now and in the long run.

We need to learn from each other. We need to understand each other. And we need to come up with solutions that achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.

We know there are no easy answers. But through an honest and open public conversation we can do a lot better than what we've been doing.

Whether there are 30 of us or 300 come to City Hall on Monday, this will be the start of something big, something great. It's not going to come from high from the people in power. It's going to have to come from the grassroots, from you.

This rally is only the first step. We will follow up quickly with a town hall meeting to organize our coalition of the people. And we will build on that and grow more confident with each success and see those on the sidelines step forward into the public arena.

That's my dream anyway, fool that I might be. But I know now that there are others who share that dream and are willing to help make it come true.

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."

 

UPDATE: Police intend to seek criminal charges against a motorist involved in a road rage  incident that seriously injured two cyclists in Mandeville Canyon on July Fourth. Laist.com has shocking photos and the story.

 You've heard the story now of how the city is destroying my neighborhood by passively standing by while a single-family house has been turned into a tenement apartment building and how commenters say the same thing is happening in their neighborhoods.

But did you know that golfers at city courses now have to show driver's licenses to prove they really are legal residents of L.A. even as City Hall resists asking for the same kind of proof from illegal immigrant gangsters who commit crimes, violent or otherwise.

And then there's the astonishing case of the LAPD's handcuffing and searching bicyclists for not having a front light -- one of a growing number of incidents logged at laist.com that suggests the LAPD has decided cyclists, not gangsters, are the real menace to our society.

SoapBoxLA.com reported on the incident that occurred last Wednesday in Hollywood and it seemed so outrageous I decided to call the cyclists involved myself.

The story involves a high-tech software developer, a young woman and a UCLA doctoral candidate in mathematics who were cycling home from Echo Park to the Westside when they were treated the way the LAPD used to treat hoodlums in its militaristic glory days under Daryl Gates.

The cyclists -- Alex Thompson, Paul Bringetto and Andrea Tzvetkov -- saw a Latino man slowly riding his bike being pulled over and handcuffed. They didn't know the man but they decided to stop and observe what was happening because that's the protocol adopted by activists who are demanding a Cyclist Bill of Rights.

Officers Corona and Stine did not like being watched and certainly didn't like Bringetto asking what was going on.

"It's like they equate bikes with poverty and poverty with criminals and think they can get away with anything," said Thompson, the doctoral candidate who will be blogging about the incident today at Westside BikeSide, an activist website.

He recalled Corona telling Bringetto, "Mind your own business."

Bringetto: "What did he do wrong?"

Corona: "Don't move. Stay there."

Bringetto: "We're just here to observe."

Corona: "You're going to jail."