Community Activists: June 2008 Archives

Hooray for urban cyclist Stephen Box who's the lead organizer for the July 14 Bastille Day protest at City Hall. He won this week's L.A. Times' Bottleneck Blog contest by submitting this photo and report on a Hollywood traffic hazard you wouldn't believe.

"This patch of roadway abomination is found on Western Avenue, northbound approaching Lexington. It is part of a much larger network of roadway cracks, gaps and holes that keep Western Avenue cyclists alert...

"It wasn't until a bus rolled by that I realized that the pothole was actually a series of asphalt islands that "floated" or moved independently of each other, offering a sophisticated "suspension" quality to the roadway, evidence that perhaps this was not simply another pothole network but perhaps an experimental LADOT roadway innovation! The "comfort lane!"

 "The roadway is so broken that the safest place to ride is out to the left edge of the curb lane,  maintaining a straight line and controlling the lane. The cyclist above demonstrates the correct lane positioning for Western Avenue. This is true for many of the larger boulevards in the area, from Vermont and Western to Hollywood and Sunset.

"To those who might argue that the cyclist should give up the lane to motor vehicle traffic and ride the gutter pan, another obstacle awaits! Granted, the city of Los Angeles has a grate replacement program under way, but it only covers an average of  5 grates per Council District. Grate! Great!

"Ultimately, I'd gladly trade all the promises of a network of bikeways in the sweet by-and-by for a simple roadway maintenance program that puts a priority on keeping the curb lanes ridable. The big streets really can work for many, they actually get across town, there's space, when traffic is flowing it's a great place to ride...but the potholes!

"Clean up the curb lane, it's good for cyclists and that is good for all of us!"

This is one of the many reasons Stephen has gotten involved in trying to make L.A. a great city instead of a pothole hell without anywhere near the number of bike lanes a great city of the 21st century should have.

What do you think is wrong with L.A.? What do you want to see happen that would make it the city you think is great? When will you get mad enough to do something about it?

People from all over L.A. are committed to coming to City Hall to air their gripes at noon July 14 and help launch the Saving L.A. Project -- S.L.A.P. -- a citywide coalition of concerned citizens who are ready to work together to Take Back L.A. and Demand A Great City.

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.

UPDATE: Home Depot cancels June 24 meeting at Sunland-Tujunga meeting at school.

n following up the controversy over LAUSD issuing a permit to Home Depot to hold an "open house" in Sunland-Tujunga next week, I asked officials a series of questions and got a written response.

I also spoke with School Board Member Julie Korenstein who represents the area who said the officials in the district's Beyond The Bell program which manages civic center permits and other non-school issues were "just doing their job...as if it were an everyday permit."

She added: "I'm sure Home Depot would be far better off doing it in a neutral place...They're setting up what could be a problem."

Her reference was to the fact the No Home Depot activists are as welcome as anybody else at the Mt. Gleason Middle School event.

As for LAUSD, here's the bottom line: "The permit has been issued and the permit applicant will be permitted to use the facility in accordance with the rules and guidelines."

Here's the full statement from LAUSD's Beyond The Bell officials:

Question: According to the LAUSD website, school sites are available to nonprofits and by extension to community groups for what are pretty benign purposes, which are also spelled out in the state law on public school sites . Why was Home Depot, a highly profitablecompany, given a permit when it hopes to use the meeting to profit indirectly by winning public support for its story?

Answer: The civic center permit was given to Mr. Abraham Mercado who requested use of the facility to conduct a meeting open to the public.  Mr. Mercado submitted an application for a "public meeting re: Home Depot."  A meeting to discuss matters of general or public interest qualifies for a civic center permit.  The District's civic center permit application process is intended to be fair and neutral to all applicants.  We do not judge whether a proposed use is worthy of the use of a school facility because such a subjective determination could result in discrimination.  Mr. Mercado also checked the box indicating that no fees or charges or contributions would be collected at the public meeting.  If Mr. Mercado had indicated that he was going to collect fees, charges or contributions at the meeting, his application would have been denied.

The issuance or denial of an application for a civic center permit is not an indication or LAUSD's support or disapproval of a proposed use or activity.  Permits are granted to individuals, groups, and organizations (non-profit and for profit) based on the activity.  Examples of private and commercial venture groups/companies/associations, etc. that have been granted civic center permits in the past are: 20th Century Fox, Northrop Grumman/Litton, Tribune/KTLA, Ticketmaster, Fidelity National Title Company, Galpin Ford, and Cedar-Sinai Medical Center Group.  Education Code section 38130-38139 and the Rules adopted by the Board of Education for LAUSD apply to the issuance of civic center permits.  Education Code section 38130 and LAUSD Board Rules 1301 and 1302 do not restrict the issuance of civic center permits to solely non-profits or not-for-profit organizations.
 

I have long mocked the idea that all the campaign money and favors bestowed on politicians brought special interests what has been euphemistically called "access."

Developers, contractors, anyone wanting to profit from government get to meet privately (i.e. secretly) with elected officials, their staffs and the bureaucracy and gather information not publicly available and to set the terms of the discussion by conveying what is in their self-interest before anyone else has a say.

This is usually done for these special interests by lobbyists, lawyers, public relations experts, consultants and political strategists who have long relationships with the government officials, relationships that are both personal and professional, and enriched by the flow of political money and advice, both free and paid for.

Most of these contacts and the business transactions they involve never even bubble to the surface, never even become public knowledge. And when they do, it is far down the road. At the point ordinary citizens become aware of what's going on, the game is up. With limited  knowledge of the fine details, relatively inexperienced at such games, the public is easily dismissed as NIMBYs, easily beaten

I knew this was a great injustice. But until I got down on the ground as a community activist myself in the last two months I didn't know just how great an injustice it is.

In hearing first-hand the frustration of community groups who just want a legitimate voice in the political process, a seat at the table of power, I got angry, angry enough to decide something dramatic had to be done to change the situation.

That's why I called for the Saving L.A. Protest at noon on July 14 at City Hall, to take the first step in creating a citywide coalition of concerned citizens who would be able to mobilize to change the rules of engagement at City Hall, to change the way the process works, to make government accountable to the people.

It's a tall order I know. But the system has grown so arrogant and abusive that we need what my friend Teddy says is a Boston Tea Party to ignite the public's emotions and get something going.

Just look at how Steve Sugerman, a onetime deputy mayor, and Richard Alatorre, a longtime elected official  -- admitted felons who were convicted for crimes involving public corruption -- are getting rich operating deep inside City Hall \. They have total access to the mayor and everyone else while the public comes with hat hand to be ignored during their two-minutes before the City Council or double-talked when they try to get information.

Former Fleishman-Hillard p.r. executive Sugerman pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge, saying he thought his boss Doug Dowie wanted him to overbill the Department of Water and Power yet he's the point man earning a fortune peddling his influence for the massive Playa Vista development, the Southwest Museum and other clients with city busiiness.

He's registered as a lobbyist but claims most of his income doesn't come from actually peddling influence directly to the pols; it comes from helping clients manipulate the political process so you, the people, aren't entitled to know that.

And Jack Weiss -- the wannabe top city law enforcement officer as City Attorney -- thinks nothing of having Sugerman host a recent fund-raiser for him. We'll never really know how much was raised at the event because the biannual reports don't show anything but the date the check was written, not who attended the event and when the deal was cut.

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!
 


 

UPDATE: I haven't been able to connect with LAUSD on the subject but I'm told that despite what the website says about non-profits only, the district has permitted developers and other commercial interests to use school sites in the past. And that's my point public rules for the public and private rules for special interests is the hallmark of LAUSD and City Hall for that matter.

It has been a long-standing policy of the LAUSD to allow the use of public school facilities after hours only to non-profit organizations.

That's why the Sunland-Tujanga community got so aroused when it found out Mt. Gleason school was being turned over to Home Depot for a community meeting June 24 to win support for its effort to convert a closed K-Mart into one of their stores.

They started an email campaign that inundated school officials this week with complaints that giving a permit to one of America's most profitable companies violated the district's own rule.

Whatever you might think about the community's years long fight to keep Home Depot out of Sunland-Tujunga, you should be concerned about how LAUSD solved the controversy.

This is what they put up on district's website today:

Civic Center Permits

---

 
The major function of the Civic Center Permit Office is the issuance of the appropriate permit to allow for the use of school facilities in conformance with the California Education Code mandate and the Board of Education rules, which require that each and every public school facility be made available as a civic center to members of the community and non-profit organizations for supervised recreational activities, meetings and public discussions, when regular school activities are not disrupted.

To qualify for a permit:
A group must be non-profit.(Incorrect)
Updated 6/12/08: The activity requested must be not for profit.

Poof, the problem is gone. Just change the rules. And for that I think the district with an unbroken record of failing millions of students for 30 years deserves the Chutzpah Award for pure blatant utter contempt for the public.

You got to give the bloated, overpaid and incompetent bureaucracy credit for nakedly showing exactly how they deal with all kinds of problems. Cross out the wrong answer and put in the right one. In a word, cheat.

That's exactly why the district fails. It gets the answers to problems wrong every day but instead of learning from its mistakes and getting better, it simply crosses out failure and writes in success That way there's no accountability, no growth.

And that's exactly why the people of Sunland-Tujunga feel that no matter what happens, the Home Depot store will be shoved down their throats Their experience with the city is no different than with the schools and that's what I'm hearing from people all over the city.

For my money, there is only one answer and that's to change tactics and to stop playing by the rules of a rigged game.

So if you care about the schools or the quality of life in your neighborhood or any other issues that affect your life because of local policies, join me and other community activists in a protest at City Hall on July 14, Bastille Day, the day the French Revolution began.

Ellen  Vukovich
Community Correspondent
 

I hate to admit it, but I still like living in Los Angeles.

Well, not exactly Los Angeles, but the San Fernando Valley, primarily Sherman Oaks.  That's why I volunteer my time to help keep my community a nice place to live and work in. 

However, I feel like vultures are circling around us like downed prey. I realize that our relatively traffic-less part of Ventura Boulevard and laid back Valley lifestyle could soon be devoured by a pro-development City Hall. 

Of course, we will fight to keep that from happening. The Valley has long been known for active community involvement but, that's no excuse for sitting on the sidelines, no matter where you live and work.  

Frankly, our generally great So Cal weather almost makes for a good trade-off between our worsening traffic congestion, and degradation of a once-affordable quality of life.

For those yearning to escape into a swimming pool, our mostly sunny days means we actually get to take pleasure in doing something the City does right.  Namely, taking a swim in a nearby Olympic-sized swimming pool owned and operated by LA.

The fact is this City run facility works very well -- clean and clear filtered water, hot water in the showers, and convenient hours reminds me that Los Angeles is still capable of doing something beneficial for the public, at a relatively modest cost to them.

And, yes, I do take note that I am a contradiction -- I spend more time out of the water stating what needs to be fixed in Los Angeles than remembering to say some parts do work well, such as non-toilet water filled swimming pools. 

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.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson

Since I retired from the Daily News two months ago, I've learned one thing above all others from email, comments and community meetings: The people of L.A. are afraid that City Hall willl trample on them at every turn.

That's what led me to this quote from Thomas Jefferson that speaks straight to what I believe is the only way to change L.A. for the better.

So many people who have worked so hard for so long for their communities believe that their government is their enemy, that even voting, sending emails and letters of protest, organizing their neighborhoods will not make much of a difference.

In Jefferson's terms, they fear their government. And that is truly tyranny.

That's what I have believed personally for a long time. I did what I could to show the truth of it in stories and editorials at the Daily News. I believe there has been some change over the years, most notably the LAPD is no longer a militaristic army at war with the people, particularly the poor and minorities.

But for the most part, the public gets lip service to their grievances while City Hall continues to serve itself and the special interests.

What keeps coming up for me is that only drastic action -- a campaign of civil disobedience -- can possibly change things.

Already, there are signs that others feel as I do.