Rumors of War & Secession - VOTE NO
Union and tenants
forever!
by Carol
Fondiller
Oh, please Valley,
don’t secede! We love you.
All of Los Angeles loves the unique beauty that
the valley offers us! We love the sunsets generated by your gas guzzling carbon
dioxide emissions farted out by top-heavy flag-laden SUV’s as they trundle
along the freeways that they need so they can get the hell out of the valley,
away from the smog that their pick ups, vans and campers emit.
We treasure your meth-manufacturing
gang ridden neighborhoods. What would Los Angeles do if the lap-dancing
sleaze-ridden strip mall black top parking lots of K-mart were to leave Los
Angeles? Please, Valley, don’t leave!
What would we do without the headlines
of families of 5 murdered, interviews of people saying well he seemed like a
real nice person, while the T.V. camera lingers on the wide 6-lane highway that
zooms through neighborhoods. And we find out that the family next door was more
Manson than Cleaver, and still the Valleyites treasure their illusion of a
Warner Bros. Andy Hardy fest, with nary a gay brother, unwed sister or child
abusing dad within yards of the pool or the green lawn courtesy of Owens Valley
and the Colorado River.
We love you
for holding on to the AMERICAN DREAM, as you fire up the barbie with enough
gasoline to fuel all of Serbia.
We
treasure your children, your drop-outs and throw-outs, as they come to Venice to
find or lose themselves.
O.K. O.K.
Writing against secession is more difficult than I thought it would be. At heart
I am as much a secessionist as Tom Paine and Scarlet O’Hara.
Decades ago, I was among the hundreds
of people who filled city hall chanting “Free Venice! Free Venice!”
after the city council said yes to yet another project that would guarantee yet
more urban removal, more gentrification and more destruction of neighborhoods to
get rid of the “undesirables” i.e., low income people and people of
color. At that time the Free Venice Organizing Committee was deeply serious
about Venice seceding from Los Angeles. There were issues ranging from pot-holes
to “benign neglect” of the Ocean Front walk to “benign
neglect” of the residents of Venice who were not members of the absentee
landlords or business or speculator community. Venetians of a certain class were
treated as if they were the enemy by the police at the encouragement and
prodding of the propertied class. Venetians had very little autonomy.
Yes. We had voices, but no one would
listen. So I know how it feels to have the patriarchal attitude
“we’re doing this for your own good. Shut up and enjoy it.”
And yes there’ll be some collateral damage i.e., mass evictions of
low-income home owners, tenants and small businesses. But that’s progress.
Now, secession, the word that was only
uttered by crackpot radicals in the “slum by the sea,” is being
chanted by the respectable God-fearing homeowner valley folk. For sure! But
I’m apprehensive about the people who are spearheading the campaign.
According to Larry Gross, Executive
Director of Coalition for Economic Survival, “The same people we fought 25
years ago for rent control, are the same people who are trying to break Los
Angeles apart. They may tell you they support tenant rights, that they would
support rent control, but their records tell a different story.”
Assemblyman Keith Richman, a candidate
for valley mayor signed the pledge to keep rent control but has consistently
voted against tenants’ rights. Richman’s recent assembly votes
included voting against Senate Bill 1403, a bill that would extend 30-day
eviction notices to 60 days. Governor Davis just signed S.B. 1403. Richman also
voted against A.B. 2330, a bill that would allow tenants to collect interest on
their security deposits. Richman also voted against the 2 billion dollar housing
bond on the November ballot (S.B. 1227) that will provide funds to preserve at
risk HUD subsidy housing. Paula Boland, a leading council candidate and
secession leader voted as an assembly member to restrict the abilities of cities
to enact strong effective rent control laws. Richard Katz, Valley Independent
Committee President, while an assemblyman, voted against tenants’ rights
at every opportunity he had. He voted against bills to restrict housing
demolitions and voted to cut state housing funds to cities with rent control.
Richard Close, a real estate attorney and Valley Vote chairperson was a leader
of the Coalition for Housing, the landlord group which spearheaded efforts to
stop the adoption of L.A. Rent Control Law of 1978 and yes Los Angeles has one
of the weakest rent control regs in the country. But now L.A. is waking up to
the fact that over 50 percent of the residents of L.A. are tenants and the mayor
and city council recently approved the following:
A moratorium on major rehabilitation
evictions. This action prevented the eviction of a 104-unit complex in the
valley.
Filing lawsuits to prevent
owners of HUD subsidized affordable housing from opting out of their rental
subsidies (#1 N. Venice, a HUD financed low income senior housing unit might
benefit from this – See Susanne Chilton’s letter in this
issue).
A $100 million housing trust
program to preserve and produce affordable
housing.
The people who are chanting,
“Hell no!” and emailing Free Venice today, also worry me. Some of
them think secession would be “cute.” Some of them think that Abbot
Kinney Blvd. is too charming to have low income housing in Irving Tabor Court in
back of Abbot Kinney Blvd. And goodness me what would we do about cars? Imagine
low-income housing encroaching on the sacred parking space. Some of these people
are in favor of low-income housing, but not next to them.
They have a Walt Disney-Beaver Cleaver
city walk vision of small-town U.S.A. populated by the Hardys, Aunt Bee, Sheriff
Andy, and for a character or 2, Goober, and Gilligan, and maybe the beatnik guy
on Dobie Gillis.
And yes I am deeply
pissed off at the cavalier way Venice has been treated in redistricting. This is
nothing against Councilwoman Miscikowski who seems willing to hear what people
have to say, but a councilwoman for whom we did not vote now represents us. And
this bothers a lot of people in Venice. The Los Angeles City Council could have
worked it so that our elected councilperson would not have been gerrymandered
out. And for those Galanter haters, she would have been term limited out in one
year, never to be able to run for city council again. So here I am world’s
crummiest debater, shilly shallying about secession.
Yes, Los Angeles is too big, but do I
want a patchwork of carved out cities with different laws every 10 miles?
Do I want cut backs of childcare,
housing preservation and city workers under the guise of efficiency and
economics?
Do I want closing of even
more hospitals and maybe preference given to private school funding over public
school funding?
Do we want these
separate little cities with their well-disguised restrictive covenants ranging
from how high one’s lawn can grow to what color you can paint your house
or proliferation of non-regulated bars (because the police aren’t paid
adequate salaries and are subject to the bribes and graft of certain businesses)
and yet more non-regulated businesses who can ignore environmental regulations?
Do we want anti union regulations
disguised as economy? Can we deal with eviscerating the minimum wage laws that
have been enacted by Los Angeles? When or if the valley and Hollywood secede,
whom will the powers that be listen to?
From the looks of the candidates who
are backing secession, certainly not the working poor who also inhabit the
valley, and have yet to meet Mr. And Mrs. Cleaver.
Posted: Tue - October 1, 2002 at 06:48 PM