A Response to DONE


By Elinor Aurthur, GRVNC Board Member

Mr. Greg Nelson, of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, has waged two assaults on our popular, democratically elected Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council.


In July of this year, Mr. Nelson shut off funding for our neighborhood council for two months, until the City Attorney determined that the funding should be resumed and the Board should be recognized, pending the resolution of challenges to the election.

This past week Mr. Nelson again shut off funding and told all City agencies that the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council was not authorized to speak for the people of Venice. For the second time now he has attempted to shut us down on the basis of a paper-thin technicality.

We understood that the neighborhood councils are to represent—to empower--the people of the City of Los Angeles. The City Charter states that the neighborhood councils are to be established to advise the City Council and the mayor of the will and the opinions of the people in the City’s neighborhoods.

The current Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council and the last neighborhood council were elected by a clear majority of voters (in what were among the largest turnouts of voters of all the neighborhood council elections in the city). Those elected represent an ethnic and income diversity reflective of the Venice population.

We have been working effectively, on an all-volunteer basis, to represent the people of Venice. Our programs and efforts are overwhelmingly popular with the majority of the voters, the evidence being that we keep winning. We work for things that matter deeply to the people of Venice—for the preservation of affordable housing, for community control of development, for youth, for the poor and the homeless, for public art, for civil rights and civil liberties.

The Human Relations Commission was appointed arbitrator of any challenges to the recent Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council election. The commission, which handed down its decision through Mr. Nelson, did not use any standard accepted practices of arbitration.

The neighborhood council board was never consulted on any challenge and never given an opportunity to answer any questions or provide any facts or background or circumstances about anything. The Human Relations Commission came to its decision without ever talking to Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council board members. This is not arbitration. Arbitrators listen to both sides. It is fiat.

Even if it were determined that there was a violation of our bylaws in the election last June—in that two separate elections on two different ballots took place at opposite ends of the Westminster School Auditorium on the same day (which, in any event had no discernible effect on the outcome of the election of board members)—I ask you, does the punishment, shutting down a popular, democratically elected neighborhood council, fit the “crime”? What happened was not intended to be a violation of the bylaws. It was not fraud, but an administrative error.

You might ask, why would Mr. Nelson, your director of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, mount an assault on our neighborhood council, a popular neighborhood council that gets a high turnout at its annual elections?

We cannot peer into the heart of Mr. Greg Nelson, but as reasonable thinking adults we ask, who is behind this? It may have something to do with the 300 or so Venice property owners and outside real estate interests who drive through our streets and see not people but dollar signs, who represent the minority opinion in Venice, and whose platform is the gentrification of Venice.

They seek to shut down the democratically elected Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council because we do not seek to promote the over-development of our community, or the exclusion and relocation from Venice of the minority populations and the poor of all nationalities.

Greg Nelson is the mouthpiece of this minority opinion. Apparently the neighborhood council movement is being subverted to enforce the will of the minority.

If the outcome of this skirmish is to order new neighborhood council elections, the currently elected board members will have lost a total of nine months of our terms. But the outcome of any new election will be the same. The progressives will win and the minority, in league with your Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, will try to overturn the results.

So, what will be the outcome? We look at Santa Monica’s history to suggest an answer to that question. Santa Monicans for Renters Rights was formed in 1979 to fight for the tenants of that city. For the last 25 years they have nearly always held a majority of city council seats in Santa Monica and represented the interests of the majority of people, who continue to vote for them. We do not expect an early end to our fight. And as the people of our city fight on and find their democratic voice, we expect our fight in Venice to be part of a citywide movement for the rights of the people of Los Angeles.

Mr. Nelson states that “a good place to start is to find at least one neighborhood leader whose focus is all of Venice.” We ask, how can one person represent everybody in a community where there are deeply divergent interests and opinions on key issues such as land use, gentrification, economic and cultural diversity, protection of the environment, and the rights of the poor and homeless to live here?

If, on the other hand, Greg Nelson and his allies know of such a person, let them put that person forward as a candidate in a regular election, rather than continually overturning democratic elections on the basis of bogus challenges.

Finally, we call your attention to a separate answer to Mr. Nelson’s decision. This answer points out the erroneous citation of the bylaw provision on which the challenge was based.

Finally, we call on calmer, more deliberate and more democratically-minded individuals in the city government, and among opinion makers, to reflect on the damage that this decision to strip an elected council of its legitimacy can have on the entire neighborhood council project. Now is the time to take a stand for – or against – the future of an effective and democratic neighborhood council system.

Posted: Wed - December 1, 2004 at 11:51 AM          

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