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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Instead of power-focused politicos on one side of a polyhedral equation, self-perpetuating agencies on another, the abject poor and homeless on a third, joined by turn-a-quick-profit-and-run companies and know-everything-care-about-nothing cults and more, how about empowering ordinary people to reimagine their neighborhoods.
By establishing small, self-governing communities that work together to fight for a better future, could we possibly [an] accountant find an antidote to the disempowerment and degradation of life in a megalopolis?
A quarter of a century ago, Neighborhood Councils were established in Los Angeles to give power back to the people, to break the backroom dealing at City Hall, and to give voice to local concerns.
Well-meaning but risk-averse fiefdoms like the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, designated with birthing and supporting these councils, and a growing constellation of ancillary bureaucracies in other departments tasked with “helping” the nascent Neighborhood Councils have, instead, ended up smothering them with regulations and stifling their ability to effectively advocate for the communities they represent.
By accident? Doubtful.
For grassroots organization to achieve real influence, the layers of bureaucracy above them must get out of the way or be reformatted to enable the power of the people to pass through.
Which threatens the supremacy of those within the existing structure. All the way to the top.
As a result, Neighborhood Councils are being used as political pawns by various City cliques and officials to cement their own control, manifest their own power, and advance their own agendas.
Blocking any vestige of an ability to perform those tasks for which Neighborhood Councils were ostensibly established.
Is all lost? Also doubtful.
But it will take constituent effort to revamp or remove the impediments and allow Neighborhood Councils to flourish.
People who can, don’t have to flee to smaller communities elsewhere in the state or the world to find happiness, they can stay and help re-establish local democracy and revitalize local economies within the framework of greater Los Angeles, enlisting the help of those who can’t afford to leave and so are even more committed to improving their lot.
Joining together with like communities to build a better whole. A Los Angeles of vibrant neighborhoods that can decisively direct their elected officials to put the benefits of the whole enchilada above backroom bargaining, behind-closed-doors wheeling-and-dealing that only serves to advance the wealth and power of special interest groups.
What was intended by those who established the Neighborhood Council system in the beginning.
With an emphasis on working together, each one for their neighbor, not @MeFirst.
Special interest groups may cloak themselves in a mantle of altruism representing sectors of society such as labor, Blacks, the homeless, the business community et al but, so long as their internecine rivalries continue to focus on the short term, on personal wins chalked up on individual scorecards and not a holistic future for the City, nobody wins.
Politics is of necessity a messy business but that doesn’t mean it can’t represent the concerns of ALL Angelenos. But the four million in the City, nine million in the County need to be chunked down to where EVERYBODY has an equal say and that an efficient, effective and accountability system exists to transmit the people’s wishes and embody them in the administration of our lives.
To do so, the existing bureaucracy must get out of the way and a new political infrastructure imagined that is spectacularly and emphatically ground up. From the people to their elected officials. Prioritizing the people’s needs, the people’s future. A future interwoven with the City’s, for sure, but one emphasizing their needs, not empire building by a few.
Huh? Sounds like a democracy.
We have all watched and railed at the decline of our communities. Cratered streets, evictions, homeless encampments, boarded-up shops… despair and lack of political engagement.
What tools do we have today that work, and can help we-the-people reclaim control over our lives and neighborhoods?
What are our priorities?
Public safety. Protection in the face of wildfires and flooding, terrorism and earthquakes. Effective infrastructure. Affordable housing.
Accountability of leaders and service providers. Fiscal responsibility. Empowerment.
An emphasis on community – helping others and accepting help. Not at a handout but earned from our contribution to society.
A return to a once-and-future way, globalized villages with communally run businesses and services. Where nobody has excessive wealth, but everybody has enough to flourish and, more importantly, can develop the self-esteem essential for great happiness and the energy to throw themselves into building an even more glorious future for generations to come.
The initial vision of the Neighborhood Council system was specifically intended to do just that.
Over the years the Neighborhood Councils have been sidelined and defanged, too often due to overt actions by the department ostensibly empowered to enable their establishment and support their freedom to act.
And further curtailed by successive City Hall administrations looking to consolidate their own power and avoid any scintilla of oversight.
A City Hall full of elected officials who personally benefited from the old system of backroom dealings. Where it didn’t matter what color your skin was, only that the payment was in green.
Where the interconnection between infrastructure, communities and people’s health and livelihoods was ignored.
Now, once again, Angelenos must respond to a clarion call, demand our city government engage in positive-for-the-people decision-making.
It is on our shoulders to self-empower. It cannot be done for us. And we will need to be eternally vigilant against the machinations of influential interests subverting our power for their own ends.
It won’t be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. Moving from familiar lassitude to unfamiliar leadership is never easy. But it is better to strive shoulder-to-shoulder with ones’ friends and neighbors. Building from the ground up.
Together we can take aim at impediments to a quality life for all Angelenos.
Together we have power. And every time someone demonstrates courage by demanding change, it strengthens the backbones of others, encouraging them to join in as co-advocates.
To develop affordable housing and neighborhood-respectful stores, communities buying abandoned or derelict properties and repurposing them, pre-empting land speculators, providing shared living and workspaces, co-operative businesses serving our needs and those of our neighbors.
To insist the City, invest in the resources necessary for our safety.
To address the urgent need to have effective local control over the creators of local pollution no matter under which aegis they operate, so much more essential now with the Trump-EPA’s new directive to no longer shut down “any stage of energy production” unless there is an imminent threat…
Threat to the profits of the Über-Lord and his billionaire buddies, obviously not his long-suffering subjects.
Together, we can invite each other to be part of a grander whole, of something more important than individuals buffeted by the winds of City Hall top-down diktats.
Reimagining local infrastructure from the ground up by emphasizing sustainable growth with communal spaces like schools and libraries, clean meeting and performance spaces, safe pathways and parks, establishing local financial institutions, networked to ensure fiscal responsibility, to help grow neighborhood businesses.
Drastically reducing dependence on multinational corporations siphoning off our hard-earned money while harming mother earth in their incessant pursuit of cheap labor, shipping raw and finished goods hither and yon to enable maximum profits at minimum cost. To them.
Enhancing that income through corporate welfare leveraged by their plutocratic influence, blessed by their god mammon, and dumping environmental destruction on the government, all at the taxpayers’ expense.
In our divisive and screen-distracted epoch, our neighbors and neighborhoods are here to help. To replace lost familial networks, decimated spirituality, and lack of interaction with the natural world by deepening relationships within our communities and with each other, providing sanctuary for our souls, and reestablishing grassroots democracy.
Giving power back to the people.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
