Gary Slossberg For LA City Council District 13

Every week I cull the newspapers, blogs, cable talk shows and radio blowhards for the latest crop of bad news on the economy. This week, there’s plenty to talk about. Last month, the unemployment rate hit 7.2%, up from 4.9% just a year ago. We’re on a pace to hit 10% by the end of the year.

Think about that: one in ten people without a job. And that doesn’t even count the people who have just given up, taken themselves out of the job market. These are people who have moved back in with their parents, tightened their belts as their households downgrade from two incomes to one, or hit the street or homeless shelters.

Just last week, Caterpillar announced it was eliminating 5,000 jobs; Home Depot said it would cut 2% of its workforce, or 7,000 jobs; Sprint, Texas Instruments and General Motors all sent out thousands of pink slips. Even Microsoft is letting 5,000 employees go.

Last year, the U.S. lost 2.6 million jobs. It could lose another 2 million in just the first half of 2009.

What can anyone do to fix this mess? After the inauguration, the satirical newspaper The Onion captured the present moment with its headline: “Black Man Gets Worst Job in the World.” Why would anyone want to take responsibility for this train wreck?

Well, luckily for President Obama, the entire weight of the problem will not be carried on his shoulders. Case in point: On a little stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard, in East Hollywood, between Vermont and Virgil, stands a clutch of small shops with handmade signs and a distinctly local clientele. Just this week – despite the news that consumer confidence is as low as it’s been since they began tracking these things in 1967 – a local entrepreneur opened up a small grocery store.

I walk past the place every day on my way to and from the subway. I watched, day after day, as workers laid tile, painted the walls, installed the light fixtures and, finally, stocked the shelves.

What an expression of hope and confidence this is. What a repudiation of fear and isolation. Circuit City may be closing its doors, but the Santa Monica Grocery is open for business.

This morning, as I walked past on my way to work, the store was open. Customers roamed the aisles looking for things they need: laundry detergent, eggs, milk, bread. Out of the corner of my eye, in my rush to make my train, I noticed a small sign in the storefront window: “Gary Slossberg for City Council.”

Ahhh … . Know hope.

Is not the product of good youth-development and education supposed to be civic engagement? If we are going to take Obama’s words seriously and do our part as citizens to get this country back on the right track, the education system should be priority numero uno.

Civic engagement means being involved and taking part in the duties and obligations of belonging to a community, from voting to attending a community meeting to volunteering in some kind of community service. But do we see our young adults crowding the streets to make positive change? Hardly. There is probably an entire web of issues leading to poor civic engagement, but it all starts with education.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I think it is pretty obvious that if someone has virtually no education, they will have a low paying job, maybe even three of them, and won’t even have the time to contribute to their community. Or, their lack of education could leave them oblivious to even the most basic structure of their community and how or why they should contribute. Or, like many people, maybe they do know how the system works, but they also feel they have no power or influence to make a difference. Personally, I can mark the exact minute when I became civically engaged – it was when I realized I could make a difference.

That is what education should be all about. Showing our youth how the system works and how to use it or change it to make things better. Empowering our youth will give them the interest and energy to contribute to their communities. That is what is going to revitalize this great nation of ours.

I wish our City Council would focus on, more than anything else, getting youth involved in community change. City Council should have its own White House-like student interns shadowing its council members and staffers at all times, learning the ins and outs of creating change in a highly political system. City Council should work with youth to have them organize and host community events. City Council should be tightly connected with our local schools to ensure that our youth are becoming civically engaged. Maybe City Council could encourage civic engagement of youth through our neighborhood councils.

This is not to neglect the fundamental, crucial problems in the Los Angeles Unified School District education system. Civic engagement should be the measure of how well the system is working, and that is my point. We need to change the system so it does work – so it produces valuable, productive, effective citizens that can change the world for the better. Can City Council do anything to make this happen?

Please share your thoughts.

Today marks a new beginning in America. So, just for today, I figured I would take a break from kvetching about the state of the economy and talk about the challenges we’ve been called to face together.

Sure, we have problems. Yesterday, Barack Obama said in his inaugural address:

“Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”

Not exactly a rosy scenario. The temptation is to tune it all out, to focus our energies inward or to look to Washington to solve our problems. It feels good to know that we have a new president, a new outlook a new set of hands at the wheel. But Barack Obama knows better than anyone else that he can’t do this alone. He can’t fix our economy, educate our children or make our City our country or our planet any more livable on his own.

Barack Obama knows this, not at the intellectual level, but at the experiential level. He’s experienced the power of grassroots organizing. He’s a product of the South Side of Chicago, where he cut his political teeth organizing communities to make things better for themselves.

Yesterday, strangers in elevators looked each other in the eye. Some nodded their heads in recognition of the other. Many openly expressed their optimism and their hope for the future.

All this in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression – a crisis so deep and far-reaching that no one can be sure where the bottom will be.

Where did all this hope come from? And will it last? Will the Obama bubble burst the second some new challenge comes around the bend? I don’t think so. What Obama understands better than any politician in generations is that people want to be challenged; people want to roll up their sleeves and pitch in; people want to be engaged.

But old habits die hard. Speaking to unnamed foreign leaders, Barack Obama said: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Was Obama speaking to our local leaders? Maybe not. But dissent can be silenced as effectively with apathy as it can with a clenched fist.

So take this opportunity to become engaged. Not just by reading the Op Ed pages of the New York Times, but by educating yourself about what’s happening in your own back yard. I’m not suggesting how you should cast your vote on March 3rd, but vote. In the last election, Eric Garcetti won with barely ten thousand votes out of more than 130,000 registered voters.

He ran unopposed.

Now is the time for boots on the ground. Obama will fail if this country simply turns on the TV and watches change happen from the comfort of its living rooms. We can’t all go to Washington to work for change. We can’t all go to Baghdad or Afghanistan or Palestine. But we can all walk out our own front doors, talk to our neighbors, take the Metro, go to a Neighborhood Council meeting and become engaged in our own lives. Don’t let this moment pass.

Melrose between Vermont and Normandie is again blacked-out at night. Normandie between Rosewood on the South and Monroe to the North is also blacked-out. Normandie just South of Melrose, is totally dark. These dark streets are unsafe for motorists and pedestrians.

My initial impression that people around here needed the neighborhood council to help them take ownership of their space has changed. People from all over the neighborhood are calling, emailing and inviting City agencies to meetings. Although it is dark on the streets of East Hollywood, I can now see that it is the City who needs to take more ownership of this neighborhood. Nearly 4 acres of prime East Hollywood land are being used to house city lamp posts for the rest of the city. How do we motivate our city servants to fix the installed street lights so that the good people trying to run businesses, plan ArtCycles, walk and drive the streets of their neighborhood can get on with their work?

~Jennifer Moran

Written by Stephen Box, Hollywood Resident and Bike Activist http://SoapBoxLA.blogspot.com

One of the simplest things we can do to support mass transit in our community is to make sure that transit stops are comfortable, clean, safe and aesthetically pleasing. it seems like a no-brainer that if we want people to become transportation solutions by getting out of their cars we’ve got to make the choice attractive and at least competitive in terms of convenience and comfort.

Unfortunately, we’re far off the mark.

The Metro has its focus on getting people from point A to point B. As for the transit stop amenities, the “no-man’s land” approach from the Metro and the local authorities leaves the average mass transit patron feeling like a second class citizen.

The Metro holds that the City is responsible for the streets, the sidewalks and the amenities along the way. The City looks at the wear and tear on the transit heavy streets and asks the Metro for maintenance money and the standoff starts. Meanwhile, transit patrons throughout the City of Los Angeles stand on narrow, filthy sidewalks, looking for little respect.

The Metro holds that the sidewalks are not their responsibility and that the City is responsible for street furniture. The City turns and contracts out with CBSDecaux who then installs bus shelters with advertising, paying the City for the privilege. The money is split so that our City Councilmembers all end up controlling some of this revenue, ideally to be spent within the respective Council District.

CBSDecaux provides everything from the traditional bus shelter shown above to the automated public toilets (APTs) such as the one located at the Santa Monica and Vermont Red Line station. Along the way they put up advertising, on the bus shelters and on two and three sided sidewalk-sized kiosks and billboards.

Missing from this relationship is a simple commitment to supporting mass transit with an overall plan for streetscape beautification, a plan that would improve the aesthetic of the neighborhood, complement the local architecture and streetlife and encourage pedestrians and transit patrons.

The picture above is of a bus shelter on Hollywood Boulevard at Western. It sits on a narrow sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to squeeze past. The sidewalk is sticky, the area smells and the solid wall of the shelter hides the activities on the other side. It’s evident here that the standards for architectural security are non-existent, that the placement of transit stops is not part of a larger commitment to mass transit and that maintenance is low priority.

The sidewalk just beyond this shelter is sinking, leaving two plates that don’t line up. A simple misstep results in a tumble as pedestrians squeeze past the shelter and passengers who are jockeying for their bus.

On the west side of Western, the sidewalk is not just uneven and patched with asphalt, it has a meter hole covered with plywood.

At least mass transit passengers suffer no delusions of equality. It’s painfully apparent that in the grand scheme of things, mass transit is for people who have no choice. It’s evident that it’s a bare-bones service for those who can’t afford a car. A comfortable, walkable environment that is safe and pleasant is not something to be wasted on a public street.

It’s a sad commentary on our community that the most popular streetscapes are fake, created by developers who study Great Streets and then imitate them, drawing people in cars to the Grove, Americana and CityWalk, all so people can walk on faux boulevards. enjoying something they should be able to find in their own neighborhoods; walkable streets.

As for our neighborhood, it’ll change when we work together and demand big sidewalks, clean sidewalks, street furniture and a commitment to making our streets pedestrian oriented.

“See you on the Streets!”

This past weekend, I helped host a community tree event. The event was to do follow-up maintenance on trees we planted 10 months ago. Each time I do one of these events, I think about how it relates to community issues.

In case you are wondering, follow up tree-care is a vital step to ensuring trees make it in the urban environment, which is very difficult for trees. Also, the city does not have sufficient funding to maintain all the trees in the city. Someone has to ensure the trees planted actually make it. This is where the community comes in. Not only can they keep the closest eye on trees in their neighborhood, their participation helps the social health of the community.

During the event, I found myself conversing with other event volunteers about how wonderful it is to do tree care as a community event. Not only are community members invited to attend the event to check up on their street trees and to learn how to care for them, but when we work on the street, people cannot help but notice what we are doing. Sometimes they stop and join in the activity. Sometimes they stop to talk, find out more, and thank us for what we are doing. Sometimes they just look, but it probably gets them thinking. For everyone who participates, it builds a sense of belonging, responsibility, and connection to the people around us and to the streets on which we live.

We all know that the government cannot, and probably should not, do everything for us. The government extends only so far. In our city, it will pay for trees to be planted, but does not have the resources to take care of them all. At the same time, we notice social problems in our urban environments. What if we had well established systems of community participation where all residents actually did their part to contribute to improving the neighborhood, especially to compensate for lack of governmental resources/services? I think this would go a long way to improving social responsibility and connection in our neighborhoods. Could our City Council Representative do more to encourage this type of activity?