8:00am | “State of the [fill in the blank]” events overwhelmingly tend to follow the same outline:
We’re special.
Here’s what’s happened over the last X amount of time (with some specificity).
Here are the challenges we face (getting a bit vague).
Here’s how we do it (vaguer by the minute).
We can do it; we’re on the right track.
We’re special.
While no one who spoke at the “People’s State of the City” talked of Long Beach being on the right track, the dose of feel-good came in the form of the power the people have if they band together — particularly around the ballot box.
The open question is whether the 200 persons who congregated in Antioch Church will take the ideas exchanged and exhortations made Wednesday night back into their communities and rally their friends and neighbors, or if the evening was little more than a chance for a collection of like-minded folks to share their grievances (inequitable distribution of wealth, not enough green space, unsatisfactory policing, a run-down educational system) and daydream about how things could be different.
An overview:
From the opening prayer (offered by Jimi Castillo, spiritual leader of the Tongva tribe): “We need to thank our children’s children’s children’s children. We know that they aren’t here yet, but we need to prepare way for them.”
Among the representatives of local government in attendance — emissaries for Mayor Bob Foster, Councilmember Steven Neal (including Ricardo Linarez, who is running for a spot on the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education), Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, and Long Beach City College (including Doug Otto, running for reelection to the Board of Trustees) — were Councilmembers Robert Garcia and Patrick O’Donnell. O’Donnell had gotten wind of the event only yesterday and said he “came out to be further educated.” For his part, Garcia said, “I think it’s an interesting event, [with] a lot of great groups involved. It’s important for people to listen, for us to hear all voices all the time.
Former 7th District Councilmember Tonia Reyes Uranga, a steering committee member for the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community, presented on Long Beach as “a tale of two cities,” with chart-heavy slideshow whose thesis boiled down to city government’s giving the proverbial shaft to the lower classes — and getting away with it because voter turnout is especially low in this population. “Locally the focus has not been on the greed of the banks and corporation, but on working men and women,” she said. “Working families and immigrants [are] under attack. […] It’s up to you to participate, or you get what you get.” The most surprising (to me, at least) statistic she offered concerned children in “real poverty” and how the number gets higher the closer we focus on Long Beach: 42% nationwide, 44% statewide, 48% countywide, 55% in the LBC.
The attendees broke into five “breakout groups,” huddling in different parts of the nave to brainstorm on problems and possible solutions in five areas (one per group): education, environment, healthy and safe neighborhoods, pollution, and affordable housing. It was an energetic but cacophonous exercise, with a good portion of the talk being overly general (e.g., K-12 education ought to better prepare our students for life, potholes aren’t dealt with well enough). One group complained of “parking tickets and various tickets [given] to residents that cannot afford them, but we expect them to pay them.
The proposed “living-wage” initiative got a lot of play, as did the belief that too much money is poured into downtown. These were two issues I’d hoped to ask Garcia and O’Donnell about, but…
I want to ask the representatives, the councilmembers and the elected officials that are still here to stand up,” said Evangelina Ramirez of Housing Long Beach during the summary of the breakout sessions. Two people stood, and representatives from Neal’s office (whose 9th District is, according to Uranga’s charts, the city’s most economically challenged) remained present; Garcia and O’Donnell were absent. According to Ramirez, that some of the officials didn’t stay — and, presumably, that six districts didn’t send anyone — is “representative of how they don’t listen to the community.” It was the comment that drew the night’s biggest cheer.
It was noted (with disappointment) that the LBUSD did not send a representative.
The most prominent post-breakout-sessions leitmotif was the need to get out the vote. “People just kept coming back to, ‘We have to vote, and we have to tell our neighbors to vote, and we to go and canvas, and to vote by mail,” said one speaker whose name I missed. Glaring omission in the pro-vote talk: Apparently not a single word was said in favor or against any specific candidate standing for office in the upcoming elections, nor was there talk of how voters and would-be voters might educate themselves about how best to cast their ballots.
It was noted that many coalition groups already exist in Long Beach in relation to various issues (e.g., for pollution/environmental issues there are Green Long Beach! and the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports), but that not enough people know of or have joined these existing groups.
Allison Bost of Housing Long Beach: “We need to organize. We need to take the power that’s in this room and go to city council and ask…and demand for what we’re looking for. They will not listen if we are not there demanding for it. And we’ve seen that — [for example,] with the Downtown Plan.
Debbie Pacheco, a Hyatt employee who physically filed the “living-wage” ballot initiative with the City Clerk last week, said she has seen “tremendous change” since she and workers banded together.” The Hyatt is very afraid of me and my co-workers,” she said, pointing to raises and overall better treatment they have received since then. “Through organizing […] we have seen changes, and I have grown as a person. […] Organizing and being here is where it all starts, where the changes are made.
Porter Gilberg of The Center in Long Beach: “If we know one thing here tonight, it’s that the change is going to begin with us.
“Si, se puede,” that standby of a rallying cry for causes on this end of the sociopolitical spectrum, made an appearance near the program’s conclusion. What was not clear is whether those chanting had in mind that the phrase speaks to possibility, not triumph. Yes, we can. But to realize any potentiality, we must do. Otherwise, it’s just another snappy slogan.