Your City Council (Not) at Work

Illustrations by Chandler WoodStandingroomonlyat Rancho Cienega Park, and although it’s outdoors on a sun-streaked Saturday, it feels like Sunday morning in church. Not one of those quiet churches; something more like First AME. The men are wearing dark suits and ties, the women are wearing their Sunday hats, but they’re dancing, shouting, cheering for Martin Ludlow. They’re playing Marvin Gaye on the PA system: “What’s Goin’ On?” Tom Bradley’s widow is here to give Ludlow the oath of office. Half the City Council is here. Half the Board of Supervisors is here. Mayor Jim Hahn is here, and even his clunky speech can’t deaden the electricity in the air. No one even minds when Hahn calls the councilman-elect “Martin Lother,” maybe some kind of subconscious hybrid of “Ludlow” and “Martin Luther King.” “Martin Luther Ludlow?” Hahn offers as he jokes about his gaffe. The crowd approves, but is impatient to get on to the main event. And here it comes. Ludlow takes the oath and then grabs the mike, and the crowd unleashes itself in that special manner reserved for rock stars, preachers and new politicians. People jump and cheer as Ludlow, formerly a field staffer for civil rights and labor causes, now a self-described general of the troops, promises to curb gang violence, to block new fast-food drive-thrus, to encourage responsible development, “to protect our communities, fight to improve our neighborhoods, and fight to save the innocent lives of the children we are raising here in the 10th District.” After this June 2003 Saturday — no, even before this day, back to the night a month earlier when Ludlow’s campaign headquarters rocked with excitement as every new return showed him rolling to victory in a hard-fought runoff with a City Hall staffer — there came predictions. Predictable predictions. Journalists, cheering progressive activists, wary suburban homeowners and fretting business leaders came to an agreement on what was going to happen next. City Hall was about to take a sharp left turn. Ludlow’s election was the capper. With labor organizer and ACLU leader–turned–state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa already elected to the council without a runoff two months earlier, Ludlow filled out a four-man social-justice core with council sophomores Eric Garcetti and Ed Reyes that could be expected to move forward aggressively with legislation aimed at dethroning San Francisco as the nation’s most progressive city. Past councils with superstars of the left like Jackie Goldberg and Mark Ridley-Thomas got the ball rolling with the landmark living-wage law, guaranteeing that city contractors lift their employee pay and benefits to basic levels. But that was just a start. Now the real work would begin. “Progressivism has reached a critical mass in city government,” a trio of policymakers and academics wrote in a LosAngelesTimesop-ed. “We’ve called this our ‘motion-made-and-seconded’ campaign,” said Los Angeles County Federation of Labor chief Miguel Contreras, referring to the election of Villaraigosa and Ludlow and making it clear that he had some legislative initiatives in mind. “Charisma comes to the City Council,” wrote LosAngelesmagazine. “Labor is back,” said the L.A.Weekly.Some reporters and editorialists, and some of the new members themselves, saw a new-age City Council made up, for the first time, of a majority of ethnic minorities. A new day was at hand. Now, after two years of the supposedly progressive Los Angeles City Council, there is — what? Community-impact studies, a cornerstone of a social-justice movement to give labor and neighbors a say in major development, failed first in the Community Redevelopment Agency, then in the City Council. A proposed ban on grocery-selling big-box superstores turned into an ordinance that simply requires the Wal-Marts of the world to jump through a few extra hoops — but only in certain parts of town. Inclusionary zoning — a mandate that builders include affordable units — has been debated forever but seems perpetually a day, or maybe a week or a month, away from a vote. Housing is still beyond the reach of average wage earners, while many apartments remain unsafe and substandard. Schools are a failed warehouse system for the city’s youth. Cops in a reformed, enlightened Los Angeles Police Department still beat and shoot to death black men and boys in South L.A., and innocent children still are murdered in the crossfire of gang warfare. So what happened? Where is the progressive legislation? Why is there no motion to second? Why are progressives split on the city’s leadership? Why is this City Council, far from being the most charismatic in years, so downright — well — boring? “Oh, so you’ve noticed,” said an aide from an earlier council who now works for a labor union. “Not much going on there, is there? A lot of talk. Not much walk.” As Villaraigosa enters the final stretch in his second mayoral run against Hahn, thinkers, activists and pols offer a variety of reasons for this council’s failing to live up to its progressive billing. They basically boil down to blame (we were distracted by the recall of Gray Davis and the presidential election); inexperience (in other words, cut us some slack, it hasn’t even been two years yet); crippling power (we got a front-row seat in the Hahn administration but were stymied by our own new alliance); and error (we never claimed this council was going to be all that progressive). One more argument — success: This council has been a progressive powerhouse, but quietly. And one loaded, compound question: What is the progressive agenda for Los Angeles anyway, who carries it, and is it really the best approach for the city’s poor and disenfranchised, let alone the suburbanites and middle-class homeowners who do much of the voting and the taxpaying?