The vast majority of public commenters begged not to be placed in his jurisdiction. Wesson's black voter base is across the 10 freeway in South L.A. Many K-towners say Wesson does not provide Koreatown — where Latinos are the majority and Asians a large minority — with the public works, services and nonprofit funding it deserves.
In purely racial terms, Asians have no City Hall representation. Asians are 11 percent of L.A., but there hasn't been an Asian council member since 1993. L.A.'s population is 9.6 percent black, and black leaders Wesson, Jan Perry and Bernard Parks hold 20 percent of the City Council seats.
USC advocate and redistricting Commissioner David Roberts, Perry's appointee, often sided with Kim. Roberts calls the commission "really a sham. ... You have people behind the scenes, the mayor and [Wesson], directing the process."
Wesson has denied that he is engineering the maps to punish his enemies, such as Perry and Parks.
Even so, Kim says, "I decided I was going to start documenting and objecting to all the procedural irregularities." A corporate litigator specializing in class actions, she found it "incumbent upon me to create a record."
On Feb. 22, the commission approved a citywide map that will be sent to the City Council for approval. Commissioners who voted yes struggled to describe their product, calling it "a good effort," "credible," "ugly," "ornery" and "OK."
Mona Soo Hoo, a Villaraigosa appointee, said, "I don't have anything nice to say. I'm gonna pass." She then voted for the map.
Former state Sen. David Roberti, appointed to the commission by Councilman Paul Koretz, voted yes after stating: "I am terribly guilt-ridden over the concerns of the Korean community. They did not win here. They were not heard." Already, a coalition of Korean-Americans is discussing a lawsuit to challenge the map.
In a final twist, commissioners praised Kim for her tenacity and, as one said, "for championing other voices." As the unexpected praise continued, Commissioner Grover McKean leaned over and whispered, "God, Helen, it's like we're at your funeral!"
The next day, Kim laughed: "I would have liked their votes better! ... They had to vote for the map, even though they felt guilty? They could have just done the right thing."
Recently, Kim received an email from a stranger. It asked: "Have you ever thought about running for city council?" Kim said she hadn't. "I'm very ill-suited," she says. "Obviously, I don't know the art of the deal."
But with the commission's work completed, the next job of City Hall leaders might just be to figure out in which council district they've placed the intriguing Helen Kim.
Reach the writer at hillelaron@mac.com.
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The redistricting issue brings to light a perpetual problem with Los Angeles i.e., The Brown Act requires that deliberations take place in public.
Gov’t Code, § 54950 declares the law's intent that deliberation as well as action occur openly and publicly. Recognition of deliberation and action as dual components of the collective decision-making process brings awareness that the meeting concept cannot be split off and confined to one component only, but rather comprehends both and either. Frazier v Dixon (1993) 19 CA4th 791, 795-797
Ms. Kim appears to be objecting that the deliberations took place behind closed doors. The article gives the impression that all or almost all of the Commissions' deliberations, if there were any deliberations rather than mindlessly voting as the powers-that-be directed their appointees to vote, were conducted out of public view.
Because corruption and incompetence are a way of life in Los Angeles, people may not realize that everything the Redistricting Commission has done may have been in violation of the Brown Act's requirement for public deliberations.
If any members of the public are actually aggrieved over the corrupt ways of Los Angeles, they will do more than moan and wail; they file suit over the Brown Act violations and force the Commission to go back to square one and deliberate in public.
We realize the corruption.The Redistricting Commissioners were the apparatus used to circumvent the Brown Act.City Council's frantic rush to approve corrupted process has nothing to do with deadlines.They fear us
Wendy Greuel only appointed Helen Kim to try to get the Korean vote for her Mayoral race. The committee was a total sham. LA politics is disgusting. If Helen Kim is supposed to help Asians in LA, then God save them.
Mrs. Kim stayed engaged to the very last meeting. The people of Westchester/Playa are truely indebted to her. Thank you Helen Kim and thank you Wendy Greuel for appointing the most ethical commissioner. I hope the people of Los Angeles takes a very close look at the Redistricting process and Commission selection. If I had only one suggestion, that would be anyone serving on the redistricting commission would be prohibited from running or serving in a Coucil office for ten years.
Redistricting is disrespectful to people like myself who beleive in the process and had faith in the leadership of Los Angeles
Since I'm the subject of this article and these comments, I'm not sure whether it's appropriate for me to comment. Nevertheless...I don't agree that all commissioners were selected to "forward an agenda." My instructions from Wendy Greuel were to look at the interests of the city, as a whole, as well as to be a voice on the Commission for the Asian-American community, which has no voice on the City Council, even though they constitute approx 11% of the city's total population. Commissioner Julie Downey also had no "constituent" council district (and voted against the Commission's Final Map Recommendation, too). While I appreciate the media coverage overall, one issue that seems to get overlooked was the extent to which I tried to unite other communities as well. I worked with communities all over the city to address their requests. In fact, Amendment B, which made Historic Filipinotown whole (using the community's definition, not the City's) was proposed by me on Feb 22. And my final Amendment N, which never got to the floor of the Commission's Feb 22 mtg for a vote, would've united not only WCKNC, but also Westchester-Playa NC, Central Hollywood NC, Hollywood United NC and Hollywood Hills West NC. It is true that I tried to keep WCKNC intact, but it wasn't the only NC I tried to keep whole. If the goal of the Commission was to keep as many communities intact as possible -- and I believe that's what the LA City Charter Section 204(d) required -- then they should've adopted a map that did just that. And they didn't.
Reading your own press? Both Greuel and Garcetti, who appointed you and Commissioner Ahn respectively, are both mayoral candidates, and the last time I checked, Trutanich is running for DA so I'd say that there is an agenda here whether you want to admit to it or not. What exactly does it say when Garcetti, who as the former Council President, uses his extra pick for Ahn and his other commissioner (Dupont-Walker) votes the opposite way? Sounds to me like someone is hedging their bets...
We need more Asians on the City Council. Our population is more than African-Americans and they have three. This imbalance has to be corrected.
For a summary of what I thought was wrong with the Redistricting Commission's Final Map and Report, here's a link: http://www.thecitymaven.com/20...
I fell in LOVE with Commissioner Kim during hearings on TV 35. So articulate. So adorable. So PERFECT! She and David Roberts really WERE the VOICE OF THE PEOPLE at the Redistricting hearings. She was RELENTLESS in making sure due process was followed as closely as you can hope for, given it was a SHAM/RICO effort!
Ms. Kim asked me a question after I spoke during the last Redistricting Hearing and I found her to be genuinely interested in my answer. She was one of three (out of 15) Commissioners who appeared engaged. What this process has done, more than anything, is show how the politicians in Los Angeles are so wound up in their own careers. The best thing every Angeleno can do is really pay attention to who is running for office, who they are allied with and to just vote these lifers out of office. Will Wesson, Cardenas, Huizar, eta get another term in their CD's or do they have their sights set on a higher office? I vote to retire them all.
Cardenas began his third term in City Council July 2011.However, Cardenas had already announced in June 2011that he is running for Congress.Primary is June 5, 2012 and then election November 6, 2012If there were a way to vote "NO" for a candidate, Cardenas would receive the most "NO" votes.
For a summary of what I thought was wrong with the Redistricting Commission's Final Map and Report, here's a link: http://www.thecitymaven.com/20...
For a summary of what I thought was wrong with the Redistricting Commission's Final Map and Report, here's a link: http://www.thecitymaven.com/20...
Thanks to Anon2 for commenting. We at LA Weekly have been covering many details of the gerrymander, but the Helen Kim article did not repeat many of those details due to space considerations. To read our previous blog coverage detailing all the new maps, please go to http://blogs.laweekly.com/info... as Also, please read our print story headlined "Koreatown roars against gerrymander" at http://www.laweekly.com/2012-0... Thanks very much for reading! -- Jill Stewart, LA Weekly managing editor
Jill, thanks for taking the time to reply and to link to the rest of the LA Weekly's coverage. I know I'm responding late, so no one may ever see this, but I still don't think that my question has been answered. Simone Wilson's blog post from two weeks is a good example. It says that the problem is Wesson screwed Parks and Perry, but what do I care about that? Are these maps going to be bad for the communities they represent? I've seen no evidence of that. In fact, the article doesn't even claim it. So I'm left wondering, why should I care that Wesson hurt their feelings? How is it going to affect the politics of the city?
Although I respect the valiant fight she put up for K-Town, I'm sorry but i don't buy into Ms. Kim's aw shucks routine. You aren't handpicked for the commission if you're not accustomed to the art of the backroom deal so please save the Pollyanna rhetoric for someone who buys it. She's a corporate attorney for God's sakes....
Redistricting is inherently political so none of the commissioners should be surprised that there would be winners and losers in the end. IMO, K-Town achieved most of what they reasonably could achieve--that is, get the core of K-town into one district. The problem is that they overstated their physical boundaries and tried to fit 10 lbs of crap into a 5 lb bag and move all of the Wilshire Center/K-Town NC from CD 10 into CD 13.
What Ms. Kim refers as the "doing the right thing" is what she wanted the map to be, not what was necessarily the proper thing because I don't think such a map exists. It was pretty clear from Day 1 that the primary goal of Commissioners Kim and Ahn was to lobby for a unified K-Town and that's perfectly fine. But let's not pretend that she wouldn't have approved an equally flawed map if it had included all of WCKNC in CD 13.
I can't vote in the City of Los Angeles so I hadn't paid as much attention to the city redistricting. I liked Helen Kim's attitude - it was important to keep a record, because so many politicians can't remember the next day what they said - and ask the important questions. I wouldn't characterize the way the article portrayed her and her role as an "aw shucks routine." I've met Ms. Kim, and she could be described as a force of nature the way she bluntly states her mind, and she's very smart, if you didn't gather that from her credentials. If she had questions, she really had questions, and it sounds like the process could use such digging into. While it is probably so that one of Ms. Kim's goals was a unified KoreaTown, Helen Kim is as honest as the day is long and all the gerrymandered weirdly-configured districts that needed questioning at least got some airing by virtue of her being part of the Commission, even though she didn't garner enough votes to stop them.
I don't think anyone is questioning her credentials or abilities, but I think it's naive to broadly paint anyone involved this process as having noble intent. Each commissioner, including Ms. Kim, was selected to forward an agenda. And as far as her role of keeping the record is concerned, that's why they keep minutes so I sincerely doubt that was her goal. She's an attorney so she knows the importance of filing objections and getting them into the record just in case a lawsuit is filed, and I think it's important that she did it. However, "honest" isn't the adjective I would apply to ANY of the commissioners. Is it any less questionable that Commissioners Kim and Ahn were trying to gerrymander WCKNC into CD 13 when Latinos represent nearly 2/3 of the population in the area in question and only 1 Latino sits on the WCKNC executive board? (On a side note, Samuel In, the LADBS inspector under Federal investigation for kickbacks, was on the WCKNC board until he was removed in January) You're never going to have a truly objective and impartial redistricting committee so long as it's left in the hands of those in power.
This article would have been better if it had said something - anything - about what the Board had done wrong. It has a lot of accusatory language, but, aside from the claim that Koreans don't like Wesson, it doesn't actually mention any real issues.
For a summary of what I thought was wrong with the Redistricting Commission's Final Map and Report, here's a link: http://www.thecitymaven.com/20...
Why doesn't LA Weekly mention that "Koreatown" is a designation for a district that is fewer than 15% Korean? It doesn't matter how you slice the districts, most Koreans and especially the KoAms don't live here but in Orange County.
Funny that most of the Koreans who showed up in the redistricting meetings are NOT residents of Koreatown.
When was the last time you saw a politically active Korean or Korean American who claimed to be "fighting for Koreatown" actually living in Koreatown?
The Latinos and non-Korean Asians in Koreatown are treated like shit by these Koreans who own the businesses here and the young Korean-Americans who come to "play" here (eat Seoul food, do karaoke until 5:00 am, smoke in restaurants, drink under the age limit, drive with no respect for traffic rules), but live miles away.
Did you see how the Korean woman (Grace Yoo?) interrupted the Latino rep as he was being asked for his opinion on all this? Wouldn't be surprised if she only works in Koreatown, but goes home to a comfortable abode after all these meetings, while the Latinos are left behind to take out the garbage and clean up at the Korean restaurants and supermarkets.
i echo the replies to your post. there are a ton of koreans who live in koreatown, which is a huge geographical area. there are also tons of latinos who live in koreatown and are the backbone of the country and especially the restaurant industry. i'm sorry you think koreans in koreatown treat latinos like shit, but buck up - koreans treat everyone like shit, including other koreans. lol.
but i am not about to cry you a river. latinos make up a huge population of the politicians in LA and in California. the latino population has tons of representation. koreans have ... a couple people in the entire state of California? and frankly, a lot of these latino politicians and administrators are incredibly uneducated - sorry to break the truth. koreans don't ask for much, if anything. just that koreatown is seen as koreatown because of the total pathetic disgusting criminal crap koreans dealt with from the riots. give the koreans that.
right here, buddy. save the sad generalizations, and my apologies in advance for disrupting your worldview that "crazy foreigners" are subverting the "natives."
Ms. Kim should be awarded The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner for her willingness to do the right thing instaed of the political thing. I hope the Koreans sue the pants off the city.
actually, she just had the luck (well the money and prestige really) to be appointed by a a calculating mayoral candidate. what a sad world we live in when people seek to award an honor to someone who is willing to do the right thing.
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