
Attending this week’s Culver City candidate‘s forum, I was disappointed in the lack of focus on the residents and businesses of Culver City by the CCDC-endorsed slate of “progressive” candidates. Whether they are prepping for higher office or believe that they have an inherently superior perspective, the “progressive” candidates continue to show thinly veiled contempt for the residents and businesses that make Culver City strong.
Culver City is not an island, nor is it a remote community distant from large city centers. Yet, listening to the “progressives,” we live on an island, and a bucolic one at that. Don’t get me wrong, our city is a great place to live, but we are not isolated, facing many of the same challenges as our neighbors.
There are glaring examples of the “progressive” contempt for our citizenry and business community. First is their continued insistence on the value of the MOVE project in its current form, a wildly unpopular project that cost the last Mr. Fisch his seat on council, among other things. Furthermore, young Mr. Fish is violating the public trust by asserting that he was not involved in the MOVE lawsuit. He was a signatory to “Save MOVE,” the pop-up organization created to file a legal challenge to the voter’s will. He must have recognized the unpopular nature of the MOVE project, as he had his name removed from that list. In the forum, he even asserted that he was wholly uninvolved in the suit. This is a blatant untruth.
Ms. Barba is at least not as disingenuous. I believe she has been a supporter of this reviled project from the outset. At the forum, she asserted that MOVE, in its current, unpopular form, should be extended to even more of our congested streets. This ignores the community’s clear disdain for the project. Ms. McMorrin is on record (fortunately not erasable) opposing the MOVE reconfiguration, even though the community that she claims to represent overwhelmingly supported it.
With regard to housing, the community’s concerns are usually ignored by “progressive” ideologues. Once again, they know better than the residents and businesses of Culver City. We all understand that we have to meet California’s legally mandated goals. Most statistics show we are moving toward meeting those very goals. But for Fish, Barba, and McMorrin, too much is never enough. The citizens of Culver City believe differently, but our desire to preserve the character of our neighborhoods matters little to them.
Housing is a perfect example of our integration into the broader community. Again, we’re not an island. The housing in Palms north of Venice is part of our community—its residents shop in our stores, eat in our restaurants, and work in our businesses. And Overland north of Venice (with substantial new construction) is far closer to downtown Culver City than are the areas west of Inglewood Boulevard. While that density does not count in meeting our state-mandated targets, it affects the affordability and congestion of Culver City and must be recognized.
The “progressive” failure to provide full-throated support of our first responders, particularly our police department, is further evidence of their disdain for our community. Instead, they continue to support a clearly failed policy which says, in its most basic form, that public safety can be enhanced by defunding the police and not prosecuting obvious crimes. And if you’re a victim of such crimes? Well, tough luck. It is absurd to assert that weakening law enforcement and failing to prosecute crime will enhance public safety. It won’t. La Cienega and Venice are not moats. Crime that affects mid-city Los Angeles spills over into our community—and the only thing that we have between us and the lawlessness that continues to plague LA is Culver City’s excellent police department.
The “progressives” claim that they represent “the people,” while asserting that most Culver City voters are right-wing conservatives. This is false on both counts. Instead, it is a difference between ideologues more interested in burnishing their images among radical left-wing power brokers on the one hand, and concerned citizens that better represent the spectrum of people who live and work in our city on the other. The choice is clear.
It is time to put our community above their ideology. In this election, we can take a stand for our community. We can elect leaders who listen to us, their constituents. We can, and should, vote for Renteria, Vera, and Wisnowsky-Stehlen in November.
Gary M. Zeiss, Esq.