Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies.<\/em><\/p>\nOrganize, Organize, Organize.<\/p>\n
Because Los Angeles City has nearly 4,000,000 people, it isn’t surprising that there is a different organization holding a meeting or protesting something every day. Veterans for Peace, PETA, Bicycle Collectives, Third Parties, Farmers Markets, The Bus Riders Union, PTAs, Community Gardens, and the list goes on… <\/p>\n
Recognizing that there are so many organizations working on so many worthy causes, and understanding that it can be difficult to choose one and stick with it.<\/p>\n
I would like to draw specific attention to the neighborhood council system. The NC system is THE grassroots level of government. Neighborhood Councils are in a great position to pitch a large tent and invite all groups to participate and understand how government works.<\/p>\n
First, a bit of history: The NC system was created out of The Valley Secession Movement of 2002. San Fernando Valley residents had the option to vote for secession from the city of Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
Even though the secession vote didn\u2019t pass, the movement spawned by the campaign, led to the creation of the Neighborhood Council system. There are now 95 NCs in the city of Los Angeles, each with an elected board of representatives that is truly grassroots. Often, 20 votes can get you a seat on one of these neighborhood councils. <\/p>\n
Each NC currently has an annual budget of $40,500 to benefit their community. But, they all spends their budgets differently, according to their personality, board members, and locality; some might choose to use $500 to feed their local boy scouts during a community cleanup like the Chatsworth NC did in May; others like Mar Vista and Venice NCs use some of their resources and influence to push sustainability; and sometimes, a few NCs come together to put on large community events like the emergency preparedness fair to be held at Fire Station 87 in Northridge in September.<\/p>\n
The last city election, held on March 8th, was one of the most contentious in LA City history partly because several Neighborhood Council board members ran for City Council. <\/p>\n
Neighborhood Councils are a great way to organize. They have legitimacy, structure, and resources while the barriers to entry are almost non-existent. However, the NCs are a significant time commitment \u2013 they have monthly general meetings that sometimes last 3 hours while dealing with minutiae, expected disputes, and an awesome amount of bureaucracy. There are also committee meetings where a lot of the initial policies are worked out.<\/p>\n
But the NCs have been evolving, and have become a major force in city politics. Today the Neighborhood Council system has become a network of thousands of activists and concerned citizens educating themselves and the public on the inner workings of City Hall. <\/p>\n
A major victory and example of the power that NCs can exert is the creation of the Office of Public Accountability and DWP Ratepayer Advocate, which will scrutinize our water and power bills. Not only was the Ratepayer advocate strongly supported by the NC system, but one of the commissioners that will decide the actual advocate, is a neighborhood council member. <\/p>\n
The Congress of Neighborhood Councils, one of the few times all 95 NCs get together, will be held on September 24th at City Hall \u2013 a great opportunity to get information and think about joining your local group. <\/p>\n
When we organize and come together under a large tent to work on solutions as opposed to debating ideology and getting stuck in ego, we can kick the clowns out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies. Organize, Organize, Organize. Because Los Angeles City has nearly 4,000,000 people, it isn’t surprising that there is a different organization holding a meeting or protesting something every day. Veterans for Peace, PETA, Bicycle Collectives, Third Parties, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-circus","category-radio-commentaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies.<\/em><\/p>\n