Grayce Liu | Michael Kohlhaas dot org

Some guy whose name I didn’t catch last night at the SRNC appeal hearing speaking what evidently passes for truth in some circles these days, although I’m not sure what circles those are.

Background: Last month the Skid Row Neighborhood Council failed to be formed and then General Jeff Page, head of the formation committee, and his colleague Katherine McNenny discovered some very shady looking activity and filed an appeal with the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. You can also read a more balanced version of the story by Gale Holland of the Times.

Last night a panel consisting of three neighborhood council presidents from around the City heard General Jeff’s appeal of the election that defeated the Skid Row Neighborhood Council separation from DLANC last month. You can read the whole appeal here, including DONE boss Grayce Liu’s recommendations to the panel. The gist of it is that someone sent around an email that looked like it came from DLANC urging people to vote against the SRNC. If this had been a candidate for a neighborhood council office this evidence would have been enough to incur sanctions from the City based on the rules in the official election manual.

As it was, though, the panel unambiguously recommended that DONE either hold another election without the exceedingly contentious online voting that was unaccountably allowed in this election.¹ Note that you can also read a less impressionistic version of this story than mine by Gale Holland, writing in this morning’s Times.

The meeting was well-attended and the level of interest and excitement was high. Unfortunately I had to leave after only three hours, long before anything was decided, but what I did see was well worth the trip. Most exciting was the public comments, which, at least while I was there, were all but one in favor of Skid Row. They were insightful, heartfelt, moving, convincing, enough to restore understandably flagging faiths in democracy. The one guy who was against the new NC was…well, his comments are summarized in the image that appears at the start of this post. It may seem like a joke, but it was not.

I’m pleased to note, also, that at least one public commenter mentioned my recent public records request on the SRNC, connecting up the immoral, probably illegal anti-partition campaign with the nefarious activities of Downtown Business Improvement Districts and their cross-appointed-to-DLANC executive directors Rena Leddy and Estela Lopez. Even puppet-wielding crackpot Wayne Spindler, evidently seeing the gravity of the situation, laid his creepy-moronic pig-performance aside and said something important in favor of the SRNC, and was applauded. Anyway, that’s the news. Find a little unfounded speculative nerdview material after the break.
Continue reading Patti Berman, Estela Lopez, Rena Leddy, Unite DTLA, Rocky Delgadillo, Tentatively Foiled In Their Evil Plan: Skid Row Neighborhood Council Victory In Sight As Hearing Panel Recommends Do-Over Of One Sort Or Another! →

General Jeff Page in front of the Skid Row City Limits Mural.

According to the incomparable Gale Holland, writing in the L.A. Times, the initial balloting shows that the Skid Row Neighborhood Council has been defeated by a slim 62 vote margin. The NC election was the subject of extensive and disgusting opposition on Facebook and elsewhere.¹ The fix was in, though, as the City Council voted a few weeks ago to allow online voting in this NC election only, according to Gale Holland. In a striking performative demonstration of the digital divide, the traditional paper ballots were 183 to 19 in favor of the SRNC, whereas online ballots were 807 to 581 against.

Screenshot of moronic facebook rants against the Skid Row NC accusing, among other stupidity, the LA Community Action Network of being part of a criminal conspiracy.

The NC proponents also suspect that the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council misused city funds to campaign against the election.² Anyway, evidently a challenge is planned based on these considerations. The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, overseer of the City’s neighborhood councils, is notorious for the number, length, and vituperativity of its appeals, so this process promises to be, at least, interesting.

And the other side is gearing up for policy-wonk-based battles as well. It seems that Estela Lopez herself, voodoo queen of the ongoing criminal conspiracy known as the Central City East Association, made a CPRA request to Grayce Liu of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment in January on the subject of the SRNC, evidently to gather materials for the witch’s brew of revanchist zillionaire subversionism that’s presently bubbling, boiling, toiling, and troubling in her hellish cauldron out there on Crocker Street. Turn the page for a transcription and some discussion.
Continue reading Skid Row Neighborhood Council Tentatively Rejected In Face Of DTLA Neighborhood Council Shenaniganistic Opposition. High-Powered Lobbyist, Criminal Conspirator, And Smoke-Filled Room Denizen Estela Lopez Apparently Uses Or Will Use California Public Records Act To Subvert Democratic Outcome →