Allen David Heskin After the Battle is Won, Political Contradictions in Santa Monica, UCLA Lecture and unpublished ms. Fall, 1983, 1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1977
Assoc. Prof., Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UCLA
"In 1981, a coalition of groups referred to as Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) won majority control on the City Council of the City of Santa Monica. Having won this battle, however, SMRR faced a new challenge, that of governing the city. This paper examines some to the political contradictions that have become apparent in SMRR's approach to this task. Its perspective is shaped by the author's research in preparing the book, Tenants and the American Dream (1983) and employment in the city by a community organization to develop a community development corporation from mid-1982 to mid-1983. In 1983, SMRR lost its first election after gaining control. While it still has a majority on the council, SMRR and its member organizations are searching for the reasons for the electoral turn around. It is this author's belief that part of the problem lies in SMRR's failure to resolve the contradictions discussed in this paper.
"From 1979 to 1981, Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR), an electoral coalition in the City of Santa Monica, scored an impressive set of victories at the polls. They passed and defended a tough rent control law, elected a full rent control board, elected school board candidates, and gained a two-thirds majority on the seven member city council. SMRR had combined an almost military mobilization of the population and the latest in computer aided electioneering to score their victories. However, having won these battles, new challenges awaited them, that of governing the city, and while governing, consolidating the victories they had scored. During the second year of SMRR's first two years in control of the city council, I worked in Santa Monica for the the Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO). My responsibility was to establish a community development corporation and help formulate neighborhood housing policy. While carrying out my assignment, I had the opportunity to closely observe SMRR's actions. My view was from the neighborhoods and, from my perspective, what I saw was an organization with a lot of problems in danger of squandering an extraordinary base of support.
"In the Spring of 1983, SMRR's first election since "taking power," my fears were realized. SMRR lost a seat on the city council, failed to unseat two opposition incumbents, and failed to gain a majority on the school board. While retaining full control of the rent board and narrowly defeating the latest attack on rent control, they are clearly worried. In two years, all their remaining seats on the council are up for election while none of the opposition's seats are in jeopardy.
"When the results of the 1983 loss are compared with the results of the 1981 victory, two worrying facts emerge. The first is that the shift in voters appeared to be nearly city wide. Only in one part of the city, which historically had not been a SMRR stronghold, were the result not more favorable for the opposition. Even in the SMRR stronghold, Ocean Park, there was a negative shift. In 1981, 72.3% of the Ocean Park voters voted for SMRR council candidates and 21.8% for the opposition. In 1983, this changed to 64.2% for SMRR and 27.2% for the opposition. This represents a 12% loss in votes for SMRR and a 23% gain for the opposition. In other parts of the city, the shift was greater. The second fact is that the opposition was able to mobilize an unusually high voter turnout (8% increase in the high-income, north of Montana homeowner district), while SMRR either held steady or suffered a slight drop-off in turnout in its strong areas (Ocean Park, a 1% decline).
"Some of SMRR's problems resulted from the particular circumstances of SMRR's emergence in Santa Monica, and others from the strategic choices it made. Their problems were compounded, in my opinion, by the inability of community organizations to adjust to the change in governments. SMRR had two options open to it when it took control. It could have taken the approach of becoming a mass based organization and continued to organize and politicize issues in the city as it had during elections, or it could have acted as a political machine, building wards with a system of patronage. It chose neither. Instead, it maintained its electoral battle format of a cadre-centered organization, and focused inward on the development of additional cadre to meet the needs of city government.
"The community organizations, for their part, never adjusted to the SMRR victory. They maintained an Alinsky stance even though the nature of SMRR made it nearly impossible to carry on in this manner. They tried to maintain the illusion of autonomy (independence) and struggle while rejecting the dream of most community organizations, community control.
"Santa Monica is a rather nondescript but pleasant little coastal city of about 90,000 people on the edge of Los Angeles. It has its lower-income neighborhoods, but the terms ghetto and barrio do not have real meaning in the city. If the term "middle class" has meaning to you, then Santa Monica is a middle class town. It is not a city with a rich history of political movements or widespread neighborhood struggles. While there have been moments of protest, the city's politics were, until 1979, typical of many small towns whose government is controlled by business and real estate interests with an electoral base in the home-owning population. This was true even though 80% of the town's population rented their homes. Within this background, the emergence of "progressive" politics in Santa Monica is surprising.
"What protest there has been has been primarily concentrated in the heavily renter, "alternative lifestyle" beachfront neighborhood of Ocean Park. A redevelopment project in the neighborhood which was intended o create a Miami Beach high rise beachfront has been a source of discontent for years, and efforts to privatize the very popular recreational pier and build an enclosed suburban type shopping mall in the areas that adjoin the neighborhood were major issues. Much of this, however, is more related to coastal politics that led to the formation of the Coastal Commission than to traditional urban politics. Outside of Ocean Park, including the more working class and minority Pico neighborhood, no such history of protest is known.
"As a result, the Santa Monica "shift left" was much more a case of SMRR seizing the moment than winning after building through years of struggle. The moment was created by the passage of Proposition 13. The inflationary spiral in real estate was steeper in very few places than in Santa Monica. Buildings were turning over three times a year, condos were rising, and Santa Monica was on its way to becoming Beverly Hills by the sea. The stakes were high and the elected officials in power unwilling to compromise. Santa Monica was the focus of an immediate fight between those who were benefitting from the inflation and those [who] were not, i.e., between those who owned property and those who did not. Those who did not were in the majority.
"SMRR's early mobilization of people was extraordinary. In my random survey of 729 renters in Santa Monica in late 1979 and early 1980, an extraordinary 23% of the respondents reported they had been either active in the tenant movement or been otherwise politically active. The Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights ended its first campaign with nearly five thousand names in its files of those who had helped.
"There was a base of spontaneous tenant organizing in the early period following the passage of Proposition 13 from which to build, but the mobilization was far from spontaneous. The campaigns were run like military operations, incorporating broad scale organizing and the latest electioneering technology. It was this combination of mobilization, i.e. people, and technology that proved so effective. Over a quarter of those who had disputes with landlords organized at the building level to fight the landlord (nearly 50% of the dispute was about rent levels), and over a third of these people were brought into the campaign. The technology consisted of polling and computer assisted targeting and getting out the vote campaigns.
"The result of this effort was an exceptional sense of efficacy in the Santa Monica renter population. Nearly half of the Santa Monica tenants I interviewed believed that if tenants became active and organized they could be very successful in gaining more rights. Another 40% responded that they would be somewhat successful. The question was no longer could it be done, but whether the tenant population wanted it done and was willing to work for it.
"They were willing to vote in unusually higher percentages. Nationwide, tenants vote only half as often as homeowners. In Santa Monica, with the help of computer-aided voter identification and massive get out the vote campaigns, only a few percentage points separated the two populations. Also, the tenant were willing to vote as SMMR directed. Nearly two thirds of those interviewed said they would be likely to vote for candidates recommended by their tenant organization, with only 10% saying they were not at all likely to follow SMRR's lead.
"This rosy picture, however, was not without its thorns. While the majority of the renter population was moving into the SMRR camp, there were those adamantly against the change, with 16.5% actually against rent control. When asked what were the major problems in the neighborhood, several respondents answered that radical rent control organizers were the number one neighborhood problem.
"Comparing the results of my survey in Santa Monica to a parallel study in Los Angeles County as a whole, the overall impression is one of politicalization and polarization in Santa Monica. The right (conservatives and moderates) moved to the right, and those on the left (liberals and progressives) moved to the left. Politics became more aligned with political identity than is the custom in this country. All this seemed to indicate that SMRR might have topped out and, needed to change people's overall political belief system in order to gain more votes. It also meant that they would have to take good care of the supporters they had.
"SMRR was organized after an unsuccessful rent control campaign in 1977. It was structured for electoral purposes, bringing together the electoral resources then available in the city. It functions in the city much like a political party, but, since local elections are non-partisan, it is not a party which has registered members. The initial coalition of groups that formed the SMRR membership were the Santa Monica Fair Housing Alliance (SMFHA), largely made up of those who were unsuccessful in the 1977 try; the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), which had stayed out of the 1977 effort, but brought much of the technology to the successful campaigns; and the local Democratic club.
"After the first victory in 1981, a fourth group was added, OPEN. The Ocean Park Elector Network (OPEN), was the product of the same organizing effort that led to the formation of the Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO), for whom I worked. While OPCO's members worked in the first campaign, OPCO, as a tax exempt organization, did not participate. After the election victory, however, members of OPCO formed the Ocean Park political organization, OPEN, and petitioned SMRR for membership.
"The opposition to SMRR has repeatedly charged that OPCO, with the formation of OPEN, became and continues to be a political organization. SMRR activists also complain about OPCO, but their complaint is about the separation and that OPCO itself is not political enough. In my experience, the differentiation between OPCO and OPEN was strictly maintained. However, the role of OPCO, as opposed to OPEN, and the other community organizations in Santa Monica in the political life of the city is a major issue in this paper and will be dealt with later.
"SMRR is organized on democratic centralist and consensus lines. When it's time to select candidates or issues present themselves, thorough discussion takes place both within SMRR and the member organizations. If any of the groups dissents, a candidate or a policy is rejected. However, once consensus is reached, all SMRR groups and all the members of a SMRR group and, for that matter, candidates that run under the SMRR banner are obliged to adhere to the decision. It has been a very disciplined organization. Much of this discipline has, in the past, been justified on pragmatic principles, i.e., we're winning and it's working so we should all go along.
"The most notable defector from this discipline is Bill Jennings, a former head of the Democratic club and former SMRR candidate. After his election, he refused to take instructions on how to vote and publicly broke with SMRR. In the last election much to SMRR's dismay, he was re-elected on the opposition ticket.
"Most policy questions are settled around election time with the updating of a document called the "Principles of Unity." The Principles of Unity are not in fact principles, but as noted by Mark Kann (1983) in his article on Santa Monica, "a document that promises something to all coalition members, but specifies neither priorities nor strategies for a more systematic transformation" of the city. In short, it is a list of agreed upon policies. In the case of housing, a three-page list at least as detailed as the city's housing element enumerates SMRR's housing policies. Kann notes that lists without principles or priorities has led to ad hocism in the city. Again, this ad hocism has been justified on pragmatic political lines. Lists are used as the primary alternative to ideology (Schecter 1982), and discussion of ideology is officially shunned in the city as bad politics.
"This rejection of principle in the Principles of Unity and repression of ideological debate in SMRR should not be taken as an indication of either unity or the absence of ideology. Berkeley's left movement is famous for its complex ideological debates and, certainly, this has been missing in Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, there are ideological conflicts within SMRR, however. The conflicts are between progressives and liberals and among those holding the spectrum of liberal beliefs, particularly around issues of democracy, race and class.
"This failure to acknowledge a role for ideology in political and policy decisions may be detrimental to the Santa Monica movement as the focus on ideology has been in Berkeley. One extreme seems to lead away from potential coalition, while the other leads away from coherent debate and policy. Santa Monica's problem has been exacerbated by the lack of a history of urban policy debates in the city. Even among many people with histories of political activism, such as coastal or anti-war politics, there is often a lack of sophistication and coherence on urban policy issues.
"SMRR made the choice to try to fit within the perceived mainstream norms of its voter base rather than attempt to raise the consciousness of that base. The absence of ideological discussions would make consciousness raising impossible. It is never clear what consciousness should be raised to. If my analysis of SMRR having approached the limits of its voting strength is correct, this may have been a very hazardous decision. It is far easier for SMRR's opposition to appear to be in the mainstream than SMRR, and this is what they did in the last election.
"Conflict within SMRR is almost inherent in the nature of its structure. It is not an organization of like groups. Two of the organizations, CED and the Democratic Club, are both chapters in larger political organizations, with CED professing to be a tendency within the Democratic Party. SMFHA is a local issue oriented group formed around support for rent control, and OPEN is neighborhood based and comes out of a community organizing tradition. They have different interests and different approaches. The consensus approach has masked much of this, but it has also meant that it has been very difficult for SMRR, as a whole, to develop a coherent program beyond rent control.
"Although SMRR has a mass of supporters, it has never seen itself as a mass-based organization. In fact, none of the SMRR groups is, itself mass based. SMFHA periodically makes moves toward becoming mass-based, but it has never succeeded in attaining this goal and has, in fact, a somewhat dwindling population of seniors as its major membership. CED has always been a rather exclusive club that has only recently seriously begun to discuss opening up membership. The Democratic club, while having all democrats as its members on paper, has always been run by a small group. And, OPEN, while theoretically an organization of all Ocean Park residents interested in SMRR, meets primarily in private at meetings attended by invitation only and is not open, as its name suggests.
"Previous to SMRR's emergence, a very small group of people ran the city and controlled all boards and commissions in the city. At one point before the rent control victory there was no tenant in this majority-tenant town elected to office or serving on any important board or commission in the city. SMRR had to, in effect, start from scratch in finding people to be candidates and commissioners. Their problem was compounded by their participatory vision of government that called for many more boards and commissions than previously existed, along with innumerable task forces on issues faced in the city.
"SMRR has taken heavily from the ranks of its member groups in meeting the government's needs. The result of this effort has been a near integration of SMRR and the city government, so much so that the term "the city" is used nearly interchangeably with SMRR. In fact, between elections, SMRR has become nearly invisible, operating in the shadow of City Hall. While this integration has surely been useful to some SMRR cadre, it can not be said that it has benefitted the organization.
"The focus on the needs of government has meant very little attention has been given to political organizing between elections. The result of this has been extraordinary, as Bruce Van Allen of Santa Cruz (who feared this might happen in his city) put it, to "depoliticize," "bureaucratize," and "neutralize" issues for the SMRR base (Rotkin and Van Allen 1980). With SMRR and its cadre in control and no element of SMRR doing "political" organizing, the SMRR base, while having been invited to participate in government, has been politically ignored. It has been the opposition that has had the political organizing field almost entirely to itself.
"The opposition managed to politicize the housing element debate by appealing to ideology, property values and public safety. They turned out 500 of their supporters at a city council meeting to oppose portions of the element. SMRR didn't organize, but instead called in a handful of loyalists to support the proposal and make statements for media consumption. Even on the bread and butter issue of setting the annual rent increase, one finds primarily landlords in the audience. No mobilization of tenants takes place.
"One of the city council's major policies has been the building of additional affordable housing. They passed an ordinance that required the building of affordable residential units along with all commercial development, but did not build a popular base for the policy. When I first started working in the city, an issue was before the council about whether a third floor should be added to a mini-shopping mart development for affordable housing. Everyone who appeared at the council on the issue, including neighbors, spoke against the requirement, but the council wanted to proceed. I asked one of the councilmen about the absence of any support. He was not concerned and stated that he and the other council members could take the heat. However, it is the kind of heat no politician standing alone can long withstand.
"By failing to do political organizing, SMRR has allowed the other side to gain a political advantage. In moving their cadre inside City Hall and relying on the power of their council, they have lost the edge that they had when they came to power. The opposition now works harder with its base than it did when it lost, and SMRR works less hard. The opposition increased its turnout at the polls and moved voters to its side. SMRR lost a little turnout and lost voters as well. The process of depoliticizing, bureaucratizing and neutralizing deadens. It does not rejuvenate and keep the base of a movement alive.
"SMRR's reliance on the power of the city has had other negative consequences as well, For not only did it fail to organize its base, but on occasion, it uses its power against its own base as well as the opposition. With its disciplined democratic centralist approach, any criticism is treated as an attack. It is the kind of mistake Harry Boyte (1980) reported Dennis Kucinich made in Cleveland: "anybody who criticized tended to be lumped together." In Santa Monica, this lumping has become extreme because the integration of SMRR into the city has meant any criticism of the city administration, politicians or staff hired by the SMRR Council tends to be treated the same.
"The inclusion of this city staff in the scheme seemed to me to be a major mistake. The city has a "good government" city manager form of government, with a part-time council. While the SMRR council members are loyal to SMRR and give more than could be expected to their positions, the staff, of necessity, plays a major role in both dealing with the issues of the day and establishing policy direction. The council member's loyalty to SMRR interferes with their ability to differ with the staff and respond to bruised constituents' problems. It is a situation too ripe for abuses that can only contribute to a decline in the SMRR base.
"In my experience, professionals, such as those on the city staff, tend to assume they must take on too much responsibility for carrying out their assigned tasks. With this overburdening sense of responsibility comes and almost equally compelling need to control. It is the unusual professional who has enough faith in the people who he is to serve to share that responsibility with the population. The fear of failure and the danger to career is too great.
"As a result, such observers as Milton Kotler (1982) have noted that professionals often make poor contributions to political life. They have, in his experience, an almost desperate need to find "the answer" to a problem within the confines of their expertise. As Kotler put it, "They think politics is about solutions to problems." To Kotler, however, politics is not about solutions, but "about the discovery of the common good, about equality, about being together, about the future (p.32)."
"Kotler's observations seem appropriate to the situation in Santa Monica. Although there is a great deal of rhetoric around participatory democracy in the city, the disciplined nature of SMRR and the strong component of high-tech electioneering in the SMRR campaigns seems to encourage the professional approach. Problems are to be defined, controlled and then "solved." The definition stage is often the place where the hidden ideological struggles within SMRR are fought out. In the SMRR jargon, debates often revolved around the "correct characterization" of a situation. As we know, such a characterization usually dictates a course of action and forecloses alternatives. While this manner of combat is often appropriate to campaigning with an opponent, it is far less appropriate to the day-to-day political life of a city. It is least often useful when the conflict is within your constituency and the dominant definition of a situation has meant defining away the problem raised by a potential ally.
"The emphasis on professional solutions to problems would have validity if it were not that so many urban problems are what are called "wicked" problems that defy the quick, easy solution. The emphasis in Santa Monica is on simple, political and managerial solutions that actually submerge issues rather than solve them. Attacking urban problems is a very complex process of appropriate responses to changing conditions in which both professional and citizen have a continuing role. The "Answer" is not possible.
"In Kotler's view, the issue revolves around whether there is "faith in the people, in the people's practical wisdom." It is this faith that Kann observed may be missing in the Santa Monica movement. In my experience, although SMRR has a majority of the "people" in its camp, the role of the "people" has been an issue of contention. This is both because of the emphasis on professionalism we have just discussed and the hidden ideological debate within the city. While there was most often agreement that people could and should participate, many SMRR activists worry that the "people" lack both the competence and consciousness necessary to actually share in the power of the city.
"I encountered the question in debates over the composition of the board of the community development corporation OPCO was forming. The community organizations wanted a "people" dominated board made up of neighborhood activists loyal to the community organizations. The city staff wanted a public-private partnership board dominated by experts with substantial city control. SMRR and the SMRR council members split on the issue.
"I found it a particularly peculiar debate given the middle-class nature of the city. In Santa Monica, a people-dominated board meant three architects, one who served on the planning commission, one who was on the architectural review board, and another who worked for an advocacy planning firm; a housing professional who worked on relocation for the county; a Ph.D. who worked for an economic development corporation outside the city; a private attorney who was a school board candidate, the head of the English department of a community college, and the like. Still, the pressure remained to further professionalize the board.
"The stance of the community organizations in this instance was unusual. Because of the fear of the potential of a community development corporation to run amuck in their neighborhoods and a strong sense of a need to protect their turf, the community organizations wanted control of the CDC. This was in contrast to their general position which was not one of community control, but rather one of organizational independence and an emphasis on empowering the people through organizing popular pressure on city-decision makers.
"Three major community organizations exist in the city. The Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO), the oldest group and, to some extent, the model; The Pico Neighborhood Association (PNA), which is about three years old and represents the lowest income neighborhood in the city; and the Mid-City Neighbors, formed in the past year, which represents a white middle-class area of the city with the highest concentration of seniors. All three organization profess to employ an Alinsky style of organizing and are funded by the city out of general revenue spending and block grant funds.
"The existence of these organizations is vey central to the participatory ethos of the city. From the city's point of view, it is the role of the community organizations to organize the "democratic participation" of the residents of the neighborhood. The organizations are supposed to ensure that the residents will have full input on issues before the council and ensure that additional issues are raised that speak to each neighborhood's needs. This element of the participatory program of the city is set forth in a task force report issued in March of 1982. OPCO and PNA were represented on the task force, along with other city residents, including people from SMRR's opposition.
"Not surprisingly, the opposition members of the task force objected to emphasis on community organizations in the city's plans. They were particularly concerned about the city funding these organizations. They believed that this would lead to a system of patronage. They also believed that the Alinsky style of the organizations would lead to a politicizing of issues making the organizations instruments in the SMRR electoral process.
"The community organizations, for their part, pushed for city funding and fought for the participatory approach to city government. What was surprising here, however, was not this position, but that they specifically rejected a greater role for themselves or their neighborhoods by rejecting the concept of community control of planning or other city functions. Community control is usually a central element of progressive political movements.
"In the Montreal Citizens' Movement, for example, participatory democracy is explicitly rejected. The MCM insists on the application of principles of direct democracy and community control. As they put it, in regards to an offer to participate:
"It has been suggested that these people should participate. But we must beware! We do not want a participation which will go no further than finding out what the population thinks. Because in this type of consultation, the higher authorities make the final decision.
"When participation or consultation is done in this, there is nothing progressive about it. On the contrary, it coopts. It is very profitable politically to let the people believe they have decided something . . . In such circumstances, consultative participation only serves the interests of those who have put it forward. It cuts short the movement of popular mobilization . . . (Raboy 1982, p.253).
"It is hard to understand why in Santa Monica, the community groups did not want control. The reasons given were that they wanted independence from the city; they did not want to be bogged down in the mundane issues presented by everyday planning; and they did not want to become the target of organizing of others rather than being the organizers. Given the nature of SMRR, a desire for independence can be understood, but it seems hard to see how that would be possible, particularly in the case of OPCO, and the opposition would hardly miss a chance to make the community organizations targets if it fit their purposes. While no group would want to be bogged down in details, it seems this problem could have been dealt with in the design of the neighborhood government structure, short of rejecting all direct power.
"Interestingly, the opposition also rejected the neighborhood power concept. It would have seemed that it would particularly fit their needs. Their major concern has been protection of the single family character of their strongholds. This could have been done by a neighborhood planning board. However, it also would have depoliticized this major issue and reduced their chances of retaking City Hall.
"Recently, PNA took a step beyond its "independence and influence" posture and demanded what would be tantamount to a veto power over development in their neighborhood. The reaction of the SMRR leadership and city staff shows that from their viewpoint, community control was not an acceptable approach. SMRR Councilman Dennis Zane was quoted as saying, "I think the council has the responsibility to all neighborhoods to assure that all development is environmentally sensitive and contributes to the neighborhood. But the council had the responsibility to the whole city, not just a single neighborhood. I don't believe it would be appropriate to grant any neighborhood that level of authority"(The Evening Outlook). Mayor Ken Edwards, another SMRR candidate agreed, "Duly elected officials of the city, as established in the charter, have those responsibilities." Mark Tigan of the city staff chimed in, "We support maximum neighborhood involvement in the process, but we would never recommend releasing the decision-making part to the neighborhood or providing them with veto control." Members of the Chamber of Commerce and developers agreed, but used stronger language.
"Kann notes that some of the SMRR leadership he talked with had a tendency to dismiss the community groups as "parochial, self-interested, and unable to view the larger picture." In my experience, this is due in part to the SMRR discipline and the needs of government discussed earlier. While both SMRR and the community organizations agreed on a participatory model, the dimensions of the model were not agreed upon. SMRR and the city staff had an orderly city participation model in mind. The community organizations had an Alinsky conflict model in mind.
"The independent Alinsky-like stance of the community organizations was particularly unappreciated in City Hall. Like bureaucrats everywhere, they do not like to be yelled at. Perhaps even more, the staff, which sees itself as liberal to progressive, can not accept an attack. The elected officials, for example on the rent board, are little different. They believe they are doing what is best for the city as a whole. It seems to me a kind of liberal dance of political correctness rather than a process akin to Kotler's image. Participation is supported in principle, but at the same time mistrusted. OPCO is particularly disliked when it is aggressive. Ocean Park's white "middle class" and voluntarily poor population is often seen as legitimately having complaints. On the other hand, PNA is seen as legitimate in a liberal sense. However, PNA's more working class character is seen as less professional in its approach. It was as if OPCO was white but not right and PNA was right but not white. This is a prime example of the ideological muddle in the city.
"Recently, the conflict between the two models came to a head with the Mid-City's organization. In the organization's newsletter and flyers, they attacked the city for a perceived lack of cooperation in controlling development in their area. The city staff and some of the council took this as an affront to the city and threatened the continued funding of the organization. Neither the delegitimization of OPCO or PNA or the direct attack on Mid-City can contribute to building or maintaining a popular movement. Certainly neighborhood organizations can be controlled, but at the expense of their constituents' support when it counts - on election day.
"My experience at OPCO led me to believe that the worries of the SMRR opposition were unfounded, and, in fact, the existence of the community organizations more interfered with possible SMRR patronage and electoral strategies than were an instrument of these items. This was the case both because of the attempt at independence and the Alinsky style. At the center of the Alinsky style is the notion of empowerment. Empowerment in this context means that through struggling for their rights, people learn the power of collective action and their own efficacy as individuals. Invariably, the target of this struggle is the city, and by inference, SMRR.
"In many environments, attempting to petition the government can be empowering, but in Santa Monica, it was an underestimation of the population and a miscalculation of the political situation. My interviews with Santa Monica tenants indicated an extraordinarily high sense of efficacy in the population without further community organizing. The city government, in the hands of SMRR, was, also, without much fuss, quite willing to give citizens whose support they wanted a full hearing and, in my observation, anything within reason they wanted. In this situation, the citizens were already empowered, and the act of Alinsky-style organizing often a charade.
"This is particularly true in the case of OPCO. Ocean Park has been the major SMRR stronghold in the city, and OPCO activists, both on their own and through OPEN, have immediate access to the council. Often organizing took place when a telephone call would have served just as well. In the extreme case, a SMRR councilperson was actually asked to feign skepticism to a neighborhood proposal so that it would seem to the people being organized that they had won a battle rather than been granted a favor. If the favor was patronage, as the opposition feared, the style of OPCO masked this fact.
"Even in PNA's case, which has less connection with SMRR and less access to the council, there is a falseness about the empowerment rhetoric. PNA proudly states that an example of the fruits of their struggle is the winning of a large share of the Community Development Block grant's funds for their neighborhood. However, they ignore that they won this fight when SMRR candidates gained a majority on the council and not before, and that there was no real question on the SMRR council that the Pico neighborhood should have the majority of the funds. It was a fight that was won, not in struggle, but in the change of governments, but this could not be acknowledged from an Alinsky stance.
"It should be noted that PNA's problem has not been having city funds allocated to it, but getting the funds, once allocated. As in most cities, it is in dealing with the bureaucracy, where the contractual details are worked out, that organizations like PNA often face difficulties that can only be resolved with political pressure. However, given the political structure in Santa Monica, problems of this sort are nearly impossible to resolve. There is no mediating political force, just the wall called the city. If PNA registers a protest, it is told somewhat ambiguously that it is "supported" by the city and that any direct action would only serve to hurt "the movement". This is a situation reminiscent of Blacks and the Democratic Party and produces the same level of frustration.
"The invisibility of SMRR between elections contributed to these problems. SMRR could have used its patronage power as the opposition feared and behaved as an old fashioned machine. However, one does not go to SMRR to get block grant funds or to get a stop sign. One goes to "The City." Although votes are often split, with the SMRR council members voting to meet the neighbor's requests and the opposition voting against, this fact is almost always buried in the SMRR council members' insistence that they "represent the whole city," rather than a particular constituency.
"The Alinsky position of the community organizations also contributes further to the ad hocism of the city's policies. It is a process of empowering, responding to expressed needs, but not one of exercising power. What this means is that while the community organizations fight for what is wanted by a particular group of neighbors, they are reticent to take the policy lead. Instead, they wanted to be in a position to react to the city. However, as we have already discussed, the city, and SMRR, for its part, is also often not coherent from a policy point of view.
"Within the community organizations, the reactive mode also resulted in them not building a mechanism for using the abilities of these people who have come to realize that they are, in fact, empowered. In OPCO, for example, a group of people who were both OPCO and SMRR activists wanted OPCO to take the lead in planning Ocean Park. These people were consistently discouraged by the organization for being at variance with the organization's mission.
"The second fear of the opposition, that the community organizations would be instruments of politicization and electioneering, was also unfounded. If anything, the reality was also the reverse. The community organizations' desire for independence and their Alinsky focus made them unwilling to openly align themselves with any political group. They were, however, under the influence of the city. This usually meant depoliticizing issues rather than politicizing them. As we noted earlier, the city wanted an orderly process, not conflict.
"While this sometimes worked to the detriment of the opposition by removing potential issues from the political arena, it was not what they feared. An example of this occurred when the major hotel in the Ocean Park neighborhood planned to double its size by the building of a new tower. Not unexpectedly, the initial neighborhood reaction was extremely hostile to the idea. In good Alinsky fashion, an OPCO organizer leapt upon the issue. There were a number of stormy meetings with the city over the issue, and then the pressure to ease off was put on OPCO and the organizer by the city, which liked the revenue potential of the project. Interestingly, the same pressure also came from within OPCO from some SMRR activists who were OPCO members. The organizer resisted until a compromise was worked out. In this case, a consultant was hired to analyze the impact of the expansion from the neighborhood point of view. The hotel developer accepted the consultant's recommendations and the neighbors were satisfied. Although in the end, the outcome could be characterized as the product of effective citizen participation and neighborhood planning, once again, the political result was a failure to exploit an opportunity to increase SMRR's support.
"This use of the community organizations sometimes transferred the political focus from substantive issues to the existence of the organizations themselves. In this process, the city deflected at least a portion of the flack on any issue from itself to the community organizations. The best example of this was the city's attempt at settling the long-standing conflict over the Redevelopment Project in Ocean Park. The immediate neighbors of the project, with the assistance of the SMRR's political adversaries, opposed the city's efforts. When the city made a deal with the developer to avoid what it said would be costly litigation, the conflict escalated.
"OPCO had very little to do with the deal the city made with the project's developer, but it was expected to back the city. OPCO, for its part, found itself between a rock and a hard place. Internally, OPCO was ambivalent on the project. It didn't know what to do and under pressure, behaved erratically. It had always opposed the project, but, convinced by the city that the project could not be stopped, OPCO eventually capitulated and publicly favored the proposed settlement, earning the undying hostility of a portion of its constituency. This was a problem for which Alinsky provided no solution.
"The community organizations never were intended to play a major role in SMRR's electioneering and they did not. Their part in the process was, through their encouragement of citizen participation in city affairs, to act as a training ground for future leadership and, perhaps, candidate development as well. OPCO has been just such a point of entry for many people in Santa Monica. The other organizations have not. PNA, in particular, has been very unsuccessful in placing its activists in positions of power. As one PNA activist told me after being rejected for a position on a city commission, "I thought it would be old fashioned politics, that I was the PNA person and would be picked, but it wasn't that way at all." In large part, this is because PNA has refused to accept the SMRR discipline at the expense of their own.
"In the last election, an OPCO activist ran on the SMRR slate. The results of the 1983 election indicate how small an electoral impact the community organization has in the city. The OPCO activist came in third in the city voting, 1.2% behind a relatively unknown senior Minister running on the SMMR slate. In Ocean Park, the results were only marginally different. The OPCO activist received .9% more than the unknown, a 2.1% turnaround. It is important to note here that not only did OPCO appear to have little impact on the election, but OPEN's existence also seemed to have little impact. This is further indication of the invisibility of SMRR and its member organizations.
"The election loss in 1983 has caused a rethinking of the SMRR structure. Many of the observations I have made are shared, in whole or part, by members of the constituent organizations. There are activists working toward opening up the membership to individuals and rejecting the need for consensus in all cases. There is also similar activity within the community organizations. After the last election, the SMRR opposition attempted to defund OPCO. It has had an unsettling impact on the organizations and has cause them to begin to rethink their role in the city.
"At this point, I do not believe the discussions have gone far enough. Unless SMRR becomes a more dynamic organization and takes the lead in creating a vision for the future of the city, unless it decides who its constituency is and what the organization stands for, unless the community organizations modify their Alinsky position and assert themselves in the city's power structure, I do not believe an answer will be found that will maintain SMRR in power.
"SMRR must find a way to engage in political organizing toward recapturing at least some of the passion that brought it to power. This means partially separating itself from the city, rethinking its reliance on professionalism, and becoming a direct and open political force in the city. I believe SMRR should look toward the neighborhoods as a foundation for its organizing structure and become more directly connected with its base.
"When SMRR first gained power, I compared it favorably to what I knew of Berkeley's reform efforts. I always believed that Berkeley was more an idea than a place. The Santa Monica movement initially was very much place based. It has since drifted away from what it had when it started. It is now neither idea nor place based. As a movement that was born into adulthood, SMRR has a lot of catching up to do. There are many wonderful people in the city who could remedy this problem if the proper structure and direction is found.
Bibliography
Harry Boyte The Backyard Revolution, Temple U. Press: Philadelphia, 1980.
Allan David Heskin Tenants and the American Dream, Praeger: NY, 1983.
Mark Kann Radicals in Power: Lessons from Santa Monica, Socialist Review, No. 69, 1983, pp. 81 - 101.
Marc Raboy The Future of Montreal and the MCM, The City and Radical Social Change, Dimities Roussopoulos (ed.), Black Rose Books: Montreal, 1982, pp. 235 - 239.
Mike Rotkin and Bruce Van Allen Community and Electoral Politics, Socialist Review, No. 47, 1980. pp. 101 - 118.
Stephen Schecter Urban Politics in Capitalist Society, The City and Radical Social Change, Dimitrios Roussopoulos (ed.), Black Rose Books: Montreal, 1982. pp. 110 - 128.