Today’s Congress of Neighborhoods: More Like the Founders Imagined

GELFAND’S WORLD--About 15 years ago, neighborhood council organizers had a great vision. Participants from all over the city would get together once or twice a year and debate the issues of the day. Each meeting would be akin to a town hall. Neighborhood councils and individuals would have the chance to raise topics, present their positions, propose motions, and vote on competing proposals. 

That was then, and it didn't happen. Instead, the city put on a series of meetings that mostly involved city agencies giving out free pens and politicians giving speeches. I called them the trade shows. 

This is now, where we have an annual Neighborhood Council Congress that is getting closer to the original idea. 

The big step forward began several years ago when the city government actually refused to continue sponsoring the annual meeting. There simply wasn't enough money in the budget of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). Then a curious thing happened. Cindy Cleghorn stood up at a meeting of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition (Lancc). She suggested that if DONE wouldn't organize and run the annual meeting, perhaps the volunteer neighborhood council participants could. 

This proposal was a slam dunk for Lancc. We suggested that as long as Cindy wanted to bring up the subject, why not appoint her chair of an ad hoc committee tasked with building a brand new nc congress. I believe that the proposal, discussion, and unanimous vote took no more than 3 minutes, and we were off to the races. 

Out of this project came an annual meeting that takes place at the Los Angeles City Hall on a Saturday late in September. DONE and the Lancc figured out that neighborhood councils could contribute money into a congress fund. This allows the congress to provide breakfast and lunch to its hundreds of participants. 

The advantage to having neighborhood council participants plan and run the annual congress (instead of city officials) is that we get to suggest topics for workshops and discussions. One year, I proposed a workshop on thinking out of the box in developing political influence. Another year, we planned and ran a workshop on using our growing international trade to develop jobs and businesses. These were just two out of many such suggestions. 

This year, there were dozens of workshops and presentations. I'd like to talk about two. 

Taking natural disaster planning seriously 

The first was not a formal panel. Rather, it was a table staffed by instant responders who will be involved should we have a major earthquake or other natural disaster. There were representatives of the Fire Department and there were representatives of an amateur radio emergency service group with the acronym ARES.  ARES will be one of the groups that could link your neighborhood with the authorities in the event of an earthquake that takes down telephone lines and cell phone towers. 

The advantage of having something like the nc congress is that we can get groups like ARES together with the rest of us to discuss and plan. 

Hence -- 

One of the things we did at the congress was to have a conversation that included Terrence Gomes, the president of Lancc, and the amateur radio operators. They all agreed that the radio ops should come to a Lancc meeting in the near future so that we can start the ball rolling. We can figure out a plan and then communicate our suggestions to all of the neighborhood councils. 

Eventually, we will bring representatives of the major disaster-service organizations together in a meeting with us neighborhood council types. They have the skills and equipment. We have the people. We ought to get the fire department, the hospital organizations, the city government, the amateur radio operators, and neighborhood council representatives into the same room for an entire morning. Out of this, we will get a better idea of how the public (that's you and me) can protect ourselves by becoming part of the emergency response. This can include something as easy as getting an amateur radio license and a handheld transceiver. It takes about a day's training and maybe $75 total. 

Using public relations correctly is essential to neighborhood councils 

I'd like to talk about one other breakout session, because it represented the right way to do things and, I think, a step up in the usefulness of the nc congresses. The topic involved press releases and press kits. It seems like a fairly mundane idea, but Ann-Marie Holman of Echo Park gave a well organized lecture which included sample materials. Holman was kind enough to provide the downloadable form of the sample kit to CityWatch, and you can have it by clicking here.

Why is this important? As neighborhood councils, we are all in the business of advertising our presence to the public. Is there some major policy question in your district such as a rezoning request, or is there an application for a liquor license on your corner? How do we get people to come to our meetings? 

Holman explained how you get started, and where to go from there. To get started, you write a short, one-paragraph description of your organization. She calls it the boilerplate, and provides as an example the description of the Echo Park Neighborhood Council (see the attached kit). She then explains how you expand that description into something called a one-sheet. It's named that way because it takes up one side of one sheet of paper, or in this modern era, one computer screen. 

Once you have the boilerplate and the one-sheet, you have the tools that allow you to write and put out a press release. 

The sample kit also includes email addresses that allow you to send your press releases. For example, you can send them to the City News Service. 

Finally, there is some useful advice on creating and using flyers, in particular the use of inexpensive flyers printed in black ink on colorful paper. 

An important lesson that we amateur press release writers need to learn is described in detail. In brief, write factually and don't look like you are bragging. If your press release reads like bragging or advertising copy, it won't be taken seriously, and the editor of the publication you are trying to impress may drop your work in the waste basket immediately. 

{module [1177]}

The social psychology of the neighborhood council system 

One final thought goes to the broader politics and social psychology of the neighborhood council system as a whole. NC participants sometimes think that their home council is the be-all and end-all of neighborhood councils. They expect to have political influence all by themselves. The reality is anything but. Los Angeles is a big city which has 15 city council districts and among those districts there are now 96 neighborhood councils. One neighborhood council by itself won't control its own City Council representative. On the other hand, that City Council representative may be influenced if the majority of neighborhood councils in the district take a unified position on some issue. 

But there are 15 City Council seats, and it takes a strong majority of the members of the City Council to get something done. For this reason, it is useful to have neighborhood council support from all over the city. That is what these citywide meetings are all about. They are a chance to discuss and lobby your fellow neighborhood council participants from the valley, from the west side, from south LA, and from the Wilshire corridor. 

There is a certain tension between the old vision of fighting City Hall we gray-bearded founders had, vs. the contrasting view of the current generation of city employees tasked with servicing the neighborhood council system. They seem to see us as an adjunct to City Hall, more to help than to fight. 

These are not exclusive functions. It's possible to help on some civic functions such as voter registration. But the ability of the neighborhood councils to represent the people of the city in opposition to wealthy developers is not something that the city government agencies are going to assist us in doing. For that, we are on our own. The annual nc congress, in its new form, provides us a chance to develop messages and create alliances independently of the city government agencies that would otherwise attempt to neuter our attempts at rebellion.

 

(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 80

Pub: Oct 2, 2015