Page 20 RAIN April 1982 TAKING THE CITIES! Santa Monica Leads The Way Last fall I joined hundreds of progressives gathered in Washington, D.C. for a conference celebrating the tenth anniversary of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization. It wasn't much of a celebration. Nearly a year after the Reagan election there was still a sense of shock—lots of brave talk about building new coalitions in opposition to Reaganism but a general confusion about how to proceed. These were people looking for hope and looking for models. They found an abundance of both in a speech by Ruth Yanatta Goldway, the new progressive mayor of Santa Monica, California. —John Ferrell Santa Monica is a city of eight square miles, it's the most densely populated dty in all of southern California, and 80% of its residents are renters. In the last half of the 1970s renters experienced the most severe housing crisis of any time in their history. ... In 1979, after working very hard to pull together a coalition of groups in the city that would support rent control and a rent control initiative on our ballot, we won our first election in 40 years. ... It was a shock to the landlords and a shock to the developers and a shock to the Republican establishment who ran the city until then. We did it because we developed a coalition of people who lived in the city; activists; people who wanted alternative lifestyles; people who were supporting environmental issues; people who had been advocating tenants' rights. . . . We got the California Democratic Council Club (a club on the liberal side of the party) in our area to join us; senior citizen organizations; the Campaign for Economic Democracy; union groups; minority groups. We have what ought to have been the Progressive Alliance working on a small scale in Santa Moniand rent control are ideal issues for people working in urban areas to begin to develop the coalition that can take control. We won the ititiative in 1979, but we didn't have a majority on the city council. We urged this coalition to run a slate with the initiative and with council members so that we wouldn't just win an issue, but would also have people in power who were committed to that issue. It's terribly important that we learn this lesson, those of us who have worked in consumer issues (as I have) or environmen- "We have the first multi-residential garbage recycling program, a municipal solar utility, a municipal enterprise department.... We started a farmers' market, we have a resolution opposing intervention in El Salvador, we have a status of ? women commission..." If you know anything about how the system works in this society, you know that local government functions primarily to accumulate capital for larger corporations to then use for other things. Yes, it's not powerful in and of itself, but it provides a basic purpose for the development of capital throughout the rest of the nation. The issue of rent control goes right to the heart of the question of land use and capital formation that cities use, that cities can control. By winning on the issue of rent control, we really win on an issue that focuses on the basic power that governments have, and that is land use. It also focuses on a basic human immediate need of the people who live in our cities, and that is some protection and security for their lives in terms of housing. I think housing, land use. tal issues—that you can't just focus on one bill. We won a lot of legislative victories in the 70s, but as long as we have people who still depend on special interest contributions for elections, they can overturn that legislation or they can not implement it or amend it. You have to go back and back and back to Washington or your state capital or your local city hall to get things changed. The only way to assure some continuity is to get your own people elected. *
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz