Crowd rallies to ‘save L.A.’

They were mad at Home Depot. They were mad about the Southwest Museum. They were mad at the Department of Water and Power and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

And on Monday, more than 100 neighborhood activists showed up at City Hall to vent that anger, the first major effort by the “Saving Los Angeles Project,” conceived in large part by Ron Kaye, former editor of Los Angeles Daily News.

The protest fell on Bastille Day, which marks the day in 1789 that the French stormed the Bastille prison and launched the French Revolution. Still, Monday’s festival atmosphere was a little bit L.A.-palooza, with perennial City Hall gadfly Zuma Dogg in a sombrero, Councilman Dennis Zine carrying a huge shield with the letter Z on it and parent activist and writer Sandra Tsing Loh dressed somewhat like the Statue of Liberty as she criticized LAUSD bureaucracy.

“There are sort of little fires coming off my crown to show how angry I am,” Loh told the crowd.

Relying on talk radio and his Internet blog, Kaye has been working to assemble a movement for weeks, putting together a tentative series of demands that include better public schools, more powerful neighborhood councils, stronger ethics laws and a 25% cut in pay for politicians and their aides.

Kaye said he is not interested in running for office but instead wants to end a “culture of corruption” that he said has ensnared the city’s political leaders.

“They do the bidding of narrow interests -- developers, contractors, public employee unions and most of all, the whole political apparatus: the lobbyists, the political operatives, the PR people,” said Kaye, standing a few feet from his longtime friend and former co-worker Doug Dowie, a former public relations executive who was convicted on charges involving the overbilling of the city by more than $500,000.

Dowie, who has filed an appeal of his conviction, said he understands if the scandal involving him and his former employer, Fleishman-Hillard Inc., played a role in some of the frustration residents feel toward city government. The firm was accused by City Controller Laura Chick of overbilling the city by $4.2 million four years ago.

Meanwhile, Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said he was encouraged that participants mentioned schools and public safety. “It’s good to see so many people supporting the centerpiece of the mayor’s agenda,” said Szabo.

Many protesters were upset with development issues, such as a planned Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga, a 229-home project proposed for the Verdugo Hills Golf Course and a 1,950-home subdivision being reviewed in San Pedro. One woman carried a sign that read “Proud to Be a NIMBY.”

The rally drew a few political leaders, including Chick and DWP Commission President Nick Patsaouras. As Patsaouras listened to the speakers, a Calabasas resident approached another DWP official to demand that the utility stop putting fluoride in its water.

The event was also attended by Steve Barr, chief executive of the charter school group Green Dot, who urged the crowd to take the movement to some of the neighborhoods that have the greatest need, such as Watts and South Los Angeles.

Some took a philosophical view of the event, which combined political rhetoric with street theater.

“They have some wacky people, and they have some good, hard-working people,” said James Rojas, who heads the Latino Urban Forum, as he watched the protesters. “That’s the way democracy is. You take the good with the bad.”

--

david.zahniser@latimes.com