With Venice Protesters, It’s Anything But a Silent Night : Development: After the eggnog and cookies, activists take to the streets with caroling. But instead of chestnuts and Santa, they’re singing out against Venice commercialization.

Even in politically conscious Venice, it isn’t easy to attract a crowd of protesters during the holiday season.

Packaging is everything.

So when a few dozen activists gathered at Louis and Nancy Kent’s place Tuesday night, the agenda called for a holiday party first. Then, after the eggnog, quiche and Christmas-tree shaped cookies with red and green sprinkles, it was time to take to the streets for a little political caroling.

The party atmosphere was a departure for indefatigable Venice activists, who usually take their politics quite seriously.

“We’re here tonight to celebrate friendship and the community of Venice and to unite to make some changes in the community,” said Venice resident Mary Ann Hutchinson.

The issue is what they view as the overcommercialization of Venice and City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter’s perceived role in it.

The group paraded in front of Rebecca’s restaurant and the West Beach Cafe across the street, where the L.A. Louver Gallery is expanding after Galanter agreed to grant it a hardship exemption from a temporary ordinance to control coastal development, which she sponsored.

Since that time, the Board of Zoning Appeals has rejected the project because the developer ignored its conditions at the two restaurants he co-owns. A Los Angeles City Council committee reinstated the gallery’s expansion last week.

Members of the North Venice Boulevard Residents Assn. have battled the two restaurants for years over garbage disposal, traffic and valet parking.

With great gusto and to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” their voices sang out into the brisk night air:

“We wish she’d enforce the guidelines,

we wish she’d enforce the guidelines,

we wish she’d enforce the guidelines,

Galanter, please care.”

Their protest signs read, “Revoke Ruth and Rebecca’s,” “Galanter Is Misleading Venice” and “Ruth Galanter: Just Say No to Creeping Commercialism.”

“Nobody said they weren’t creative,” said Rick Ruiz, Galanter’s press secretary.

Responding to the protesters in a telephone interview, Galanter said the gallery was granted an exemption in return for other considerations, including construction of a large parking structure to muffle the noise of parking cars.

“What they’re asking me is to agree with them. I do care, I don’t agree with them. It is beyond my power to make everybody happy,” she said.

The demonstrators’ audience was mostly valet parking attendants, a few of whom hummed along to the music when they weren’t parking cars. West Beach manager Stan Pratt said his customers were “amused’ by the half-hour parade. “There’s always something going on down here,” he said.

As if on cue, workers from Rebecca’s carried trash across the street to dumpsters behind the West Beach Cafe. Board of Zoning Appeals members were upset because Rebecca’s decided to solve its garbage problem by putting it in the cafe’s alley where, they said, it would bother another group of residents.

Before marching to Rebecca’s, the caroling protesters gathered in the Kent kitchen for an orientation. Louis Kent said he had notified police of their plans and reminded everyone to keep moving and not to block doorways. “We don’t want to harass anyone,” he said.

Nancy Kent was in charge of the singing and chanting. In keeping with the Venice style of grass-roots democracy, she let the group vote on whether they liked the song.

After jokingly lapsing into a moment or two of parliamentary procedure, the song was approved, coats were donned, signs distributed and they were off.

When they returned to the party after a half-hour of marching, coffee was served and a door prize awarded.

“This was a fine party, and it made a real important point that needed to be made,” said Venice Town Council President Larry Sullivan. The point, Sullivan said, is that a lot of people who helped elect Galanter are not happy with her policies in Venice.

Two new guests had been picked up by the demonstrators along the way. A couple who lives across the alley from the West Beach Cafe and have been fighting with the restaurant on their own joined the crowd.

They regaled the others with stories of restaurant workers and patrons urinating at the bottom of their back stairs and having to negotiate with delivery trucks blocking their cars before they leave work.

Sort of a Venice Christmas Carol.