Video Flash From the CRA Busters

This being Los Angeles, it isn’t surprising when readers send videos to the paper instead of writing letters. They suspect that people here won’t react to anything they haven’t seen on a television screen.

And so Norton Halper, one of my more persistent news sources, sent me two videos reporting on the latest development in his long-running campaign against the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, the city’s powerful slum-clearing government-within-a-government.

Halper’s a gadfly--someone who annoys others as a way of rousing them from complacency. He’s one of a small group that began working several years ago to defeat a big Hollywood redevelopment plan they felt would wipe out low-income and middle-class residential neighborhoods, including Halper’s own home. They lost that fight, but vowed not to allow the CRA another moment of peace. Halper’s group extended its battle to Wilmington and the harbor, the neighborhood around USC, and North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. In doing so, Halper and his associates perfected a guerrilla theater style of political warfare that’s earned them the name “CRA Busters.”

Halper’s video instincts were correct. While I might have thrown out a conventional press release, I was intrigued enough to watch the tapes.

The first tape, shot by Halper’s son, Scott, shows a meeting of a citizens committee that’s supposed to advise the redevelopment agency on the North Hollywood project. Vigorous questioning by Halper and his fellow protester, paralegal Brad Berlin, makes the chairwoman angry. She gavels the meeting to adjournment.

At this point, the tape begins to resemble “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” One of the chairwoman’s supporters yells at the cameraman, “Most people don’t take pictures of a public meeting, you (bleep).” The cameraman is knocked to the floor. The tape shows a wall and then the ceiling. A woman screams. End of tape.

CRA Busters 2 (the sequel tape) shows the gadflies trying to prove that the citizens advisory committee has reconvened in a secret meeting at the North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Cameraman Halper begins the docudrama in an alley at the side of a dreary Valley building. The shot then switches to a parking lot in back of the building.

A woman parks and walks toward a door, casting furtive glances. She knocks repeatedly on the door. Nobody answers. Angry, she strides down the alley to the front of the building. The camera follows. She knocks on the front door. A man opens the door just enough to admit her, and then closes it. More people are admitted. A man emerges. He comes dangerously near the cameraman and shouts, “I’m going to have you prosecuted for being offensive.”

End of tape.

Now, many people agree with the irate North Hollywood man: The CRA Busters’ antics can be seen as being more offensive than productive. But in the case of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, guerrilla theater serves a real purpose. I’ve watched a community revolt develop against the CRA over the last few years. It’s not based on trivial matters. Rather, the protesters have taken careful aim at a major weakness in Los Angeles’ social and economic fabric--the decline in low-cost housing and the resulting increase in homelessness.

The Halpers think they’ve got the CRA on the run. I talked to Halper about this recently. I met him at a favorite rendezvous, the Hollywood Denny’s on Sunset Blvd. The North Hollywood redevelopment people called us crazy, he said. Not true. Then he pulled out the legal documents that he carries with him in his car trunk. Once again, we went over the rules governing North Hollywood redevelopment in obsessive detail.

As he talked, I could see Halper made sense. The CRA has bent the rules, operated in secrecy, ignored neighborhood wishes. Others have become convinced of this and joined with Halper. In Wilmington, people questioned the size of a big industrial park promoted by the CRA. Residents of the Hoover redevelopment area, adjacent to USC, were assisted in their efforts to limit a project.

The CRA Busters generate publicity, and instruct others in their methods. Other activists organize community meetings. Legal Aid and others pursue the fight in court. As a result of it all, Mayor Tom Bradley has ordered the CRA to put more money into building inexpensive housing.

I don’t think the CRA will like this column. The officials there will say I’m publicizing a bunch of nuts. And I intend to avoid that lonely alley and parking lot in North Hollywood.

I don’t care. The people in that North Hollywood building didn’t look exactly hospitable in the tapes. Anyway, I’ll be home, getting my news by video.