A Thanksgiving Pageant of Protest With All the Trimmings

Except for the make-believe Indians, this was a Thanksgiving pageant like no other.

Billed as a Thanksgiving Performance, it drew about a dozen onlookers and at least that many performers to the lower parking lot of Topanga State Park.

As Pierce College dance instructor Marian S. Weiser shouted out instructions, her eight improvisational dancers swirled about the trunk of an especially large oak tree at the lot’s edge.

The music of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons blared from the driver’s side window of a pickup truck borrowed for the noontime event, while one of the “Indians”--a blonde wearing sunglasses--kept time on a skin drum.

“Surprise,” yelled Weiser, as a man with a blue hard hat, toting a chain saw and identified by the sign he wore bearing the phrase “I am a board of supervisor,” began to chase the dancers.

“Realization,” Weiser prompted the dancers.

“Fear. Sorrow. Desperation.”

And finally, Death, followed by enthusiastic applause.

This was no re-enactment of the first Pilgrim harvest. It was a protest against plans to build 8,700 upscale new homes, golf courses, mini-malls and other related byproducts of the Mayflower invasion on 2,800 acres of grassy, oak-studded hills west of Chatsworth.

The document listing all the changes to the area that will be caused by the Ahmanson Ranch development is not measured in pages, but, like turkeys, by weight: 18 pounds.

Besides that, protesters say the area hardly needs a few thousand more unsold houses and struggling businesses.

Still, the Ahmanson Land Co., an affiliate of Home Savings, hopes to get permission to build from the Ventura County supervisors at a meeting Dec. 15.

Supporters of the $1-billion project say the bad stuff is outweighed by the prospect of getting 10,000 acres of parkland from local landowner Bob (Land Is No Joke) Hope for $29.5 million, which is said to be a below-market price. Considering the market, protesters said the county ought to offer the venerable funnyman about half that and see what he says.

Ventura County officials figure they’ll get about $26 million over the next 30 years from the project to pay for public services. Protest organizers said they want Ahmanson to ditch its plans and sell its land for a giant public park.

“We were going to have the protest in front of Home Savings on Wilshire, but we would have had to use umbrellas for oak trees and we were afraid people weren’t going to understand the symbolism,” said Mary Altmann, a Malibou Lakeside resident who helped organize the protest.

Many people who oppose the project are commuters who will have to make room for another 37,000 or so cars squeezing onto the already hellish Ventura Freeway. Never mind the additional smog, noise and other troubles that come when people start living where rabbits and coyotes now roam.

Mary Wiesbrock of Agoura Hills said her dream is that the Ventura supervisors will turn down the project, and then somebody in the federal government finds $30 million to buy the property from Ahmanson.

Wiesbrock, once a lonely voice railing against the development, has been joined by some 22 homeowner groups, nearly all in Los Angeles County, who want the land left vacant.

“We’re not going to give up,” Wiesbrock said. “We need a greenbelt and a central park for the millions of residents of the San Fernando Valley.”

Other protesters, like Mark Andrews of North Hollywood, one of the make-believe Indians, offered a somewhat more severe prescription.

“All modern living must be abandoned,” Andrews said. “We have to get out of the cities and return to straw huts.”

Straw huts?

“Or maybe adobe huts.”

And if not?

“Chaos, destruction and catastrophe,” he said, optimistically. “Which is what we have now, but we’ll get it a lot worse.”

Andrews was called away to a second performance before he could explain further.

This one had a more traditional Thanksgiving theme. The Indians presented a wicker basket of oranges, apples and pomegranates to a woman and the man in the blue hard hat--who also wore a sign saying “Ahmanson.” The woman accepted the gift and everybody smiled.

Then the man in the blue hard hat tried to give a bundle of rolled-up blueprints--also labeled “Ahmanson”--and the Indians, making furious hand gestures, refused. The couple tried again. The Indians refused again.

Finally, the blueprints ended up on the ground. The Indians kicked dirt and piled leaves on them.

“Hey, go easy, those are real plans,” yelled a man from the crowd.

Finally, another Indian placed a six-foot brown cross against the trunk of the oak tree and the scene ended to applause.

Weiser praised her troupers, saying they had to wear hard shoes, instead of the soft ones they usually dance in, because of all the sticks and stones on the makeshift Topanga stage.

Janet Allen of Calabasas reminded everybody to show up for the December hearings, as well as the vegetarian Thanksgiving celebration in Pacific Palisades.

“Instead of eating turkeys, we’re going to have live turkeys there,” Allen said. “That way, we’ll be able to look them in the eye.”