The Other Valley Speaks

For five years Valley VOTE used the megaphone of secession to make itself the voice of the San Fernando Valley. At a recent hearing before the agency studying secession, Jeff Brain, the group’s president, said that Valley residents had “long felt neglected and left behind” by City Hall. He criticized city officials who oppose breaking up Los Angeles, saying, “If we were talking about some foreign country where 1.4 million people were asking for independence, we would be sympathetic.”

But not all of the Valley’s 1.4 million residents are asking for sympathy--or independence. Not all feel as put-upon by big, bad City Hall as Brain does. Some actually like living in the nation’s second-largest city. And with the prospect of a breakup being on the ballot a year from now, they have decided it’s time to speak for themselves. Their fledgling group, called One Los Angeles, is a welcome new voice in the debate over the city’s future.

Valley VOTE Chairman Richard Close dismissed the group as having “a stake in the status quo” at City Hall. Truth is, Valley residents have a stake in the entire city. Mulholland Drive is a street, not a border, and if an Angeleno lives north of it that doesn’t make him or her less proud of the Music Center, Watts Towers, Venice Beach, Chinatown or--gasp--City Hall itself. As Tarzana resident Georgia Mercer, a Los Angeles Community College District trustee, put it, Los Angeles’ civic landscape is “part of me.”

Secessionists speak of a Valley of malcontents obsessed with pothole-scarred streets, crumbled sidewalks and untrimmed trees. The One Los Angeles organizers, who met for the first time Wednesday night, are skeptical--that’s putting it politely--that a separate Valley city would provide better services for less money, as Valley VOTE claims. But mostly they are dismayed by Valley VOTE’s vision of a city as the sum of its potholes. The organizers of One Los Angeles have a more cosmopolitan view of their city, and the diverse Valley they inhabit is a vital part of it. They are ready to speak in its defense.