by Garrison Frost

1.
Prior to the successful push to defeat Redondo Beach's Heart of the City plan and Chris Cagle's ascension to that city's City Council, things looked pretty bleak in the South Bay as far as local activism. Apart from a successful campaign in the 1990s by local activists to defeat Hermosa Beach's plans to drill for oil, most efforts to oppose policies support by the area's political and business establishments have been insufficient, isolated, ill-conceived, poorly executed and counterproductive.

The easiest explanation for this is that there aren't any good causes to pursue, that City Councils and governments are responsibly executing the public trust. But that doesn't quite ring true. For instance, if city officials in Hermosa Beach were right when they finally decided against oil drilling, that means they were wrong years earlier when they fought the Stop Oil Coalition in court. In Redondo Beach, activists for years spoke out about wrongdoing in the administration of then-City Manager Bill Kirchhoff. Still, it took the police union to finally generate the impetus for his firing. The recent history of the beach cities is replete with examples of activists in this area mounting righteous, but doomed, campaigns. Why is this?

2.
The simple reason is that the area lacks good activists. There aren't too many like Chris Cagle who has proven he can grab a compelling issue and with limited resources drive public opinion to take action. Still fewer are those like Rosamond Fogg, who for years kept up a persistent legal and political battle against the city and its oil contractor. Instead, when one thinks of local activism, one usually thinks of the usual group of ineffective malcontents who fight the wrong battles the wrong way at the wrong time and try to make up for it by alienating every potential ally.

This is Donley Falkenstien. This is Bill Eisen. This is Chris Boyle. This is Bill Victor.

What's particularly frustrating about this group has been their inability to spark open public debates on legitimate issues. Hermosa Beach needed a frank discussion about its utility tax and beach access, however, thanks to Falkenstien's participation on those causes, residents were denied that debate and those who favored one side of the issue were handed victory without ever having to make their case. So too with Metlox in Manhattan Beach. For years Bill Kirchhoff thrived due to the ineffectiveness of his citizen opposition.

3.
But there is another side to this, a reason why the pool of activists isn't stronger. And that's the knee-jerk support that most influential people in this area have for the status quo. No one doubts the opinion of the city manager. No one questions the police chief. No one wonders if the executive director is looking out for anyone but himself. And this continues despite the fairly frequent reminders that we should ask more questions and pay closer attention. As a group, we tend to hate our local activists even when they're right.

It's hard to tell if things have changed, if Cagle's success means that people are now willing to listen to voices from sources other than the City Council or the Chamber of Commerce. Only time will tell. But I'm not holding my breath.

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