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ChineseBRU Invites Koreatown to their May 24th Garden Party
So walking home tonight from my grocery, I see the lovely sign above. My Korean is poor (hey, at least I have some Korean now, thanks to the wonderful folks over at the Korean Cultural Center of Los Angeles), but it’s obvious that this is about the meeting on May 24th.
Lovely. So basically, in their “rail is racist” message they expect to drag along residents of Koreatown, a district that, in my view, is the best example in LA of what can happen to an area after you add rail service. My hope is that most fellow residents and boosters of Koreatown recognize this nonsense for what it is. It’s interesting to see them try to pull along Korean residents, when anyone who watched TV in the 90s could tell you how poor relations were between the Korean parts of town and the traditionally poor sections that the BRU tries to represent. Well, that they try to represent when they’re not driving expensive cars or throwing parties at the Biltmore, that is. But that’s neither here nor there.
I do wonder if the reason that the fare hike “debate” is so muted may be the BRU - they’ve basically sucked all of the air out of the room, and it’s hard to come back with nuanced, well-thought ideas when they’re at these meetings shouting like five-year-olds who haven’t had their afternoon snack yet. I know I’ve certainly shied away from the issue - I put in my written comments and went about my day.
So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. I’ll be curious to see if the meeting makes the news. But I won’t be there - if I wanted to see or hear a bunch of five-year-olds throwing tantrums, I’d go to my local McDonalds.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Actually, the BRU has been free of the fare forums (just went to #3 today). Unfortunately, so has the rest of the public.
Poor 5 year olds. Not much can be worse than being compared to a bunch of whiny, un-informed, racist BRU members.
Calwatch: There much point in going to them? I mean, let’s be realistic here, the rational written comments may get minimal attention and carry at least a bit of administrative weight, assuming that Metro behaves like a federal agency. But are these public meetings anything more than these minor earthquakes up in the Valley, just an opportunity for folks to let off pressure and hopefully lessen the impact of the big one? ;p
I work near someone who is forced to listen to Zuma Dawg’s City Council rants (meaning I’m forced to listen too, sadly) and, truly, nobody’s taking the guy seriously. Come by the City’s Civil Service Commission some day, there’s a guy who comes like clockwork, every two weeks, to complain about promotional ratings. Does the Commission listen to him? Hardly, they use his time slot for putting sugar in their coffee. I can’t blame them.
Is Metro going to take anyone else giving a time-limited presentation any more seriously?
On the other hand, you do have more time to do expository there since you have more than 60 seconds to get your point across. The attendance has been so sparse that they have not timed anyone. Plus, they were originally my idea (in a letter I sent to the fares address on day one of this fiasco), so I feel obligated to attend them and see how they are doing. Sixty seconds for 300+ people, plus the student walkout, plus the chanting and screaming, is a real farce.
I respectably disagree that Zuma Dogg is not taken seriously. On the contrary, he’s gotten into the LA Weekly and despite his “performance art” style, makes good points about densification in Los Angeles.
Re: Zuma- City Hall and Council both think he’s a farce, and I have to admit, they have a point. A little bit too sound and fury for most people. He’s on the wrong side of a lot of issues and the only people who seem to take him seriously are those who take him seriously solely because he is the anti-authority. That’s not exactly a broad-based (or terribly useful) constituency.
I see what you’re trying to say regarding the meetings, but this, like any other big city, is a highly political city, and it helps to know where to exert the pressure. Here, constituent noise directed against Council or the Mayor has more of a chance of building up organized political opposition than these meetings do. The Supervisors are largely impervious to constituent issues since they run unopposed (Massachusetts was onto something by basically abolishing the County tier of government), but we have an image-conscious Council that likes getting behind popular issues. Because no focused opposition has lit a fire under Villaraigosa, Garcetti, or another respected community leader, I worry that Metro may unintentionally squeak its full-fledged pass-eviscerating increase past the board.
Then we will all buy Metrolink passes in 2009 then, and Metro will get $30 instead of $140. Oh well.
Yup, I agree, Calwatch, Metro may be in for a case of “be careful what you wish for…” We all may be, but the broken politics of the Southland make that startlingly inevitable.
Of course, I’m more cynical than most people, but…
I’ll be anxiously awaiting the 24th myself. I’m going to get hit among the hardest, proportionally, since they’re basically eviscerating the disability passes. I don’t know how I feel about that; access here isn’t as bad as Boston, but there’s still definitely hassle. The jury’s still out, in my head, and may be out for a very long time.
[...] is a student walkout planned that day and the Bus Riders Union is mobilizing their membership by posting flyers all over town. Or they could have done a good job at scheduling it to avoid attendance, as most of the fare [...]