For the past two years, I have been documenting from every direction that Los Angeles is “Crossing of the Rubicon,” its point of no return at which we have become an old dying city divided between the rich and the poor with a diminishing middle class. <\/p>\n
I use the phrase crossing the Rubicon advisedly because it refers to Caesar’s 49 BC crossing of the river on his way to conquering Rome and ending its democratic traditions. The writer-philosopher Cicero, a senator who fled Rome for his life, spoke truth to power as few have ever done. <\/p>\n
“Freedom,” he said, “is the participation in power… a possession of inestimable value.” <\/p>\n
In endless articles on my blog, at my citizen journalism\/community networking site OurLA.org, on radio and TV and at many community meetings, I have tried to convey the vision I developed of our city as a newspaperman for 30 years in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
It is a struggle for democracy against a narrow network of powerbrokers and special interests that served themselves even as they sharply raises taxes, rates and fees, chased away good jobs and let the streets, sidewalks, water and power systems deteriorate. <\/p>\n
Along the way, they resisted every effort at reform, only embracing the most modest progressive changes in the face of the most overwhelming evidence of police brutality against the poor and minorities and the threat of secession by the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and San Pedro. <\/p>\n
What we learned from that secession debate is that the City of Los Angeles is a corporation under the law. It owns everything: Streets, lights, every part of the DWP, all the parks, libraries and city buildings. <\/p>\n
The city is no more owned by the residents and businesses, the taxpayers, than the customers of General Motors or any other corporation is owned by its customers who supply the money that feeds their executives, staffs and shareholders. <\/p>\n
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Many people are upset at the recent Supreme Court ruling that lifted the
\n ban on direct contributions to political campaigns by companies and
\nunions because they don’t understand that we have given them the same
\nrights under the Constitution as people. <\/p>\n
We have personified
\ncorporations and unions and we have personified the City of Los Angeles
\nas if it was made of flesh, a living human being. <\/p>\n
We find
\nourselves now in this time of crisis bestowing personhood onto the
\nunitary actor we call “City of LA”. It is an easy metaphor, an easy
\nprosthetic for an entity whose head and tail are hard to find. <\/p>\n
In
\n our discussions it is very easy to attribute properties we associate
\nfirst with human beings – rationality, identities, interests, beliefs,
\nand so on. Many of us have assumed that the idea of personhood is
\nmeaningful at some fundamental level and makes sense. <\/p>\n
Where
\ndid this idea come from? <\/p>\n
Alexander Wendt, an international
\nrelations theorist, confers that the idea of corporate ‘personality’ is
\nof medieval origin, its application was not routine in the West until
\nthe 18th century – further proof, if any were needed, that LA has
\nbehaved in very medieval tendencies from its Council members’ fiefdoms
\nto its archaic bookkeeping systems. <\/p>\n
“Almost anything can be a
\nperson by social convention, but only some can be a person by nature,”
\nhe said. <\/p>\n
If the city is a person under the law, it raises the
\nquestion of just what does it mean to be a person? <\/p>\n
To be a
\nperson one must have the capacity of first person subjective experience
\nand a clear identity. That is to say, it has to be more than
\nVillaraigosa’s ego, or the Council’s pompous attitude, more than “I love
\n LA… I really love LA,” as the mayor put it. <\/p>\n
Personhood means
\nLA must have a desire that motivates it, and the ability to make choices
\n on a rational basis — a test we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that
\nCity Hall has failed miserably. <\/p>\n
If LA were truly to be a person
\nit would need be a psychological, legal and moral constituent. It would
\n need to possess certain mental or cognitive attributes, to be an
\norganism of some sort that functions just like an individual. <\/p>\n
LA
\n can barely meet its rights and obligations under the law let alone
\noperate in a moral manner as proven by its stream of sweetheart deals
\nand giveaways to special interests. <\/p>\n
Individual persons have
\ninternal authority, sovereignty, over themselves as well as external
\nsovereignty as a member of society. City Hall has displayed its internal
\n authority with early retirement and layoffs plan but the chaos that has
\n ensued and the ballooning budget deficit have cost it the confidence of
\n the public and its workers <\/p>\n
LA has failed the tests of its
\npersonhood as surely as it has failed to provide the leadership the city
\n desperately needs. <\/p>\n
Yet, we see it wield its power on the lives
\nof workers, taxpayers, and stakeholders as if its legitimacy were
\nunchallenged. We see the mayor wield it against the neighborhood
\ncouncils and completely disenfranchise them as if they were not created
\nby the same Charter that creates the city government as a whole.<\/p>\n
City
\n Hall today is nothing more than an artificial power, its legitimacy,
\nits personhood, undermined by its failures. <\/p>\n
The collective
\nactions and intentions of those we elected must be judged and those
\nresponsible held accountable. <\/p>\n
We, as constituents and
\nconstituted members of this society, must not allow them to wash their
\nliability behind the political agency that comes from their election to
\noffice. Those election themselves are of dubious legitimacy because of
\nthe overwhelming role of the campaign money supplied to the favored
\ncandidates by the same special interests that benefit from the city’s
\nactions. <\/p>\n
There may be better forms of governance to restore
\nlegitimacy to the personhood of the city government, such as a system of
\n boroughs that devolves authority to the local level and allows for the
\ndiversity necessary in a city so complex and sprawling. <\/p>\n
But no
\nsystem of governance will change things much, as we have seen with the
\nendless and ineffective structural changes in our schools. We need an
\nuprising from the persons who make up the body politic of Los Angeles,
\nnew leadership and most of all, a new vision and a new spirit of LA that
\n redefines us and the city we call home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the past two years, I have been documenting from every direction that Los Angeles is “Crossing of the Rubicon,” its point of no return at which we have become an old dying city divided between the rich and the poor with a diminishing middle class. I use the phrase crossing the Rubicon advisedly because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}