Bittersweet History

Jail in Baker County Georgia consisted of a black metal cage, 20x20x8, divided into four equal sections and placed within a square, concrete block building with openings for windows, but no windows. It was the usual Georgia summer, hot and thick with bugs, especially June bugs.

Bittersweet history. Amendment XV to the US Constitution (1870) “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The Voting Rights Act (1965). No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Across the South these laws were ignored.

In the summer of 1965, I was one of a handful of SNCC (Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee) workers in Baker County GA knocking on doors, going to church meetings, teaching people how to read and talking to people about why it was worth it to register to vote. It wasn’t that people didn’t want to vote. It was that they weren’t allowed to register and, if they insisted, what they got was trouble, sometimes terrible trouble. You see, Baker County had a sheriff named L. Warren Johnson. Sheriff Johnson used to boast about the number of people he’d killed.

A generous and kind, black farming family were my hosts. As the first white civil rights worker in the county, I was news. One morning I overheard the youngest child in the family talking to his grandmother, excitedly telling her that I’d made my own bed. I gave a silent thank you to the summer camp where, along with fun stuff – swimming, canoeing, and campfire building, we’d been taught how to make hospital corners for a neatly made bed.

The day we went to jail started pretty much the same as the others. Most of the family went out to the fields at dawn to farm. Someone always stayed in the house with me, as protecting a guest was both a political act and a moral commitment. I was waiting and worrying about this day. Some civil rights workers and about 14 local people were on our way to the Courthouse to try to register to vote. We knew we were on our way to jail.

Today there are 1073 registered African-American voters in Baker County. On November 4th, 1674 people voted in Baker County. Obama won in Baker County.

What Say You: Voting Day

November 4 2008: USA. News reports coming from every state confirm long lines of peaceful and patient voters. As I write this, we don’t know the results. As you read this, we will. You can bet the world is watching. They want to know who our next president will be as much as we do. The first winner of this day will be democracy herself and that win comes from our turning out to vote in impressive numbers.

Dateline: Santa Monica. Our own Santa Monica elections are down ballot. At the Santa Monica Shores, just as at polling places around the country, neighbors and friends greeted each other. Poll workers remembered many voters from previous elections. There was a young woman who was voting for the first time. She was excited and wanted to make sure she marked her ballot correctly. She wanted her vote to count.

Prop T is definitely down ballot. And, no, the world is not watching. But it is important to Santa Monica. Now the proponents said a vote for T was a vote against traffic and the opponents said a vote for T was a vote against schools and housing. After reading the arguments, it seemed clear to me that Prop T didn’t solve our traffic problems and didn’t hurt our school children or our renters. So what gives?

Here’s where it gets interesting. We’re a small town of 80,000 some people. Our population grows everyday because of the people who come here to work, to play, to shop, to eat. On hot summer Sundays we can have as many as 500,000 people at the beach. So, yes, traffic is a huge problem. And that, I think, is why Prop T got on the ballot and, if it wins, why it won.

We can’t make traffic congestion go away by arbitrarily slowing development. But there are ways to make big decreases in traffic problems. Our elected and appointed officials and City staff and our wonderfully active and involved citizens need to work together to implement smart and fun and easy ways to get around town. It's possible. We know how to do it. Let’s do it. Let’s show that democracy works down ballot and up ballot.

I hope Senator Obama becomes President-elect Obama with a double-digit win and I hope that, by next summer, those 500,000 people at the beach will have great things to say about getting around Santa Monica as well as having a great day at the beach.

The Beach House

April 2009. Mark your calendars. You’re invited to swim in the restored, Julia Morgan designed pool, to play volleyball on the sand, to bring your kids to play in the ‘splash pad’, to picnic, to party. Ride your bike, take the Blue Bus new beach shuttle to the Annenberg Community Beach House.

415 Pacific Coast Highway, the site of the beach house William Randolph Hearst built for Marion Davies in the 1920’s will reopen in 2009 as the Annenberg Community Beach House. The first public beach club on the coast of California is the triumphant result of the work of an amazing cast of characters.

The cast really starts with Hearst, Davies and Julia Morgan who took five acres of iconic Santa Monica beachfront property and turned it into a famous estate and an important landmark for Southern California. Subsequently, the site has been used as a luxury hotel and a private beach club. When the State decided to find a “highest and best” use developer, the site had a brief moment of being planned to return to a luxury hotel site. The voters overturned that idea and for almost 15 years the site languished and was greatly underused.

Enter Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation. In a serendipitous moment for Santa Monica, in fact the very day before the City was set to issue a public call announcing the search for a private partner the Annenberg Foundation contacted the City of Santa Monica to say they were interested in the idea of the public beach club and wanted to talk to the City about participating.

On the City side everyone was interested and hopeful. City Council Members and Recreation and Parks Commissioners, Landmarks Commissioners and Planning Commissioners, the Santa Monica Conservancy, Santa Monica residents and immediate neighbors joined the cast. Next came six months of substantive meetings with Barbara Stinchfield, Director of Community and Cultural Services taking the lead for the City team. The result was that the City and the Annenberg Foundation entered into an agreement whereby the Foundation would fund the 27.5 million required for the restoration and rebuilding of the site into a public beach club. Barbara Stinchfield said, “The thing I learned early on was that this gift was a purely philanthropic gesture and the core of our experience was the generosity of the Annenberg Foundation at the direction of Wallis Annenberg.”

Next to join the cast was Fred Fisher Architects, known for their design work and their ability to work responsively with communities. Fred Fisher describes his vision for the Beach House , “It will be, as it has been, a stage for people to create memories. The site provides a rare combination of a dramatic natural setting, important historic architectural assets and an opportunity for a new architectural fabric to bring these together.”

Providing a base for the architects work were planning documents and principles, developed by Moule & Palyzoides through a public process to: “preserve the history of the site, encourage a ‘light touch’, create a community-oriented destination, provide public recreational activities, increase public access to the beach. create a range of uses, encourage diverse users, provide for year-round use, link to the regional open space network” and to do all this in a sustainable way.

For all the growing enthusiasm and support for the project there were large obstacles. The City faced the threat of a lawsuit. Immediate neighbors, citing past problems in working with the City and concerned that the Beach Club would cause them problems, hired attorneys to stop the project unless their concerns were addressed. While these issues were in negotiation the work on the project was ongoing.

Mia Lehrer, Landscape Architects were selected to design the landscape and to insure that sustainable principles were used to maximum benefit. Sustainable requirements included tree shaded parking lots to reduce the heat island effect. Storm water retention ponds were designed to return rainwater to the ground. Water efficiency standards would be met by the use of a native and drought tolerant plant palette and the use of a drip irrigation system. On the energy side the pool will be solar heated, non heat transferring glazing will be used and passive heating and cooling elements are integral to the design. Most important of all, is the fact that this is an historical adaptive-reuse project. The reuse of the site and the building reuse is itself the expression of sustainability.

The lawsuit problems were successfully negotiated and the threatened lawsuit dropped. Credit for that goes to negotiators, the neighbors and to the overwhelming public support presented by the “Friends of 415” organized by Joel Brand of the Santa Monica Conservancy. Construction began in 2007 and in April 2009 there will be a weeklong opening celebration.

In summer of 2009 the Beach House will be officially open to everyone and except for parking and the pool and its facilities, will be free to the public. Picnicking, the gardens, the restored Marion Davies Guest House, children’s play areas, playing volleyball and beach tennis is what visitors can expect free of charge. There will be charges for pool use and parking as well as some of beach sand courts during peak times. Some reservations will be offered for parking and pool use. The Beach House will also be available, by reservation, for special events, parties and celebrations.

Fred Fisher said they “attempted to create a canvas for the widest variety of activities that will naturally and creatively evolve with the community’s embrace and imagination…. We imagine a broad and changing spectrum of activities from the most casual and personal moments, to active group sports, to family poolside lounging, to formal group celebrations. Its success will be in the momentary experiences and recurring rituals that people create on the site.”

The Memorial for Dorothy Green (1929-2008)

Dorothy Green

Mt. Sinai Memorial Park October 16, 2008 

A fond goodbye to the woman who founded Heal the Bay.

The Sinai Chapel was shoulder to shoulder with people who had come to this final parting.  From the words of her protective brother and her admiring grand-daughter, from the stories of her two lifelong best friends, a picture emerged of a beloved sister, mother, grandmother, and friend who knew how to love, how to encourage and support, and how to have fun.

”Katchkala” her brother called her, as he stood on the Bima in front of the simple flower-covered wooden casket.  In his voice, loving kindness, the generosity that comes from the ability to really see the one you love. The bond between Gerald Cohen and his beloved younger sister, Dorothy Green, had given her an acceptance of her intelligence and skills and grounded her self- confidence.

Mark Gold, now president of Heal the Bay and Dorothy’s first staff hire 22 years ago, called her his mentor and his closest friend. In his eulogy he said, ”Immortal: I never thought this day would come. Dorothy was so strong and has overcome so many enormous obstacles to achieve so much, that I just never thought she would leave us. There is too much work that still needs to be done. I loved her so much, and relied on her constantly over the last 22 years. Now she is gone. But is she really? Look around you at the incredible people that she has touched, inspired, and taught.”

Dorothy will be with us in memory and in action. She will be in every tree we plant to filter stormwater, in green streets and new parks, and every action that that takes urban runoff, purifies and returns it back to the aquifer so we protect the Santa Monica Bay and create a clean and sustainable water supply.

”Katchkala” translated from the Yiddish means ”little duckling.” It was a prescient name given to the child who would dedicate a large part of her adult life to the protection of the Santa Monica Bay and to advocacy for water quality. She inspired me. I am proud to have been her friend, and I will miss her.

Dorothy Green was the founding president of Heal the Bay, the Los Angeles/San Gabriel River Watershed Council, and a founder of the California Water Impact Network.