Reimagining the Civic

1968 Academy Awards Ceremony
Santa Monica Civic

Reimagining the Civic         

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist

We sat on uncomfortable seats in Santa Monica’s beloved Civic Auditorium.  A full house was there for the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra’s “A Farewell Tribute to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.”   The all -Tchaikovsky program included a gorgeous performance by Antonio Lysy of  “Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra.”  The “1812 Overture,” written by Tchaikovsky in 1880 to commemorate “the defense of the motherland,” concluded the program and the significance of the piece was not lost on the audience.  When Conductor Guido Lamell closed the evening with a promise to be back at the Civic there was great applause.

Built in 1958 and given Landmark Designation in 2002, the Civic was known worldwide as the home of the Academy Awards. 1968 was the last year the Academy Awards were held at the Civic.  The awards ceremony was held late that year because of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The Civic has been the venue for artists andperformers who are part of the cultural history of the Country: Andre Previn, Dave Brubeck, Pete Seeger, Ella Fitzgerald, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Ray Charles, Arlo Guthrie, the Beach Boys, the Carpenters, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters, Allen Ginsberg, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Sarah Vaughan, and Bruce Springsteen.

Designed by Welton Becket and Associates, the Historic Resources Technical Report cites it as “an excellent example of International Style design as applied to an auditorium.  It was also considered an engineering marvel noted for its use of hydraulics for raising and lowering the floor for multiple uses.”

“Functionally obsolete” was the description of the current state of the Civic by John Altschuler, a former Santa Monica City Manager and the Chair of an Urban Land Institute (ULI) panel discussion on the building’s future.  The ULI does think the Civic can be saved and has ideas for how to understand the urban design problem and how to finance the revitalization.

The panel was one of many outreach events held since the October 7, 2012 Council meeting where staff was directed to, in Jessica Cusick’s words, “beat the bushes to get public and expert opinion on a vision for the future of the Civic.  The Council had two goals:  to retain the cultural use of the Civic and to identify funding in light of the loss of Redevelopment Funds.”

Cusick is the Cultural Affairs Manager for the City.  She has been pursuing both goals and reports that there is “significant interest in revitalizing the Civic as a cultural venue by private sector businesses.  Given the interest from both the public and the private sector in preserving the Civic as the cultural heart of our city I am optimistic that we will be able to put together a way to fund the future of the Civic.”

The Civic is on the agenda for the June 11, 2013 Council meeting.  Council Member Winterer expects that will be the “beginning of discussions of public/private partnerships.” 

A week before the Council meeting there will be a community meeting to discuss ideas for the Civic.  The meeting will be held at Virginia Avenue Park, June 4, 2012, at 7:30 pm.  

The public interest has been long and well expressed.  The City has committed to protecting and revitalizing the Civic at least since the time of the original Civic Center Specific Plan.  The Santa Monica Conservancy, the Landmarks Commission and other organizations have expressed support and an interest in working on good solutions.

“Save the Santa Monica Civic,” an organization founded in November 2012 by Landmarks Commissioner Nina Fresco and a coalition group of well known Santa Monicans, is committed to “restoring and enhancing the Civic’s place as a vibrant cultural and community hub, as well as saving its landmark architecture and continuing its celebrated heritage.  We will seek to develop recommendations for a management approach that will be profitable and enable long-term efficient operation.  The coalition will help garner public support for any viable approach.”

When the Civic Auditorium was just an idea in the 1950’s, the Council established a Public Board to advise the Council on the development of the Civic Auditorium.   Given the broad public support for the Civic and the high level of interest, doesn’t it make sense to create an advisory board for today’s needs, composed of both public and private sector members and staffed by the City Manager and Cultural Affairs Manager, for the planning part of the revitalization of the Civic?

According to Sepp Donahower that Advisory Board could be the precursor to a Management Board on the model of the Pier Board.  Donahower was a pioneer concert producer who brought the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin to Los Angeles.  He believes it can be made to be financially self -sustaining.  “The Civic will only work,” he said, “if it’s part of something bigger – a cultural commons.  Give people a reason to go there, make it a fun thing.  We could have a great public plaza and garden with wonderful places to drink and eat and listen to good music.  Build an exhibition space that could also be used as a venue for films or a place to have weddings.  Maybe follow ULI’s suggestion and add a boutique hotel.  When you put sympathetic elements together it will create the environment for success, it will serve the entire Civic Center and energize the neighboring hotels and Main Street.  It will be a connecter.”  

Saving the Civic also supports the City’s goals for environmental sustainability.  Certainly, as was written on a Santa Monica Conservancy sign at the Main Street parade, “The greenest building is the one that already exists.”  

Let’s revitalize and keep the Civic.  Let’s also look at the idea of creating a Cultural District incorporating the Civic, using the adjacent parking lot as a site for a new building, compatible in scale and character but having its own identity, and create an art park that surrounds both buildings.

Saving the Civic is the right thing to do for so many reasons.  It’s time now for all ideas to be on the table to help us get from where we are now to once again having the Civic Auditorium be the cultural ambassador of the City.  We honor our history, we protect our cultural future, we enhance our international reputation, we support our commitment to sustainability, and we support our business community.  It is an exciting challenge and one I think we’re up to.

What Say You?

What Say You? Parks and the City Council

Susan Cloke
Columnist
Santa Monica Mirror

Santa Monica is having an identity crisis.  This city of 80,000 plus residents is internationally known for its ethos, life style, commitment to principles of sustainability and love of art, as much as its beaches and weather.

From its beginning the City was the landscape for the creativity and imagination of the people.  They built neighborhoods of wonderful bungalow houses with front porches and neighborhoods of elegant craftsman houses on wide streets planted with majestic palms.  Entrepreneurs brought their energy to the City and built the Santa Monica Pier, started the Paddleboard Races, opened restaurants and stores and businesses.  It wasn’t all perfect.  The City had its seamy side and there were disasters but overall the City thrived in the energy of its people and the natural beauty of the beaches of the Pacific Ocean and the mostly balmy weather.

This image of the City is now giving way to the demands of a new scale of development and a faster pace of life.  And it is the pressure, the push of new development and the faster pace of life that is pushing the current identity crisis. 

The flashpoint for this is the internationally recognized and iconic Palisades Park.  The Park is the grand promenade of the City.  A park of scenic vistas planted with specimen trees where people can find shade in a historic pergola.

Palisades Park Pergola at Sunset

Once Palisades Park was where people went to stroll, to watch the sun set over the Pacific, to picnic or to sit on a park bench and read.  In our time it became a park for joggers and is now the end point of the Los Angeles Marathon. 

Recently for-profit, professional trainers decided to offer classes in Palisades Park. They brought heavy equipment, tied exercise bands to trees and made the park a more crowded and louder place.  Residents were concerned and took their complaints about the fitness trainers in Palisades Park to City Hall.

The Council responded, seeing it as a matter of needing to create a citywide ordinance governing commercial fitness trainers in all parks.  A proper response to the ongoing problem of sharing public open space in a City with more demand for parks and playing fields than the City can currently provide.

But the concerns being expressed are about more than the appropriate regulation of trainers in the parks.  These concerns go to the heart of the identity crisis.  What is being asked is: Which parts of the City’s built environment are we willing to change to accommodate the pressures of this faster pace of life and which will be kept as they are?

Palisades Park is the flashpoint because it’s a public park of significance, of memory and of history.  Changing the character of the park goes to the core question of how the City Council will understand and govern given the pressures for changing the scale and the pace of the City.

At the Council hearing of April 23, Margaret Bach, representing the City Landmarks Commission, spoke about the need for “stewardship and protection of the City’s only landmarked park.”

Bach went on to say,  “It is a uniquely configured park– a narrow, linear park at the edge of fragile bluffs over looking the Pacific, 14 blocks long covering more than 26 acres. A destination for locals and visitors alike, it serves as a veritable museum of the history of the city. The park's evolution over the decades embodies its original public purpose.

“Preserving Palisades Park for public enjoyment, prohibiting equipment that can damage the park's many features, and clarifying the current regulation that prohibits commercial activity within the park --- these three objectives constitute the most appropriate, practical and fiscally prudent approach to a regulatory structure for this world-class resource. We are counting on the city to continue to be the responsible stewards of Palisades Park. Our landmark park is unique among parks in Santa Monica. It deserves special consideration and protection.”

In writing this article I spoke with several Council Members.  They are rightfully proud of the parks we have.  They all talked about wanting to build more parks, to make sure good parks are within walking distance of every residence, that there are more playing fields and more opportunities for people to exercise and to enjoy being outdoors. 

The City is committed to supporting an active lifestyle and that includes fitness trainers and classes.  Council Members directed staff to negotiate a compromise regulating the commercial trainers and to prepare regulations for review. 

The carefully crafted Staff Report to the Council looks at all the City Parks.  It recommends a series of regulations for commercial fitness trainers, including permit and license requirements, locations, conditions of use and so on.  In some of the City Parks Staff recommends no commercial fitness training be allowed, in some parks Staff recommends 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 commercial fitness classes be allowed, and other parks would allow commercial fitness with a trainer and groups.   The staff report recommends allowing commercial fitness trainers in both Palisades Park and the upcoming parks at City Hall with the condition that they limit their classes in those parks to 1 or 2 people.  The details will be spelled out in a new Ordinance scheduled to come to Council in June. 

Certainly fitness classes should follow the rules of urban politeness: share the park, protect the landscape and the furniture and buildings, clean up after themselves and in general be good citizens.

Trainers and the clients for the commercial fitness classes have participated in the crafting of the regulations and agree.  The one place where they disagree is they want to continue to hold group classes in Palisades Park.  They like Palisades Park best for its ease of parking, for its views and because people know it.

Stroller Strides, now called FIT4MOM, is a national franchise.  According to the testimony they gave at the Council hearing it’s a great program made greater by being in Palisades Park. But why wouldn’t it be a great program at the beautiful Annenberg Community Beach House, which has great amenities, ample parking and wonderful beach views; or Airport Park or Virginia Avenue Park, which are both great spaces and have ample parking.  I understand surf camps need the ocean and tennis classes need tennis courts.  But fitness classes don’t “need” Palisades Park.

Fitness training is a good thing.  Any one wishing to train in any city park is allowed as long as it’s not for profit.  The proposed regulations won’t change that.  The proposed regulations only address for-profit fitness trainers. In appropriate park locations the main concern with for-profit fitness training is that it’s pricey and that excludes many people who would like to participate. 

There are ways around this problem.  Other Southern California cities run their own fitness programs, making it financially possible for many more people to participate.  If the trainers want the benefit of public property maybe their fees should be regulated to be inline with the fees of Santa Monica’s other recreation programs?  Or maybe there’s a better answer?  Affordability is a problem the Council should consider in the context of the use of public property for private profit.

Even with good regulations and good will on all sides, when I listen to the conversation about commercial fitness trainers in Palisades Park I hear people asking that a line be drawn and that the trainers not be allowed in Palisades Park, the grandest of our parks, and that the Council recognize and honor the history, the geography, the ecology and the iconography of the park.

What Say You?

 

Hometown Hero: David Bryan. Educator and Adventurer

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

David Bryan
New Roads School

David Bryan, the Head of School at New Roads School in Santa Monica, has spent most of his life in the classroom.  In thinking about his teaching he said, “Some of the most exciting moments I’ve had have been in the classroom.  To be part of a moment when everyone is being passionate and even ferocious about the same ideas, to help people come together in their shared knowledge, is exciting.  It’s like juggling and then seeing the pattern emerge.”

Teaching started simply as a way to get through grad school without paying.  He was studying Law at SUNY Buffalo.  Law School tuition was high and he decided to ‘go shopping’ to see if he could get some financial help.  He got help from The SUNY Communications Department when they accepted him as a PhD student and paid for all his courses, including the law classes.

Bryan had always been shy and when he found out that to get his tuition paid he would be required to stand up in front of a classroom of college students and teach he almost gave up.   However he didn’t want to lose what he saw as a great opportunity.  So he gathered his courage, went into the classroom and took roll.  He hoped that would be a way into a conversation with his students.

Seeing the name Timothy Leary on the roster Bryan asked the student.  “Are you related?”

The student looked questioningly at Bryan.  He had no idea there was a famous Timothy Leary.   Bryan was somewhat thrown and he jokingly asked the class, “Hey, do you guys know the Beatles?”

The class laughed.  Bryan was relieved.  He was more than relieved.  Bryan said, “I liked the feeling of making the students laugh.  I liked the interaction.  It got me out of feeling uncomfortable.”

By the time he earned his law degree he had come to the conclusion that he didn’t have the temperament for practicing law.  So he taught, he wrote, he worked construction jobs.  Then he and some friends went to Florida to live on a boat and work on boats.

“I lived on a 36’ Morgan sloop in south Florida and in the Caribbean.  Living on a boat makes you pay attention.  There is always the demand of the ocean and that demand is ignored to one’s peril.   You pay attention to the ocean and you pay attention to yourself.  In fact, living on the ocean can be self -absorbing and over time it made me realize I needed to reenter the world.

“I was in the boat and reckoning with the idea of boat life and what’s next and the idea of teaching high school took hold of me hard.”  Bryan started to research what he needed to do in order to teach High School. 

His mother was in California and he wanted to live near her.   “I loved my Mom.  She was amazing.  She could figure out anything, she could fix the dishwasher and the washing machine.  She was smart about money and investments.  She loved her garden, especially her roses and her gladiolas.  She hated housework.  She and my father made it abundantly clear to me and to my brother that they loved us.”

LA Unified gave him a substitute teacher emergency credential.  While he was subbing at LA Unified he was also looking for a full time job. 

He ran into Jack Zimmerman who had been a friend from college days. Zimmerman was by then an educator and a therapist.  He introduced Bryan to Paul Cummins, the Founder and Director of Crossroads School in Santa Monica.  Cummins hired Bryan to teach Crossroads Middle School history, English and the mysteries classes - then an innovative and now a widely used curriculum for teaching human development and ethics.

Part of the ongoing discussion among faculty at Crossroads was how to make a Crossroads education available to all students who wanted it.  It was an idea Paul Cummins acted on and he started New Roads School to do just that.   Cummins formed the New Visions Foundation to provide support for

his plan for the school and for an Educational Village.

Cummins asked David Bryan to be the Head of School at New Roads.  It was an assignment Bryan gladly accepted.  Bryan describes the work at New Roads as “super joyful.  The kids are fabulous.   They come to school because they want to be here and that’s an essential part of a learning environment.”

New Roads is a school that is genuinely diverse – racially, ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically.   Diversity is recorded in School demographics and statistics.  Bryan said the students and faculty have “embraced diversity.  It is lived in the daily life of the School. At New Roads students and faculty cross the invisible barriers that seem to exist in our society even though we all know they have no basis in fact.

“Another measure of our success as a school is that our kids are prepared for college and our students go to colleges all over the country.   Even more important, they are prepared to take the next steps on the path of life,” said Bryan.

After 18 years of being the Head of School at New Roads, Bryan is retiring.  He and his wife, the psychologist and educator Shelly Graham, are moving to the Santa Cruz Mountains.  Right now his plan is to create some space and see what fills it up.  “I’ve had an adventurous life,” he said, “Now I’m doing what I always tell the kids to do, be open to having an new adventure.”

What Say You? Dignity, Autonomy and the Advance Directive

 

What Say You?  Dignity, Autonomy and the Advance Directive

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

Dr. Jonathan Weaver, a member of the medical staff at Saint John’s Health Center, believes “communicating ones wishes for treatment at the end of life is one of the most important discussions you can have.  This can be a conversation with your physician or with your spouse or any person you designate to be your advocate. 

He continues, “It is a discussion that is not frequently done and in fact only 30 percent of physicians polled have communicated their wishes with their own doctor

regarding end of life care.”

Dr. Weaver will discuss a practical approach on how to conduct end of life decisions with your doctor and how doctors approach end of life care for themselves at the St. John’s panel discussion on “End of Life Care.”  Santa Monica Main Library April 16 2-4 pm and April 17 6:30-8:30 pm.  (For reservations call 310829 8453)

Other panelists and facilitators include:  Ross Kino MD, Medical Director, Emergency Services; Brian Madden MD, Medical Director Palliative Care; Nancy Parks, RN, Palliative Care Nurse Coordinator; Cynthia Lane, RN, Director Case Management and Social Services; and Paul Schneider, MD FACP, President, Southern California Bioethics Committee Consortium.

Why care about this?  If you want the physician and the medical staff to respect your wishes when you are in the hospital, if you are unexpectedly in an accident or become severely ill at a young age, if you are elderly and have an illness or a disease, if you want your health care values and beliefs to be respected, it is worth it to care.

An example of when it’s important to have your wishes known ahead of time is with CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).  When you hear someone talk about CPR is your image one of a TV actor playing a buff lifeguard pushing on a swimmer’s chest and administering mouth- to -mouth resuscitation restoring the swimmer to breath and life? 

That is one kind of CPR.  In the hospital a patient with no heartbeat might need in hospital CPR where their ribs are cracked and the rib cage opened so the heart can be accessed directly.  Emergency or operating room CPR saves lives and is an essential protocol in the hospital.  But is it always the right thing to do?

Is the patient fundamentally healthy but has stopped breathing due to a trauma and can be restored to health or was the person in a serious auto accident, having no discernable heartbeat, and with irreversible brain damage causing the loss of cognitive capacity?  In these completely different scenarios the patient, or the patient’s advocate, must direct the physician.

Physicians make medical decisions and offer medical advice.  Patients have the right to autonomy and the right to accept or reject medical care based on their own health, their values and beliefs.

So how do you keep your autonomy even if you can no longer speak for yourself?  One way is through an Advance Health Care Directive informing physicians of your health care decisions.  Another is to authorize a person to be your advocate when you can’t speak for yourself.

If only 30 percent of doctors think this is important, why should the rest of us?  We have learned form the Johns Hopkins Precursors Study (a longitudinal study following Johns Hopkins trained physicians) that doctors often “forego the same end of life treatments they offer to patients.”  (Doctors Die Differently by Arline Kaplan June 29, 2012 Psychiatric Times)

Ken Murray MD, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC and one of the physicians in the Hopkins Precursors Study, is the author of the Zocalo Public Square essay “How Doctors Die: It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But ItShould Be”

He writes,  “It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

“Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen–that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

“Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery.

“If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices. They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night.”

Dr. Murray is clear about his values and has communicated them to his physician and has shared them with us.  For everyone, getting to clarity takes some work.  Hearing from medical professionals might just be a good way to get started in figuring out your own beliefs and values.

What Say You?

What Say You? No One Dies Alone

Sister Maureen Craig holding a patient's hand at St. Johns Hospital
Part of the NODA Program

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist

“The scientist in me knows that we don’t thrive alone.  When we’re born we need human contact.  Throughout our life we know from science and from our own emotions that we need human contact to thrive.  In dying we can no more be alone that we can at birth.

“I’m not religious but I am spiritual.  It makes me feel good to be able to be with the dying person, to touch them, to hold their hand, to make human contact.  I want to be there for people.  It means a lot to me,” said Melissa McRae

McRae is a native of Santa Barbara who studied at both UCSB and UCLA.  She currently works at St. Johns as a Surgery Administrative Coordinator.   She volunteers for the No One Dies Alone (NODA) program at St. Johns.

NODA was the idea of a Critical Care Nurse named Sandra Clarke.  She wrote, “there seems to be an unwritten universal protocol (among nurses) for the patient who is dying without the presence of friends or family.  One’s other patients’ care will be taken over by nearby nurses.  Rituals of passing are acted out: I’ve seen nurses quietly singing, holding the hand of the dying, and, in all other manners of behavior, showing care and respect while an individual passes on to death.  Nurses know the awe of being present at the birth or the death of another human.  I believe awe and privilege is an innate human response at these times – the very essence of humanity.” 

That unwritten protocol became a formal program now known as “No One Dies Alone” and it was founded at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene Oregon in November of 2001.   Hospitals and health centers across the country have followed their lead.  St. Johns began their NODA program in 2004.

Sister Maureen Craig, a person happily known to all who work at St. Johns said, “St. Johns has a long tradition, rooted in the mission of the hospital, for compassionate care.  I am thankful for the volunteers carrying our traditions forward.  Through the years our numbers have diminished and work that was once done by the Sisters has now become part of the lives of our volunteers.  We love the fact that the loving care we so believe in is being continued by the hundreds of volunteers at St. Johns and by the remarkable volunteers of the No One Dies Alone program.”

Grenda Pearlman, Director of Volunteer Services at St. Johns reports, “the NODA program currently has about 25 volunteers.  Each one attends orientation sessions and receives training.  The current volunteers range in age from their early 20’s to their late 70’s.  The requirement for being a NODA volunteer is “an interest in being advocates for the patient.  These patients are on comfort care and our goal at St. Johns is to see they have no physical pain and to offer compassionate care.

“NODA volunteers are special people and it is not something that everybody can or should do.  But if it is something a person can do then it is not only a gift to the patient it is also a gift to the volunteer,” said Pearlman. (For information about volunteering for the NODA program of for any of the St. Johns programs contact Grenda Pearlman at 310 829 8434 or grenda.pearlman@st.johns.org)

Marge Gold is a NODA volunteer who provides care to patients and who also helps the Director with program organization and coordination.  Gold talked about what she learned from being a NODA volunteer.  “NODA has taught me to just be there in whatever way the patient needs, to suspend judgment and to come with no expectations about the patient or the family.  I hope I always say and do whatever is needed and am of help.  It’s a profound experience and I’m grateful to be a part.”

Like other volunteers for NODA, Nancy Cronig has a long series of accomplished volunteer work on her resume.  Currently she is an actor in the Moot Court program at UCLA, is part of the St. Johns Surgery Waiting Room Volunteer program and a NODA volunteer.

Recounting her NODA experiences Cronig said, “I came to realize that even in a coma a person hears you.  I play music and sing to them.  I hold their hand.  I wipe their brow and put ointment on their lips and do other things to make them comfortable.  I advocate for them when they can’t advocate for themselves.

“When I got called for my first patient I didn’t know what to expect.  I sat with her and held her hand and played music for her.  I was so thankful to be able to pass on some of help I have gotten in my life to someone who was in need.  It is a healing experience.”

From the beginning of St. Johns to now much has changed in health care.  The work of being a physician and the physician’s commitment to each patient is a value we agree to as a nation.  One we all want to protect.  However the delivery of health care, cost of health care, and availability of health care remains in the public, the political and the economic spotlight. 

In addition medical technology has made great advancements bringing great benefits but adding to the ethical questions that have always been part of medicine.  

A discussion of the forces shaping our national health care is, and needs to be, ongoing.  Throughout what can sometimes be a contentious debate individual people, across the nation, are using their time to volunteer in ways that support the commitment to each individual patient.    NODA is one part of the answer to the ethical questions of our time.

What Say You?

What Say You? Planned Parenthood Food Fare

What Say You?  Planned Parenthood Food Fare          

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.  March 7, 2013.

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

March 15, 2013

Julia Child was an ardent Planned Parenthood supporter and the inspiration for the now much anticipated annual Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA) Food Fare Fundraising Gala.  34 years ago Child supervised 20 amateur sous chefs in the kitchen of Ma Maison in Beverly Hills as they prepared a five-course dinner for 130 people.  That dinner was the first of the Planned Parenthood “Food Fares.”

The 2013 PPLA Food Fare at the Civic was attended by more than 1500 people.  It was the 17th year PPLA hosted the Food Fare at the Civic.  An orange carpet marked the entry into the beautifully decorated and lit Civic, a great venue for this event.  Fare goers feasted on food prepared by Chef of the Year Joe Miller.   PPLA chose Miller for the Chef of the Year Award based on his culinary arts, his history of work with PPLA and his commitment to the goals and values of Planned Parenthood.  The list of participating restaurateurs reads like a “Who’s Who” of LA’s favorite chefs.

Alice Miler, Clementine
Planned Parenthood Los Angeles Food Fare
March 7, 2013

Fare goers also bought chic goods from vendors selling everything from jewelry to pajamas. http://pplafoodfare.com/?page_id=8 

The credit for planning and organizing this event goes to the PPLA Guild President Marcy Bergren Pine and the approximately 200 Guild Members. They volunteer their time and their expertise to support PPLA’s fundraising and public outreach. The Food Fare is PPLA’s major fundraising event and this year, from attendees, donors, sponsors and contributors to the Fare, they raised over $800,000.00.

Supporting reproductive rights wasn’t always this fun or this easy.  Giving out information about birth control was once a crime in the U.S.   The reproductive rights pioneer Margaret Sanger was jailed for opening the first U.S. birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York in 1916.

“Planned Parenthood dates its beginnings to 1916 when Sanger, her sister, and a friend open America's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. In Sanger's America, women cannot vote, sign contracts, have bank accounts, or divorce abusive husbands. They cannot control the number of children they have or obtain information about birth control, because in the 1870s a series of draconian measures, called the Comstock laws, made contraception illegal and declared information about family planning and contraception "obscene."” http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/history-and-successes.htm

Sanger overcame legal and public obstacles and her clinic became the American Birth Control League.   Over time the League became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Margaret Sanger was Planned Parenthood’s first President.

Planned Parenthood “believes in the fundamental right of each individual, throughout the world, to manage his or her fertility regardless of the individual’s income, martial status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or residence.  We believe that respect and value for diversity in all aspects of our organization are essential to our well-being.  We believe reproductive self-determination must be voluntary and preserve the individual’s right to privacy.  We further believe that such self-determination will contribution to an enhancement of the quality of life and strong family relationships.” http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/vision-4837.htm

Serena Josel, the Director of Public Affairs for PPLA said, “In LA it can become easy for us to become complacent but when you look at what’s happening across the country you can’t be complacent.  From 2010 to 2012 there were over 2000 pieces of anti- women’s health legislation in the form of anti abortion and anti birth control bills across the country.

“We served over 136,000 patients last year in our 19 clinics and 80% of our patients live at or below the poverty level.  Our goal is to never turn anyone away,” said Josel.  “Fewer than 7% of patients are teens and the majority of teen patients come with their parents.  We provide reproductive health services, family planning, contraception, abortion, screening for breast, cervical and testicular cancer, HIV screening and counseling, STD testing and treatment.  We work to help people have healthy families.

“California often leads the nation on reproductive rights health care and that’s a signal to us to keep on.  We follow common sense, evidence based policies and when we don’t get bogged down by outside politics we can concentrate on our essential work.”

PPLA expenses totaled approximately $48 million in 2012.  Over $5 million came from donations.  The main source of funding is from reimbursements for individual health services from private health insurance companies or from public health coverage such as California Family Pact or from health care programs supported by Federal funding.

Federal funding to Planned Parenthood started in 1970 when President Nixon signed “The Family Planning Services and Population Research Act.”
The Act provides funding for family planning services and was supported by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans. 

Signing the Act, Nixon said, “No American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”

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