Envirowimps: L.A.'s Big Green Groups Get Comfy

http://www.laweekly.com/2009-07-02/news/envirowimps?src=newsletter

Activists leave the street-fighting to the little guys

By Patrick Range McDonald
July 01, 2009

So far, 2009 has not been a banner year for the environmental
movement in Los Angeles. As the area's mainstream enviros buddy up
with self-described green politicians and deep-pocketed land
speculators and unions in Los Angeles and Sacramento, who have
seemingly joined the "sustainability" cause, an odd thing is
happening: Environmentalists who should be at the top of their game
are turning into servants for more powerful, better politically
connected masters, and suffering a string of defeats to boot.

The first bruising local loss was dealt on March 3, when voters shot
down a controversial, Villaraigosa-backed solar-energy initiative,
Measure B, which many prominent environmentalists supported heartily.
The stunning defeat came after a flurry of bad press, which accused
the mayor and his political friends of secret backroom deals, and
criticized the way the measure was rushed onto the ballot, for no
apparent reason, by the Los Angeles City Council. The political
chicanery turned off the city's mostly liberal voters, and Measure B
went down hard and heavy. The losses kept racking up from there.

On April 29, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder placed a temporary
injunction on a key clause of a "clean trucks" program at the heavily
polluted Port of Los Angeles, thus allowing independent truckers to
continue working for themselves rather than for trucking companies.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters came up with the controversial clause, and
environmentalists, according to Coalition for Clean Air president
Alberto B. Mendoza, signed off on it.

The federal judge's ruling may not seem like a big deal, but
environmentalists agreed with city pols and the big union that
forcing independent truckers to work for a company would ensure that
only clean trucks rumble through the port. Their plan, ridiculed as a
sop to those who hoped to turn the truckers into Teamsters, went out
the window with Snyder's injunction.

That same day, the American Lung Association scored L.A.'s ozone
layer as the dirtiest in the country, and L.A. as the third-worst
city for year-round air pollution. The Port of Los Angeles is a very
bad actor, its belching emissions creating a dramatic increase in
cancer rates in numerous suburbs upwind of the harbor. A federal
Environmental Protection Agency study released June 24 says those
emissions have turned pleasant, tree-lined places such as Cerritos,
miles away, into Southern California's hot spots for cancer and other diseases.

More bad news followed for enviros, when, on May 10, the L.A. Times
reported that major oil companies and gas-station chains collected
"hundreds of millions of dollars" from a state environmental-cleanup
fund that was meant for mom-and-pop businesses. It was a
public-relations fiasco of the highest proportions, with big
businesses showing once again that they're more than willing to
co-opt a well-intentioned project for a lucrative payday ­ and do it
gleefully, behind the backs of greens, who had supported creation of the fund.

"This sort of green-washing is unacceptable," says Marcia Hanscom,
one of the rare environmentalists who openly question the
effectiveness of the green movement. "Large, polluting corporations
should not be allowed to access funds like this ­ especially when
their record profits translate to their not really needing public funds."

It's a cautionary tale for this city's environmentalists, who must
increasingly deal with the fact that labor unions, big businesses and
politicians are embracing a green economy to solve their own
financial and political woes. If the big boys aren't handled smartly,
the green agenda ­ repairing a damaged planet, and protecting the
local environment in which we live ­ may end up watered-down, even an
afterthought. Yet today, in one of the most politically progressive,
seemingly eco-conscious cities in the United States,
environmentalists have increasingly become a marginalized voice
struggling to transition to a strong political force.

"I don't think the traditional environmental organizations are up to
speed of where we need to be," says Miguel Luna, executive director
of Urban Semillas, a grass-roots environmental group based in
Northeast L.A., who, though careful not to condemn, doesn't
necessarily go along with the strategies of the big-name green groups here.

Mendoza, president of the influential mainstream Coalition for Clean
Air, concurs: "If we don't become more modern in our approach, we'll
become obsolete."

Yet environmental groups are trying to raise funds in a terrible
economy, which is putting the crunch on a number of green nonprofits,
environmentalists aren't effectively widening their movement to
include community groups such as neighborhood councils, and leading
environmentalists sometimes act as silent accomplices to the things
they criticize. Eco-conscious honchos privately grumble about
Villaraigosa's "lack of vision" and "slow action" on green issues but
give him a free pass in public.

"Nobody has come out against [Villaraigosa] because he's trying,"
explains Melanie Winter, director of the River Project, a grass-roots
environmental group based in Studio City. "But because of his
potential, he's been a disappointment."

Under the current crop of politicians, developers have marketed, or
"green-washed," huge buildings to the Los Angeles public as
"sustainable" ­ meaning healthy for the environment over the long
term ­ when critics say they actually create more traffic congestion,
more pollution and a plainly lower quality of life.

In Hollywood, the political turf of green-friendly City Council
President Eric Garcetti and 4th District City Councilman Tom LaBonge,
Bob Blue saw one proposed skyscraper or giant condo complex after
another come before the community group he chaired, the Hollywood
Studio District Neighborhood Council. Outsize projects that ignore
local zoning restrictions are now peddled by developers as good
because they are "LEED" buildings, meaning they offer such features
as low-flush toilets, on-site renewable energy and improved
indoor-air-quality standards.

Lost in the push for LEED certification has been the pressing
question of whether the environmental benefits of these buildings
outweigh the negatives. Do these big structures cause more emissions
by attracting increased traffic and encouraging congested streets
filled with idling cars, for example, than they claim to reduce? In
truth, nobody knows ­ including the many cities such as L.A. whose
development approvals now require LEED standards. "But if you have a
project that would normally be four stories high and now it has 20
stories," says Blue, who supports the concept of LEED design, "it
still adds enormous weight to the infrastructure." There is a "net
increase in power, water, sewer, traffic, pollution and impact to the
immediate surrounding area." The community activist adds, "I think
that this is being missed by everybody."

Blue's hardly alone in his criticism. Rex Frankel, a widely respected
independent voice in L.A.'s environmental movement and director of
the think tank ConnectingCalifornia.org, says, "If you're using LEED
to justify greater density, it's a false tradeoff ... we'll still
face more time in traffic, increased smog and other impacts. It's
just another example of green-washing."

LEED is little-known to the public, but among many L.A. greens it's
an all-but-closed debate ­ and represents a profound shift. Greens
like Hanscom, Frankel, Bruce Robertson, Kathy Knight, Sabrina
Venskus, Patricia McPherson and Wendy Wendlandt directly took on City
Hall in the 1990s, preventing the City Council and Mayor Richard
Riordan from wiping out big chunks of the Ballona Wetlands and very
publicly exposing the politicians and their land-speculator friends
over absurd "sustainability" claims. Playa Vista's proponents
actually attempted, for example, to call the green median strips at
Playa Vista "open space."

Yet today, Los Angeles enviros are sliding toward the argument that
big development is good for the air, land and water, and that tiny
bits of green are enough. Bob Blue goes to six to 10 city
planning-department meetings a year to keep an eye on these kinds of
projects, but he's rarely seen an environmentalist in attendance.
"Maybe one time an environmentalist showed up," Blue says, "but it
was on behalf of the developer."

Many neighborhood activists believe that environmental leaders need
to connect with ordinary citizens like Bob Blue, and learn to play
hardball in a city where the political and business establishments
take no prisoners. "L.A. is a rough town," says John White, a
longtime environmental lobbyist based in Sacramento. "Like one City
Hall insider told me, 'We don't cut off noses anymore, but Los
Angeles is still like Chinatown.'"

Within the green movement, Andy Lipkis, founder of Tree People, and
Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay, have reputations as
longtime, heavyweight environmentalists with privileged access to the
city's and state's top politicians. Neither of them, though, want to
jump into the rough-and-tumble games of California politics, like the
Hanscoms and Frankels of the world.

Lipkis, a likable and dedicated activist, proudly describes himself
as politically "naive," adding that he doesn't "have a lot of
understanding or patience for politics." Gold, a smart and equally
dedicated environmentalist, says that what some see as the hijacking
of green issues by politicians, labor unions, developers or
speculators doesn't concern him. "Not even a little," he says.
"That's not what I worry about. I worry about the economy. I worry
about cleaning up the environment."

This laissez faire attitude toward politics, though, has increasingly
left the L.A. greens in the position of followers, not leaders. The
River Project's Melanie Winter, for example, visited New York City
not too long ago. The veteran environmentalist saw recycling, open
spaces and great parks. When Winter returned home, she found herself
literally depressed. "We're 12 years behind New York in making L.A. a
green city!" she says.

One example can be seen in the new trend of land speculators and
developers proposing apartment and condo complexes near freeways, in
many cases arguing that the buildings are "sustainable" because they
bring workers closer to jobs. The developments often get the blessing
of L.A. City Council ­ to the horror of health experts. The
University of Southern California and other research institutions now
know for certain that children living in these projects are burdened
with serious, often lifelong lung and respiratory illnesses caused by
a relentless stream of traffic nearby. "They are putting individuals
at risk," says USC professor of preventive medicine Jim Gauderman, of
the politicians, developers and greens. His 2007 study made that clear.

Greens, in fact, are so focused on lowering emissions statewide to
fight global warming that they now praise freeway housing projects,
forgetting about the young humans involved. And such family dwellings
are enthusiastically being green-lighted by the Los Angeles Planning
Department, taking its cues from City Council members. Incredibly,
Planning Commissioner Michael Woo, a Villaraigosa appointee who sits
through endless public hearings for such projects, says he's not
heard one word of opposition from environmentalists about placing
children in housing along freeways. After the USC study came out, "it
made me wonder why we're approving so many of these projects," he
tells L.A. Weekly.

Woo says he's looking into "solutions," but the proposals to build
freeway-adjacent family housing ­ two years after the USC study was
released to much media attention ­ keep coming. "I'm not sure there's
a political will to stop housing projects at these locations," Woo says.

And this surprising dynamic is unfolding in a city where supposedly
eco-friendly Democrats control almost every aspect of the political
scene, its mayor throws out regular "green" buzzwords, and its
citizens are sympathetic to environmental causes. By all rights, the
green movement here should be enjoying a golden age, not suffering
from a lack of political will.

Measure B, the plan to cover hundreds of buildings in Los Angeles
with solar panels, is the most talked-about example of a failed green
effort that should have been a "slum dunk," says Bill Gallegos,
executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, a leading
environmental-justice group based in Huntington Park. But after DWP
union honcho Brian D'Arcy and Villaraigosa wrote up a plan that, at
its core, critics say, was about expanding the DWP union's jobs and
not about the environment, Measure B could not be saved, even with
the backing of major environmental figures including Gold, Mendoza
and Jonathan Parfrey, a past leader of environmental projects at the
L.A. branch of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Pissed-off
voters shot it down.

In Los Angeles, more than 400 environmental groups work tirelessly to
close down power plants, improve the water quality in the Santa
Monica Bay or plant trees on barren city streets. Filled with
committed people who may work with large staffs or only a handful of
volunteers, the green groups differ dramatically from one another,
falling in three distinct categories: well-funded, well-staffed
"mainstream" groups, such as Heal the Bay, Tree People and the
Coalition for Clean Air; smaller, socially conscious
"environmental-justice" groups that work closely with communities,
such as Communities for a Better Environment and Urban Semillas; and
less-wealthy, smaller-staffed "grass-roots" groups that also work
closely with communities, such as the River Project, the Surfrider
Foundation and the Ballona Institute.

Hanscom, the hard-charging environmentalist who has never gotten
anything by staying quiet, worked for years with several dozen
environmental groups fighting City Hall and property investors in the
Ballona Wetlands, near Marina del Rey, a crucial watershed and one of
Los Angeles County's last surviving wetlands. In 2003, the
coalition's relentless efforts paid off ­ the state bought more than
600 acres of the wetlands to preserve and restore. She says the
environmental movement in L.A. has lost its way. She believes it's
time for people to talk openly about a "midcourse correction."

"On the one hand," Hanscom says, "I've seen really good things happen
­ we've had more access to City Hall in some ways. But people have
been timid when using that access. They don't want to upset anyone."

Without that push back from activists, says Hanscom, Los Angeles
politicians have come to think that environmentalists should be
serving them. "They sometimes call me as if I'm one of their staff
members," she notes, "and I'm supposed to do what they say. They have
their roles mixed up. I'm here to advocate for the environment, not
to advocate for them."

Wendy-Sue Rosen, vice chair of the Brentwood Community Council, who
takes up green causes such as keeping energy-sucking, environmentally
intrusive digital billboards out of her neighborhood, says the
movement's softball brand of politics in L.A. isn't working. "I've
seen a lot of these organizations honoring [Mayor Villaraigosa],"
says Rosen, "but I'd like to know, what are they honoring him for? I
haven't seen the policies that have made this city more green."

Environmentalists certainly can't brag about Measure B. For an
estimated cost of at least $1.3 billion to L.A. residents, it would
have paid for the installation of solar-energy panels on the rooftops
of city-owned and commercial buildings. Voters smacked it down after
newspaper reports of backroom deals to secure jobs for the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the only workers who
would have been allowed to put up the panels.

When Villaraigosa and the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers hammered out Measure B, they failed to consult environmental
heavyweights Gold and Lipkis. Both have tight connections to the
Villaraigosa administration, yet both tell the Weekly they were never
invited to the power table. This didn't stop Gold from granting his
full endorsement when the mayor finally came calling ­ after the
fact. Gold even appeared in an online video enthusiastically backing
Measure B.

Gold is no Marcia Hanscom or Bill Gallegos. He won't criticize any
aspect of Measure B. "It's too easy a target," he explains to the
Weekly. Gold feels Villaraigosa's work on green issues has been "superb."

Measure B, in fact, was one of those mishandled opportunities ­
similar to California gay-rights honchos' bungling of the campaign to
defeat Proposition 8 ­ that can shake an entire movement to its core,
prompting activists to demand publicly that their leaders change the
way they do business. The gay-rights movement has been going through
that transformation since it lost at the ballot box in November. By
contrast, many environmentalists are hesitant to accept any blame or
criticize City Hall. When L.A. Weekly brought up Measure B with
various local environmentalists, for example, many responded with a
tense sigh and a word or two about how it's a "sensitive issue."

Seemingly in denial, Stephanie Pincetl, director of the Center on
People and the Environment at UCLA, blames the failure of the measure
on former L.A. City Controller Laura Chick. Chick was considered a
hero by many for saying publicly that Measure B, jammed with fine
print that all but banned the involvement of the vibrant private
solar-installation industry, "stinks." After Chick made her
surprising public break with Villaraigosa, neighborhood activists
ramped up their already-boisterous attacks on Measure B. Pincetl is
offended by all this. Chick shouldn't have publicly "turned up the
way [Measure B] was allegedly written up in secret," Pincetl says
with disgust. Pincetl even blames "yellow journalism" for hurting the
ballot measure.

Parfrey recently jumped the fence from enviro to politico, named by
Villaraigosa to the powerful Department of Water and Power Board of
Commissioners. He shrugs off the Measure B fiasco, explaining, "If
you look at the recent environmental initiatives, they all go down" ­
not quite true, with huge funds for mass transit being approved by
voters last November in the form of an increased Los Angeles County
sales tax and voters backing Proposition O in 2004, directing $500
million to clean up L.A.'s waterways and beaches. As if reading cue
cards, he says the Measure B loss was a lesson of patience in a
"long-term struggle" and contends: "We need to have a very robust
public-engagement plan, and the [DWP] will be a part of that."

But what are the chances that DWP, a slow-moving bureaucracy that
takes its orders from politicians, and whose union under D'Arcy has
long stood in the way of solar-energy development, will really play
such a role?

Lipkis of Tree People, whose activism spans 35 years, believes
Measure B exposed the greens' lack of serious political power at the
table. "Environmentalists are perceived as not having enough votes,"
he suggests, "so environmentalists are perceived as not having enough clout."

David Abel, publisher and editor in chief of the Planning Report, who
followed the Measure B campaign closely, believes that "Southern
California environmental leaders underestimate their political power
and leverage in setting environmental policy" ­ which translates into
a fundamental weakness in which enviros make ready concessions and
let establishment types set the agenda, as long as they can claim an
often unprovable win for "sustainability" or the fight against global warming.

John White, a lobbyist for green causes in Sacramento, says
environmentalists in Los Angeles are perhaps more influential than
those from other parts of California ­ due to their connections to
wealthy political donors in the entertainment industry. If
politicians want generous contributions from the Hollywood crowd,
White explains, they need the blessings of environmental leaders, and
then those pols must campaign on a strong "green" platform.

Yet there's a disconnect in the minds of the leading
environmentalists in L.A. Purportedly progreen politicians control
the office of mayor, almost every Los Angeles City Council district,
every Los Angeles Unified School Board seat, a majority of seats on
the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and, for years, both
houses of the California Legislature ­ yet the greens seem oddly
incapable of taking advantage of it.

Gold went out of his way to endorse Measure B, even though Mayor
Villaraigosa drew it up without Gold's input. What local union boss
would stand for that? Certainly not D'Arcy, the outspoken, aggressive
IBEW general manager.

Sacramento lobbyist White says environmental leaders have
historically focused on "policy-oriented" work while barely
cultivating the skills to deal with bigtime political operators like
union chiefs and land speculators. "When dealing with these kinds of
political matters," says White, "it's not in their experience."

Environmentalists made a clumsy leap into the political worlds of
City Hall and the Teamsters when they were invited to the power table
to create the "clean trucks" program at the Port of Los Angeles. The
Teamsters and Villaraigosa wanted the port's long-independent
truckers to work for companies. Although the public was told that the
reasoning behind this move was to stop Wild West truckers from
driving filthy, smoke-belching vehicles, critics saw another motive
at work, one that had nothing to do with "clean trucks." Instead, it
was all about stripping the truckers of their independence and giving
the Teamsters a major opening to organize the drivers as union members.

Coalition for Clean Air's Mendoza, whose staff members worked on the
plan, says environmentalists backed that controversial clause. "[We]
thought it was the best way to ensure that clean trucks would be
maintained," Mendoza writes in an e-mail to the Weekly. "If the
trucks are not properly maintained and no one is accountable for
that, then the whole purpose of having new/clean trucks goes out the window."

For Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, though, dabbling in Teamsters
politics wasn't a good route for pursuing "clean trucks" and clean
air for the Port of Long Beach, right next door. The Teamsters move
was, in fact, a big distraction. "My first job in dealing with the
port is to improve the air quality," Foster tells the Weekly.
"Employee status wasn't a part of the issue." The environmentalists
appeared to get sucked into the Teamsters' and Villaraigosa's agenda.
But Foster decided against any provision that could threaten "the
clean-trucks program with a lawsuit," he says.

This year, U.S. District Judge Snyder halted the plan to strip L.A.
truckers of their independence. Although the trucker clause was
peddled as absolutely necessary to achieving cleaner air,
Villaraigosa released a statement suggesting the opposite: Despite
the judge's striking of the clause, the clean-trucks plan is "moving
full-steam ahead." The prolabor provision, it turns out, was not
crucial to clean air. The environmentalists had gotten entangled in
the mayor's political maneuvering to help the Teamsters, and the
lawsuit that went with it.

Mitchell Schwartz, president of the Los Angeles League of
Conservation Voters and a national political operative who headed
Barack Obama's presidential campaign in California, says there's a
reason for these missteps.

Environmentalists "sometimes want to be so pure," he says, that,
unlike Schwartz, most don't have much experience with rough political
campaigns. "But that's not how politics works." Schwartz adds,
"People have to get dirty. You can either get in there, get dirty,
and get something done, or you can stand on the sidelines with a
beautiful reputation intact and get nothing done."

"The good news for the environmental movement is its time has come,"
says Darry Sragow, a well-known Democratic consultant. "The
environmental community is swimming with the current, but that's just
good luck. If you don't have an ongoing political operation with a
political plan that's run in a sophisticated way, you're going to run
into trouble."

And Stephanie Taylor, interim managing director of the Green L.A.
Coalition, an umbrella group of more than 100 environmental
organizations in Los Angeles, doesn't see that kind of political
operation in place. "I don't know if we've figured out how we can
reach out in a bigger way," she says.

One problem may be the lack of Internet savvy among older leaders of
the movement. Mendoza, in his 30s, sees a generation gap, with
younger environmentalists telling him that older, mainstream groups
in Los Angeles have not properly used social-networking tools, such
as Facebook and Twitter.

And Taylor and others think the public needs to be far more educated
on the issues, in order to intelligently question corporate publicity
machines and their adjunct political machines in Sacramento and City
Hall. "I think we do need to be more aware and diligent about making
sure that the 'green job' movement doesn't take environmental issues
away from us," says Taylor.

Jack Humphreville, who is active in the citywide neighborhood-council
movement and helped to lead the campaign against Measure B, says the
greens are now in danger of getting "tainted. Environmentalists have
to be careful how they approach these things," he says. Humphreville
says a lot of people want to clean up air pollution or restore the
Los Angeles River. But there's a wariness now, as activists allow
themselves to "get played" by developers, labor unions, factory
owners and politicians. "What the mayor has done is use the
environment for his union activities," he claims.

If they really want to stop this mission drift, says Sragow,
environmentalists must elbow their way into power-broker roles. "It's
their job collectively, as a movement, to kick into gear and play
offense," he says. "They have to ask for things." Taylor of the Green
L.A. Coalition agrees, saying, "We have to make sure we're at the
table when these decisions are made about the new green economy."

But, John White says, they aren't sitting at the table at all. "Right
now, we're more like the menu."

For now, green leaders around Los Angeles seem to be opting for a
different, and maybe not terribly effective, form of power. Conner
Everts, executive director of the Santa Monica–based Southern
California Watershed Alliance, notes, "You've got a lot of people
from environmental groups who have moved into regulatory positions" ­
plainly put, they are now drawing salaries from the government.

Everts then lists a half-dozen or so men and women who now have jobs
with the city or state, suggesting that environmentalists inside
these ossified institutions will use those posts to expand the
movement's political power. The River Project's Winter doesn't think
it works that way. "They do everything in half-steps and baby steps,"
she says of these bureaucracies, "but we need to get on our feet."

The stark difference between the day-to-day work of Hanscom, the
grass-roots environmentalist, and Parfrey, the political insider and
mainstream environmental activist, proves Winter's point in spades.
When the Weekly talked with Hanscom recently, she was right in the
middle of fighting an almost surreal but classically Los Angeles
battle ­ to keep glaring digital billboards, made up of nearly
500,000 piercingly bright LED light bulbs, from popping up
immediately next to the Ballona Wetlands, a key ecosystem for
migrating birds, shore life and land flora.

As has become common practice under the "green" politicians who
control the Los Angeles City Council, mayor's office and City Hall's
bureaucracy, environmentalists had not even been warned that the city
government was considering a hunk of land next to the wildflowers and
blue herons as a future billboard location. "All of a sudden," says
Hanscom, "the city has the Ballona Wetlands as part of a billboard
'sign district.' It's outrageous. I even had [prodevelopment]
lobbyists and lawyers ask me what they were thinking."

By contrast, as Hanscom aimed her firepower at City Hall, Parfrey,
one of Villaraigosa's newest political appointees, was getting ready
to visit a DWP wind farm way out of town, with the idea of creating
"educational tours" for environmentalists. Not necessarily a bad
thing but not exactly shaking up the system. If anything, the tours,
as described, have the feel of a public-relations campaign for DWP.

The timing of Parfrey's ascent to an influential political post was
troubling to some. The mayor appointed him to the DWP late last year,
as the campaign over Measure B began, which caused some critics to
ask if he was being rewarded by Villaraigosa for backing a measure
many voters saw as having little to do with going green.

"I can see the difficulty Parfrey faces as an environmental lobbyist
and activist co-opted into an official capacity by the City Hall
political machine," writes former L.A. Daily News editor Ron Kaye on
his blog, www.ronkayela.com. "But ... the question has to be asked
whether you're an environmentalist or a green-washer profiting from
public support for a greener world."

Stephen Box, a bicycling advocate who has worked on green issues in
L.A., believes Parfrey and other insider Los Angeles
environmentalists are co-opted; blind-sided by digital billboards
quietly proposed next to wetlands and in many residential
neighborhoods, backtracking on the hard-won 1990s push to require
green belts and building setbacks in housing developments, looking
away as children get housed along freeways and staying nearly mum on
unprovable claims of sustainability by big business and big unions.
"It's a wonderful thing to think you're working on the inside," says
Box, "but based on the results, nothing is happening." He sees a
"fear" of rocking the boat among insiders, and an unwillingness to
"set the bar too high."

Several grass-roots activists believe mainstream environmentalists
aren't there for them, or won't share their access to politicians.
Bill Gallegos is executive director of Communities for a Better
Environment. Although he believes things are getting better, he sees
a "deep division" between traditional big groups and his kind of
highly local organization, especially on the issue of environmental
justice. Gallegos has focused for years on Huntington Park, a
tattered, working-class, almost entirely Mexican-American
southeast-L.A. suburb. Still, he's worried about whether Villaraigosa
and big environmental leaders will "throw down" with him.

On April 14, Villaraigosa stood on a stage inside the Balqon Electric
Truck Factory in Harbor City and smiled at the City Council members
and political insiders. Everyone was there for the mayor's "State of
the City" address, and Mark Gold of Heal the Bay was one of the VIPs.

"We are aggressively growing the industries of the future here in
L.A.," Villaraigosa announced. "We need to build a future in which
clean technology is as synonymous with Los Angeles as motion pictures
or aerospace. Where L.A. is acknowledged as a growing capital of the
green economy."

The mayor threw out buzzwords like "clean-tech corridor" and
"green-collar jobs," and optimistically promised that "if we follow
this path, we can turn a new page toward a green tomorrow."

Gold loved what he heard. "I was excited by it," he later said,
calling it "the kind of leadership we need. We really need to seize
the day in clean tech." When asked who invited him to the State of
the City address, Gold said someone from the mayor's office. It turns
out, in fact, that it was a deputy mayor of economic development, not
the mayor's environmental staff.

However subtle, the origin of that invite was a telling sign of how
political power brokers regard the L.A. environmental movement.
Instead of seeing it as a passionate force to be tapped for improving
the air, water and open spaces, powerful people outside it
increasingly see it as just another jobs program. It makes some of
the greenest greens wonder if their leaders are taking a back seat,
as their own movement declines.
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Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@....

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