The quotes in this article are taken from a January 2013 city staff report which recommended to city council that they should withdraw funding from the Pico Youth Family Center (PYFC). At the time, now-Councilmember Oscar de la Torre was the executive director of PYFC. De la Torre is listed as the president of the board of directors on their most recently available tax returns (PDF) and is still listed as receiving a salary. Current Executive director Alex Aldana was the only other person listed as receiving a salary.
For those unfamimiliar, PYFC is a non-profit organization headquartered in the Pico Community in Santa Monica and founded by de la Torre. The organization lists three goals for their mission on their website:
- To equip underserved youth and their families with the leadership and advocacy skills needed to strengthen and sustain the community in which they live.
- To promote peace, unity and social justice by modeling cooperation and advancing educational and economic opportunity.
- To work for positive transformation, and instill hope in our youth by engaging them in creating solutions to our community’s problems.
The first four letters presented in this article are resignation letters by the PYFC board chair and three other PYFC board members in December 2012. The fifth is a letter to the city from the head of the NAACP Santa Monica-Venice Branch regarding PYFC, also in December 2012.
Why cover a 2013 staff report in 2024? I attempted to search for contemporaneous coverage of this in local news outlets such as the Santa Monica Daily Press and Santa Monica Lookout and came up empty. I likewise am not aware of any coverage of this from 2020, when de la Torre first ran for city council. So to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time these letters have been reported on.
For ease of reference, the page numbers listed in this article are the PDF page numbers that will be listed in your PDF viewer and the PDF viewer embedding of the full report below this paragraph, not the original page numbers in the staff report. All bolding in this article and highlighting in the report pages is mine.
Amanda Seward letter of resignation as PYFC board chair (pages 40-45)
The misperceptions and falsehoods generated to retain Oscar’s control over PYFC has created a toxic atmosphere.
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It was very disturbing to hear statements of an alleged racial conspiracy on the Board. … It was irresponsible to engage in this kind of race baiting.
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Another Board member, Oscar claimed, wanted his job, presumably merely because she had experience in serving as an executive director of a nonprofit. The Board member was white and the word was spread that this was a grab by the establishment of ” our” organization.
Oscar demonized the organizational development consultant engaged by the City when it was perceived by him that she was critical of his leadership. Oscar claimed she did not like the social justice mission and did not like the Malcolm X portrait on the wall because Malcolm was Muslim and she was Jewish. Oscar also said that she wanted the PYFC to fail because she was on the board of an organization that received an endowment from the Peggy Bergman estate and would stand to benefit with additional monies if the PYFC went under. The charges were ridiculous.
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I must register my grave concerns about his leadership and profound disagreement with his tactics and the modeling it provides the youth.
Jan Brook letter of resignation from PYFC board (pages 46-47)
During the time which I have been Treasurer of PYFC, I have witnessed repeatedly the inappropriate behavior of the PYFC Executive Director, Oscar de la Torre. While he may mean well, he is an activist at heart and as such, he looks for opposition and conspiracies, encourages resistance, and employs divisive tactics in order to get his way. Unfortunately, this kind of leadership teaches the youth that the end justifies the means.
While Oscar enjoys using the PYFC mantra of Peace, Unity and Social Justice, his behavior these past four weeks has demonstrated that these words only apply to him, and not to others. … And when Oscar verbally insulted several of our Board members with racial, religious and / or ethnic slurs, Oscar demonstrated that the right to have Social Justice does not apply to everyone.
Shelly Wood letter of resignation from PYFC board (page 49-50)
The behavior that I have observed by the Executive Director and Founder, Oscar de la Torre, is disturbing and unacceptable.
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Oh November 20th, I was shocked to see PYFC staff and Oscar, picketing outside of the board meeting. It was at this time, that I realized Oscar had breached the confidentiality that we had agreed to.
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I believe that Oscar thrives on dishonesty and manipulates the truth for personal gain. … Oscar, as Executive Director, did not seem to care that the youth and community were being mis-informed [sic].
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Oscar’s behavior at this meeting was despicable. He tried to polarize the board and make it a racial issue between the African American board members and the Latino board members.
I am now convinced that he should not be in a position where he can influence and lead young minds.
Jill Moniz letter of resignation from PYFC board (pages 51-52)
I cannot condone the gross misconduct of PYFC executive director Oscar de la Torre. … [He has] demonstrate[d] a pattern of behavior that at best is unethical, at worst illegal.
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What is more troubling is the board member who abstained from voting received threats from the community because her vote could have swung the decision the other way. These violations of ethical conduct are further evidence of Oscar’ s interference with board governance.
In addition, the executive director admitted to stirring misperceptions of a racial divide on the board to the community in an effort to gain support for his desire to remain executive director. … he betrays his mantra of peace, unity and social justice, by misinforming the public, making threats against the personal safety of the board and attempting to instigate racial unrest.
[Oscar] threatened me and another black board member in a private meeting if we did not support him fully…. [He later] alluded to these threats … by referencing said meeting as proof that I wasn’t “on his side” despite his warning.
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However, after 3 months of my own hard work that was met with nothing but open hostility from Oscar and his staff, I cannot support this organization any further. It would be equally unethical of me not to report this misconduct to the Attorney General.
Darrell Goode, President of the NAACP Santa Monica Venice Branch (page 62)
The current administration has not demonstrated this ability to generate inclusive participation between African American and Latino at risk youth.
Recently [Oscar’s] actions and statements in relation to those of other cultures that are not supported by facts are proving to be divisive in our community. … There is the concern that if the Executive Director cannot show respect, support, or collaboration with African American leadership on his board, it may speak to the lack of its support and outreach to the African American population that does not feel valued at the center, indeed they have expressed fear about coming to the center. … Furthermore, this lack of multicultural support, that was apparent in how a consultant who happened to be Jewish was accused of trying to destroy the PYFC and to give the recovered grant funds to the YWCA, is counter-productive to what we see as building towards a community that is inclusive.
