News about local politics in Santa Monica.
Via Streetsblog California Over a million people marched last Sunday at women’s rallies in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, to say nothing of the dozens of other rallies across the states. Governor Jerry Brown uses his State of the State to…
This post originally appeared in Streetsblog California. This last Saturday, you marched. You rallied. You marched in big cities. You rallied in other cities. It was a glorious day for Democracy. Over the years, Streetsblog has noted the importance of the public…
The following piece first appeared on The Healthy City Local. I haven’t written here for a while. It’s easy for a little hiatus to become a long vacation, especially over the holidays, and especially, if you write a column about local…
The campaign that soundly defeated the no-growth Measure LV this past November has been given the “Honorable Mention” nod in the 2016 Streetsie Awards category of “Advocacy Organization of the Year.” The Streetsie Awards are meted out by Santa Monica…
This past year, Santa Monica continued to advance some very progressive policies aimed at sharing the city’s increasing prosperity with as wide a swath of residents, workers, and other members of the community as possible. Still, this year’s headlines also…
For the fourth year in a row, Assemblymember Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) will chair the Assembly’s budget subcommittee that oversees spending on pressing environmental issues such as transportation and greenhouse gas reductions. Bloom, a resident of Santa Monica who served…
For a city its size, Santa Monica has a robust media ecosystem of locally-focused print and digital news publications. With a population just shy of 100,000, Santa Monica boasts several print papers and two exclusively online publications (this one included)…
What will it take to end the divisiveness surrounding development in Santa Monica? That was the ostensible question underpinning the discussion at the Santa Monica City Council meeting early Wednesday morning. Councilmembers Gleam Davis and Kevin McKeown together placed an…
The final vote counts for Santa Monica’s local elections are in, showing big wins for incumbents and an unambiguous rejection of the no-growth ballot initiative, Measure LV. The final tallies, which were officially certified by the office of the Los…
(Note : This article first appeared in the Healthy City Local. – DN) Shell-shocked after the presidential vote, I’ve been slow putting my thoughts together on the local election. In fact, when analyzing local elections it’s a good idea to…
With election day nearly a week behind us the dust is beginning to settle and a clearer picture of the political landscape at the national, state, and local levels is emerging. One thing is resoundingly clear from the outcome of…
Last night, the nation was shocked at the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. As more and more states turned red by a razor margin, the feeling among many progressives that I know, and the…
This article appeared yesterday in The Healthy City Local. Over the weekend my son Henry wrote a note to his Facebook friends explaining why he felt so personally threatened by the candidacy of Donald Trump. Henry, who is getting a…
Last Thursday, Santa Monica Next held a non-partisan pre-election party that featured a voter guide listing endorsements on local, regional and state-wide ballot measures from over a dozen advocacy and news organizations including the L.A. County Democratic Club, Santa Monica…
The following is a response from downtown community member Babak Mozaffari. For voters in California, the first look at this November’s ballot has often been accompanied by a sense of shock and horror. There are 17 state-wide measures, followed by…
