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The San Fernando Valley wants to secede from Los Angeles. Is it fighting City Hall, or resisting diversity?
By STEPHEN BUCKLEY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 13, 2002
LOS ANGELES -- The Brady Bunch lived in the San Fernando Valley. So did E.T.
The eponymous Valley Girl grew up here. So did Michael Jackson.
Charles Manson hid out in the valley. The 1994 Northridge earthquake, among the nation's worst, happened here. Police beat Rodney King here.
Hemmed in by haze-shrouded mountains, America's most famous suburb sprawls over 222 square miles. St. Louis, Washington, Boston and San Francisco combined could fit into that space.
Fifty years ago, it was America's fastest growing urban area, awash in aerospace affluence and conservative Wasp sensibilities. It was 90 percent white.
Over the years, immigrants came for jobs, cheap housing, good schools, safe streets. Today, the valley is nearly 55 percent minority -- 37 percent Latino.
The valley became a mix of horse country, middle-class neighborhoods and dreary patches of poverty. Gang violence came and thousands of residents, mostly whites, went.
Amid the change blossomed a secession movement. Its champions wanted an independent city, with a mayor and city council and a billion-dollar budget. They wanted more control and community, less corruption and crime.
Some call it a dramatic fight against City Hall. Others say it's a movement of elitists who long for a valley of another time.
In other words: Is the valley running from a battered, dysfunctional Los Angeles? Or is it running from itself?
Jerry England is old San Fernando Valley.
He lives in a west valley community called Chatsworth, where horseback riders clop along the sidewalk toward the sun-kissed Santa Susana hills.
England, a friendly, gentle-spoken former Green Beret, wears his cowboy hat and boots everywhere. He drives his Ford Explorer through hills, home to deer and bobcat and coyote. Now bulldozers and backhoes churn up and flatten chunks of land for houses.
"I used to ride in hills that aren't there anymore," says the 59-year-old artist, who paints Western scenes.
He blames downtown politicians for the demise of his paradise. They won't stop building houses. They won't fund a museum or arena in the valley. They ignore illegal immigration.
Secession would let the valley control at least some of those issues. It's why he wants a seat on the valley city council, if it breaks away.
He drives along a main road and passes two Latino men spraying a lawn. A Latino man sells red roses along the freeway.
"It's just not politically correct to talk about in California, but it's a large problem," he says of illegal immigration.
Later: "We really haven't done a good job of closing the borders. There's a lot of illegals. I admire the Latino candidates, and they feel the same way. They want to protect their community, and I want to protect mine."
Secession has surged and faded as a movement since the 1920s, but it found new life a few years ago.
In 1997, a law made breaking away easier. No longer would the Los Angeles City Council decide whether part of the city could cut ties; secession now requires a citywide majority vote and also a valley majority vote.
That helped spur a rash of secession movements. A harbor movement withered; the Hollywood and valley campaigns got their referendums on the ballot.
Deeply rooted tensions erupted.
"There's always been a cultural divide between Los Angeles and the valley," says Kevin Roderick, author of America's Suburb, a history of the valley. "It's a marriage that's never quite been consummated."
Dick Healy was a Big Brother in Hollywood and taught immigrants English in East L.A. His Episcopal church is a mix of Ghanaians, Nigerians, Koreans, African-Americans and Anglos.
He tells friends their problem is they never go into the city.
He has unkempt gray hair and an open, friendly face. He has lived in the valley for 40 years and owns a coffee shop in Sherman Oaks, along famed Ventura Boulevard. Its patrons are well-educated, affluent. Most oppose secession.
So does he.
"There's a lot of me-ism," says Healy, 64. "It's a sense of not wanting to pay for something else. I sense this estrangement from the whole."
Two customers sit at sidewalk tables, sip coffee, break open muffins, read the Los Angeles Times. Everyone gets a greeting.
"Good morning, Penelope."
"Peter, have a good day, now."
Healy is no fan of city government. Still, he says, "We need more city government, not less."
The whole city, including the valley, needs better schools, more street repairs, more police.
He says secession isn't about racial resentment. It's about change.
"This is radical change, fast change, unasked-for change. That's the central question: How are we going to deal with change?"
Immigrants changed the valley.
They came from Mexico and El Salvador, Vietnam and Korea, India and Armenia.
They brought their food from the Middle East and Morocco, from Asia and Argentina. They provided cheap labor as the service industry took hold. They changed housing patterns: A valley of single-family homes was suddenly studded with apartment complexes.
An immigrant middle class bloomed, but so did an immigrant underclass. By the late 1990s, most of the valley's poor communities were places with a major Latino presence.
Some worry secessionists would dismantle rent control and living wage laws to harm Latinos.
"The people who deny that the issue of changing demographics is a part of (the secession movement) are just not being realistic," says Tom Hogen-Esch, a political science professor at Cal State-Northridge.
Today, polls show a majority of Latinos favor secession. Surveys suggest that maybe 60 percent will vote for it on Nov. 5.
They are led by people like Jose "Roy" Garcia, who doesn't think the city has ignored all of the valley. Just the poor parts.
Businessman, activist, would-be valley city council member, Garcia arrived from El Salvador 21 years ago with no English, no clothes and no cash.
Today he is famous for his United Nations Soccer League, which boasts 326 teams, comprising mostly poor youngsters. He started it eight years ago with 12 players.
He installs hardwood floors all over Los Angeles, has 10 employees, drives a black Mercedes-Benz and wears smart charcoal-gray suits.
He drives through North Hollywood, a working-class community in the south valley, with its tiny apartments and litter-choked alleys.
"See that?" he says, pointing to a brown Camaro, its left side crushed. "That's been there for months."
Sidewalks on side streets are overwhelmed by sofas, refrigerators, couches, stoves and mattresses. Alleys are blanketed in paper, overturned grocery carts, discarded furniture, crushed glass.
"We believe it'll be easier for us to go through our local government," says Garcia, 47. "The people downtown don't care what's going on over here."
"Downtown" means the City Council and other Los Angeles politicians. Valleyites say the council makes too much ($140,000), spends too much on the core city and pays too much attention to rich developers.
At a recent forum in the old-time valley community of Van Nuys, a crowd of about 300 people assailed politicians for trying to scare them out of secession. About half the crowd favored secession; the other half was against it or unsure.
Richard Alarcon, a state legislator from the valley, warned that a new city might suffer from a lack of emergency services.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you lied," one audience member responded. He shook his finger at the politician.
The crowd applauded.
Alex Padilla is president of the Los Angeles City Council. He was among prominent Latino politicians at a recent antisecession news conference in Mission Hills, in the heart of the valley.
"Secession would not bring smaller government," he says from a sidewalk podium. "It would jeopardize the future of our city."
"Free the valley!" opposing activists shout back. "Tell the truth!"
Padilla and his colleagues are poised, handsome, dapper, eloquent. They quote John Donne and Thomas Jefferson.
Padilla, a Mexican-American, was elected three years ago. At 29, he is the youngest council president in the city's history.
He grew up in the valley, in working-class Pacoima. His father was a short-order cook; his mother cleaned houses.
He graduated from MIT with a degree in mechanical engineering, then worked in the aerospace industry and realized "that wasn't such a good place to be in the early 1990s."
He turned to politics.
He says supporters of secession don't know how hard it is to birth and sustain a big-city government. Extracted from L.A., the 1.35-million valley residents would be the nation's sixth-largest city.
"There are certain parts of the valley that have historically been ignored by the city," he says. "But the bottom line is improving the quality of life, and their approach is to take their marbles and go home."
Secessionists say they want a working government. They want less taxes, less development, less bureaucracy and more police, more (and better) schools, more cultural offerings.
They promise to keep rent control and the living wage. They promise to make life easier for businesses. They promise street lights and less litter.
There are 110 candidates for a future valley council (if secession passes), and few have helped run a government. They tout themselves as citizen-politicians who revel in their underdog status, with campaigns built on $20 checks and door-to-door stumping.
Terry Stone is an ex-hippie and unrepentant liberal. She also supports secession.
At first, she kept an open mind. She liked the idea of local control and smaller government but wanted to hear others' arguments. The more she listened, the more she wanted to break away.
"None of the arguments held water," she says. "The more I listened to them, the more I thought, "They're lying.' "
Like other Valleyites, she's tired of wasting a whole day to do business downtown, tired of a demoralized school system, tired of seeing poverty spread around her.
"We don't just have pockets of poverty," says Stone, 55. "We've got these big, huge sections of poor people."
Now she, too, is a valley council candidate. A longtime activist and political aide, she will spend less than $2,000.
One recent evening, she goes door-to-door in a middle-class Van Nuys neighborhood, on a street with Volvos and Chevelles, with schoolteachers and retirees and office workers. The yards are all American flags and rows of impatiens.
She knows what may be at stake here. In the 1970s, the valley's revolt against property taxes inflamed similar movements nationwide.
The tax revolt was known as Proposition 13. Like the secession movement, it was a scrappy campaign that knit together unexpected allies. On election day, the referendum was considered a long shot.
It won by a landslide.
It is hard to know how secession will turn out. Valley voters favor it (52 percent in one poll this month), but the rest of the city is lukewarm (43 percent in favor).
Stone knocks on a door. (She actually says, "knock, knock" before she knocks.)
Beth Shea, a teacher's aide, arrives home as the candidate starts to leave.
"I'm still kind of mixed," she says.
Stone, tall, friendly, direct, poses a choice: "Do you want to be part of a global industrial city? Or do you want to be in a little smaller town?"
She says goodbye and turns away to the next house, as the sun begins to set on the valley.
RODNEY KING
His 1991 videotaped beating by police took place in the valley and led to the L.A. riots.
(filmed or set there):
Boogie Nights.
Chinatown.
Double Indemnity.
E.T..
Earth Girls are Easy.
Hell's Angels.
The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Bing Crosby (actor/singer).
Clark Gable/Carole Lombard (actors).
Lucille Ball/Desi Arnez (actors).
Michael Jackson (singer).
Ritchie Valens (singer).
The popular 1970s sitcom about a lovely lady and a man named Brady was set in the San Fernando Valley.
The mass murderer hid out in the valley before police caught up with him.