DAMN, the Los Angeles Redistricting Commission Hearings, as televised on L.A. City TV 35, was the most frustrating experience, of my six year L.A. City Hall gadfly history. THE GIG IS UP, and the once a decade, redistricting map drawing is the BIG CAPER the L.A. RICO MAFIA has been waiting for. MORE ON THE ORCHESTRATED RICO EFFORT, under the guise of "Redistricting," HERE (ZD's previous post from today.): Los Angeles Redistricting "MINORITY REPORT": Ignored public input, engaged in procedural irregularities and illegally relied on race to draw new district boundaries.(READ HERE)
Two "People's Champ" STARS emerged out the hearings...JAN PERRY'S APPOINTMENT, David Roberts of USC, who got a voice mail of endorsement and appreciation from Zuma Dogg, himself!
AND, the subject of this LA Weekly profile, "Commissioner Kim," as Zuma Dogg affectionately refers to her as. Aka: L.A. REDISTRICTING COMMISSIONER HELEN KIM! ZD fell in LOVE, fast and hard! So adorable! So articulate! So PERFECT! She even said, "That's how you KNOW to vote, "NO!," one late evening, around 1am, when everyone was a little slap happy, in response to L.A. RICO MAFIA TONY CARDENAS' appointment Jose "Corny-A-Hole" Cornejo saying, "I ask for a, "Yes," vote." DAMN, that sounds like something ZD would say! AND, she was a REAL, RELENTLESS THORN in the side of L.A. REDISTRICTING RICO MAFIA.
Sad to say, at the end of the day, that's all Commissioner Kim, David Roberts, and 1000's of voices from the public are to the L.A. RICO MAFIA...a mere THORN in their side, as the maps will certainly go on to approval by Herb Wesson's (L.A. RICO MAFIA COUNCIL PRESIDENT OF PUPPETS) L.A. City Council (POWERLESS BODY OF L.A. RICO MAFIA BACKED PUPPETS, WHO ARE EITHER ORCHESTRATING, OR FACILITATING...AND NO ONE GETS IN THE WAY, EXCEPT PARKS & PERRY!)
SO HERE IS THE ARTICLE ON HELEN KIM, CAUSE I WANT THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE WHAT THE FUTURE OF THE PEOPLE'S VOICE, LOOKS LIKE!!! HELEN KIM FOR CITY COUNCIL, MAYOR...OR NEXT AVAILABLE ELECTED POSITION!
Helen Kim Takes on L.A.'s Old Guard
Rising star of Koreatown's Generation K
Helen Kim was not used to feeling like the dumbest kid in class. A graduate of Harvard and of Yale Law School, a top litigator — yet she felt as if everyone on the Los Angeles City Redistricting Commission had done their homework except her. She felt like the only one asking questions.
"Either they were a lot better prepared than I was," she says, "or they knew which way they were gonna vote."
Every 10 years, state and local governments redraw voting district boundaries to ensure that each citizen's vote carries equal weight. The obscure work got surprising attention in L.A. thanks to a very public California Citizens Redistricting Commission in Sacramento that recently drew new lines for legislative races.
Officials were stunned when 30,000 Californians applied to be on the largely randomly selected and independent 14-member state commission. By contrast, the 21 members of the city's redistricting body were chosen by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa,Controller Wendy Greuel, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and 15 City Council members.
Following in the footsteps of the state citizens' commission, the city's commission promised transparent decision-making. But careful observers soon noticed that a voting bloc seemingly had made up its mind about how to "redraw" L.A.
One case in point was Commissioner Amber Martinez, appointed by Villaraigosa to replace a commissioner who fell ill just hours before a meeting. Newcomer Martinez didn't ask any questions, voting on complex new boundaries without hesitation.
Redistricting is supposed to respect boundaries such as freeways, mountains and "communities of interest." But in practice, redistricting morphs into gerrymandering — with politicians drawing crazily shaped voting districts to assure that they or their allies win the next election.
There are very few women, and no Asians, rising in the ranks of L.A. city politics. So Kim, a two-fer, stood out for her plainspoken criticism of the commission's decisions.
"I'd like to think I was more than just a thorn in the commission's side," Kim says. "I wasn't the person who created the shit. I was just the person who turned the light on and said, 'This is the shit you've created.' "
Unexpectedly huge crowds showed up to watch the L.A. gerrymander unfold, and many demanded that their neighborhoods be united or left alone. This often was impossible, given population growth and changing demographics.
But other motives were afoot. The commission altered the boundary of Council District 1, represented by Councilman Ed Reyes, to include the home of Reyes' ally and chief of staff,Jose Gardea, who is running to replace termed-out Reyes in 2013. The commission neatly chopped out of the district the home of state Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, who also is running for that seat.
Jose Cornejo, an appointee of Councilman Tony Cardenas, persuaded the commission to move an elementary school in Van Nuys named after Cardenas' parents back into Cardenas' council district. The audience loudly guffawed, with an elderly woman exclaiming, "He can still visit it!"
Early on, the commission voted to break into three closed-door committees to draw maps of the 15 new council districts. Kim challenged that vote, asking the group to continue working and debating in public. She got little support.
Also early on, the commission hired Andrew Westall, a top aide to City Council President Herb Wesson, as executive director. Kim objected. Although Westall finally quit his job with Wesson weeks later, critics saw a conflict in allowing Westall to oversee a group as it drew political boundaries that directly affected his longtime boss.
Kim says one of the commission's arguments for considering Westall — that it might not find a suitable executive if Westall weren't in the mix — "was an early sign that things were awry."
Then, as the maps began to take shape, rumors erupted that Westall planned to run for the Council District 4 seat in 2015.
Westall denies that, and there's no proof it's anything but a rumor. Even so, anger erupted when District 4's new boundaries were heavily gerrymandered, a mad pinwheel spinning through unrelated areas such as Griffith Park and the Wilshire district, its borders cutting through the Santa Monica Mountains to the San Fernando Valley. One redistricting expert says the commission diced up serious interest groups that might have fielded District 4 candidates, making it much easier for a city insider to win in 2015.
Two weeks ago, the commission publicly met to debate and possibly reconfigure 79 initially proposed boundaries throughout L.A., many of which drew withering criticism. It appeared that a majority bloc had made its decisions beforehand.
"At a certain point, I realized my job was shifting," Kim says. "Because I wasn't at the table at which these decisions were made, which was apparently behind the scenes."
Defending the commission, redistricting Commissioner Michael Trujillo, a hard-bitten political consultant, says, "It's a pimple we have to squeeze once every 10 years, and the pus that goes everywhere — so be it." [NICE ANALOGY, MIKE! You're a WIZARD of words, Mr. "Political Bullet Through Head" Guy!]
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