 Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
I spent part of New Years day with neighbors who have been feeling "poorly", both of them have been laid up with the flu for over a week. They are about over it, so they invited me in.
When I first moved here, I had a misunderstanding with "Papa Joe" and his wife "Mama Jerry" about my dog and got off on the wrong foot. Later we discovered we have very similar politics, and now we're great friends. They even invite my dog Solomon in with me, and they make him feel very much at home.
The stories of Joe and Jerry, and countless other couples like them, forms a strong cloth of what America is at our best; the radical notion that the pursuit of happiness is a God given right.
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"Papa Joe" is 80 years old. About 40 years ago, he was a divorcee, with two children, working construction and traveling from job site to job site. Joe was a Master Mechanic on large equipment, earthmovers and such. He repaired the diesel engines and the hydraulics for construction equipment building dams and roads. He is also a strong "Union Man."
 Papa Joe in his library. |
Around 1969, he met Jerry, a widow with five children, who was working as a bar tender. They married a year later. Joe and Jerry work well together as a team. Both of them are still active union members. These hard working people realize that if they don't stick together, they will be picked off, one at a time. That is the essence of community organizing.
Joe and Jerry have spent most of their lives organizing, living that principle. In addition to Union organizing work, they help to organize the neighbors’ association here in our community. One year, when a rent increase seemed too extreme, they organized protests, complete with pickets, and the media put it all on the evening news. Management decided that the rent increase (not to mention the exposure) was a bit much after all, so they backed down.
But they see that working people don't think that way anymore. We have become a nation of individuals who are more concerned with our own self interest than the "common good."
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But that means that ordinary folks have to step up to the plate and take responsibility for making government work.
One of my friends here in Portland gave me an interesting comment about the gay male community in West Hollywood. He said that West Hollywood is a place filled with 8s all looking for a 10, and none of them very happy.
 Joe and Jerry with their grandchild. |
I wonder if the same thing might not be true on the political front. As community awareness increases with regard to how inbred and corrupt City Hall has become, I wonder if the electorate will take a chance on "activist candidates" who are not polished, or if it will be business as usual?
The recent vote on the organ pavilion in West Hollywood Park underscores this. A free gift, a beautiful gift, the pavilion would have enriched the arts in the city. It was probably turned down because John Heilman didn't want it. With the exception of the Sunset Millennium Project, I can't think of much that John has opposed that got through City Council in recent years, and the organ pavilion seems to be an obvious example of this.
Before I ran for City Council, I had lunch with John Duran, who was at the time a friend, and he gushed about John Heilman's power, and how as good friends they could count on each other for support.
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If I were in John Duran's shoes right now, I'd feel very betrayed, and used. I know Weston Harris, he built the organ at St. Thomas Episcopal church which John Duran attends. Weston builds world-class organs, and this one would have put West Hollywood on the map.
 Union members knew who held their interests to heart. |
But if John Heilman doesn’t want something, it won't happen, and they don't care who they betray or stonewall, it's not happening. John H., John D. and Abbe Land don't raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for campaign money by looking out for the interests of "ordinary people" in the city.
So, as you consider the 2007 City Council race, consider what your priorities are. Are you wealthy enough to vote with the current city hall establishment? Do you really trust those in power to look out for your interests, to protect you if your building is sold to a developer? Do you believe that incumbency is the only reason to take someone seriously?
Or can you learn something from two old fashioned, union organizers, who worked with their hands, "Papa Joe" and his wife "Mama Jerry" who live here in a mobile home park in Portland?
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Their sage community-based advice? "Question everything."
From the banks of the mighty Columbia River, Ed Garren
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If there can be such a thing as instinctual memory, the consciousness of land and water must lie deeper in the core of us than any knowledge of our fellow beings. We were bred of the earth before we were born of our mothers. Once born we can live without our mothers, or fathers, or any other kin, or any friend, or human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in man’s heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings from “Cross Creek”
Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind", a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America. More information about Ed can be found at: www.edgarren.us