• Thank you, Bert Green, for helping to clean up Downtown
Tonight, the City of L.A. is permitting the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) to hold its first meeting since the disputed June 25 election. Few have bemoaned the troubled organization’s absence from community affairs over the summer. But with this meeting comes the overdue turning of the spade upon the corrupt and unethical Executive Committee, which for too long has been the personal fiefdom of the landlords’ hired man Russell Brown and his sidekick Brady Westwater.
Earlier this year, Russell Brown stepped down from any further “service” to the community following a series of embarrassing revelations and news stories shining a light upon the huge ethical gaps that have made DLANC irrelevant at best, and a blight on the community at its worst. Brady Westwater, too, declined to run again.
The revelations about Russell Brown’s underhanded abuse of power emerged as the truth came out regarding his months-long campaign to sabotage the Art Walk non-profit and smear the characters of the unpaid community volunteers who were working full-time to transform the Art Walk from a private enterprise to a California Public Benefit Corporation, which it is today. After the volunteers resigned rather than face any further abuse from Russell Brown and his associates, they spoke up about the attacks that they had suffered.
But none of this would have ever come to the light if one particular community member had not taken it upon himself to put those volunteers in a position where they could experience first-hand the outrageous behavior which for DLANC President Russell Brown was simply business as usual. That community member was gallery owner Bert Green, who hand-picked Richard Schave as the person to whom he would hand over control of the Downtown Art Walk in mid 2009.
Although Bert Green would almost immediately begin collaborating with Russell Brown on the sabotage of Art Walk and attacks on the volunteer management of the non-profit — evidence of which can be found in Russell Brown’s own words from the videotape of his DLANC grievance hearing for ethical violations — the fact remains that if Bert Green hadn’t sought out an ethical, community-minded person and handed the reigns of Art Walk to him, it is unlikely that Russell Brown’s poor behavior would have come to light, as it did, in late 2009. The many new faces on DLANC’s incoming board come out of the growing awareness that new blood was needed to power a broken system.
And while the community must remain ever vigilant — particularly about longtime Executive Committee member Patti Berman, who personally censors the Newdowntown Yahoo group, and failed to place any notice of Russell Brown’s grievance hearing on the DLANC mailing list or community calendar — things could be, and have been, worse. It is up to the Downtown community to attend meetings, stand up and speak out, document the organization’s discussions and votes, and hold DLANC accountable. As outgoing board member Ashley Zarella Hand recently warned “DLANC… has… no real system for getting information out, sharing past successes (and failures), or retaining any form of organizational memory – beyond its leaders.” Those leaders chose to whitewash a history of grievances filed against them over the past five years, grievances which were echoed in the complaints filed against Russell Brown in 2009.
And so we recognize Bert Green for his somewhat unexpected service. As DLANC swears in new blood and has the opportunity to make a fresh start, endeavoring to meet the highest ideals of the Neighborhood Council system, we note that none of this would have been possible without Bert Green. Thank you, Bert Green, for all you have done to clean up a dirty political machine, and make Downtown Los Angeles a better place to live, work and play.
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Tags: abuse, art walk, bert green, brady westwater, civic reform, corruption, dlanc, downtown, ethics, grievance, janus, los angeles, neighborhood council, russell brown
