A History of the Progressive Movement in Los Angeles: the Seventies

1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s

1976: A colorful collection of former anti-war activists, social justice organizers, and urban environmentalists launched a campaign to provide a "lifeline" rate for low income utility consumers of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power electricity and water. Using guerrilla theater tactics, community and constituency organizing, and considerable media savvy, the group, CAUSE (or Campaign Against Utility Service Exploitation) forced the mighty DWP to create a lifeline rate for low income residents. CAUSE's victory reflected the diversity and potential reach of the social movements of the 1970s, concerned with basic issues of survival as well as broader quality of life concerns.

Its reputation as a Mediterranean-type paradise already undermined by riots and other social strife, Los Angeles during the 1970s confronted a wave of economic and environmental dislocations, from the decline of major industries to its dubious distinction as the nation's smog capital. Yet the 1970s also witnessed Progressive LA at its most prolific in terms of new ideas and movements. Environmentalism became a dynamic new force. Its visionary wing was expressed in the growth of multi-purpose Ecology Centers and in the establishment of alternative institutions, such as food cooperatives. But environmentalism also presented a radical and pragmatic challenge to the dominant political and industrial status quo. Environmental organizers helped launch crusades against nuclear power plants, a successful ballot initiative to protect the coast and establish the Coastal Commission, and, in 1974, a campaign finance reform approach that sought to limit the growing influence of money on mainstream politics.

Spearheaded by a Los Angeles group known as the People's Lobby, this effort became a key element in Jerry Brown's successful run for Governor. Brown, despite participation in several activist causes during the 1960s, never fully embraced a progressive agenda. But a wing of Brown's administration kept the progressive flame lit, encouraging a wide range of innovative initiatives, such as the establishment of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, support for farmers' markets in urban communities, and the development of alternative technologies and alternative energy approaches.

While Jerry Brown played more of a cat-and-mouse game with progressives, Tom Hayden's campaign for U.S. Senate in 1976 sought to craft an explicit progressive vision for the state. Hayden, who wrote the "Port Huron Statement," the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society, and participated in 1960s community and civil rights organizing, had become a mini-celebrity as a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial and as husband to actress Jane Fonda. Hayden used his bid for the Senate to further consolidate a wide range of progressive activity, from environmental and tenants' rights activities to community economic development, into a statewide progressive network called Campaign for Economic Democracy. His slogan, "economic democracy," helped articulate a common progressive program and vision.

Even more than the Brown election and the Hayden for Senate campaign, Tom Bradley's initial campaigns for mayor reflected the potential clout and wide reach of Progressive LA during the 1970s. In the four years following the Watts riots, Congress had passed the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act, while voters in Gary, Newark, and elsewhere, had elected their first black mayors. But those were cities with large, even majority African American populations. In LA, 60% of the population was white; only 18% was black. When City Council member Bradley decided to challenge incumbent mayor Sam Yorty in 1969, it was clear that even if every eligible black voter registered to vote and went to the polls, Bradley couldn't win without significant white support, along with the votes of the growing Latino population. Three overlapping circles of activists - the CDC clubs, Jewish liberals, and Black community activists, many of whom had forged connections in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the era - were enlisted by Bradley campaign manager Maury Weiner (himself a veteran of progressive Democratic Party activity) and others to form the backbone of Bradley's campaign. It was a remarkable grassroots effort with about 15,000 volunteers - more than any mayoral race before or since. Yorty, however, emerged victorious by playing on racial fears and linking Bradley, a former policeman and a moderate reformer, to black militants, anti-war radicals, the Watts riots, and crime. After the election, Bradley and Weiner kept the biracial coalition together, and four years later, in 1973, Bradley prevailed, becoming the first African American to be elected mayor in a large, predominantly white city.

Like Jerry Brown, Tom Bradley was not a progressive, but gave progressive forces - in such areas as social services, women's rights, environmental protection, housing, and political reform - some room to maneuver. Bradley was caught between his electoral constituency and the city's business elite, and sought to please both. During his twenty years in office, Bradley improved access to jobs and political influence among the city's minority groups. But he became increasingly linked to his downtown redevelopment agenda, hoping to turn Los Angeles into a "world city" of trade, finance, and entertainment. Bradley did little to address the accelerating decline of blue-collar manufacturing jobs, the loss of inner-city supermarkets, banks and other commercial and retail services, the spiraling cost of housing, the intensification of strip-malls, and other manifestations of urban sprawl and the decay of minority neighborhoods.

Many of the 1970's new ideas, movements, and progressive initiatives occurred outside the electoral arena and separate from the Bradley and Brown administrations. In the housing arena, for example, the struggle for rent control was fueled in 1978 when tenants received notices of rent increases shortly after the tax-cutting Proposition 13 passed. Tenants who had been hit by rent increases organized meetings to demand that landlords share their property tax savings. Governor Brown established a renter "hotline" which received 12,000 phone calls a day to register complaints about rent hikes. When heavy real estate industry lobbying defeated a statewide bill requiring landlords to pass on Proposition 13 savings to tenants, the battle shifted to the local level. Groups like the Coalition for Economic Survival, the Gray Panthers, and the Campaign for Economic Democracy organized tenants and kept the anger about post-Prop 13 rent hikes in the news. There was an upsurge of rent strikes, even in the politically moderate San Fernando Valley. Within a few years, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and other cities had adopted strong tenants' rights laws. Tenants became a potent political force for at least a decade, forging alliances with other progressive movements and helping reshape the political contours of Southern California.

Other movements during the 1970s grew or expanded in new directions. For example, the women's movement began to focus on new concerns, such as violence against women, reproductive rights, women's health issues, and cultural stereotypes. The Los Angeles Women's Center opened its doors in 1970, and, along with the Sisterhood Bookstore, which started in 1972, soon became a gathering place for feminist activism. In 1975, a group of women artists and writers founded the Woman's Building in downtown Los Angeles, which provided the space and home for what emerged as a new cultural renaissance, including the Feminist Studio Workshop. Several campuses initiated Women's Studies programs through the 1970s. And a new organization, Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) organized the first of what became nationally known as the "Take Back the Night" marches, proclaiming that violence and sexual abuse against women needed to become part of the city's (and the nation's) political agenda.

New progressive bookstores, publications, libraries, and foundations also became both the memory and catalyst for Progressive LA. These included the Midnight Special Bookstore, which opened in Venice in 1971; the LA Weekly, which was founded in 1978 and defined itself as an alternative and progressive voice in its news and cultural coverage; KPFK radio, which provided an alternative news and cultural view of Los Angeles; and the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, founded by Emil Freed in 1963, which became by the 1970s the historical archive for activists by gathering the little known history of Progressive LA.

In the foundation world, Sarah Pillsbury helped ignite new energies among progressives in Los Angeles by creating the Liberty Hill Foundation. Pillsbury, an heir to the Minnesota baking fortune, settled in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, attracted to the region's sense of possibility, and soon became a widely-respected and successful producer of socially engaged movies. In 1976, Pillsbury helped start a new foundation, taking the name from the 1923 Liberty Hill episode involving Upton Sinclair and the dockworkers. The Liberty Hill Foundation, along with a handful of counterparts in other cities, was unique in the foundation world both in how and to whom it distributed funds. A "Community Funding Board" composed of grassroots activists made the decisions, providing crucial seed money for a wide range of "from the ground up" movements. Liberty Hill's annual Upton Sinclair Award dinner also became a meeting place for a new generation of progressive actors, directors, filmmakers, and other participants in the entertainment industry.

Like the Liberty Hill Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union emerged as an umbrella organization, connecting different parts of Progressive LA. The ACLU often spoke of its one client, the Constitution, but in Southern California the group also became an important player in the progressive struggle for social, economic, and racial justice. During the 1970s, under the leadership of its director Ramona Ripston, the ACLU made its mark on a variety of issues. These included classic civil liberties causes such as police abuse in communities of color, "police spying" among progressive groups, opposition to the death penalty, voting rights, and academic freedom. But they also included issues not traditionally associated with civil liberties, such as reproductive rights, violence against women, the war in Vietnam, and the rights of immigrants. The ACLU's successful law suit against the PDID division of the LAPD (a reorganized "red squad") helped crystallize sentiment for police reform that has continued to be a key component of Progressive LA's efforts to remake the city. The ACLU was also a key ally of the civil rights movement, especially its push to desegregate the schools and to establish stable, integrated communities. And it was also activists like Joyce Fiske, who for more than thirty-five years was an indefatigable organizer both inside and outside the ACLU and in her neighborhood work in the Pico/Fairfax area, who established the progressive reputation of the organization. Fiske, a one-time president of the ACLU board who was widely known among activists in many communities and causes, recently died. Her memorial, which brought so many of those activists and participants in Progressive LA together, was a touching reminder of the compelling and far-reaching work that had been done and all that still remained to be accomplished.