As exhaustively documented here (if nowhere else), UNITE-HERE Local 11 was one of the prime movers behind the two-year long march for by-district council elections that culminated in the “Yes on Measure L.” The militantly left-wing union provided many of the bodies – both directly and via its twin organization OCCORD — that attended Anaheim Citizens Advisory Committee on Elections public hearings, and donated more than $50,000 to the Yes on L campaign.
It also provided a lot of bodies for the Yes on L precinct walking campaign, according to UNITE-HERE Local 11 second-in-command Ada Briceno in this OC Register profile:
“In November, 70 percent of precinct walkers in Anaheim were from our union. We finally passed a ballot initiative to get district-based elections. Now we need to elect politicians who have workers’ voices in their hearts.”
Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait also sang the praises of Measure L (which benefited from thousands of dollars in campaign expenditures by the Tait Family Trust) in the OC Register profile of him:
Thoughts on politics in Anaheim: “I’m excited about six council districts coming to Anaheim in 2016. I really believe and hope that the council will be more responsive to the people because of this past election.”
Also excited about six council districts coming to Anaheim is the coalition of left-wing interest groups and labor unions that poured half-a-million dollars into Measure L. They’re excited about electing a city council with a Democratic majority. They’re excited about successfully re-structuring Anaheim elections to produce a left-of-center city council that will adopt job-killing ordinances like the mis-named “living wage.” Their idea of a city council that is “more responsive to the people” is one that is responsive to enacting progressive policies of the kind harm job-creation and business formation.
Briceno’s profile points out her influential role in UNITE-HERE having “pushed through an L.A. ordinance requiring at least $15.37 an hour at the city’s large hotels, one of the most successful campaigns to raise wages in the nation.”
Guess which major California city is bursting with hotels, most of whose thousands of hotel workers are not organized into unions – and where unionists like Briceno are anxious to impose that L.A. ordinance once Measure L renders an Anaheim City Council amenable to such progressive economic nostrums?
It’s important for the sake of accountability to retain clarity on what Measure L’s real-world political and policy impacts on Anaheim will be.
WAH WAH WAH
And that, dear readers, nicely sums up the intellectual heft of the editor-in-chief of the OC Weekly.
Not a surprise. His website, http://gustavoarellano.net, describes him as “wacky.”
Ada Briceno, who has a working relationship with Mayor Tom Tait/Lorri Galloway, blocked me on Facebook (we had been friends for years) when I started asking the wrong kind of questions about her alliance with some of the biggest bigots in the state. (Note: her Unite Here has ZERO in the way of liberal credentials.) I once respected her, but it has dissipated much due her flimsy values and contempt for democracy.
To put her in context, however, the respective grassroots of both parties are factories for independent and disillusioned voters. Also, I wonder how much UNITE-HERE Local 11 paid to get her listed on the OC Registers’s most influential 100. But it is sad… conflict (and she has seen her share) cripples the soul and the revolution will always devour its own children. And history rolls on in Anaheim…