The pressure got to them

I'm afraid the pressure got to the council.
I ain't blogged in a while cuz I aint got nothin to talk about other than how disappointed I am. The politicians realized that their voters had much more "modest" community standards than the cities they were trying to model the plan after... so they finally just gave up and said fuck it. They get to protect their jobs and downtown remains as it is. I could just about spit.

The problem folks always run into when they trying to improve a community is that the people already there usually like it the way it is. Its a place to hide for them. You show them fancy restaurants and boutiques and they think they being run out. They think theres no place for them in a place like that. Its what I like to call a community-wide inferiority complex. The problem is that the people it largely appeals to are not currently living here. (myself excluded)
Educated Whites, Blacks, Asians and Latinos with money to spend would say, "Now theres a community with everything I want, I think I'll raise my family there." And they would live and work and shop right here in downtown Santa Ana. What I'm sayin here is "The council gave up cuz they all trying to appease the wrong people... and that just don't make no kinda sense to me.

I would have been OK with an overlay plan since going after the business owners and rezoning the housing at the same time was too much to bite off. Like I say, you gotta fight money with money. Its not a perfect solution, longtime business owners wont like being told they cant be noisy and messy and all, but I say let them stay. Except for Ware of course. (That bitch got to go!) But the others can stay... and without the industrial business owners working against the plan- it could have a real shot. If they could just get that train station mini mall put in than everything else would fill in naturally... They just need to start is all. Just start. then just you wait and see how fast things take off. In the mean time, with property values in the can. This is a great chance for the city to buy up land, clear it, and then sell it cheap to the developer with the best "downtown style" plan.

And I looked into my idea of selling pies after the rezoning went through (if it had gone through) and anyhow, I think it looked fine. Pass the RSP and you all invited to my house for pie.

Whose afraid of the RSP?

Somebody sent me a message asking me to stay focused on the RSP.
Well whatever you say baby! I aint nothin if not accomodating!
... So heres a lil' little bit of Mamas wisdom for y'all.


Are you attending any meetings and letting your voice be heard?
The meetings are a joke. The city brings in these people with impressive backgrounds in urban planning and such and then wave after wave of angry people show up to yell at them and call them racists. Its damned pitiful if you ask me. I feel sorry for those people- They deserve better. I might have liked to ask them about the new shops or maybe about the new light rail thing they talked about putting in. But those folks wouldn't have it.

What exactly do you like about the plan? dislike?
Whats not to like? I love the plan. The thing is, I think that most people love the plan. If you was to explain the RSP to the average person in Orange County... they'd say "Its about time."
The people that you hear fighting against the plan are what I like to call a "VOCAL MINORITY" Which is really just a fancy term to describe a handful of people that talk a whole lot of shit. Hey, sometimes growing hurts y'all. Its a fact. But I got stretch marks that hurt more than what the RSP ever will.


Why do I want it?
Same reason as most people do I suspect. I want shops, restaurants, and parks put together by someone who understands how to build a proper community where people wanna walk around. I want to build a place that shines so bright that the gangs will all have to run away and find a new dark hole to climb into. And a little "cultural diversity" wouldn't hurt nobody either!


What do I 'NOT' want?
Well, like I said, the highrises worry me a little bit. But when it comes right down to it- the real question is who is going to make these things? And how are they expecting to make money? Are they gonna pack in as many people as they can into cheap little places? (Cause thats gonna put us right back where we started.) OR, are they gonna build only as much as the community can bear? If they think about community first... then they will create an effective downtown, and in the long run make more money than if they'd just cashed in for a quick buck.

No questions.

When I was a younger woman the boys around the neighborhood would call me Bertha Butt after that old Jimmy Castor Bunch Song on account of the fact that I got myself a backside as wide as all outdoors. After a while that name just kinda started to follow me around. Before too long, people I didn't even know would see me on the street and say, "Hey there goes Bertha Butt! Now, I never did mind too much about the little things you understand. But back in the day- that shit really pissed me off. Now, a lot of time has passed since then. And everyone from those days is gone now. And I was missing them. So I put on that old Jimmy Caster Bunch record earlier tonight and it really brought me back. And if I could, well I suppose that if I could I'd bring all of them all back. Everyone I knew. Even the SOBs that used to call me Bertha Butt. Especially them.

What did they call you?

Pizza and progress? or just pizza?

Hey y'all SanTinos!

Anybody hit up that RSP meeting tonight?
I had to watch my babies bu Id love to hear about how it went.
I'll bet its all been worked out and nobodies upset anymore right?

-Mama

R,E,S,P,E,C,T, Give some to the RSP

I hear a lot of talkin goin around. A lot of talkin from a lot of folks sayin they aint happy with the RSP. Now I'll be the first to admit that I ain't no genius or nothing like that, but I cant rightly say that I can see why everyones so angry about the RSP. I'm gonna just say it. Because I'm the Two Fisted Mama and the Two Fisted Mama ALWAYS speaks her mind! When people in this neighborhood aint happy , then Mama aint happy either! So what do ya say we all put our chips out there on the table and say what we really mean. Thats all I ever do. I raised all my kids drug free and gang free because I always told them the truth about how things really was. Thats what you gotta do. Its the only way you can ever know which way is up and which way is right. So speak the truth everybody! Speak the truth and and lets get to the nitty gritty already!


I'll just throw some issues out there, but y'all feel free to talk about whatever.

1. The City redrew the borders of the plan to benefit themselves personally.

Mama: Big Deal! Of course they gonna line they pockets and help out theyselves and they families... Thats the way things work. Been that way forever. Y'all can stand in front of the tank or y'all can climb on and take a ride on it... Now some things are worth standing in front of the tank over, But not this. Me? I happen to like where this here tank is heading.

2. Its ethnic cleansing, they're only doing this to get rid of the Mexicans.

Mama: This is just about the silliest damn thing I ever heard. They is only one color politicians care about and that color is green. (Even Mexican politicians which is all we got in this city by the way) Now, I love the Mexican people I do, My kids play with they kids, we all get along just fine and have all my life. But as long as I happen to be on the subject, You Mexican people in Santa Ana gotta relax a little bit about this kinda stuff. You like 80% of the population and still acting like somebody's gonna force you out. What about Black people? There are so few of us around here that somebody actually wrote me that there WAS NO BLACK PEOPLE IN SANTA ANA!

3. The RSP wants to turn Santa Ana into Aliso Viejo

Two Fisted Mama: Santa Ana is a big place. A very very big place compared to other cities in Southern California. A few nice restaurants and lofts in one small part of the city aint gonna make us into Aliso Viejo... but it will make it feel more like the kind of downtown that it has been advertising itself as! And it might just raise the value of this old house of mine. If it dont, at least I'll have someplace new to pass the time.

4. Anything I don't like about the RSP?

Mama: Sure. I dont think we need highrises over six stories. I dont like that Ware disposal aint getting kicked out. I dont like that they wont allow the grocery trucks to come around no more. They is lots a things I dont like about it. But shoot, Shopping in downtown designed for everybody and not just Mexicans? I think its long overdue.

My Papa

I wasnt more than 6 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. And It aint easy to remember things that happened when you was six years old. But I will try. Papa had just moved the whole family out to California to live with his sister, my aunt Althea just a few years before that around 1965. To tell you the truth, I didn't even really understand who Dr. King was until my second grade teacher assigned my class to do a little presentation about our heros. Now I didnt have no hero so I went and asked papa who his hero was. That was the first time he ever talked to me about how bad things had been for him growing up. Daddy had grown up in Selma, so he knew a thing or two about how bad things were for us black folks in those days. I suspect he probably saw some things that he didnt ever tell me about because when I was a teenager I asked him if he had ever saw a lynching and he just got real mad telling me to thank the lord that I didnt have to worry about such things like that. Well, I didnt have to worry but Papa sure had had to. Papa had grewn up right in the middle of all that mess. Its hard for me to even imagine.

When I got up in class that next day I told my class what my daddy had told me. I said that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had brought together all the churches in Alabama and given black people a way to fight back that he learned from Ghandi and because of him we could ride in any part of the bus that we wanted to ride in. The End. As a young girl growing up in a California I didnt understand whats so great about riding in buses! and I surely didnt know who Ghandi was! But I just told it the way my papa had taught me anyhow. I remember my white teacher Mr. G giving me an A+ for that report and telling the whole class what a brave man my papa was. I felt very proud of papa then. I gave my papa a big hug when I got home and told him that the A+ that WE had earned together. I really miss my papa.

Turns out I had a hero all along.

Where to put Ware?

This is Judy Ware. Her company Ware Disposal is the enemy. The straight out enemy. They don't come any more corrupt or connected. Everybody knows it- Aint nobody arguing the fact. So whys the place still there? how come nobody stops her? Hell if I know. But I do know that the city government wont even let us put nothing on the ballot about it. So what can we do? Can you think of another city where they put a damned dump in the middle of a residential neighborhood? Near a childrens school? Come on now people- This is not OK. Just look at her happy smiling face. Do you think she'd ever live in the Logan Lacy neighborhood? Hell no.
Didn't you know? This bitch lives in Newport Beach. She has standards.
Thats right. She only pollutes in Santa Ana.

Right now it dont look like the RSP is gonna get rid of her... which is pretty bad considering that its the only place everyone agrees on getting rid of