Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?
I couldn’t help think of Russell Crows movie Gladiator when he challenges the empathy of the raucous crowd that gathered to see gladiators fight to death as a form of sickly, and oddly enough thrilling spectator sport for the rich to quench their unhealthy appetite for excitement and vicious brutality even to the point of death.
There’s no other way to describe the rush of adrenaline I felt when I scrolled through my social media feed and read that Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. suffered another bruising defeat in that the city of Inglewood and Trifelletti Consulting were forced to abandon their plans to demolish the local Vons Market, which is less than a mile from City Hall, to build a Maintenance and Storage Facility (MSF) for the proposed Inglewood Transit Connector commonly known as the people mover.
I’m not only proud but so should all of Inglewood because based on a series of recent losses suffered by the Mayor, Inglewood is starting to feel like home again.
The mayor’s losses are stacking up like the legal fees taxpayers are footing the bill for related to multiple lawsuits due to the mayor’s behavior. Starting with the loss of many members of his cheering squad (Willie Agee, Michael Benbow, Ray Davis, etc.) his approval rating plummeting from over 80% to nearly 54%, the loss of tax Measure I and George Dotson’s loss to Gloria Gray in the District 1 runoff, its a banner day in Inglewood.
Renters are starting to matter again in that through almost a sense of necessity and/or survival akin to the Sit and Sleep commercial where the loud and boisterous salesman yells “you’re killing me Larry” I feel like screaming “you’re killing me Jimmy” which aptly and appropriately describes Butts’ tenure as mayor. I mean how many people are looking at him sideways knowing he used them for his political gain? Every person who stood for a photo on the now defunct InglewoodForward.com website are all having buyer’s remorse because they did this to themselves for the accolades and perceived fame of being associated with the mayor and the Clippers organization.
Don’t get me wrong, many of them felt an inkling of love when manna and honey rained down on them as they were highlighted during Super Bowl, Clipper’s halftime follies, and the like because everyone knew the hammer was gonna drop any day. Problem is, this council didn’t predict the backlash they received once everyone caught on.
2UrbanGirls this is huge. And for a moment, allow me to speak on behalf of the Inglewood community and say THANK YOU for you and your “little blog”, as Mayor Butts used to refer to, or your “twitter fingers” that Councilman Alex Padilla called you served as a staple to not only inform the community for years of what was coming down the pike, but it was also the unbiased reporting of the Inglewood Transit Connector project and its unintended consequences on the communty helped save Vons.
I mean where was the City’s newspaper of record Inglewood Today? They attempt to take claim for the defeat of George Dotson but haven’t written a single word about the impact of this transit project in the over the FIVE years its been discussed. If you look back through the 2UrbanGirls archives you were sounding the alarm from day one.
Vons is more than just a grocery store. How many people remember when they closed the grocery store on Crenshaw and Imperial to turn it into a discount clothing store? Grocery stores are where the community convenes before and after work, on Sunday’s after church. Grab their newspaper and participate in civic affairs by signing petitions for ballot initiatives that impact the residetns. How many of your readers forgot when 2UrbanGirls brought it to their attention Vons forbid signature collection for the rent control initiative but allowed the process for the return of the NFL?
People also forget the history of Vons when it began as a Sears and then fell into the hands of the city’s former Redevelopment Agency for a bargain process to stop the blight in the area. The store is also situated near residents, particularly senior citizens who will be tasked with voting next year on whether to return Councilmembers Eloy Morales and Dionne Faulk to the dais and City Clerk Aisha Thompson to another four-year term. The residents are fed up with not being listeneed to meaning they want to see action from its elected officials based on what the RESIDENTS want. And if we go back and tally up the mayor’s losses, he can’t afford anymore as the City is in the final stages of obtaining funding for the construction of the people mover.
Make no mistake, don’t put it past Butts & Co. to come back around. Tin cup in hand asking for more of your money to pay for the maintenacne and operations of the transit connector once its built but we can look to our friends in Las Vegas where the only solution was to increase the Transient Occupancy Taxes (TOT), again, becuase no one in their right mind should be coming out of their pocket to pay for it.
Simply put, it would behoove Dionne, Eloy and Aisha to take note about the residents displeasure with the mayor and distance themselves accordingly and expeditiously.
Butts should be NOWHERE near Aisha and Dionne’s “Women’s Rock” event when he has told a woman to “choke herself”, embarrassed Treasurer Wanda Brown by reducing her salary and removing her from the dais, and most recently attempted to have a senior citizen, a Black woman at that, forcibly removed from the March 29 special city council meeting by Inglewood police officers. The Melanie McDade lawsuit is still unresolved because Butts felt entitled to pay grab ass in his taxpayer funded office.
Mayor Butts is toxic and even though he is doing nothing more than damage control to save face in the eyes of the residents he’s a day late and a dollar short.
Marvin McCoy is a lifelong Inglewood resident and can be reached at therealmccoymarketinggroup@gmail.com or on Twitter: @MarvinM83905936 | Instagram: @therealmccoymarketinggroup