SMRR Celebrates 25th Anniversary

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

April 19 -- Under cover of a cold, starry night, on the second floor of a little church in Ocean Park, officials and politicians from the City’s key boards and commissions past and present mingled with the jubilancy of a family reunion. Did they all belong to an ancient secret club controlling the destiny of the City?

The popping of wine bottle corks and pockets of laughter from the more than 100 people assembled pierced through Rolling Stones classics blasting from the speakers.

In the crowd a voice asked an elderly man, “Why don’t you guys have your own building,” and the elderly man laughingly replied, “We already have City Hall.”

On the walls hung photographs of the club’s alumni, which included many of the 17 council members, ten mayor pro tems and ten mayors the group had put into office in the last 25 years. A little more aged now, some of the faces on those pictures could be seen mixing in the crowd.

Wearing his trademark blue jeans, un-tucked plain dress shirt and aged white tennis shoes, Dennis Zane, a founding member of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, stood up on the stage and kicked off the 25th anniversary of the organization that forever changed Santa Monica.

“My name is Denny Zane, and I’m here to point out to you that 25 years ago in this same building we used to do fundraisers with what we called ‘the boogie strategy,’” he said, sending ripples of laughter through the packed room.

The laughter indicated an understanding by those who worked on the 1979 campaign to pass the controversial rent control initiative that would revolutionize City politics, that at least in one place in America the counterculture spirit of the 70s had triumphed and is still winning.

For many in the room that campaign had marked the birth of their political awakening, and the beginning of a lifetime of political activism.

Standing behind a table selling SMRR t-shirts to fund upcoming political battles, Rent Control Board Member Betty Mueller, now a senior citizen and a veteran activist, said that before joining SMRR and working on the rent control campaign, “I didn’t even know where City Hall was.”

Mueller, who remembered canvassing neighborhoods until three in the morning for the rent control initiative, said the group’s work has really made a difference.

Unlike most towns that are “run by property owners, this town is really responsive to it’s citizens… Maybe that’s why the meetings are so long,” Mueller said with a laugh, referring to the City Council meetings that often run deep into the night.

But it was through those long, sometimes arduous meetings that SMRR council members slowly transformed, vote by vote, Santa Monica into a bastion on radical politics its detractors dubbed “Soviet Monica.”

Beginning with a sweeping victory in 1981, when SMRR won four-seats on the seven-member City Council, the tenants group has held a majority for most of the next 23 years. The impact SMRR has had, Zane said, was unforeseeable.

The policies spearheaded by SMRR in the last quarter century, Zane said, have given tens of thousands of renters secure living, created 1,200 new affordable housing units through city programs and innovated the most proactive and highly regarded environmental program of any municipality in America, amongst other things.

“There’s no way we could have imagined 25 years, and still going strong,” Zane said, as he pushed play on the CD-player to fire up “Tequila,” which blasted through the very same speakers SMRR used at fundraisers as a fledgling fringe political group.

“It’s wasn’t till ‘81 that we realized we could get control of the City,” said Judy Abdo, a former mayor and a veteran SMRR leader. The passage of rent control in 1979 created a stable voter base that didn’t exist before. By giving renters predictable, affordable rents, once transient residents were transformed into permanent citizens.

“If you think you’re not going to live someplace you don’t put down roots, you don’t talk to your neighbors, you don’t pay attention to your local government,” said Abdo. “Rent control provided housing security, which was an important part of what SMRR brought to this City.”

Rent control also generated a dedicated, politically active local populace, with guaranteed low rents giving many Santa Monicans the luxury of volunteering for public service, something they couldn’t otherwise afford to do. Many current and former elected and appointed officials came out of that political legacy.

“I moved to an apartment north of Wilshire on February 15, 1976,” said Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown, who credited housing security with his involvement in local politics and his eventual rise to the City Council. “Tonight I go home to that same apartment. That would not be the case without rent control.”

Now standing on stage clean cut in a dress shirt and slacks, McKeown cuts a far different figure from the man in the late 70s portrait hanging on the wall, which shows a young, scruffy hippy with long hair and a magnificent beard hanging over a loose-fitting shirt.

Once a group of radical liberals, the aged activists -- while still dressed causally, some still in bell-bottoms -- now stood on stage receiving certificates of recognition from the Santa Monica City Council, State Senator Sheila Kuehl and State Assemblywoman Fran Pavley; members of the “establishment” they once fought against.

But having established itself as virtually unbeatable political force in local politics, SMRR faces the same problems as any entrenched political party, said Nancy Greenstein, a veteran SMRR organizer.

“It’s always difficult when you are democratic organization that people want to use you for personal gain,” Greenstein said. “You have a core group who are there for the values, and when somebody comes there not because of their values but because of their personal agenda, that has happened and that’s always a concern.”

Nobody expected SMRR to win in the first place, Greenstein said, and the group has survived far longer than most grassroots organizations built around a movement, so there is reason to be optimistic about the future.

“We’ve probably surpassed anybody’s vision at that time,” Greenstein said. “Most grassroots groups have a lifecycle and it’s usually less than 25 years.

“But SMRR is still vibrant, and there’s a lot of life,” she said with SMRR members, some graying, others with their kids, doing the boogie in the middle of the church hall to the Rolling Stone classic, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

It seems the boogie strategy is still working.