Evan Meyer welcomes Lana Negrete to this edition of Meyerside Chats. Interested in any of the civic topics below? Please tune in to Meyerside Chats on the Santa Monica Daily Press.
Meyerside Chats seeks to eliminate the “us and them” narrative and toxic polarization by praising those who lead by example, virtuous community leadership, and authentic conversation. The intent is to showcase the humanity in those that take on tough jobs (often in the public realm) through civil discourse and honoring differing points of view.
Recorded by santamonicamusic.com
Council member Negrete is a lifelong resident of Santa Monica, bringing a wealth of knowledge about the issues impacting youth and families, renters, and small business owners.”
Summary:
– Lana’s fantastic podcast studio, a community resource & creative space.
– How Lana got involved in her music stores.
– The importance of music in society, learning, and emotional intelligence | 13:00.
– Social Media ⇾ “Keyboard Warriors,” time-management & childhood development.
– Why people create categories, buckets, and “camps” of thought | 20:00.
– The tendency to only discuss what isn’t working, not what does.
– The perception of needing to be perfect for politicians.
– The lack of information for the public to determine “truth” | 26:00.
– Bringing balance and unity to the council.
– Why holding office is difficult to endure for nominal compensation (in Santa Monica).
– Unfair labeling | 42:00.
– How the council can approach transparency in council meetings | 47:00.
– Helping children learn how to “get involved.”
– It’s NOT work-life balance to strive for, but rather work-life integration ⇾ when work IS life, fun, and efficient, and how Lana juggles her time with this approach.
– You’re never too good to take out the trash | 56:00.
– The need for shorter council meetings.
– People should call in for public comment with solutions :-).
– The incorrect news around Santa Monica Pier | 1:05:00.
– How news gets “minced” to paint a narrative, even at a city or local level.
– Improving our communication.
– For most people, many of our issues are luxuries to worry about.
– Lana’s one big takeaway: “Just be kind.”
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Listen to the podcast here
Meyerside Chats With Lana Negrete
I’m introducing another episode where Evan Meyer sits down with folks around town and has in-depth conversations with them. Continuing his trend of talking to council folk, he is going to talk to Lana Negrete, who is the newest Councilwoman. She is a business owner and comes from her family with deep Santa Monica roots. It should be an interesting conversation between Evan Meyer and Lana Negrete. Here we go.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
It’s great to see you.
I’m glad to be on this and I’m glad to be here doing it.
This is a wonderful studio. I hope a lot of people can come here and use this awesome space. Is there anything we can know and tell them to come to do that?
You can go to www.SantaMonicaMusic.com. Check out the podcast rooms and rates. We have Stefan whom you can’t see who’s an engineer. You can do everything from renting it by the hour to signing up for class packages to learn how to podcast. We’ve got a couple of different options on how you can do that. You can call us, you can go on the website, but come check us out if you’re interested in podcasting or you’ve already got one and you want to use the space.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Podcasting in particular was not something I knew anything about, to be honest with you before the pandemic. I knew what podcasts were. I listened to a couple on a road trip. It was through a friend of mine, Ryan Sickler, who during the pandemic asked if he could move his podcast studio into one of my subleted offices at the Music Center in Santa Monica. I was like, “Yes.” I had lost tenants during the pandemic. I didn’t think much of it.
After watching what he did in a short amount of time to flip the studio and learning more about podcasting and how this was an awesome platform for people all over to talk about all kinds of different topics, I realized, “Everybody wants a podcast and is trying to learn how to podcast. Here’s someone in my studio space who’s made a living out of it and is successful.”
Immediately, I thought of the youth in the community and talking to them. They were like, “I do my own podcast,” with their phone or whatever at home. I thought, what a great opportunity to unite at the time, what was happening during the May 31st riots in Santa Monica. There was a lot of tension between the police and the community.
In our community in Santa Monica, I felt that the national narrative was being applied unfairly to our police department. I thought, “What a great chance to get the kids that I work with through the diversion program, through Santa Monica Police Department, and the police together in a room.” They were already thinking of the same idea so that the kids could interview the police officers and they could have this dialogue behind the badge, getting to know officers, and who they are as human beings from a youth’s perspective that has had possible negative interactions with police.
For me, it was also like, “Let’s teach them skills that they could go get a job with. Let’s teach them about camera live switch, post-production, pre-production, and how to develop an entire show so that there might be a kid who wants to be the interviewer and that’s all they want to do, or there might be a kid who does not want to be in front of the camera, but wants to learn how to produce a show.”
We are providing the skill training for that with a person who’s been doing it professionally, Ryan Sickler. He has The HoneyDew Podcast. They’re learning from a professional who’s proven to be successful at it and who built it from nothing. These kids are now running a podcast show that’s talking about real issues, whatever they want to talk about, but it’s also creating a united bond between police officers and the community.
That’s how that took off. We couldn’t do lessons. We were like, “Let’s flip some of these studios. It’s easy to put up some soundproofing and get some microphones and some cameras in here. People can rent these spaces and have a professional setup. They can have it as simple or as complicated as they want.” We have engineers like Stefan here who can edit, who can be here to monitor the sound, or you can come in and if you know what you’re doing, and you want to take your memory card afterward and edit yourself, you can do that.
Our business shifted from just music lesson rooms to providing a creative space. You could be in here and you could be by yourself, filming a cooking show. We have DJ HAPA, who does his DJ lessons from his studio space. We have a green room that you can use to talk about cats or whatever you want to do. You can come in here and have lessons with Stefan and learn how to create a podcast. It’s been neat.
You’ve been in music for a while. You’ve got a location in Santa Monica, here in Culver City. How did you get started with music?
My dad. My dad is Chico Fernandez. That’s how everyone knows him. He is a musician first and started the store many years ago. Our corporate name is Fernandez Talent and Associates because he wanted to represent talent and have a place for musicians. He’s a photographer. He would do their headshots, maybe do album covers. He used to book musicians in movies, like For the Boys, The Godfather, and Naked Gun 33 1/3. Wherever you saw musicians playing in a movie, my dad probably had a hand in booking those musicians. That was his goal.
My Uncle Victor Fernandez came from Canada. Honestly, he needed to be able to come here and show he was investing in a business. It was for immigration purposes. He came over here. He has an accounting background. Within a few years, he was like, “We need to develop an actual physical retail space, not just the studios.” That is what birthed the music store, what it is now.
My dad was the marketing guy, the musician, and the creative. My uncle was the backbone of all the business side of the music store. They developed the store. It was on Lincoln Boulevard across from the Boys & Girls Club, which is next to a little motel and was a dressing place. Our old music note was there forever. They just took it down. It was a music store with a few studios to do lessons. For the last several years, we’ve been on 19th and Santa Monica Boulevard, which is a nearly 10,000 square foot space with a school upstairs and a full retail shop downstairs.
They opened Culver City several years ago, which has a much smaller store. At this location, we’re changing the outlook of what it’s going to be. It was all because my dad started this business. He’s still my partner. He started it with a dream to get kids to play music. Band and orchestras are what we focused on, supplying instruments to the schools.
When I came in, I shifted and birthed more of a community aspect in the sense that I have a nonprofit outreach through the arts. We have a program that’s through the Peggy Bergmann Fund. It goes through Ed Foundation through the district so kids that are on free and reduced lunch get to choose from a lot of different vendors, we’re one of them, to get private music lessons.
Kids that are in music. That gets paid for through The Ed Foundation. We supplement the kids by giving them additional lessons year-round. Anyone can apply for that who can’t afford music lessons at our music store to get private music lessons. We have scholarships for our DJ programming and music production. We have a podcast camp we’re going to do. My goal is to have a space where anybody can come and create, whether you’re a professional, a novice, or somebody who doesn’t have the financial means to afford the luxury of learning something like this. I want to demystify the industry for the youth because these are the jobs that they’re getting.
There isn’t a college for it. I don’t think it’s necessary to spend tens of thousands of dollars and be burdened with loans in the future when you can learn a lot of this stuff. They know more of it when they come in already. They’re connected technology-wise. That’s the goal. I hope that the professionals that are coming here will rub their elbows. A lot of them give back their time, like Ryan, to the youth that are here and volunteer their time to mentor them. We have many of our 42 music teachers offer to give students lessons for free all the time.
I wanted to diversify what it looked like at the schools. Our band and orchestra should represent the diversity that we have in the community. For a long time, it wasn’t. After scratching my head, I was like, “I grew up with all these instruments and music lessons,” not realizing it’s a luxury to have that. We grew up in apartments. We never had money. I never connected the two. I realized, “If your dad doesn’t own a music store, taking music lessons is expensive.” I have kids. I remember putting my stepdaughter through gymnastics. It was expensive.
It’s also time-consuming. One of the things with music, and it’s something that is important about music, is that you learn the discipline of practice and how important repetition is and how to learn to eat the elephant one bite at a time as they say and stick with it. It requires daily practice or at least sometimes a week, a few times a week. When you get older, you don’t have that time anymore or that’s harder to create that time. One of the best things about music is not just teaching the music, because music is credible on its own, it’s how to learn.
How that other side of your brain works, it’s a creative space and opportunity for kids to release whatever emotions, especially with the pandemic and everything. It’s an opportunity for them to be themselves and create. There’s also a lot of science and math and engineering involved when you’re doing music.
Music is a creative space for kids to release whatever emotions they have. It’s an opportunity for them to be themselves and be creative.
Do you teach theory?
We do theory. My daughter can hear a song and write out the notes just by listening to it. That gene skipped me. Everyone’s like, “What do you play?” I’m like, “I can play Swans on the Lake on the piano.”
She can write the intervals or the actual note, the perfect pitch?
She can write notes. She doesn’t have perfect pitch, but she has a form of it when she was little. I’ll never forget when they started recorder class. It was deafening for her. It would bother her a lot. My other daughter is in a chorus. We are blessed in Santa Monica to have the music program we have. I’m on the board for NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants. When we have our meetings and people come all over the nation to talk about music programs, we’re so spoiled. I realize, “Our high school has seven bands and orchestras to get into. Our middle school has 3 or 4 different orchestras and choirs. Most schools, they’re lucky if they have one.”
These are programs that are going away, too.
These are programs that are constantly going away. We’re lucky that in Santa Monica, we fund those and there are accredited programs you receive a grade for. It’s not an afterschool special where if you’d want to do it, it’s mandatory K-12, TK through fifth grade. It’s a choice in middle and high school. To give the kids that exposure TK through fifth, it’s such a gift because there are many schools that don’t have that opportunity.
It’s sad to see them go away. I do believe art and music are important in the fundamental thinking of not just youth but of people, and how we experience the world. It’s hard to see them go away. It’s almost not necessarily the priority of it, but to not have it at all. It’s one thing to say this is the order of how we prioritize them in our school, but to eliminate it entirely, you’re removing ultimately a form of emotional intelligence.
Not to mention, I don’t know anybody in life that doesn’t listen to music or have some. You might not be a fan or a musician, but everybody listens to music. We look at art all day long, whether it be architecture and buildings, whether it be actual or physical art itself. You don’t have to be somebody who goes to museums every weekend to appreciate it. It’s part of our every day. It’s interesting to me when I do hear about certain schools or institutions that are willing to cut that first. That’s crazy to me. Imagine if we didn’t have any music, musicians, and people producing all the shows and the entertainment and the movies and the TV shows we watch. That’s all art. That’s the creative field.
Kids these days, these generations that are after me have many platforms and technology, because I have kids. They’re not my best friend all the time. I wish I could take phones and all that away and have my kids be kids a lot of the time. I watched my daughter when she babysits the neighbor’s kid, my best friend’s daughter. She’ll make films on her phone. That’s awesome. I didn’t have that when I was growing up. There are a lot more pluses if we can put it in the school day and teach kids how to utilize all this technology that’s in front of them the right way. TikTok for most parents is probably a nightmare, but there’s a job in there somewhere if you can use it the right way.
Even saying TikTok, there’s a twitch associated with it. It’s hard. Social media has that issue in general where it’s powerful that it has these incredible tools and resources that are good, but it also comes with this other side of taking all that’s good and then corrupting it.
Kids are impressionable at this age, and up until they’re 23 when their frontal lobe is fully developed. Here we are, overloading them with information. I hear about many children now being diagnosed with ADHD. We all are. Yeah. We’re all doing too many things. When we’re dealing with marketing and how we’re going to market ourselves, we always talk about attention span. Adults, children, and everyone have 30 seconds or less. The seconds are getting shorter and shorter.
As you talk about that one, something a friend said to me in terms of social media and even texting and all that, when kids are having an interaction with each other on the playground or in person, you can see in other person’s emotional response if you say something mean to them, for example. We have a lot of keyboard warriors, and there are a lot of adult ones as well.
I like that term. I’ve heard you use that before. It’s a good one.
They get behind there and they can say a lot of things behind the screen. They can’t see the other person’s face. It’s easy to, immediately without thinking, type something, send something. A friend of mine, our kids grew up together. I’ll never forget this. She said, “I tell my kids all the time, if you’re not willing to yell it out in the lunch room during school, then you shouldn’t be texting it or posting it.” Now you say those things and it’s not, “Did you hear what so-and-so said at lunch?” Everyone saw it. It’s there. Everyone can take bits and pieces of it and develop their own conclusion about what you were trying to say. That happens to us adults in the news media world.
That’s a whole other thing of cognition in general. How you take information in and then the filters behind that, that give you your perception.
A young person does not live a long enough life to understand that if you say something this way, or if it lacks tone, or how something you say might impact someone for a long time. That’s a huge responsibility. It’s something that comes with age and experience. Kids are given these devices right away.
They have the cognitive switching instantaneous. You go from a five-second video of one context to a five-second video of another context to an incoming message. Even adults, this is part of us. I always have to regulate when that happens. There’s an incoming message and I’m in the middle of a task. Don’t jump to the message. Swipe and finish your task.
It’s still there. You’re thinking about it because you saw it.
Kids don’t have the discipline, the awareness, or the goals for themselves for whom they want to be to be able to say, “This is not a good choice for me.” That’s scary.
As adults, we struggle with it. Jay Shetty had a talk on my Calm app about confetti and how we create confetti out of our time.
Temporal confetti. It’s good.
As you look at that message or you go down the wormhole of cat videos on Instagram, tear, there goes your time. What started out to be, “I have an hour to check emails and follow up on something,” has turned into 45 minutes of you checking Instagram, scrolling through Facebook, replying to the DMS, or whatever. There goes your time being torn up. In the end, you’ve got this big mess of shredded paper.
You go, “Why didn’t I get my tasks done?” You have a big mess of shredded paper.
Within all that is the context of what all this information is. Kids are watching people have a great experience in their life and doing all these wonderful things, getting invited to the party they didn’t get invited to, or dressing a certain way. They’re watching all this imagery coming up all the time of what their life should look like. As adults, we deal with it, especially at this level.
Being on the city council, there’s an expectation. People have many expectations and then we create expectations of ourselves. It’s all dictated by fake news and social media. We’re told, “This is what you’re supposed to look like and supposed to do and supposed to sound like.” If you waiver at all off of that, there’s a narrative. “If you start to be too much yourself and it doesn’t jive with certain people, we will tear you down.”
You’re a conspiracy theorist worse yet if you disagree with the narrative.
You’re crazy.
It depends on where you are. If you’re in California, that means one thing.
You’re put in a box. Everyone likes to put people in little boxes.
It helps them categorize. Carl Jung said something good. He said, “Thinking’s hard to do. That’s why people judge.” You’re constantly comparing people to yourself saying, “The people in my social circle or what I know to be true or strong belief of mine, this person disagrees with. They must then have all these other qualities.” If you disagree with that one thing, you must be a bad person. You must be evil. You must be a person who doesn’t volunteer on the weekends. You make these weird connections. I’m conscious of not doing that, but it’s hard.
We’ve been conditioned to do it.
It’s part of our programming. You have to be mindful when you’re thinking about these categories of people. This is what we have in politics in general and why people have a hard time even listening to different viewpoints.
That’s why a lot of people said, “You don’t have Democrats checked off on your last voting of independent.” The minute you vote a certain way or say a certain thing, “You’re this. You’re a Republican. You’re a Democrat. You’re left. You’re right. You’re center.”
Those are meaningless because it all depends on what you know those terms to be. They’re not the same for everybody.
They’ve changed over the last few years. In the Reagan era, my parents were Republicans. Now they’re Democrats. It depends on where we are in history and what that means to be that.
What you’ve read before this conversation.
The approach I take, and this is going to sound super cheesy and naive, but it’s working far and I’m going to go with it, is my mom’s spiritual. We’ve been raised with a moral compass and listening to our heart, our solar plexus. Everything I do in life, I have anxiety. I do suffer from anxiety. It affects my stomach. Bad decisions, if I say something or do something that wasn’t right, I’ll immediately feel it in my stomach. I’ll get physically sick in my stomach. I have to go to bed at night and I have to feel good. If my stomach is upset and I can’t sleep, something’s wrong and something’s off.
I try to make decisions with what’s in front of me and ignore people’s historical attachment to it. They might have an experience with an individual or a project and they’ve got all their historical information on it, which is important and much needed, but it’s from one perception. Being able to gauge when it’s appropriate to listen to everybody’s perception of their past experience with whatever it is in front of me and then being able to block all that out and look at it for what it is right in front of you at that moment.
I tie it to the kids I work with. These are kids who need 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th chances. A lot of times when I’m looking at things, it’s like, “What is this project in front of me? Now I’ve heard this story and I’ve heard this story. How do I give this its 2nd, 3rd, or 4th chance and judge it for what it is in front of me?” Our community is amazing. We have a lot of involved vocal community members. That’s a great thing. People who want to be involved and find the time to care, that’s amazing.
It comes with though a certain group of people or certain people like to find the negative and everything. They like to only discuss what they don’t like and whom they don’t like as opposed to what is working and what they do like. I’m a solutions-driven person. If you’re going to tell me that this is wrong or this doesn’t work, you also have to follow that up with what does, because it’s easy to judge and not think. It’s so much harder to come up with a solution because you might fail.
Those of us who sit up on council might make decisions that at the time they feel right, but maybe they didn’t work out, and then we’re to blame by the community. I wish the community would remember there’s nothing magical that happens the minute you get sworn in and you’re up there. You don’t become this all-knowing being. You’re still a person who can’t get her nails done because she has kids and four different jobs she’s working.
I’m still a person. I still make mistakes. As much as I try to block out and look at something, I try to look at things pragmatically and practically. I’m also a conditioned human being who has my own biases and beliefs. We struggle to make decisions and work together with a diverse council to come to a decision that’s going to be for the greater good of everybody. A lot of times, I’ve had to vote on things that I’ve never even thought of before. Quite frankly, I’ve had to vote in ways that like, “This doesn’t benefit me, but I know that this benefits the greater good of the city.” That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. At least you hope so. It’s disheartening when people point you out.
You’re supposed to vote that way, too.
I tell people all the time, like, “I’m myself all the time.” That’s hard. All of a sudden, you become a council member and you’re like, “Am I allowed to wear this, say this, do this?”
There’s an opportunity to break that mold in general. One of the things that hold people, hostage, in the political realm is that there’s this feeling that you can’t be yourself even if you have a job that requires you to wear a suit. When you hold that version of a person, they’re not supposed to screw up. The public holds these people like they are omnipotent. If they screw up, then they must be evil or there’s corruption or they’re stupid. How can they make that decision?
It’s similar to sitting on your couch, watching a football game, talking about how this person did not catch the ball. You don’t even get to start that conversation. I feel there’s a lot of that with politics where people need to categorize themselves. They need to put themselves in a bucket. They have limited information. They have only biased news. All news to some degree is biased. Even by just the nature of writing and interpretation of something, it’s biased to some degree.
It’s an opinion piece.
If you look at the information in that way, you’d say, “I don’t have all the information. No matter how much research I do, surely, I’m not going to get it from three articles on CNN or Fox,” or whatever you watch. Everyone has an agenda. You hope their agendas are pure. What frustrates me is that people don’t have that humility. They think a lot of times that they have this limited information and then they point fingers at the person and go, “How can you do that?” They don’t even know the real story, especially at the federal level. That’s nuts.
At least at local, we talk to people. We can have coffee. We can understand the issues better. Our vote counts one to one. You can go and make meaningful changes at your neighborhood association or your business improvement district. You can participate and make real change. There’s a humility piece missing for me. This is one of the things that gets people angry. They think they know. In a pie chart, you have 1% of the information of the total story. That also depends on whom you’re socializing with and what information they send you.
Also, your own life experience. I often say I’m a person who experiences Santa Monica as a renter, a small business owner, and a mother. I lease a commercial space. I don’t own a building here. I’m someone who was born and raised here. My experience and taste of the city are different. I grew up living in apartments, walking barefoot down to Station 26 to jump in the water.
I’m not always hanging out with the best of the kids. I’m getting into trouble, for sure. My experience of the city is from a different angle. I had friends that lived on the North side. I lived on the South side always. I look at things from a different perspective. My struggles and my wins and the things I love about the city and the things I like to see change are all based on my experience.
Everybody has a different experience. The problem is that we don’t respect everybody’s experience. A lot of times, we talk negatively, like people who have money or live this way. That’s their experience. There are times when their experience is helpful in decision-making. We might be talking about a topic that I’m not familiar with and vice versa.
It’s key to find that diversity to make real decisions at the table. It’s like giving everybody a seat at the dinner table and respecting what everybody has to say based on their perception. The council’s been fractured for a while. Sometimes there’s some attacking going on. My goal is to bring some balance to that, some unity. There’s no secret agenda. I truly don’t think anyone has a diabolical plan to take over the city, whether it be staff or the council.
Respecting everyone’s experience is key to finding that diversity to make real decisions at the table.
We all have just a vision. Oddly enough, our vision is similar in the end in terms of wanting to live and work and raise a family in a community that’s for all. It’s just that we’re all going about it in a different way. We get caught up in arguments. I try to not get caught up in arguments as much as I can. What makes it hard is that there are community members. I’m a human being. I have thick skin for the most part. If I don’t, I do have a fiery response. I’m emotional. I say our house sounds like a Puerto Rican family from the Bronx, a Latino house. There’s a lot of yelling, but we’re not fighting. We’re just talking. I get over things quickly, but I’m affected and hurt.
I often read things. It’s weird and jarring to read someone writing something about you like they know you. You’ve never met them, or you have had only positive interactions with them and now they’re saying something about you. My knee-jerk reaction is that I’m hurt. I want to talk to them. I realize, “I can’t do that because this is a person who wants to engage negatively. This is not going to go anywhere.” That’s a bummer because now I’ve lost an opportunity to make a friend or a connection with someone.
Do you think of getting coffee with that person?
I do it all the time.
Would that help?
I had an experience. I’ve had one where I’ve done that and it didn’t help because they had an agenda and a narrative. I realized quickly that didn’t help. They’ve had situations where it’s been helpful or so. Someone’s got an opportunity to get to know me and we’ve been able to discuss something. Now, a couple of those people are like, “I’m glad I got to know you. I had no idea.” I’m naive in the sense that I think that can happen for everybody. I’ve always been that way, like, “Let me talk to you.” I don’t think people are evil people.
Even when we’re arguing and you’re looking at someone going, “That’s horrible. How can they say that? What are they trying to do?” When you get to know someone and you let it all go. We’re people. We’ve been hurt in our lives. Some people operate from that space. Some people have healed more so they operate from a different space. There’s some point where we can connect. Finding that connection to me is key.
Something I would love for the community, especially those that are constantly fueled by negativity and being upset, is being upset and pointing out what’s wrong is necessary, for sure. People need to know what’s going on. You have the right to voice your opinions and concerns, but then there needs to become the solution-driven part.
If you find yourself creating Facebook pages or advocacy work that’s around being upset and ranting, what are you doing? You’re fueling the fire that you say you don’t want to get burned by rather than looking for ways to extinguish it. That’s number one. Number two, which is a big thing, is I hear the community say, and this is nationwide, too, “We want to see somebody who represents us, the working-class person, the regular Joe up there.”
If you create Facebook pages or advocacy work just around being upset and ranting, you’re fueling the fire rather than looking for ways to extinguish it.
That person gets up there. The reason why a lot of people don’t do it for one is, at least at the local level, it’s a volunteer job. You have to have the luxury of time and or money to get yourself in that position first and then to be able to spend the time away from your family and your work because it’s not like it’s a paid gift. In Santa Monica, it’s $16,000 a year or whatever.
That’s such an obvious incentive barrier, too. You’d think there’s something there that’s missing. It feels like most people know that. There’s an opportunity to change that.
It’s not a twenty-hour week job.
It’s another full-time job if you take it seriously.
If you take it seriously and you’re going to read the agenda packets.
Which then, in that case, lends itself to exactly what you’re saying. To make it of that time in your life, you have to make it pay.
We go, “Look who’s up there, running the city.” Nobody else could do it. Quite frankly, I was asked for a long time. I thought, “There’s no way. I’m struggling. I live in a rent-controlled apartment. I’m trying to put food on the table for my kids.” I’m already strapped. I can barely make it to the kids’ PTA meeting. The last thing I need to be doing is being chastised, possibly having my name dragged through the papers in some weird way, and having my kids reading that. Who knows? I don’t have anything to hide, but people find weird things.
They’ll create something.
Right when I got appointed, some guy listened to my HoneyDew Podcast and the headlines read, “What we know about Council Member Negrete: She was molested and drugged as a youth.” I’m like, “Out of a two-hour podcast, those are the two things you picked out.” It’s not even a story, but I immediately felt regretful because I thought my children now google my name and that article comes up all the time. We didn’t have that conversation yet.
I’m not saying that’s what happens. I put myself there, whether I knew or didn’t know how it was going to turn out. I’m saying that people need to understand that those people have control more than they realize of who goes up there. There are a lot of people who welcome you, but there are more people who are more likely to drag your name through the mud, for whatever reason, be judgmental and critical of everything you do. That makes it hard for somebody to say, “This is totally worth me giving up time with my family, time away from my job to sit up here and serve the community, and then people are going to tear me down and nitpick me for every decision I make.” It’s anxiety.
You give yourself to such a cause and that comes with this level of destruction.
On top of it, to not be compensated for that.
Why do you do this? It has to be in your heart.
It’s honestly for the parking pass.
As a council person, can you get an extra parking pass?
I was like, “Can we get this forever for all we’ve endured? I might need therapy sessions.”
That will line itself to more of a meritocracy.
It’s interesting because then you go, “Are people doing it just for the money?” People should be compensated for the time that they take. Otherwise, you’re going to have an imbalance. We’re often fighting about how we create diversity on council, on school boards, in Congress, in legislation, whatever. You create that by giving people the pathways. Those state-level jobs are paid. They get a healthy salary, but usually, the way to get to that is through local government. A lot of times, that opportunity is not even on the radar for somebody who might be passionate, great, vocal, logical, pragmatic, not tied to any certain interest groups, and all that kind of stuff.
That’s why we have people who are up there. People are constantly saying, “People are up there because they’re tied to this interest group or that interest group.” It’s also because people who aren’t tied to those interest groups are people who are working, putting food on the table, who are experiencing life and the city and the things that we care about, and might have something important to say.
They don’t have the time to sit on a commission or a board because again, that’s time and there’s no money involved in that. There’s no way they’re going to run an election and a campaign, expose themself and their families. I’ve had protestors at my apartment building. My entire apartment building was like, “Why are they here? Is there a council member that lives here?” It’s a lot to endure for no financial compensation behind it.
There’s a weird privacy and safety issue there alone. They would show up at your home.
My kids were crying. They were scared. “They’re yelling your name out there.”
They do publish your home address.
It was a bizarre thing because it was an anti-vaccine thing. What was interesting was that I was not supporting the vaccine passport for other reasons, for business. They were holding signs that said, “Small business matters.” I’m like, “You don’t do your homework because I own a small business. You clearly haven’t listened to any of the meetings.” Again, limited information.
That’s a good point. That’s another categorization that people do. They’ve categorized anyone who has anything to say about the vaccine at all.
You’re in a group.
You’re an anti-vaxxer. You go into anti-vax. If you don’t dive into that, that means that you’re anti-vaccine. Not anti this vaccine necessarily, all vaccines.
You’re a conspiracy theorist.
That’s not even what I hear most of the issue is. It’s about a mandate. It’s not about the vaccine.
Which is when two men go to lunch, by the way.
They talk about vaccines. This is a perfect opportunity without getting into the vaccine conversation.
I was talking specifically about a vaccine passport and whether or not that’s effective and as we are building our economy back, but you get lumped in either which way. You’re like, “Are you not voting for this? Are you voting for that?”
“You must be a Republican.” It’s wild that it’s almost impossible in day-to-day existence for most people, at least the ones that I communicate with, to have an opinion about it or to let you have an opinion that doesn’t put you into a category immediately. “What are you, a Republican?” That’s not fair.
You find yourself trying to figure out who you are and what you are. That relates back to kids. They’re trying to figure that out right now with all the labeling that’s going on. My sixth grader is constantly talking about how she came back from two years of missing school and everybody has changed how they identify themself, whether it be through pronouns or whatever.
I don’t want to be labeled. I’m like, “You created eight more labels.” We do it as adults. We talk about why are the kids doing this. We’re teaching them that. We label all the time. We want people to check off boxes to make sure that they have this many of each group represented in a job. It’s become no longer about the content of our character to quote Martin Luther King.
It’s hard. It’s interesting to think of construct as it used to exist and then the new construct that people are generally trying to create. Often, having definitions in the first place for these things is the issue. Sometimes creating new ones depends. Everyone has different ways of looking at this and solving this issue, but often, the labeling and categorization, I find, creates the problem.
It’s more diversity. I’m like, “You’re drawing more lines.”
You’re creating more separation.
You’re not bringing anyone together. You’re creating more lines. This is another thing I’ll say about being on council. The fact that we don’t allow that freedom to express your opinion, you get on and there’s no training on the format of meetings or whatnot. That’s another fearful thing. I’m fine being embarrassed and raising my hand because I don’t know what I’m talking about. If you watch meetings, I’m often like, “Can we say that? Do I have to say some special phrase?”
I sat on the Public Safety Commission for two seconds before I became on there. I’ve been on the PTA Council and I’m on different boards. I get the format, but it’s different. There are sub motions and abstaining. What does that do to the first motion and the second motion? It can be intimidating so then you don’t end up saying anything. That’s another reason why we don’t see diversity on the board. There is no real formal training that you go through. It’s like you’re thrown in there and you figure it out. There is some, and you can ask for training. I have asked a lot of questions, but you’ve got to be that person that knows what to ask and whom to ask, and then you shall receive.
It doesn’t just come. There’s no manual.
It’s a quick thing that’s common-sense stuff. In sexual harassment training, you learn about what the Brown Act is, and all that. We are always talking about having transparency. All those rules and then the fear of being judged by your opinion and the inability to speak openly is what create the lack of transparency. We can’t just go up there and have a real dialogue and say things that might offend or might be confusing to some people. That’s the whole point of getting to a solution.
All those rules, the fear of being judged by your opinion, and the inability to speak openly create a lack of transparency because we can’t just go up there and have an honest dialogue and say things that might offend or be confusing to some people.
You talk to the other side and you go, “That’s interesting. I don’t agree with that. Now that I see where you’re coming from, I can now think about the solution we want to come up with understanding that.” I don’t have to agree with it, but I could say, “I see why you’re saying that. I see how I’m saying this.” You can still walk away disagreeing, but now you’ve got a plan to go forward. We’re all up there to go forward in some way. It’s like, “How do we do this?”
There are going to be times where it is like, “I don’t want this project to happen and this side does want it to happen.” That’s different. A lot of the time, there’s more dialogue that needs to happen. We’re rushed through the agenda. We’re told, “Stop talking about things. This is not the place to talk about it.” We want the community who selected us, in my case I was appointed, but I’m hopeful I’m going to run in 2022, that when people vote for you, they voted for you because you represent their voice.
This is rewarding enough. They know that. That’s why they don’t pay. They know that there’s an internal sense of reward.
I almost feel like it’s like a duty. I’ve got here this far and everyone’s like, “This is refreshing to have someone who’s telling it like it is. Let’s hope that it still goes that way.” I’m nervous about what this is going to look like. Campaigning is a whole other beast. Being able to have that open dialogue so that the community sees the other piece and here’s your part.
People are given this much information. They’ve got their own perspective and then they’re reading headlines and whatever biased news. You want to be able to present items and go, “This is why I’m deciding this way. This is why I’m voting this way.” A lot of times, you’re not given that opportunity. It’s exhausting because you’re constantly having to talk to constituents to make sure that you’re listening and that you’re engaging, but you can’t talk about certain things.
I mentioned it with Gleam and Phil as well. With all the administrative work that supports the council, there could be a good opportunity to create the highest version of transparency and decision-making that’s a table of information about the council and their thoughts. You don’t have to do it on every issue, but on ones that are big.
To the council’s credit, and Gleam said this as well, the council is pretty much unanimous on most votes. It’s only the controversial ones that seem to get a little weird. If there was a way to be transparent in the decision process and say, “We had to make a choice, given the information we were given. In the same way, you have a choice of determining how you feel based on the information you’re given.”
We looked at this set of data and this was the cost-benefit. We had to give up some things to get some other things. You don’t get everything you want all the time in life. That would be something you learn in preschool, which is another funny joke Gleam and I were talking about. Maybe we should have preschool lessons early on.
If you get what you get, you don’t get upset.
We have to share. There’s etiquette and a lot of decorum. Maybe people would understand and be like, “I understand I didn’t get what I want. I see where they’re coming from.” This is a hard thing to do. Perhaps it’s naive, and even thinking that that’s possible. It could be a lot more effort than I can even imagine. There’s a way of moving that needle forward. Potentially even having this conversation on the council with the council to public is a way to at least of opening that conversation up. If it’s not had, you can’t even get to the next place. At least let that level of transparency and humility. You’re a human.
Also, the biggest thing is that we’re given information that sometimes isn’t always talked about or discussed or out there. We’ve got to make a decision. I’m always super impressed. There are community members that are like, “Why aren’t you up here?” They know what’s on the agenda. They’re given all their time to maybe one particular item or multiple items. They spend their time every week reaching out to everybody on the council. It’s admirable and impressive. I’m glad.
That’s one of the things I want to teach not just my own kids, but the kids I work with. I was on the PTA Council for Santa Monica-Malibu Unified. I was the legislative rep at one point. We got to go to Sacramento. It’s called Sacramento Safari. Kids got to come with us. It’s an awesome process. We need to do it locally and get kids involved in, what it means to run for local government, to be a constituent, and demystify that process. Your voice does matter. Here’s why, what it is to sit on a commission and a board, how you get involved, and how you move the needle and make things happen.
Advocacy and marching and all that stuff are great. Kids should learn how to use their voice, the First Amendment, and all stuff. What happens after? Oftentimes, we teach kids, “You can post a certain picture on Instagram and make that go viral. You can do a hashtag. You can do a sign in your pictures and march up and down the street.” That’s all great. That’s a movement. They should continue to do that, but what’s the next step? How do you move the needle?
Kids should learn how to use their voices.
I always thank the Ocean Park Association for leading me down this path, Ted Winter is the one who said it. I came to be on the planning commission. He’s like, “You probably should start with the neighborhood association.” I was like, “Okay.” I did that for ten years. Still, it’s part of my distance. Neighborhood associations are where to start.
I’m going to point out what I said a few council meetings ago. I don’t know if you heard it. We were talking about something and someone made the comment, “Are you going to vote not with your neighborhood association.” I said, “Neighborhood associations don’t represent everybody.” In the world of neighborhood associations, as a working mom who was on PTA Council, VP of fundraising for my daughter’s school, team manager for two soccer teams, running two locations, a nonprofit, sitting on multiple boards, and part of the visual and performing arts district advisory committee for two different cities, I didn’t always have time to then join a neighborhood association meeting.”
Quite frankly, there were times over the last several years when my fresh opinions were not as welcomed as those who had tenure there. You go, “I don’t have a lot of time for this anyways.” I wasn’t a part of my neighborhood association, Sunset Park. I love Zina Josephs though. I felt like I was much though a part of my neighborhood and knew about a lot of the issues. I didn’t think for me that it made me any less of a concerned community member. I wanted to point out that I want to speak for the mom who feels guilty that she can barely rush from work to make it to her kid’s clarinet recital, or the PTA meeting, or doesn’t know, can’t bring snacks all the time.
It sounds like to me you figured out, and this is a great way of life balance, when work and life and play intertwine, you end up being particularly efficient in finding all of those ways. Neighborhood associations, for example, are not necessary for you. You figured out how to get involved in the school. It overlaps with the other things you’re working on in your life. You’re able to find, “If I’m here, I should do the thing that overlaps.”
Performing arts. I’m more into music.
It’s efficient. You’re able to do ten things at once in a sense, as opposed to like, “I have to raise my child, and then I have to go to work.” I was talking about this with someone saying I never work. I’m like, “You work 24/7. You don’t realize it because everything you do is working and you like it.”
That’s true for me. I had a traditional corporate job before and quickly realized, “That’s not for me, but I needed an income to raise my family.” We had a house. At one point, when I was pregnant with Mia, but right after she was born, I told my husband, “I want to start a nonprofit and help my family business.” He is like, “We have to move out of this house and live in an apartment. You’re going to have to drive a different car and carry a different purse. Are you going to be okay with that?” I was like, “Yeah.”
He was like, “I grew up in the projects with ten siblings. It doesn’t matter to me where we live, how big or small our space is, as long as you’re doing what makes you feel happy.” That’s when I made the shift. I’ve been happy ever since, but I work 1,000 times more than I did before. Even what seems to be a social event is generally work-related. I’m building relationships for my nonprofit. I’m in the music industry. Even if I’m at an event, a lot of times, it’s work-related.
At this point, if I go to a social event and I don’t have anything to do, I’m usually like, “Can I hand out hors d‘oeuvres or something?” I’d love to be the person to walk around and hand out hors d‘oeuvres or drinks. “Do you got anything for me to do?” I can talk to people and engage.
I have my friend, Darlene, who is always like, “You have too many friends. How do you have time for more friends?” I’m like, “I love people. I love connecting people.” A lot of times the connection is not for me. Most of the time, someone will start talking about something. I’m like, “I know a guy who does that.” I’m connecting with them. Every day, I send an email introducing our text to people that should be working together.
I’ve thought about starting my own company for that, connecting people. I feel like I work all the time. I’ve found a way to be outside and still be at soccer pickup every now and then. It’s not like it used to be. I’m not participating as much. It breaks my heart. My kid, we had a sit-down talk before I even thought about applying for the council position about what it was going to look like. You always think, “When my kids are this age, then I can back away.” It’s never a good time to back away. They need you at every stage in life differently.
Your kids need you at every stage in life, just differently.
I’ll be in the car on a Zoom, waiting for pickup. My kids know. It’s always like, “I’m on a Zoom. You can’t talk right now because I’m listening to this Zoom meeting or I’m on this neighborhood association meeting.” I’ll be making dinner and then have to pause it. My daughter old takes over and I run in the room and I get on to speak at something. I juggle my time. I was at a soccer game. I had to take three phone calls on the way up, which was so hard for my daughter because we couldn’t listen to music the whole way up for an hour and a half.
She had to listen to me. I let her use earbuds and sit in the third row. You make it work. When I’m at work, I meet people. They come to the music store and it’s totally about council business. We have a running joke at the store, “Are you looking for Council Member Lana Negrete or store owner Lana Negrete or do you need to book a DJ?” What’s happening?
That’s part of the personality, too. That shows up.
I dropped someone’s trumpet off at their house and was picking up repairs at jams. This woman was like, “Are you a council member?” I’m like, “Yes.” She’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m the delivery person. I also take out the trash.” You’ll see me doing a lot of different things.
You never get too high up in the ranks to not take out the trash.
My dad always used to say that. If everyone were to leave, if we couldn’t operate the store by ourselves, I have to admit though, I’m getting to a point now where I used to make fun of my dad down in the store and now, I’m down there and I’m like, “How do you do this? I don’t know how to work this system anymore.” I’ve got an awesome team, thank God.
When you came on the council, in my head, I was like, “Lana could be this great unifier.” In the sense that you were appointed by everyone, almost. It took 1 round or 2. Different folks on council who would maybe naturally have different beliefs all came together to put you in there and believe in you. It’s an interesting responsibility. I don’t know if you’ve taken that on, but to some degree, it feels like there is an opportunity to own that.
I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say that, but since this is the way I talk, I’m the swing vote. Let’s be honest. That’s how it is. That’s an interesting and tough position to be in. I get 872 phone calls every Monday before the Tuesday meeting. It’s a tough spot to be in a lot of times because there is some division. Whether it’s unifying or being the swing vote, I don’t know what you want to call it. Everybody’s got a history up there to some degree, whether it be politically in the community, personally with people, or in their own experiences. I try to bring a little bit of what my mother raised us on spiritually and look at everybody as that child.
Sometimes when we’re having heated moments, I zone out and I try to imagine everybody as their 10-year-old, 6-year-old, or 5-year-old self as a mother. We are people up there working from whatever we’ve experienced in life. I do try to say, “We have to come to some solution here. Let’s not fight. That’s not going to get us anywhere. It’s a huge distraction if we’re fighting up there.” To me, it’s like when parents fight in front of their kids. It makes everybody nervous.
We are just people up there working from whatever we’ve experienced in life.
It’s your leadership. If you’re leading by example on how you want people to be, then it’s important that you maintain that decorum to show that, “This is how we do things here. We don’t want you coming up here and yelling at us. We’re going to operate in a certain way and we’re going to preach that good information to you all and try to hold onto.” It’s hard to do. There are many sensitive things. It’s tough.
Everyone wants to talk and explain themselves because of what we talked about earlier. It’s their opportunity to say, “This is why I’m doing this or that.” For those that are more tenured, it’s frustrating because they’re like, “We’ve done this already. Can we get on with the agenda?” It’s trying to find that balance. We don’t want the meetings to go on. They should not be going until 3:30 in the morning. The meetings need to end the day they start at the very least.
I wake up at 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning. For me, at 3:30 in the morning, I’m on my 22nd hour. Nobody can make a good decision. I don’t care what you’re deciding on at that hour. We need to take a look at how we operate up there, creating parameters, creating boundaries, and creating space for everyone to say what they need to say concisely. You can’t go nine hours and be labor issues and start getting into a conversation that’s scope creep.
We need to look at how we operate, creating parameters, boundaries, and space for everyone to say what they need to say concisely.
A lot of it is scope creep. A lot of times, people talk about things that are not relevant to the conversation. There’s some degree of First Amendment stuff. There’s maintaining the right environment for a council meeting and public input that’s important. When I watch it as a systems person, I’m like, “Can things be hand votes sometimes?” I don’t know the reasons why they keep doing it. Maybe there’s a reason why you have to do the individual.
That’s a process I haven’t even dove into. I don’t know why.
That’s a quick one and to win to me. There are only seven people there. Everyone knows the names. Raise your hand and let’s move on. If it’s 30 seconds or 1 minute per voting thing times 10, that’s 10 minutes instantly shaved.
That’s a good point. The meetings need to end by 11:00. We need to get home. You need to decompress. One night we went until 3:30. I didn’t go to bed until 4:17 AM and I woke up at 5:26 AM. It ruined my entire next day.
You can’t make decisions that way. It’s not fair to put people in positions to make decisions that way. You’re tired. I’m sure a lot of frustration.
The community is on hold sometimes to speak on an item that’s not heard until 1:00 in the morning. I wouldn’t be able to hold going back to, “Who has the time? Whom are we serving?” We have to be giving everybody a platform. It’s not just for the commissions and boards in the neighborhood associations. It’s also for the people who are like, “I’m not on a neighborhood association, but I’m involved. I care about this issue. This is the first time I’ve ever called in and they don’t know the process and they’re confused.” Now they’re like, “I have to wait until 1:00 in the morning?” There are a lot of things we can do.
It’s another reason why it’s hard to get involved. You want to have public comment, but they’re waiting to have their one minute.
Imagine if that’s your first introduction.
You’re like, “I thought I was going on at 9:00. I’m on at 11:00.”
“I’ll never be on the council. This is screwy. This sucks.” There goes their bad experience. That festers.
Some of that’s far for the course and others are like, “What can we do to make it more encouraging?” Going back to what we’re saying, the keyboard warriors, the intimidation of council meetings.
It’s being solutions-driven. For all the people who have a problem with things, it would be great if they’re not calling and crapping on council members or saying things. I don’t know what that does. I always want to ask the people who call in and run through a bunch of mean comments like, “I’m curious. When you do that, because you do it every week, every time we have a meeting, have you noticed that anything has changed since that? I haven’t.” It’s a genuine question.
I’m genuinely curious if they think, if I do this for twelve months, then something’s going to happen and they’re finally going to address what I’m talking about or whatever. Instead, it would be nice to see someone call in and be like, “I would like to voice my opinion and have a great solution. Would you like to hear it?” Please give that person eight minutes.
Again, the keyboard warrior, too much time, the intimidation of council, it’s too much. Part of that can even be part of the frustration and what you’ve mentioned now about the news. You go on there and one thing’s missed is turned around on you and you said they find things about you that are not even real, exaggerated, or is the one thing out of a two-hour video that they pulled to get a strong subject line engagement.
That’s what happened to me with the LA Times. Call it out there like the vending card. I did an interview with Gustavo who does an opinion piece. He’s a food columnist, but he’s taken a special interest in vending, not just in Santa Monica, but in general and all the issues around it. He interviewed me about what was happening in Santa Monica. The newscasters that were interviewing me and the news, I don’t blame them because they’re just out there doing their job and then they move on to the next thing.
Anyone who’s doing real journalism or taking the time to type something up, we talked about lots of things, first of all. We are a city that’s given out more permits. We have 93,000 people. LA has 4 million. We’ve given out about 150 permits. LA’s given out less or around that. We have a specific issue that’s happening at the pier that has nothing to do with any of this other stuff. If you were fighting for what you’re fighting for, you would be concerned about what’s happening, whether it be the propane and the organization.
I didn’t see any of that in that article.
After we spoke, he realized, he goes, “This is a more complicated issue. I’m going to have to take some time on this.” What he took was there was one comment that I made. First of all, he tried to paint the city a certain way because it fed into a narrative that was more in line with where his opinion piece was going. It would’ve shifted things if he had shed light on the facts. We talked about pollution. I said we’re a beachside city. It’s important for us to keep our beaches and pier clean.
I said, “You can’t find a plastic straw in Santa Monica to save your life, but all of a sudden, we’re going to turn a blind eye to Styrofoam and trash being dumped down our storm drains and thrown all over our beaches?” He said that Council Member Negrete says, “You can’t find a plastic straw in Santa Monica. Now we’re going to lower our standards of what kind of food we eat.” I never even said that statement. He was trying to pair those two things to make it seem like I was looking down on bacon-wrapped hotdogs.
Now everyone reads that gets a perspective of you. All these people who read that article have this perspective that’s not even what you intended.
He had control over that. I wish that people that are in that position took it seriously. You have the control to paint a person a certain way. I don’t know how that person goes to bed at night with a clear conscience, knowing that they mince things in order to create. It’s like taking a puzzle and then getting other puzzle pieces and making a completely different picture.
You have the control to paint a person a certain way by taking a puzzle and then getting other puzzle pieces and ultimately making a completely different picture.
There was a similar situation that happened at the neighborhood level where something was written without mentioning names to rule on the show. I remember I wrote one thing. Someone took it and made something about it that’s not what I said. I was like, “How did you do that? It said right here in the email.” I’ve experienced that a little bit. It does upset me to know that that’s happening and that we only deal with it at the local level.
This was the LA Times.
Now you’re at the county level. That’s a nationwide publication.
I texted him and said, “It’s sad that you had an opportunity to open a store.” As someone who’s born to immigrant parents, I want to look at the idea that who was being exploited here and at what cost. There was something much deeper to look at, “This lawyer is like standing on the shoulders of this issue. Who’s being exploited are the women who are working these carts all day long for a flat rate when somebody else is organizing the whole thing, threatening people, and making ten times the amount. Yet this is what we’re talking about.
Let’s talk about all the permitted vendors whom I’ve recently met with, who are threatened, who are in fear for their life, and who feel afraid to show any gratitude or partnership with the city or the police because they don’t want to be threatened after.”
I’m like, “You should be shedding light on those people. It’s like a dark alley. If you don’t shed light, then there are things that are going to keep happening. You’re participating in that and ignoring it in the guise of you’re this big warrior for the little guy who’s trying to have a food cart. The guys that are trying to have a food cart are unable to do their business because somebody has decided to monopolize the situation, create criminal activity around it, expose the pier to potentially being set on fire while trashing the pier.”
There was so much going on that was newsworthy that more people would’ve wanted to listen to than to keep going with some narrative. It’s straight-up lazy journalism. That was an easy grab for you. It was much harder for you to tell the story than it was for you to be like, “I’ve already been telling this story. I’m going to make it work.”
I can’t speak for that individual in this case, but knowing that that type of thing happens, in general, you would think, and from what we discussed before about generally having limited information, it’s any the idea that fake stuff is out there. There’s something called deep fake, which most people know, or maybe a lot of people don’t, which is crazy. You’d think people would have a bit more humility in the things they read and a little more patience with the people they meet around their decision-making. That’s the thing that always gets to me. “Why are you hung up on this belief? Why is this one thing so strong for you?”
The mayor was talking about the state of the city and cancel culture in the sense that we cancel people all the time. I’m not talking about it in the sense of cancel culture when that’s usually directly related to a man doing a #MeToo Movement. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the idea that we cancel people. You say one thing, you’re canceled. You’re in this crowd and we’re not going to listen to you anymore because you’re in these camps.
Phil and I were talking about that word in general, camps, and the goal for one Santa Monica.
Bringing Santa Monica together.
That’s the real opportunity. Having the conversation and exposing the real nature of things that we’re talking about, I hope enough people will hear that to give maybe some of the council people a little bit of a break maybe, or at least don’t yell at them.
We’re not perfect. If you think that the way you think is so much better, I encourage people to apply and run. That process might bring some humility. It might humble some people. It might also make people realize, “This is a lot more than I realized.” I have respect for someone even trying and even going through the process of applying and then running. It’s not like you walk up there and stand and learn. It’s a process also.
Even the people who do have a tone or an approach to things that can be hurtful, often, some of those people at least are working hard for a cause that they believe is important. They’re angry and frustrated. They don’t know how else to do it. That’s the best way it comes out. My dad always used to say, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
I had a situation with employees and I said, “Email lacks tone. Text lacks tone.” I can read the same sentence with a certain tone and it means something totally different. It’s bringing this right back to the beginning of this conversation with our kids.
If someone yells at you, it’s hard to listen to them. You don’t even absorb what they’re saying. You don’t even try to listen or read. You don’t experience the message that they’re trying to convey. It can’t get past the first filter of like, “This is attacking.”
“Now I’m not even listening to you.”
“You’re accusing me of something. Now you want me to absorb all this other thing. I have three minutes to read this article. It started with accusing me. I’m a human. Now I’m going to be done in three minutes. I may not absorb that message that you were trying to deliver in the same way I would if you said started out with something more pleasant or approachable.”
The hamburger approach, nice little warm bun.
Start nice. Get your message across.
End it.
The compliment sandwich. There is a truth to that. There’s a way of communicating these things. There’s an opportunity to make it better by thinking about this stuff.
That’s what I’m looking forward to, whether that be a naive goal or not. We have so much diversity up on the council right now. We’re representing so much, like working small business owners, three moms up there. We have the most women on the council than ever before, 5 of us, 2 men, long term residents. There’s somebody who works outside the city that brings that breadth of knowledge.
Christine Parra brings a whole other set of knowledge working with OEM in Culver City. The mayor who’s had many terms and experience and legal knowledge. That’s great. We need all of that. Some people work government stuff during the day and some others don’t. That doesn’t mean that anyone earns that spot more than the other. We’re all there for a reason. We should celebrate diversity because we’ll need to tap into those different people with different issues.
Kathleen Rawson and I were talking about this. We forget the celebration. You get used to things quickly and then you move on to the next problem. That’s a hard thing. That’s another human nature thing. The joy of the win doesn’t last long, especially when you’re an adult and you have a real life. There are 1 million problems. Life is figuring out which one to solve next.
That’s true. It’s funny that you said that because I had that moment. I was telling you about a contract. My husband’s like, “We need to celebrate tonight.” I’m like, “This, that.” I thought about it as you said that. We don’t celebrate the little things. We have to sit in the celebration. That includes when it comes to local government. We’ve done a lot of amazing things in Santa Monica. We’re pretty spoiled. I work with a lot of other cities that don’t have a fraction of what we have. We sometimes forget that the conversations we’re having are a luxury, the topics we’re talking about. We have to sit a little bit more in the celebration.
It’s funny you say that. It’s something that’s generally on my mind, too. Once you’re able to even have these types of conversations on these types of topics around community wellbeing, even climate, which is an important one. A lot of my background comes from that. People who are worrying about what meal to put on their table have a hard time worrying about, say, the policy on climate change. As important as it is, there’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
If you’re not involving the person who is trying to put food on the table in the conversation, then you’ll never know what that person’s struggle is and what they need.
You miss a whole group of people who exist in this space and have different levels of needs. They’re part of our community.
They’re the most impacted by a lot of the legislation that goes to the misty middle. I’m in that group. We get hit hardest in terms of, a lot of times tax the most, but then you don’t have access to these things because you’re right outside the cusp, but then you can’t afford it so you can never get here and you stay in this middle space. A lot of times, that’s what creates a lot of what we’re talking about. People get angry and upset because you’re trapped. You can’t get out of this middle space.
The city is fortunate to have you.
Thank you. We’re fortunate to have you.
If you want to leave people with one thing to go home with?
This is going to be super lame and my daughter’s going to make fun of me, but it’s the first thing that came to mind. I love Harry Styles. We went and saw Harry Styles in concert. We’re going to try to see him again. Be kind. Be kind to yourself first because that’ll probably allow you the space to be kind to other people. As simple as it is, be kind. Before you say something, ask yourself, “Is it kind?” If it’s not, maybe you can take a second breath and think about it before you say it. Operating from a space of kindness will get you a lot farther than not. That’s my message.
There you have it. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Lana Negrete
- www.SantaMonicaMusic.com
- The HoneyDew Podcast
- National Association of Music Merchants
- Gleam Davis – past episode
- Phil Brock – past episode
- Kathleen Rawson – past episode