It's no longer 'woke' time in Santa Monica

Standing slumped under an American flag hung from a lamp-post, the clown looked as if he had died inside. The scattered passersby ignored him and his forlorn bucket of balloons. His impassive white face and painted smile hid real thoughts as he stared at the sparse street in front of the closed retail stores. A rainbow-coloured wig and a few half-tied balloon shapes told of an optimistic start to the morning. But now it was past lunchtime and the day had not lived up to his plan - Santa Monica having little interest in his street performance.

My wife and I visited the 'Pearl of the Pacific' back on May 25th and were immediately struck by how empty and ‘off’ the resort felt. In what should have been a bright, busy crowded pedestrian thoroughfare, there were too many closed shops, too few people and a sketchy atmosphere with litter, dirt and decline, which an out-of-tune street karaoke could not dispel. 

Everywhere, there was evidence of people living rough, with not a few of them - who were clearly experiencing mental episodes - wandering the streets. One bare-chested young man holding a stick, aggressively shouted at people near a fountain before drifting down a side street while three young teens ran out of a shop, laughing excitedly having clearly taken something, but nobody followed. The clown watched them disappear from view before slowly sitting down with a mountain dew soda. Time to go.

Some weeks later, on August 31st, a restaurant worker was eating his Sunday lunch at Santa Monica pier when a homeless man ran up behind him and stabbed him multiple times in the back before fleeing. Many of the online messages of support called for the removal of non-local homeless people from Santa Monica and agreed that “We don’t need to allow these people in our community out of a misguided/false sense of compassion”. There was universal consensus that the city had become too dangerous for both residents and tourists, epitomised by the loss of its Nordstrom shop. The retail giant is believed to have closed its clothing store on August 26th because of safety and crime issues in a district “once known as a signature destination for shopping and dining”... and a clown with balloons.

Such attacks are not unique to this city. The shocking video of the killing on August 22nd of Iryna Zarutska as she sat on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, revealed her truly senseless, random and avoidable murder. The suspect has a long history of serious mental illness and criminal violence but had been allowed liberty by authorities while awaiting charges. Donald Trump raged that the young Ukrainian refugee “was slaughtered by a deranged monster” and demanded law and order reform including an end to lenient bail terms to end “this madness”.

Phil Brock recently discussed Iryna’s tragic story. His views on ‘homeless’ crime is from a politician not afraid to speak his mind. While positions on Santa Monica City Council are officially non-partisan, the talent agent and former city mayor resoundingly calls himself a Democrat. Yet, his leftist detractors point to the large number of Republican officials who endorsed his 2024 re-election campaign and his July 2023 appearance on Fox News after he had an altercation with a homeless person on the city promenade.

Brock sees the decline of his beloved Santa Monica as partly due to extreme progressives in such groups as the Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) a powerful, long-standing political organisation in Santa Monica that advocates for tenant protections and affordable housing.

“It is clear who the sellouts are,” Brock appealed to voters in September last year. “The SMRR and pseudo-democratic ticket have sold out our safety and security and allowed the Promenade to deteriorate for almost a decade by being unwilling to own up to the economic disaster that was brewing in our city and reigning in homelessness. 

"It’s no longer 'WOKE' time in the city we love. It is time to have compassionate accountability toward the homeless who inhabit our streets, parks, and alleys. There is no longer time to ignore the needs of our residents and businesses to have a safe environment. Ask yourself if SMRR’s policies have made you safer..."

Brock's online musings on the decline of Santa Monica have garnered much support while he has called out ‘woke’ politicians and officials who he sees as determined to hamstring efforts to revitalise the city, most recently forcing the resignation of popular Chief Batista, while also overseeing the near-bankruptcy of the municipality.

In the latter case, the long failure of city authorities to stop the activities of a child abuser in an outreach programme where police officers and city employees volunteered their time to mentor children has resulted in over 200 young victims at a cost of a staggering $229 million in compensation.

Batista’s resignation reveals a lot about Santa Monica itself. Brock and his supporters may be best represented by Arthur Jeon’s copious and critical letters to local media. The founder of the Compassion Prison Project and co-founder of Global Animal Foundation is passionate in his advocacy for Santa Monica and condemns those who believe that “all these thousands of addicts and criminals need are free needles and a lollipop”. He sees out-of-touch progressives dominating the City council with their “luxury beliefs, because they are not the victims of crime we living near downtown experience”.

Jeon’s most recent letter on August 30th to the Santa Monica Observer (and shared by Brock) claimed that “social justice warriors trying to right every wrong as if they were living in the year 1970” have finally ousted the modernising police chief who had been revitalising the local force from a low morale base—because he wasn’t DEI enough. They tied his hands with false claims of police brutality and ended police patrols as it made some residents “feel uncomfortable”—even as “the city was overrun with criminals, encampments, and people sleeping and defecating on a daily basis…”.

He also sees public transport as having brought these groups from downtown L.A. to the beach. 

“Figure out the train problem with L.A. county so we can stanch the never-ending influx of the criminal, the crazy, and the addicted (nothing will change until you do)”. 

It’s well known that homeless people ride for free on public transport so why wouldn’t they take advantage of the extension of the light rail line to Santa Monica in 2016?

The Democrats run California and effectively run Santa Monica. Thus, these social problems are laid at their door irrespective of what Donald Trump, MAGA or the Republicans get up to elsewhere. The continuous failure to solve issues of poverty, crime, drug use and mental health problems among the vast number of homeless people in Los Angles will only see more people turn to support Trump. 

Irrespective of the merits of progressive policies of the political left, few worry about policing gender pronouns when random acts of murder affect their communities. As Arthur Jeon warns, shaming people into performative ‘woke’ labelling such as using the term “unhoused residents” for homeless people only seeks to further alienate locals, as evidenced by self-identified liberals supporting Republican crime policies on Phil Brock’s Facebook page.

As the sad clown with the rainbow-coloured wig and painted smile in Santa Monica understands, delusional optimism will eventually get a reality check.