The angriest, most paranoid people I have met here in Silver Lake happen to be the ringleaders of Neighborhood Watch. (All but one of them got voted OFF the SL Neighborhood Council in April.) While NW purports to promote safety by getting to know ones neighbors, not a single participant has ever invited us to a meeting, has invited us to their homes. Their meetings are secret; they do not publicize the dates or locations. Many months ago, two friends here in SL asked our areas LAPD senior lead officer to add them to NWs email distribution list, and then have never been contacted by NW. (Both are known to the NW ringleaders.) Tonight is NWs big annual shindig National Night Out. On Saturday, a promotional flier was attached to our front door. It read in part, To offer any level of involvement ... please contact Paul at pmneuman@yahoo, 323 662 3123. When the SLNC Outreach Committee wrote NW ringleader (and recently ousted SLNC board member) Paul Neuman to request a table, this is what he wrote: Since the start of the neighborhood watch and certainly including while I was on the SLNC board -- I chose quite deliberately to keep the SLNC and the neighborhood watch separate, and did so on a pretty consistent basis. I had my reasons, including that they each deserve their own separate voice and harm can be done by confusing those voices. I will note that last year, I told one group, not the SLNC, that they couldnt collect signatures on a petition, simply because the nature of that cause (with which I had no conflict, personally), if promoted at our event, would have caused confusion as to what the neighborhood council chooses to support, or not. And we have the right and the responsibility to make that call: National Night Out events are events traditionally sponsored by neighborhood watch programs across the nation, and not neighborhood councils, and the event tonight is on private property, not public property. The Northeast Silver Lake Neighborhood Watch, which is presenting this event, has not said the SLNC could set up a table. Indeed, I am stunned that the SLNC has not bothered to even ask. In my decades of working at community events,I simply can never remember, not even once, anyone, ever, having the presumption to believe they can just walk into an event being put on by somebody else, and set up a table, without asking permission. The SLNC doing this now, essentially barging into an event where others did the work, and doing so without first asking, strikes me as being the heights of arrogance and presumption, and would bring to this event a sense of entitlement, and NOT a spirit of community. You are quite welcome, very very welcome, as is everybody, to come as individuals and eat, enjoy the music, and talk with others -- but you are NOT welcome to set up a table. Where I create safety and find refuge in getting to know my neighbors is via the Silver Lake Time Bank. I do not WATCH my neighbors, I COMMUNE with them, as one of our members famously said recently.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 18:13:57 +0000