For immediate release
14 March 2010
Grievance Hearing for Downtown Neighborhood Council President Who Threatened Art Walk Organizers
WHAT: Grievance Committee hearing on ethics complaint against Russell Brown, President of Downtown LA Neighborhood Council (DLANC)
WHERE: Los Angeles Central Public Library
WHEN: Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 6:30pm
MORE INFO: This Grievance Committee hearing is a public meeting, and all interested members of the community or press are welcome to attend. Additional details will be posted at
http://stepdownrussbrown.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/status-updates/
LOS ANGELES- On Wednesday, March 17, a new era of openness and accountability begins in Downtown Los Angeles. That's the date of the first Grievance Hearing held under new rules in which powerful Downtown L.A. Neighborhood Council board members are no longer permitted to investigate charges against themselves, a policy which has resulted in past grievances being ignored, questionable behavior going uninvestigated and community disenfranchisement.
The March 17 Grievance Hearing concerns Russell Brown, the DLANC President who has been charged with sabotaging the Downtown L.A. Art Walk non-profit through a campaign of false claims against its volunteer board members. Side effects of the original grievance include Russell Brown threatening citizens who question his political activities, and a major shift in DLANC's grievance policy.
This grievance also resulted in the discovery that several past grievances against Russell Brown and DLANC going back to 2005 have disappeared from the files of the Neighborhood Council oversight agency Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) and have been removed from the DLANC website. The missing grievances include serious claims of election fraud, conspiracy, gender-based bullying and harassment and Brown Act violations. All records of how these grievances were resolved are also missing. And since this grievance was filed in January, DONE itself has been absorbed into a separate agency (Department of Community Development) and DONE's General Manager BongHwan Kim has been removed from his position.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE GRIEVANCE: For much of 2009, Richard Schave and Kim Cooper, the couple who are the brains behind Esotouric bus adventures and the newly launched creative consortium LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association), volunteered to transform the wildly popular monthly Downtown Art Walk into a non-profit community organization with an ambitious new program of cultural activities. That ended on November 9, when Richard and Kim resigned in response to months of false claims from Russell Brown. Brown, who has been asked in a local newspaper editorial to resign from one of his two jobs due to ethical conflicts, is President of DLANC (a community service organization serving all local citizens) and Executive Director of the Historic Downtown Business Improvement District (a private landlords organization). With their resignations, Richard and Kim stated they felt they could do more good for the community off the Art Walk board than on it.
On January 22 at 3:40am, Russell Brown sent a disturbing email threatening to bring civil and criminal charges against Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, using the enormous resources of the City Attorney's office. Why? Because Kim filed a formal ethics complaint against Mr. Brown with DONE, the City agency that oversees the Neighborhood Councils, and has been exercising her First Amendment right to criticize Mr. Brown's political activities online. Even more disturbingly, DONE immediately sent Kim Cooper's complaint to Russell Brown, outing a whistleblower and exposing her to threats. Russell Brown's threats are also directed at Richard Schave, who did not file a complaint, but whose wife did.
On February 9, Richard Schave addressed the elected board of DLANC with a message from DONE: the oversight agency recommended that DLANC reject their current grievance policy, in which Russell Brown and his four colleagues on the Executive Committee would investigate the grievance against himself. Instead, DLANC should adopt the new grievance policy which was voted into existence in summer 2009, but which Brown's Executive Committee failed to file with DONE: a random selection of five unbiased board members would investigate. In a unanimous vote, DLANC elected to immediately change their grievance policy, which means no other community member runs the risk of having their grievance provided to the person they are complaining about. (See related video link below - http://vimeo.com/9361300)
The March 17 Grievance Committee hearing represents the first opportunity for Downtown community members to see DLANC President Russell Brown held accountable for his often controversial words and actions, and according to one local newspaper, is believed to have triggered a wave of additional grievance filings. So stay tuned as Downtown L.A. politics gets a breath of fresh air and the Neighborhood Council system begins to grow up.
Kim Cooper and Richard Schave are available for interviews. Contact Kim at amscrayATgmailDOTcom, 323-223-2767.
"RUSSELL BROWN SHOULD RESIGN" PETITION LINK - http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stepdownrussbrown
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS LINK - http://stepdownrussbrown.wordpress.com
