A Silver Lining for the Help Group and Culver City

Carlene Brown

On Wednesday evening, June 20^th, I went to the Culver City Planning Commission meeting to offer Public Comment in support of The Help Group, a non-profit school who had requested a Conditional Use Permit Modification to accommodate an additional 200 students at their 400 –student site on Washington Blvd. between Inglewood and Grandview.

I deliberately wore a pair of designer sandals I had purchased at the Help Group’s Silver Lining Resale Boutique & Vocational Training Center, the first resale store of its kind providing vocational training and competitive employment opportunities to young adults with autism or other special needs.

What an exciting opportunity for Culver City to put themselves on the map as supporters of expanding such a state-of-the-art educational facility! I intended to convince the Planning Commission of just that.

But before I could offer my Public Comment, a written comment from former Mayor Alan Corlin stung my ears as it was read aloud. Corlin raised the question as to whether The Help Group is a “value added” to Culver City. Corlin disparaged The Help Group’s Silver Lining boutique because “it is of no benefit to Culver City’s coffers.” He then had the audacity to add that “non-profit organizations stifle economic growth!"

Immediately following Corlin’s diatribe, I charged up to the podium on my white horse. After offering my credentials as a passionate professional educator, I announced, “I am proudly wearing designer sandals that I purchased at The Help Group’s Silver Lining boutique, and that school is definitely ‘added value’ for Culver City!”

I told Planning Commission members of the wonderful tour I had been given by Nata Preis, head of one of two schools on campus. “She was so accommodating to Sylvester Street residents who registered complaints about outdoor graduation noise,” I said, “that she planned an indoor graduation ceremony for her school.” I wanted to ask if any Commissioners had visited the school, but out of respect, I refrained.

Congratulating the Planning Commission for re-considering their earlier decision to reject the Help Group’s application, I shared a commencement address quote from Paul Hawken: “Inspiration resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress . . . and reconsider. . . . The living world is not ‘out there’ somewhere, but in your heart.”

I held up photos of The Help Group’s 2011 ribbon-cutting ceremony in Sherman Oaks, with the tagline: “AUTISM CENTER OPENS NEW DOORS OF HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY.” Mayor Antonio Villariagosa and several LA City Council members co-hosted the event and offered words of praise and support. “That is the ribbon-cutting ceremony picture I want to see with the Culver City Mayor and City Council members,” I said. “I hope this Planning Commission wants to see that, too. And remember, ‘The living world is not out there somewhere, but in your heart.’”

The Commission did not see what I saw, however, and chose to deny The Help Group’s application for Conditional Use Permit Modification on a 3-2 vote. Commissioner Marcus Tiggs moved to approve the application, and Chairman Anthony Pleskow seconded the motion. The move to adopt a denial resolution was led by Commissioner John Kuechle, whose opening arguments echoed the free-market, heartless sentiments of Alan Corlin.  Though Kuechle’s arguments were expressed less blatantly, they were circuitous, petty, and devoid of real critical thought. Vice Chair Scott Wyant joined Kuechle in knit-picking the report given by Dr. Barbara Firestone, President and CEO of The Help Group. Wyant questioned my assessment that the Help Group staff was working hard to “accommodate” Sylvester Street neighbors. This tone of disrespect toward educators was familiar to me—the same energy I had felt in school board rooms where I given presentations about cutting-edge teaching methods and assessment tools.

The deniers’ line of argument demonstrates what cultural studies professor Henry Giroux refers to as “the ideology of the big lie. . . [that] propagates the myth that the free-market system is the only mechanism to ensure human freedom and safeguard democracy.” Giroux further asserts, in his Op-Ed piece published in Truthout, June 19, 2012, that “Getting beyond the big lie is a precondition for critical thought, civic engagement and a more realized democracy.”

The deniers do not want to get beyond the “ideology of the big lie” to learn the great “value added” that expansion of The Help Group can bring to Culver City, but Progressives do. Progressives value the information I gleaned from the promotional materials I requested—that The Help Group, founded in 1975, is “the largest, most innovative and comprehensive nonprofit of its kind in the United States serving children with special needs related to autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, ADHD, developmental delays, abuse and emotional problems.”

Specialized day schools on six campuses in the Los Angeles area offer pre-K through high school programs for more than 1,350 students, employing more than 850 staff members.  

The good news is that The Help Group will appeal the Planning Commission’s denial of their application to add 200 students to the Culver City campus, which will then place the decision in the hands of our City Council. A large network of Progressives who organized to elect Jim Clark and Meghan Sahli-Wells to City Council can now organize civic engagement on this issue, calling forth informed Public Comment in support of The Help Group and calling forth “a more realized democracy.”

The Help Group’s Silver Lining involves much more than a designer resale boutique!  

Carlene Brown is a retired teacher who is currently writing a memoir and a Certified Life Coach.