Thursday Anaheim Democrats Meeting with the Amazing Grace Stepter!

Anaheim Democrats Club General Meeting & Celebration

THURSDAY Nov. 2, 7:00 P.M.

Unitarian Church, 511 S. Harbor

(Zoom link available on request to: President@anaheimdems.org)

Hello Anaheim Democrats!  Don’t miss this Thursday’s November General Meeting, where our (main) topic will be HOUSING IN ANAHEIM, and our special guest will be the Amazing Grace Stepter! 

“The Amazing who?” you say?  GRACE STEPTER is Anaheim’s Director of Housing Projects, where, according to Dr. Moreno, she has been doing an amazingly good (and unheralded) job, given the constraints of having to work under Mayors, Councils and City Managers who prioritize the desires of deep-pocketed DEVELOPERS who prefer to provide NO affordable housing.

Fans of the JL Report will remember Ms Stepter as the brave outspoken city employee who described (her boss) City Manager Vanderpool as “a chameleon” who would do anything Mayor Sidhu wanted, and memorably said (of favored developers getting whatever they want) “If you have an ounce of integrity it makes your blood boil.”

We have a lot of questions for Ms Stepter about affordable housing in Anaheim and how we can get more.  And the Club also believes we should treat good, hard-working, honest City Employees with the same respect as our POLITICIANS.  So please come Thursday and meet, celebrate, and learn from Grace Stepter! 

Relatedly…

We will have our first report and discussion on Disneyland Forward, Disney’s plan for Anaheim’s future these next few decades.  Mike, Jeanine and Vern have been meeting with company representatives and have some information to share with the Club.  “Relatedly” Disney is firmly planning to provide NO NEW HOUSING and no new help with housing, despite their plans including 14,000 new employees.  (link) Show up Thursday to learn more, and to find out if there’s anything we can do about this! 

Wrapping up our guest speakers, we will also welcome…

…Jeffrey Cardenas, the DPOC’s new organizing director.  He’ll have a lot of things to tell us and we’ll have questions for him, and he’ll probably tell us that WE NEED TO COME UP WITH GOOD CANDIDATES for council and school boards next year, otherwise the County Party will recruit some themselves.  We do try to maintain a good, mutually respectful relationship with the Mother Ship.

And did we say…

CELEBRATION?

YES!  We have at least three new things to celebrate, aside from the fact that the Charter School in Cecilia’s neighborhood gave up on its appeal and the Cove Church is going to be sold to those nice Pentecostal Latino folks…

  • Last week the California Supreme Court ruled that Disney IS bound by Measure L’s Living Wage Law that so many of us fought for five years ago, and Disney’s been fighting – so now the company will have to pay TENS OF MILLIONS in back wages and interest to over 25,000 hourly employees – maybe with that windfall they’ll be able to afford HOUSING IN ANAHEIM!  (See what we did there?)
  • Looks like The BAD Recall – the one in Santa Ana of the great progressive Mayor Pro Tem Jessie Lopez, hatched by the corrupt police union in that town – AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN AFTER ALL, and funny story there, you’ll have to hear it.
  • Then there’s a GOOD RECALL, in the Orange Unified School District (which includes Anaheim Hills) – that recall of two far-right culture warriors got enough signatures to proceed to an election in March, and what a good job the organizers of that Recall did!  One of them is going to come and talk about it a little, right, one more guest speaker, welcome ALEX BREWSAUGH!

Finally, just like last month, we have a Zoom option (thanks to our tech whiz Daisy and the DPOC’s Jeffrey) but you have a difficult choice – if you don’t come in person, you will miss out not only on seeing our smiling faces but also on the SPAGHETTI and other great food to be announced, prepared by our President and Master Chef Kenneth Batiste. If you MUST attend by Zoom, e-mail president@anaheimdems.org for the link.

But, again:

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About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.