Peaceful Creative COVID Protest Parks U-Haul Trucks Outside Three ELB Council Incumbents' Homes To Send Message: Take Action To Support LB Businesses...Or Leave

+ Peaceful Creative COVID Protest Parks U-Haul Trucks Outside Three ELB Council Incumbents' Homes To Send Message: Take Action To Support LB Businesses...Or Leave

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(November 29, 2020, 7:10 a.m.) -- LBREPORT.com has learned that roughly a dozen area taxpayers turned out on Thanksgiving Day for a peaceful protest that sent a visible message to LB's three ELB Councilmembers: Suzie Price, Daryl Supernaw and Stacy Mungo. The taxpayers rented U-Haul trucks and lawfully parked them outside the three incumbents' homes for two days to send the message: take action to support businesses or pack your bags and leave.

In a release, Matt Fleischmann & Tony Nieri say it was "an economical yet humorous way to send a very serious message: 'Stand up for business and against the lockdowns, or move out!' We will pay for the moving trucks."

[Release text] Put together in less than 48 hours, our attempt to bring attention and levity to a very serious situation resonated online. A dozen folks showed up on short notice during Thanksgiving evening. We ate dinner on the parkways, danced, and passed the microphone between bites. Statements were civil, logical, and humorous at times. We wanted people to share their ideas and encourage them to do the right thing and save our dying businesses.
We plan to grow support and grow our presence as we continue to oppose the County of Los Angeles’s and Long Beach Health Department’s decision to close outdoor dining and instituting a curfew without data that demonstrates transmissions at outdoor dining establishments. We want the Long Beach Health Officer to look at logical alternatives. We plan to visit more electeds in the coming weeks but started with the three councilmembers we believe have supported and listened to servers, cooks and restaurant owners who are working to stay open.
Councilwoman Mungo was the only one who came out and talked with us after our presentation. She listened to some of our ideas and discussed the work her and her colleagues have done in partnership with the Restaurant Association and other groups who are fighting alongside her to provide solutions. She agreed, more must be done.
Everyone has their style and way of asking for change. We would have preferred to make our case at a Council meeting but the timing of this new Health Order didn’t allow us that opportunity for several weeks. We needed to act now. People can’t survive three weeks without income and without their freedoms to run a business. We needed to voice our ideas and goals.
Hosting our mini-outdoor dining Thanksgiving on short notice, we knew attendance wouldn’t be huge, but it represented the start of more clever, humorous, and outside the box style of confronting a Health Order that is throwing the baby out with the bath water. We are a passionate group that wants to join with others that want to make change.

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As previously reported by LBREPORT.com (here and here), the City Council hasn't met on any matter(s) since November 17 when it voted 8-0 (with Price absent and Mungo joining her colleagues in voting "yes") to cancel their Dec. 1 meeting. They had previously voted 9-0 to cancel their Nov. 3 (election day) and Nov. 10 (after election) meetings (while collecting their full pay in the interim.)

The Council now isn't scheduled to meet until Dec. 8 despite a pending LB management announced change to make publicly unspecified changes to LB's current COVID Health Order (that may or may not parallel changes announced by the LA County Dept. of Public Health.)

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The Council can meet on any date on 24 hours notice in a special meeting on a single topic if five Councilmembers agree to do so. Despite controversy over the LB Health Officer's ban (effective Nov. 25) on outside restaurant dining, no Council incumbent has moved publicly to do so.

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Messrs. Fleischmann and Nieri say in their release that their "next round" will "focus on three different council members."

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Support really independent news in Long Beach. No one in LBREPORT.com's ownership, reporting or editorial decision-making has ties to development interests, advocacy groups or other special interests; or is seeking or receiving benefits of City development-related decisions; or holds a City Hall appointive position; or has contributed sums to political campaigns for Long Beach incumbents or challengers. LBREPORT.com isn't part of an out of town corporate cluster and no one its ownership, editorial or publishing decisionmaking has been part of the governing board of any City government body or other entity on whose policies we report. LBREPORT.com is reader and advertiser supported. You can help keep really independent news in LB similar to the way people support NPR and PBS stations. We're not non-profit so it's not tax deductible but $49.95 (less than an annual dollar a week) helps keep us online.

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