Recall Mayor Garcia? A Q&A with Recall Organizer Franklin Sims
26 minute readProtests against racism and police violence nationwide have spread to Long Beach and, over the last month, expanded into a grassroots campaign to recall Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia.
I recently had the chance to talk with one of the organizers of the recall effort, Franklin Sims. Then, last Tuesday, I caught up with him again outside City Hall. Around 50 people—mainly young folks in their 20s—had joined Sims to continue the protests against Garcia.
You can follow along with the recall campaign yourself on Instagram, @lb.strong, and YouTube. Their upcoming events include a benefit concert on July 4.
Sims informed me that the notice to recall Garcia will be served today. From there, it will take a few weeks for the California Secretary of State to approve the notice for circulation, after which the group will have 160 days to collect the required signatures.
What follows are some highlights from our conversation, along with a series of photos from the Tuesday protest.
"And that is the power of the global movement of BLM. Everybody’s reimagining what this is supposed to look like."
"And that is the power of the global movement of BLM. Everybody’s reimagining what this is supposed to look like."
Andrew Carroll: Well, first off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Franklin Sims: I’ve been here in this community since I was in middle school. I went to Stanford, I left for a little while when I went to law school at Berkeley. Then I came back, and that’s all. Got my feet wet doing local politics fighting the Mayor over the first Measure A.
And I was really talking about the same things then that I’m talking about now. The issue with Measure A then was, I felt like the Mayor wasn’t being transparent with voters. I felt like the tax increase was disproportionately gonna impact poor people of color, and that’s exactly what it did.
He also wasn’t honest, because he said that he was gonna make sure the tax sunset—that it would be temporary, basically. And lo and behold, two years later, it’s back on the ballot and he wants it not to sunset. And right now that’s in litigation. That’s another local topic, but that kinda brought me back into the fold with a little more fire in my belly.
Andrew: And what went into the decision, that maybe a recall campaign was a good idea?
Franklin: There’s this group called People of Long Beach, [co-founded] by Carlos Ovalle. We were trying to figure out what we wanted our response to be. Actually, me and Carlos were both looking for leadership, but we were out there protesting with everyone else. So we were thinking about next steps. What we found was that, among local activists, they were upset, and so were their supporters, but they really didn’t have a next step. And the reason they didn’t is because people in Long Beach, there’s a lot of voter apathy.
So all this new energy that came with Black Lives Matter, there was no local that understood, that knew the history and understood the politics, understood the players, so that they could direct and channel that energy into direct action. Once I realized that the reason there was no direct action is because the people who were engaged—the Millennials, Generation X—they had been too far outside the game, that they didn’t know who the players were.
That’s when I said, “Oh shit, I gotta step up.” I gotta get out of my bubble, I gotta get out of myself, and go to the people and be like, “Hey, you guys, I’ve been in the chambers before, I’ve fought the Mayor before, I’ve had it out with city councilmembers before, and this is how this works.”
Andrew: That reminds me of Garcia’s last election, because he ran in 2018, as you know, he ran more-or-less unopposed. Henk Conn ran against him, got a couple thousand votes. What do you think has changed since that time? Do you think people are more engaged now? Because obviously Henk’s campaign got almost no media attention. It got no buzz. Garcia even refused to debate the guy, you know, so what’s changed I guess in the last two years?
Franklin: I don’t think anything’s changed in the last two years. I think something’s changed in the last two weeks.
What’s changed is that we have a Brown mayor, who is also a member of another minority group, within the LGBTQ community, and he has not responded in a way that seems consistent. He has not seemed empathetic, compared with what most people in this town would have done. And I think that really bothers people to the core.
The way I put it is that Garcia gave us a Trump response. But he didn’t run as a Trump, he ran as an honest, gay Latino. You know, he checked a lot of boxes, and he was youthful. But when we saw him respond in almost no different of a fashion than we saw President Trump respond, by retreating into a bunker… That’s what Garcia did, he retreated into a bunker. No one heard from him for days. And it wasn’t until people started trolling him on social media that he finally came back.
So it was just his lack of empathy, and his lack of responsiveness. He didn’t see the moral challenge of the day.
"I don't think anything’s changed in the last two years. I think something’s changed in the last two weeks."
"I don't think anything’s changed in the last two years. I think something’s changed in the last two weeks."
Andrew: Do you think this recall campaign has a chance to get Garcia to come out of his “bunker,” so to speak?
Franklin: I’ve done it before and I know how to do it. When I ran against Garcia on Measure A, I was nobody. I was just a regular Black kid. And, you know, I had no political office. But I actually ended up, I managed to become the face of the opposition against the Mayor and Measure A, and I brought him out using social media. And that’s what I’m doing now.
I created these videos of the Mayor, and they were critical, but they trimmed it, and, consequently, the Mayor used the press to delete my video from YouTube. Ended up actually shutting down my YouTube channel, claiming copyright infringement. The pictures in the video were from the newspaper. Well, his lawyer synced up with the newspaper, and so the newspaper said, “Hey, we contacted YouTube because the individual in those photos, those images belong to him. They are his private property.”
So, literally, like, you can bring out the Mayor, and I’ve done it. And you do it through social media. In the same way he erases Twitter posts, and Instagram posts, that’s where he’s vulnerable. So, you know, I know how to shake that cage.
Andrew: I guess that leads me to want to ask what are some of the very specific criticisms of the Mayor that you have? Just some of the specific criticisms that led you to believe that, you know, a recall is something that should be on the table.
Franklin: Alright. What we’re dealing with in Long Beach is a crisis, a crisis of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In terms of diversity, we can look at the police, and the issue is that, the Mayor’s financial relationship with the Long Beach Police Officers Association undermines his ability to protect locals, and it’s having a disproportionate impact on Black and Brown locals.
There was a police officer, Anton Fischer, he died in a car accident. The Mayor sent out condolences, as he should. But the problem is, if you have a Black kid that’s shot, the Mayor doesn’t send out condolences. When we look at that, we say why is it? And we only need to go as far as his campaign contributions.
And I’ll give you an example of inclusion. So Long Beach has a lot of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars from the Tidelands [Fund], which is cool, because that’s a financial resource for us, right? And it helps our city. But the problem is the inequity. The Mayor takes those funds, and he’s always sure to put them in the hands of the Whites, in predominantly White, wealthy, affluent communities in Long Beach, to the exclusion of communities of color.
The best example of that is the Belmont Pool. The Mayor essentially created a Whites Only pool. He has placed the pool in the corner of the community. Millions of dollars is being spent on this pool, and the money’s coming from the tidelands, which is a part of Long Beach. The tidelands doesn’t belong to Whites, it belongs to all of Long Beach. But instead the Mayor doesn’t distribute those funds, he allocates those funds only to Belmont Shore.
A Black kid on the west side or in the Ninth District, they’re not gonna be able to swim in that pool. But Councilmember [Suzie] Price’s kid can. The tidelands money is gonna be used to make a junior lifeguards station, servicing White kids. But what about the Black kids that wanna swim?
So there have been people from the tidelands who were like, “Hey, maybe we should put this in the First District, right? Where people don’t have pools, and the parents have lower income.” And the Mayor doesn’t want to put it there.
And when Rex Richardson talks about a tale of two cities, you know, that’s one thing that me and Rex actually agree on. We don’t agree on a lot, but there is a tale of two cities. But Rex needs to tell the rest of that story. He’s not going to tell the rest of that story because, you know, he might ruffle a few feathers, but I don’t have anything to lose.
But we also have to talk about environmental injustice. Things like the reconciliation… reconciliation can only happen when you have inclusion. It’s not only that minorities are victims of police brutality and of a justice system that won’t hold police accountable because the Mayor’s got his hands in the cookie jar. But there’s also this distribution of funds and inequity that persists across the board, whether we’re talking about a swimming pool, or we’re talking about the air that we breathe, and the chemicals that are in it.
And this Mayor will not stand up for the people that he’s supposed to represent. And that’s why he deserves to be recalled. It’s not because, you know, he didn’t take a knee soon enough. It’s because this is just the last straw.
Andrew: And these are the kinds of connections that need to be drawn?
Franklin: And now’s the time to do it. Because Black Lives Matter has brought up these issues of inequity. And, you know, the thing is like, Long Beach is not South Central, right. So, you know, it’s a beach city, but there is an undercurrent of established racism here, but it’s subtle. But people don’t know these things. So we gotta talk about it.
"And that’s why he deserves to be recalled. It’s not because, you know, he didn’t take a knee soon enough. It’s because this is just the last straw."
"And that’s why he deserves to be recalled. It’s not because, you know, he didn’t take a knee soon enough. It’s because this is just the last straw."
Andrew: I was gonna ask, too, since you’ve been receiving 200 word responses about why folks want to recall the Mayor. Have you received any interesting ones? Or what sorts of responses have you received so far?
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Franklin: You know, most people are being thoughtful. And they’re not just referring to what’s been happening recently. They’re actually taking a step back and looking at the big picture. And I thought that was really interesting, because, you know, I was really afraid to give this sort of homework assignment. Because, hey, most people don’t like to write, so I’m really not going to get much feedback here. But right now, we have like 30 responses that people wrote. And only one of them was three words. One guy wrote, “He’s a fraud.” (laughing)
But there was another one that really struck me. And I was proud when I read it because it really showed that, like, people are giving this a lot of thought, and they’re not just having an emotional reaction. And so this person wrote it, right:
“The city of Long Beach can afford at least $30.3 million on litigation-related police misconduct, but it can’t afford to open the main library on Sundays and Mondays. In 2017, the Library Services Director Glenda Willie said she wishes there was a budget for every library to open seven days a week and for longer hours, but the library budget has been flat since 2009. This is a city where one out of six residents has no internet access at home. In the same in the same time period, the LBPD budget has increased by about $50 million since 2011, citing the Long Beach Business Journal. Besides the city budget, the city of Long Beach has failed to cooperate with the Senate Bill 1421, effective January 1 2019, which mandates transparency for police records. A week before SB 1420 went into effect…”
See what I mean? Like some thought went into that? Yah, and that’s what I’ve been loving about the responses.
Andrew: So, you’ve talked about apathy and now you’ve mentioned a little bit of homework assignments, and people had to respond. And a recall campaign would probably take a lot of similar action from people for over a sustained period of time.
Franklin: Yep.
Andrew: So were you planning on running a traditional campaign with this? I mean, is there going to be door-to-door canvassing or phone calls? Are you just kind of imagining more of an information campaign and sort of build up momentum towards something else, or what were you thinking?
Franklin: It’s not going to be traditional at all. I’m not dealing with traditional support, right? The people that I’m interfacing with, these guys are Millennials, they’re Generation X, right? So I’m coming to the people where the people are. And so we’re not doing that whole thing, we’re not doing phone calls. This is a straight up local grassroots effort. We’re literally gonna throw parties. We’re gonna make it fun. And the way that I present this is not just information. I present it, and package it “Long Beach.”
So when I made the announcement that we were recalling the Mayor, we had a punk band in front of City Hall, right? Because that’s Long Beach, you know. We’re having events with skaters, because that’s Long Beach. So it’s not going to be traditional at all.
And the other thing is, we’re not paying canvassers. Like most of the time, they pay professional canvassers to get the signatures. But, no, that’s not gonna work. What we’re doing is educating an electorate. Many of them haven’t voted before. And you can’t engage an electorate that hasn’t voted before without building personal relationships. So what I’m doing is I’m talking to people, engaging with them, meeting them where they are. Our volunteers, they come on, and they’re telling me what they’re interests are, what they like to do, and then we’re creating a campaign based on the actual people’s interests.
So if someone comes to me and they’re like, “Dude, I’m an artist.” I say, okay, cool, we need some political satire cartoons, and we’re gonna put ‘em on t-shirts. Whereas a normal campaign, they would send out mailers or whatever. Nah, fuck a mailer, man. Put it on these t-shirts, so when people are at the grocery store, and they’re walking around Long Beach, they see this art that communicates the message. That’s how you reach people. And it takes it outside of politics, and brings it back to the people.
So, no, it’s not gonna be a campaign like they’ve seen before.
"So, no, it’s not gonna be a campaign like they’ve seen before."
"So, no, it’s not gonna be a campaign like they’ve seen before."
Andrew: So do you know what it would take, how many signatures do you need, what would a timeframe look like?
Franklin: Okay, so you take the number of registered voters in the last election for the Mayor, which was like over 255,000 voters. Now, these people didn’t come out and vote, and that doesn’t matter. It’s not based on who voted, it’s based on who was registered at the last election.
According to the city charter, and the state, it requires 10% of that number, that’s the amount of signatures. So basically, I need just over 26,000 signatures. After the recall is certified, that has to be accomplished within 160 days. We’ll have to get those signatures within a certain amount of time.
After that, once I get those signatures, I submit them. It’s a good idea to outpush them there, so I’m looking at around 30,000, 35,000 signatures. Then they count them, and we move to a special election.
Andrew: Thanks for that. Because I remember, and you’re probably familiar too, with the attempt to recall [Second District Councilmember] Jeannine Pearce. It didn’t pass. They had some problems because some of the signatures were coming from not her district, which didn’t count. But also what you brought up too, because that campaign was professionally done, they had money, hotel backing, they paid professional canvassers, they hired a company.
Franklin: Exactly. You pay for what, man? You pay somebody to do that, they’re just making the money, right? That’s why I’m not doing that. I’m making sure that people are personally invested. I’ve got kids on skateboards going to their parents and their family, right? We’ve got people who are personally invested. And that’s what makes it different. That’s listening. The Mayor doesn’t know how to do that.
And a lot of people say, “Why are you going after the Mayor? Why don’t you go after [Police Chief Robert] Luna, or the city manager?” And what people didn’t understand is that the Mayor is actually vulnerable.
People don’t see him as vulnerable, but one of his vulnerabilities in this historical moment is just that every liberal politician—and I don’t believe he’s actually liberal—but every liberal politician is having to now navigate the terrain of, “Oh my gosh, I’ve taken so much money from police my entire career. That’s part of the playbook. What am I gonna do now?”
They all have to reckon that. So if I make the issue his corruption, and he’s got to turn in financials, well he is going to show financially, that he’s corrupt. Which only reinforces, which should only invigorate the people on the ground that are saying, “This guy’s gotta be recalled.”
But the beauty is this. He could change his fate, if he changed his ways. He could just simply stop taking the money. And then he would kill my argument that he’s corrupt. He could have a change of heart. So either way the people win.
Andrew: And you touched on something that I’ve always been fascinated by, which is this seems to be how Long Beach politics is run, is that it’s a squeaky clean liberal city, but it’s really not that liberal. Do you want to talk a little more about that? I mean, it’s an interesting observation to me.
Franklin: The irony is that here I am asking, and a lot of people are asking, it’s not just that, “Oh, we want our police to be held accountable,” the voters have to be held accountable too, in the sense that they have to have the gall, the conviction, to say, “Hey, I’m gonna hold my politician accountable, even if he’s on my side of the aisle.”
So it’s not a question in Long Beach of red or blue. It’s a question of integrity. And the issue is that, when you are in office, will you sell out? The issue is that, you don’t lie to people, you don’t hide records. You don’t get in cahoots with the city attorney, and any time the public asks for public records from the police, you always have a reason to stonewall it. You don’t do that. You don’t tell people you wanna raise their taxes temporarily to fix infrastructure, and then leave them with potholes and increase the salaries of police officers who paid for your campaign. You just don’t do that. It’s an integrity issue.
The issue to many is that, this is a blue town, and so they’re being bought out by big oil, big real estate, and the police. And the question is, can we elect officials with enough integrity to say, “My political career cannot be at the expense of the people I serve.”
Andrew: I like what you said about the big three: big oil, big real estate, and the police. Those seem to be the financial interests that run this city.
Franklin: And that is the inequity, and the lack of diversity, and the lack of inclusion, they all surround those things. When we talk about the tidelands, what are we talking about? We’re talking about big oil and real estate. And so there’s tons of money there, right? Millions of dollars. And those millions of dollars are being used by the Mayor for his pet projects. And it just so happens that most of his pet projects benefit the wealthy, White, affluent part of Long Beach.
"It’s not a question in Long Beach of red or blue. It’s a question of integrity."
"It’s not a question in Long Beach of red or blue. It’s a question of integrity."
Andrew: I noticed when the Measure A signs were going up saying, “Your Measure A funds at work,” a lot of those signs were in Belmont Shore. I didn’t notice them, like Second Street looks gorgeous, but I didn’t notice those Measure A signs going up anywhere else.
Franklin: (laughing) This is what it means. You know, it’s just a fact. That’s just what’s going on.
And what’s happened, this summer of unrest, is a golden opportunity, because you have an electorate that has never used its power to elect. This is the way I put it. In Long Beach, there’s a selection process before there’s an election. And [former Mayors] Bob Foster and Beverly O’Neill, they select who’s going to be in power, and they selected Robert Garcia. And after they selected him, we then had the chance to elect.
Well, the difference now is, if Mayor Garcia is recalled, this will be one of the first times in Long Beach’s recent history that the selection of the candidate has not preceded the election. And we have the power to do that because of this new electorate that I am trying to register to vote.
Andrew: On that point, there are a few other forces in the city that are opposed to Garcia, and are moderately powerful. Do you expect any collaboration? Maybe they’re not politically on your side for the most part, but they might still sign on to a recall campaign.
Franklin: Well, I’m in a unique position, because I live on the east side. I don’t have any Black neighbors. I am surrounded by White neighbors. So yes, we have some White allies. I have support coming from sides who don’t ordinarily talk to one another, and don’t live among each other, but on the issue of recalling the Mayor, they can all agree.
And that is the power of the global movement of BLM. Everybody’s reimagining what this is supposed to look like.
andrew@forthe.org
