Petition of Mayor Robert Garcia’s Recall is Ready to Sign

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The petition to recall Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia is here. The campaign’s launch was celebrated on Sunday, starting with a march and ending at City Hall, where the petition was signed for the first time.

The following day, Garcia announced the death of his mother, Gabriella O’Donnell, due to complications from coronavirus.

“My brother and I are heartbroken. Our mother was the kindest and most compassionate person we’ve ever known,” Garcia tweeted on Monday.

The announcement put an immediate halt on the campaign’s promotion out of empathy for the mayor’s loss. Franklin Sims, one of the creators of LB Strong, which is leading the campaign against Garcia, asked supporters to also show compassion as a global pandemic and the fight for equality loom over the nation.

Sims noted Monday that the right thing to do is to come together as a city to support the mayor, even if residents may disagree with his policies, “It shows that we have to come together and really be there for one another even when we disagree. This is how we show that Long Beach is a different city, it is a different place.

Supporters march towards City Hall to sign the petition. Photo by Brigid McLaughlin.

“I get it, there are people out there who are residents of Long Beach who have lost family members and people that they love to injustices like police violence, none of that goes away because we’re showing love to our brother,” said Sims when addressing the mayor’s loss.

But the recall efforts won’t be postponed, and LB Strong is proceeding to help grant change in the city to those who want it. Pressure to defund the Long Beach Police Department has risen following the death of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, causing some residents to push for the recall of Garcia, instead of asking for reform.

Tomisin Oluwole
Dine with Me, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 inches

Click here to check out our interview with Tomisin Oluwole, a literary and visual artist based in Long Beach.

Instead of gunking up our site with ads, we use this space to display and promote the work of local artists.

A few people line up to sign the petition for the first time. Photo by Brigid McLaughlin.

Currently under construction or approved by City Council: a new Olympic-size pool in Belmont Shores, a few state-of-the-art beachside concession stands, and a rising number of high-rises. Gentrification as a result of the new construction has left many residents who rent struggling for their rights, causing those pushing for Garcia’s ouster to question where his priorities lie.

In response to the petition, Garcia reputed his administration has worked to bring down crime, and reduce officer-involved shootings and use of force. He also claims to have “built and planned 4,000 new affordable and working-class homes across the city.”

Supporters of the recall lined up at Long Beach City Hall Sunday where Sims said, instead of a career politician, “The ideal mayor for Long Beach reflects our community and the principles that they are asking for now. Someone who’s going to stop gentrifying, someone who is not going to protect bad police officers.

Tia Turner, founder of Caravan 4 Justice, speaking at the recall launch. Photo by Brigid McLaughlin.

Sims’ proposal to recall Garcia gets straight to the point—creating a platform for new leadership by taking Garcia’s title away altogether. “By raising the bar for Mayor Garcia, essentially, you raise the bar for all of council. This is about accountability. Recalling the mayor is about accountability,” Sims said at the event on Sunday.

LB Strong’s campaign is based on using registered voters to fight back and clean the slate: “I want to inspire the leaders to come out of Long Beach and say hey, now you can run for office,” says Sims. By signing the petition, residents of Long Beach who are able to vote, and who are over 18, can establish a long-term change in leadership instead of holding out hope for eventual reform to the mayor’s policies.

To print and sign the petition for Mayor Garcia’s recall, visit: moveourcity.org.

Franklin Sims entertains the crowd at Sunday's recall launch. Photo by Brigid McLaughlin.

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[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.

The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.

More on them later.

And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?

I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.

It’s like Lenin said, you know…

Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.

I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.

That is just its “ideology.”

The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.

This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.

If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”

“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”

This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.

This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:

(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system

Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5

This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.

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