Crude emails reveal nasty side of a California beach city’s crusade to halt growth
LA TimesRedondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand is photographed next to the AES Power Plant in Redondo Beach in 2019. One post used an image of a hooded and masked rioter lighting stores on fire in Chile to ask whether residents would want McKenzie’s “Oakland-based style of protest” in Redondo Beach. “It is not something that is rare for them.” Tonya McKenzie, shown at the Redondo Beach waterfront, said the offensive emails sent by the city’s top leaders are “their way of mocking minority groups among themselves when they think no one is listening. John Heath, who runs a nonprofit affordable housing management company in South Los Angeles and is working on the statewide initiative with Brand, called the Redondo Beach mayor “the most upstanding, committed public servant I’ve ever met” and said Brand is dedicated to combating gentrification, displacement and other harms of runaway development in communities of color. In a recent NBC News story about the plan, Councilmember Todd Loewenstein, a Brand ally, said that Redondo Beach was “already full” and that affordable housing belonged inland.
Discover Related
