|
Thank you to those who joined us for the June edition of our annual Summer Movies in the Park series. This month's newsletter cover photo (above) features SONC board and committee members who helped put on the show (it was Toy Story!), as well as staff from Assemblymember Nick Schultz's office (not pictured was Assemblymember Shultz, who himself attended and spoke to the crowd before the movie began). We look forward to seeing you July 26 for The Wild Robot!
The 2025 SONC elections have concluded and I am pleased to share their results.
Please join me in welcoming SONC's newest Board Members, elected (or re-elected) to four-year terms, through June 2029.
Area 1 Residential: Lielt Endashaw
Area 3 Residential: Howard M. Katchen
Area 5 Residential: TBD (tied result)
Area 7 Residential: Martin H. Stahl
Area 1 Business: Levon "Lev" Baronian
Area 7 Business: Martin Hernandez
Area 1 Community Interest: Christy Adair
Area 7 Community Interest: Jeffrey Kalban
Congratulations and we look forward to your many contributions to Sherman Oaks in the years to come.
All are welcome to join our monthly board meeting on Monday, July 14 at 6:30pm at Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center (5056 Van Nuys Blvd) as we seat the 2025-27 SONC board. Council District 4 Councilmember Nithya Raman and representatives, as well as Assembly District 44 Assemblymember Nick Schultz's representatives, will be on hand to participate in SONC's ceremonial transition.
After the newly elected SONC members take their seats alongside continuing SONC members, we will continue with ordinary business, which this month will include motions from the Government Affairs Committee sounding the alarm on City Council's attempt to suspend state law during an emergency when said law already addresses emergency provisions, advocating for fair and impartial investigations into rental market price gouging in the wake of the January wildfires, and from Traffic & Transportation regarding traffic and parking mitigation efforts in Sherman Oaks.
.
The SONC board meets on the second Monday of each month, either at the Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center (5056 Van Nuys Blvd) or virtually. Be sure to confirm final location information via the agenda posted in the days leading up to the meeting.
Finally, as my second and final term as President winds down, I'd like to express my appreciation and gratitude for the opportunity to lead this body. It has been a tremendous honour to serve in this leadership role and I wish my successor the best of luck as I return to my role as a SONC member. There is much yet to be done.
My message in perhaps my final newsletter letter (although I intend to continue providing updates in my capacity as Government Affairs Committee Chair) is to those who feel threatened by larger current events not just in our city or state, but our very country and world.
What is happening to and within this country and its bedrock principles is nothing short of tragic.
We continue to suffer a nationwide healthcare crisis: this basic human right, which a supermajority of the world population (69%) enjoys through universal healthcare coverage ("UHC"), eludes this country. As Visual Capitalist wrote in 2024, "The U.S. is the only developed country that does not have UHC."
Economic health remains threatened by oligarchical decision making practices and shortsighted policy strategies continue to threaten the planet's wellbeing, realities that affect all of us.
But this is an especially dangerous time to be a minority: Anti-immigrant sentiment and overt racism, transphobia and homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry and discrimination are on the perilous rise in our world. It's downright scary out there, and it seems like the most power hungry world leaders, driven by megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur and greed, continue to campaign on hate, division, manufactured culture wars intended to divide & distract from regressive wealth transfer alongside persistent oppression.
We are experiencing political polarization with extremist views seeking to dominate and rule from the fringe, leaving an unrepresented and quickly growing abandoned middle, which now includes far beyond what we would traditionally describe as "Independent."
We continue to suffer a nationwide epidemic of lawmaking and unlawful executive actions and pogroms targeting very vulnerable minority populations. As our City Attorney said at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association (SOHA) meeting several months ago, "The two communities in our city that are the most scared right now because i've heard from both of them are the immigrant community and the trans community."
Immigrants who have entered this country legally, who have gained citizenship through naturalization and have committed no crimes, who work hard and contribute to society while chasing the American dream just like any others in our community are scared and are making their own contingency plans, fearful of a government that has targeted its own citizenry, with many of these legal immigrants caught up in ICE raids.
Transgender people who have suffered for years just trying to be their true selves, who have followed all the rules, find themselves targeted by coordinated vilification campaigns from bad actors seeking to manufacture a crisis out of thin air that hasn't existed for the centuries and millennia during which trans people have always existed. Thanks to blind hate and fabricated outrage, this vulnerable community is similarly scared and making contingency plans to leave this country, in many cases the only country they have ever known. The Lemkin Institute, founded to make sure the atrocities of the Holocaust never happen again, issued a "Red Flag Alert for Genocide" specifically in regard to anti-trans laws and actions in the United States.
And in a most hypocritical and distressing turn, Native Americans—the actual original inhabitants of this land—have been detained and swept up in federal immigration raids. The Greater Los Angeles Area sits on the land of at least seven indigenous tribes: the Chumash, Tongva, Micquanaqa'n, Fernandeño Tataviam, Acjachemen (Juaneño), Payómkawichum (Luiseño), and Yuhaaviatam/Maarenga'yam (Serrano).
These are indeed troubling times and it is of utmost importance, critically so, that we continue to stand up for the most vulnerable amongst us whose daily experience is engulfed in flames of intolerance. We must reach out to each other in the spirit of community building and friendship, camaraderie and fellowship, to support the downtrodden in order to weather this most abhorrent storm of totalitarianism and prejudice.
This is the struggle of our time—our moral moment—and although SONC's work pertains largely to the nuts-and-bolts of Sherman Oaks operations, I would be recklessly remiss if I didn't speak up about greater injustices in our world than a bus lane that doesn't work at midnight or the decades-old saga of a zoo elephant that the community passionately disagreed about. To be clear, these are issues we hold dear, but it is also important to include the bigger picture and acknowledge the real pain and fear many of our friends and neighbors feel daily.
In this closing message, I urge kindness, patience, and grace. We are all in this together and it is through community that we will persevere.
As I wrote last month, take inspiration in community to find strength in the face of adversity. We will win. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Thank you for your continued interest and dedication to the Sherman Oaks community. Please stay safe and be kind to one another.
With Pride and Determination—
Lindsay
| 
