1) One of the first pieces of real business was a high school girl looking to get the Whittier Alliance to support her organization's efforts to have the city totally on local renewable energy by 2025. Which the meeting was more than happy to do. The fly in the ointment is that one of the local Benderites offered an amendment to to motion to support her effort - something along the lines of the meeting declared that the girl was a real "bad ass". It was really slimy.
2) And then we had a presentation from the Fifth Precinct. The presenter was a last-minute substitute for the person who was supposed to present, a point she made right at the beginning of her talk. And yet another Benderite (male, like the first one) demonstrated his asshole nature by taking her to task for not having any numbers to back up her observation that burglaries from automobiles were up sharply. Laura wondered if he would have been such an asshole if the presenter had been male; I strongly suspect that the answer to that question would be "No". So much for the putative progressives attending the meeting.
3) An election was held for the position of Chair of the Community Issues Committee. The winner shared the dubious distinction with some of the other new members of the Board of Directors of apparently being unaware of the name of the organization - it's not the Whittier Association, it's the Whittier Alliance (and there is history behind that name).