4—
Middle Americans and Generalized Unresponsiveness

We don't consider ourselves of the rich class. We don't consider ourselves of the lower class. . . . We're middle class, but poor.^[1]

Our tax protest movement has been characterized as a grass roots revolution set in motion by a beer truck driver in Alhambra. It's true and thank God for people like Mike. We hope that it is never forgotten that the American Revolution was started by farmers in work clothes.^[2]

The average working guy gave us a much fairer shake than the fat-cats did. Fortunately for us, the little guys had a thousand times as many votes as the fat-cats did.^[3]

Alhambra, Chinatown

Alhambra is middle America, in spite of its place. Located eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles, it stands at the foot of the sprawling, suburban San Gabriel Valley. In 1960, Alhambra was an incorporated town of fifty-five thousand inhabitants with fewer than one hundred blacks; it was 94 percent Anglo despite its close proximity to the Mexican-American barrios of East Los Angeles. The families of Alhambra were of modest means, earning a median income just about that of Los Angeles County. Alhambra was a city of small, two-bedroom stucco houses and plain apartments in need of paint. The name Alhambra, like so many names for real estate in California, is a creative misnomer, for this town has nothing in common with the palace of Alhambra in Spain.

Michael Rubino was a regular guy. A forty-year-old beer truck driver, he was outgoing and unpretentious. Through his deliveries and by once owning a gasoline station, Rubino had won many acquaintances. He was engaged to be married and was caring for his elderly mother who lived nearby. Energetic and sometimes brash, Rubino described himself as a "sucker for the little guy."

In November 1964, Rubino received a notice that his property taxes had increased by six hundred dollars, at a time when apartments in Alhambra were renting for eighty dollars a month. With a group of friends, Rubino organized a protest meeting, attended by over one thousand homeowners whose taxes had also drastically increased. Outside, one thousand more protesters were caught in a three-mile-long traffic jam around the meeting site. Inside, public officials faced a storm of catcalls, boos, and roars of disapproval that led Rubino to wonder aloud to the audience, "Are we a mob?"^[4]

Rubino claimed that he was offered a government job if he would call off protest activities. Indignant, he refused. A week and a half later, passions still ran high. Rubino led one thousand demonstrators in a caravan of buses to confront the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. "Citizens surged forward from their seats to press against the wood rail in front of the supervisors' desks. . . . [Protesters] shook fists, shouted, [and] tried to get control of microphones . . . " Rubino shouted to the officials, "When an Italian gets his temper up, look out!" After an impassioned speech, Rubino strode out of the room, only to collapse in a faint. As his fiancee rushed to his side, the crowd called out, "What have you done to him?"^[5] The demonstrators then booed the county assessor and the supervisors and even a protest organizer who meekly announced that the buses were about to leave.

Those buses, however, were the start of Michael Rubino's problems. He had chartered one hundred of them and had personally guaranteed to pay the bill. Fewer than expected had bought tickets, however. The bill for the buses and other expenses left Rubino with a personal debt of over seven thousand dollars. The leader of the movement to save people's homes was forced to sell his own house.

Although Rubino organized one more large protest meeting, public pressure did not result in lower property tax bills. Activists then formed an ongoing group, Property and Homeowners of the San Gabriel Valley. Periodically becoming involved in local issues, the group later gathered signatures and campaigned for Proposition 13. Looking back over his efforts to reduce property taxes, Rubino reminisced: "I wouldn't say I was a failure, no. I've said this a couple of times to certain people I know and they said, 'No, Mike, you were never a failure because from what you did Proposition 13 came about.'"^[6]

A year after the tax protest, Rubino was elected to the Alhambra town council; a decade later he was again elected and was chosen as mayor. Then, he was accused of punching a political rival and was convicted of accepting a bribe from an ambulance operator, who was actually a police undercover agent in a sting operation. Rubino was forced to resign. Shortly before his sentencing, his mother died. A sixty-year-old bachelor, Rubino wept as the judge spared him a prison term. Now his solace is not so much his religion as a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about his dogged political career.

Today in Alhambra, middle Americans speak little about their former mayor. They watch uneasily as thousands of Chinese immigrants bring their savings from Taiwan to Alhambra, buying new condominiums and opening seafood restaurants with large red signs in Chinese characters. Michael Rubino and the white residents of Alhambra share the same fate. Their worlds have become as inauspicious and as incomprehensible as Chinatown. They feel relentlessly pursued in strange, foreign surroundings that they did not create and cannot control. On occasion, however, middle Americans take their stand.

Interpretations:
Unresponsive Big Government

For Michael Rubino and other tax protesters throughout California, the tax revolt was something more than the simple reluctance to pay more money. It was also a protest against big government, which had the power to tax but had failed to respond to the citizens. The government seemed to have the power to arbitrarily wreak havoc and, worse, the authority to increase tax bills in the future to the point where all would lose their homes. Some of the daring went to the County Administration Building to appeal the assessments on their homes. They won only token changes and, moreover, witnessed proceedings that dramatized the power of the state over the individual:

One time I went down and I appealed . . . when they raised the assessment. It must have been in the early 70s. . . . [T]here's something called an Assessment Appeals Board, and you go down there and you state your reasons. . . . And they had a very arrogant head of the board. . . . I started to testify and he interrupted me and overruled me and said I couldn't quote the Wall Street Journal because it wasn't proper legal authority. . . . So I went a little further and I quoted the Constitution, and he said, "Well, that doesn't apply." And I said, "Do you mean to overrule the Constitution?" And the man said, "Constitution overruled!" And they

were so impressed by my testimony, they gave me some small benefit that amounted to not more than ten dollars a year but that's the best they would do.^[7]

When citizens visited the halls of government to express their grievances, they were, to their surprise, rebuffed. Tax protesters found it difficult to get the opportunity of presenting their views to the County Board of Supervisors, which could have reduced tax rates. When Richard Carman took the protests of San Gabriel Valley citizens to the supervisors, he discovered that they actively hindered him.

Local government did everything in the world to discourage us. We'd be on the agenda to speak, and I'd be the last one to be heard because they figured the press had plenty of stories and they'd have to get out and file their stories and they'd be gone. . . . Then they'd do everything possible to belittle you or even entrap you. You'd be halfway through your thing and they'd say, 'That's enough time,' and they'd give their sheriff a wink and he'd come over and take the microphone away. . . . No cooperation—it's a wonder we lasted as long as we did.^[8]

During one of Carman's presentations, "Two of the five supervisors were talking behind their desks, two others were reading, and a fifth was making an effort to appear he was listening." Government was unconcerned about the taxpayer's plight. Carman received similar treatment from officials in state government. "When we showed up at Sacramento, and we couldn't afford to go there very often, they treated you very badly because they just didn't want to be bothered. We got to talk to the officials very little because they cloak everything so that the ordinary person wouldn't even know what they were passing—everything was cloaked in secrecy."^[9]

Even when government officials took the time to meet, they did not take the taxpayers' grievances seriously. At the height of 1964 protests, Michael Rubino met with the county assessor and his staff, who all flaunted a condescending attitude.

The . . . Assessor did explain a tax graph, the type often seen in school books. . . . Then Rubino was ushered out of Watson's office and into the arms of waiting newsmen. . . . The TV lights flashed on. . . . Smiles slowly spread over the faces of Watson's [the assessor's] employees as they coughed and turned away. Rubino said the first thing that came to mind. "We certainly learned a lot about taxes."

Later, driving away from the County building with its marble floors and inlaid wood paneling, Rubino commented, "He [the assessor] never really did say very much, did he?"^[10]

Another government official gave a junior high school lesson in civics to a tax protest activist, in a manner almost calculated to induce feelings of inferiority: "[I had] a hard time getting to see him but I saw him. I'm very persistent and I saw him personally. And you know, he took . . . a great big book . . . in very small print to show all of the different departments and what they call them. He practically laughed at me. . . . I got nowhere, absolutely nowhere."^[11]

Before Proposition 13, the tax protesters had an unbroken losing streak. No concessions were granted, and property tax assessments and rates continued their inexorable climb. But more than that, the protesters felt that they were not even a part of the political game. In the supervisors' meeting room, a oak railing was the barrier. Solid oak divided the citizens who tried to express their plight in the allotted two minutes from the insiders who did not care. The top floors of the county administration building were a social world unto themselves, where citizens like Mike Rubino realized they were but strangers.

Strangers at City Hall

Although citizens thought they could obtain help from smaller governmental units such as towns, no favorable response was forthcoming.^[12] Mike Rubino brought the problem of property tax increases to the Alhambra town council. Their reaction, in his words, was "It's tough." The mayor of the town, Norma Yocum, "did a good job of cutting our throats." After establishing an office in Alhambra where taxpayers could file an individual appeal, the mayor then argued that Rubino's planned protest was no longer necessary. Mayor Yocum, emphasizing that Rubino was only a beer truck driver, helped to establish a rival taxpayers group. The president of that group claimed to be more respectable than Rubino and attempted to become president of Rubino's own organization.

School boards at the community level, which activists hoped would be more responsive than big state and county government, nonetheless imposed taxes without heeding the wishes of citizens. In 1967, the California legislature passed a bill that enabled school boards to increase taxes without approval of the voters. The San Gabriel Taxpayers Association reacted angrily: "If you are unhappy about the constant increase in your property taxes and the fact that your inherent right to vote on school taxes has been stolen from you, then you have the privilege of letting your opinions and wants known." Activists sought to arrange a debate with school board members and administrators, but no officials were willing to attend. The taxpayers association sent a delegation to Sacramento to press for repeal of the bill, without success.^[13]

Tax protesters in the middle-income towns of San Gabriel Valley found to their dismay that all levels of government were unresponsive or actively hostile. An activist concluded that elected officials "were against any controlling of taxes by the people. . . . They felt that as long as they were elected . . . they had the right to do just as they saw it. Another summarized: "It's unfortunate that the citizens, the consumers, the people, the so-called we the people—are only recognized on election day. The day after election, 'Fine, thank you very much,' but business is as usual. . . . [T]hat's the Federal right down to the little township."^[14]

The unresponsiveness of local government, not only on taxes but also on a host of other issues, contributed to the activists' sense that they had little voice. Immediately before a major tax protest in Monterey Park, homeowners had failed in another battle, against a costly urban renewal project promoted by a prominent state senator. In another community in the San Gabriel Valley, a tax protest group had also unsuccessfully fought a redevelopment project that consumed many tax dollars. One activist had learned, "There's aiways a gimmick behind everything that city hall does. Remember that. There's nothing for the people."^[15] Another activist in a middle-income community, who led a campaign to pressure Los Angeles to limit noisy air traffic at a nearby airport, summarized his group's dealings with local government:

First of all, they don't want to see you. You have trouble getting in to see them. You'll see an aide. . . . When you do see the supervisors, your position is denigrated, or at best, listened to but only given lip service. . . . At other times you cross a politician. They write you off, and they have to deal with you, but they'll do the least they possibly can. . . . [The mayor of Los Angeles] has never been cooperative. . . . Only in a confrontational situation would he send a polite word process[ed] answer, but not really deal with the gutsy sort of issues that we want.^[16]

Studies of localities throughout the United States reveal a similar pattern. In one medium-sized city, the mayor ignored the middle-class homeowners and instead cultivated support from city agencies, political parties, and community institutions. One official ridiculed middle-class homeowners as "cheese and cracker millionaires" who lacked political clout but nevertheless made demands on public officials. In Levittown, the community that Herbert Gans studied as a typical lower-middleclass suburb, power was concentrated in an "actual government" composed of the developer and a caucus of Democratic party leaders. The residents believed that a corrupt political clique ruled their community and that local politics was a series of schemes by the powerful to sell out the residents.^[17]

Interpretations and Actions

Two centuries ago Americans were incensed that England could impose taxes while the colonies could not make government decisions. As Howard Jarvis put it, "'No taxation without representation.' In a very real sense, the American Revolution was the first American tax revolt. Proposition 13 simply followed in that hallowed tradition."^[18] Once again, although citizens found it self-evident that their government should be a democracy, citizens instead encountered a multitude of offices and repeated injury in answer to repeated petitions. The resulting anger animated the tax revolt.

Michael Rubino was one to directly vent his anger at big government. During a protest demonstration, Rubino pointed his finger directly at the county supervisors and exclaimed, "Your seats are getting a little bit too comfortable. . . . We have come to this conclusion—you might not know where Alhambra is now, but hereafter when you walk in, you're going to take your hat off." In order to get just a little respect, a little break for the homeowner, Rubino had to protest again and again, preaching his message—politicians "don't give a damn." The people had "lost faith in the politicians."^[19]

The story of Michael Rubino is also the tale of many other tax protests in middle-income communities throughout southern California, where local politicians failed to support the tax revolt. Table 2 lists the communities in Los Angeles County that reportedly held a tax protest event attracting at least one hundred persons.^[20] All of the middleincome communities, with a relative affluence index of at least 0.60 and less than 1.30, are indicated by an "a" in column E.^[21]

The protests that were supported by community political leaders are marked with a "p" in column F.^[22] Among the twenty-four middleincome communities (which erupted in a total of forty-nine events), community political leaders failed to support the protests in twenty-three of the twenty-four cases.

For example, in the community of Baldwin Park (with a relative affluence index of 0.64) an activist in the Taxpayers Committee for Lower Property Taxes complained, "I didn't know the government would do this. Not to the working man. The government is breaking him into little pieces." Tom Klein, the leader of the group, alleged that the government responded to their petition by deliberately cutting needed services rather than waste and administrative costs, thereby discrediting the protesters. "I think they did a number on us. . . . The experience taught property owners a big lesson. They learned that there is a need to organize," like the unions, to gain power.^[23]

And organize they did. Angry taxpayers shouted abuse, refused to

pay taxes, demonstrated at the county administration building, tried to recall public officials, burned their tax bills, and reenacted the Boston Tea Party, complete with colonial garb. In the seaside community of Venice, a low- to moderate-income area in 1975, tax protesters went to the office of their representative on the Los Angeles City Council. "She had a meeting there one night so we had a candlelight march there. . . . [T]he Venice group was quite militant."^[24]

Tax protest associations set upon the goal of increasing their political influence. One group in the San Gabriel Valley summarized its aims: "To promote a constructive and equitable property tax program and a reduction and/or limitation of governmental expenditure . . . " and, "To encourage participation in management of government affairs. . . . We the people insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the instruments that we have created." Throughout southern California, groups with similar aims emerged.

Some protesters tried to use their voting rights to reduce taxes. But as they gathered signatures to place initiatives on the ballot, the activists felt that big government again was hindering them. The government required that for each of the hundreds of thousands of signatures, the signatory's voting precinct needed to be determined and listed. Activists worked long hours, looking up names in voluminous precinct books during the limited time allowed. Tax protesters alleged that county government was deliberately interfering in their basic democratic rights:

The demands made upon the public by the Los Angeles County Registrar of voters pertaining to the precincting of petitions . . . reeks of obstructionist self-imposed controls. We also feel that some of our county Supervisors have lacked in cooperating in addition to our county Counsel.

These controls have [been] deliberately designed to obstruct and discourage the average non-professional group from ever attempting to qualify any petition of any kind for placement on a statewide ballot.

In addition to illegal demands, the . . . registrar's lack of cooperation, delays in fulfilling orders for the proper precincting books and maps vitally necessary to fulfill their arbitrary demands are intolerable. The REGISTRAR'S lame excuses are pathetic and must be eliminated. The County Counsel's arbitrary decisions have been discriminatory. . . .

The shameful politics, pressure tactics, and deliberate withholding of full and proper information and instructions upon receipt of a Title and Summary from the State. Attorney General is [sic] tantamount to suppression of the voters right to have placed an initiative that they themselves can vote on.^[25]

A Land of Strangers

The activists in homeowners groups who were so angered with local government were neither chronic malcontents nor atypical agitators; rather, they were expressing sentiments common among the American public at the time. A public opinion poll in 1978, for example, indicated that 81 percent of the citizens had "only some" or "hardly any" confidence in local government; only 19 percent had a great deal of confidence. These sentiments were not some volatile flash in the pan; on the contrary, they persisted through the 1980s (18 percent in 1983 and 23 percent in 1984 had a great deal of confidence in local government). Similarly, only a small portion of the public (19 percent in 1978) expressed a great deal of confidence in state government.

The views of tax activists also resembled those of the public in that both groups were dissatisfied not only because big government spent too much but also because it was unresponsive to the citizens. When pollsters asked, "How much attention do you feel the government pays to what the people think when it decides what to do," the percentage answering "a good deal" fell from 32 percent in 1964 to 14 percent in 1978, the year Proposition 13 passed.^[26] The percentage who thought that political parties pay attention a good deal of the time also fell (from 41 percent to 21 percent between 1964 and 1978). The public in 1978 doubted that the government was run for the people; rather, 67 percent believed that it was run for the benefit of "a few big interests" (up from 29 percent in 1964; the percentage remained above 60 through 1982).^[27]

The sentiment that government was unresponsive was widespread among citizens earning moderate incomes. One survey identified "middle American radicals," who believed that the government unfairly favored the rich and the poor at the expense of the middle class. Most middle-American radicals earned moderate incomes and lacked a college education. They expressed much alienation from institutions and felt that local government did not serve their needs. Middle-American radicals were more likely to support the tax revolt.^[28]

In short, the public in the 1970s concluded that the government had become unresponsive. Some concluded this because government did not respond to their calls for withdrawal from Vietnam. Others were disaffected because they wanted the government to respond to whites instead of blacks; still others during the Watergate hearings witnessed a presidency that combatted public criticism with dirty tricks.

Tax protesters operating in the very different arena of state and local politics had also learned about the unresponsiveness of government. Tax activists spoke about big government with a passion that could only come from firsthand experience. The activists in middle-income commu-

nities, in contrast to the ordinary alienated voter, were informed about government, were confident about their own abilities, and at least cared enough to be involved. When these activists denounced the unresponsiveness of big government, they could easily find an audience of alienated voters who were willing to cheer loudly. Tax protesters found many a stranger who needed little convincing to join a campaign for representation and no taxation. The truly estranged who felt that they were "not well represented" in government were more likely to vote for Proposition 13.^[29]

Feelings that the government was unresponsive mobilized ordinary voters in other states as well. A study of voters in Michigan revealed that, "Far and away the strongest support for the [Headlee] Amendment [a limit on state revenues and local property taxes] came from those who felt that it would increase either government efficiency . . . or voter control of government." The feeling that one is cut off from political decision making is the best predictor of public support for the tax revolt nationwide. Pollsters Yankelovich and Kaagan characterized the mood of Americans with the phrase, "take-back psychology"—the desire to retrieve from government the authority that belongs to the people.^[30]

The Antibusiness Moment

To take back political power and to win back tax money—these were the twin objectives of the tax revolt. Accomplishing these goals would be difficult, given the lack of support at all levels of government. What strategy would overcome the political roadblocks to tax reduction? What groups or forces could help? These were the questions that would confound tax protest activists for decades.

One possibly ally for the tax revolt was business. The support of small business in the final stages of the movement would prove decisive. But in the 1960s and early 1970s, activists from middle-income areas found that large corporations and even the leaders of small businesses in the community were unwilling to assist homeowners in their battle. Homeowners responded with dislike, distrust, and sometimes anger at business. These negative feelings affected the programs that the middle-income tax activists adopted.

Tax protesters counted among their enemies the industrial giants, utilities, and banks large enough to be listed in the Fortune magazine directories of top corporations. Large companies sought to reduce their own taxes and showed no interest in helping the homeowners' movement throughout its long history, to the very end. Many large firms took a public stand against Proposition 13 and donated large sums of money

to fight it; the California Taxpayers Association, whose directors are senior managers in large businesses, actively campaigned against Prop. 13. One community activist exclaimed, "The large corporations opposed it. The Bank of America opposed it. . . . They pretend to be for lower taxes, but in practice they were getting great benefits out of high property taxes." Not only did large companies allegedly have a different economic interest; they were also unwilling to help the homeowners gain political influence because they already had great powers in government: "Government listens to financial interests. . . . Government is dictated by financial considerations mainly. The rest of it is a show, I think. It's what will make money for someone, and the people who run our government are large corporations and banks, financial institutions. . . . Politicians make a pretense of working for the common man but in practice they don't, unfortunately."^[31]

Another activist agreed:

Most of our legislation favors big business. . . . It's going to be difficult to change this. We just don't have the lobbying power even though we are the biggest special interest that should be recognized. . . . Big business is out for itself. Because of its inefficiency, it needs to get out of us as much money as it can. . . . Since big business's interests are different from those of the consumer, its stance on public issues will reflect this.^[32]

Large institutions, both business and government, work together and concentrate power at the expense of the citizenry:

The big people work together. They may not always work directly together but they're working indirectly together. . . . This is a normal function of business. . . . Whenever a ruler, say, has gained power, he's sought more power, and learning the road to power he's learned the tricks. Like Caesar—once he learned to conquer one county he learned how to conquer another one, and then five and then ten and then twenty more. Same things happened here among the big corporations. They got a corporation. They see how to merge and take over another one and they get bigger and bigger and concentrate power. . . . The problem is that they're taking this power at the expense of the common man, the average citizen.^[33]

The activists' views about large corporations were quite in keeping with what the general public was saying in opinion polls during the late 1970s. For example the percentage agreeing that, "There's too much power concentrated in the hands of a few large companies for the good of the nation," rose steadily to 78 percent in 1975, remaining around there through 1981. Another question tapped opinions about the economic power of corporations: "In many of our largest industries, one or

two companies have too much control of the industry." The percentage agreeing also steadily rose from 58 percent in 1965 to 82 percent in 1975, fluctuating to 79 percent in the first year of the Reagan administration.^[34] When respondents were asked to state their opinions of industries on a five-point scale, the average percentage of "very favorable" and "mostly favorable" responses steadily declined, from 68 percent in 1965 to 35.5 percent in 1977. When tax activists criticized the power of large corporations, the activists found many others in the community who were inclined to agree.^[35]

Small Businesses in the Community: Backslapping or Back Stabbing?

Through their experiences in tax protests, activists developed negative views of big business. Activists had more direct and frequent contact with smaller businesses in their communities and, as the movement developed, it was this contact that decisively shaped the views of the activists. Most of them believed that small business had different interests and powers than large corporations:

I think that when you say business, we have to make a difference between business and monopolism, and what we've got today are two types of business going on—monopolism, which is the operation of large corporations and large banks that are using government to further their own ends at the expense of the average man. In contrast with that is small business and entrepreneurs and individuals and little businesses of five employees or less who are working in a really competitive situation and they aren't monopolists. They can't be.^[36]

In middle-income communities, a few owners of small retail outlets supported tax protests; after all, many of them paid high property taxes on their personal residences. "Some of our members were small businesses, so yes, we sought their help when we started our tax reduction activities. . . . Many small businesses did not want to join because they didn't want to get involved."^[37]

Michael Rubino was irritated at the businesses in Alhambra for opposing his tax protest in 1964. Rubino thought that businesses did not support him because they had the money to pay their taxes and could work through established political channels rather than protests. Real estate businesses did not help, despite that fact that land and buildings, their stock in trade, were the targets for higher property taxes. Rubino charged that after homeowners could not make their tax payments, real estate agents were "buying up homes cheap." Rubino alleged that the attitude of the agents was, "Why should we help you? We stand to make

more money." The lack of business support made it difficult for the tax protest to succeed, for "it takes money, and we didn't have a lot. And it takes a lot of influential people, and we had very little of that."^[38]

In the middle-income communities of the San Gabriel Valley, Richard Carman also found it difficult to gain the support of community businesses:

The majority of the people I was working with were people who were medium class back in 1969. . . . We worked with down-to-earth people, grass-roots people. . . . I approached business owners for support . . . with very little success. The business community was not responsive in general. . . . I was wasting my time going to business people. . . . When you walk into a business place, number one, they've got customers and they're interested in serving their customers. The boss isn't in. If the boss is in and you state your case, by the time the clerk goes back to the boss, "Oh well, another one looking for a handout." They haven't got time to listen to it.^[39]

Although a few small retail outlets offered support to tax protests in middle-income communities, leading small businesses and business organizations in the community usually did not help. These community business leaders typically included the heads of organizations such as the community's chamber of commerce and real estate board, the managers of supermarkets and other business chains, and the owners of retail outlets and wholesale and manufacturing firms employing between five and fifty persons. In middle-income communities, according to a tax protester:

The chambers of commerce are a joke because where do they get their handout? They get it from the city. Where does the city get its money to give them a handout? From property taxes. . . . They're not going to bite the first hand. They're not going to give you anything, and they're not famous for the number of individual household tax participants. . . . Local real estate boards were practically no help. They didn't want to buck the politicians.^[40]

Another tax reduction activist who lived in the middle-income community of West Hollywood criticized the chamber of commerce:

I resigned from their board of directors because of the fact that they were all for business—of course that's the name of it—chamber of commerce. They were all for business, and the heck with the homeowner. And they don't live here. There isn't hardly a business in West Hollywood that the owner lives in West Hollywood. They live in Bel Air and Beverly Hills [two very affluent communities] and the [San Fernando] Valley and all over. They make their money and put it in their pocket and run home with it.^[41]

The newspaper accounts of tax protests indicate that in other middle-income areas, community business leaders usually failed to support tax protests. In table 2, those protests that community business leaders supported are marked by a "b" in column F. Of the twenty-four middle-income communities, community business leaders supported the protests in only three localities.

In one of the three instances (Temple City), the evidence for support is scanty. Newspaper articles reported that citizens could contact the town's chamber of commerce to obtain petition forms or learn when the next meeting would be held. Community business leaders clearly supported protests in two other cases, Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks, discussed in chapter 7, and Covina, discussed in chapter 6. The strength of these protests, as indicated by the attendance totals above two thousand, could account for the support of community leaders. Furthermore, in these two cases protests also arose in adjacent, more affluent areas where community business leaders supported the protests. Perhaps the business leaders in Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks and in Covina were following their more upscale compatriots.

These three middle-income localities where community business leaders supported tax protests are the exception, amounting to only 12 percent of the cases (compared to 75-percent support in upper-middle-class communities; see table 3). As the activists in middle-income communities pressed their grievances, they discovered that the institutions around them, from the largest corporations to the local chamber of commerce, from the governor to the town councilor, were either indifferent or hostile, creating a situation that can be termed generalized unresponsiveness. Activists reacted to this situation with angry antielitism, targeting the well-to-do and political leaders: "[W]e're wasting our time to pay taxes. For who? Some politician. What's he do with it? He goes [sic] buys a Lincoln limousine two blocks long and puts eighty gallons of gas in it and runs it down to Las Vegas."^[42]

The Social Origins of Antibusiness Redistribution Programs

Where antibusiness views were particularly intense, tax protesters supported proposals to increase the taxes on business and to lower the taxes on homeowners, consumers, and workers. Mike Rubino's protest in Alhambra was one of the 88 percent in middle-income communities that did not gain the support of business leaders. Rubino spoke out angrily against business and advocated tax benefits for moderate-income earners at the expense of business and the wealthy. Rubino argued that his movement championed the "little people" who owned only one house or, at the most, one in front and a cottage in the back. The Alhambra protesters of 1964 insisted that special tax relief should be targeted to senior citizens, many of whom could not afford to pay their tax bills. Rubino contrasted himself to Howard Jarvis, who allegedly was more concerned with big corporations and the people who own "fifty thousand acres" and "five apartment buildings." Rubino opposed Jarvis's plans to reduce property taxes for businesses as well as residences.^[43]

In the moderate-income areas of the San Gabriel Valley, the San Fernando Valley, and the coastal area, past conflicts, particularly those over urban growth and redevelopment, left a lingering negative view of business. This led activists to articulate and campaign for tax reforms that would redistribute downward, away from business.

Both in Alhambra and throughout the San Gabriel Valley controversies about the redevelopment of "blighted" areas pitted homeowners against small business leaders in the community. Through urban renewal projects, local governments acquired and cleared land and encouraged the construction of office buildings, industrial parks, and shopping centers. When improvements in the redevelopment area resulted in increased property tax collections, the revenues were not spent by the city operating budget but rather were used by the redevelopment agency to meet its costs and pay off bonds. Tax protesters saw redevelopment simply as one big subsidy to business, which siphoned off revenues from the city budget and imposed higher taxes on homeowners to pay for needed services.

Tax protesters in the San Gabriel Valley began to oppose urban renewal projects around 1970, leading to direct conflicts with community business leaders: "In nearly every city, the chamber of commerce supports redevelopment. In Alhambra, for instance, the chamber of commerce is supporting the redevelopment agency, and the BGA [the tax protest group] sued, the case called Fossilman v. Alhambra . We're certainly on the opposite side there. We're on the opposite side in Downey." Activists in the town of San Gabriel distributed one leaflet

arguing, "The 'big money' in this city is working to form a redevelopment agency. . . . A lot of little people 'working together' can fight the big machine."^[44]

Richard Carman was a major activist in the movement that fought urban renewal and high property taxes in the west San Gabriel Valley. His program was that property taxes should be cut in half. State government could subsidize the localities, replacing lost revenues. "They can tax the freeloaders. The insurance companies, the banks, and others who benefit through tax loopholes should be forced by legislation to take up the slack." Another one of Carman's redistributive programs, which he attempted to place on the California ballot in 1975, would have given tax reductions to residential property only, and not to "hotels, motels, business, industrial, or commercial properties."^[45]

In Monterey Park, a community in the San Gabriel Valley where the median family income was 1.09 times that of Los Angeles County, the issue of urban growth also sparked hostility against small business leaders. In 1976, the Monterey Park Taxpayers Association opposed the town's $13 million redevelopment program and later contested new construction by private developers. Another homeowners group in the town sponsored an initiative, which won the support of 85 percent of the voters, to limit the construction of new condominiums. But at a later election, "the developers knocked us all [the homeowners] off the city council. . . . They sent out a hit piece [negative ad] and, the last weekend of the election, they killed us." The lengthy conflict between homeowners and developers led many activists to conclude that there were fundamental differences between the interests of homeowners and businesses. As Irving Gilman, a past president of the homeowners, stated: "Our local chamber of commerce is our enemy. . . . They're promoting business and . . . [that] requires customers. The more the merrier. . . . They wanted developing; we wanted control." The board of realtors, which aggressively promoted development schemes, was "just murder."

In conflicts over development, activists formulated antibusiness stances that they applied in their programs for tax reduction. Before Proposition 13 was enacted, the Monterey Park Taxpayers Association supported the Tax Justice Act of 1977, which proposed to channel tax relief to moderate- and low-income homeowners and renters.^[46]

Growth became a major issue dividing homeowners and community business leaders in the middle-income parts of the San Fernando Valley as well. Here, increasing traffic and jet noise led homeowners to oppose the expansion of the Hollywood-Burbank airport, despite the many business opportunities there. Homeowners grew antagonistic to business leaders who supported airport growth. "You have to understand that the chamber of commerce and homeowners associations on many issues

clash. And even when we agree on things there's not really a close working relationship."^[47] One activist from the middle-income community of North Hollywood summarized how his opposition to airport expansion, billboards, developers, and high taxes shaped his views about business in the community:

When I was with North Hollywood Homeowners, we had folks that were in a much lower SES, socio-economic status, than let's say, the Encino crowd. . . . In North Hollywood . . . you had more of a blue collar mentality. . . .

Small business . . . they tend to keep to themselves . . . mom and pop kind of operations. They're usually marginal operators, just breaking even. They don't have the time and money and resources to devote to community efforts. All they can do is stay in business at a profit. Bigger corporations of course are a little different. They've got the money to help. . . . By and large businesses have not been cooperative. Their principal measure of what they want is based on dollars in the short run. . . . As a result, I've gone head to head with the chamber of commerce for as long as I can remember. We've always been opposed to the chamber because the chamber has not been generally interested in homeowner concerns. . . . [W]e've not had cordial relations and right through the years that's been pretty much true.

[Banks and savings and loans?] . . . We've had contacts with them. Those have not been fruitful. I think they tend to be exploitative. . . . We approached a while ago a bank on a project. . . . I think they felt that our tactics and strategy were . . . not a suit and tie kind of thing, and as a result were not really supportive of what we did. Those have not gone anywhere, those kinds of things. . . . We've battled pretty much the real estate agents, developers. Real estate houses have not been overly cooperative with us. . . . We want to see tougher zoning and controls that are not consonant with the goal of an agent who is interested in getting and selling a piece of property and turning it over for cash.

This activist opposed Proposition 13, partly because it provided tax advantages to business rather than the homeowner. Since property under Prop. 13 would be reassessed upward with each sale, and since homes were sold more often than businesses, assessments on homes would follow more closely the upward trend of property values.

There is the matter of the turnover, . . . [that is,] when a business turns over its property for reassessment versus how often a [home turns over], and it's my understanding that homeowners are turning over faster than businesses, and as a result . . . homes were winding up by paying and were moving up on the [assessment] scale, whereas businesses have tended to be a little more static than the transient homeowner. . . . I see a definite conflict of interest between an apartment owner and a single-

family dwelling owner. . . . Much of . . . the Jarvis mentality was R-4 property owners [apartment owners] who . . . were paying a pretty hefty tax, who wanted to get out from under that and were one of the prime movers behind this [Proposition 13]. The homeowners bought into that. . . . What is good for the owner of a sixteen-unit apartment is probably not what's in the best interest of a single-family homeowner. And I feel very strongly about that.^[48]

From the Valleys to the Oceans, Views for Sale

In the coastal plain of Los Angeles County lies the middle-income community of El Segundo. Over one hundred thousand commuters stream into the town to work in the refineries, aerospace industries, and office-building complexes. Beginning in 1964, the El Segundo Taxpayers Association worked to lower tax rates, expose corrupt officials, reduce airport noise, and improve zoning regulations. When the association tried to influence local government, activists soon discovered that government had established close relations with the nearby large corporations. One leader of the association concluded that "the entire city was run by Standard Oil." The leader of the taxpayers group organized campaigns that succeeded in replacing all the probusiness members of the city planning commission and defeating three city council members.

This activist thought that the town's government should take an active role in solving traffic, pollution, and other problems caused by the many businesses operating nearby. She favored what she termed "planned progress," including stricter regulations over proposed office buildings. "The developer has certain rights, but his rights end where his property line stops. And if he's creating a problem for the community, then there should be some limitation put on it." When it came time to pay for solving the problems created by business, many members of the association favored increasing business license taxes and instituting a split roll for property taxes, which would tax business property at a higher rate than homes.

Oh, we'll have to tax industry. . . . Example. The city business license tax here has not been increased since 1947. It's $24 a year for the entire 20 stories of the Prudential Towers. (Now Palos Verdes [the affluent coastal community discussed in chap. 3] is $30 per employee.) And again they're paying absolutely nothing in the way of property taxes. But they desperately need some street improvements. I have no objection to creating a special assessment district enabling them to pay for the street improvements that they require. But I object vehemently when the public works director takes the money that he gets on gas tax which comes to the community on the basis of the number of residents and uses it to service the industry, who's getting off Scot free.^[49]

In short, the operations of the large businesses in El Segundo, usually invisible to residents of suburban bedroom communities, had led activists to support antibusiness tax programs.

Another coastal community, Venice, is an area where the median family income in 1976 was 90 percent that of Los Angeles County. But this one statistic does not capture the great contrasts in the town. Venice includes a largely black neighborhood where incomes hover around the poverty line. Nearby, blue-collar Portuguese and Greeks could still afford in 1970 to buy their tiny houses lost amid a maze of alleyways and, yes, canals. But one person's alley is another's charm. Flocking to Venice are the young professionals, whose favorite haunts include Beyond Baroque, an old city jail now resplendent with art exhibits and resounding with poetry, and the Rose Cafe, the fine purveyors of fresh croissants, quesadillas made with brie cheese, and fish with blueberry sauce. Among these Venetians of fashion, "industry" refers to film-making and not to the oil refinery a scant five miles away. In Venice one can also find a network of political organizations favoring women's rights, rent control, environmentalism, and nonintervention in Central America.

Although the liberal climate made tax protest hardly the proper cause, real estate inflation made it a necessity. One activist recounts how his neighbor paid $2,700 for his house; by 1975, the market value had topped $100,000, and $300,000 the year Proposition 13 passed. This activist volunteered with the American Association of Retired Persons to improve social security benefits and services for the aged. He campaigned to reduce noise levels at a nearby airport and pressured developers—"the big interests"—to build more housing for seniors while preserving the natural habitat in the wetlands by the beach. But his major political work was to organize the Coalition of Homeowners and Renters of Los Angeles County, which campaigned against the privileges of large property owners. As he wrote in an open letter in early 1977:

[L]arge and affluent property owners . . . pay only a small, if any, share of their fair taxes, especially those who made substantial campaign contributions to the Assessor. . . . A sampling of properties owned by some of [Assessor] Philip Watson's contributors along Wilshire Blvd. show an underassessment of $500 million and may reach $2 billion. . . . Among properties enjoying assessment advantages are reported to be the 53-story UCB [United California Bank] building; . . . American Savings and Loan—Sherman Oaks—unchanged since 1970 although residential property 2 blocks away was reassessed higher up to 300%. . . . Because of the Assessor's conferring of assessment advantages to his favorite special interests, the historical 1966 collection ratio of 55% of the taxes from the income producing [business] properties has been reduced now to 45%, thus shifting 10% of the taxes to the residential taxpayers.

This activist's program for tax reform included making homeowneroccupied property tax exempt, which would help accomplish the larger objective of "reduction of the combined total property and income tax now burdening the low and middle incomes."^[50]

Generalized Unresponsiveness

During their protests to reduce property taxes, activists in middle-income communities discovered that the governments of their towns, cities, counties, and states were unresponsive to their petitions. Through their own experience, activists learned that small businesses would offer little assistance and that community business leaders and large corporations would not help at all. Activists gave tirades about the unresponsiveness of big business and big government and, in doing so, were able to tap the feelings of many citizens who felt powerless against all dominant institutions.

Such feelings, widespread in the 1960s and 1970s, are a recurrent feature in the American polity. According to Samuel Huntington, suspicion of the power of government and other institutions such as big business is a long-standing American creed. Periodically, in times of "credal passion," democratic ideals were used to challenge existing institutions. In these periods, "[A]uthority . . . [was] widely questioned or rejected. . . . Traditional American values of liberty, individualism, equality, popular control of government, and the openness of government were stressed in public discussion. . . . Hostility toward power (the antipower ethic) was intense, with the central issue of politics being defined as 'liberty versus power.'  . . .Movements flourished devoted to specific reforms or 'causes.'"^[51]

The tax revolt was one cause that dramatized activists' and citizens' feelings that government and business had become unresponsive. Many leaders and institutions stood in the way of lower property taxes—the office of the county assessor, whose computers inexorably printed out the higher tax bills; the chiefs of government agencies, who built their bureaucratic empires at public expense; the politicians in Sacramento, who endlessly haggled over tax relief and never delivered; and finally, the executives of corporations, who along with politicians, labor union leaders, school administrators, the media, and the experts warned that Proposition 13 was folly.

In their confrontation with unresponsive institutions, tax protesters sputtered sparks of angry rhetoric that inflamed middle-income communities. But although it was like a fire that refined them, it was also an anger that isolated them from the allies that might have brought success.