Building grassroots power is essential to making Culver City a more welcoming, equitable and inclusive community. To accomplish this, a group of long term and new community activists are taking action through Our Culver. We invite you to join us.
We have a lot to be proud of in Culver City, but we still face significant challenges. Whether you’re just starting out in life, retired from paid work, or somewhere in between, we’re all being squeezed. For young people, finding a good job or an affordable apartment feels impossible. The high cost of childcare hits overstretched parents. Being able to buy a home would be like winning the lottery. Pensions have disappeared and healthcare costs keep rising. And even just traveling from one side of town to the other requires fighting through car-choked streets.
Nationally, it’s just as challenging. Climate change; the rise in hate against people of color, the LGBTQ+ and trans community, the growing numbers of poor and unhoused, the loss of reproductive freedom and even the threat to democracy itself.
Our hope for Our Culver is that together, we can engage our neighbors, empower the next generation of leaders, and educate our community on solutions that genuinely meet our needs. Young people and people of color are at the forefront of the anti-racist movement and the climate justice movement. Writers and actors speak to struggles against corporate greed and income inequality. Our older teens are calling for voting rights. Worried parents and seniors are standing up for their kids and communities. Our Culver is a place for us to take action together.
Our Culver is needed because the current City Council majority is letting down our young people, people of color, renters, and families. The majority have a vision of Culver City populated by single family homes, cars, commercial development and high income lifestyles. They see Culver City as a place for people who have already “made it,” and if you aren’t one of them, then live somewhere else until you have.
Our city is way more diverse than that vision accounts for. High density housing, public transportation, caring for the vulnerable, the unhoused and genuine opportunity for historically excluded people and our kids are the future for the LA region, and Culver City can’t be the outlier.
Our Culver will highlight the opportunity we have with the resources at our disposal. We have a city budget of nearly $300 million. How is that money spent? Does that spending align with our values? Does the city have effective policies to tackle climate change? Create more affordable housing? Take care of the most vulnerable? And to right past and current racial injustices?
Over the next few months, Our Culver will work to make our community more aware of local policies and how they have supported a vision of the past instead of the needs of the future. We want to invite everyone who lives, works, or plays in our community to take part. To find out more about Our Culver, go to the Our Culver webpage or follow us on Instagram, Twitter/X, or BlueSky.