Crude emails reveal nasty side of a California beach city’s crusade to halt growth

Abstract

The campaigns Brand has run and supported are awash in appeals to preserving the city's beach town charm. Brand, who is white, also jokes with a Black supporter about her becoming an "Angry Black woman." In another email, Brand contends that the "Increasingly latino laden Coastal Commission" would dislike a project because it was too luxurious and exclusive. "People have been coming after Redondo Beach and anybody associated with Redondo Beach," Brand said. 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 an email exchange from February 2017, Brand told her that she should be proud if she lost her seat on a Redondo Beach city commission in retribution for criticizing the CenterCal project. In an email from February 2014, Brand refers to then-Redondo Beach Mayor Steve Aspel, a supporter of CenterCal's plan to redevelop the city's pier. 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.