One local leader has seen her breadth of transformative moments in Santa Monica history, and continues to be celebrated as a strong part of the community’s present and future.
This year’s Santa Monica Fourth of July Parade will feature former Mayor Judy Abdo as the Grand Marshal, a position she was "really surprised and very pleased" to gain from parade organizer Jeff Jarow. An organizer in Santa Monica and the Ocean Park neighborhood for much of her life, Abdo will be seen either sporting the red, white and blue or rainbow colors highlighting her status in the LGBTQ+ community.
"I think it’s really important to have community events that are more or less local that bring us together as a community, and this is one of the best, because people can come there (and) easily be there, walk down Main Street and enjoy seeing local people in a parade," Abdo said of the event.
A Santa Monica City Councilmember from 1988 to 1996, Abdo served as Mayor for three years (1990-91, 1992-94) along with a litany of other roles. In education, she held the role of Director of Child Development Services for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District and has been a member of both the Santa Monica Early Education Childcare Task Force Steering Committee and the Committee for Excellent Public Schools Steering Committee.
Her accomplishments have also been tied to environmental matters, one of the issues she’s looking at when assessing the upcoming November elections. For 25 years, Abdo represented the city on the Metropolitan Water District Board, and is currently on the Steering Committee of Climate Action Santa Monica.
In her cavalcade of roles, Abdo has seen movements such as the "Save the Pier" campaign of the 1970s, which she noted was her first involvement of "seeing people come together to save something" in the city. In the next decade, she saw the city’s rent control movement take off, a statement by locals wanting their neighbors to stay neighbors.
"Before rent control happened, people lived here briefly and then moved on," Abdo said. "Once rent control happened, then people knew that they’d (have) stable housing, and they ended up living here and connecting to their communities … in long-term kinds of ways. You could meet somebody on your block and (know) that you’re going to have that same person in your life for a long, long time."
The rent control issue is her main political consideration this year, particularly looking at the potential elimination of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act via the Justice for Renters Act on the November ballot. Locally, she states it’s going to be an "interesting campaign" for City Council positions, one that will uncover the "true differences" between incumbents and challengers.
"I think there’s some really good people running and it’s going to make a difference in our community to see what they have to share," Abdo added.
One source of inspiration for current candidates may be the work done by "Mr. Santa Monica," Nat Trives, who will join Abdo as a special guest in this year’s parade. Trives, the city’s first Black mayor, has kept a healthy relationship with his fellow former mayor.
"(He) was on the City Council (when) I very first got here back in the 70s, and I was so impressed that Santa Monica had a Black councilmember and then a Black mayor," Abdo said. "It took me a while to be able to meet him, but he has been a community leader all of his life, and I always like listening to him and his point of view about how things are because he’s been just a stalwart of community involvement."
