Activist recalled fondly
By Daily Press staff
CITY HALL — About a dozen people gathered on the lawn here Tuesday to remember a man who proved you can fight City Hall — and win.
Len Doucette, who died recently, won a case on behalf of Santa Monica’s homeless, who maintain the right to assemble and eat in city parks.
Doucette, who was in his mid 70s, led scores of protests in Santa Monica by homeless people in the early and mid ’90s, including a six-month fast and protest in Palisades Park.
Doucette also founded one of Los Angeles’ first-ever homeless newspapers, “Hard Times,” which was a publication about homeless issues and the forerunner of today’s current Santa Monica-based homeless paper “Making Change.”
He also co-founded Santa Monica’s first-ever grassroots homeless group, “We the People,” which still meets weekly to help homeless people fight for their legal rights, access community services and find community within the city with other homeless people. The group also held protests, camp-outs, and hunger fasts in Santa Monica for homeless people’s rights.
Doucette, while homeless, was a board member of one of the largest, and today’s most prominent, Los Angeles-based anti-poverty organizations, The Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness.
While still homeless — and without any apparent formal education — Doucette co-founded and co-lectured one of the first California State College courses ever offered concerning the phenomenon and causes of modern American homelessness through the California State University at Bakersfield. And Len was a constant guest speaker on homelessness at colleges, churches, synagogues, civic clubs and other groups.
“Although I didn’t completely understand him, I loved him,” said Deputy City Attorney Marty Tachiki, who remembers Doucette well through his activism and hanging around City Hall.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 9, 2004. Read the original PDF.