The Mar Vista Community Council is soliciting public feedback on a proposed mural at the north side of the Venice Boulevard/405 Freeway underpass. The survey closes today, Friday, at noon.
The mural project has been in motion for some time, and never without controversy. When we first reported on it last year, we detailed what this site actually represents. A mural at “Venice and Globe” is not a triumph over blight, but the violent erasure of a community. The encampment at Venice Boulevard and the 405 Freeway was home to a long-standing community of unhoused Angelenos, repeatedly swept and harassed until it was finally erased. For those who lived there, and for the neighbors, advocates, and mutual aid organizers who supported them, what officials called a “cleanup” was in reality the traumatic scattering of vulnerable people into worse conditions. Like every sweep conducted across the city and country, this operation was carried out for the comfort of housed residents unwilling to reckon with what it looks like when a society fails to care for its own.
The site’s location was emblematic of Los Angeles’ overlapping bureaucracies. The freeway median belonged to Caltrans. One side of Venice fell under Culver City, while the intersecting streets were split between Council Districts 5 and 11. In practice, this jurisdictional patchwork created a void in accountability. Everyone had authority, and yet no one took responsibility.
Despite the institutional failures, the people living at Venice and Globe created their own networks of safety and survival. Overdoses were reversed not by professionals but by neighbors armed with Narcan. Peer education and harm reduction practices spread organically, contributing to a notable decline in fentanyl deaths within the camp.
The city’s sweep dismantled all of that overnight. The only motel rooms available at the time were in South LA, so people were displaced twenty miles from the community that had kept them alive. The costs were devastating. An elder resident known as the “matriarch” of the camp died alone in a motel room, isolated from the friends who had once checked on her daily. Others were lost to overdoses that might have been reversed had they still been surrounded by their community.
We reached out to the original artist selected for this project, Julia Aerose, to share this context. We explained: “Many of those people were swept from the site without meaningful offers of housing, and the operation fractured a fragile but vital network of mutual care, community, and survival. Many of the folks who supported that community and knew the people who lived there are still grieving what was lost, including friends who died as a result of the sweep.”
We had an opportunity to speak with Julia, and she seemed genuinely conflicted and disturbed by the history we shared with her: the sweeps, the deaths, the community that had been broken apart. We don’t know the circumstances under which she left the project, but it’s hard not to wonder whether she made a choice to walk away. If so, that would be a courageous act of artistic integrity worth acknowledging.
What we do know is that Julia Aerose is no longer attached to the project, which is a collaboration between CD11 Councilmember Traci Park’s office and the LA Department of Cultural Affairs. They have selected John Park, an LA-based muralist whose portfolio includes commissions from Nike, the Cesar Chavez Foundation, Universal Music Group, and various corporate clients. His work is technically accomplished. But a mural is only as meaningful as the story it chooses to tell, and the story being told here is not an honest one. As one community member put it: “A mural is people’s art. What’s happening here is art-washing, a politician painting over the suffering she caused.”
The Problem of Marty
Now comes an additional and deeply troubling dimension to this project. The proposed mural design includes a portrait of Martin “Marty” Rubin, a longtime Mar Vista Community Council board member who died last year. To some in the neighborhood, Rubin was a dedicated local figure. But his legacy is far more complicated than a commemorative mural would suggest.
During the 2019-2021 MVCC board term, Rubin physically assaulted a Black LGBTQIA+ board member during a board meeting. Later, he assaulted another community member during public comment. The pattern of intimidation continued into the 2023-2025 term, when he was recorded screaming at fellow board members: “I could make trouble here! But what I don’t wanna do is what I’m saying I could do!” To anyone in that room, the meaning was unmistakable. The fact that this same man once championed a “civility pledge” for board conduct makes the record all the more jarring. Serious concerns about Marty Rubin are not fringe views. They reflect a real and legitimate concern about who gets memorialized in public space, and why. A mural on the north wall of a freeway underpass is a statement, permanent and visible to everyone who passes through.
What You Can Do
The survey closes today, Friday, at noon. Please take a moment to share your perspective. A Special Board of Directors Meeting on this topic follows on April 6th, 7 to 8 PM, in person, where community members can also speak directly.
The survey asks how well the mural reflects Mar Vista’s identity, what elements you’d suggest adding or adjusting, whether anything feels out of place, and what else you’d like the design team to know. Our position remains what it has always been: a mural at this location is not inherently wrong. Art in public spaces can be powerful and healing. But art that papers over displacement, erasing the memory of people who lived and suffered at this site, and that elevates a man with a record of violence against his own neighbors, is not a gift to the community. That is a monument to the version of Mar Vista that those in power prefer to remember. The people who were swept from Venice and the 405 deserve better than to be painted over, and the Mar Vista community deserves public art that tells the truth.