Former West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land appeared with now-Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, 3rd District, and Jane Fonda at the One Billion Rising for Justice event in February 2014. (photo by Joshua Barash)

Hollywood NOW HERstory Awards honored former West Hollywood Mayor and Councilwoman Abbe Land at its eighth annual reception March 13, which was held in the city’s community meeting room.

Land moved to the unincorporated community in the late-1970s, relocating from the East Coast to pursue her Hollywood dreams.

“Typical story – I was coming out to be an actress,” Land said. “What brought me to acting was those movies of people like Jane Fonda, who made all those movies in the 1960s and ‘70s … ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They?’ and ‘Coming Home.’”

Those films had activist-slants, exploring the social issues driving conversations in America at the time. Land wanted to lift up those stories and make a difference by telling them. Life, however, had a completely different plan for how she was to achieve that.

Faced with eviction in the early-1980s, Land became familiar with renters’ rights through the Coalition for Economic Survival. While she was forced to leave her then-apartment, she remained in the area. When the coalition began working on the campaign for West Hollywood to become its own city, they recruited Land as a volunteer.

“It was really the issue of housing affordability that got me truly involved in the fight for cityhood,” she said. “Then, of course, it became so much more after that.”

Just two years after West Hollywood achieved cityhood in 1984, Land was elected to its City Council.

“What I loved about West Hollywood, and I still love is it’s a city where lots of different folks live. It’s a city that’s inviting and inclusive. I liked the fact that it was a city that was very proud of its LGBT, now QAI, community,” she said. “I liked that it was in the middle of this L.A. megalopolis but it had a kind of small town feel to it. And of course, once we became a city, I liked that we could actually make decisions together about what kind of city we wanted.”

Land felt that West Hollywood was a city that “took people into account” when often people feel government overlooks everyday people.

During her tenure on the council, which lasted on and off until 2015, Land served as the city’s mayor five times. She led the way on progressive rent control laws, access to affordable housing and women’s issues, and helped develop the city’s women’s and disability advisory boards.

When West Hollywood became a city, the gay community was stricken by the AIDS crisis, and advocating for those with HIV/AIDS became central to Land’s service.

“Those were terrible years. Every week you lost somebody you knew,” she said. “When you look at the response to COVID, and how quickly – I mean, of course, technology has changed – but how quickly they came up with a vaccine, how quickly things happened, because the whole world was impacted. Right. There was not [that] sense of urgency on the government’s part [for HIV/AIDS]. So many people were lost … just because people’s prejudice and bias.”

The importance of social justice issues to Land has extended into her professional life. For many years, she was The Trevor Project’s executive director and CEO, and she also worked as the CEO of the Saban Community Clinic. Recently, she acted as executive director of the Los Angeles County Women and Girls’ Initiative. Now, she runs her own consulting firm.

“I primarily work with nonprofits, helping them with their strategic planning, executive coaching, management training [and] working with their boards. I think nonprofits are the backbone of our world because they’re doing the good work – it’s mission driven. And I’m so happy to be able to take some of my expertise and help organizations do their work as best as they can.”

Land also serves on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, the STARZ #TakeTheLead Advisory Council, the L.A. County Women’s Health Policy Council, the MAZON Government Affair and Public Policy Committee, the Creative Acts advisory board and the advisory board for the Women Against Gun Violence. She also confounded ROAR Resistance, the Los Angeles chapter of Indivisible, an organization dedicated to safeguarding democracy.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, 3rd District, credits Land with her own career in service.

“Abbe broke the glass ceiling for so many women, including myself, here in West Hollywood and across Los Angeles,” Horvath said. “The ways in which she shows up for and with community, and for other women, is remarkable. Congratulations to Abbe for the well-deserved HERstory award. My life was forever changed the day I met Abbe, and I’m grateful to call her a mentor and friend.”

“Abbe Land is one of the most important figures in the city of West Hollywood’s history,” West Hollywood Mayor John Erickson said. “I owe a debt of gratitude to her commitment to public service. And there is no one else I can better think of that is deserving of this award.”

Land said that the “arbitrary” inequities in the world drive her activism.

“I was born with this white skin in a middle-class family, which gives me just automatically a bunch of privilege. That’s pretty arbitrary. And other people are not born with that. And they don’t get the same privilege. It’s not right. It’s just not right. I know I’m not going to solve it in my lifetime – I get that. But I want to try to make it better in any way I can,” she said.

Land did eventually get to meet Jane Fonda, several times over – working with her in various initiatives with the city of West Hollywood over the years, and the actress continues to serve as an inspiration.

“She’s just done so much. And I have so much more I have to do,” Land said.

Abbe Land helped for fight West Hollywood’s cityhood in the 1980s before becoming a long-serving member of its City Council. (photo by Joshua Barash)