When Meghan Sahli-Wells was growing up in Culver City, she wanted to be an actress, which hardly distinguished her. But, fittingly for her latest career move, her heroine on the screen was a woman known more for her power and influence than her beauty, Linda Carter, Wonder Woman.
Six days out from the City Council election, the names of the two winners — or at least whomever will join incumbent Scott Malsin — remains as muddy as last autumn when the four candidates for two seats announced their intentions. Community debate holds that the second seat on the Council either will go to the first-time candidate Ms. Sahli-Wells or Jeff Cooper, making his second run, ignoring Robert Zirgulis.
Ms. Sahli-Wells has shattered a couple of molds during her five-month campaign.
In Culver City, known as a middle-aged man’s town, young women — in their 30s — hardly ever run for office. Married moms with small children even less frequently. Although she has repeated and emphasized and pounded away at her Culver City bona fides, her upbringing here coupled with her return home three years ago with her husband and two young sons, she brings with her the fresh breeze of a continental flavor, mainly the air of Paris.
She also is the only fulltime bicyclist in the field of City Council candidates, a tradition she established and maintained throughout her single and married lives in Paris where she never owned a car.
Continental Influence
She lived abroad for a decade and a half, and traveled widely.
As a collegian in France in UCLA’s study abroad program, she met and later married Karim Sahli, a native of Grenoble who grew up in the burgundy region, a fine arts student who evolved into a graphic designer in Culver City. Together they have two sons, 5 and 7, Parisian natives. At home, the Sahli-Wellses are raising their children bi-lingually, in French and English. Their father addresses them only in French, their mother in English, although she is fluent in French. When alone, however, the couple speaks to each other exclusively in French. On the other hand, they live with her grandmother, who only speaks English. (For euphonious purposes, they are Sahli, pronounced sally, and Wells rather than Wells and Sahli.)
A proud mainstream progressive in her convictions, she has, conventionally, emphasized community access to the Council in decision-making and stressed the importance of making a communal commitment to greening.
But in hometown elections, personalities are pivotal. Here is where the race may be decided among her, Mr. Cooper and the aggressively creative Mr. Zirgulis.
Possessing a bubbling schoolgirl charm in a kind of Audrey Hepburn-abroad milieu, Ms. Sahli-Wells’s resume will not be confused with anyone else’s.
Her Beloved Grandmother
Turning to the original shapings of her life, she says that “in my family, we believe in books. So I grew up without a television. At school, when kids heard about that, they would make fun of me. Then I learned to be proud about it.” The literary leadership came from her late mother, who had a master’s degree in medieval literature.
Young Meghan grew up to major in world art and culture at UCLA, with a concentration in folklore, and during her Paris years, she worked as a translator.
In making the rounds of Culver City political audiences this winter and spring, she never failed to mention her grandmother’s indelible influence on her life. That leads to recalling how she brought her family back to Culver City to care for her grandmother while simultaneously plunging, with vigor, into neighborhood political activism.
“It is thanks to my grandmother I ended up going to France in the first place,” Ms. Sahli-Wells says. “When my grandmother was young, she dreamed of going to the Sorbonne in Paris. But her family farmed, and she grew up during the Depression, meaning that while they ate, they really struggled.
“My grandmother was the eldest child of a large family, and she supported many of her relatives. She always had to work. Never made it to Paris. When I was in high school, she told me if I learned a language, any language, she would send me to that country so I could study abroad. I said ‘great,’ and I immediately started learning French.
“Eventually, I ended up studying visual anthropology. After I finished my degrees at UCLA, I went back to Paris, and I continued to study visual anthropology (which she describes as “anthropology by and for the image). I was interested in doing documentary films.”
Ms. Sahli-Wells’s political roots were planted in her undergraduate days in Westwood. “I was in the L.A. Student Coalition, fighting apartheid and racism in Los Angeles. This was around the time of the Rodney King beating, and even before that.”
To summarize the passions of her life:
“The other side of having a love of books and a love of learning is also having a political conscience.
“With my mother, for example, her big issue was hunger. It was shocking to her that people could overeat and have an overabundance of food while others were starving.
“We grew up thinking about these things. Nuclear disarmament was another issue.”
Reviewing her motivations, Ms. Sahli-Wells says she is running for the City Council even though she has entertained apprehensiveness about becoming a public figure for the first time in her life. “People are quick to judge,” she says. “You just have to grow thick skin.
“Finally, my experience comes from the community. I believe the City Council needs the voice of someone who has been in grassroots organizations.
“Mine would be the bottom-up approach rather than from the top down.
“We have a financial crisis. We have an environmental crisis. Now we need to think differently, creatively, about solutions.
“You can’t throw money at problems and expect them to go away.”
On Tuesday, Culver City voters will let Ms. Sahli-Wells know if they agree.
