Mission Accomplished: Bill Brand did what he came to do. But his final message was that the fight for the Redondo waterfront is not over
by Mark McDermott Mayor Bill Brand knew the finish line was approaching. He’d had a frank conversation with a palliative care doctor not long after being diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in both his brain and lungs. Brand was an engineer and thought like one, both in his unlikely political career and in his approach to cancer. He wanted facts. “Look,” Brand asked the doctor. “Just between you and me…if this were you, what would you be thinking — how long do you got?” “Well, Bill, optimistically, I’d say about four or five years,” the doctor said. “Pessimistically, I’d say a good six to nine months.” That conversation occurred in June 2019. In the four years and six months that followed, Brand brought the same tenacity to his fight with cancer that he displayed in his two decade-long battle fending off big development on the Redondo Waterfront: first as a citizen activist who helped stir a movement, then as councilman often reviled by his more pro-development colleagues, and finally as a mayor who became more than a mayor, but a regional leader. It is often said that in the labyrinthian American medical system, a patient must learn to be his or her own advocate. Brand fiercely applied…
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