Grier Is Stopping at Nothing to Get a Grip on Poverty

As ghetto social projects go, Rosey Grier’s L.A. operation is a major disappointment.

You go to write a story about a program like this, you want skid-row atmosphere, the ambiance of poverty. You want peeling plaster, orange-crate office furniture and cockroaches. At Rosey Grier’s “Are You Committed?” headquarters, you get carpeting, plush furniture, modern art on the walls, air-conditioning, piped-in music and a warehouse floor so shiny a trespassing cockroach would skid right out the door.

With Rosey himself you get a guy in an expensive sport coat, crisp shirt and silk tie. If it weren’t for the bright red suspenders, he would look like your typical black, goateed, 280-pound bank president.

“You don’t have to look like you’re working in an alley-way in order to help people,” Grier says. “A lot of people think that’s the way to show how humble you are. We’re humble, but that’s not our purpose. We desire to impress young people, to motivate them.”

Rosey Grier has never dealt in subtlety. As a football player, he made himself famous by slamming ballcarriers and quarterbacks to the turf every Sunday. He was part of the Rams’ Fearsome Foursome.

At age 53, Rosey is still an aggressive, unsubtle cuss. He has been involved in a lot of social causes since retiring from football, but now he’s really rolling up his sleeves. He has declared war on L.A.’s inner city ghettos, on the poverty and depression. He has made a vow to keep at it until the ghetto isn’t a ghetto, or until he dies, whichever comes first.

At “Are You Committed?” you don’t have to be a jock to get in on the action. You just have to have the correct answer to the question.

Grier started the program a year and a half ago with Willie Naulls, the former UCLA basketball star, who is no longer with AYC. Rosey is the chairman. He and his wife, Margie, kicked in $300,000 for start-up expenses.

AYC consists of community programs such as remedial reading, computer training, a job bank and various spiritual-awareness programs. It’s non-profit, takes no government money, is self supporting.

The showcases of the AYC program are the retail training center and a 7-Eleven convenience market at Manchester and Figueroa. The training center is a retail store that sells athletic shoes and sportswear at discount prices. The store and the market are staffed and managed by Rosey’s kids, young men and women who are paid and trained in every aspect of the business world.

The concept is best expressed by the words on the AYC brochure: “If you give a man a fish, you help him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you help him for a lifetime.”

Along with the business training, Rosey’s workers are exposed to some strong spiritual cheerleading. Grier is an ordained minister, and he’ll preach to you some, but his message is as much about getting off your butt as it is getting down on your knees. He sees small businesses, locally owned and operated, as the answer to many of the inner city’s problems.

The program is having impact.

“We are now a force that has to be dealt with in the inner city,” says AYC worker Brian Weaver, a former ghetto gang leader.

Grier and Naulls decided to enlist the help of major corporations. They persuaded 7-Eleven’s parent company, the Southland Corp., to open the store and assume operating costs, with profits to go to AYC.

“We won’t sell any booze,” Grier told Southland.

“Well, OK,” Southland said. “It’s your profits, pal.”

“We won’t sell explicit magazines, either,” Grier told Southland.

“No deal,” Southland said. “We can’t change company policy that radically. Magazines are big business, big profit. The magazines stay.”

“How can we tell our people to be strong morally, then turn around and compromise that for the sake of money?” Grier asked.

Southland finally gave in. You can buy Madonna’s exclusive pics in any 7-Eleven store in the world but this one.

On the store’s front counter is a cardboard photo of Rosey’s face with a message thanking customers, explaining that their money will be put back into their community through AYC programs.

Rosey isn’t shy about using his name and his face to push the program. It’s the age-old game known as cashing in on your athletic fame, only in Rosey’s version of the game, instead of raking in, you’re reaching out.

“When we started up 17 months ago,” Rosey says, “people asked us, ‘Are you just another do-gooder that’s going to come in with a program, write up some reports, and leave?’ I told ‘em, ‘You better get used to my face.’ ”