Olympic $ Should Be Shared With the Ghetto and Barrio

There is an interesting contest left over from the 1984 Olympics that will go into its first round today: a test of wills over how to spend the estimated $90-million profit from the Games.

On one side is the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, the well-connected local business and political leaders who brought the Summer Games to this city over the objections of many doubters and cynics, and made them a success. They have regrouped as the Los Angeles Organizing Committee Amateur Athletic Foundation in order to distribute the local share of Olympic profits.

On the other side are the United Neighborhoods Organization of East Los Angeles and the South-Central Organizing Committee, two of the largest and most influential groups in the city’s Latino and black neighborhoods. In recent years UNO and SCOC have also accomplished things that doubters and cynics thought were impossible, helping to bring disciplined community action and civic improvements to poor ghetto neighborhoods.

A confrontation between such formidable contestants would, appropriately, be of Olympian proportions. On both sides are strong-willed people used to having their way. Nobody can question the clout and determination of the Olympic organizers. And it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the staying power of UNO and SCOC.

The two sister organizations were created using the techniques of the late radical Saul Alinsky, which have been carried to new levels of sophistication by his successors in the Industrial Areas Foundation. Using local churches as their main organizing unit, IAF staff members have had great success in creating mass-membership community groups in cities throughout the country, particularly among Latino Roman Catholics in the Southwest.

These groups empower people who are not only poor, but in some cases not even citizens. The organizers show them that they can have a say in matters that affect their lives, from where a city government decides to put a stop sign to whether a supermarket chain enforces high standards for its outlets in poor neighborhoods. Community leaders trained in small struggles like these usually move on to tougher issues, like improving public education or controlling gang violence.

It is precisely those fundamental concerns, UNO and SCOC leaders say, that led them to focus on the $90 million that will be left for local use after other proceeds from the Olympics are distributed. Leaders of UNO and SCOC remember all the good things that the Olympics brought to Los Angeles in the summer of 1984--particularly a drop in crime in the neighborhoods around Exposition Park, where many of the Olympic activities were centered.

Having decided some time ago that drug use and the crime associated with it are the basic causes of many problems in East Los Angeles and the Southside, UNO and SCOC leaders scoured poor neighborhoods to find programs that kept young people away from drugs and crime. They listed them in a funding proposal sent to the athletic foundation, asking that $6.6 million in Olympic funds be given to 136 groups ranging from small Roman Catholic and Protestant churches to major programs like the Community Youth Gang Services Project.

It was a typically ambitious effort by UNO and SCOC. But it hit the athletic foundation like another Soviet boycott.

Spokesmen for the foundation reacted defensively to the UNO and SCOC shopping list. They pointed out that the foundation has at least 70 other proposals pending from worthy agencies. They noted that many of the programs on the list, such as rape hotlines, don’t meet the main purpose for which the Olympic money was to be used: youth sports programs. (This glosses over the exception already made when the foundation granted $2 million for an arts festival similar to the Olympic Arts Festival of 1984.) They also point out that the foundation has not even decided how much of the $90 million it will give away now and how much should be saved for later years. All reasonable objections. But they overlook what UNO and SCOC leaders are really getting at.

None of them expect all 136 programs on the UNO/SCOC shopping list to be funded. Their main concern is that Los Angeles neighborhoods that have historically been neglected get a significant share of what athletic foundation officials like to call the “Olympic legacy.” As one SCOC leader told me, “We’ll be happy no matter what groups they fund on the Eastside or in Watts, even if they hand-pick them themselves. We just want our neighborhoods included when that money is divided up.” In other words, just as they have in their past campaigns, UNO and SCOC want to have some say in the matter when Los Angeles’ movers and shakers make decisions that affect their communities.

The latest moving and shaking will begin today, when the Olympic foundation’s grants committee meets to begin screening proposals in preparation for a full board meeting Dec. 9. Among two dozen proposals to be considered are 10 from the UNO/SCOC shopping list. Whether or not they are accepted will determine if the standoff between the two community groups and Olympic committee leaders ends in compromise or confrontation.

They should, of course, compromise. In their own unique ways, the Olympic organizers and UNO and SCOC leaders have shown the rest of us that with hard work, good organization and confidence Los Angeles can be a better city. That is important common ground to share.