Trio Hoping to Cure Some Urban Pains

Dr. James Mays came to announce that his well-known inner-city medical clinic would provide doctors three days a week.

James Flournoy, the lawyer and once-prominent politician, came to announce that he would offer free legal services.

Leon Watkins, the operator of a community-help telephone line, came to announce that street gang members will be offered jobs in a new business: producing T-shirts featuring gang-style graffiti.

The three men were the sponsors of a free-lance community organizing effort that descended Friday on Ujima Village, a 300-unit federally subsidized apartment project near Compton whose residents suffer all the usual urban ills.

The idea, the organizers said, is to make residents more self-sufficient by providing services not normally found inside a housing project.

Advocates of Free Enterprise

Mays, Flournoy and Watkins are unabashed advocates of free enterprise, men who believe traditional government welfare programs have stymied the poor. They have played different roles in Los Angeles’ black community, but they wound up at Ujima Village with the same rough mission.

It started with Watkins, who operates his 2-year-old Family Helpline out of the Brotherhood Crusade’s basement on Slauson Avenue. One of his volunteers received a call several months ago from a resident of Ujima who was upset by continued gang-related violence in and around the project.

When Watkins phoned the project, located off El Segundo Boulevard in the middle of Willowbrook State Recreation Area, he found that a boyhood friend from Peoria, Ill., Doug Falkner, had just been hired as manager.

For Watkins, this made Ujima an ideal and sympathetic target for his belief that neighborhoods can lessen gang problems if residents form organizations and stay in touch with one another. Falkner told him he would welcome his help.

That eased the way for Mays, who runs three medical clinics and has founded several social programs, including one called Adopt-a-Family, in which a group of professionals agree to provide various services to needy families.

Mays, former chief of cardiology at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, believes that the regimentation of public health clinics creates impersonal and often inferior care.

Mays felt he could make a difference if he, in effect, adopted a housing project, providing its residents with the same set of visiting doctors. He volunteered members of his clinics and obtained pledges from several other specialists to participate.

Flournoy, who was the Republican Party’s unsuccessful nominee for secretary of state (in 1970) and controller (in 1974 and 1982), heard from Watkins about the medical plan and said he would throw in a day of his time each month.

In the middle of all this, Watkins had what he felt was a money-making brainstorm. What was the hottest subject in Los Angeles? Street gang violence. How had Watkins spent many years of his life? As a gang member and, more recently, as a counselor of gang members. What do most gang members use as an excuse for their wayward lives? The lack of a job. What would Watkins do? He would create jobs for gang members exploiting the interest in gangs. T-shirts covered with gang members’ nicknames, scrawled in the distinctive style that blights thousands of walls. He even had a slogan: Sling Shirts, Not ‘Caine (a slang reference to cocaine).

It just so happened that one of his volunteers, Harold Highwarden, owned some silk screening equipment. And it just so happened that when Flournoy heard about the shirt idea, he was so enthused he pledged $10,000 to start it. Watkins is phoning T-shirt shops and hopes to have the shirts on shelves in a couple of weeks.

For Flournoy, the effort is fraught with symbolism.

“Twenty years ago, black professionals lived in the black community, and they were role models. That’s changed. But this T-shirt idea motivated me. It’s a way to give something back to the community,” he said.

“There’s a feeling of entrepreneurship, a feeling we must help our brothers,” Mays told a handful of residents of the project who attended a press conference.

Watkins acknowledged the risks of employing gang members as well as the public relations dangers of trading on graffiti.

“We are willing to organize some of the (gang) guys who want to cooperate, who are not so far into cocaine,” he said. “I see a lot of young men here who can be turned to do things they don’t think they could do. And this is not glorifying gangs--we’re not using ‘Crips’ or ‘Bloods’ or any other gangs’ name. We’re just making up our own names.”