Jackson Meets City’s Richest and Poorest

Beginning what is expected to be the last stretch of his presidential campaign, the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday announcing that he offers “a plan that’s good for Watts and Beverly Hills.”

Indeed, he immediately took his presidential campaign to the city’s wealthiest and its poorest. After a celebrity-packed fund-raiser in Hollywood, Jackson spent the night with a family in one of the city’s toughest housing projects.

The two events were preceded by a rally at Will Rogers Park in Watts, where Jackson recounted for an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,000 his experiences in the area after the 1965 riots. Then,543257376lived lavishly while those only a few miles away barely survived, he said.

“While there was a dream on the sunny side of the street, there was a nightmare where the sun did not shine,” Jackson said.

New Set of Problems

More than two decades later, he said, the area faces a new set of problems.

“We’re not exploding in the streets and destroying poverty. We’re imploding and destroying each other,” Jackson said. “It’s not fire in the streets; it’s cocaine in our membranes.”

The candidate was whisked from the park to the Palace, a Hollywood theater, for a fund-raiser promoted by entertainers Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Helen Reddy and Martin Sheen, among others.

Several hundred people paid $50 and $100 each to attend.

Jackson spent the night in the Nickerson Gardens project apartment that is the home of Denise Calhoun, an unemployed single mother of three daughters.

The project suffers one of the city’s worst violent crime problems, much of it tied to drugs and gangs.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis has the Democratic nomination virtually sewed up. He is a strong favorite to win Tuesday’s California primary, his final contest with Jackson.

Won’t Concede Defeat

However, Jackson refuses to concede defeat and has an ambitious schedule of events in California, New Mexico and Montana in the final few days of the primary race.

Earlier Wednesday, Jackson had ended five days of campaigning in New Jersey--which also holds its primary on Tuesday. His final stop was an appearance on a Woodbridge, N.J., beach strewn with garbage--including hypodermic needles and hospital blood bags--that had floated over from a New York City landfill.

Although New York and Woodbridge officials have been struggling over who should be responsible for cleaning up the former resort, Jackson blamed the problem on officials in Washington for not enforcing clean water laws.

Jackson also spoke briefly by telephone with Dukakis. Jackson said he had planned to wish Dukakis’ wife, Kitty, well on her upcoming surgery but she was not home when he telephoned.

The two candidates did not discuss anything of political consequence, Jackson said, but they plan to meet privately before or after their debate at El Camino College today.