A Tale of Two Cities

On the day Inglewood was named an All-America city, a man was shot to death in a phone booth, and the half-naked body of a woman was found in an alley.

Two days later, as grand civic functions were being planned to celebrate the award, a high school student was killed at a bus stop.

I began to wonder. Am I missing something here?

Exactly why is Inglewood, one of the most violent urban enclaves in the nation, an All-America city?

Is this an award meant to satirize what American cities have finally become, jungles that teem with animals far less predictable than those on four legs?

Are we ignoring the fact that doping, gang-banging killers prowl the streets, and concentrating only on those tidy municipal achievements that celebrate new libraries and old fantasies?

The obvious hope is that the whole thing is a bad joke. Chevy Chase will emcee televised tongue-in-cheek ceremonies that will award Inglewood a Golden Uzi for its significant contribution to American violence.

More guns will fire, more bodies will fall, Bob Hope will tour the war zone and that will be that. Downward and backward to next year’s awards.

Well, not quite. There’s effort here.

First, however, cut to Pomona, the home of City Councilman Clay Bryant, who some know as a courageous man of the people and others as a mad-dog civic terrorist.

Bryant, a jowly ex-sailor with a penchant for confrontation, discovered recently that Pomona was also being considered as an All-America city.

“What the hell,” he recalls asking himself, “is this?”

Unknown to Bryant, Pomona’s mayor had nominated the city for the kind of honor that Inglewood would ultimately win.

In some ways, Pomona isn’t unlike Inglewood. They’re about the same size, and both have high minority populations and high crime rates.

One significant difference, however, is that Inglewood’s civic administration is working to overcome its problems, and Pomona’s leaders spend their time clawing at each other’s throats.

When Bryant learned of Pomona’s quest for All-America status he wrote the National Civic League that Pomona didn’t deserve it.

He cited areas overrun with dope dealers and gang-bangers, lack of community confidence in its police and the subsequent loss of establishments doing business in the city.

“The image and reputation of Pomona,” Bryant wrote, “have become a laughingstock and a joke.”

Such candid self-analysis is suicidal but interesting. How many cities can boast of leaders willing to brutalize their civic image for the sake of honest evaluation?

“I see an All-America city as a Utopia,” Bryant said, “and this ain’t no Utopia.”

Inglewood ain’t no Utopia, either.

Then why would the city presume to even pursue such an award?

The name of the game, as I said earlier, is effort.

“We’re not trying to fool anyone,” Assistant City Manager Norman Craven said the other day. “Our rate of violent crime is several times higher than the national average, and we’ve got airport noise you wouldn’t believe. We’re not a perfect city, but we’re trying.”

Here again was civic candor but, unlike Pomona, Inglewood has managed to gather its dissident factions into a structure of racial harmony and civic pride that is making a difference.

One example: Last year, the city’s multiracial coalition campaigned hard in favor of new taxes to create a 20-man police task force to fight street crime. The measure won by a 4-1 majority. In the same election, voters in four other California cities rejected similar proposals.

“An All-America city isn’t supposed to be a model of rectitude,” Craven said. “It isn’t supposed to be clean, great, or even perfectly governed. But it’s got to recognize its problems and use creative means to try and solve them.”

Clay Bryant enjoys attention because of his bellicose attitude and colorful, head-banging attacks. Even his wife tells him to shut up. Pomona’s often noisy, pointless City Council meetings reflect his boisterous presence.

Inglewood boasts of no such high-profile character, but instead works quietly toward trying to clean up an urban horror that threatens every city in America. In that sense, it symbolizes a kind of hope for us all.

One of our reporters, Sebastian Rotella, wrote recently, “Inglewood is hard to dislike and easy to root for.”

It may be more All-America than I think. What the hell. Add one more rooter.