The Cynical, the Old, and the New

Nelson Mandela’s visit to Los Angeles last week demonstrated how politics is a mixture of the new, old and cynical.

Mandela’s tour directors were cynical, or at least calculating, in knowing exactly where to go for big bucks--The Industry. Almost 1,000 of Hollywood’s famous paid to attend a reception and dinner for Mandela Friday night, raising more than $1.2 million for the fight against apartheid. Like presidential campaign managers, the Mandela handlers figured star-struck industry greats would pay plenty to be near the famous. No wonder some industry people complain the political world just loves them for their money.

Old is the word for the reception for Mandela on the City Hall steps. In a manner that was venerable when the place was built, more than a score of officials were introduced, their names all preceded by the phrase “The Honorable.” Before the introductions were over, the impatient crowd was booing. Undaunted, Council President John Ferraro gave Mandela a welcome proclamation and Mayor Tom Bradley handed him that most ancient of municipal symbols, a key to the city.

Mandela was understanding. He seemed to know that the key, the proclamation, and the many introductions were the old-fashioned glue of American politics, part of the customs and ceremonies that give structure to political life. “I accept this key to this generous and exceptional city,” he said.

The event that fit the word new was a four-mile march by young people from Rancho Cienega Park to the Coliseum for Mandela’s speech.

On my way to the park, I thought I might be the only white person on the march. I was wrong. The most striking feature of the walk through black, Latino and Asian neighborhoods was its multiracial nature.

Blacks, whites, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, Palestinians, New Jewish Agenda members all marched. Asian, black and white high school students, arm in arm, held the banner of the Los Angeles Student Coalition, one of the groups that conceived the march.

“What catalyzed it was Mandela and the struggle of the South African people,” one of the parade organizers, Noel Rodriguez, told me. Rodriguez graduated from John Muir High School in Pasadena and now is enrolled at Pomona College. At present, though, he’s on leave to do organizing work for the Committee of Solidarity With the People of El Salvador.

As I wrote down his words in my notebook, I remembered doing the same thing, with equally earnest young people, at Berkeley or San Francisco State a quarter-century ago. The Mandela march also brought back memories for one of the participants. Los Angeles attorney Art Goldberg, a leader of the mid-’60s Berkeley Free Speech Movement, waved his fist in the air and joined the chants, as enthusiastically as when he was the terror of Sproul Plaza, birthplace of the famous student rebellion.

The sight of young people of all races, marching for a black hero, touched emotions of spectators, particularly older African-Americans. A few women cried. Others, like a gray-haired postal worker I noticed, simply smiled, their eyes locked on the marchers.

Every event in the long Mandela day and night served a purpose.

Money was the main goal, and the entertainers delivered it--as they do for all fashionable supplicants.

Another goal was to reward Los Angeles’ political leadership for supporting the anti-apartheid cause. When the Reagan Administration balked in the early ‘80s, liberal city administrations in Los Angeles and elsewhere pressured the South African government by divesting themselves of investments in companies dealing with that regime.

Thus, the overlong display of antiquarian politics at City Hall--producing a wealth of brochure-ready photographs for the local politicians. Democratic Assemblywoman Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, one of the first and toughest backers of economic punishment for the South African regime, got two opportunities before the cameras--speeches at City Hall and the Coliseum.

The marching young people served a different purpose. For the past few years, there have been scattered youthful demonstrations around Los Angeles, among them sit-ins at the South African Consulate, arrests for anti-discrimination protests at the Los Angeles Country Club, demonstrations for more minority faculty at colleges. The march brought the activists together for the first time, providing a preview of the next generation of liberal politics.

So there was a place for them all, the Hollywood fat cats, the City Hall pols, the marching students--the cynical, the old and the new.

And that Mandela managed to please them all says a lot about his instinctive skill as a politician.