The Fight to Save the 9th District

When Tom Bradley was growing up, he lived in a poor area just south of downtown Los Angeles.

I bring up that biographical note because Bradley, now the mayor, may be called upon next year to save the old neighborhood from being dismembered by some very accomplished City Hall political surgeons.

The neighborhood is part of the 9th City Council District, represented by 90-year-old Gilbert Lindsay, who’s paralyzed from a stroke, unable to speak and not expected to recover.

In just a few months, the City Council will draw new boundaries for its 15 districts. It’s well known that redistricting brings out the worst in a politician, but with Lindsay hospitalized, some 9th District political activists fear it will be worse than usual.

They’ve told me they’re afraid that council members may try to grab the commercial portion of the district--downtown, Little Tokyo and Chinatown--and divide it among themselves. “They can’t wait to take the upper portion of the district,” said Lois Medlock, president of the South East Central Homeowners Assn.

The districts of Gloria Molina, Bob Farrell, Nate Holden and Richard Alatorre border the 9th. While all four deny a land grab, Medlock and some other activists fear the temptation of representing downtown’s heavy-contributing real estate developers will prove too strong to resist.

Bradley enters the picture because only a mayoral veto could stop that sort of redistricting plan.

Medlock lives in the mostly black and Latino southern portion of the 9th, which extends about 70 blocks south of downtown. It has most of the residents and the poverty. Downtown, Little Tokyo and Chinatown in the north, while home to far fewer voters, have the big commercial developments.

During Lindsay’s long reign, the southern part of the district has been treated as a neglected colony. Residents paid taxes without getting much from City Hall. Lindsay catered to the downtown, Chinatown and Little Tokyo developers. Builders weren’t required to pay big fees for zoning concessions--fees that could have been used to begin housing and commercial development in South L.A.

The worst example of the city’s behavior occurred in 1986, when Lindsay and Bradley backed construction of a huge incinerator in a predominantly residential neighborhood at 41st and Alameda streets to burn the city’s trash. Medlock and other community activists protested and forced abandonment of the project.

Their upset victory sparked a wave of grass-roots political activity with a single goal: economic revival of one of Los Angeles’ blue-collar neighborhoods.

City Hall came under pressure to force developers to share their wealth. Activists had hopes that Lindsay was beginning to get that message before he was stricken. But the activists fear that their efforts are now in trouble.

So far, there’s no real public move to justify their fears. Concerned about Lindsay’s illness, the council’s Rules and Elections Committee is preparing a city charter amendment that would permit removal of an incapacitated council member. If approved by the council, the amendment would be on the June ballot.

But there’s no guarantee that the current nay-saying electorate will approve the measure. And if voters do, it’ll take a few months before a special election--with its campaign and possible runoff--will be held. A new council member might not take over until the fall. And by fall, the new census figures will have arrived in City Hall, beginning the redistricting process.

But some recent council history doesn’t give Medlock and other community leaders much comfort about what may happen in the interim.

They remember that when Councilman Howard Finn died in 1986 during a redistricting crisis, his San Fernando Valley 1st District was split up to make sure other council members would get the boundaries they wanted. Complaints from Finn’s old constituents were ignored.

Groups of neighborhood leaders have met with the mayor privately, asking him to guard against a council breakup of the 9th. Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said the leaders have “a legitimate concern.” And in general, Fabiani said, the mayor believes “the 9th District ought to be preserved.”

If Bradley saves the 9th, he’ll have accepted the argument put forth by the neighborhood activists: Preservation of the current district lines is needed for economic restoration of South L.A. That would make it more like the South L.A. of Bradley’s youth, where industrial plants and other commercial enterprises provided jobs for working-class residents. There was poverty, but the possibility of a job meant there also was hope.