Fighting Another War at Home

The war clock was ticking Monday night as Msgr. Patrick Thompson spoke in the parish hall of Nativity Roman Catholic Church in El Monte.

Despite the national preoccupation with the Persian Gulf, a forum for candidates in the election next Tuesday for Los Angeles County’s 1st Supervisorial District had drawn 650 people. They were, for the most part, blue-collar Latino families, and they wore serious expressions as they sat in folding chairs or stood along the walls. The electronic bingo scoreboards on the walls were dark on this all-business evening.

The crowd had come from El Monte, San Gabriel, Montebello and the other small cities of the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County’s vast suburban melting pot. As members of the East Valleys Organization, an aggressive grass-roots group, they were well-known for stirring the pot.

Thompson was conscious of the passing minutes that seemed to be bringing war closer. Yet, an EVO organizer told me later, he was just as aware that the men, women and children in front of him were engaged in another form of combat, against such domestic killers as gangs, drugs, polluted water and poor health care.

Thus his message: He was pleased they had not forgotten their community responsibilities on this tense night.

Not only had they remembered these responsibilities, but they took them most seriously. EVO had prepared a “report card” in which the candidates were graded on how close they came to the organization’s position on pollution control, trash disposal, gangs, crime, drugs, health and education. They applauded favorable answers and interrupted the speakers on the infrequent occasion when a candidate departed from the EVO party line.

The size and enthusiasm of the crowd seemed to stimulate the four candidates--state Sens. Chuck Calderon and Art Torres, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina and Sarah Flores, who had been an aide to Supervisor Pete Schabarum.

Maybe it intimidated them, too. All four gave the “correct” answers, and received A’s.

Emotions peaked when 60 women stood up in the audience. One of them, Irma Muniz, said: “Tonight you will hear about gangs, clean water, drugs, crimes and schools. I think we’ve been forgetting something very important, women’s health. These women have been signed up for a Pap smear screening since mid-August. They have not yet been able to have the screening done.”

Speaking in Spanish, Torres, Flores and Molina pledged to do something about the overcrowded county health care system immediately upon election. Calderon did the same in English. The candidates, being candidates, of course did not reveal how they’d pay for what they promised. But on this evening, a show of interest was enough.

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. At earlier appearances, the candidates sounded like tired roadshow troupers, mouthing the same lines in each town in the political forums that occur almost every day or evening. But in the charged air of the parish hall, even Flores became an orator. She’s usually less articulate than her foes, but she was spellbinding as she told how she defied her former boss, Schabarum, when he discouraged her from running. “Hell no, Pete Schabarum,” she said, “I’m going to run anyway.”

The applause was so loud that a passerby might have thought there’d been a big winner at bingo.

Thompson was on the mark with his admonition against letting the gulf crisis divert attention from the supervisorial election. The Board of Supervisors can contribute to a solution of each of the problems brought up by the questioners. And it’s the feeling of the East Valleys Organization members that the current board hasn’t done that.

An EVO questioner noted, for example, that the board can be a leader in setting up the “garbage train,” a project with considerable support in the valley. With its many canyons, the San Gabriel Valley has tended to be a garbage dump for the rest of Los Angeles. The proposed train would carry trash to the far desert, rather than having it poured into dumps in canyons adjacent to the valley. It would be a headache to build. Garbage fees would have to be increased. Desert residents would have to be persuaded that it’s a good idea. But if it works, there’d be fewer dumps. And the dumps, scientists are now discovering, are a cause of water pollution in natural underground valley reservoirs. Complicated, but it may save lives.

That’s the kind war that Msgr. Thompson wanted the audience to fight. “Rather than staying home and worrying,” he said, “we’re here doing something.”

Then the 650 men, women and children joined hands and prayed--for the troops abroad, and for their families and communities at home. The same prayer covered both the wars.