Ashes of a Mayor’s Dreams

Some of Tom Bradley’s proudest accomplishments went up in smoke in the past two days, points the mayor would want mentioned in his political epitaph:

He calmed racial tensions in Los Angeles by opening up City Hall to all races, and he inspired a return of markets, shops, record stores, drug stores and other retail enterprises that had been driven from South Los Angeles by the 1965 fires of Watts.

This year’s flames--the fires of Rodney King--destroyed chain drug stores and supermarkets. A huge auto parts store, many small shops, all burned and looted. A big variety store at the Slauson-Vermont shopping center in flames.

Even worse for Bradley, in a symbolic sense, was the looting of stores in the Martin Luther King Jr. shopping center at 103rd Avenue and Compton Boulevard. In the lore of Watts, this place is called Charcoal Alley, the fiery center of the riots where thriving neighborhood stores were burned down.

The MLK shopping center was the centerpiece of Bradley’s efforts to restore retailing in South L.A.

I remember how proud he was about a decade ago, the day it opened, when he walked down the aisles of the new supermarket, marveling at the variety of goods in contrast to the shoddy fare that had been available to residents.

That was the day the Watts Insurrection, as it is called in South L.A., was finally put to rest. At last, you could buy a good steak in Watts.

The new developments showed Bradley’s determination to rebuild his old neighborhood--and other poor areas. Until that time, these neighborhoods had been pretty much neglected by the city’s old, white power structure. Bradley filled his Administration with minority--and non-minority--employees who shared that view. Their efforts were supported by a multiethnic, liberal City Council.

Bradley’s opinion was that this had to be done slowly, carefully, fitting in within the system. Bradley believes in our system of capitalism, in our courts, in the high regard that America places on individual enterprise. He came up through this system in the face of many obstacles.

Tuesday night, I talked about all this with African-American City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. A block away, buildings were on fire, and police and drunken young men were facing each other on Adams Avenue.

We discussed how Bradley had opened up the system without making any fundamental changes. We recounted what had happened in city government since Watts--the liberal black mayor and a representative council, with three African-Americans, two Latinos and an Asian among its 15 members. Most recently, Bradley’s Police Commission appointed a black police chief. “And the buildings still burn,” said Ridley-Thomas.

Even though the verdict pushed him to the edge of fury, Bradley does not share such pessimism.

“I was stunned. I was shocked. I was outraged,” he said in his televised speech to the city Tuesday night. His voice, which usually reflects his age, was strong, more like the Bradley of ‘73, when he took office. “My friends, I am here to tell this jury ‘no.’ No, our eyes did not deceive us. We saw what we saw. What we saw was a crime.”

Yet even in his anger, the mayor said, “I implore every resident of Los Angeles: Do not lose heart. . . . I understand full well that we must give voice to our great frustration. I know we must express our profound outrage, our anger. But we must do so in ways that bring honor to ourselves and our community.”

Many people booed, and some even heckled when Bradley expressed the same sort of sentiment to the 3,000 people packed into the sanctuary of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church later in the evening. What they were saying was, “The hell with the system.”

Thursday, with the situation growing worse, Bradley was less the preacher, more the cop.

“Anybody out there who believes they can take advantage of this situation and create havoc for the law-abiding people of this community, we want to put you on notice we’re going to be out to arrest you,” he told a morning news conference.

But while he spoke, the president of Bradley’s Community Redevelopment Agency board, Jim Wood, was walking into City Hall with a CRA board member, the Rev. Thomas Kilgore. Today, the CRA board will meet to begin the process of allocating excess funds to help restore shattered South L.A. Earlier, President Bush promised to speed up Small Business Administration reconstruction loans to the city’s wrecked businesses.

Even on the bleakest day of his Administration, the mayor was planning to rebuild from the ashes.