Los Angeles: A Great City That’s Too Big to Fail

After all the agony that Los Angeles has gone through these past days, now scarcely seems the time for recrimination.

Now is the time to renew, rebuild and restore.

Now is the time for Los Angeles to rise above the misery and redefine itself for present and future generations.

Now is the time for deliverance.

Many nagging, troubling questions remain.

* Weren’t many of the protesters no more than criminal looters and violent hoodlums?

* Did the Los Angeles Police Department really do all it could have done in those crucial first few hours, as the first wave of protest and looting followed the astonishing not-guilty verdicts in the Rodney King beating case?

* Was the city’s capacity to respond hurt by the long-debilitating estrangement between the mayor and the outgoing chief of police?

* Where were the National Guard troops when we needed them?

These are all important questions. And they must be addressed. But at this hour in our crisis, the main issue is how to get Los Angeles back on its feet--economically, physically, spiritually.

ECONOMIC RENEWAL: Mayor Tom Bradley’s move to enlist the help of Peter V. Ueberroth, the businessman, former baseball commissioner and 1984 Olympics impresario, suggests that the rebuilding effort will not be run by amateurs. This is a very promising step.

Just recently Ueberroth had been in the news as head of the Council on California Competitiveness, a panel appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson to offer a plan to improve the state’s recession-sodden economy. Now that picture changes--and the problem is even more complex. It is no longer only a business or economic issue.

No doubt the blunt-talking, no-nonsense Ueberroth is smart enough to realize this, that he cannot do it all alone, that he must reach out and put together a broad and powerful coalition. He knows that just as a successful Olympics is a combination of many different things, the renewal of Los Angeles is both no less than--but at the same time is more than--a matter of economics. This savvy entrepreneur will want to share some of the authority and work to put together a kind of unofficial super-cabinet of committed leaders, business people, church figures. They will want to build consensus, open minds, forge a new confidence about Los Angeles.

To be sure, Ueberroth is not a minority businessman: Some argue that a black or other minority member at the head of this effort would have been better. That’s simplistic. The mayor knew that. He reached out to the best person he could find--regardless of race or any other factor.

What’s needed from the Ueberroth effort, though, is not another report. Please. If any such report is needed, all concerned need only get hold of an old copy of the Kerner Commission report of 1968. That was put together in the aftermath of the riots in Watts and other American cities, and its wisdom--on the need to rebuild America’s cities--was evident then. It’s also relevant today.

What’s needed instead is private- and public-sector action--and fast. Things like low-interest loans to hard-hit businesses; legislative action to create economic enterprise zones for inner-city areas to encourage investment; commitments from successful businesses to join in the economic renewal. Real measures, not reports. Real movement, not phony press conferences. New businesses going up--not new press releases going around.

PHYSICAL RENEWAL: For the first time since Wednesday night, there is some reason to hope. The sky is relatively clear--and so is the sense of a right direction.

It was deeply moving to see countless Angelenos take broom, shovel and determination to help in the physical cleanup of our most stricken neighborhoods. It was deeply moving to see about 30,000 people marching in Koreatown. Korean-Americans in particular now must understand the extent to which people here support their efforts to make for themselves proud and successful lives.

The sense of volunteerism--not to mention Samaritanism--was and is everywhere. The commitment to Los Angeles remains deep--perhaps more so than ever. A terrible jury verdict in a horrible police-beating case is not going to tear down this city. Too many people love it too much to let that happen.

SPIRITUAL RENEWAL: No doubt many of the looters were not protesting the verdict but were doing nothing more than taking advantage of the deteriorating situation. They are not to be pitied or coddled, but condemned. The breakdown in order was alarming and ominous. Mob psychology stalked too many of our streets.

That gruesome reality is almost too disturbing to accept. Even so, it is better to have a realistic sense of the true dimensions of the problem than to downsize it, much less to pretend it does not exist. Yes, in Los Angeles gangs and criminals roam--and often run around armed to the teeth. That’s a problem this community--and others around the country--has done all too little about.

But in the totality of the resources in Southern California, the job of overcoming this crisis does not dwarf the region’s capabilities. Last week’s nightmare won’t set Los Angeles back forever. We have the resources to do the job--spiritually as well as economically and physically. We will succeed if we want to. Consider, for example, the phenomenal resources allocated to the savings and loan crisis: The lesson is that when America has the will, it can find the way.

So, too, with the crisis here. Like a very large and famous bank that must be protected from trouble because “it’s too big to fail,” Los Angeles, too, is too big to fail.

So we won’t let it, will we?