RIOT AFTERMATH: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS : Looking for a Personal Bond in the Ashes

Amid the terrible loss of lives and of livelihoods, people in Los Angeles had an overwhelming sense that something else died last week. Many said it was the American dream--the small shop-keeper’s dream of prosperity built on hard work, the local entrepreneur’s commitment to serving his community. Some said it was civil order, even civilization.

Everyone struggled to understand what died so they could try to resurrect it. In fact, rebuilding and recovery was everyone’s immediate concern, from the people standing amid the smoking ruins on the weekend to the civic leaders introducing “Rebuild L.A.”--an “extra-governmental task force” already asking the private sector to fund this rebirth.

But there are already indications that business must be built on more than that. The most striking aspect of the destruction was the total lack of personal bond between business and customer. The most striking aspect of the cleanup is the informal, voluntary surfacing of that bond. Never mind public sector and private sector: There must be some sense of a personal sector, of the belief that “we all can get along,” as Rodney King said. “We’ve just got to.”

The conflict behind the rioting was hard to define, although it was clearly precipitated by the acquittal of police officers in the beating of King and soon focused on business as the fundamental target. It was also clear that those taking part were not just habitual vandals, but also people who wouldn’t normally commit robbery and would never break into someone’s home, but could readily step through an already broken storefront to take what they could.

That said, no generalizations fit.

The conflict wasn’t just black versus white. The businesses hit were owned by whites, Asians, blacks, Latinos, even colorless corporations.

It wasn’t just locals versus outsiders. Locals trashed locals; neighbors trashed neighbors.

It wasn’t just natives versus immigrants, although the attack on Koreatown obviously involved some special resentment of the immigrant group that formed such a presence in South Los Angeles.

In fact, there was a disturbing lack of focus in the animus. There was a lot of rhetoric, of the sort that linked wholesale stealing with “getting the point across that we are tired of being persecuted.” But many looters were quite upfront about their lack of cause. “It’s fun, man,” one looter told a TV reporter as he emerged from a drugstore carrying a big vinyl crayon and several packages of what appeared to be children’s underwear.

It was this lack of cause that most disturbed the business owners who saw years of work torn down or burned up, apparently for nothing, for something “senseless.” Many spoke of their own feelings of outrage at the King verdict--a community of feeling that didn’t save their businesses.

Whatever the words, it was clear that some basic social contract, already frayed, had finally broken, or worse, that there never was a contract. Whatever else a social contract represents, it assumes some bond among people, some relationship, some commitment to a community, and there was none. It was apparent to all how little community there is in this city, for looter or looted, when businesses were so readily abandoned by their own customers. If there was no bond between business and customer, there wasn’t much between citizen and government either. Each neighborhood, each mall, each business seemed responsible for its own safety, and when it was all over, each was responsible for its own cleanup.

Unlike San Francisco Police Chief Richard Hongisto, who donned a uniform and took to the streets, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates went to a fund-raiser Wednesday night. Mayor Tom Bradley, who appeared on TV and reportedly issued a behind-the-scenes appeal for volunteer help, didn’t hit the streets until Sunday, when he went to thank actor Edward James Olmos and 400 volunteers for their cleanup work.

But there were people making it plain who will clean up, and who will rebuild. Some were “private sector”--businesses such as the burned-down 45-year-old Broadway Federal Savings & Loan, whose president declared that “we have an obligation to reopen,” or the Boys Market chain, which advertised its intention to “put things back together.”

Most were just individuals--citizens, customers. By the weekend, there were hundreds of people and several dozen independent waste-haulers, all volunteering to clean up their own neighborhood or someone else’s simply because they wanted, like Olmos, to “be part of the solution.”

This is the personal sector, the city’s best hope when its leaders ask for community “commitment” and “self-initiative.” Certainly they’re evidence of some social contract--vestigial or incipient. Given encouragement, it may be enough to build business on.