UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS PART 5 : THE PATH TO RECOVERY : EMPOWERMENT : Fires Cleared South L.A.--Now Residents Can Redefine It

If a riot could talk, the King Verdict Uprising won’t quit. It speaks against a police chief’s “dirty rotten bastards,” a President’s “welfare cheats,” an academic’s “underclass,” an official’s “al iens,” an expert’s “dysfunctional families” and yet another jury’s “nigger.” It speaks about a demand for jobs, for tailored development, day care and responsive government. For so long, the residents of South Los Angeles have heard their community defined from without--as if the whole thing were doped out on crack, wandering, placeless, as if it had lost its collective mind. It had not. Only its patience for poverty.

When asked why it would burn down its own things, the riot said: “These things weren’t ours. We need redevelopment in our own image. This is land clearance.”

Certainly, the rioters did not speak for everyone in South Los Angeles. Angry sons rarely speak for anguished grandmothers; language separates immigrants from descendants of slaves. Yet the common logic is ownership and community self-definition. Just as society reflects when disaffected voters cry “Enough!” so must this country search itself when the underclass rises up from so far under to rage “I am!”

On the morning after the riots began, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater reassured a fearful suburbia when he declared, “The rule of law defines our freedom.” By that, communities such as Simi Valley and elsewhere were exonerated, their peace restored, the common logic of ownership affirmed.

But the “thin blue line” of police containment only partially protects suburban homeownership and community identity from the intrusion of undesirables. More often, it is the collective undertaking of zoning boards, homeowners associations and civic councils codifying their resolutions into laws respecting the identity its members elect for themselves. From frontier settlers of the mid-1800s through today’s enforcement of restrictive land covenants, white middle-class control of community identity is a solid American institution. Proscriptions on the color of fences or the height of bushes may seem petty, but the homeowners who dictate such rules are projecting their ideal self-image--one exclusive of many--on every lawn.

Contrast this with where the Uprising had to happen. South Los Angeles was not designed for its black and Latino residents, nor have they had much control. The zoning maps reflect master plans from pre-industrial times. The average age of a single-family house is 60 years--21 more than the citywide average. No homeowner whose words are muted by the chronic roar of airplanes overhead may enjoin their flight path. No elected official lost a seat because the Century Freeway project displaced residents.

Perhaps only the Lancer incinerator project presents an exception. Its defeat several years ago by community activists gave rise to one of the strongest empowerment groups in the area, the Concerned Citizens of South Central. Their success lies partly in leadership, partly in their appeal to community self-definition.

The work of such organizations gives South Los Angeles a sense of place, missing from media reports that characterize it as an amorphous urban blob between the Santa Monica Freeway and Long Beach. Media outposts during the last two weeks centered on two or three intersections in an area housing more than half a million people in a space the size of many U.S. cities. The array of economic differences, ethnic pockets and neighborhood pride are known only to residents and mail carriers.

Much of the blurring of the social and economic identities of South Los Angeles residents results from the red line around them. While changes in the character of post-industrial employment, demographic shift and immigration policies have combined to create more poverty, the longstanding effects of economic discrimination have made it indelible.

Banks and thrifts compete for the mortgages of homeowners in Simi Valley and their suburban neighbors nationally. Not so in South Los Angeles. One recent study revealed systematic disinvestment by local banks. Black and Latino home-buyers are financed at roughly half the rate of their white counterparts. Other studies show storefront mortgage brokers make up to half the home loans in the area, often at usurious rates.

The most basic banking and credit services are impossible for South L.A. families and small businesses. The result is a cash economy with eight check cashing centers for every bank branch.

Without access to capital financing there can be little investment among those who would become stakeholders in their own community. Yet low-income consumers have the same need for fresh produce, dry cleaners and pharmacies close to home that their suburban counterparts enjoy. The result is that there is no economic loop circulating consumer dollars into local businesses and then back into the community--as it does in middle-income areas.

So, when mobs cleared the land for redevelopment, many systematically took out Korean stores. This was more than pay-back to shopkeepers whom customers perceived as racist at worst, disrespectful at best. This was also a revolt against another visiting merchant class, who, like generations of ethnic proprietors before them, lived elsewhere, schooled elsewhere, employed others, took the money and left for mobility beyond the red line.

Back at the intersection of the thin blue line and the thick red one, Crips and Bloods united to say that the rule of law will not define them or South Los Angeles’ other man-children. Most symbolic about the union of gang sets, however, is that leaders recognized by the community did, in fact, lead. Young people, particularly males dispossessed by the mainstream, disregarded the established leadership and defined their rage in no uncertain terms.

The logic of this rage is not always consistent or easily articulated. It makes no sense to seek community ownership by blowing away gang rivals on your turf or the bystanders near them. It makes no sense to rail against realities, yet to act with blindness to consequence. This kind of leadership brings weary grandmothers to their knees beside coffins. It sends future black employers packing. As men, these boys must own this legacy.

To be sure, many inner-city youth articulate no plan for community development or lasting peace between enemy sets. You hear the logic of disownership and anomie. “They own everything . . . I control nothing . . . It’s the system, see what I’m sayin’?”

Most Americans don’t. But “the system” is real and overwhelming--and defines a gangbanger and his peer group. It is white cops and white “law” demanding he kiss the concrete, discount due process and in-your-face verdicts for the kin of Latasha Harlins and Rodney G. King. It’s the kind of health care where the first time many young women establish a relationship with the doctor is during pregnancy. It is a system of welfare that, rather than “redistributing wealth” as President Bush feared last week, imposes strict limits on savings.

And now for all of South Los Angeles, the system anointed Peter V. Ueberroth, again a Great White Hope chosen without consensus, again from outside the red and blue lines. While Ueberroth may, with competence and good faith, seek out private-sector investment as few else could, his selection subverts a process no middle-class white community would tolerate. The indigenous leadership born of the flames was not sought. The unknown talent laboring amid the ranks of black elected officials was not consulted. And the black and Latino businesspeople who have toiled to define South Central’s image without outside help must again wait. If rebuilding is to create self-defining ownership for South Los Angeles residents, this makes no sense.

Yet the logic of South Los Angeles’ renewal is not unlike Simi Valley’s creation: Various communities actively engaged in self-definition through social and economic development. A few broad principles apply.

First, there must be community planning and design--including residential decision-making over the character and mix of commercial and residential neighborhood uses.

Second, a greater commitment by government leadership at all levels is required to facilitate business development--that is, true job creation. Small-business development, though encouraging, will neither employ all who need it nor satisfy all consumer need. Large employer development, with minority equity participation, is critical.

Third, residents have made clear their demand for equal access to capital financing and basic banking services. While some prefer traditional institutions, many feel black-owned banks or community credit unions are more accountable.

Fourth, there must be justice--against police brutality, redlining and housing discrimination.

Since self-definition is a psychic prerequisite to community definition, areas like South Los Angeles require greater commitment to productive activities for youth. These are disproportionately young populations, who benefit from recreation, leadership development, job training and personal counseling. So do their parents, who shoulder mammoth burdens without adequate family supports, such as day care, health insurance and affordable drug rehabilitation.

Ultimately, the issue of ownership extends back across the colored lines. Promising to prosecute every last looter, Bush would “show them with justice.” A law-and-order reflex so perverse and counterproductive could be easily dismissed if it didn’t come from the top and speak for so many.

What happened in Simi Valley and South Los Angeles has a rich history, and white people in America must now own it as well. White voters and parents and homeowners must struggle with the pathology of racist denial and blissful neglect over 12 years. The consequences of this must now come home.

Just as Americans ideally define their community identities, the rule of law does not define our freedom. We do. And that definition is sadly hollow.

Understanding the Riots

On Monday, The Times explored the roots of the problems leading to the riot.

On Tuesday, The Times revisited emotional images to feel the scope of the chaos.

On Wednesday, The Times viewed the turmoil through the words of participants to hear what was going through their minds-- and the lessons they learned.

On Thursday, essays examined what has happened to the image and sense of Los Angeles as a multicultural city.

Today, analysts and citizens discuss what we need to do.