UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS PART 5 : THE PATH TO RECOVERY : What to Do? : The Times asked public policy analysts, artists, community activists, business executives, economists and academics what could be done to reinvigorate the city following the riots. Their thoughts:

Earvin (Magic) Johnson FORMER BASKETBALL PLAYER, LOS ANGELES LAKERS

If blacks ever had a chance to own their businesses, now is that chance. The banks are the ones we should be talking to, not the government. The banks have got to give blacks the opportunities to own these businesses.

Once we get the businesses, we have to run them correctly. We’ve got to hustle a hundred times more than other groups. There is discrimination against us and that’s been going on for years.

Once you make it, you have to reach back and help another person or another 10. Once we get the businesses, we have to frequent them. We have to put money back into black people’s hands.

What I say to the young black people is: “Look, you’ve got goals and dreams? Let’s go for them. You can’t rely on anybody.” That’s what we’ve been doing for too long. We’ve been waiting for a handout. It’s not going to happen.

Alvin F. Poussaint

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

Put new things in the community, like some municipal buildings, to give it a new kind of status, a new dignity, a sense of being a participant in the government. Perhaps using the schools, people in the community should get parenting and child-development courses. Overwhelmed mothers and people in poverty situations need good parenting skills.

Roger C. Altman

VICE CHAIRMAN, BLACKSTONE GROUP; FORMER UNDERSECRETARY OF TREASURY UNDER JIMMY CARTER

Form a development bank, because there’s too big a lag when the economy is left to its own devices between national recovery and the conditions under which the private sector will do large-scale development. Just years and years will go by. In the case of Los Angeles, you’re going to need some financing mechanism. The city is going to have to be the catalyst.

The financing mechanism ideally involves both public monies--which the city and state will have to put up together--and some private capital. The front-end risks will have to be taken by public capital. The banks will invest in projects that attract private capital. The projects themselves become public-private joint ventures. The task is to create jobs in Los Angeles, not just in South Los Angeles.

Henry G. Cisneros

FORMER MAYOR, SAN ANTONIO

Bring people together on a more consistent, systematic, tireless and structured way than ever before. That means informal as well as formal leaders, not just people who head organizations or run corporations, but people who work in the neighborhoods and have churches in the area and speak for community organizations--and even some in the gang structure. At a minimum, take the temperature of the community regularly and try to understand what people are thinking and saying.

Alexis Smith

ARTIST

If the media devoted attention to the positive aspects of Los Angeles--a huge number of people from diverse backgrounds coexisting--if that was promoted with the same ferocity that the fear and horror were promoted, it might do some good. That means promoting not just the perception of our differences, but a perception of some of the things people bring to the culture, which I think everybody experiences. It’s also the idea of belonging, and some of the good things about having such an incredible wealth of cultures together.

Ed M. Davis

STATE SENATOR; FORMER LAPD CHIEF

Get some research group busy collecting some of the demographics on the 10,000-plus people arrested. Knowing who our target group is might make for a better investment. Rebuild the neighborhood watch/team policing program that I left in place in 1978. Here was something that was so goddamned effective--and LAPD jackasses just tore it apart. Those dumb clucks who run the place down there--City Council people and the mayor--never even protested the abolition of team policing. So what we mostly need are retroactive term limits.

Harold H. Martinez

OWNER, ABLE INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS INC., SOUTH EL MONTE

For the last 50 years, we’ve been creating jobs for everyone around the world but us. We’ve been doing that through federal aid. I don’t see why we can’t start helping our own. We must come back to our tax base. The only thing that assists our tax base is jobs.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

POET, SCREENWRITER, AUTHOR

Sober up and get really tired of being betrayed by government. Then have people take control of their communities again. Instead of having people like Eddie Olmos or Arsenio Hall, why not go to leaders who have lived in these communities, who know the culture, who know the language and the customs, who were born and will die there.

Ella D. Williams

PRESIDENT, AEGIR SYSTEMS, INC., OXNARD

I’m thinking about starting a new company. I was looking to open a retail store in the vicinity of 7th and Flower. Now, I’m rethinking my position. Maybe I should open in the inner city, because that’s where jobs are needed.

David Carrasco

VISITING PROFESSOR OF RELIGION, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

From the beginning, cities were hierarchical organizations, in which the small elite in charge could count on police or warriors to keep them in power. You have to eliminate the “warrior” class who hold the line for those that are privileged. You have got to get the “warrior” class to serve a broader cause than the interests of the elite. There’s got to be a revolution in the distribution of power.

Harry P. Pachon

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL STUDIES, PITZER COLLEGE

Pump monies into an entrepreneurial fund to develop small businesses in the barrio and in the ghettos. If there’s a thriving entrepreneurial sector, aided by some capital venture fund, it’s going to have an impact.

Gerald C. Horne

CHAIRMAN, BLACK STUDIES, UC SANTA BARBARA

Public investment along the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority, especially in day-care centers, libraries--even state-subsidized credit unions and small businesses. More aggressive affirmative action to bring more people of color into influential policy-making roles.

Martin D. Eakes

PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR COMMUNITY SELF-HELP, DURHAM, N.C.

Create a corporation with a board that represents a broad range of community interests. Attract capital through a variety of affiliated entities--credit-union deposits; contributions to a 501(c)(3) organization; venture-fund investments; bond proceeds to a community development corporation.

With the bulk of the proceeds, buy real estate in the community. Lease it on terms that minimize short-term risk and cost to developers and entrepreneurs-- for example, $1 a year for 5 years--but maximize the long-run interest of the corporation (higher than market returns in later years, options to obtain interests in the business located on the site).

Use the remaining proceeds to establish a small-business development fund, which lends less than $10,000 with minimum paperwork. As the value of the corporation grows, leverage its assets to create incubators, generate housing loans to borrowers outside current bank standards and develop other economic development tools.

Robbie Conal

ARTIST

I think we have to do it from the bottom up. Take the mayor and City Council and chief of police and turn them upside down and shake them for loose change. Put that money into the ‘hoods. The chief’s $300,000 book advance would be a start.

The people who live in the community must take over their own turf for real. Gangs aren’t necessarily a bad form of organization. The dominant power structure of Los Angeles is a gang. They’ve taken care of their own.

Education, affordable housing, health care and humane law enforcement might help. But they’re not coming from above. Local control, however problematic, is the ‘hood’s only hope.

Dinesh D’Souza

RESEARCH FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, FORMER SPEECH WRITER FOR PRESIDENT REAGAN

Reinvigorate what social scientists call “mediating institutions”--those that stand between the individual and the state: fraternal associations, philanthropic groups, the black church. There needs to be a community effort, which may even be largely non-governmental--to restore these bonds of community.

David Hayes-Bautista

PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND DIRECTOR OF CHICANO STUDIES CENTER, UCLA

The Latino business and professional community needs to be a core actor in the reconstruction. Much business growth is in the hands of immigrant Latinos and --horrors!--the undocumented businessperson. Rather than being penalized, these Latino businesses should be encouraged. For example, some Latino businesspersons want to hire undocumented immigrants. But employer sanctions keep labor supply and demand from meeting.

Henry W. McGee Jr.

PROFESSOR OF LAW, UCLA

In the short run, expedite FEMA-type aid, including interest-free loans or subsidized loans to devastated businesses, and provide technical assistance from local educational institutions like UCLA and Loyola, to help people rebuild. Generate incentives for construction companies by requiring them to demonstrate their training programs for insurrection-zone residents.

Maria Elena Durazo

PRESIDENT, HOTEL & RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES UNION, LOCAL 11, LOS ANGELES

The economic reality for huge numbers of Angelenos must not be rebuilt, it must be changed. My union represents people who for the most part earn about $13,000 a year and make up what is commonly referred to as the working poor. Our members are 65% Latino, but also Asian, black and white. The point that Los Angeles has to recognize and the lesson that, hopefully, is obvious by now is that the city’s rebuilding and survival depends in part on the near-term success of the city’s labor movement. Recovery must ensure that every job includes dignity, security, living wages, health care and a voice at work.

Allen I. Freehling

SENIOR RABBI, UNIVERSITY SYNAGOGUE

Our community’s business executives, industrialists, accountants and bookkeepers, educators, and professional caregivers--attorneys, physicians, psychotherapist, and so on--ought to devote some intensive short-term volunteer time to help those who have suffered trauma, and then give long-term guidance to those who want to improve their lives by beginning the arduous but rewarding climb up the economic ladder.