UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS PART 5 :...

Rodolfo F. Acuna PROFESSOR OF CHICANO STUDIES, CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE

You have to give people hope. I’m taking it to the streets--marching. It’s totally peaceful. I want to give high school students the feeling of empowerment. You have to give people an alternative to putting their name on the wall and joining gangs. That’s why the marches of the ‘60s were successful.

Donald C. McKayle

CHOREOGRAPHER; PROFESSOR OF DANCE, UC IRVINE

Rebuild a sense of the future in young people’s lives. The arts are a tremendous force for this. Even outlawed arts like graffiti can be put to use. If you had an inner-city dance troupe made up of 17 youths who weren’t looting, you would know the difference. There has to be some enlightenment. If you have nothing to occupy your time, no hope for anything constructive, then things tend to go into destructive areas.

Franklyn F. Jenifer

PRESIDENT, HOWARD UNIVERSITY

Ensure that every youngster’s education needs are not just addressed between 9 and 5. Education is a 24-hour-a-day job. It requires parental input. In some instances, we have to think about residential schools with individuals who care for youngsters and love them.

Vivian E. Rothstein

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OCEAN PARK COMMUNITY CENTER

Create a public-jobs program targeted at men and women. Women are an equally important source of stability and financial health.

John Kenneth Galbraith

ECONOMIST, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

One should not in any way evade the basic problem: This is only going to get handled when certain federal programs are put back in place. The answer is money for welfare support, for education, for drug rehabilitation and, of course, affordable housing.

Victor M. Valle

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, JOURNALISM AND LATINO STUDIES, CAL STATE LONG BEACH

You have to create a political will. It’s how you begin to think of Latinos as the majority rather than as the minority. The Latino political culture is based on the certainty that the “them” is always going to be there. That view doesn’t foresee the possibility that Latinos will actually become the majority.

William G. Ouchi

PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT, UCLA

The odds are unfortunately high that the existing leaders, who are overwhelmingly white and male, and who want to do things as quickly as possible, will want to take matters into their own hands. That is a mistake. We should teach people how to fish, as it were. There are several minority-owned banks in the community. Most of them are prohibited from making small-business loans--existing credit standards are too high. Yet, the people who run these banks know their customers. They’re the ones who know the credit risk. They should be consulted.

Irakly S. Mashkharashvili

DIRECTOR, ARCHITECTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION DEPARTMENT, TBILISI

Designate one--I repeat--one city service or department, give it all funds, resources and powers and only then begin the assessment of the damage and the scope of your rebuilding effort. The top body in your city must give this task force a formal vote of confidence, or you better not begin.

As for the specifics, first decide what you want to achieve. If it’s just restoring the status quo, the procedure is rather straightforward--clear the debris, repair houses or raze them if they are beyond repair, restart your electricity and plumbing systems and so forth.

We decided to remodel the entire city center of Tbilisi, which suffered heavily after all the bombardment and fighting. We set up a commission that worked out the concept of this remodeling. Then we divided the damaged area into seven zones according to their priority, with housing holding first place.

And just tell your workers not to talk to any of the passersby, volunteers or outsiders, in general--or your rebuilding work will soon degenerate into another round of demolition.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER

Black professionals should organize and conduct weekly social and training workshops to teach black history, culture, family values and parenting skills. Young blacks would be taken on field trips not just to museums, libraries or sporting events, but to prisons, drug-abuse and teen-pregnancy centers, and hospital emergency rooms. These visits would help strip away the romantic fantasies many blacks have about street life.

Frank H. Cruz

CHAIRMAN, GULF ATLANTIC LIFE INSURANCE CO.

Banks and insurance companies have got to modify their lending standards when it comes to South Los Angeles. We have to apply different standards and criteria to black, Latino and Asian entrepreneurs, so that they can obstain loans and insurance coverage in their neighborhoods, so they can own property.

Tong Soo (T.S.) Chung

PRESIDENT, KOREAN-AMERICAN COALITION

We need more equity partnerships among different ethnic groups--owning buildings together, owning and running businesses together, making money together. When blacks and Asians are co-owners and fellow employees, their customers will know it and polarization will not take place. How about a black-Asian partnership to take over a departing Bank of America branch?

Adela de la Torre

PROFESSOR OF LATINO STUDIES, CAL STATE LONG BEACH

This is the perfect opportunity to have demonstration projects in cooperative ownership, because it’s difficult to expect an entrepreneur to come into an area where there are low human-capital skills. One approach is to look at employee-based ownership schemes--giving people a piece of the pie in terms of capital ownership. That probably means people will have to accept short-term losses.

Glenn C. Loury

PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Churches should try and get together and visit each others’ sanctuaries. One Saturday you come to my church and work on my project; another Saturday, I go to your project.

Mary M. Lee

LEGAL AID FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES

We’re not just talking about rebuilding; we’re talking about building. Young people need to be shown that there are ways to own a business, a restaurant or athletic-clothing store.

Enrique Fernandez

EDITOR, MAS MAGAZINE; COLUMNIST, VILLAGE VOICE

Everybody from the East looks at Los Angeles and sees the glitz. They’re blind to the fact that it has a power structure that plays hardball to keep power. All of that is disguised by all the wonderful Hollywood glitz. So I think a hard look at how power is distributed in the city would be the first order of business. If there is something wrong, it has to be something wrong very, very deep inside the system. Everything else, all people coming together, is very wonderful and I’m glad to see it. But I always think that any deep problems like this have to be structural.

Peter Schwartz

PRESIDENT, GLOBAL BUSINESS NETWORK, EMERYVILLE, CALIF.

There are a number of things in the microeconomy that can be done, like the improvement of telecommunications and the quality of the local labor force. These aren’t national initiatives, but are within the scope of what Los Angeles, PacTel or local industry can do. If I wanted to improve vocational training, I’d go to the 100 largest companies in Los Angeles and say, “Help us create a new system for worker education.”

Julia Sheveleva

DIRECTOR, “BASEMENT THEATER” FOR CHILDREN, MOSCOW

Begin with kids, because they are truly the only hope for changing society’s sicknesses. Talk to them honestly about these problems. Tell them that you don’t have to put others down to feel good about yourself. That’s very important, because when a teen-ager feels like a nobody, he is more likely to hate another guy just because he is different. Theater projects that bring together black, Hispanic, Korean and white kids from Los Angeles might be a good idea.

Harold M. Williams

PRESIDENT-CEO, J. PAUL GETTY TRUST

The arts have a role to play. They are a genuine medium of expression. Rap music is a medium of expression and, in some ways, we need to listen more to the words. The various arts in the various communities need to be encouraged and used as a medium of expression for kids all the way up. We also have to consider other programs at a national level. Certainly, television is the dominant medium today. What does television tell us about our values? Primarily, violence of one form or another. Isn’t there something more constructive that TV can tell us?

Ivan H. Light

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UCLA

To increase black entrepreneurship, Afro-Americans should be encouraged to save money in rotating-credit associations rather than in banks. As the Koreans have shown, rotating-credit associations make community savings available in the community.

Raul M. Escobedo

BARRIO PLANNERS INC.

We have to be a little more aggressive in attracting new business. We should be looking to attract some high-tech industries, and marrying those industries to our community colleges or high schools.

Dwayne A. Banks

PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, UC BERKELEY

There’s a necessity for role models. Growing up in South Los Angeles, my friends and I would dream that we wanted to be doctors and we wanted to be a lawyers, but we didn’t know how to do it. That is the result of isolation.

Ofelia Montejano

FASHION DESIGNER, GLENDALE

The problem is money. I do a lot of fashion shows for our community--children’s benefits. And we raise money. It’s going to take several charity benefits to just contribute a little bit to the small businesses that need financial help.

Lodwrick M. Cook

CHAIRMAN AND CEO, ARCO

We can’t just wall the area off and say, “Hey, we’ll pour money into it.” We have to get more personally connected to the community, to people in the community and to community organizations. Big Brother kinds of programs would be an example. We have to get professional people involved who will go down and give their time to assist and work with youngsters. They’ve got to understand that we care about more than just our pocketbooks.