Competing for Jobs in the New L.A.

African-American leader Danny Bakewell stood on the bulldozer, demanding that its driver stop work.

The driver, a Latino immigrant engaged in clearing the wreckage of a store burned in the riots, smiled. That’s because he didn’t understand a word Bakewell was saying.

Bakewell, head of the Brotherhood Crusade, the African-American community’s largest social welfare and charitable organization, had led more than a dozen black contractors to the site last week. For the second time that week, he was trying to close down a construction job because it didn’t employ blacks.

The procession had started just down West Adams Boulevard at the Golden State Life Insurance Co. building, where a hearing was being conducted by state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. The subject was whether insurance companies had been denying riot reconstruction work to black contractors.

The insurance company auditorium was overflowing with African-Americans asking for a chance to work. One man interrupted the hearing with the news that a job was under way nearby, and no blacks were working on it.

Immediately, Bakewell and several other men pushed their way out of the room. I caught up with them outside the building, where Bakewell was organizing the impromptu march. “Keep it peaceful, keep it organized,” he said.

At the site, Bakewell climbed on the bulldozer and spoke to the worker. When the man’s unfamiliarity with English became apparent, Bakewell turned to the crowd. “Does anyone speak Spanish?” Bakewell asked. Nobody offered to translate. Finally Bakewell said, “No trabajo, no trabajo.” The Latino worker got it. He picked up his water bottle, climbed off the bulldozer and left with a resigned expression on his face.

It was one of the saddest and most troubling sights I’d witnessed since the riots--struggling African-American contractors against poor Latino construction workers, the bleak side of the new L.A.

A few days later, I talked to Bakewell about what had happened.

Bakewell is a stocky, aggressive man with a quick mind, a strong voice and an intimidating manner. He never eases up on his message that white-dominated Los Angeles society “absolutely discards African-Americans and our need to survive in the system.”

I asked him about the Latino on the bulldozer. I said he’s poor, and also trying to survive, just like the black contractors.

“In Los Angeles, 50 days after the revolt, it’s business as usual,” said Bakewell. “We are omitting the black people in the heart of the community. We make a place for the Mexicans and the Koreans, but they do not deserve to work if we do not work.”

Words such as these have prompted critics to call Bakewell a rabble-rouser, even a racist. Bakewell acknowledged this criticism. “We have to work,” he said. “There is no way to elevate ourselves and our families unless we work. But every time I raise my head on this it is deemed as some way segregationist.”

Bakewell’s urgency seems driven, in part, by L.A.’s changing demographics.

He and other black leaders see the African-American community’s influence slipping away. The fast-increasing Latino population is moving into power. So are Asian-Americans.

For the present, Bakewell’s demonstrating seems to be paying off. Mayor Tom Bradley has announced that five construction and engineering companies, four of them minority-owned, will demolish up to 500 burned buildings, using federal and state funds. Eighty percent of the work goes to minority-owned firms.

As I watched Bakewell at the burned-out store last week, I remembered the first night of the riots, April 29.

I had seen the store burn. At first, there were no firefighters. Latino residents of nearby apartment houses joined with African-American congregants of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, across the street, in trying to stop the flames.

When a firetruck arrived, they rushed to help the small Fire Department crew. Black, brown and white hands grabbed fire hoses, connected them to the hydrant and pulled them over to the flames.

L.A.’s present task is as tough as controlling that fire, and will require the same cooperation.

At the demonstration, I talked to African-American contractors who couldn’t find work. Latinos have the same goal, earning a living. So do almost all of us.

Job creation is at the heart of rebuilding Los Angeles. Give someone a job and a lot of other troubles go away. As Bakewell put it: “What is wrong with Los Angeles that it cannot embrace the reality of if you want a job, you ought to work?”