PERSPECTIVE ON JOBS : Latinos Defend Right of All to Work : Rebuilding Los Angeles is a job for everyone. Black leaders’ pulling people of other races off the job is indefensible.

The recent actions by Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell in shutting down Los Angeles reconstruction sites because blacks were not represented in the work force must be challenged. His attempts to justify those actions as an appropriate way of representing his community must also be called into question.

The Latino community will not tolerate, under any circumstances, the assault on the rights of Latinos, Anglos, Asians or African-Americans to work. Bakewell’s actions smack of the same barbaric tactics employed by members of the Ku Klux Klan in removing blacks from work sites. In fact, those actions resulted in the passage of laws designed to make such activities illegal.

For anyone to order a worker off the job under the circumstances documented in the Bakewell case is totally unacceptable. TV news footage showed him using pidgin Spanish to tell the worker, “Vamanos a la casa. No trabajo. Andale.” For many of us, it drew an ugly parallel with how slave owners must have acted in talking down to their workers. These actions and attitudes are racist, pure and simple, regardless of the color of the skin of the perpetrator.

Certainly today’s African-American leadership would not stand idly by and condone Anglos or Latinos challenging one of their own sitting on a tractor and speaking to him in a black dialect, ordering him home, saying that no more work will be done by him and his people. Then why should Latinos be expected to accept Bakewell’s approach as anything but a totally unacceptable form of intimidation and harassment of all people, regardless of ethnicity?

South-Central Los Angeles is no longer exclusively a black community. In fact, recent Census Bureau data show that the black and Latino populations in the area are about evenly split. Therefore, Latinos who are in this country legally have as much right to work there as African-Americans do.

This position will no doubt bring out some criticism of the Latino leadership by black elected officials and other apologists, who will defend Bakewell as part of what has become a pattern of knee-jerk reaction by some in Los Angeles. But the Latino community recognizes that, being the majority population in Los Angeles city and county, we must defend the rights of all people to have the opportunity to work, and we’re willing to take any criticism. Leadership is not a quality that is exclusively reserved for those in elected office. Clearly, the recent turmoil in Los Angeles has shown us that many of these “leaders” have failed all Angelenos, especially many of our own Latino elected officials. Therefore, those of us who run the businesses, care for the ill and homeless, educate and defend the children, and otherwise do the rest of the work of life in our communities on a daily basis, must speak out. We are determined to work for all of the people of Los Angeles, not just the Latino community.

This is in sharp contrast to Bakewell’s comments that he is only acting on behalf of his community. He says that he is not an advocate for other people. Perhaps that remark, more than any other, is so telling of the problems we face today. No one is willing to look at the broader picture. Too many so-called leaders and activists have a “me” complex about their mission in life. We need a better Los Angeles, not a better black or Latino or Anglo Los Angeles. Bakewell should recognize that Los Angeles is simply too big, too diverse and, right now, much too fragile for that kind of narrow thinking. Many African-American leaders have been quoted as saying, “There will be no peace until there is justice.” This only serves to inflame an already difficult situation. Actions like those of Danny Bakewell, especially when they are endorsed by elected officials, make the job of rebuilding our city even more difficult. Perhaps it is time to publicize a new slogan that many of us in the rest of the Los Angeles community--Latino, Anglo and Asian alike--can say: “There can be no healing until we stop opening new wounds and work to close the old ones.”