Bring Two Cities Closer Together : L.A. needs better leadership, and follower-ship

For too long before last April’s riots, Los Angeles’ leaders tried to go about business as usual, telling themselves that if everything wasn’t perfect, at least things were pretty darn good. Even the smog was less awful.

And, indeed, for one Los Angeles, the system still worked, even if people had to yell a little louder to get government’s attention. Sure, a public hearing to discuss whether dogs should be allowed to run free in a Laurel Canyon park was important to nearby neighbors. And no doubt protecting bluffs in Pacific Palisades from oil drilling took extra work, as did fighting overdevelopment in the San Fernando Valley and Westside neighborhoods. Still, those issues eventually all got attention from City Hall; this was part of the give and take of politics.

But for the other Los Angeles, the inner city, the give and take of politics didn’t work well. Many of the residents there are immigrants. Some have little command of English. In these poor neighborhoods, even U.S. citizens living there are struggling to find work. Some are third-generation welfare recipients. Even the young people whose parents eke out a living often don’t look forward to growing up. Many have died instead in the gang wars that have claimed hundreds of lives.

And then there are the longtime middle-class residents of the central city, Mexican-, African- and Asian- Americans. Many had pulled themselves up through opportunities opened during the civil-rights era, to middle-class lives. Many became active in organizations like the NAACP or MALDEF, or more commonly in neighborhood or church clubs. Some of these leaders became elected officials--to city councils and the state Legislature. One even became mayor in 1973.

So why hasn’t the local political system worked for so much of urban Los Angeles? The reasons are complex, and they don’t start and end at City Hall. But as the Times series--”Lessons in Leadership: What went wrong in the years before the Los Angeles riots”-- points out, the business-as-usual way of doing politics in this town simply doesn’t work for a growing number of people who feel shut out and unconnected from decisions that directly affect their lives.

On the plus side, some longtime political activists have had the courage to admit this and are looking for new ways to address the inner city’s problems at the grass roots. They realize that organizations and politicians must be more inclusive of all elements of the community, and residents of the inner city must become more involved. That may mean, among other things, more lobbying so that more citizen commissions include working-class people, not just the well-connected; it may mean insisting that some community meetings be held more often in the evening when more working people can attend and participate. It will certainly mean that more must become citizens and register to vote.

One Los Angeles can’t exist peacefully without cooperation from the other. Is one L.A. willing to meet the other halfway and see what each can do to help the whole city?