End Ethnic Strife, Tackle Common Woes, Torres Says

State Sen. Art Torres on Sunday called for Los Angeles’ diverse population to focus on solving shared problems of violence, poverty and inadequate health care to overcome ethnic divisions in the wake of this year’s civil unrest.

Eliciting enthusiastic applause from his audience at First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Torres said: “I’m here to propose a single community of Los Angeles. . . . We are here, united, to begin the process of healing. We want to build a new city on a hill on common ground.”

Torres (D-Los Angeles) shied away from specific recommendations for improvement and focused his 15-minute address on how members of the city’s various ethnic communities have challenges in common and have a shared future.

“We need to pool our academic and professional leaders to remind us that we are one in economic development, race relations, in policy analysis and research,” he told his largely African-American audience.

Minority groups in Los Angeles contend with the same police brutality, homelessness, poverty and unsatisfactory medical systems, said Torres, chairman of the state Senate’s Special Committee on a New Los Angeles.

Violence within each community tears up families and ends too many young lives, he said. “Our young people kill each other, black against black, brown against brown, yellow against yellow.

“We don’t even own businesses in our own communities,” he said, touching on a theme that has angered many residents of South-Central Los Angeles for years.

Improving the future means speaking out to politicians. “Let us not be afraid to stand up when we must to make people not portray us as criminals, to stand up to the media and all other groups that divide us into categories (and) say there are racial wars when there are merely tensions that can be worked out,” Torres said.

“TV, the radio and newspapers continue to perpetuate us in negative forms,” the state senator continued, eliciting some of the longest applause during his talk.

Audience members said afterward that the legislator’s message was one they think needs to be aired more often.

“I think he did a good job of piecing Asian, Latino, African-American themes together,” said Peter Shiao of Los Angeles. “People talk of differences too much and people lose sight of the problems that bring us together,” he said, echoing the opinion of many in the audience.

Beverly Kelly, another member of the audience, said: “We have to realize our futures are entangled.

“It’s to some people’s advantage to keep (different ethnic groups) apart,” she said, because “you’ve got 10% of the people owning 90% of the businesses.”

Minorities have to work on increasing ownership of businesses and influence in the Legislature, she said.