The enterprise would spawn businesses, keep dollars in the community and send a message to youths: The system works.

The community-owned supermarket sends a clear message that there is a future for having your own business in Watts. The reality within the community, particularly since the 1965 riots, is that there hasn’t been any self-economics. Business has all been guided by outside forces.

When you look at Martin Luther King Jr. Shopping Center, most businesses there are not owned by a community person. They’re people from the outside. Even though there’s goods and services there for you, you can’t say that Ms. Bilal down the street owns that business. And until Ms. Bilal down the street owns that business, how can it really seem like your community?

The U.S. Census is reporting that the average age of African-Americans in Watts is 27. If you look at anyone 27 and older who doesn’t own anything in the community, how can they send a message to younger people that you shouldn’t sell drugs?

And so the community-owned supermarket is the way to say to the 27-year-old: “The leaders in the community are making something happen for those who are younger.” The leaders are giving them some stock ownership and taking a self-economic leadership role that Watts has never had.

The community-owned supermarket is not just a supermarket. It creates real ownership for the community. The private holding company being formed for the venture would serve not just the supermarket but create other local business concerns. It would be an entity to build other businesses.

That’s a difficult message to understand, because when you look at the senior citizens, they want a store opened immediately for goods and services. They don’t care who owns those goods and services. But they should care.

Every dollar that comes into Food 4 Less in the Martin Luther King Jr. Shopping Center ends up going out of Watts.

When people from the outside look at Watts as a self-contained community, the economic and real estate base increases, encouraging greater community pride.

As it stands, when a young person grows up in Watts, they are looking for a way out because they don’t see a low-paying bag-boy job as a way to be a financially successful role model in the community. So they find a faster way--by selling drugs.

With community business ownership, people begin to care about the type of businesses because they know they belong to Mr. Rogers down the street or are investments for improved real estate values and career opportunities.

The leaders like Lillian Mobley and Eric Priestley (who are members of the Watts Towers Community Action Council) really have come to understand that they can control their community, that they can send a message to young people--that even though there’s a system here that says: “No you can’t have this community-owned supermarket,” you can have anything you want in your community.

Once that message is sent, people will learn that the system does work for them. It’s taking charge and saying that we do have power.