Today’s Agenda

The nine children of Juana Beatrice Gutierrez have enough college and advanced degrees among them--Loyola Marymount, Boalt Hall, UC Santa Barbara (twice) and Princeton (twice) for starters, that they could practically open their own university. Even so, says Gutierrez, a founder of the politically potent Mothers of East L.A., most Anglos seem to think they couldn’t drive through East Los Angeles without being caught in a gang shootout. In Testimony, Gutierrez says, “When you live here, you see the truth” of mostly good kids and good families trying to get ahead. But all of that is threatened, she adds, by the withdrawal of much state and federal aid and the sad state of the economy. Without part-time jobs, says Gutierrez, her kids would never have made good.

And now there are very few jobs for teen-agers.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s also a refrain in Platform, where community leaders tell us what Bill Clinton can do for Los Angeles. But everybody has a different way to create jobs. Make the government the employer of last resort, says one. Give investors tax credits, says another. Invest in start-up businesses for poor people. Encourage environmental industries. But does Los Angeles have a better claim than other cities to Clinton’s ear and the nation’s money? If we hope to avoid a repeat of the disturbances six months ago, maybe it does.

One of the lingering raw spots of the rebellion is the question of rebuilding liquor stores. Some say that the merchants have every right to reopen in the same spot, selling the same thing. But others see an opportunity to make life in the inner city a shade better by limiting the number of liquor outlets. Today’s In Dispute, by South Los Angeles drug-and-alcohol expert Karen Bass, says that all sides can be satisfied, but first everyone has to recognize that it’s not a racial issue between blacks and Koreans--that the overload of liquor outlets was an issue 10 years ago, when African-Americans owned most of the stores. Bass proposes emergency aid to store owners, then a measured program of reopening, relocation and diversion into selling goods other than alcohol. And, she says, a good chunk of the money for this should come from the profitable alcohol industry.

Escalating violence on and off campus has made safety and security major issues at Southern California high schools. State Atty Gen. Dan Lungren has proposed using metal detectors to screen students at problem schools, and a few schools have tried them.

In the Youth column, a Lynwood High student objects to the school’s use of metal detectors on every possible grounds, beginning with civil liberties.

But a student at Jefferson High in Los Angeles, where there was a recent drive-by shooting minutes before classes let out, welcomes the idea. “I’m scared,” says Ana Vasquez, 17. “I go to school to learn, not to see other people fight.”

And in Gripe, Frank H. Strausser of Los Angeles objects to omnipresent, ominous police helicopters. Do they really reduce crime? Would the LAPD like to answer? We’d welcome a reply.