Today’s Agenda

Does it matter that 40 of the estimated 25,000 mentally ill homeless people in Los Angeles County are living safe and independent lives now, thanks to an innovative program? The numbers of people involved are hardly impressive. But something is brewing here that could eventually put a much bigger dent in the problem. A Community of Friends, profiled in Making a Difference, is expert in finding housing sites, remodeling, cutting through red tape and managing property. But you can’t just hand apartment keys to mentally ill people--that’s a recipe for failure. A Community of Friends succeeds by cooperating with social service providers who counsel, instruct and supervise residents of Community of Friends properties, and with residents themselves, who gradually take more responsibility for their lives. As one grateful resident put it, “I’m responsible for myself here, but it’s not like we’re out in the dark.”

As the trial known as “King 2” winds toward conclusion, the spotlight turns increasingly on the jury. Maria F. Barbee of Woodland Hills recently finished her first tour of duty as a juror, deciding a case in which a coffee shop lease went sour. That less-than-earthshaking case was utterly frustrating, she says in Community Essay. It was circumscribed by arcane rules of law that turn trials into board games--the judge makes the rules, she says, and the attorneys move the pieces. Then jurors have to make their own subjective judgments about what constitutes “clear and convincing evidence and other legalities that sound precise but aren’t.

“God help the jurors” in the bigger cases, she says, “for the legal system makes prisoners of all its players.”

Parents are also keeping a close eye on the King trial and its cousin, the Reginald Denny beating case. In Platform, parents tell us what they did in the aftermath of the first trial, both to help their teen-age kids through the emotional upheaval and keep them off the streets. Father and civic activist Frank Juarez prescribes talking to kids about it now, not later--”It’s preventive maintenance.”

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‘h would some power the giftie give us To see ourselves as others

see us . It would from many a blunder

free us And foolish notion”

Does that advice from Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1786 also apply to cities? In the Youth column, high school students from Denver, Atlanta, Providence, R.I., and Topeka, Kan., let us in on their impressions of Southern California. Last year’s upheaval is foremost in their minds, but a surprising number of these kids still see some glamour in Tinseltown.

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Is there any way to stem the tide of tagging that seems to mar every blank surface along some streets? Marte Amato says in Modest Proposal that she’d develop citizen watch crews to identify taggers, then make the taggers and their parents clean up every mark they’ve made.

And in Second Opinion, we hear the objections of many Korean-to a key scene in the movie, “Falling Down.”