Reaching Out to Clean Up Los Angeles

The stench from the gutter outside Holmes Avenue Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles grew more sickening with each scoop of Wayne Bailey’s shovel.

“It is like a sewer,” the Santa Monica inventor said incredulously, a string of blackish goop dripping on his boat shoes. “It isn’t very pleasant doing this, but I guess living next to it hasn’t been very pleasant either.”

Saturday was an eye-opener for Bailey and thousands of other Los Angeles area residents who ignored long-held taboos about crossing neighborhood lines and joined in a hopeful “picking up” of the city from San Pedro to Pico-Union.

For some the excuse to push a broom or use a paintbrush was Earth Day; for others it was because of the approaching anniversary of last year’s riots. A dozen or so groups organized events such as planting trees, painting over graffiti, cleaning up beaches and sweeping streets, most of which invited a cross-cultural rubbing of elbows that some participants complained is too seldom seen in Los Angeles.

“It is all a drop in the bucket. You just have to look down the street at what we’ve missed,” said Peter Krietler, who directed an anti-graffiti effort near a South-Central grocery store in which neighborhood homies and Westside businessmen dipped their brushes in the same paint can.

“But there is so much symbolism,” Krietler said. “We’ve got young people, old people and people of all colors. It represents the diversity of this city.”

President Clinton, in a tape-recorded message, urged 1,500 volunteers gathered at Exposition Park to renew the spirit of Los Angeles, while 10-year old Anthony Rose of Watts read a simple poem pleading for a better place to live.

“We . . . need to stop the racism from the blacks and the whites,” Anthony announced over the loudspeaker. “We all just got to get along.”

In the end, the message across the city was the same, whether it was planting a crepe myrtle tree at Leo Politi Elementary School on crime-ridden 11th Street or diving for underwater rubbish at Point Mugu.

“We need to pull together, like never before,” said Autmese Wilburn, 76, a retired Woolworth’s clerk working her first community cleanup near her Central Avenue home of 30 years. “I have aches and pains, but that doesn’t stop me. I am willing to do my part.”

Wilburn, who moved to Los Angeles from Louisiana in 1937, wore a powder-blue hat and soft-sole sandals as she raked bits of paper and glass from a small clump of grass at the edge of a dusty corner lot. Alberta Williams, a fellow Louisiana native, helped with a large trash bag, and a small girl and her mother, looking for something to do, soon pitched in.

Across the lot, looking eager but somewhat out of place, a group of volunteers from Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica-based environmental group that helped organize the Central Avenue cleanup, got their assignments for the day.

Several members of another sponsoring group, Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles, were still a few blocks down the street taking care of a more urgent matter: About 50 people waited outside the organization’s office for a monthly distribution of food.

That the two sets of volunteers on Central Avenue came from very different worlds was not lost on the participants or their leaders. Lisa Crossley, gutter patrol manager for Heal the Bay, said the environmental group has tried to address criticism by some inner-city residents that environmentalism in Los Angeles has little relevance in their neighborhoods.

“This is not just the proud Westsiders marching in and telling people what to do,” Crossley said. “It is not just the beaches anymore. Everything is connected in terms of our streets. Heal the Bay has to grow into that, too. Coalitions can be formed on many messages, not just ours.”

RaJendra Hunter-Samana, the environmental planner for Concerned Citizens, said bringing the two organizations together was as important as the work they accomplished Saturday.

“That is what the civil unrest was all about,” Hunter-Samana said. “We always keep ourselves separate. This shows the Westside can come to South-Central and in return we can go out there when they need help.”

By far the largest effort Saturday was choreographed by L.A. Works, a nonprofit group founded two years ago by actor Richard Dreyfuss and others. More than 30 buses carried 1,500 volunteers to cleanup sites throughout the city, with most participants pledging money or signing up sponsors for their labor.

At a huge early morning rally, volunteers got their assignments over bagels and coffee at Exposition Park. Many companies sent contingents, as did clubs and community groups. For some, it was their first journey into inner-city neighborhoods devastated by last year’s riots; many came only after long discussions in the office about safety. Others were scared off.

“There were people afraid to come because they were afraid about their car getting stolen or getting shot at,” said Amelia Jones, who works for a Santa Monica developer. “But that can happen in Santa Monica, too. Hopefully this is a start and more people will begin coming together.”

A handful of restaurant workers from the downtown Hyatt Regency Los Angeles said they turned out to help improve the city’s damaged image, which has hit them directly in the pocket book. Business at the hotel has dropped dramatically, they said, and they don’t expect real improvement until the city proves--to itself as well as others--that it can work together.

“People are afraid to come downtown,” said waitress Silvia Stumph, who lives in Glendale. “We just want to show everyone this is still a good city.”

About two busloads of volunteers spent several hours cleaning up and painting the El Pueblo Del Rio housing project near 53rd Street and Holmes Avenue, but the work crews were not all from outside the area. Bruce Willison of Pasadena, CEO of First Interstate Bank, stood in boots and dusty shorts sifting glass and rocks from a sandbox, while longtime project resident Myra Luckett pushed a bright orange broom on the sidewalk nearby.

Luckett has tended to a spectacular flower garden outside her apartment for years, but never before, she said, had she seen so many of her neighbors get down on their hands and knees and “take ownership” of their collective home.

“This has brought some of our own out,” Luckett said, her smiling face shaded by floppy straw hat tied with a neat pink bow. “This has really motivated people. It feels so good to be getting this kind of help.”

A block away, the education of Wayne Bailey continued. Frustrated and short of breath after shoveling about 200 pounds of debris from the gutter, Bailey leaned on his shovel and asked a question many El Pueblo residents said they don’t bother asking anymore.

“Where has the street sweeper been the last 15 years? That’s what I want to know.”