Working to Make L.A. Work

I was intrigued with the way the name of the project combined simplicity with naive optimism--L.A. Works.

These days, the idea that L.A. works is hard to fathom. In fact, we’re in the middle of a mayoral campaign based on the concept that L.A. doesn’t work at all.

We reporters have been making our living writing about variations of the L.A. doesn’t work theme. Our time is spent covering stories of violence, selfishness, hatred, sloth, drugs, bigotry and the rest of the deadly sins that send a message of impending chaos and doom.

The past few weeks have been particularly depressing, especially the grim, overwrought days preceding the verdicts in the Rodney G. King case. On one of those days--perhaps it was when the paper issued us bulletproof vests and gas masks--I got a call promoting L.A. Works.

It came from Donna Bojarsky, who assists actor Richard Dreyfuss in his political and community activities. Dreyfuss started L.A. Works in 1991 as a way of mobilizing volunteers for such activities as planting trees, cleaning parks, reading to sick children, helping with the Special Olympics, tandem cycling with the visually impaired, renovating single-room occupancy hotels in Skid Row and distributing free food to the poor.

Bojarsky said L.A. Works was sending 1,000 volunteers around the city Saturday at sites from South-Central Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley. I forgot about the call. But last Friday afternoon, after I turned in my unused bulletproof vest and gas mask, I remembered. It sounded like something to see.

I caught up with some of the volunteers late Saturday morning at the Pueblo del Rio public housing project just east of the Blue Line commuter rail around 51st Street in South-Central L.A.

I met Dreyfuss on a street corner. He’s a short, slender man with a serious manner who grew more intense as he talked about L.A. Works.

His interest in L.A. is unusual in the entertainment industry. Industry giants tend to flock to big-name politicians and high-profile causes, basking in the limelight of events such as President Clinton’s inaugural. But Dreyfuss sensed trouble closer to home, before last spring’s violence. “This organization existed before the riot, long before,” he said.

Dreyfuss thought part of the city’s troubles were caused by the isolation of L.A.’s many communities. Thus he and Bojarsky conceived an organization that would bring people together, as well as provide a volunteer labor force for public service projects.

As he spoke, men and women painted nearby playground equipment, filled potholes, fixed broken fences and did other work under a warm April sun. Some were L.A. Works volunteers, including actors, actresses, studio craft people, directors and executives from the entertainment industry. The others lived in the project. The project residents and the visiting volunteers worked side by side.

This is unusual in a city that has long been segregated along racial and economic lines. If you live in the Valley, South-Central may just be an image on television or in the movies. Many Westsiders have never been to East L.A. And the harbor, with its view and great restaurants, is beyond the experience of many Angelenos.

The idea of breaking down such barriers was what intrigued Dreyfuss.

As a Vietnam War conscientious objector, he had worked at County-USC Medical Center at night while acting and studying during the day. “I had two lives,” he said. “And not once during those two years did anyone from one world ask me what happened at the hospital. Nor did anyone at the hospital ask me about my other world.”

Like Dreyfuss, I have always been struck by the isolation of various parts of the city.

I’ve seen great ideas for improving L.A. tossed around at community meetings in East L.A., South-Central or the Valley, but they never make it west of La Cienega Boulevard or south of Mulholland Drive. Worthwhile thinking from the Westside isn’t welcomed by activists in the trenches in other parts of town. Nor are many urban scholars from USC or UCLA found mucking around in the pits of local politics, as is the case in Chicago or Boston.

Isolation breeds fear. For some Angelenos, civic activism boils down to demanding permission from the City Council to barricade their neighborhoods.

L.A. Works is an attempt to tear down the barricades and, at the same time, perform some good works around town. The number is (213) 465-4097.