Don’t Expect an Army of Neighborhood Citizen-Politicians Soon : Governance: In L.A., the political mantra seems to be local control. But the city’s new immigrant communities may be unwilling participants.

The woman at the door was urging her neighbor to sign a petition limiting the number of liquor stores in their community. The young Latina mother hesitated. “What if someone will see what I sign?” she asked. “Will they come after me?”

The Latina’s reluctance to sign the petition reveals a potentially troublesome hurdle for what seems to be the political mantra of the ‘90s--local control. For local control to be effective, citizens must have the energy and the time to organize and, most important, must believe that their efforts will make a difference. They must also trust each other.

The Latina, like most members of Los Angeles’ many ethnic communities, possesses few, if any, of these characteristics. Most of their time and energy are spent simply surviving, and the experiences in their homeland might argue against political participation. It thus seems quixotic to believe that she and others like her will eagerly enlist in an army of neighborhood citizen-politicians to govern Los Angeles.

Still, the idea that government that governs locally is best infuses the movement to break up Los Angeles Unified School District and inspires proposals for neighborhood councils. It is the faith element in the politics of empowerment.

The growing desire for local autonomy in Los Angeles springs from its sheer size and the multiethnic character of its population. If “we” don’t want to tell them what to do--or worse yet, have them tell us what to do--it is fair to let everyone do what they want to do. It is not as venal as “separate but equal,” because we really do value individual involvement in neighborhoods.

The many ethnic communities that make up Los Angeles are quite different from each other. Less obvious--and certainly less known--is the complexity and divisiveness within each community. All the city’s new immigrant societies struggle with issues of trust and disunity among themselves. And most of them come from cultures that do not value--or trust--the power of organization and government to benefit citizens.

We like to think that, in time, these communities, no matter how different in outlook from the mainstream, will assimilate into the dominant American culture and succeed in the way our forebears did a generation or two ago. Most probably they will, but there are substantial differences that will make the transition tougher today, even if attitudes toward political participation are shared.

Take, for example, the Filipino community. It is the largest Asian community in California--and one of the most silent. On paper, Filipinos have several advantages over other immigrant groups: They speak English; they are well-educated, and they come from a political culture much like our own, since it was designed by the same Progressive fathers who designed ours. So, why aren’t the Filipinos more like the Irish of the last century?

One difference is that Filipinos are entering a society already divided into black vs. white, or black vs. brown. In such a situation, Asian communities find it hard to demand a piece of the pie, partly because these lines are so deeply drawn, partly because they would not be inclined to demand help under any circumstance: doing so would bring a measure of shame upon their families and their communities. The 19th-Century Irish did not face such polarization; they came hating the English and, once here, the Brahmin upper class in eastern U.S. cities became the American “English.”

Also unlike the Irish, Filipinos in Los Angeles are dispersed throughout the city. They have no economic base like Koreatown; they have only handful of social-service organizations. For unity to come about and endure, a history of internal conflicts must be set aside.

Most of the organizations in L.A.’s new immigrant communities suffer from internal struggles for power, from distrust of those who get ahead and from the absence of mechanisms and resources to overcome their disputes. These problems are not solely immigrant-related: They explain the failure of many small businesses and most voluntary organizations in America. Yet, they seem more intractable in immigrant organizations, partly because these groups, unlike their 19th-Century counterparts, do not enjoy the benefits of political parties that could help through the rough times by connecting them to government and its goods and services.

For neighborhood control to be politically viable in Los Angeles, it must recognize the differences among ethnic communities and the difficulties their organizations face when their members are struggling to survive. The ideal of local autonomy should not be held so high that it blinds us to the support it will take to sustain local groups. When we move toward neighborhood control, we will also need neighborhood supports.