Community Comment : Zagreb Has Lessons for Ravaged L.A.

If Los Angeles were to have a new sister city, Zagreb, Croatia, might be a more appropriate nominee than one might at first suspect. I spent the beginning of January in Zagreb, a city that has been forced to provide shelter for more than 500,000 homeless people amid one of the most savage conflicts affecting Europe since the World War II. The last three years there have been horrific. At first, the city itself was under direct fire. Today, its problem is to absorb the refugees, the overwhelming majority of whom are women, children, the elderly and the disabled.

Meanwhile, in about the same time frame, Los Angeles has been devastated by riots, fires, mudslides and earthquakes, as well as economic recession.

In Zagreb, they have coped amazingly well. Virtually all of the homeless have been given shelter and basic food. There are no homeless people walking on the streets, no beggars. The crime rate per capita is less than 1% of the crime rate in Los Angeles. There are no drive-by shootings. A woman can still walk the streets in any neighborhood at any hour without fearing for her safety.

In Los Angeles, where the federal government started passing out food stamps, hundreds and probably thousands of people abused this helping hand. Many of them were not among those affected by the earthquake. In Zagreb, there weren’t any cases of price-gouging for necessities by local merchants.

Still, like other people I have spoken with, I have strong attachments to the Los Angeles area and would not live elsewhere. But, like the people I have talked to, I do not live in the inner city. The closest many of us come to the inner city is watching the evening news and hearing about the latest victims of gang violence. The fact is, there are (at least) two very different cities of Los Angeles: one for the privileged, the other for the racial and financial minorities who haven’t been given--or achieved--a way out of the ghetto. Some may be there by choice; perhaps they don’t know any other way to live.

Like the people in war-ravaged Croatia, they too are victims. Many have not had any real family life or a chance at a good education. They have grown up, in many cases, in a climate in which social and moral values are not shown and not taught. Our social system is broken. I don’t pretend I know how we can fix it, but I do know we cannot start until we admit the seriousness and truth of the situation. In Zagreb, in the refugee camps I visited, I was moved by the closeness and caring among the surviving family members. We too need to care for every member of our society. This won’t be easy, but we must always be aware that every child is our future. If every child isn’t given the opportunity to be free of terror and have their human needs addressed, the future of Los Angeles, as well as many other major U.S. cities with similar problems, looks bleak indeed. In Zagreb today, no matter how bad the circumstances, virtually every child has school lessons to learn and someone to study with--so unlike many of the children in Los Angeles--and one day the war will be over for them.

It is time for residents of the Los Angeles area to realize that we are also at war with inferior education, parental neglect, poverty and other serious social problems. It is time for us to pull together as a city and nation to defeat these foes.