BODY POLITIC : Keeping Activist

“I just got a hot second,” says Pearl White, heading off to continue her effort to cajole $2 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for programs in her Venice ‘hood. Two days later, White, 74, is stepping off her porch again, this time trying to whip up an uneasy truce between local gangs. “With all these killings we’ve got to do something,” she says. “Just last night there was another shooting almost right in my window.”

And then there’s the Pearl White Theatre of Performing Arts, gearing up for more rehearsals: Got to get those kids ready for their auditions. Got to keep them off the streets.

White has been putting out flames--and stirring up trouble--in Venice since the mid-1940s. Then, just arrived from her home state of Texas, she immediately began registering Democrats in the area because, as she now recalls, “We had nothing but Republicans here.” Getting out the vote was difficult then, she says. “At the time, people didn’t talk about voting. But now we’re doing pretty good.”

Neighbors credit White with starting many of the community service programs that serve the gang- and crime-ridden Oakwood district. The theater, which began in 1975 and is sponsored by actors Lloyd and Beau Bridges, stages plays, most of them reflecting aspects of life in Oakwood, that are written and performed by neighborhood youths.

“She has been involved with every program designed for youth since the 1940s,” says Melvyn Hayward, the group’s business manager, “from housing, education and theater. A lot of these kids are going on to college, doing television and films.”

White isn’t interested in kicking back in her golden years. Besides working to get funding and low-interest loans for area residents, she is involved in a multitude of organizations that help get homeless families off the streets, keep kids out of gangs and parents off drugs.

“I was always helping the poor,” she concludes. “It’s something that I’ve been doing all my life. You know why? Because that’s why I’m living. As long as God’s going to keep me living, I can’t be lying in no bed.”