George Givens: A Life Steeped in Meaning : REMEMBRANCE : Refusing to abandon Compton, he organized successful campaigns to bring better lives to workers.

Everybody said George Givens made the best barbecue in Southern California at his restaurant, the Barbeque Experience. But since he made it in Compton, 16 times banks denied him loans for his business, despite his character and track record as businessman, veteran, church leader, college graduate, solid family man.

When most people would have gotten discouraged, George decided to get even. He became a leader in the South Central Organizing Committee, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation. He raised money for scholarships for inner-city youth. He organized parents and young people to force the county Recreation and Parks Department to continue youth soccer at Normandie and Toberman parks.

He led campaigns to crack down on crimes around liquor stores. He forced South-Central grocery stores to clean up, stock decent food and charge fair prices. He led actions to force the Amateur Athletic Foundation to place more than $2 million in excess Olympic Games revenue into programs to help inner-city youth.

After six-and-a-half years as a volunteer leader with SCOC, George sold his restaurant and became the organization’s full-time organizer. In that capacity, he helped organize the campaign that raised the minimum wage in California from $3.35 to $4.25 per hour. He was a primary architect of the campaign to ban assault weapon sales in the state. He helped deliver 49,000 people who didn’t often vote to the polls in 1988 in support of Proposition 98, the state measure to guarantee funding for public schools.

For the past three years, George was the lead organizer for Nehemiah West Housing Corp., a project of the SCOC and its Latino sister organization, the United Neighborhoods Organization. With the clout of these organizations he helped create and $3.5 million from the Catholic and Episcopal churches, George went back to the same banks that turned him down for loans for his restaurant. This time they said yes.

Earlier this month, his once-strong body diminished by his two-year battle with bone cancer, George watched the opening of 126 Nehemiah homes in Bell Gardens and 32 townhomes in Compton. Another 131 are scheduled for completion by June, 1996, in Compton.

The dominant strategy toward our inner cities, with the almost single exception of the churches, has been abandonment. Families move away from “them.” Financial institutions make loans in the suburbs or overseas. Economists and sociologists dream up Laffer Curve or Bell Curve explanations for blight. Pundits offer simplistic, individual solutions.

George Givens stayed. He reared a fine family, though his daughter, Candice, was wounded in a drive-by shooting. He fought, cajoled, trained, led, organized, pressured, prayed. He put his will and talent into development of other leaders.

He would stare down a hostile National Rifle Assn. member in the morning, comfort a grieving parent in the afternoon and train people in the intricacies of housing finance in the evening. He organized Latinos, white people, black people, refusing racial politics, asking only what people would do and when they would do it. He worked face-to-face and in your face. He loved and worked until his body ran out.

George will not see the next fruits of his labor, another 131 low-income families moving into new homes they own, homes with bank loans. He died last Monday, in his home, in Compton.