Beacons of Change : Rebels With a Cause, These Four Activists Tell How They Want to Reshape L.A.--and the World : LOIS ARKIN: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST : ‘Once you have the knowledge about making something better, and you have the ability to do it, then you have the responsibility.’

They are solitary voices shouting to be heard, pleading to be supported, but willing to stand alone.

They are activists--like Californian Harry Wu, a human rights advocate who spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps before immigrating to the United States in 1985. He risked his freedom in June while entering China in his continuing efforts to draw attention to human rights violations.

What makes activists take such risks?

Activism is a lifelong pursuit, says Craig Jenkins, a sociology professor at Ohio State University. Those who take up a cause rarely let go. The causes are as diverse as the activists, says Jenkins, who chairs the Collective Behavior and Social Movements section of the American Sociological Assn.

Activism in the 1990s has taken a more local focus. While few gain the international attention of Wu, who remains jailed, many are at work in the neighborhoods. The following are four Angelenos who live their lives committed to bringing light to darkness.

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Lois Arkin rides a bicycle for basic transportation around her Los Angeles neighborhood. It’s a philosophical statement.

“The idea is to maximize the beneficial connections within and among social, economic and ecological systems,” says Arkin, who does not speak in sound bites.

The secondhand green Schwinn with its balloon tires, symbolizes her commitment to creating a radically different way of living in cities.

For more than 20 years, Arkin, 58, has been pursuing a vision she describes as “living lightly on the land,” stemming from her belief that the quality of life rests on our relationships with one another and with our support systems of soil, earth and water.”

Since the 1970s, when she discovered the “joyful labor” of cooperatives, her single-minded goal has been to engage people in positive, collective activity.

To do that, she founded the Cooperative Resources and Services Project (CRSP), a training and education center for such co-op endeavors as community barter systems, collaborative housing networks and community loan funds.

Guided by Arkin, CRSP is slowly converting the two block, multiethnic neighborhood near First Street and Vermont Avenue--where she has lived for 15 years--into the Los Angeles Eco-Village. The idea, she says, is to use small physical projects to develop a sense of community and trust. Neighbors who have never known each other are getting acquainted.

“We had 11 for this week’s vegetarian potluck,” she says with satisfaction. The menu included tofu spaghetti and potato salad made with the first eggs from the mini-farm chickens. “Every time we have a harvest here, we have a ritual.”

She is not perturbed that her crusade for “cooperative, caring” neighborhoods hardly registers on the cultural scale of Los Angeles’ drive-alone, single-family housing, shopping-mall tradition.

“It may sound laughable, but what we are creating is what people in increasing numbers are leaving Los Angeles to find,” she says. “If we don’t begin to take care of one another, in terms of the earth, water and soil in our neighborhoods, we will lose it.”

She can’t imagine herself ever quitting.

“Once you have the knowledge about making something better, and you have the ability to do it, then you have the responsibility,” she explains. “I think that if I wasn’t involved in this kind of action, the pain of being an informed person would be too great for me.”