Gore Talks to Unreceptive, Young Crowd

At a high school in South-Central Los Angeles on Monday, Vice President Al Gore got about as much respect as a substitute teacher with no principal around.

As he went on and on in a wonkish address at Locke High School, some students roughhoused in front of him, talked as he was talking and complained that the real main attractions--former Lakers Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar--were no-shows.

Trying to rouse the crowd, Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson) did everything she could.

“I want you to pretend this is a football game,” she said. “Now, you can yell better than that.”

The crowd did yell. But it was mostly the teachers and other adults who had crowded up front near the stage.

Behind them were an array of students--some interested in the No. 2 man in government appearing at their high school, others bored. One young man in an oversize T-shirt and droopy pants folded the Clinton-Gore sign he had been given into a cone and plopped it onto his head. Asked what he thought of the vice president, he said: “Nothing at all.”

“It’s not necessarily boring,” said Earnest Stallings, 17, a senior who was listening to Gore’s address. “He’s saying a lot of things, but, honestly, I don’t think it relates to me. Personally, I don’t think it matters who is president. How does it affect me?”

Reynalda Fuentes, 15, said she did not know Gore existed before he took the stage. As the vice president delivered his stump speech, she crumpled up her Clinton-Gore handbill and used it to playfully bang her friend, Maria Miranda, on the head.

In a pitch he has made with better results before, Gore defended affirmative action, lamented the lack of capital in the inner city and praised the administration’s enterprise zones designed to create more jobs. His fact-filled talk also noted that there has been a drop in unemployment over the last four years.

Earlier, Gore made a better connection with a group of Latino politicians and community leaders at the Atlas Bar and Grill near downtown. Peppering his speech with Spanish phrases, Gore condemned Proposition 209, the ballot initiative that would wipe out state-run affirmative action programs.

“It will be wrong for California and wrong for America,” he said, prompting applause. “The way to pull this nation up is not by pulling the weakest down. . . . We do not have a level playing field--yet.”

Gore stopped at the Atlas because a March visit to the Latino-owned restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard had been canceled. “Promesa hecha, promesa cumplida,” Gore said in Spanish, telling the crowd that he keeps his word.