Cause for Hope, Not Despair

On the fifth anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, many of the media seem obsessed with two questions:

Has anything really changed in five years?

Can L.A. blow up again?

With their parade of interviews with residents and community activists who tell bitter stories of poverty and violence, the media invite the depressing “yes” answer to the second question.

And at first this seems to spell more turmoil in the city. After all, 200 or more stores have not been rebuilt. The federal government and private industry didn’t deliver on their over-ambitious promise to provide $5 billion for small business loans, housing construction, increased social services and recreation programs in South-Central Los Angeles. Rebuild L.A., charged with securing funds for business and housing development in South-Central Los Angeles, closed its doors last September after failing to prod public and private agencies to pony up the dollars needed to remake the riot-scarred neighborhoods.

Then there is the high unemployment of African Americans, especially young men; the gaping disparities in income between minorities and whites; continuing gang violence and the drug plague; slashes in welfare, education and social services; the backlash to affirmative action; the escalation of hate crimes; and the ouster of the Los Angeles Police Department’s first African American police chief, Willie Williams.

To get a better handle on the shape of things that might come, I dug out the article I wrote in 1975, on the 10th anniversary of the Watts riots. In it, I made this gloomy prediction: “The residents of Watts are poorer, more desperate and more angry than in 1975. They are still ready to riot.”

Twenty years later, I had to eat those words. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on the 30th anniversary of the Watts riots in 1995, I wrote that “even though Watts is still plagued by poverty, crime and drugs, it no longer should be seen as a symbol of destruction and despair.” Much had changed for the better in Watts. Health services, transportation and education had improved. Two shopping centers, a library and new housing had been or were being built.

Latinos make up nearly half the residents of Watts, and they are working with black residents to combat drugs and gang violence and demand more funding for jobs and services. That spirit of cooperation was much evident during the 1992 riots, when property damage in Watts was practically nil. What happened in Watts can happen in L.A. during the next five years.

So what--if anything--has changed? These are the visible and not so visible changes I’ve seen since 1992:

% There will continue to be more residential racial mixing in Los Angeles than in almost any other major city in the country. A significant number of African Americans, Latinos and Asians have bought homes, rent apartments, work and own businesses on the Westside and the San Fernando Valley.

% Women and minorities will continue to own more businesses in Southern California than in any other area of the nation.

% Construction of low- and moderate-income housing in South-Central Los Angeles and other parts of the city will continue. Several major banks and S&Ls; have committed more funds for minority-owned housing and business loans. In addition, the nonprofit Operation Hope and the Community Development Bank will continue to work to secure more private and federal funding for home lending and small businesses.

% The Community Redevelopment Agency will fulfill at least part of its plan to renovate buildings, beautify streets and secure more small-business loans in the Crenshaw and Slauson-Vermont areas.

% The record surge in Latino voting during the past mayoral election ensures that Latinos will be even bigger political players in the next few years.

% The ouster of Williams was not the signal that the LAPD will return to the Daryl Gates era. The rap against Williams was that he didn’t move fast enough to implement the Christopher Commission’s recommendations to reform the LAPD. Mayor Richard Riordan, the City Council and the Police Commission have made it clear that the next chief must continue to implement those reforms.

% The City Council is likely to continue to sponsor periodic citywide days of dialogue between community leaders and residents. And white and minority community activists likely will increase their protests against the elimination of affirmative action, repressive immigration laws, welfare and social service cuts.

% Activists and gang leaders will make more attempts to get black and Latino gangs to stop the killing. Some will succeed. Some won’t.

Predicting the future is risky. But enough positive change has happened in Los Angeles to make me believe there is more cause for hope than despair.