Few Minorities Join Crusade for Valley Secession

Xavier Flores has heard the claims that if the San Fernando Valley secedes from the city of Los Angeles, it will give local residents more control over their political destiny.

That may sound appealing, particularly for Latinos and other minorities in the Valley who feel they are often ignored. But Flores, who heads the Valley chapter of the Mexican-American Political Assn., is staying clear of the secession movement.

“It’s our position that there is not enough information to determine whether secession will impact Latinos in the San Fernando Valley negatively or positively,” he said. “If we are going to err, we are going to err on the side of caution.”

Flores’ reticence is shared by many minorities in the Valley who are cautiously watching the secession debate from the sidelines, some worried that dividing up the city could dilute their political strength, others fearing it might erase years of minority achievements made in concert with the city of Los Angeles.

More than one minority activist has suggested that the secession drive has racist undertones and sees it as a move by Valley whites to divorce themselves from the problems of a large, racially diverse city.

“The leaders from the minority communities are suspicious of the motives [behind the secession drive],” said Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Others suggest that few minorities are involved in the secession drive because they have other, closer-to-home worries to contend with.

“Maybe secession is not as important an issue as being financially viable,” said Rose Castaneda, an instructor at the Pacoima Community Youth Culture Center.

Leaders of the secession movement concede that their message has yet to strike a responsive chord with minorities, but say that it is not for lack of trying.

“We have actively solicited minority representation,” said Richard Close, co-chair of Valley VOTE, a group dedicated to supporting state legislation to make secession easier. “They are getting the invitation, but they are not coming.”

The group’s efforts to attract minorities, he and others say, proves that racism is not a motive behind the drive.

But their failure to attract more minorities cannot be blamed on the Valley’s demographics.

Unlike the mostly white homogeneous Valley of yesteryear, the Valley of today is almost as racially diverse as the rest of Los Angeles, with a population that is 30% Latino, 4% African American and 8% Asian American, according to 1990 census figures.

Similarly, Los Angeles has a population that was estimated at 38% Latino, 13% African American and 10% Asian American in the 1990 census.

However, the call for secession has resonated loudest in white middle- and upper-income Valley neighborhoods of Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Encino. Many leaders in those communities say Los Angeles has ignored them and cheated them out of their fair share of city services.

The turning point in the secession battle will come this week when Gov. Pete Wilson is expected to decide whether to sign a bill that would make secession easier by eliminating the City Council’s power to veto a breakaway move. He has until next Sunday to make a decision, or the bill becomes law without his signature.

Close and other secessionists contend that the campaign is still in an early stage. If the bill is signed, Close said, he and other movement members will begin reaching out to minorities in the Valley.

“As part of the second phase, we realize we have to go to the community leaders and show why this makes sense for them and their communities,” he said.

Although minorities in the Valley account for more than 40% of the total population, their role in any future secession effort is difficult to determine because they traditionally tend to vote in much smaller numbers.

This year, however, Latinos voted in record numbers, partly in response to such ballot measures as Proposition 187, which eliminated benefits for illegal immigrants, and Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action in public university admissions and state hiring and contracting.

Secessionists say they plan to appeal to minorities by arguing that a split from Los Angeles would allow them greater say in their future because they would be part of a smaller, easier-to-govern city. They will also argue that secession would ensure that local tax dollars are spent in the Valley and not in other parts of the city.

“I think everybody in the Valley feels they are being underserved,” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and a member of Valley VOTE.

On this issue as on others, minority leaders do not speak with one voice. Some support secession, but others simply support the right to vote on a breakaway.

The 11-member executive committee of Valley VOTE includes two minority activists, Marie Harris, an African American community leader in Pacoima, and Carlos Ferreyra, a Latino activist in Van Nuys.

Both Harris and Ferreyra say minorities should not try to gauge how secession would impact them, but instead should consider how it would impact the Valley as a whole.

“We are all in the same boat,” Ferreyra said.

Harris added: “I see everyone not getting their fair share regardless of race, creed or color.”

C.K. Tseng, president of the Asian Business Assn. and owner of a travel agency in Northridge, said he supports secession because it would ensure that Valley tax dollars are spent in the Valley.

Susan Ng, executive director of the San Fernando Valley Asian-Pacific Islander Council, also says that Valley residents don’t get their fair share of city taxes. But she is not yet convinced that secession is the way to remedy that problem.

“Once we break away from Los Angeles, where do we go from there?” she said. “I’m like most people, watching from the sidelines.”

The Rev. Zedar Broadous, president of the Valley chapter of the NAACP, said he has been approached to join the secession drive.

But Broadous said he is reluctant because he fears that minorities will have to start all over to gain a voice in a newly created city.

“We have been kicked to the curb so many times, why would we want to set ourselves up to be kicked again?” he said.

He and other minority leaders say they have made great strides in getting their voices heard in City Hall and fear that secession would wipe out such achievements.

The 15-member Los Angeles City Council includes three African American and three Latino members. In 1993, when Councilman Richard Alarcon was elected, he became the first Latino representative from the Valley.

Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), elected last year as the Valley’s first Latino Assemblyman, said he worries that secession could dilute minority strength by dividing the city’s minorities.

“I think the minority communities on the other side of the hill have a longer history in the city and there are relationships that have developed (with Valley minority groups) and that separation may hinder those relationships,” he said “Will that translate to a step backward?”

Cardenas introduced his own secession bill this year that would have required a two-thirds majority vote in the Valley to approve a breakaway. He said his intent was to ensure that secession cannot take place without widespread support, including support from Valley minorities. That bill died in committee.

Some minority leaders in the working-class communities in the Northeast Valley say they are reluctant to join the secession drive because they have not felt welcome by the Valley VOTE leadership.

Irene Tovar, the executive director of the Latin American Civic Assn., the largest provider of Head Start preschool centers in the Valley, said she became disillusioned with the secession movement after attending a recent transit summit organized by many of the same homeowner and business groups that support the secession bill.

Tovar said the homeowners talked mostly about improving the transit system for the middle- and upper-income residents of the West Valley, ignoring the needs of working-class minorities in the East Valley.

“I think they are insensitive to the needs of the Latinos,” she said. “That is the feeling I got.”

But Ferreyra, a member of the Valley VOTE executive committee, said minorities will have the power to vote for their own representatives and make demands for their own services under the structure of a new Valley city.

“I don’t think minorities will be any worse off,” he said. “I don’t think they can be ignored.”