Politics in a Civic Vacuum

The decision by Councilman Richard Alatorre not to seek reelection opens the door for a new generation of Eastside leadership in the 14th District. All the attention paid to his district and the race to succeed him can only be good for local politics. Last week, an unprecedented 19 candidates declared their intention to run. Unions, which have played a pivotal role in augmenting Latino political power, are gearing up for the campaign. But within this arguably healthy political climate lies a more distressing story about the sorry state of democracy in Los Angeles, particularly the Eastside. The resulting loss of civic life can bestow undue influence on institutions whose self-interests clash with those of the community.

Over the past 25 years, an increasingly transient and foreign-born population has replaced a more permanent, reliable voting base in the city. The newcomers have yet to fill the political vacuum left by the departure of the city’s white middle-class voters to the suburbs. Between 1977 and 1997, the city’s population grew by 23%, yet there was a phenomenal 61% decline in actual ballots cast in general municipal elections.

By 1990, fully 45% of adult Angelenos were foreign-born. Westlake, just west of downtown, and Boyle Heights, on the left bank of the Los Angeles River, were the two most heavily immigrant districts in the city. While Westlake’s demographic changes were an amplified version of what occurred in other parts of Los Angeles--native-born Anglos being replaced by Latin American immigrants--Boyle Heights, the heart of the 14th District, experienced its own transformation. Indeed, the metamorphosis of the Eastside continues to be one of the untold stories of recent L.A. history.

By the 1940s, Mexicans already were becoming the predominant ethnic group in Boyle Heights. Thirty years later, the area had stabilized and gained renown as the quintessential Mexican American barrio. The vast majority of Eastside residents were U.S.-born. Since immigration from Mexico had been relatively low for decades, English was the language most often heard on the streets. Latino Eastside residents had become less immigrant than they were ethnic American. Mexican American culture was considered a subgenre of American pop culture. Souped-up American cars, Cheech and Chong and R&B; oldies passed for Latino culture.

Strong upward mobility has lifted great numbers of these Mexican American families out of the traditional barrio and into the suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley and beyond. Just as in South-Central Los Angeles, newcomers associated with the wave of immigration that began in the mid-1970s have facilitated the outmigration of former residents by renting out and sometimes even buying their homes. By 1990, fully 76% of adults in Boyle Heights were foreign-born, and an estimated 50% of them arrived in the United States only within the previous decade. Between 1980 and 1990, the district not only became more heavily immigrant, but denser and poorer. As one scholar recently put it, Boyle Heights has been “transformed into a corridor community whose commercial strips and traffic arteries are pathways for commuters through and out of the area.”

Mexicans tend to follow the traditional immigrant pattern of spatial mobility, according to USC demographer Dowell Myers. In other words, newcomers tend to “concentrate in the city, followed by slow departure for the suburbs as the immigrants work their way up the economic ladder.” U.S.-born Latinos, the children and grandchildren of immigrants, are significantly less likely to live in the city of Los Angeles than are immigrants. While immigrants have injected energy and renewed commercial activity into the inner city, they don’t always stay long enough to fully stabilize a neighborhood. One of the great ironies of immigrant upward mobility is the destabilizing effect it can have on a city. “The departure of the upwardly mobile makes room for new immigrant arrivals who join the remaining, less successful members of previous immigrant waves,” contends Myers.

One consequence of this pattern is a decline in civic participation. Local institutions suffer, and there emerges a type of absentee leadership, in which the most vocal people in a community tend to be middle-class activists and politicos who no longer reside in the district. Boyle Heights and unincorporated East L.A. are to Los Angeles what Brooklyn is to New York. They command the affection of many who grew up there but no longer live there. Both Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights and its rival Garfield High in East Los Angeles, for example, share a remarkable tradition of former students returning to teach in the community.

But the activism of former residents does not offset the lack of a strong, organic political infrastructure. By some accounts, there are three voices in L.A. politics: homeowners, businesses and unions. In Boyle Heights and the entire 14th District, which winds its way through Highland Park, El Sereno and Eagle Rock, a lack of homeowner groups and a largely unorganized business class leave unions to wield disproportionate political influence. This imbalance of power ensures that elections remain noncompetitive, top-down affairs. As Fabian Nunez, the political director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said last month, “We will not only help elect council members but we will determine who that candidate will be, not only by our endorsements but by ensuring that they win those seats.”

When Alatorre announced that he would not seek another term, his aspiring successors quickly sought the all-important endorsement of the County Federation of Labor. Union support not only delivers financial backing but also an unmatched number of campaign workers to run a field operation. Yet, when labor’s role in anointing candidates monopolizes everyone’s attention, the greater and broader need to widen the district’s voting base and to give its residents a political voice and a larger stake in democratic decision-making go begging. “It’s a shame that people are just going toward the established sources of brokering votes, like labor,” says Manuel Bernal, the executive director of the East L.A. Community Corp. “It minimizes the role of anybody who is not related to labor.”

At times, unchecked union power can even diminish the role of community. For example, the Service Employees International Union has championed the candidacy of a former UCLA biology professor who neither grew up nor lived in the 14th District until less than a week before the December residency deadline. The SEIU-backed candidacy of Jorge Mancillas, who moved into the district from West Los Angeles, represents a new milestone in carpetbagging. Apparently, the union’s ideological criteria for endorsement outweighs candidate legitimacy.

Eastside political consultant Victor Griego, who is splitting labor endorsements with Mancillas and One Stop Immigration director Juan Jose Gutierrez, says he would not consider running for the 14th District seat without union support. The good news, however, is that union clout has not prevented an unprecedented number of underdog candidates from availing themselves of home-grown networks to garner support. Thirty-year-old Alvin D. Parra, who ran an insurgent campaign against Alatorre in 1995 and garnered 42% of the vote, is trying to capitalize on a grass-roots network of supporters. Charter-reform commissioner Nick Pacheco says he’s relying on a “mothers’ network” to help him get out the word. Water district engineer Luis Cetina says he is asking constituents to get involved by contributing financially to his campaign. California Medical Center’s public-affairs director Sylvia Robledo will try to tapan unexploited base of women voters. These and a number of other young candidates could help to energize the district’s electoral base and bring new voices into its politics.

More than any political agenda, the 14th District needs more of its residents to feel a sense of proprietorship over their civic institutions. As the only viable political infrastructure in the district, unions must think beyond anointing friendly candidates and begin to help build a stronger civic infrastructure that can truly engender movements from the bottom up. “There’s no way that Boyle Heights can turn around by solely providing government services,” says Manuel Bernal. “The only way to improve the quality of life is by the community becoming more active in the process.”

But we can’t expect Boyle Heights’ immigrant residents to become more active until we first open up the process itself.