Gore Presses the Need to Invest in Inner Cities

Vice President Al Gore stressed Saturday that the country is missing out by not providing seed capital to young, entrepreneurial blacks and Latinos with innovative ideas about starting businesses in their distressed communities.

“Investment in our inner cities is not just a good deed, it is good business,” Gore told a gathering of business, community and government leaders at Los Angeles Southwest College.

Gore stopped in at the Inner-City Economic Summit organized by Operation HOPE Inc., the country’s first nonprofit investment banking organization, which is trying to chart a new course for America’s underserved communities.

During his two-day stay in Los Angeles, the vice president attended a $2.7-million fund-raising event Saturday night for the Democratic National Committee hosted by DreamWorks SKG chiefs David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.

He also met with Lydia Camarillo, chief executive of the Democratic National Convention Committee, to discuss the preparations for the convention in Los Angeles this August, according to Gore spokesman Douglas J. Hattaway.

This afternoon, he plans to address a rally of striking janitors at Lincoln Park in Santa Monica.

During his speech Saturday morning, Gore said many black and Latino communities across the nation have been left out of the country’s economic prosperity because of “the cumulative impact of many generations of diminished opportunity, discrimination [and] barriers that have impeded progress.”

Gore cited statistics that, on average, the wealth of African American families is just 11% that of the average white family. For Latinos, he said, the figure is 10%.

As a result, he said, many bright young Latinos or African Americans with good entrepreneurial ideas can’t rely on relatives to help finance a first business, and thus abandon their dreams.

“We’re missing out in America, because when a young entrepreneur has a good idea, that individual is going to create more jobs in the community, more wealth in the community, more investment by the people who live in the community in the future of that community,” Gore said.

The vice president also stopped in at the grand opening of a swanky new Cyber Cafe at 3721 S. La Brea Ave. in South-Central. Under the coordination of Operation HOPE, companies like Intuit, Unisys and GTE donated the equipment for 16 workstations so that local residents who do not have their own computers can have access to the Internet.

Throughout his campaign, Gore has emphasized the need to make computers and the Internet as commonplace as telephones. He is discussing with his contacts in Silicon Valley how to make his vision a reality. He has also proposed expanding programs that give incentives to the private sector to provide start-up capital in distressed communities.

In his speech, Gore scoffed at an article he read that suggested there “is no such thing as a digital divide.”

“If you don’t as a child gain access to this technology and familiarity working with it, you’re going to be less able to excel” in the new economy, he said.

Lester Gardiner, branch manager at the Cyber Cafe, said he believes the center will give many people in the neighborhood the break they need to “move up the economic ladder.”

“If you’re not on the Internet, you’re almost nonexistent in this society,” he said.

After shining a spotlight on the plight of the city’s most disadvantaged citizens, Gore met with some of its richest and most celebrated residents at the historic Greystone mansion in Beverly Hills. Actors Kevin Spacey and Whoopi Goldberg were among the celebrities expected to attend and singer Sarah McLachlan was expected to entertain.