And Over Here, the Real World

On the edge of sleek Staples Center stands a concrete box from another era. A few delegates to the Democratic National Convention might notice it. Odds are none will walk into the bare lobby, past the sign that says simply: “The Baker.”

This is where rhetoric meets reality.

Tonight the convention agenda will focus on “progress and prosperity,” matters of great importance to the people of The Baker.

Each day, Guillermina Cernas, a single mother, leads her young children through gang-infested streets to one of the lowest-ranked schools in the state. Betty Moon, a mentally disabled woman in an apartment that could be mistaken for a closet, frets about noises overhead and having enough food to finish the month. Cornelio Montes catches a crowded bus, hoping to land a full day’s work in an oppressive garment factory south of downtown.

These are the faces of America’s urban underclass.

As delegates move between chandeliered hotels, lavish parties and choreographed celebrations on the convention floor, life will grind on at The Baker. It has to.

A draft of the Democratic Party’s national platform sketches the grand vision Vice President Al Gore has for the country. Like the manifesto adopted by Republicans, it talks of good jobs, clean neighborhoods, quality schools and better health care.

But life at The Baker is a reminder of the great divide the “people’s party” must bridge to make good on its promises to those struggling at the bottom.

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. . . We have [to] secure prosperity that is broadly shared and progress that reaches all families in this new American century. . . . We must not leave any community behind. . . .

--2000 Democratic National Platform

Committee Report

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The Baker, coated in a patchwork of mismatching brown hues, is a hand-me-down.

It began as a respectable 46-room hotel for businessmen and travelers in 1913. It’s taken a long slide since.

The walls, mailboxes and woodwork are scrawled with graffiti from the “42nd Lil’ Criminals,” the gang that claims the neighborhood as its own. Most evenings the gangsters loiter in an alley next to the building. They drink and harass passersby. A young woman, talking with residents, complains that cholos, or gang members, stole her money days before.

“Everybody’s scared of them,” says another woman, hurrying across the alley as she leaves the building.

The adversity that residents share forges a close-knit community at The Baker--whether they’ve been there for two decades or two weeks. Mothers help each other lug babies in heavy strollers up creaky stairwells because the elevator is busted. They look out for each other’s safety. They comfort one another when things go from tough to tougher.

With few places to play, the children of The Baker scamper between fire escapes and hallways or kick soccer balls at their neighborhood playground: a Staples Center parking lot.

This week, the lives of everyone at the building will be even more trying amid the crowds, the roadblocks, the protesters, the possible tear gas drifting through windows kept open for relief from the heat.

Although there’s hardship, there’s also hope.

Each morning, as the sun peeks over the downtown skyline, workers and students stream through the security gate on Olympic Boulevard. On foot and bike they scatter in all directions for school and work, past a series of freshly painted 14-story murals. The towering images are icons of the Democrats’ commitment to workers, immigrants and the poor--Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Robert F. Kennedy.

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. . . By the end of the next presidential term, every failing school in America should be turned around . . . consistently bad schools should be shut down. No excuses. No exceptions. . . .

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Guillermina Cernas is tired of walking.

With two children on different class schedules, she makes the 10-minute walk between The Baker and Tenth Street Elementary School six times a day. Her two children, Victor, 4, and Noemi, 6, stick close as they cross under the Harbor Freeway, past dilapidated buildings and into the troubled world of the Los Angeles school system.

Their school is surrounded by one of the city’s most notorious gangs. So deeply rooted is the group that its name--18th Street--is embedded in the concrete sidewalk the Cernas family travels.

Tenth Street must run year-round to accommodate about 1,600 students. More than 90% are learning English and receiving federally subsidized lunches. Last year, it was ranked among the lowest-achieving schools in the state.

Many parents and political leaders might argue that Tenth Street fits the profile of a failing school.

But not Cernas. It seems to be a good place, she says. The mother is baffled by the Democrats’ suggestion that failing schools be shut down--even temporarily--especially in overcrowded districts.

“That’s not a good idea,” she says, arriving at the brightly painted school. “What would they do with the children?”

Cernas kisses her daughter, who skips through the school gate. “Be good. Pay attention,” the 40-year-old mother calls out in Spanish.

The girl already talks of wanting to be a doctor, Cernas says proudly, explaining that she herself only made it to eighth grade.

Before coming to Los Angeles in 1984, Cernas sold flowers and cleaned homes in Mexico. Three years ago, her husband left for a construction job and did not return. She earns money baby-sitting for other women at The Baker so they can work.

She also volunteers as a classroom aide and goes to parent meetings. One of these days, when she has more time, she hopes to take English classes so she can help her children study.

“I want them to learn as much as they can,” she says, changing a diaper on a neighbor’s 10-month-old boy. “I want them to be better.”

Cernas knows her home of six years is not an ideal environment for learning.

The cramped apartment--basically one room where six people share three beds--has no desk for her daughter to study. The young student has just one book, a Spanish picture dictionary.

If she could have anything for herself, Cernas has a modest wish. She wants to be a nurse or a cook. “I want to help people,” she says.

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. . . People need to get the health care they need, when they need it. . . . When mental illness goes untreated . . . people are denied the opportunity to live full lives. . . .

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Betty Moon sits on the edge of a sagging bed tucked alongside an old refrigerator. Together, they take up most of the space in her corner unit off The Baker lobby.

Rent eats half of her $622-a-month federal disability check. Her rug is frayed and stained. She’s been trying for weeks to get a coat of paint on the peeling walls. Is that too much to ask? she says.

Moon stares at a small radio in her lap that’s blaring rock music. It helps drown out noises she says she hears from the apartment overhead.

Tall and barrel-shaped, she’s 47 with matted gray hair and fading tattoos on her arms. She’s an affable spirit whose thoughts sometimes skip like a scratched CD. “A friendly nut,” as she puts it.

Like nearly one in five Americans, as the Democrats’ platform notes, Moon’s life is diminished by mental illness. Her problems date back, she says, to her days of abusing drugs as a teenage runaway.

Moon, now in her third year at The Baker, seems to have fallen through the cracks of the mental health system. She’s not disabled enough to be institutionalized, acquaintances say, but she has trouble managing her daily affairs. She’ll give away money or food she needs and then be unable to pay the rent.

It got so bad that workers at a car wash next door kept finding her sleeping on a customers’ bench. The car wash employees became de facto mental health caseworkers.

One, Cesar Criano, is now authorized to cash her checks and manage her finances, paying her bills, giving her spending money and buying her clothes. His wife gets the groceries.

“She didn’t have nobody else to help her,” says Criano, a Mexican immigrant who lives nearby in the Pico-Union district.

Moon has nowhere to go, little to do. So she wanders, often riding the train to Long Beach. When it gets too hot at The Baker, she rides the bus to Union Station, where there is air-conditioning.

No social or mental-health workers check on her, and she gets no regular psychiatric care, say both Moon and the car wash manager, Monte Peterson.

“She needs someone to go to who can help her with day-to-day stress . . . other than the car wash,” Peterson says.

“She needs a halfway home she can go to every day. Counseling, therapy, [someone] to make sure she’s getting three square meals a day.”

In her room, Moon opens her refrigerator. There’s a bottle of iced tea, a few pears and some eggs. A hot plate in the bathroom serves as her kitchen. On this afternoon, she’s boiling hot dogs and the last of a piece of cabbage.

Moon says she hates where she lives, with its small bathroom and strictly utilitarian shower. And that is why her wish is modest too. She wants a bathtub “right in my room” to soak and soothe herself.

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. . . [We] reassert our belief in an equal day’s pay for an equal day’s work [and] seek to prevent the exploitation of workers. . . .

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In a better world, Cornelio Montes’ wish would be to land a job as a painter, or maybe a construction worker.

But for now, he treks to the bus stop early each morning, hoping to beat others to a South-Central garment factory for a day’s work.

Montes, 32, is a husky, well-groomed man who’s been at The Baker two years. He arrived from Mexico in the late ‘80s with his wife. They have two children, Dalia, 3, and 11-year-old Ivan, who has cerebral palsy. Each morning, Montes’ wife straps a helmet on the boy to protect him against falls.

Finding steady work has been a nerve-racking preoccupation for Montes since 1995. His employer, a garment manufacturer, moved south of the border chasing cheaper labor--thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement, championed by the Clinton administration.

Now each day is an exercise in survival.

One recent morning, Montes steps into the street and waves his arms at a bus idling at a red light. But, as always, it’s packed. The driver won’t open the door.

A few minutes later, Montes manages to snag another bus filled with workers carrying sack lunches. Montes would rather go hungry than waste time eating. He’s paid by how many shirts and pants he sews. “Breaks cost money,” he says.

Soon, he is slipping through a chain-link fence and into an unmarked brick factory that helps feed Los Angeles’ $10-billion-a-year garment industry.

Inside, it’s already hot and musty. A few fans, hardly up to the task, hang on the walls. Electrical cords dangle from the ceiling to small sewing machines and irons.

Workers, nearly all of them Latino, hunch over their stations, sewing and pressing colorful dresses, pants and shirts. They are cheap off-brands headed for a downtown wholesaler and swap meets.

Montes gets about eight hours’ work, pocketing $40. “It hurts,” he says. “We work hard [but] make little money.”

He’s not so lucky on another morning. Turned away at the factory, he hauls out a stash of crushed soda cans he’s collected at home.

With his daughter in tow, he lugs a 13-pound bag onto a bus and heads to a recycling center, where they pay $1 per pound. He’ll use the money to buy eggs, milk and tortillas.

“It is not a lot,” he says, “but it is better than nothing.”

More than many of his neighbors at The Baker, Montes keeps up with the noticias, the Spanish-language newscasts. He knows all about the convention. But he’s not expecting much.

“You know how politics are,” he says. “They promise a lot, but. . . .”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Working Families

“American Dialogue” panel discussions will focus on different topics each evening during the Democratic convention. One of two panels tonight will focus on working families. Democrats and Republicans alike say they are looking to help working families. Highlights of their plans:

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DEMOCRATS

* Gore proposes a $38-billion, 10-year program to make child care more affordable for working families. It would include expanding the child-care tax credit to cover half the cost for eligible families, up from the current 30%, and make up to $2,400 for child care available to low-income families who pay no tax. Would offer $500 tax credit to stay-at-home parents with babies under age 1.

* Supports expanded family leave law to cover employees in firms with 25 or more workers and giving workers the choice of time off instead of overtime pay.

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REPUBLICANS

* Bush supports block grants to allow low-income families to choose child care providers. Prefers giving states discretion in spending federal grants. Emphasizes family’s role in child care, offers tax relief, including doubling the current $500-per-child tax credit to $1,000 per child.

* Proposes bigger tax cuts for adoptive families and $2.3 billion for child-welfare programs over five years.

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Sources: Candidates’ campaigns, Associated Press, Times staff

Researched by NONA YATES/Los Angeles Times

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Times researcher Vicki Gallay contributed to this report.