Friday, August 19, 2005

[California] Watts plus 40: 'We want to see solutions to poverty'

From The Tidings

By R. W. Dellinger

Four decades ago, the arrest of a black drunk driver in South-Central Los Angeles sparked the Watts Riots, which claimed 34 lives, destroyed or damaged more than 600 buildings and resulted in 3,438 arrests. Some 35,000 African Americans participated in the six nights of burning and looting, while 16,000 National Guardsmen, county sheriff deputies and LAPD officers tried to halt the urban revolt.

Last week, on the August 11 anniversary of the Watts Riots --- and at the site of the arrest that sparked the violence --- civic, religious, business and community leaders came together at 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard, hoping to spark interest and widespread community participation in a grassroots effort to develop and execute "sustainable solutions to poverty."

At the morning outdoor press conference, the Watts Renaissance Committee launched an initiative targeting education, employment, policing, crime, healthcare, transportation and business development in Watts --- a two-mile-square area bordered by 92nd Street on the north and Imperial Highway on the south, Central Avenue on the west and Alameda Street on the east.

"Here we are 40 years later and there is still so much work to do," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "Forty years later the schools in this part of town are among the lowest achieving anywhere in the city. Forty years later the unemployment rate is among the highest of anywhere in the city."

The mayor reported that he was appointing Denise Fairchild as his special advisor for South Los Angeles Investment Initiatives. The businesswoman and community activist's job will be to speed up and increase the number of inner-city development projects.

Chris Jordan, co-chair of the Watts Renaissance Committee, praised Villaraigosa's action. "There is 40 years of frustration here, and part of the reason for a riot or a revolt is the inability to be heard," he told The Tidings. "But I think with a program like we're kicking off, with a system in place where the people are actually heard and can plug into the city, it greatly lessens the possibility of this happening again.

"Our mayor has committed resources to this group to actually plug right into the city. So he will be hearing what it is we think can be done. All we're doing as the Renaissance Planning Committee is giving people the opportunity and platform to be heard, and then to take on some sustainable solutions to the problems which we face here."

Jordan, executive director of the Grant Housing and Economic Development Corporation, said there have been many reports from outside sources about Watts. The difference this time is the study will be an "internal look" at what the impoverished community needs to improve.

'Internal' initiative

The yearlong initiative, which started immediately with the annual Watts Summer Festival, will bring together neighborhood forums to develop a strategy for revitalizing the community. One area that will get special attention is education. This year, he pointed out, only 300 seniors out of 900 former freshmen enrolled at nearby Locke High School graduated.

"We here in Watts have shown how to burn and how to revolt," Jordan said, "but we can show how to build a community also. We're all working for a common goal --- and that's the betterment of life in Watts."

The renaissance project was an expression of unity, according to Timothy Watkins, president and CEO of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, bringing together the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary, churches and other nonprofits to work as a team. "We can treat the problem forever, but we'll never solve it until we cure what causes it," Watkins said. "Poverty is caused by poor policies, bad policies.

"And we don't have to only look for the city government to change its policies," he pointed out. "We as people can also change our policies: the way we do business, the way we buy tennis shoes, how we treat our neighbors."

The community organizer said Watts had changed, but economically had basically remained the same. In 1965, it was almost entirely black, while today Hispanics make up a significant segment of the population. But Latino children suffer the same abject poverty as their African American counterparts, with single mothers often working two or three jobs to make ends meet.

"The façade has been improved," Watkins noted. "The buildings look a little bit better. You can see new housing in the community. And some organizations like WLCAC offer more social services today. We do everything from childcare for single parents to providing meals for senior citizens, and everything in between.

"But the problem is that we have treated the symptoms of poverty for 40 years, and I'm damn sick and tired of it. We need to fix something. We should be nurturing health and wealth. We shouldn't be constantly trying to give someone a Tylenol for the pain.

"It might be ironic to hear me say that we would prefer to be being put out of business by our successes," he added. "We want to see solutions to poverty and get away from simply treating the symptoms."

Smoldering causes

In August 1965, Tommy Jacquette was 21 and full of rage --- especially at the predominantly white Los Angeles Police force patrolling his neighborhood like some occupying army. He and his friend Marquette Frye were used to being stopped and padded down by cops as they drove home from dates or were just hanging around outside their homes.

So it was no big deal for Frye to be pulled over by a Highway Patrol motorcycle officer named Lee Minikus on that late hot afternoon. In fact, he and the officer were getting along OK until his mother showed up at the scene and started scolding her son for being drunk. That's when the embarrassed young man lost it and became belligerent. After Minikus handcuffed him, the mother jumped on the officer's back and Frye's brother hit him. That got them all arrested.

"Marquette was in jail when the revolt actually started," explained Jacquette, now 61, after the press conference. "They had taken him away. The bricks and bottles did not start while he was here. So he was as surprised as anybody about what had happened as a result of it."

The community activist who helped found the Watts Summer Festival stressed that this incident that sparked the nation's first major race riot of the '60s was often referred to as "routine" in reports by various commissions. But he said what was beneath the spark had been smoldering for years.

"Police abuse and brutality in our community had existed for decades," Jacquette explained. "It was not just the arrest of one black man that set off the powder keg. The cops were so used to us people not reacting to the mistreatment. So the conditions already existed. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back in 1965.

"To call it a riot delegitimizes the moral right we had to defend ourselves, and it also gives some legitimacy to the exploitation and abuse that was going on here in the community," he added. "A riot is a fight between UCLA and USC when one loses a football game."

Could a racial revolt flare up in Los Angeles again?

Jacquette nodded. "Absolutely," he said. "The conditions still exist, the frustrations still exist, and the possibility of continued violent revolt still exists. Yes, it's still a powder keg without a doubt.

"But I think people are aware of the danger that now exists," he went on. "And, hopefully, through honest effort and sincere concern people will do enough of the right things to defuse the powder keg."

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