Six weeks after the riots, the mood in Los Angeles is one of profound and angry confusion. The optimism that flowered immediately after the riots now alternates with an unsettling pessimism. Efforts to rebuild the city are splitting along ethnic lines. Radio and television talk shows routinely flare into angry debates over whether the violence was “rioting” or an “uprising” against oppression. ABC’s “Nightline” recently hosted an acrimonious encounter between white District Attorney Ira Reiner and black city Councilwoman Patricia Moore. As Reiner sputtered helplessly (“Ms. Moore, please … Let me … just a sentence . . .’), the councilwoman lashed the city for rigging justice against blacks. The verbal brawl was atypical only in that it took place on national television.
Few are more conscious of L.A.’s fractious volatility than Peter Ueberroth. The former baseball czar who orchestrated L.A.’s 1984 Olympics now heads Rebuild L.A. charged with master minding the city’s recovery. An optimist by nature, even he sounds a bit daunted. There are no “quick fixes,” he says. Until he comes up with solutions, he’ll “have to take a beating.” Ueberroth aims to build an urban-renewal team that pulls together private business, government and the community. The first is no problem. Corporate investors are “lining up.” But as time passes Ueberroth fears federal, state and local governments will renege on financial and legislative commitments. As for the community, he concludes, “total participation is key. “The problem? L.A.’s ethnic Balkanization. " We have Latino groups that won’t talk to each other.”
That’s one reason why Gloria Molina, a prominent Hispanic community leader and the only woman on L.A.’s powerful Board of Supervisors, finds it hard to be upbeat. “I keep reminding myself that we have to be optimistic, that we must solve our problems.” But disappointments are inevitable. “Haves and have-nots are at war,” Molina explains. Confrontations will “escalate,” she says, as the city’s ethnic groups compete for shrinking resources, creating a deeper crisis. In South-Central, such disappointments are already finding expression. Claiming that prime jobs are going to outsiders, residents have picketed half-a-dozen inner-city construction sites. They are led by Danny Bakewell, president of a black community group, Brotherhood Crusade. His mission is to ensure that jobs in black neighborhoods from now on go to blacks. He tells a pair of white visitors that “no one is going to stand anymore for you guys to enjoy an excessive way of life while we have nothing … Next time, it’s gonna be your house that burns.”
Minority leaders find they must be all things to all people. Among them is Diane Watson, a no-nonsense black state senator from South-Central. On weekdays she battles with California’s growing budget imbalance-and to protect funds for L.A.’s inner city. She says “the state’s financial crisis could not come at a worse time” in terms of social stability. On weekends she’s back home, in the role of politician-cum-social worker-cum-surrogate parent. “Kids see themselves as being pushed out of the system, dehumanized,” she says. " They are full of anger, and no one’s listening.”
Amid the conflicting voices, it would be easy to conclude that this spring’s violence will be repeated. Though L.A.’s myriad gangs have worked out a tenuous truce, skeptics suspect this may only be a prelude to some other nastiness. " Someone is going to hit the police,” vows an ex-gangster from East L.A. Yet it is simply too early for pessimism. For the first time in decades, the city is talking out the issues that divide it. New alliances are springing up among groups that, before the unrest, had little contact. What happens now depends on timing. Visible change will muzzle the skeptics. But not if today’s confusion gives way to inertia and indifference.
