Images. Scenes that flicker like tongues of flame: of reasoned indignation and unthinking rage; of wanton destruction and numbing fear.

And among them all--culled from the streets and the television and the newspaper--one picture that deserves to be remembered: the Rev. Cecil P. Murray, pastor of Los Angeles' First AME Church, his chin up and his cheeks bright with tears.

As a columnist for The Times, I have spent some of my most instructive hours in "Chip" Murray's quiet study at First AME. It wasn't hard to imagine his thoughts--anger over the injustice that most African-Americans see in the acquittal of Rodney King's accused assailants; frustration that his pleas for a nonviolent response have been so widely ignored.

But it is on precisely that response--one which recognizes both dimensions of our current civic crisis--that we can begin to rebuild this city's future.

It is a melancholy fact that Los Angeles has been for many years the most segregated of America's big cities. But over the past 12 years, economic and political forces have pushed Angelenos further and further apart.

Today, more than ever before, we are two cities. One is overwhelmingly white and relatively well educated. Its residents have benefited disproportionately from federal tax and spending policies and from their ability to find jobs in the so-called sunrise industries. The other Los Angeles is populated by poor--and poorly educated--blacks, Latinos and recent Asian immigrants. They have suffered disproportionately from federal policies and economic restructuring.

When they can find a job, it usually is in Los Angeles' fastest-growing occupational category: "salesperson." Its average entry wage is $4.75 an hour. In this "other" Los Angeles, even a high-school diploma is no guarantee of a decent standard of living. Between 1973 and 1986, the average yearly income of African-American high school graduates declined 44%; Latino earnings fell 35% during that period. During that same period, many of the city's poorest neighborhoods have been ravaged by unprecedented increases in drug addiction and violent crime. While the vast majority of poor Angelenos, like all poor Americans, are law-abiding, 80% of all criminal defendants in the city's urban courts now are indigent.

The distance between these two Los Angeles' was never more clear than in the angry questions posed about the conduct of the city's leaders when the violence began Wednesday night.