Cause for Hope, Not Despair

On the fifth anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, many of the media seem obsessed with two questions:

Has anything really changed in five years?

Can L.A. blow up again?

With their parade of interviews with residents and community activists who tell bitter stories of poverty and violence, the media invite the depressing "yes" answer to the second question.

And at first this seems to spell more turmoil in the city. After all, 200 or more stores have not been rebuilt. The federal government and private industry didn't deliver on their over-ambitious promise to provide $5 billion for small business loans, housing construction, increased social services and recreation programs in South-Central Los Angeles. Rebuild L.A., charged with securing funds for business and housing development in South-Central Los Angeles, closed its doors last September after failing to prod public and private agencies to pony up the dollars needed to remake the riot-scarred neighborhoods.

Then there is the high unemployment of African Americans, especially young men; the gaping disparities in income between minorities and whites; continuing gang violence and the drug plague; slashes in welfare, education and social services; the backlash to affirmative action; the escalation of hate crimes; and the ouster of the Los Angeles Police Department's first African American police chief, Willie Williams.

To get a better handle on the shape of things that might come, I dug out the article I wrote in 1975, on the 10th anniversary of the Watts riots. In it, I made this gloomy prediction: "The residents of Watts are poorer, more desperate and more angry than in 1975. They are still ready to riot."

Twenty years later, I had to eat those words. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on the 30th anniversary of the Watts riots in 1995, I wrote that "even though Watts is still plagued by poverty, crime and drugs, it no longer should be seen as a symbol of destruction and despair." Much had changed for the better in Watts. Health services, transportation and education had improved. Two shopping centers, a library and new housing had been or were being built.

Latinos make up nearly half the residents of Watts, and they are working with black residents to combat drugs and gang violence and demand more funding for jobs and services. That spirit of cooperation was much evident during the 1992 riots, when property damage in Watts was practically nil. What happened in Watts can happen in L.A. during the next five years.