The powers that could be

In the slightly rundown meeting rooms of the Los Angeles Convention Center, worlds collided last weekend. Dark-suited elements of the city's political apparatus, like so many gray blimps, passed through the annual Congress of Neighborhoods talking of synchronized traffic signals and diversity. About 300 elected neighborhood council representatives sat around tables clustered by color-coded region. They didn't seem impressed by the show. They were over being awed by the politicians' praise of their ethnic, racial and geographic diversity, tired of being congratulated for the obvious and ready to get on with their part of the city's half-finished revolution -- a revolution of popular desire put into motion by City Charter reform in 1999.

Charter reform, among other things, sought to create a new world of civic life in Los Angeles, centered on more than 100 elected neighborhood councils There are almost 90 of them now, and they embody much of what is hopeful in this fractured and cranky city. The old world of politics-as-it-is -- represented by the dark suits from City Hall -- concentrated mainly on what is fractured and cranky. They mildly but insistently reminded the neighborhood council members that City Hall has branded them as difficult. (True, every council has been disrupted by its gadflies and one-issue die-hards. And not every council board member -- all of them unpaid volunteers -- can successfully chair a meeting, draw up a budget or lead a crowd of strangers toward a common goal.)

The neighborhood council board members -- representing the new world of politics-as-it-might-be -- generally accepted the criticism. But they were at the Convention Center for more than a lesson in civility. They were ready to talk about real power -- because the neighborhood councils have discovered they actually have some.

That's a problem for the City Council and the mayor, because each would like to use neighborhood councils for their own small ends. It's a problem for the neighborhood councils themselves too, as they labor to define what their larger purpose is. Neighborhood councils may one day have the capacity to change how Los Angeles is being made. In fact, change has already begun.