Ethnic Groups Los Angeles

On a cool, breezy evening in Chinatown, beneath a soulful black-and-white portrait of a man wearing a turban and white beard, weekly visitors trickle into the comfortable living room of Lourdes and Vahid Sanaei. An unemployed secretary, a computer programmer, a full-time mother, a flower shop owner, a building supervisor. White, black, Latino and Iranian. Some murmur an Arabic greeting: Allah' u Abha: God is most glorious. Most have embarked on spiritual quests to arrive here, at a Baha'i "fireside," an informal educational gathering that mingles believers in the Baha'i faith with prospective followers and the merely curious.

To Ruben Ledesma, ethnic diversity is not just a catch-phrase. It's an entrance requirement if you want to play in the Shoot 4 Peace Basketball Tournament. "That's what makes this tournament different from all the rest," said Ledesma, a former gang member who, with the help of legislators and a few community groups, started the tournament. The event got under way Wednesday. There are three players on each team, with teams divided into junior and senior divisions.

As West Coast correspondent for the Cairo daily Al-Ahram, Soraya Abdoul Seoud seldom ventured across the river to Los Angeles' Eastside. "I was afraid to come to this area," Abdoul said Wednesday as she rode in a bus down bustling Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, one of the neighborhood's main drags. "All you hear about in the media is the negative side."

The authors of the new book "Bridge Toward Unity" hope their work will help Los Angeles' ethnic communities begin to understand and mend the divisions that have kept them apart. "The publication of this book marks a real departure within the Korean American community," said Edward J. W. Park, one of the authors and an assistant professor of ethnic studies at Cal Poly Pomona.

Beyond "tropical-style," Hawaiian shirts and a sprinkling of Polynesian-themed restaurants boasting bamboo highball glasses and plastic leis, Los Angeles in the '50s offered only a tiny, postcard-perfect sampling of the cultural wonders of the world. A trek for the exotic used to be just that--a trek. An ambitious undertaking that would yield--if you were tenacious--exhilarating, praise-worthy results.

The manager of the Eastside grocery store looked stricken as a state health inspector examined some unusual stock on the shelves along with the fruits, vegetables and sundries: an array of drugs either that are banned in the United States or supposedly available only with a doctor's prescription. The City Ranch Market had prescription eyedrops and nose drops, capsules of the antibiotic ampicillin, and Nordinet, an aspirin-based drug augmented by three illegal ingredients.

Continuing discussions on how the Japanese-American community can build bridges with other groups both in the United States and overseas are the thrust of the second annual National Japanese American Conference Friday and Saturday at the Biltmore Hotel. Several hundred Japanese-Americans from across the country are expected to attend the two-day conference and a related fund-raising dinner and golf tournament for the Japanese American National Museum. Akio Morita, chairman of Sony Corp.

They arrived in the awkward time after World War II, the trauma of the internment camps still a fresh wound for many, and gradually began settling into single-family homes in the all-white neighborhoods west of Arlington Boulevard and north of what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. In doing so, they not only helped dismantle the ethnic barriers that demarcated Los Angeles' housing market, they built from scratch one of the city's largest Japanese-American communities.

Seeking to enhance the strength of ethnic groups in labor and political affairs, six labor-related organizations last week announced the formation of the Ethnic Labor Coalition. Civil rights and economic justice are issues that cross racial and ethnic lines, said Kent Wong, president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. The labor movement "has more ethnic minority leadership in it than any other institution in our society except for minority organizations themselves," Wong said.

When Tom Bradley announced he would leave his office--Room 305, City Hall--after 20 years, more than 50 people signed up in a bid to succeed him . The pack has since thinned to 24, but that's still record. Why the rush? True, the pay's OK--$118,000 a year. But look at the downside. The mayor has huge problems, long hours and receives uunremitting criticism from every quarter. Well, maybe it's the perquisites of office--the fringe benefits that make the job a little nicer.