Watts Labor Community Action Committee

The Watts Labor Community Action Committee has begun providing hot lunches for people 60 years and older who live within its service area. Lunch will be served between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Mondays through Fridays at the committee's Senior Citizens Center, 10957 S. Central Ave. The site also provides adult day care, sewing classes, arts and crafts classes, day trips, live entertainment and games. There is no charge for the meals, but a $1 donation is requested from those who can pay.

A Watts housing program once lauded nationally as a model for bringing middle-class comfort and homeownership to poor neighborhoods is now a shambles, leaving 38 families in near-slum conditions and the city with $2 million in repair and escrow costs. City officials have taken control of the development, a clutch of pastel ranch homes known as Franklin Square, from the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, a nonprofit organization that owned and managed it for nearly 25 years.

In what is billed as a coming together party, the 6th annual Watts Latino / African American Cinco de Mayo Celebration will be held today, featuring a parade that will culminate with a fiesta at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. The parade starts at 10 a.m. at Watts Avenue and Santa Ana Boulevard.

Charles Wright has glorious memories of playing the first Watts Summer Festival in 1966. "They had James Brown, Bill Cosby, Brenton Wood--everybody who was anybody was on that show. It was so packed, they had to lock the gates and people were jumping over the fence," said the veteran R&B musician, best known for his Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and its 1970 classic, "Express Yourself."

In 1951 the City of Los Angeles, looking for a place to build an alcoholic rehabilitation center, paid $10 for 520 acres of brush-covered land in Saugus, a remote, sparsely populated area north of the San Fernando Valley. The center closed in 1967. Over the next 20 years, all sorts of proposals were considered for the site, including, most recently, a prison. Each was rejected for financial or political reasons.

Los Angeles City Councilman Gilbert W. Lindsay on Tuesday proposed selling 520 city-owned acres in Saugus for private development and using the proceeds to beef up the police. Lindsay, who represents crime-plagued South-Central Los Angeles, said sale of the property would provide at least $10 million "for the expansion of the police force in areas of the city which have experienced high levels of major crime."

They are not among the elite of the art world. But the six African American and Latina artists whose paintings are now on display in Watts represent a passion and commitment to their community that would rival any old master. Their show, "In Harmony: African American and Chicano Women Artists Exhibition," opens today at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee Center. The six artists represented are Yreina Cervantez, Margaret Garcia, Varnette Honeywood, Alma Lopez, Toni Love and Noni Olabisi.

When film director and writer Joel Marsden first heard about Watts, his reaction was unfortunately typical--fear. "The name 'Watts' has conjured up bad images that have traveled the world over," said Marsden, 27, who now sees the Watts neighborhood in a completely different light.

In the largest effort of its kind in Los Angeles, city officials and anti-poverty agencies have unveiled a $500,000 pilot program to provide intensive job training and help in finding housing to 300 homeless people each year, with the goal of "getting them off the streets for good."

In what is billed as a coming together party, the 6th annual Watts Latino / African American Cinco de Mayo Celebration will be held today, featuring a parade that will culminate with a fiesta at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. The parade starts at 10 a.m. at Watts Avenue and Santa Ana Boulevard.

When film director and writer Joel Marsden first heard about Watts, his reaction was unfortunately typical--fear. "The name 'Watts' has conjured up bad images that have traveled the world over," said Marsden, 27, who now sees the Watts neighborhood in a completely different light.

They are not among the elite of the art world. But the six African American and Latina artists whose paintings are now on display in Watts represent a passion and commitment to their community that would rival any old master. Their show, "In Harmony: African American and Chicano Women Artists Exhibition," opens today at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee Center. The six artists represented are Yreina Cervantez, Margaret Garcia, Varnette Honeywood, Alma Lopez, Toni Love and Noni Olabisi.

The grotesque image was what remained of Emmett Till after a Mississippi lynch mob beat him to death in 1955 and threw his grossly disfigured body into a river. A chorus of gasps arose from the Locke High School students assembled around the television monitor, looking at videotaped footage of the photograph. And then stunned silence. Janine Watkins, their tour guide, let the silence settle over them for an excruciatingly long moment before asking: "Are you going to remember?

The grotesque image was what remained of Emmett Till after a Mississippi lynch mob beat him to death in 1955 and threw his grossly disfigured body into a river. A chorus of gasps arose from the Locke High School students assembled around the television monitor, looking at videotaped footage of the photograph. And then stunned silence. Janine Watkins, their tour guide, let the silence settle over them for an excruciatingly long moment before asking: "Are you going to remember?

The warehouse is the biggest building on the grounds of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. It survived the rioters who stormed the gates and burned the committee's offices to the ground, looted and put the torch to the coin laundry, the toy store, the chili parlor, the food stamp center and youth center, and chased the group's founders down Central Avenue with guns drawn. Those were the riots of 1992.

The warehouse is the biggest building on the grounds of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. It survived the rioters who stormed the gates and burned the committee's offices to the ground, looted and put the torch to the coin laundry, the toy store, the chili parlor, the food stamp center and youth center, and chased the group's founders down Central Avenue with guns drawn. Those were the riots of 1992.

Charles Wright has glorious memories of playing the first Watts Summer Festival in 1966. "They had James Brown, Bill Cosby, Brenton Wood--everybody who was anybody was on that show. It was so packed, they had to lock the gates and people were jumping over the fence," said the veteran R&B musician, best known for his Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and its 1970 classic, "Express Yourself."

The Watts Labor Community Action Committee has begun providing hot lunches for people 60 years and older who live within its service area. Lunch will be served between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Mondays through Fridays at the committee's Senior Citizens Center, 10957 S. Central Ave. The site also provides adult day care, sewing classes, arts and crafts classes, day trips, live entertainment and games. There is no charge for the meals, but a $1 donation is requested from those who can pay.