A LIFETIME CONNECTION CAN SECESSION OFFER A BETTER DREAM?

Byline: William Toren Local View

OK, I'll admit it, I suffer from a lifelong case of largely unrequited love. I love the city of Los Angeles. I love it without ignoring its many flaws; it takes no courage to love something one sees as flawless.

This is the city that I was born and raised in, and, inevitably, it has played a large enough role in my life that it has become a part of me, as I have been a part of it.

It should go without saying that I can love the city without necessarily loving City Hall.

I also will come right out and say that I love the Valley. I was born here, in an Encino hospital that has long since given way to a strip mall, like the walnut groves that my father and my mother ran through as children; like the fields through which my grandparents rode their horses, along the dirt road that became the six-lane highway called Nordhoff Street; like the remote, rural expanse that my great-grandparents thought would be worthless to own more of because it would never be anything different.

But I have always loved the Valley and been proud to be its son, in part because it was connected to, because it was a part of, the greater gathering of humanity that is Los Angeles.

Even looking at so much that is correctly derided as sprawling wasteland, I knew that there was a value to it as a whole, that the precious flowerings of hope, dreams and beauty that still occurred between the cracks inspired a feeling that I always hoped was shared by someone not all that much different from me on the other side of town looking up at the Watts Towers, or at the ships pulling into San Pedro from every corner of the globe.

When I was old enough to articulate this emotion, my friends all thought I was nuts.

They wondered how I could possibly not share their desire to grow up and leave, seeking my fortune and happiness in a ``real'' city like New York or London.

And when this would happen, it was years yet before it would occur to me to ask why, if L.A. was really such nowhere, it was always New York or London that they held up instead of other great cities like Chicago or Miami - unless it hadn't occurred to them that they didn't really consider those a step up.

No, the only answer I had was that Los Angeles had the potential to be as desirable a place to live as any of those, that I already thought it was and they just couldn't see it. I never used the tired phrase ``world-class city,'' but maybe that's the way I saw my hometown.

Now, of course, those three words have so much political baggage attached to them that I cannot even stand to hear them. The fulfillment of L.A.'s great potential is an idea that's been prostituted so often to sell the city's residents on so many broken promises that it slithers on its belly like the Serpent of Eden.

But City Hall has no monopoly on forked tongues.

Which brings me to the movement to break up this city that I love. I'm against it, but I wanted to start by speaking in favor of something. I also wanted to show that not everyone who opposes secession does so out of heartless selnterest.

Secessionists list the numerous sins of the City Hall power structure, as if I didn't know that there was something rotten downtown. But I've always believed that there were enough people like me, and that a little girl in Watts, or a family in San Pedro or maybe you, who love the city in spite of its flaws, who could find each other across the distance and work together to change the way things are.

The secessionist say it's time to give up on that dream, even as they reach across Mulholland to recruit allies in their dream-replacement mission.

They want me to abandon the city I love to history. They want me to withdraw my kinship with people across the mountains and reserve it only for my neighbors in the Valley. The implicit argument is that my natural benefactors are people who live on a hillside in Sherman Oaks but not one in Brentwood, that I should be concerned about reducing crime in North Hills, but not in Boyle Heights.

They want me to believe that Los Angeles as it exists now is so dysfunctional that it does not deserve to endure one more year on this Earth. But the burden is on them to convince me that what they propose to build in its place will be better.

So, secessionists, this is a challenge. Convince me to turn my back on two-thirds of the city, to vote to cut my civic ties to the bones of my great-grandfather, a World War I veteran buried in Westwood, on the other side of the Great Divide that seems to mean so much to you.

Your relentless criticism of the downtown power elite has shown me they don't care about me. Show me that you do. Your numbers have shown me that secession would be great for Realtors and car dealers. Show me that it's good for renters and subway riders, too.

Help me understand how a new city eager for lower taxes and better services will be able to resist paving over the last remnants of the rural Valley for revenue-generating retail centers and condominiums. Tell me where it's going to put our garbage.

You've shown me how the evil unions and special interests have too much power at City Hall. Show me what exclusive virtues Valley politicians have that they'll be able to resist their influence.

I'm waiting. I'm listening. I know you probably have the power to kill a dream. Can you provide a better one?