A POLITICAL AWAKENING : GRASS-ROOTS MOVEMENT MAY PROVIDE MODEL FOR NEIGHBORHOOD REPRESENTATION IN L.A. CENTRAL L.A. ACTIVISTS ATTACK AREA'S PROBLEMS.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer

For Doris J. Spates it began with an insult.

A business acquaintance's offhand remark about the decay along the main streets of her South Central neighborhood about six years ago awoke something deep within the postal supervisor: her community conscience.

Claudia Noonan, an office administrator, thought she was simply getting a better real estate deal and a shorter commute to her downtown skyscraper suite when she moved in 1990 to Budlong Avenue. Grass-roots politics was the last thing on her mind.

Clinton Trainor never had much time for local political groups, either. He was too busy raising a family in Watts and getting a career going.

His political awakening came during the course of a single fall 1992 community meeting at South Park Elementary School. Something had to be done, he resolved.

Victor Nahmias heard the call to action in 1991, during a dispute over a traffic light near his Cameo Woods neighborhood.

Each of these people joined a nascent grass-roots movement that is bringing neighborhood governance to South Central Los Angeles and that may be a model for the kind of neighborhood representation for which residents across the city increasingly are clamoring.

Under the auspices of City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the City Council's Eighth District, residents are electing their own neighborhood leaders to the Eighth District Empowerment Congress.

The congress, which attacks problems and recommends solutions to the city both independently and through Ridley-Thomas, is a civics lesson in local involvement and problem solving - an example of how community activism can overcome problems even in areas beset by gangs, poverty, blight and racial tension.

They have kept new liquor stores out of their communities, retained or attracted retail stores like Ralph's and Macy's, forced dozens of absentee tenants to clean up and secure their vacant buildings, and helped get the first inner-city Little League field.

It's a work in progress that is not perfect. The most glaring failure has been an inability to attract Latinos, who make up more than 30 percent of the otherwise predominantly African-American district.

And while the congress's leadership is elected by residents, it has no binding power over how Ridley-Thomas votes on the council.

Still, as the city as a whole grapples with charter reform and the broader issue of neighborhood empowerment, the Empowerment Congress has developed since 1993 into a model of community involvement.

``No one in their right mind would say the Empowerment Congress is perfect, nor have the efforts they've undertaken entirely succeeded,'' said Xandra Kayden, acting director of the UCLA Policy Forum. ``But what is the alternative - not to undertake the effort?''

Kayden, who has researched and published material on the congress, believes it can be a model for grass-roots efforts throughout the city.

``It recognizes that there is a diversity in patterns in residential lives and organizes by neighborhoods on a ground-level basis to reach some kind of understanding,'' she said.

Ridley-Thomas agrees on both points.

``It takes much more than this,'' he said. ``It takes more people, more energy. This is an important core of activists who have become quite informed, quite intelligent about how to get business done on behalf of their neighborhoods. We just have to expand that.

``I'm fundamentally persuaded that if you want to have people involved in local government, then this is an important way to do so,'' Ridley-Thomas said. ``And if you don't have people connected to local government, you have what basically constitutes a very substantial threat to democracy,'' he said.

The congress draws its strength from its elected community leadership - a system unique in Los Angeles.

Four area councils and a dozen neighborhood development councils are elected every two years. They and members of appointed committees that tackle such ongoing problems as community standards and public safety make up a well-defined leadership of about 75 individuals.

In turn, the leaders reach further into their communities, spending hundreds of hours tutoring residents in how the city works and how to use its many departments.

The congress also uses the city-leased and operated Constituent Services Center near Manchester and Vermont avenues, with officials available to solve problems on the spot.

Each of the four community areas - roughly representing a quarter of the district - has a council staff liaison assigned to further advance the relationship between residents and city bureaucrats. That accounts for nearly 25 percent of Ridley-Thomas' office staff.

David Fleming, a Universal City attorney working with Mayor Richard Riordan to reform the city charter to give neighborhoods more say in their government, called the congress concept ``the wave of the future.''

``It's clearly along the lines we're talking,'' said Fleming, who is also president of the city Fire Commission. ``There's a pulse to it. He (Ridley-Thomas) deserves a real pat on the back. It's futuristic thinking.''

Looking back, congress members can trace their path - the many restructurings, and trials and errors - and can document their successes.

Spates remembers when the congress was ``just an idea, a small idea.''

Stung by the merchant's dig at the thoroughfares near her Vermont Knolls home, she joined a block club. One day, the captain asked whether she could fill in at an Empowerment Congress meeting. She was surprised to find about 70 other people there.

``Nothing had really been started,'' she said. ``But the councilman (who she hadn't met until then) talked about the ideas of unity and quality of life. I was impressed and went to other meetings.'' It wasn't long before she was nominated seFcretary for the congress' Southwest Area Assembly.

Spates quickly became a conduit for concerns between the congress, the city and the block clubs. ``I relayed back and forth what was going on,'' she said.

Trainor still isn't quite sure how or why he was elected chairman of the Southeast Area Assembly. It was a few months after the initial meeting at the school, when about 200 people from his community gathered at a Christian center to elect their congress representatives.

``I was nominated and gave a two-minute speech, saying that I was getting involved, would do the best I could, that I wouldn't make a bunch of promises, but that I'd be available,'' he said. ``I was surprised when I won.

``It was all done through the residents,'' he added. ``The councilman didn't ask me. After everything settled down later, I got to know him.''

With Noonan, it was a different story. She dates her involvement in the congress to ``mouthing off to Ridley-Thomas'' one day, expressing the community's decadelong frustration in not getting a supermarket to fill an empty lot at Adams Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. (A new Ralphs opened there recently.)

After Ridley-Thomas was elected in 1991, she was named one of 10 interim representatives to the congress, getting initial training until she was elected chairwoman of the North Area Assembly a few months later.

``I said I'd work on it, if he didn't mind listening to me,'' she said. ``We still disagree at times.''

Following the traffic signal dispute, Nahmias got a letter from the council office asking him to become involved. A hallmark of the congress is the amount of correspondence it generates - some of which is paid for out of Ridley-Thomas' officeholder account - with regular updates, appeals for involvement and the like. Eventually, Nahmias was elected co-chair of the West Area Assembly.

``The Empowerment Congress made it easier because there was something being organized, a venue to get involved,'' Nahmias said.

In most cases, Fthe area assemblies began modestly - picking obvious and vexing community problems to tackle. Not all were successful.

One concern that got almost instant attention districtwide was the large number of liquor stores and problems with loitering, panhandling and suspected drug dealing nearby.

``The kids had to walk by one of them to get to Baldwin Hills Elementary,'' Nahmias said. ``We sent letters to the owners and asked to meet with them. Two were responsive; one wasn't.''

The store near the school halted the sale of individual cigarettes, vending machines were removed, and a security guard was posted to end loitering.

Encouraged, assembly members moved to other problems with the primary goal to cultivate a dialogue between the community and City Hall.

Last year, the then mall manager at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza tipped the congress leadership that Federated Department Stores, which had bought Broadway, was considering consolidating its operations and might close the plaza's store.

The community wanted a replacement for Broadway and thought its best option was to convince the company to keep it open as a Macy's, Nahmias said.

``We organized a `Make It Macy's' campaign,'' Nahmias said. ``We had a petition drive, we had volunteers in the mall and collected 3,000 signatures in two weekends. We knew who to contact back East. We organized a letter-writing campaign, then had a parade through the mall with a high school band playing.''

The West Assembly's successful effort illustrated the confidence members had gained in their ability to go forward independently. Ridley-Thomas' initial reaction was that they had entered the debate over the store too late, but that he would back them if they decided to go ahead, Nahmias said.

``That's absolutely correct; it was the Empowerment Congress that organized the effort,'' Ridley-Thomas said. ``I would have done it differently in some ways. ... They took the ball and ran with it, and they scored.''

In the Southeast Area,F the congress had a more formidable problem. The mayor had vetoed an ambitious commercial-housing complex at the intersection of Vermont Avenue and 81st Street, which by the councilman's projections would eventually pump $150 million into the community.

Riordan said he had concerns over the proposed public-private financing partnership and also was convinced many of the immediate neighbors opposed the project.

``We had an apparatus, a network. We walked precincts. People knew what they were talking about. We went to grocery stores and passed out literature. It was many of the basic things that have to be done in order to educate people about a project,'' Ridley-Thomas said. ``They came to City Hall and lobbied.''

Ultimately, it was no contest. The council voted 13-0 to override the mayor's veto, following some changes to the financing package.

Spates found a role for herself on the Community Standards Council, a group with three primary goals: ``Improve the appearances of our neighborhood; eliminate activities that infringe upon the rights of others; and address concerns of the community that affect the quality of life.''

The council meets periodically to hash out the most serious problems identified by block clubs and other community groups, and to develop a strategy to tackle them.

Recently, members reached a consensus that something had to be done about the many large and garish advertising signs tacked to fences.

Instead of ripping down the signs - which, as a last resort, they have done - the council came up with a multipronged approach.

First, volunteers canvassed the neighborhoods, writing down the phone numbers on the signs. Then phone banks were created, with callers entreating the sign posters to remove the placards, telling them that any future postings could result in legal action, she said.

Working with the Community Safety Council, members contacted officers they knew at LAPD's 77th Street Area station and got them to agree to include sign removal Fin the station's annual ``Operation Sparkle'' cleanup drive Oct. 5. ``No posting'' signs were put up to warn potential offenders.

``Some of those (commercial) signs were taken down as part of the cleanup,'' said Sgt. Robert Rivers at 77th Street. ``It's proven that criminals don't like to commit crimes in clean areas, so by getting the community and police involved in the cleanup, you reduce the crime, as well as the fear of crime.''

Added Spates, now chairwoman of the standards council: ``The signs were a negative to our property value. Also, this is our children's environment. Someday, they'll look back at where they lived. We want our environment to be a certain way and ask others to cooperate if they wish to live in this community.''

At the neighborhood level, agreeing on and imposing community standards can be tougher.

Not every culture shares the same values, Spates said. There is evidence, for instance, of conflict between African-Americans and Latinos over the way neighborhoods should look.

Neighbors in Spates' 80th Street Block Club were concerned when a new neighbor began parking his Jeep on his lawn.

Leaders participate in skits and training sessions to learn the right and wrong ways to approach neighbors. In September, for example, about 100 people at a Southeast Assembly quarterly meeting watched an actor illustrate different results that come from persuasion and browbeating.

They also have access to a detailed pamphlet spelling out the municipal codes that prohibit parking on lawns, illegal dumping, improper posting of signs in residential and commercial zones, visible clotheslines and unkempt premises. The training came in handy in dealing with the Jeep's owner.

``We went down to his house and said, a lot of people don't know it's against the law to park on lawns, but it is and we don't allow it,'' Spates said. ``He's never parked there since, and in fact has put lights along the sidewalk and is fixing up. He's going along with what the block is all abFout.''

The congress has been unable to attract large numbers Latinos to its vision of community participation.

The Rev. Fernando Arizti of St. Brigid Church said Latinos' reluctance to embrace organized politics is deeply rooted in complex social and historical experiences.

``I have had problems getting Latinos involved, too,'' said Arizti, a member of the Coalition Against Drug Abuse, which cooperates with the Empowerment Congress in fighting drugs.

``They will become involved in projects where there are not too many politics - with keeping the bus fares down, for instance,'' he added. ``Many of them, the majority, have just arrived, and they don't want to get involved with anything where they have to give their names or their addresses. I ask for them so the parish can contact them, and they give the wrong names.''

Race also is a factor, he said.

``The Latinos sometimes are suspicious. They've been brainwashed that they should be afraid of African-Americans because of the gangs,'' he said.

Ridley-Thomas acknowledges the difficulty attracting Latinos to the congress.

``It's very, very hard to sustain involvement - and that's true across ethnic lines - and then you add the additional issues that relate to (Latinos') feelings about government on to citizenship, add the language issues and racial issues ... and it makes it very tough,'' he said.

In time, Kayden predicted assimilation will occur.

``In the long run, they'll succeed, because the Latinos will have lived there long enough,'' she said. ``An element of racism will always be there, but we (Americans) no longer value it. The American Dream now is the belief you shouldn't discriminate.''

Trainor was among congress leaders who in 1994 attended the first in a series of Spanish classes offered to help African-Americans and others communicate with their neighbors. The class continues on a regular basis.

There have been inroads, however modest, he said.

``One Hispanic neighbor told another (wFho was complaining about a stripped car in his alley) that `Trainor can solve your problems,''' he said. ``I told them to get me all the information and that we'd make a phone call. I called the city department for abandoned cars, and it was picked up before the end of the night. I gave them a list of phone numbers. They came to one meeting.''

Trainor said that under a new program, residents sign a pledge card to ``adopt a street'' in their neighborhood and are then given city phone numbers to call when they observe neglect, litter or other problems.

So far, more than 100 people, including 10 Latinos, have signed up in the Southeast Area.

Many say the congress is at a critical point in its evolution. Its members question their direction and purpose; whether they have fulfilled their potential or have a broader role to play in Los Angeles' political landscape.

For instance, the Constituent Services Center opened April 8 - after the building it was supposed to open in was burned during the 1992 riots.

There are about 20 officials from 15 departments, but many only work in the center part time, and public hours are limited. Building and safety permits aren't issued at the center, though there is counter space and a cashier cage.

Ridley-Thomas said full operation of the center has been delayed by budget considerations and by the city's interest in developing similar centers throughout the city.

Still, the center is important. It has the only personnel department satellite office where job applicants can check postings, fill out forms and confer with a city representative.

``No one in this community had this kind of access to the city before,'' said Leo V. Fuller, building and safety liaison.

There are suggestions that the community - through the assistance of the Empowerment Congress - is responding to the center where, in addition to the city departments, a meeting room draws regular crowds.

One of the best used departments is building and safety, with two insFpectors assigned permanently to the center and four others working there on a part-time basis. They cite problem buildings, like motels where prostitution is suspected or vacant buildings that have become havens for drug activity, said building and safety chief inspector Richard C. Sanchez.

When the Los Angeles City Council in 1991 funded a program to crack down on nuisance auto repair shops, the Eighth District mobilized a Nuisance Auto Repair Task Force made up of several city departments, including police, fire and transportation.

``We went to a meeting of the Empowerment Congress, where they also expressed their concerns and showed a real interest in bettering their quality of life,'' Sanchez said. ``In Council District Eight, they are becoming much better organized, they're cooperating with us, a team effort between the community and city agencies. Now we get calls directly from residents. The community can take care of its own problems.''

The number of noncompliant auto repair shops has plummeted in the district, he added.

The congress's future scope also hinges on continued growth, Nahmias said. Whether it takes on broader, more substantive - possibly even citywide matters - depends largely on reaching a ``size threshold,'' he said.

Meanwhile, congress members are striving to maintain the ground they've reclaimed in a community that's still climbing out from the destruction of the 1992 riots.

``I could move,'' Spates said. ``But I've seen people move and just take their problems with them. You have to ask, what am I running from?

``Sometimes it's better to stay and fight for what you want.''`

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos, Map

Photo: (1--color) Chairwoman Doris Spates, left, and Empowerment Congress members are working to remove illegally posted signs.

(2--color) Romerol Malveaux, left, and Victor Nahmias hand out voter materials.

(3) Community members look over materials at an Empowerment Congress meeting.

Phil McCarten/Daily News

(4) Clinton Trainor, chairman of the SoutheastF Area Assembly, wasn't one for political involvement, he says, until he decided that something simply had to be done.

Bob Halvorsen/Daily News

(5) Claudia Noonan, an office administrator, became involved to help her community win its decadelong fight to get a grocery store to fill a vacant lot. A Ralphs supermarket recently opened at the location thanks to the work of grass-roots activists.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News

(6) ``. . . if you don't have people connected to local governemtn, you have what basically constitutes a very substantial threat to democracy.''

- Mark Ridley-Thomas

City Councilman for Eighth District

Map: LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT 8

Traci Wooden/Daily News