Southern California Voices : A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Today’s Agenda

We will all be in for a big letdown if we depend on big corporations to revitalize South Los Angeles, says businessman and lawyer Tyson Park. Speaking from history and the experience of his own life, Park, in today’s Community Essay, says that the result will be more lasting if the city puts its money behind small entrepreneurs--the people who are already selling flowers at freeway off-ramps or household supplies from the back of a truck. But how many flower sellers are as ambitious and resourceful as Park, a former shoeshine kid in South Korea? And how many new jobs would really be created this way? Still, it’s hard to resist his argument.

While Park may have too much optimism, Nancy Berlin goes the other way in a new feature, Testimony. Berlin provides day care for the children of poor mothers at Las Familias del Pueblo in downtown Los Angeles. She wonders how a mother working 11-hour days for a pittance in a garment sweatshop can ever make a better life for her children. Berlin is a classic “point of light,” but sees a system in utter breakdown. Where’s the city, we ask? Where’s the state? Money may be tight, but what’s the cost of discarding a generation? National polls, for whatever they’re worth, have recently shown a greater willingness to accept taxes if they’re earmarked for children and education. Would this be true in California?

A self-described victim of police harassment with sympathy for the police? That’s the message of today’s Youth essayist, Gabriel Silva. His attitude illustrates how much most people want to like the police. LAPD Chief Willie Williams, take note. Silva is just asking politely that officers take a closer look at their actions.

There are plenty of people dissatisfied with California schools. The ultimate step is to take your kids out of the schools altogether. In today’s Platform, four families who did exactly that tell why. Even they acknowledge that it’s hard--and that one parent has to be home full-time to make home schooling work. There aren’t any good statistics on this phenomenon, because so many people do it outside the law. But it does seem to be growing. Voices would be interested in hearing from educators who can propose ways to lure these parents back to formal schooling.

Today’s Gripe, from a longtime skateboarder, casts blame in equal amounts on impolite enthusiasts and municipalities that fail to provide legal places for “skaters” to practice their sport. But it brings up a bigger question. Should government get involved with skateboarders at all? It’s not a team sport, like baseball, or a part of school curricula. Is this a small symptom of our budget-breaking “entitlement overload?”

One of our Sermons exhorts Buddhists to take a more active part in the “real world.” The other, from the Rev. Myron J. Taylor, who’s absolutely comfortable linking the spiritual and the secular, cautions us that without religion in our lives, human life is cheapened and death by violence becomes all too commonplace.