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Life & Times Transcript

12/06/07

Announcer>> Tonight on Life and Times --

They're fed up with neighborhood crime, but can they do anything about it?

Dino Smiley>> It just got to the point where there was no longer people walking their dogs out, there was no longer people going to the local stores or going out just shopping generally.

Maria Ortiz>> I told him, "No, we have to stop them. Somebody has to not go up to them to find a way that you could be the winner and stay in your house."

Announcer>> And then, do good performances, a smart script and an engaging story add up to a great movie? Our critics sum up "Juno".

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> We often assume that poor, heavily immigrant communities are willing to put up with gangs, bad schools and pollution because they don't care. Well, not true. Changing your community is tough even for privileged areas and that's what makes this next story so remarkable. Hena Cuevas met one woman who got fed up and started a process that transformed her neighborhood.

Hena Cuevas>> It's one of the smallest unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and it's quite easily the poorest. It's a neighborhood called Florence-Firestone located south of downtown and just north of Watts.

The Florence-Firestone area is known as the place where the Rodney King riots began. It's only three square miles, but sixty thousand people live here and the crime rate is extremely high. In 2005, there were more than forty murders that year. That's higher than a lot of the major metropolitan cities.

But three years ago, something began to change. It started slowly with a woman named Maria Ortiz. Maria has lived here ever since her family moved from Mexico thirty years ago.

Maria Ortiz>> You could see a little bit of violence, but not that much. Nowadays you see a lot more kids joining gangs, more violence.

Hena Cuevas>> In 2004, that violence found her. Gang members began taunting her family repeatedly.

Maria Ortiz>> We were that afraid that we couldn't sleep at night. I have to be watching out through the windows because I have three kids. I have to protect my kids.

Hena Cuevas>> One afternoon, it just became too much for her husband.

Maria Ortiz>> My husband went in to get a gun and he shot it to the ground. He went to jail. He goes, "I know that's my mistake." He did time in prison and, when he came out, he said that we were going to move or we were going to sell our house. I told him no.

Hena Cuevas>> After twenty years of living in the neighborhood, Maria refused to leave.

Maria Ortiz>> I told him, "No, we have to stop that. Somebody has to not go up to them to find a way that you could be the winner and stay in your house."

Hena Cuevas>> But she didn't know where to start. Then she heard about a community organizer named Herman Barahona. When you were holding these community meetings, about how many people would show up?

Herman Barahona>> We first started with about five people.

Hena Cuevas>> Five people?

Herman Barahona>> And then as we began to expand our work, we began to get more representatives from all the different schools, parks and churches in the area.

Hena Cuevas>> Barahona is with the county's Community Development Commission, or CDC. As part of a trial program, he was sent to Florence-Firestone to organize residents interested in fighting crime.

Herman Barahona>> What we did really is look for those people that were angry enough to do something about it and put them together in a room to come up with some plans.

Hena Cuevas>> Another resident who wanted to take back his neighborhood was Dino Smiley. He's lived here since 1966. He works at one of the local parks and has seen the steady decline in their quality of life.

Dino Smiley>> It just got to the point where people, once it became dark, were staying in the home. There were no longer people walking their dogs out. There were no longer people going to the local stores or going out just shopping generally. It was just a fear factor at that time.

Hena Cuevas>> He was intrigued by Barahona's meeting, but also very skeptical.

Dino Smiley>> I wasn't really sure I wanted to get involved with it because I just felt it was going to be something we'd do for a couple of months and then we're right back into the same situation.

Herman Barahona>> Well, we weren't promising anything. What we were looking for is to build a network that was willing to engage the county to figure out what things need to be, part of, I guess, a priorities list or wish list. That's how it all began.

Hena Cuevas>> The initial group was small and included Dino and Maria. Their wish list was long. It included cleaning up Lillian Elementary School where Maria's son was a student. Graffiti was everywhere. Plus the heavy industry brought on health problems in their kids and some nearby businesses were an eyesore.

Herman Barahona>> When I first drove in here, you could tell this was some sort of party center or nightclub or home for rent on the weekends because they had all kinds of decorations here. It looked like a bar. In fact, the first time I arrived here, there was a bucket of paint that was dumped there in front of the school.

Hena Cuevas>> The residents' first target? Getting the club closed. With help from parents and the county, they learned how to pressure the owners. It worked. The club closed along with an illegal auto paint shop. So how long would you say this whole process took?

Herman Barahona>> About a year. They wanted to make sure that they shut them down. The key part for the CDC to do was to teach them how to engage the county employees when they came into the area and they did a very good job at it. That was their first turn.

Hena Cuevas>> Another key to improving the neighborhood was the reopening of this Sheriff's substation with its own full-time lieutenant. Together with the community's help, crime has been cut in half.

Richard Martinez>> Civic engagement means more than just voting.

Hena Cuevas>> Richard Martinez runs the community county program designed to empower residents.

Richard Martinez>> It has meant a great impact to the community because the community now feels like the Sheriff does have an interest in what happens here because it's long-term, it's not a one-shot deal, it is a permanent situation.

Hena Cuevas>> There have also been smaller accomplishments that make a big difference. One of Dino's pet peeves was all the garbage in the streets.

Dino Smiley>> Our containers were basically containers people brought to the curb themselves. They would leave trash bags and other trash cans. They weren't uniform trash cans, so cats and dogs would tear up the bags overnight. The street sweeper would sweep two days before and the trash stayed on the streets.

Hena Cuevas>> Florence-Firestone now has the same three color-coded trash bins as everyone else. There's also a new computer room and a basketball court which are open late.

Dino Smiley>> I think, once we came together, it showed that we had power to really fight for it and sit down with the county agencies to make things better.

Maria Ortiz>> We want to get more people involved. If we could get all the people in the community, I think everybody will get their streets back.

Hena Cuevas>> And their meetings have grown in attendance from those original five to more than four hundred people. But there is a downside to this success, success that drew the attention of the Los Angeles Times. Now Maria is afraid that the gangs may retaliate. You were worried about what these gang members could do. Why?

Maria Ortiz>> By coming in the newspaper, I feel a little bit scared, but not that much as before. I feel a little bit because of my kids because they left the block, but now they're back.

Hena Cuevas>> There's still plenty of work to be done, but now Maria and the others know exactly what they need to do to fight back. I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> We'd love to know your response to that story and you can post it on our blog. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/
blog.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Southern California cities have spent millions on anti-gang programs and many of them focus on job training and employment. But is giving jobs to gang members really the answer to our gang problem?

For a lively discussion on jobs and gangs, we brought three people together at our Kitchen Table. Paul White runs an alternative high school for troubled kids. He says that jobs should not be central to anti-gang programs. Jack Weiss is a Los Angeles City Councilman who's familiar with anti-gang programs across the city. And kicking off our discussion is Joe Hicks with CommUnity Advocates.

Joe Hicks>> Paul, Jack, thanks for coming in and talking with us today about the issue of gangs in our city. As everybody knows, it's a huge problem. I think there's a couple of models that have been adopted as an intervention model in gangs. One is, you know, kind of the Homeboy Industries model which is, you know, give a thug a job and all problems will be solved.

I kind of think you may not agree with that particular kind of approach. What's wrong with simply employing people to be gainful, you know, productive citizens? Does it work? Does it not?

Paul White>> The basic difference between us and other community organizations like Homeboys is they take an illiterate unemployed gangster and they make him an educated employed gangster. We take an illiterate unemployed gangster and make him a literate employed, honorable man or woman. In other words, you've heard their theme of "nothing stops a bullet like a job."

Joe Hicks>> Well, I --

Paul White>> -- Hang on just one second, Joe. That's really not true. Nothing stops a bullet like totally disavowing your gang ties and totally removing yourself and that's what they don't do. That's what we do and that's why ours is successful.

Jack Weiss>> I will say that I am a supporter of Father Boyle and of Homeboy Industries. Apparently, you're not and that's fine. But the folks I know who work in that part of town say that what he does works and that he uniquely works because he's a very unique and impressive person who really puts his life on the line in a very dangerous part of town.

Joe Hicks>> I don't know whether you agree with it or not, but the city's invested a lot of money in gang programs and intervention models, if you will, where jobs are central. The mayor just met some months ago with the then Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez and the promise was to deliver ten thousand new jobs to at-risk youth in the city of Los Angeles. So it seems to be a view that there's something central about a job in the life of an at-risk youth.

Jack Weiss>> Well, yes, I think there is a view that is central, but I do believe that the Homeboys Industries model isn't just that. I believe that the idea is to change someone's life by giving them skills, tools, education and a sort of support network out of their gang support network.

Now does it work every time? I'm sure it doesn't. But if we are going to redirect these folks in a better direction, we've got to give them the skills to succeed. That's the job piece. It's also the education piece, fixing the LAUSD.

Paul White>> Well, the reason they're lacking the skills is not because they haven't been given them. They often are in the same house with brothers or sisters who didn't choose the gang life and have good educations.

They don't have the job or the skills because they chose to get into an evil, wrong lifestyle. Until that's identified, accepted by them and turned away from by them, well, how do make-work jobs work when you don't deal with the individual's integrity?

The Federal Job Program survey shows that young people come out of make-work jobs less employable than they go in because we're not changing what really matters. This goes for summer youth programs, things like this.

Los Angeles does not suffer from a lack of jobs. It suffers from a lack of children who are parented and schooled with character and integrity and who want to be employed.

Jack Weiss>> But I don't believe we're talking about make-work jobs and we shouldn't be talking about that. What we should be talking about is giving people the tools they need to be successful in life.

The problem is, as you point out, when people are having kids younger and younger and younger and those kids are neglected, if you don't reach them by a very early age, it's very difficult to turn their life around.

What we're talking about now is creating sustainable workers with the right education, the right attitude, the right environment, the tools to succeed. That's what I very much want to see happen. That is one reason why Mayor Villaraigosa has focused so much of his time on the LAUSD.

Paul White>> I agree, and the mayor needs to say, "We've waited long enough." We drove by a number of Los Angeles Unified high schools coming to this meeting this morning. It was around 9:30 or 10:00. In other words, two hours after school had started. Students were still trickling onto campus.

Is the school allowing them to come in because they want to make sure they get their education? No. It's because, if they cross the plane of the property, they can bill for them. The mayor has to say that it's not reading comprehension scores that are making twenty thousand parents a year pull their children out of Los Angeles Unified.

It's not a lack of math teaching that is making charters, private schools, etc. burst out everywhere. It's the fact that they're not safe, secure campuses in LAUSD. They simply won't take a stand to create an environment in which the existing teachers would do just fine.

Joe Hicks>> What's the role of schools in all this? What's their role in trying to deal with this issue of gang violence and thuggery frankly?

Jack Weiss>> Schools are central, but we can't pretend, with problems, let's let the LAUSD deal with this and parents can wash their hands of it. I think we need a school system that gets parents more involved in their kids' education from an early age and makes it clear to those parents that they're responsible for their kids' actions. They can share in the successes of their kids, but they need to share the consequences when their kids do bad things.

I don't want to wait until those kids do really bad things before I put some responsibility on those parents. If those kids are out there tagging, if they're out there causing a ruckus in their neighborhood, I want to see a school system and a law enforcement system that reaches out and makes those parents responsible early on.

Joe Hicks>> Paul, you've called for a parental boycott of schools. How and why would that be helpful?

Paul White>> Well, when we have a school district that is pretty much acknowledged to be in a state of meltdown and of overall behaviorally and then following behind that, of course, academically, we have to ask ourselves how long we're willing to be patient and let them figure out how to solve this.

We need an absolute parent-student boycott. Keeping your kids home from school one day costs Los Angeles Unified forty-five million dollars. They do not understand anything else other than hitting them through their budget. Changes are not going to be made until we do that.

You stand right at the door of each secondary school in Los Angeles with a video camera and you watch the children they're allowing on campus and you say, "Why are you allowing this type of child with this kind of behavior that is totally gang --

Joe Hicks>> -- I'm going to have to let you have the last word. We're just flat out of time. I'm not sure exactly what we did here, but I think we've made an inroad in the problem. Nothing better than having a couple of guys who know what they're talking about at least trying to have an impact on this issue. I appreciate you both coming in and having this conversation.

Jack Weiss>> Thank you.

Paul White>> Thanks.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is the fantasy adventure, "The Golden Compass". It's directed by Chris Weitz and Nicole Kidman stars with Dakota Blue Richards.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media. Peter, what did you think of "The Golden Compass"?

Peter Rainer>> Well, this is a movie that desperately wants to be a franchise. It's the first of what they hope to be at least three pictures from the Philip Pullman trilogy.

But it seems awfully presumptuous for me to sit there and then see a movie that ends so open-endedly, as this one does, as if we're all going to be desperately awaiting the next installment. Meanwhile, you're left hanging and there isn't much to care for in the first place.

The young girl who's in the film is in the sort of Narnia, Harry Potterish realm except not nearly as much sense of wonder. Nicole Kidman is very icy, as usual. Most of the special effects aren't terribly special. Overall, I think, except for the big polar bear fight in the film, it just left me as cold as those polar bears.

Larry Mantle>> (Laughter) Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, the only thing I disagree with Peter really is that I thought the special effects and visual effects were actually very good. You know, wherever there are furry animals, I'm going to be sort of happy. I thought all of the special effects of the little animals were wonderful and the polar bear was great.

But the problem, yes, what you need is the human characters and relationships to draw you in. I don't feel that this film had that. Now I've never read the trilogy of books. It has such an abrupt ending, as Peter was alluding to, that you're just left with, "Well, wait a minute. Where's the story going?"

I hadn't really seen that much that got me drawn into it. It's such an obvious that there's going to be a follow-up and you're going to have to wait and see it. But I wasn't even that excited about what I was seeing at the time. So I was disappointed, but I did think it had wonderful special effects.

Larry Mantle>> A pregnant teen is at the center of the film, "Juno", which is directed by Jason Reitman.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of "Juno"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I really liked it. I think it's one of my favorite films of the year. It's really sweet. It's really warm. It has a lot of humor. Like "Lars and the Real Girl", it also has a lot of heart and, dare I say it, soul.

Whereas "Lars and the Real Girl" which is, again, one of my favorite films of the year, was quirky, this film is not so much quirky as slightly irreverent. Ellen Page leads a wonderful cast. She plays the young girl who finds herself pregnant after having sex for the first time.

But everybody in the film is good. I felt you couldn't really tell where the film was going. It just went. It sort of meandered a little bit. It had an end place it was going to, but I was very interested in following where it went, so I was very high on the film.

Larry Mantle>> You related to the characters, it sounds like.

Jean Oppenheimer>> Oh, very much, very much.

Larry Mantle>> Peter, what did you think of "Juno"?

Peter Rainer>> I think this is an amiable, sweet movie. I don't lose my mind over it. I think that it's the kind of film that gets a lot of points for being somewhat different than the usual, but not so different that it's going to keep anybody up at night. Ellen Page is quite charming in it.

The thing that got me, though, is that she plays someone who is so precocious. Everything that she says is a wisecrack or some sly wit comment. You know, she's just so on point all the time that, I mean, she's probably the best case scenario for what teens and tweeners would like to sound like in her situation as opposed to a real person.

Larry Mantle>> Well, she has a writer.

Peter Rainer>> (Laughter) True. So I think, on that level, it was more of a fantasy than any kind of, you know, really homespun, realistic film that you could be engaged with on a level of anything more than just, I think, a smart, good time. But that's enough for the movies these days.

Larry Mantle>> Finally this week, Keira Knightley stars in the film adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel, "Atonement".

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Atonement", Peter?

Peter Rainer>> "Atonement" is the kind of movie that, if you had a computer program -- and I'm sure somebody in Hollywood actually has one these -- to program an Oscar winner, this film would spew out. It's not a bad movie in some ways. It's a very kind of well-designed, formidable, very British, somewhat too tasteful adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel which has a very tricky time structure.

The screenwriter here does a fairly good job, I think, of finessing that so that you kind of get the flavor of the book and, at the same time, you don't feel like you're scratching your head throughout.

Keira Knightley is pretty good in this film. She tends to work very well with this director, Joe Wright, who did "Pride & Prejudice", which I think is easily her best performance.

The first fifteen minutes or so of the film, I think, are pretty stunning in terms of the way it delineates this upper-class family in England in the thirties. Once it moves on from there, I think it loses a lot of its focus and becomes more conventional.

Larry Mantle>> Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I liked the film, but I didn't in any way love it. I think the production design and the cinematography are wonderful. I think the young actress who plays the pivotal role of the young child was very good and James McAvoy was also very good. I think one of the problems I had with it is Keira Knightley who was pretty good in it, but I never really got a feel for who she was, what her character was.

I never felt the passion that theoretically she and James McAvoy had for each other. I'm not that big on a lot of these big romantic tales, so that may have been one of the problems. I enjoyed it while I was there, but I really didn't take anything away from it at all.

Larry Mantle>> So in "Atonement", I'm hearing a lack of passion on both sides (laughter).

Jean Oppenheimer>> A lack of passion, yes. That's a good way to put it.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle with critics Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media and Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor. Please join us next Thursday for the next edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> KPCC public radio broadcasts a longer version of FilmWeek Friday mornings at eleven. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

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