A Vision Thing
Can't say I'm surprised. Inglewood lost its mayor in the middle of the night, so to speak, when famously outspoken Roosevelt Dorn resigned without so much as a fare thee well to the public. The resignation was a necessary part of a plea deal in which Dorn agreed to a misdemeanor, two years' probation, a thousand dollar fine--oh, and he gave up the privilege of ever holding public office again. I'm sure that's the biggest blow, even though the new ex-mayor is nearly 75.
The deal was the culmination of charges brought by the D.A. in 2008 that Dorn misappropriated half a million dollars of public money, namely by helping himself to a low-interest home-loan program meant for city employees, not elected officials (that garnered him a conflict-of-interest charge as well as misappropriation). Jury selection in the trial was set to begin when Dorn pled out and gave up the position he increasingly regarded as uniquely and permanently his--at least that's what many of consitutents, er, subjects, thought. A minister and former Superior Court judge, Dorn had a reputation of ruling his courtroom/congregation/city with an iron fist, putting his ego and personal enrichment before anything else and not taking kindly to criticism of any of the above. He was also closely allied with the Inglewood PD and was therefore slow to obstructionist in responding to the city's many alarming incidents of police-involved shootings and police abuse in general. For these and other reasons, I can't say I'm sorry to see him gone, and I'm not alone in that view. Though everybody agrees that the rate at which black South Bay pols, from Compton to Inglewood to Lynwood, have been driven from the scene because of shady behavior and/or criminal convictions is a distressing trend. Not an encouraging intro for Black History Month.
But the issue of leadership of Inglewood and the question of what's to become of us remains. People will credit Dorn with putting Inglewood on the big-box retail map--in the last decade we got everything from Bed, Bath & Beyond to Jamba Juice, all packed into a couple of blocks along Century Boulevard, east of the Hollywood Park race track between Crenshaw and Prairie Avenue. It's all very convenient and a sight better than the empty lots that were there before; Dorn liked to call the development "Inglewood on the Move." But a city's got to be more and better things than its chain stores. Jamba Juice, et al, are blight-busters, but they're modular; they could go anywhere. In order for a place to grow, it's got to be distinct. It's got to be a destination, not merely another landlord for Target and Marshall's, which can end up being blight of another kind.
The art hangs and small businesses that have tried valiantly to characterize the north end of Inglewood, far from the vast parking lots of Target, have that potential. But they get very little love from city hall, probably because the small outfits don't generate the sales tax that would make politicians pay attention. One of the last real draws in town was Howling Monk, a coffeehouse and live-jazz venue that sat on Market Street, the main drag of Inglewood's downtown. It was a fine location, but nothing developed around it, and it closed in 2005. Market Street is still fallow.
So what does meaningful progress look like? Inglewood needs more than the eternally false choice between chain stores that promise to legitimate its tenuous middle class, or no stores at all. It needs to expand its definition and diversity of growth and movement to include people and their ambitions. In short, the next mayor of Inglewood needs to make capital of us all.
