Politics
By Betty Pleasant (Published first in the WAVE Newspapers)
Much to the surprise of most pundits, Rep. Maxine Waters endorsed Councilman Bernard Parks for the 2nd District seat on the Board of Supervisors last week. Most of us figured Waters would stay out of this race because we all know she hates Parks’ politics and finds his conservative, anti-common people approach and interests anathema to her own liberal agenda and populous, militant leadership style. We also know that she has an intense, deep-seated personal dislike for the other candidate for the seat, state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas.
She has never hidden her disdain for Ridley-Thomas and has made it evident for as long as I’ve known her. She dislikes him and everybody he knows and everybody who knows him and everybody associated with him. So, faced with two despicable choices, we assumed she’d be loath to endorse either one. But no, personal animus trumped her legacy as the champion of the people and she chose hatred over politics.
Let’s see if we can figure out why Waters picked Parks over Ridley-Thomas for county supervisor. Parks’ only claim to fame is that he is a former LAPD chief. Yes, but he was a Centurian-esque police chief always at odds with the black community: He stubbornly denied his cops (a term he does not like) engaged in racial profiling when everybody else in the world — black and brown citizens, other law enforcement officials, the state legislators, and finally the U.S. Justice Department — acknowledged that insidious racial policy was indeed rampant in the LAPD and they all took measures to stop it despite his intransigence as to its non-existence.
Parks refused to cooperate with the district attorney and the Blue Ribbon Commission formed to investigate that horrible Rampart Scandal in which his cops systematically brutalized, terrorized and framed innocent citizens for profit and sport. Then when the federal government stepped in and slapped a consent decree on the department to make it clean up its act, Parks initially fought against that decree and ultimately drug his feet implementing the changes it mandated to protect the people from his police.
Don’t get me started about Parks’ response to his cops’ killing of Margaret Mitchell, the black, elderly homeless woman, and the black actor Anthony Dwain Lee at a Halloween party, and Joe Joshua, the mentally challenged homeless man; their Gestapo-style raids in Pico Union and the riot they had with the residents of Jordan Downs. Does any of this sound like something that would impress Maxine Waters?
Let’s look at Parks’ tenure as councilman of the 8th District, in which several neighborhoods there have reached the point where they’re openly talking about seceding from Parks’ 8th and hooking up with Jan Perry’s 9th District. Parks is the only councilman in the city whose constituents are constantly mobilizing against him to either get something done, or more frequently, to stop him from doing something.
First, Parks insisted on changing the name of Crenshaw Boulevard despite the overwhelming disapproval of the residents and businesses in that community. They had to fight him like junkyard dogs to assert their collective will to retain the name Crenshaw. They are currently battling him to retain the character of Leimert Park Village and for safety measures on the Expo Light Rail Line, and they are still steaming over the construction of the new county services building on Vermont Avenue at a location where the overwhelming majority of the residents begged for the construction of badly needed retail establishments.
Even Waters, herself, opposed the county building, saying it would “ghetto-ize” her neighborhood. But she eventually joined Parks and Supervisor Yvonne Burke, his would-be predecessor, in opposing the residents and erecting the building that features the dispersal of county welfare benefits.
I have received numerous complaints from Parks’ constituents who want me to write about their fights with him. So many, that I can’t handle them all because if I did, all I’d write about would be the ongoing war between Parks and the people he’s supposed to be serving. There are people in the 8th District who want to talk to me about the airport soundproofing program which LAX allegedly dropped because of him, the fact that he is supposedly selling the vacant LaSalle/Adams Fire Station for $800,000 when the residents want it used for community purposes, and claims that he’s done nothing to solve the day laborers problem in Chesterfield Square.
Residents are petitioning against the demolition of Dorset Village at Crenshaw and 8th Avenue to make way for the construction of 500 to 800 housing units on that little spot. Parks’ constituents have gone over his head and written to the mayor to have the Crenshaw Used Wholesale Auto Auction closed because the business violates the area’s newly minted, highly ballyhooed specific plan that Parks got that supposedly closed Crenshaw to any more automotive businesses. In fact, they tell me that since I wrote that glowing account of Parks’ great work in getting that specific plan implemented, three new nuisance auto repair businesses were established in the area last year in violation of his plan.
People in the 8th District are mad and one particular extremely active district resident told me that, in an open meeting in which she expressed her anger, Parks told her: “You need to lower your expectations.” People from the Southeast Neighborhood Development Council and the Black Business Assn. told me that the redevelopment project at Broadway and Manchester is stalled and that when they complained about the inactivity to Parks, their councilman, he allegedly told them: “Crenshaw is my priority.”
And just last week activists told me the CRA informed them of Parks’ plan to consolidate all eight of the district’s troublesome Community Advisory Committees (CACs), thus reducing citizens’ participation in district matters and, as the residents see it, silencing the opposition around him. Now this is big and affects the whole district and I must pursue this.
While Waters has never been much of a community empowerment wonk herself, she has acquired national legitimacy by engaging in mobilization politics — organizing and leading community residents to force the powers-that-be, people like Parks — to bend to their will. Then what could there be about Bernard Parks that appeals to Maxine Waters? Nothing, except he’s running against Mark Ridley-Thomas. (More Betty Pleasant and SOULVINE at www.Wavenewspapers.com ) _
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