LA's Progressive Mosaic: Beginning to Find Its Voice (Page 3)

In a public show of strength, on June 10 the IAF brought 4,000 members to rally alongside more than 15,000 other union members and supporters in favor of amnesty for undocumented immigrants. The AFL-CIO's call for amnesty this past February marked a dramatic shift in policy, applauded by local organizers who know that employers often try to thwart union drives and intimidate immigrant workers by threatening to contact the much-despised la migra (the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service) and have them deported.

Rocked by several recent scandals, Los Angeles's major public institutions--schools, police and government itself--are in a state of crisis. Movements are percolating to break up the school district and the city government, and the federal Justice Department has threatened to take over the police department. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of LA's new political topography is the disarray in the business community. During LA's postwar boom, the city was run by a shadowy handful of businessmen--the Committee of 25--who spoke with one voice, typically through the then-conservative Los Angeles Times. Today there is no such coherent corporate power structure; LA has become a city of absentee-owned firms that have little long-term stake in local affairs. The most conspicuous symbol of this trend is the recent sale of Times Mirror, owner of the Los Angeles Times, to the Tribune Company of Chicago. The city's largest private employer is now the University of Southern California. Major banks, aerospace firms and oil companies have left, causing local nonprofit groups to worry that absentee-owned firms won't fill the coffers of philanthropic foundations.

Politically, this business leadership vacuum is mostly filled by elected officials' reliance on contributions from a wide variety of firms with a direct stake in local policy-making. These include contractors that do business with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the port, the airport and other government agencies, and developers seeking zoning approvals and tax breaks. A multimillionaire and former corporate lawyer, Mayor Riordan has cobbled together support from these (racially diverse) political supplicants.

Can LA's progressive labor and community groups transform their grassroots successes into a political force that will fill the leadership and policy vacuum? A key test will be the mayoral race (Riordan is being forced by term limits to step down) and the City Council contests next April. The major themes are likely to be the widening economic divide and frustration with the city's public schools, police and the housing crisis. The favorite mayoral candidate among progressives is 47-year-old Antonio Villaraigosa, a longtime activist who was, until a few months ago, Speaker of the California Assembly, the second most powerful post in the state. During his two years as Speaker, Villaraigosa surprised observers with his ability to move progressive legislation--including major funding for schools, parks and health insurance for children--through the state Capitol's political maze. Since it's unlikely that any mayoral candidate will obtain more than 50 percent of the vote in the April election, Villaraigosa needs to make the runoff. To succeed, he must mount a coalition campaign that dramatically increases turnout among Latino voters (who represent about one-fifth of the city's eligible voters but have been thwarted by low turnout), garner substantial support in the liberal (and heavily Jewish) west side and get respectable support in the more conservative San Fernando Valley.

Since he faces intense competition even for progressive and Latino voters, organized labor could prove crucial to Villaraigosa's campaign. Led by the LA County Federation of Labor, unions have recently resurrected their political activity, demonstrating that they can make the difference in close races. Moreover, LA unions recently sent a signal to Democratic incumbents that their support will not be taken for granted, most concretely by defeating eighteen-year Democratic Congressman Matthew Martinez (who had a decent AFL-CIO voting record but who on fast track and several other issues parted ways with labor), replacing him with State Senator Hilda Solis, a woman whom labor leader Contreras describes as "a warrior for working people." Immediately after the election, union leaders began receiving calls from sitting Democrats who hadn't been in a union hall in years. Unions are relearning how to mobilize members to work in campaigns, and are even recruiting some of their own activists, such as Gil Cedillo--previously general manager of a large SEIU local, now an effective State Assemblyman--to run for public office.

Of course, Los Angeles is still the dirty US capital of low-wage labor. Unions have concentrated their resources and energy on the so-called immobile sectors such as hotels, public employment, healthcare and transportation; last year, in the single largest organizing victory since the thirties, the SEIU unionized 75,000 homecare workers. But the heavily unionized aerospace, auto and steel industries left years ago, replaced by light manufacturing jobs in textiles, food processing and metal finishing. Hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers, many of them recent immigrants, toil in these plants, but so far unions remain virtually locked out.

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