Testimony : ONE PERSON’S STORY ABOUT WORKING IN A COMMUNITY IN DISARRAY : ‘The People Have a Resiliency’

Ernestine Myers earned her master’s degree in social work at USC and is now with El Nido Services, supervising youth programs in South-Central Los Angeles and Compton.

There’s a lot of talk about the gangs and the destruction and the community being in disarray. And truly it is in much disarray. But in South-Central, there are no movie theaters. There are few places for young people to go to do what young people do, which is to have fun.

The kids have to go outside of the area for recreational activity. And if you know anything about adolescents and what their needs are, they need a place to go. We are without a lot of what it takes for people to get by. If a young person is not an athlete, or in the top part of the class, there’s little for that child.

There aren’t jobs, you already know that. But if you looked at the under-girding, there is nothing in South-Central for young people or adults. Industry and businesses are afraid, if that’s the word I can use, to come into the community. I do know that you cannot treat people like they are not human and expect them to act like humans.

I go on Ventura Boulevard and I almost get dizzy because there are so many movies, so many ice cream parlors, so many shops where the kids play those video machines. I’m not knocking that. But when I think about what happens in the community where I am, there’s nothing. And the kids that don’t have cars are left to do whatever it is they do. Because how can they get to Westwood to a movie, or to Torrance, or to Cerritos? And I’m just saying a movie, which doesn’t seem like a big deal.

And then what does that say to the children? That they don’t have what they see other kids having in schools where they are bused out to, or that they see on television, or what’s rightfully theirs.

We need somebody that’s responsible to look at the recreational needs of the children in the community. Do they want miniature golf? Do they want to have a skating rink? Do they want to have a video machine? Not at the corner liquor stores, where parents are scared for their kids to go. If these places were open, there would be jobs in the theaters. The kids in South-Central and Compton, who live in and out of the projects, want as much for themselves as other children. The parents, even though they get a lot of negative press--we do parenting classes--they want as much or more for their children. They just don’t know how to get it.

I know that we’ve just worried about another riot taking place and some people did burn stuff down last year. It makes everybody very, very nervous. I understand it. But it was the result of having all these other things happen down through the years. It’s like when you don’t take care of a tooth and then you’re surprised that the dentist wants it pulled.

I hope that it hasn’t gone so far that people cannot talk. I work with kids that have claimed to be in gangs. I’ve worked with those young men to get jobs or work through the California Conservation Corps. You know, these are young people who want jobs. It’s just ludicrous that the major employer could be thought of as being cocaine. But if you look at the number of jobs that have left South-Central, say in the last 30 years, it would be similar to Detroit. They had the Firestone plants and other plants there and nothing replaced those places. I mean it’s almost like a ghost town, because there is nothing.

I’ve worked in South-Central since 1970. It’s gotten worse, but the people there have a resiliency. You know the whole thing with the drugs, and the drug abuse, and with all of the other ills, the non-jobs, and the people who used to have jobs but who don’t have them now because of layoffs and cutoffs, they can’t understand it. It’s not that people are not working because they don’t want to. I mean some people maybe, but the majority of people want to work.

People do not not work because they can get welfare. You could probably find some people that may do it. But that’s not the majority. Just like you could find some people that do almost anything. I mean not every stockbroker is an Ivan Boesky, (who was convicted of insider trading). There are young people that are coming out of Jordan Downs, Imperial Courts and the Nickerson Gardens housing projects who are in school, who are going to community colleges and universities, either through their own means or through scholarships, because they want to do it. It’s just that there’s so many obstacles for the majority.

People are trying to bring about a change, like the gang truce. But these are all young men--16, 17, 18, 19 and middle 20s--who clearly need to be employed. Many times I hear, “Miss Myers, do you know anybody that’s hiring?” Especially with the summer youth employment. There are not enough hamburger stands, McDonalds, for the kids to have employment. I’ve often thought about the companies that are far away, they could send a van and take people to Sherman Oaks or wherever their companies are. Because the bus transportation here is not the best.

I see a lot of guys lift their hands up to the truckers as they come off the Santa Monica Freeway at Alameda, to see if they need help in unloading the trucks or whatever. And some of them allow them to help and some don’t. So, it’s not just a whole bunch of black men sitting up under a tree somewhere, playing cards. You’d really have to live it to know that in spite of all this, people have hope. They still keep getting up. They still keep trying. And I’m not trying to say that there aren’t some people that have just given up. But a lot of people, a lot of men, and a lot of women are still availing themselves of training programs. But after they get out of training is there something?

It’s a wonder sometimes that we’re not all just absolutely stark raving mad. Because the stuff is really crazy. But people keep struggling. Now this is a time of cleansing. We could say, OK, now what are we going to do?

What do you do in order to make it? How do you do things that are legal and right? Well, you need the opportunity.

You know, our country, our city, we were so afraid there was going to be a riot. Somehow that money came together to pay for all those people to be on alert. That was a lot of, lot of money.

I don’t even know whose fault it is, and I really don’t care. I would just like to fix it before it’s too late. Because it’s real hard to get the cows back in after they’re all out.

TO GET INVOLVED, call El Nido, (213) 587-2534.