UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS--SIX MONTHS LATER : Touched by Fire / A Legacy of Pain and Hope : Q & A: Sylvia Drew Ivie, Administrator, T.H.E. CLINIC, on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard

Q: What are the most pressing issues facing Los Angeles?

A: Nobody listens to anybody else anymore. Everybody feels that the problems are insurmountable, and we don’t have any structured way of sharing the frustrations from all the different sides of the table. The politicians don’t have enough money and the people don’t have enough services. So there’s a sense of real distrust and frustration on both sides. I think you have to start by structuring a way for people to sit down and talk . . . to identify issues and see if they can’t come up with a way together to wait out the current economic lull. Nobody has any way of finding all the resources that we need at this moment. But I think there’s a great deal to be gained by people talking to each other

(Now) I just think people don’t listen to each other. We’ve gotten into camps: Male-female, black-white, Asian-black, every group is at odds. And yet we’re all individuals struggling to understand feeling hurt by various things. And we need to express that.

Q: Are there other problems beyond communication?

A: I’m very disturbed by the level of violence that I see--not just the violence in rioting or the violence in gangbanging, but violence among people who love each other. Right now, everybody thinks that the solution is, at every level, to fight about it. . . . There is such a level of approval. So I would like money and resources to go toward an anti-violence campaign. I would like for parents to have an opportunity to learn how they can deal with frustration in their lives, at whatever level they are, without hitting anybody. . . . Because all this beating and brutality works itself up into the kids who kill each other and beat each other up and stab each other, and a country and a culture that says, “Let’s go beat up, stab, kill anybody that gets in our way.”

(There are) the frustrations of poverty and the frustrations of fear. I’ve got a lot of white consultants that worked with the clinic that won’t come back now because of the riots. They’re just afraid. Most white people I talk to feel like they’re not sure, another riot could come any minute and they’d rather just not be in the neighborhood.

Q: How could we address that?

A: There have to be certain governmentally sanctioned or set up conversations, not with any expectations that you’re going to go into the meeting and come out with something, but that you’re going to get in there and you’re going to talk to one another. . . . We have a staff meeting every month where all 50 of us sit down and talk about whatever the issues are in the clinic. (After the riots) I just put that aside and said let’s talk about the riot. It was a little scary because people had such pent-up feelings, ideas, hostilities, wariness. But it was a very cathartic thing for everyone. It wasn’t finished by any means, but it was really good to have black people tell Korean people here how they felt about one another, and it was good to hear a Korean physician say, “Look, I think I can help more people if I stay alive than if I get killed.” To just hear the anguish of somebody feeling afraid for his life. And yet, having had a chance to say that, then going out and trying to save a black drug addict’s life in a restaurant right behind the clinic one week later. Because he felt loved, he felt appreciated, he felt he could say what his real feelings were. And then he could get back to work.

Q: Have you seen any evidence since the riots that people are responding in that way?

A: I’m really not encouraged by what’s been happening since the riots. I don’t think there’s much clarity of purpose or mission. I think there’s just a lot of confusion. Someone white said to me the other day, “You know, it’s awfully hard to get behind helping people who burn up their own communities.” If you start from that emotional place, it’s hard for the city to get behind something as an opportunity to rebuild and to reinvest in human beings and to try to prevent another conflagration in so many years. So, I think we had this big cataclysm but . . . the analysis that we have all done hasn’t gotten at whatever the issue is. So it’s hard to go forward.

Q: Why have we been unable to get at the roots of all this?

A: I think people don’t want to know. . . . Each one of us feels like we’re doing the best we can: “And if all the rest of you with problems would just do the best you can, then I wouldn’t have to listen to your whining and your complaining and your problems. You don’t have the right value system, you don’t have the right work ethic, you don’t have the things that I have. And I have all those things and I’m struggling.” Somebody has to articulate what the good is that comes from hearing, from listening--not for the other person (but) for each person’s self.

I like to think about the Olympics. That was my best feeling in Los Angeles, where there was a unified feeling of pride in the city, we were the host to the world, we pulled out all of our talent in all of our communities, we had help from all sectors of government to make it work. . . . I always want to get back to that. I want our leadership to find a way to say, “This could be the greatest city in the world. More than any other city in the United States, this could be the example. We have the resources here, we have something to share, we have something to show.” And we just miss that opportunity. Somehow, it doesn’t get put in front of us: That this is our destiny, this is what we’re part of.