Let’s Get It Up and Running

The L.A. City Council has taken an extraordinary step in voting to allocate $2.5 million for Hope in Youth, an anti-gang program backed by a coalition of grass-roots community groups and religious leaders, including Cardinal Roger Mahony.

It was extraordinary because that is a lot of money for a city badly strapped for cash. It was extraordinary because the council didn’t make Hope in Youth’s potent backers jump through the hoops that other programs needing city funds must jump through. And it was extraordinary because the council may have to back up its 10-2 vote with a vote overriding a threatened veto by Mayor Tom Bradley.

This week’s vote was an important one that should stand. The problems posed by youth gangs in this city are so serious that exceptional steps must be taken to deal with them.

Council members did not need a reminder of how serious Los Angeles’ gang problem is but they got one anyway: A day before the vote, a major shopping mall in West Los Angeles--a part of the city not normally associated with gang activity--was the site of a gang shooting. People in the neighborhoods most plagued by gang violence, mostly on the Eastside and the South Side, live with such violence every day.

Even its staunchest backers do not claim that Hope in Youth is a magic wand that will make gangs go away. They insist that other anti-gang programs must continue to receive support if the problem is to be controlled. But Hope in Youth’s innovative approach, using parents, teachers and gang workers in a team effort to keep kids out of gangs, has worked on a smaller scale and should be expanded.

It is also worth remembering that the city money is only part of the $17 million that Hope in Youth’s backers aim to raise. The County Board of Supervisors has already chipped in $2.9 million, and the balance will come from churches and private foundations. With so many others gambling on Hope in Youth, the City Council would have been remiss to not join in--as Bradley would be. Rather than wasting his time on a surely futile effort to reverse a one-sided council vote, Bradley should sign off on the bill to fund the promising and important Hope in Youth project.