Commentary

It is clear to the Garment & Citizen that the the operating procedures of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) have served to disenfranchise Latino/Americans.

We call on representatives of the same city government that provides DLANC with taxpayer funding and an imprimatur of officialdom to address this matter.

Consider the June 12 elections for the 28 seats on DLANC’s board, held at the Los Angeles Theatre on the 600 block of S. Broadway. Everyone who works Downtown is eligible to vote in DLANC’s elections. Citizenship is not required; voters can register at the polls. Thousands of Latino/American workers on Broadway and nearby streets could easily have walked over to the polling place during their lunch hours.

Except that the polling place didn’t open until 2 p.m.

We realize that working-class Latino/Americans could have gone to the polls after they got off the job—as long as they didn’t have to get home to their families, or to a school graduation, or another job. But many do have such obligations, and it’s obvious that the lunch-hour would have been the ideal time for them to vote.

That would have required some desire for their participation, though, and there’s reason for doubt there because the fix on polling hours appears to be part of a pattern of systematic disenfranchisement.

Think about this: The DLANC board has 10 seats set aside for residents, eight for business interests, three for social service providers, and another three for individuals involved in artistic, educational, or “cultural” endeavors. There’s one seat to represent homeless folks, and another is an at-large post. That leaves just two seats for workers—despite the fact that Downtown has far more wage earners than members of any other constituency carved out under DLANC’s by-laws. And the workers’ seats are inexplicably split between the private-sector and public-sector.

Bounce that information against the fact that Latino/Americans account for the most significant chunk of the couple of hundred thousand individuals who work Downtown every day, especially in the private sector.

No one has to be a political genius to figure out that the best chance for a Latino/American to win election to the DLANC board would be as a candidate representing private-sector employees. But the system of disenfranchisement works against any enthusiasm for such an opportunity. Wage-earning Latino/Americans are a pretty smart bunch, after all. Many have shrewd outlooks that carry over from dealing with rigged political games in their homelands. They know that one seat on a 28-member board hardly lives up to DLANC’s billing as a place for grassroots democracy. It’s not worth their time.

Latino/American’s aren’t alone, either—the board seat representing private-sector workers drew only one candidate who garnered 24 votes, according to preliminary results available at presstime. That’s a statistically insignificant percentage of the eligible voters in the category.

To be fair, we’ll note that DLANC doesn’t exactly strike a resounding chord in general—preliminary results indicate that somewhere around 1,700 votes were cast in the June 12 voting. The numbers of actual voters is likely smaller, since many were allowed to vote in more than one category.

Consider the category of Downtown residents—a group estimated at 30,000 or so by local boosters. The numbers indicate a turnout of less than 2% of the population. Russell Brown, the current president of DLANC’s board, appears set to return to his seat representing residents on an area-wide basis with the support of fewer than 100 voters—approximately 0.3% of the population.

There’s some irony here, because the paltry numbers on turnout could get a real boost if working-class Latino/Americans paid much attention to DLANC. Yet efforts to invite them into the process have been uneven at best, and DLANC’s structure offers scant incentive. That’s where the disconnect started. The recent 2 p.m. start on voting finished the job.

It’s time for our city officials to realize that anyone who doesn’t stand against such a fouled-up situation will stand in favor the continuing disenfranchisement of the Latino/Americans of Downtown (See related Dot Dot Dish item, “Ethnic Split in Echo Park,” home page)

—Jerry Sullivan, Editor & Publisher