safe streets

"What you got on you?" the 15 year-old girl says the cops pulled up alongside her asked as she walked along Vermont one night.

Well, what do you see?

The first time he shot somebody, he says, another gang member helped him hold his hand steady as he aimed the gun out the window of the car they were sitting in.

The young men watched the cyclists ride their way past the Watts Towers and post up at the corner of Graham Street.

Voting is great and all, but it is only one part of democracy.

When neighborhoods suffer foreclosures, everyone on the block gets hurt. The abandoned buildings can quickly become blight and attract criminal activity. The decline of a block can hurt the self-esteem of a community. It is also hard to bring communities together through block clubs and neighborhood councils when people are struggling to stay afloat and the neighborhood is in constant flux. At the very time neighbors most need to come together to support each other, their own struggles may leave them little time or energy to do.

When people look at questions of transportation, livable streets, or complete streets, they sometimes look at them in isolation, as if they stood alone from socio-economic issues. Slate's recent touting of LA's transit system as the next big thing, for example, never addresses questions of who is riding, how, and why. Or, why not, in the case of many Angelenos, who may find public transit cumbersome and/or have less than favorable opinions of the "public" that rides it or the neighborhoods it passes through.

If you were one of the participants in the South L.A. Healthy Food Ride/Walk this past weekend, you could be forgiven if you walked away a little confused about the purpose of the walk.

I don't live in South L.A. But I can be found somewhere within its confines 4 times a week, on average. Often, more. And, always on the bike.