Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has spent an inordinate amount of his energy
as mayor running away from his Latino-ness. In the absence of the visionary new kind of leadership his election was
supposed to have represented, Villaraigosa's police force felt on May Day at MacArthur Park that it could
revert back to its darkly familiar ways of violence and repression
against the people it's supposed to serve. It could have been avoided, arguably, if Villaraigosa had not adopted a policy of keeping immigrant issues and the immigrant rights movement at a 'safe' distance.
And now we see a shift, welcome, and hopefully lasting. On Sunday, La Opinion's lead headline was "Villaraigosa se acerca a su gente," or "Villaraigosa reaches out to his people." Eileen Truax followed the mayor as he attended Mass at Immaculate Conception in Pico-Union, visited Watts, and walked among Angelenos at Olvera Street. A side-bar titled "Back at home" noted the adoring reception Antonio got at Olvera (some shouted 'Villaraigosa for governor'), and ended with the line: "Most definitely, the mayor is back." And today the paper goes with a piece that says "MacArthur Park reclaims its color." But difficult questions remain, along with the sense that the mayor for too long neglected his base, the working-class foundation of our very complex Los Angeles, to what can only be historicized as disastrous results.
* Photo by Jeff Grace, La Opinion.