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The immediate concern is that minorities are not being included in enough of what rebuilding is taking place. "What people want is an active voice at the table," says Janet Clark, a staff coordinator at the Maxine Waters center. "They want inclusion. They want their needs to be discussed so it's not something shoved down their throats." With black-male unemployment over 40% in South Central, they also want a fair share of riot-related rebuilding contracts and jobs in inner-city areas. "I don't have a problem with other people working," says Bakewell. "But the bottom line is if black people can't work, nobody can. We are no longer going to allow people to do business in this community if they don't include us."
Shortly after black contractors and community activists closed two construction sites, Mayor Tom Bradley put together a consortium of five companies, including two owned by Latinos, one by blacks, one by Koreans and one by whites. He awarded the group $10 million worth of contracts to demolish nearly 500 fire-damaged buildings, and ordered that 80% of the subcontracts let by the consortium go to minority companies located in riot-affected areas.
"It's a good step, a bold step, but it can't be the only step," says Bakewell. "The issue is more than demolition. It's financing. And insurance companies do most of the financing in this world." Increased access to credit and capital is critical for rebuilding and empowering inner cities, says Brentwood Thrift & Loan Association president Jeffrey Hobbs. "Because of the way we do things in the 1990s, insurance companies are an essential ingredient. They have to come to the table."
Lack of access to a range of other financial products, from basic bank loans for businesses to automobile and student loans, also hinders the economic development of inner cities. "The problem is access to the kind of financial dollars that create a sense of self-worth in community stakeholders," says Carlton Jenkins, managing dirctor of Founders National Bank in South Central, California's only black commercial bank. "Not only do people here now not have supermarkets or liquor stores or cleaners, they never have had somewhere they can go and talk with someone about a financial plan."
As an owner of one of only three black financial institutions in California, Jenkins believes his 18-month-old bank has a unique opportunity to take advantage of the riots by attracting new deposits and filling some of the financial void in inner-city L.A. But the combined assets of Founders bank and the other two black-owned institutions are only $300 million, compared with the $1 billion or more in assets of some of the state's larger banks.