Second of two parts
Re “Parks Peppers Wesson for His Race Charges and Self-Inflation”
[img]1436|left|Bernard Parks||no_popup[/img]In the aftermath of Herb Wesson’s bombastic “I fought for you on redistricting” speech last month to a group of offended black Baptist ministers, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks said the Council President seemed to violate the first rule of public speaking:
Know your audience.
“If these had been pastors who never had been involved in the political process,” said Mr. Parks, “what (Mr. Wesson) said about standing up for them during the redistricting process, may have played.”
It vexes Mr. Parks – tall, disciplined and as restrained in manner as his rival is a fiery bantamweight – that Mr. Wesson appeared to don a hero’s mantle before the pastors when, he says, Mr. Wesson had behaved in quite the opposite manner throughout redistricting.
“They invited him to come to their meeting because they were dismayed that he led the charge not to allow them to speak.”
At the Root of Criticism
It is the contention of Mr. Parks and Council colleague Jan Perry that during the months of backroom redistricting debate, Mr. Wesson raided their black districts to lasso desirable neighborhoods into his now-enriched district while their territories have become markedly impoverished. The first lawsuit seeking to overturn the Council’s lopsided approval has begun to wend its way through the courts.
“The pastors also were dismayed,” Mr. Parks said, “that he would, basically, disenfranchise large parts of the communities where their churches are (by favoring a rather drastic and still unexplained redistricting scheme that shifted them away from Ms. Perry and Mr. Parks).
Separate Agendas
“For him to say ‘I fought for you,’ the pastors really did not appreciate that.”
Led by Pastor Marvin Davis of the Baptist Ministers Conference of Los Angeles, the ministers wanted Mr. Wesson to explain why he had silenced them when they wanted to protest the redistricting plan he was shepherding to a onesided vote.
When the ministers flatly asked Mr. Wesson ‘Why wouldn’t you let us speak?’ he answered, ‘That was another colleague’s motion,’” according to Mr. Parks. “Then they said, ‘That may have been true, but only two people voted to allow us to speak,” Mr. Parks and Ms. Perry.
“‘You didn’t vote to allow us to speak.
“Then (Mr. Wesson) said, ‘No, no. That was because my colleagues had sent a clear message that they were through with the subject.’
How to Mute a Pastor
“Now here you have 12 to 15 respected pastors who, literally, had waited for hours, and you tell them they can’t speak?
“Yet recently,” Mr. Parks continued, “we spent four hours letting everyone who wanted to talk about medical marijuana have a say?
“The thing that probably is fundamentally strange about this is, here’s a guy who said, ‘We have three black elected officials today,’ and yet he presided over a process that weakened two of those three districts. He moved votes out of the 8th District and the 9th District for no apparent reason for no apparent reason other than based on race.
“To say publicly that his goal was to maintain two black seats for the next 30 years is illegal on its face, unless you can justify those actions by a study that requires race to be a part of the discussion.”
Mr. Parks was asked if this latest flareup would widen or further poison the gap that separates him and Ms. Perry from Mr. Wesson?
“I don’t know how wide it is now,” he said. “We just do what we can for our districts. We have cleared the record for what we thought was appropriate during that hearing. Obviously there are people who have chosen to go another direction. We happen to believe that the court will decide on the side of the people who have been disenfranchised.
“The bad part about these stories,” Mr. Parks said, “is that people keep trying to pit three elected officials against each other. This is not about elected officials. This is about residents, real live people, being harmed for the next several decades because of the selfishness of the body that voted for those (redistricting) maps. (The Council) voted for the benefit of elected officials, not for the benefit of the people.”
