First of three parts
[img]1899|left|Ms. Ana Cubas||no_popup[/img]I made amazing discoveries today on my way to the campaign headquarters of political newcomer Ana Cubas. An impressive young woman, Ms. Cubas hopes to defeat Curren Price in Tuesday’s runoff election, winning the seat vacated by Jan Perry in the Los Angeles City Council’s 9th District.
Driving through South Los Angeles on this overcast morning, it hardly seemed conceivable these grindingly hollowed-out neighborhoods form an historically integral backbone to my hometown.
Wednesday is Trash Pickup Day in South L.A., a happy occasion for a certain strata of this compressed society. Trash barrels were wheeled into the streets to be collected.
But first, desperate men roamed the small, narrow residential sidestreets., Invariably and silently, they raised the lids with their left hands, and with their right, they scooped up (could it truly be?) their next sources of nourishment.
Poverty would be a step up for the people I observed.
Down-dressed men, often garbed in hoodies, irrespective of the temperature, shlepped grocery carts, a scene repeated so often you suspected markets must be nearly empty.
Wending through screamingly barren streets that felt like a backwater scene from a 1910 scrapbook, framed by modest-sized businesses that seemed never to have enjoyed one profitable day, much less a break-even year, you wonder what revs their engines to keep stand them upright and keep them moving forward.
The businesses run on such infitesimal budgets that their professions scarcely qualify as commerce.
Regardless of what kind of retail they were, they were built to serve residents whose spending green is colored silver.
Unavoidably, you have the feeling your spaceship has landed on a separate planet. It has not. The ghostly neighborhood is walking distance from USC, just east of the campus.
But who notices?
Your sense of decency urges you to roll down the window and hand off $5 and $10 to select natives who could make the single bill last for a week or more.
And this setting is where the uncommonly interesting 42-year-old Ana (pronounced Ah-na) Cubas (pronounced Coo-bus) has chosen to launch her own political career after a few years on the staff of East Side Councilman Jose Huizar.
In the seven-way March 5 primary, Ms. Cubas, who seeks to be the only woman on Herb Wesson’s City Council, finished a narrow second to the much better known Mr. Price, buoying her hopes for Tuesday’s decider.
The gods of political fate have dictated that in this district that has been transformed from dominantly black to heavily Latino, the favorite is a long-established black veteran, matched against a true Latina with a bushel of recommendations.
(To be continued)
