First of two parts
[img]1929|right|Damien Goodmon||no_popup[/img]The central question going into last evening’s meeting – actually, rally – of Damien Goodmon’s Crenshaw Subway Coalition was whether Light Rail Miracle No. 2 can be pulled off at the next downtown meeting of the Metro Board a week from Thursday?
Is there enough steam left in Mayor Villaraigosa’s perhaps fading heart, heading into his final four days in office, to steer the Board votes he controls to back a tunnel configuration for 11 crucial blocks through the Crenshaw business district in Park Mesa Heights?
Miracle No. 1 at last month’s Metro meeting – winning a light rail station in Leimert Park Village – was as stunningly surprising as it was welcome. Hardly anyone saw it coming.
At the Vision Theatre before last evening’s well-attended meeting, Mr. Goodmon was asked if he had an explanation for Mayor Villaraigosa’s abrupt change of heart after two solid years of opposition. Unaffordable, he repeatedly claimed. What could have been the mayor’s motivation for leaping over the fence and bringing with him the four votes he controls?
“The vote on the Leimert Park Village station is about two things,” Mr. Goodmon said. “First, when we asked for the station to be approved almost two years to the day of last month’s vote, we had 10 votes against. Last month, with the Metro budget situation remaining almost the same, we had 10 votes in favor.
“The difference was, we finally convinced the mayor to put his political capital and his political will behind seeing the station funded. When that happened, the votes fell into place.”
Yes, but what did you do to convince him?
The always impeccably dressed Mr. Goodmon smiled.
“The mayor got a shellacking after the May 2011 vote. He saw, behind the scenes, that we were conveying to people who were delegates (to the Democratic National Convention) that we were extremely disgruntled over what was happening with light rail at a time when the Obama administration was considering him for positions.
“We made clear this was the most public rebuke, the biggest showing of disrespect for the black community.”
South Los Angeles hoists a lengthy list of complaints against Mayor Villaraigosa, said Mr. Goodmon, “because he has done a lot of things . We have seen a number of black general managers go down. We have seen non-responsiveness on issues affecting South Los Angeles (and non-responsiveness can sting, perhaps, more than an overt rejection).
“But nothing as public matched what happened in May 2011 – seeing 600 people, all elected officials of South L.A. being on board (for the Leimert Park Village station and the 11-block tunnel through the Crenshaw business district) except for him.
“I think he felt pressured to respond,” Mr. Goodmon said. “We are just glad he did.”
But it is much too early to crow because the outcome of the Metro Board’s pivotal vote in nine days, Thursday, June 27, remains heavily in doubt.
Can the Board’s momentum, the heat on the mayor, carry over until next week?
Before answering the question, Mr. Goodmon noted an astounding discovery that his unrelenting research has uncovered. He forced Metro to admit that three of the four contractors bidding to building the Crenshaw Line said the tunnel could be constructed within the $1.3 billion budget, contrary to Mr. Villaraigosa’s loud and long assertions – before his conversion – to the contrary.
Ironically, when Mr. Goodmon called for a celebration in Leimert Park of the station victory the morning after last month’s vote, Mr. Villaraigosa was one of the earliest and overtly most enthusiastic arrivals.
The conversion seemed to have taken.
Mr. Goodmon’s muscular critical viewpoint on Mayor Villaraigosa appears to be widely held in light rail circles where brown, white, yellow and black persons concur that most Los Angeles neighborhoods got what they asked for – except for South Los Angeles, deemed the least powerful by City Hall, the least capable of blowback.
(To be continued)
