First of a series
After seven years of thumping, unbending sparring with Crenshaw Subway Coalition leader Damien Goodmon, the equally gritty (some would say stubborn) Metro Board long ago concluded its enviably sharp, affable young adversary is a human form of the weather:
They can’t do anything about him, anymore than he has been able to budge them.
[img]2094|right|Damien Goodmon||no_popup[/img]Complain though they may about Mr. Goodmon – his iron determination, blended with brilliant rhetorical skills, presented in a faultlessly framed sartorial portrait – the Board, for all of its political authority, is powerless to discourage or to diminish him.
At a mature 32 years old, he is the face and the voice of a regularly snubbed black South Los Angeles community for whom he has been seeking an affordable tunnel through the final one mile of the Crenshaw-LAX light rail line.
Metro insists that the Last Mile run above the ground, repeatedly rejecting pleas that a fragile black business corridor would be imperiled, dense traffic would be impeded and nearby schools would add a major new worry for their students.
Well-Disciplined
In his hands, the quietly industrious Mr. Goodmon holds documents showing that the mysteriously intransigent Board inexplicably defied world-class contractors who told them the tunnel could be constructed within budget or darned close. In technical documents, the builders laid out their strategies – to which the Board snorted, “Feh.”
But the perceived central roadblock to the long dreamed of Crenshaw tunnel – a dramatically bombastic personality at select moments – has not yet strongly been called out.
Six weeks ago, the Metro Board gave their noses a clear view of the ceiling in their spacious downtown meeting room. Overwhelmingly, they said no to the tunnel. Feverishly, they hoped that after four years of partially successful bartering, Mr. Goodmon would go home muttering, “Half a loaf isn’t bad.” Except half a loaf is bad.
He Was Here a Moment Ago
What he remembers most vividly from that funereal scene was that the “most powerful black elected official in Los Angeles” vanished, as is his frustrating habit when it gets warm in the room, Mr. Goodmon said.
“For Metro Board members collectively and individually, this was just the latest, greatest missed opportunity,” he said. “All that they did boils down to this: The tunnel will be more expensive than before.
“After it became known that three of the four (finalist) contractors requested to bid the tunnel, what we were asking for was that they be allowed to bid the tunnel in a competitive environment.
“It would have been a simple process.
[img]1979|left|Mark Ridley-Thomas||no_popup[/img]“Why it was not initially a part of the procurement process, why the Metro staff was allowed to lie for almost three years about the cost of the tunnel, why Board members, particularly (County Supervisor) Mark Ridley-Thomas, refused to speak up in that span of time leading up to the past June – all of these are examples of failures to position this project in a way that would have allowed the (Crenshaw) community to win.
“It is disappointing but not surprising,” Mr. Goodmon said, “when your own representatives are complicit in this act through their silence.”
He was aiming his criticism directly at Mr. Ridley-Thomas’s puzzling refusal to advocate, even softly, for the tunnel.
(To be continued)
