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The mercurial vibrancy of Mark Ridley-Thomas’s two-year reign as a ubiquitous County Supervisor — contrasted with his torpid predecessor, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke — was on display again this afternoon in the runup to next Saturday’s 20th annual Empowerment Congress in the shadow of his Exposition Park office.
Making meaningful participation in hometown and wider government not only appealing but accessible is the chief thrust of the Empowerment Congress, created in 1992 by Mr. Ridley-Thomas when he was on the Los Angeles City Council.
The Congress is an all-day assembly.
Divided evenly between hearing a roster of speakers — led by new state Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris — and participating in assorted workshops later in the day, it is not a one-note event that evaporates by the next day or next week.
It births committed activists.
Members of the Empowerment Congress are engaged the year around.
Six different committees meet on a monthly basis, at 6 in the evening — Economic Development, Education, Health and Environment, Human Services, Mental Health, Public Safety and Justice.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas retains strong-minded masters in each of these fields on his staff, a crisscrossing the generations.
This afternoon, two of his principal aides — senior advisor Vincent Harris and Dan Rosenfeld, senior deputy for economic development — needed nearly an hour to describe the wingspan of projects the Supervisor has begun, infused with energy or speeded up.
From the grand (re) opening of the vastly reconfigured Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center, targeted for two years from spring, to light rail, especially down the Crenshaw corridor to LAX, to specifically revitalizing identified neighborhoods, Mr. Ridley-Thomas y is making a lasting imprint throughout his assigned one-fifth of Los Angeles.
Ironically, Mr. Ridley-Thomas was out working his district this afternoon during the buildup for the Empowerment Congress in Bovard Auditorium on the USC campus.
One of the main reasons the gregarious Mr. Ridley-Thomas was eager to return to Los Angeles from the state Legislature in ’08 was to be among the people again instead of 500 miles distant.
He meets with and courts the press, which Ms. Burke rarely did unless she was accepting or presenting an award.
He not only talks to the people but actually enjoys physically mingling with them. During her long tenure, the often invisible Ms. Burke never was accused of being a people person.
