[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img][Editor’s Note: Community meeting tonight from 6 to 8, Crenshaw DWP Auditorium, 4030 Crenshaw Blvd. CrenshawSubway.org]
The first smiling face to greet me on Friday morning for the Urban Issues Breakfast Forum at West Angeles church belonged to the boldest, the most persistent, never-discouraged, most diplomatic, clearest, most persuasive, most important young man I know, Damien Goodmon.
A future candidate for Mayor, the almost 30ish Mr. Goodmon is daring City Hall to deny his Crenshaw neighborhood’s full-throated bid to build the final mile of the Crenshaw-to-LAX light rail under the ground instead of ground level where it would damage numerous businesses and disrupt the flow of life forever.
City Hall’s reflective response has been “You are black and powerless. Therefore, we do not care how much you howl.”
Mayor Needs Heart Surgery
Mayor Villaraigosa’s heartfelt message to Mr. Goodmon is:
“Get lost, kid. You and yer type bug me.”
The dim, constantly preening, insensitive, career-desperate Mr. Villaraigosa should know he is not just blowing off a fly on the end of his nose. Mr. Goodmon is somebody. He is on the ledge of becoming a much larger somebody.
As the Moses of South Los Angeles, the good kind of community organizer in contrast to Baloney Obama and His Boob Brigade in the White House, Mr. Goodmon actually is helping people, giving them hope in a meaningful way, not spewing phony air.
He leads the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, which is in business to win a light rail terminal in crucial Leimert Park Village and a mile-long subway at the end of the Crenshaw-LAX line.
Last May, when the MTA board voted up or down on Leimert Park and the one-mile subway, Mr. Villaraigosa, controlling four votes, had the power to steer the board in the right direction. “Get away, kid,” again was his message to Mr. Goodmon as Metro told the Crenshaw neighborhood “Zev and his white backers are more influential, and they oppose both of your ideas.”
Steeply educated in Los Angeles’s filthiest politics, Mr. Goodmon knows he is up against the meanest hombres in politics — uncaring whores locked into their cushy seats for life, safe from the people they pretended to care about to win their offices.
What do the whores have in common? Every last scoundrel, from Zev on up, is a tone-dead left-winger.
All of our lives, we have been told that liberals lovvve — just adore — black people, that they care more about the daily welfare of the besieged black community, especially poor blacks, than they do about feeding their own families. Liberals cry themselves to sleep at night, we are taught, wrenching their aching hearts into pained contortions in tireless pursuit of global justice for their beloved black brethren.
TRUTH VICTIMIZED AGAIN
The entire paragraph is a lie, which is why Mr. Goodmon and his confreres filed suit against the MTA last October.
Mr. Goodmon is convening a meeting this evening in Crenshaw to update neighbors on several major encouraging developments.
Before Friday morning’s program began at the Urban Issues Breakfast Forum, we sat down with Mr. Goodmon.
“The first, easiest update to understand,” he said, “is about the case we filed in state Superior Court against Metro for violating environmental laws and civil rights laws when they approved the Crenshaw line EIR. It now has been moved to federal court. That means we are on course to go to the (always volatile, often-reversed) Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. I have not figured out whether that is better or worse. But I like our chances there.
“If they win, we will go to the Ninth Circuit. If we win, they will go to the Ninth Circuit.
“We are going to be at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals one way or the other. We need to make people understand that. This is just the first legal round.
“Another major development,” said Mr. Goodmon, “is that in late December, the Federal Transit Administration gave its approval for the project, similar to the way Metro approved the project in September.
“Just two weeks prior, the FTA Office of Civil Rights came out with a statement in their Title VI review of Metro to see if Metro is complying with the nation’s civil rights laws.
“They found Metro is not compliant. They specifically found Metro in violation on the Crenshaw line EIR. “Metro is breaking civil rights laws that our leaders fought, marched and died for.
“So it seems as if the left hand of the Federal Transit Administration was not talking to the right hand.
“I ask, how can the FTA say that Metro is in compliance with the civil rights laws when their own department says it doesn’t?
“This should give Metro pause, not only from the standpoint of violating civil rights laws, it should also tell them, ‘Uh-oh. We are on a collision course if we allow this to go to trial. Let us talk again. Go back to the community about a subway from 48th to 59th Street and add a station at Leimert Park Village, the African American cultural center of Southern California.”
I admire Mr. Goodmon’s enthusiasm and optimism. He may be gray before this slog is over.
