Secession’s Effect on Minorities Is Debated

PACOIMA —  Kicking off a series of forums on the volatile topic, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People brought together opposing speakers Monday to discuss whether San Fernando Valley secession would help or hurt minority communities.

Jeff Brain, president of secession group Valley VOTE, and Thomas Hogen-Esch, a USC graduate student studying the history of urban secession drives, presented strongly differing views on the probable impact of breaking up Los Angeles to a sparse crowd at Mt. Gilead Baptist Church.

Brain, who stressed that his group wanted only to study secession, nevertheless pointed to Burbank and Glendale and said a Valley city--which would be the nation’s sixth largest--could become a similar haven of low taxes, pretty parks and bountiful businesses.

He said residents of Pacoima and the rest of the northeast Valley--traditionally its poorest, most politically disenfranchised area--could only gain clout by breaking away from Los Angeles.

“I believe you have the most to gain in the northeast Valley,” Brain said. “You don’t have the bus service. Your streets are full of potholes. If we become our own city--if we decide that is the right thing to do--you will have tremendous say.”

Hogen-Esch, who also works part-time for the elected charter reform commission, countered that the history of such breakaway movements was one of a group looking to gain political clout over another by redrawing political boundaries to its benefit.

He said that Los Angeles is now mainly Latino, but the proposed Valley city would be mostly white. And he concluded that Valley African Americans, like Latinos, stood to lose politically if they broke away from more established black leaders in other parts of the city.

“Rather than empowering Valley blacks, secession might actually hurt them by cutting off relations with blacks on the other side of the hill,” Hogen-Esch said.

Hogen-Esch also pointed out that some of the most vocal supporters of secession were the opponents of busing two decades earlier. He suggested that the homeowner associations that are the driving force behind the secession movement could wield power in ways that would hurt minorities and the poor, by fighting to keep low-income housing out of the Valley, for example.

“Influential homeowner associations could use their influence to keep out ‘undesirables,’ ” he said.

Brain took strong exception to the socioeconomic conclusions drawn by Hogen-Esch, calling them inflammatory and unfounded. Though the secession drive is clearly motivated in part by gaining greater control over land use, he said, the intent is not to use such power to benefit one segment of the Valley over another.

“This gentleman and I have never met until today, yet he gets up here and calls me a racist,” Brain said.

At that point, a man stood up from the largely African American audience and defended Hogen-Esch, saying he had not called anyone a racist, but was merely talking about history.

The man then recounted his experience trying to buy a home in Granada Hills in 1972--only to be steered to Pacoima by real estate agents.

“I know this is a racist community,” agreed another audience member, Edward Kussman of the Pacoima Chamber of Commerce.

Northeast Valley activist Benny Bernal, a secession supporter, said that in his months of involvement with Valley VOTE, he had never seen or heard anything to suggest there were racist undertones to the breakup movement. He questioned the basis for Hogen-Esch’s conclusions, and said that from his experience fighting a waste dump proposed for the Pacoima area, that area needed direct land-use control most of all.

Facilitator Barbara Perkins said it was clear from the forum that northeast Valley residents needed to learn much more about secession.

Perkins, a candidate for the City Council seat vacated by state Sen. Richard Alarcon, was originally a member of Valley VOTE’s board, but dropped out because of what she felt were assumptions that her involvement in the group meant she supported the breakup.

“There are people that are not getting the information,” she said. “That needs to change.”

Valley VOTE activists recently collected 202,000 signatures to spur a study on Valley secession--a necessary step before the breakup could be placed on the ballot.

If the study finds that a Valley city is economically feasible, and that the city could be formed without hurting the rest of Los Angeles, the issue would probably be placed on the ballot in 2002. It would require a majority vote of the entire city, not just the Valley, to pass.