The Plight of Los Angeles Underclass (1990)

<v Val Zavala>This is their story. <v Val Zavala>They live in neighborhoods where crime is so high, not even their laundry is <v Val Zavala>safe from thieves, where Mother's Day is on the 1st and the 15th - when <v Val Zavala>welfare checks are delivered. <v Val Zavala>And where eight out of 10 births are to teenagers who sometimes become grandparents <v Val Zavala>in their early 30s here. <v Val Zavala>More than half of high school students will never walk in a graduation line, <v Val Zavala>where poor health care means they spend more time than anyone else in emergency rooms. <v Val Zavala>And where tensions are so high that tempers flare at a moment's notice. <v Val Zavala>Just as the rich are gated away from the rest of society, so are the underclass, <v Val Zavala>some living in the projects, low rent prisons of despair, where <v Val Zavala>success is found mostly on street signs. <v Val Zavala>All this despite their living in one of the wealthiest cities on earth. <v Val Zavala>These are society's underclass.

<v Leonard Schneiderman>What one is attempting to describe the use of a word like <v Leonard Schneiderman>underclass is not the fact that there are people at <v Leonard Schneiderman>different income levels in the society. <v Leonard Schneiderman>But the progressive disconnectedness of a group of people from the mainstream <v Leonard Schneiderman>of the society. <v Val Zavala>Dean of the UCLA School of Social Welfare, Leonard Schneiderman. <v Leonard Schneiderman>We have a kind of polarization going on, a kind of two tier society <v Leonard Schneiderman>in which the polarization between the haves and have nots is intensifying <v Leonard Schneiderman>very greatly. The ladders available to people to achieve upward <v Leonard Schneiderman>mobility have been cut off at the bottom. <v Val Zavala>And a changing job picture is one reason why. <v Val Zavala>Gone are high paying blue collar jobs replaced by low paid service sector <v Val Zavala>jobs. The lucrative information based jobs are unattainable by a poorly educated <v Val Zavala>underclass. Twenty years ago, a high school diploma and hard work meant a ticket <v Val Zavala>out of the ghetto. Today, that's next to impossible.

<v Val Zavala>They are unable to keep up in a world that is rapidly changing, one requiring high <v Val Zavala>levels of education and highly skilled workers. <v Val Zavala>And because they've been unable to adapt, it's getting even more difficult to get out of <v Val Zavala>the ghetto. The world is passing many of them by. <v Val Zavala>Their numbers tripled in the 1970s alone. <v Val Zavala>At last count, there were two and a half million people nationwide. <v Val Zavala>Using 1980 census data the urban Institute measured <v Val Zavala>the underclass. They looked for neighborhoods with an overpopulation of welfare <v Val Zavala>dependents, high school dropouts, female headed households <v Val Zavala>and jobless males. <v Val Zavala>They found 880 underclass neighborhoods nationwide, 22 <v Val Zavala>in Los Angeles alone. <v Val Zavala>Among them, Watts. <v Val Zavala>Despite the riots 25 years ago, it is still economically depressed, <v Val Zavala>but it's home for 24 year old Tanya Fortson, a high school dropout <v Val Zavala>and single mother of three. Tanya is a third generation welfare recipient.

<v Val Zavala>She lives in Nickerson Gardens, the largest housing project in Los Angeles, <v Val Zavala>where she sees the despair daily. <v Tanya Fortson>They feel, why should I have to work? <v Tanya Fortson>I have a girlfriend now who is working and she only makes I mean, she works seven <v Tanya Fortson>days a week, and she only makes $730 a month, OK? <v Tanya Fortson>I make more than her just sititng on my behind and waiting on the mailman. <v Val Zavala>Tanya and many like her have fallen into a trap. <v Val Zavala>Victims of a program originally designed as a safety net, but the net is slowly <v Val Zavala>pulling them under. Faced with little more than the prospect of low wage jobs, <v Val Zavala>most stay on welfare and low wage dead end jobs <v Val Zavala>mean the young men of the underclass resort to an underground economy of selling <v Val Zavala>drugs seen as the only way out. <v William Rathburn>When people are poor, there's no question but that a larger percentage of those people <v William Rathburn>are going to get involved in crime. <v Val Zavala>And this lifestyle has severe consequences. <v Val Zavala>Many young black men are being killed in gang warfare.

<v Val Zavala>Those who avoid getting shot end up in jail. <v Val Zavala>Today, one in four young black men are either in jail or under court supervision. <v Val Zavala>Many expect to go to jail, according to Leon Watkins, who runs a South Central L.A. <v Val Zavala>Crisis Hotline. <v Speaker>I've heard some of the guys say it's not if you go to jail, it's when you <v Speaker>go to jail. It was out there on the street. <v Speaker>And that in and of itself is something different than what it used to be a few years ago. <v Val Zavala>Fred Owens and James Weaver may be the next generation of underclass. <v Val Zavala>Both are 16 and both have been in trouble for gang activity with <v Val Zavala>no father in the home, Fred wanted to help his mother financially, so he began <v Val Zavala>making over fifteen hundred dollars a week selling drugs. <v Fred Owens>I just say kept a secret to myself say, hey, I will come in and pay the bills and <v Fred Owens>whatever she wants, I give it to her. <v Val Zavala>Many parents close their eyes to the crimes their sons commit, <v Val Zavala>something ex-con Marshall Brown has seen time and time again.

<v Marshall Brown>Their mom was gonna go along with it, you know, because mom would like the money. <v Marshall Brown>That's what's happening, it's happening all around here that you got. <v Marshall Brown>You got 15 years of 15 year old taking care, his whole family, <v Marshall Brown>you know, and provide transportation. <v Marshall Brown>And so, what do you know, how how would they lose it if they feel they're surviving? <v Val Zavala>These men speak from experience. <v Val Zavala>They're prisoners in a halfway house awaiting release. <v Val Zavala>To them, crime and drugs are both a matter of survival and a ticket <v Val Zavala>to the American dream. <v Marshall Brown>You can't give a man that's um say I have three kids and a <v Marshall Brown>wife. You can't give him three dollars and thirty. <v Marshall Brown>Minimum wage. Three dollars - four dollars, thirty five cent. <v Marshall Brown>So it results back to dope, you know, where they can make money. <v Alan Hudson>I was looking for that goal. <v Alan Hudson>You know, that's all I wanted was that go a nice family, a nice home and <v Alan Hudson>a car to get back and forth to work. <v Alan Hudson>In other words, I'm going to ride the boat like everybody else.