Visions of a Lush, Green South L.A.

My initial interest in trees was selfish. I’d read that they boosted property value, and Trees for a Green LA was giving them free to homeowners who agreed to take a mandatory class in tree planting and care. It was only an hour. A free boost in property value was worth that.

The workshop was held in the Westchester Community Center and taught by a handsome, longhaired Latino in his late 20s. The passion and pride with which this young man taught us the benefits of trees moved me. Erudite and eloquent, he described his immigrant grandfather, a gardener, as someone who though not formally educated had great respect for the Earth and had become an arborist. As he spoke of the beauty of planting a young tree, nurturing it to maturity, basking in its shade, purified air and divine loveliness, it was as if a new spirit took root inside me.

He showed us images of tree-lined streets in Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Bel-Air and explained that one of the hallmarks of wealthy areas was an abundance of green space. Low-income areas, on the other hand, have little respite from concrete. Greening a community, he suggested, was a path to revitalization. Tree-lined areas attract businesses and home buyers; they enhance communities and improve quality of life.

I left the workshop a convert. Soon known as the Tree Lady of my South Los Angeles neighborhood, I passed out fliers promoting Trees for a Green LA, and I encouraged others to plant away. My neighbors, mostly retired, were skeptical. They cautioned about the damage trees would cause to my plumbing.

Zora, diminutive and in her late 70s, shook her finger at me. "Be careful what you plant in front of your house. Those roots gon’ grow up your toilet and scratch you on the butt." Thurman, also retired, marched out frowning as my spouse dug the hole for our new bottle brush tree. "That red mess gonna end up on my lawn?" he asked, already certain of the answer. The boys down the street laughed at the new trees and called them twigs. But as they began to flourish, people complimented them. A neighbor on the next block took the class and got a tree, and one of her neighbors across the street did the same.

Greening the street remained a battle, though. At one of our block-club meetings, a neighbor who had elegant, mature trees on her parkway asked for help finding out how to have them cut down. The roots were cracking her driveway. Another neighbor griped about how the trees attracted birds that defecated on her car.

In 2007, I managed to get nine trees planted on either side of my block. Today, three of those trees are dead, and one is dying. It pains me, but five of them are still thriving. That’s five more than we had. I try to look on the bright side, otherwise I’d wither and die myself.

A negative attitude toward trees is not uncommon in South L.A. And to be fair, most of the issues my neighbors warned me about were true. But I still love trees. I still believe my community would thrive more if we had more of them. And I’m not alone. There are people here who recognize the benefits and who want the trees, but it’s such a struggle to enlighten and move the nonbelievers that sometimes we want to give up, or at least take a break.

For two years I tried to get our local Ralphs to plant trees on the sidewalk in front of the store. I offered to work with a nonprofit that would cut the concrete, plant and provide the trees for free. All the store would have to do was water them. But the director of store operations declined. The store refused to take responsibility for watering the trees. This seems unjust, considering that the Westside Ralphs markets I drive past all seem to have irrigation systems. I did a survey of all the Ralphs within a 10-mile radius of ours, and the only other store I could find with no green space was also in South L.A.

I keep at it, though, despite the odds of victory seeming slim, because I love South L.A. I love the people here, and I envision a lush and beautiful community where trees and people can flourish.

Toni Ann Johnson is the Humanitas Prize-winning screenwriter of the films "Crown Heights" and "Ruby Bridges." She is a neighborhood council board member in Southwest Los Angeles.

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Coaches as Teachers?

In my travels around the country, a phenomenon that never fails to impress me is the athletic excellence maintained by some of the most challenged schools in some of the most difficult urban areas.  I immediately remember the varsity football team at East St. Louis Senior High School when Bob Shannon coached it to SIX Illinois state championships at the highest level of competition.  I need not describe the innumerable problems that beset East St. Louis, Illinois.

The following is a reaction to what I have observed over the years:

Athletic Coaches Are Successful Teachers
(Let’s Use Them in the Classroom)

I can remember when very, very few African Americans played football for predominantly white colleges because of their alleged limited mental talents, lack of discipline and volatile temperaments­-to cite but a few narrow-minded views.  These prejudices increased exponentially when the fitness of an African American to play quarterback was considered.  Not only did the above-mentioned bigotry apply to the evaluation of potential quarterbacks, but finding a black player capable of leading and commanding the respect of white teammates was unimaginable.  Mind you, this was the attitude of most NORTHERN colleges and universities.  The South was a world apart and advocating the inclusion of black players, at all, could provoke physical violence.
 
Back in 2006, some of us recall Vince Young’s stellar performance in the Rose Bowl in leading the University of Texas to the national championship over the University of Southern California.  Obviously, that demonstrated how “times have changed.”  Less than a week earlier Mark Price led the West Virginia Mountaineers to a Sugar Bowl victory over the Georgia Bulldogs led by D. J. Shockley.  Both quarterbacks were African Americans.  Almost a month earlier Reggie Bush of the University of Southern California won the prestigious Heisman Trophy, given annually to college football’s best player.  He, too, is an African American as have been approximately two-thirds of the winners since the first black player, Ernie Davis of Syracuse University, won it in 1961.
 
Not only have black athletes overcome formidable racial barriers during the past four decades, but the scope of their disproportionate excellence stretches from middle school through the National Football League and the National Basketball Association.  Something worthy of serious scrutiny is happening here.  What is the source(s) of this exceptional performance and concomitant motivation?  What is the methodology employed by the motivators (coaches?) that produces such phenomenal success?  We must remember that “natural athletes” are not born, that athletics are voluntary school activities and they are VERY demanding.
 
Whatever our attitudes toward athletics, we cannot deny that coaches somehow summon excellence from players who often live in some of the poorest and most chaotic neighborhoods.  I have often wondered about the feasibility of creating transitional programs to move some of these successful coaches into secondary school classrooms to teach courses beyond physical education.  They could then bring their great motivating power to academics and especially to the massive number of floundering black males.  If their “pedagogy” is too harsh for the classroom, then maybe it could be taken off school property altogether and underwritten by private funding.
 
At the prestigious private secondary schools, ALL athletic coaches teach academic courses.  Shouldn’t those of us who are concerned about the fate of young African Americans splice into the phenomenal motivating power of public school athletic coaches and steer their talents to a more expansive educational purpose?  I’ll bet that some active coaches or others wishing to leave athletics would jump at a fellowship to a transitional program at a graduate school of education.  Who knows?  Maybe the National Football League or the National Basketball Association might help to finance such programs.  It would be unfair to expect these coaches to relive the frustrations so poignantly described by Gerald Kimble, a former football coach at historically black Southern University in Louisiana: “We have done so much with so little, we are expected to do everything with nothing.”

David Evans

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