Little Traffic Means Too Few Customers

With friends like Ruth Galanter, the black community doesn’t need enemies.

Galanter shot down a proposal to build an Ikea store in the Crenshaw District because all those people coming to Crenshaw to spend their money would have increased traffic. But the Crenshaw district doesn’t have too much traffic. It has too little traffic, because traffic means customers for local merchants.

Galanter’s objection that Ikea is a European company and developer Alexander Haagen is a white man only hurts Crenshaw. Local people could have used that infusion of customers, whether its source was foreign or American, black, white or purple. But because Galanter turned it down, Crenshaw residents who want to shop at Ikea or Nordstrom will drive to white neighborhoods to do so.

Galanter says the project “would do nothing for the community.” Jobs and money are not nothing, as she might have found out by asking her constituents. Now she ought to explain what she proposes to do for the community, and I hope it’s not an $80,000 government study on why Crenshaw has economic problems.

LAURA JONES

Venice