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The Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC) founded in 1965 is a community service organization for African American in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angles. Watts is famous for its landmark, Watts Tower, and for the 1965 Watts Riots. The people of the Watt community reacted to the police discrimination pressure with riots activity both in 1965 and in 1992. The founder Ted Watkins, of the WLCAC was involved in both riots activity.

The Watts Labor Community Action Committee

Today the WLCAC is one of the organizations that has prevailed in continuing to help this community. There are several programs within this organization such as child care for low and medium income families with children from three month old to five year old children. This child care was provided five days a week and up to twelve hours a day. Transportation was provided through busses that were equipped with wheelchair lifts to allow for the physically handicapped and seniors have easier door-to-door transportation. They provided rides to shopping centers, healthcare facilities, and senior centers for a small fee. Along with transportation services for seniors there was also a Senior citizen program. This program provided them with educational programs, health screenings, recreational activities, field trips, meals and day care. Employment training was for the youth as well as adults. They helped with skills in banking, retail sales, computer operations, bookkeeping, security services and clerical fields. There was also an assistance program to help the homeless. Individuals and families who were homeless were given groceries, motel vouchers, and permanent housing in some cases. Another program that was provided was specifically for mental health. . The WLCAC understands that some individuals that are released from mental institutions are not ready to live on their own and therefore, WLCAC operates two different living facilities that are semi-independent that helps them become independent. The Ultra Low-Flush Toilet Distribution Program is another program that enabled poor people with better infrastructure and provided jobs in the area. These programs were implemented to emphasize the importance of programs that address dire issues in the community that are not well addressed by the government. It has also functioned as a facilitator and initiation point for several struggling youth and adults trying to deal with the burden of residing in Watts.

He build the WLCAC to improve the WLCAC to improve the quality of life in Watts and he organized the teenagers to clean up empty lots, plant flowers and grass and turn them into small gardens and the one of which remained in his name.

He worked with the local and national organizations to build the Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center to provide medicine service. Today the WLCAC is a non-profit community based on providing human social services and dedicated to improve the quality of life for South Central Los Angeles residents include the homeless families by providing them a place to sleep, food to eat, money to earn and love to grow.

At the WLCAC cultural center there is a picture gallery, a theatre, and classrooms for vocational classes including glass blowing and for the training of restaurant workers and chefs. During the 1992 Watts riots the original building created by Ted Watkins was, according to the WLCAC, "targeted and burned to the ground."

Today

One of the controversies in the Watts Labor Community Action Committee came about in June 2003, when the Los Angeles Times published an article about the conditions that the WLCAC’s housing program had. The houses managed by the committee did not meet the sanitation and safety standards as determined by city inspectors. One of the homes was in such bad conditions that it was not approved to be a housing complex. However, there have been other projects that have stood out as positive contributions to like the McCoy Villa that is the first and only housing complex that was specifically for homeless families. South Los Angeles also began to cultivate its first farm, known as Mudtown Farms, in an attempt to create environmental and economic sustainability. The WLCAC also created the first institute of public policy in Watts that is dedicated to studying the planning and development of is Central Avenue Corridor along with the area around it. The first museum in South Los Angeles that has a permanent civil rights exhibition was also a product of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. Another one of WLCAC’s most recent projects has been a playground. They hope to encourage youth to practice healthier physical activities in an environment that is controlled for their health and social development. As of right now, a basketball court is what is available to the youth until the playground is completed. .

Today, Tim Watkins is President and CEO of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. His vision for the committee is similar, but he has also added other aspects that he thinks are important. For instance, he wants WLCAC to grow as also a cultural institution. Tim Watkins is also looking into innovating ways that can put a solution to poverty and neglect in this community. As for the future, Watkins wants the community of Watts, and South Los Angeles, to begin to reclaim the community as a whole, instead of as individuals, as a catalyst to the healing process. He believes that as a community it will accelerate the process and make it easier on individuals so they do not feel alone. There is also the ongoing project of Mudtown Farms that Watts residents are excited about. The project is looking to have fitness equipment, an orchard, learning facilities, a community center and more. The next part of the of the project is to include a Roadside Produce Stand, Cannery, and General Store in the two and a half acre farm. The vision is that Mudtown Farms become a community center that is self-sustaining that has and provides community gardening, job training, entrepreneurship for stakeholders, farming, and education for people of all ages and backgrounds. This Farm and its services have been designed by the community and for the community it is in and hopes to serve as a model of economic, physical and spiritual growth and health for other urban communities. .

Ted Watkins made this community-based non-profit organization into one of the most successful and largest organizations in the United States. The WLCAC even has a field office in London, England. Its reputation is international due to the help they have provided the community of South Los Angeles, but in specific the Watts neighborhood.

The funding that makes the WLCAC still function today are grants from the federal, state, and local governments, private donations and other grants. The WLCAC however, also recycles and generates money in the community.