First, a definition:

Ethnic cleansing is any governmental or social activity that results in fewer persons of an ethnicity in an area, occupation, university, or neighborhood. When ordinary European Americans are being ethnically cleansed or pushed away from an area, occupation, university, or neighborhood, it is usually demeaningly labeled "white flight," even though there is no evidence that European Americans wanted to depart.

It is the defamers' way of adding insult to the injury of being pushed out. The term "white flight" is a wonderful example of "blaming the victim." The accusations are usually centered around claims of cowardice on the part of those departing, or around claims of racism. How being pushed out of an area is evidence of cowardice or racism on the part of the victims lacks all logic and such claims are merely agitprop in the campaign of defamation.

 Next, the story:

When George Cole moved to southeast Los Angeles County looking for factory work in the early 1970s, the mostly white and working-class area was being transformed by waves of Latino immigration.

Cole applied for an apartment and the landlady bestowed her approval."It will be nice to rent to a good white boy," he recalled her saying. "We've been doing a good job of keeping the blacks out, but the Mexicans are like cockroaches. They're hard to keep out."

Soon, he got a job — $3 an hour at a plastic bag factory. He was the only white worker in a plant full of illegal immigrants. He got the job by tricking the white owner into thinking he spoke fluent Spanish by reciting lines he remembered from high school Spanish. He received 50 cents an hour more than the immigrants on the line.

Back then, Cole only knew enough Spanish to trick a gullible businessman. But from the moment he began working alongside the immigrants, he began to learn — and never looked back. It would help forge his identity.

Over the next 35 years, his adopted town of Bell — along with surrounding cities such as Huntington Park, Bell Gardens South Gate and Maywood — were transformed from mostly white to more than 90% Latino. Most of the manufacturing plants, such as Bethlehem Steel, Firestone Tire and General Motors, disappeared.

Cole remained.

He was elected to the Bell City Council when it was still all-white and now is its only white member.

Cole has emerged as a leader for southeast Los Angeles County. He took a prominent role in making sure overwhelmingly Latino cities served by the Los Angeles Unified School District have a voice in Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's takeover plan, which a judge threw out last month.

"George Cole is a Latino leader," Supervisor Gloria Molina said, "even though he is not Latino."

Consider a community meeting last year where state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) introduced her Democratic successor, Ron Calderon.

Calderon spoke in English. Escutia translated. A few people got annoyed.

South Gate Councilman Henry Gonzalez said one woman in the crowd referred to Cole and cracked, "Here's a white man who can speak better than you can!"

Cole, 56, is not embracing another culture as much as trying to fit into the world around him. It was a lesson he learned from his father, a Presbyterian preacher and activist who ministered to Latino farmworkers in Arizona in the late 1950s.

"My father taught me to embrace change," Cole said. "A lot of people were afraid of the changes that were taking place, but I just accepted it."

After working at the bag factory, Cole landed a job at Bethlehem Steel in Vernon, eventually earning $16 an hour.

He became active in the union. Over time, more Latinos joined him on the lines. He traveled to Mexico City for a conference on immigrant workers rights. His Spanish continued to improve.

"He stood out as a big guy, this gabacho (an ethnic slur Mexicans use against Whites - Ed) speaking Spanish," said Rudy Montalvo, a longtime friend from his union days. "Our people are downright brutal and cruel if they see a pocho [American-born Latino] take Spanish and tear it up," Montalvo said. "But you turn it around, and someone like George starts talking Spanish and they embrace you."

He went to work for the Oldtimers Foundation, a social service organization for retired factory workers now located at a former Elks Lodge in Huntington Park.

Soon, the industrial plants around southeast Los Angeles County were closing down and white flight was beginning (Mexican author mocks the demographic hegemony and ethnic cleansing as 'white flight' - Ed).

In 1982, Cole was laid off from Bethlehem Steel. But he still had his job with the Oldtimers.

The next few years amounted to a demographic earthquake in southeast L.A. County as Latino immigrants — legal and illegal — flowed in.

When Cole and his wife, Judy, moved to Bell, one of his biggest worries was that his children wouldn't have anyone to play with because "there were hardly any children in the streets. Most of the neighbors were older, white," he said. Soon, his children had more than enough playmates as streets filled with Latino children.

Cole said he was sad to see longtime white neighbors go, but that his family never shared the fear of isolation that drove many of them out. And they came to embrace the new families who replaced them.

Still, the community became poorer. (Why?  I thought home-ownership made one richer, especially in southern California - Ed) Gang violence increased dramatically.(Again, why? - Ed) One of the Coles' neighbors was shot in the stomach during a drive-by in nearby Maywood.

One of the Coles' sons, Jason, played on Garfield High School's varsity football team. It was a tradition that the varsity players shaved their heads.

"We told the coach we were not going to allow our kid to shave his head," Judy Cole said. "We didn't want him to be in a situation where he could be construed as a gangbanger."

Her sons rarely complained about being treated differently, even though they were among the only white students at the East Los Angeles school.

The Coles adapted, but transition was more difficult for others in the community.

"Some older folks clearly didn't like what was happening in the community. They didn't like all the people talking Spanish," Cole said. There were letters in local newspapers "about how this is America and these people need to learn English."

Oscar Hernandez, a councilman who has lived in Bell for nearly 40 years, said that in the early 1980s he bought a mini-market at Bear and Bell avenues from a white owner. Many white customers immediately stopped shopping there, he said.

"I had to put up a sign that said, 'I Speak English and Spanish,' " Hernandez recalled. "It was crazy in those days. There was a lot of racism (typical grievance mongering - Ed), even among the politicians."

At the time, Bell was in the grips of a casino corruption scandal that would lead to indictments against a former mayor and a city manager. Friends who knew Cole for his union and nonprofit work suggested that he should run for office.

Cole said the tipping point was when he took his two boys to a park only to see part of the playground area and the park being razed to make room for an office for city staff.

"It told me the priorities of the city were all screwed up," Cole said.

Cole used Spanish campaign literature, a first for the city, when he joined the all-white council in 1984.

Hernandez campaigned for Cole and was criticized by some friends.

"They said, 'Why are you supporting a white man? Why not support a Mexican American?' " Hernandez recalled. "I told them, 'It doesn't matter if he's a white man. He's got a Spanish heart.' "

Shortly after his election, Cole said, he went to the office of the park's director. The administrator's secretary was on the phone.

"Obviously from her side of the conversation, the other person didn't speak English, or not very well," Cole said. "She said, 'Just call back when you learn to speak English' and hung up. I was aghast." (God forbid! - Ed)

 Lastly:

Increasingly, Cole took on issues that resonated with the growing Latino community. Cole began to host Tuesday night meetings to discuss education issues. Most of the people who attended were Latino immigrants. Cole helped ferry local parents to school board meetings. He complained that schools in the southeast got short shrift in part because they were poor and Latino.

"My parents involved in schools here in Maywood know more about George Cole than people in their own city," Maywood Councilman Felipe Aguirre said. "They go to the meetings he's been having for years and years."

For many Latinos new to town, he became a kind of fixer.

"He's the guy who delivers, whether it's a low-flush toilet to a home or getting someone's kid some help," said J. Arnoldo Beltran, an attorney long involved in the Latino community.

By the early 1990s, the old white power structure in the southeast L.A. County cities had crumbled. (Mexican author mocks the collapse of the white demographic after ethnic cleansing that used to support white politicians - Ed)

In 1991 four white City Council members in Bell Gardens were recalled in a campaign fueled by their perceived indifference toward the dominant Latino community. Over the next few years, Latinos swept into office in neighboring cities.

In Bell, some Latino activists targeted Cole for defeat, arguing that Latinos should be represented by fellow Latinos. There were unsuccessful attempts to run all-Latino slates of candidates, excluding Cole.

Once, a community activist — a former fellow steelworker — pulled Cole aside and asked for his help in filling more City Council seats with Latinos.

"I told him it was not about simply replacing white faces with brown faces. It was about replacing bad leaders with good leaders," Cole said. (How did that work out for you?  These communities are largely war zones now- Ed)

Time and again, Cole sailed to reelection.

In recent months, Cole helped organize the elected officials from the surrounding cities into delivering a unified message, successfully demanding that they, along with Los Angeles' mayor, have a role in the school district's operations.

UC Irvine history professor Mike Davis, who has written extensively about Los Angeles' changing demographics, said he's not surprised to find Cole in the middle of the issue. Because Cole has been an elected official for more than 20 years, he actually served as a mentor to many current council members. His union experience also gives him credibility.

"He never acted primarily as a white politician," Davis said.

Some friends believe he may have embraced Latino culture too much — or at least the cuisine. After Cole had a heart attack last winter, Felisa Martinez, 54, a patron of the Oldtimers Foundation, told him he had to lay off the burritos and tacos he loved. Instead, she brought him dish after dish of diced cactus salads.

"We used to tell him, 'One day, Mexican food is going to kill you,' " she said.

Today, Cole is one of only two white council members in the Latino cities of southeast L.A. County. The other is Bill DeWitt, who kept his lumber company in South Gate as other businesses left.

Cole has his detractors. Some opponents call him a wannabe political boss who uses his long service on the council, in addition to the Oldtimers Foundation, to bully foes. But even those critics, many of whom declined to speak on the record, say Cole is popular.

"We liked this gordito because he did a lot of good things," said Lynwood community activist Adolph Lopez, using an affectionate Spanish word for a chubby man. "He's not perfect, he's not a saint, but he's on our side."

"Living here, sometimes I have to be sensitive to the fact that I'm white," Cole said. "When I meet someone for the first time, if I greet them in Spanish, sometimes they get angry at me. They say, 'I speak English!' "

But Cole said he feels less comfortable when he's away from home. "When I'm in a restaurant out in Rancho Cucamonga and everyone around me is white," he said, "then I feel different. It feels funny."

  Latinos were a minority in southeast L.A. County cities when Bell Councilman George Cole moved into the area in the early 1970s.

	1970	1970 % of	2006 %
City	Population	Spanish origin*	Latino
Bell	21,984	22.3	91.8%
Bell Gardens	29,311	21.7	94.3
Huntington Park	33,758	35.9	96.2
Maywood	16,990	34.9	96.9
South Gate	57,008	17.3	93.8

*People with Spanish surnames or whose first language is Spanish

Sources: Census Bureau, 1970 census; Claritas, 2006 estimates.

 Is the rest of the nation headed this way?