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The presidential candidates and Congress, after years of looking the other way, are competing over who has the best plan to address the problems of the inner city, responding to the polls that, at least for the moment, are suggesting Americans want something done. A message has been sent to the nation from Los Angeles, California, message that has raised our national consciousness and to which we must respond. It has been said that if people want to see their future, look to Los Angeles. First, in this nation so rich in resources, millions continue to live in grinding, depriving, demeaning poverty. The situation has steadily deteriorated in the past decade as the gap between the rich and the poor has grown to be greater than at any time since statistics were kept. The second great fault in American society is the inequality of opportunity and the fact that millions of Americans are excluded from the opportunity structure. When people are locked out of the opportunity structure and thus unable to realize universally held aspirations, they may adapt to this societal double bind in four ways.