Street Scenes: Leimert Park

The LA Times has an innovative new series of multi-media on different barrios, neighborhoods, and regions of LA. The project is called street scenes and so far has chronicled roughly nine different parts of the greater LA region. One that I am particularly fond of is Leimert Park, a historically Black neighborhood located at the cross road of mid-city and South LA. Other neighborhoods include the sometimes forgotten Temple City, the infamous East LA (now undergoing another attempt at cityhood), and the King of the I.E., Riverside.

LA Riots Remembered…

I remember the riots. I remember the fear that they would spread to East Los.                                                             Being picked up in my family’s boxy white toyota van.                                                                                                   Getting rushed out of Farmdale Elementary School.                                                                                                       Jumping into the van and driving away.                                                                                                                            I don’t remember where, but I remember when.   SD ‘09

 

 

Photo: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

LA Riots Remebered

 

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

ARC Compact for Racial Justice Phone Forums

I want to put a plug in for the Applied Research Center’s (ARC) new inclusive policy program, the compact for racial justice phone forums. ARC is a non-profit, non-partisan research and policy organization that critically analyzes the intersections of policy, the media, and race through advocacy, reports, and publishing the monthly magazine ‘Color Lines’. 

The phone forums provide participants an opportunity to dialogue about omnipresent policy issues with peers and social justice advocates. Specifically, justice advocates on the Compact Forum calls will track the first 100 days of the Obama administration and shape plans to influence policy affecting racial justice. In addition to engaging featured speakers, participants will share progress on local, state and national efforts, and join a call to action on key issues. Interested individuals must RSVP by the Monday before the call.

To register for the phone forums, please click here. To learn more about ARC, visit: www.arc.org.

Skid Row

Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’? The scenes of skid row, testimonials of dumping patients into the streets, and images of taxi cabs. I guess that is where our insanely expensive health care fees originate from, taxi cabs in LA. From the westside sky rises to the streets of San Pedro and 10th. Anyways, flash forward to the present and the illegal dumping practices employed by College Hospital are getting their time in judicial Review. 

 The LA Times writes, “Two suburban psychiatric hospitals sent more than 150 patients to fend for themselves on skid row over a two-year period, according to prosecutors who announced today the largest settlement yet in L.A.’s campaign against patient dumping.” Read more about the situation here.

Recap

After several months of hiatus, infinite days of observation, and roaming the streets of Los Angeles, I am ready to get back. A few critical things that I want to reflect on:

1. The mayor was re-elected at a margin that questions his ability to truly carry the gubernatorial race. (Side Note: I hope Newsom does not have the same fate).

2. MRT persevered and conquered the old LAPD chief, in a win that will implicate LA County for much of the next decade (Note: Hello MLK, when will you be operating, open, and sustainable?)

3. Secretary Solis has been able to deconstruct the traditional norms of the President’s cabinet to head one of the preeminent agencies in the country, the Department of Labor. It’s about time this department has a voice from within instead of being facilitated by power structures advocating for the opposition. 

4. California is in a budget deficit. Enough said. 

5. The UC and CSU systems are facing large scale cutbacks that are directly interfering with their ability to represent the demographic changes of California in their student body. If things continue on this path, both institutions, but mostly the UC system will exhibit a large degree of homogeneity in terms of class and racial background. The time to make changes are now, unless we want to time travel back to Kent State and walk on the decades-old path of white privilege in access and representation. 

6. Finally, the MTA in Los Angeles continues to be a source of great pride and inspiration for my thoughts and observations. The situations, faces, and events that transgress on the bus are unmatched anywhere in the city. I hope to elaborate more with fluid stories and character development. True knowledge. 

 

-sd

Rekindling the Realities of Education

My entire educational experience has been defined by mitigating the differing standards of four different public school districts in Los Angeles County and two University of California institutes of higher learning as a woman of color without the safety of a normative American family foundation. This reality has been equipped with challenges that were deeply rooted in my own feelings of inferiority amidst male dominated classrooms and a lack of commonalities as one of the few non-white/Asian/wealthy students. My saving graces were two highly educated and politically vocal parents, who despite growing up working full-time as adolescents in the fields or on construction sites, made education a priority for their entire families. With this foundation, I navigated public school in total disparate communities to only rekindle issues of sexism, racism, and wealth in the UC system in academic disciplines that were not inclusive of my experience. My success in overcoming these challenges was being deeply rooted in my cultural identity and history as a student organizer that developed curriculum, facilitated retention programs, and engaged in timely research on topics that reaffirmed my scholarship. However, as a graduate student I am again revisiting feelings of cultural hardship as I lack real avenues to a supportive community of scholars and mentors invested in the success of students from non-traditional backgrounds.

 

More to come… 

And though it seems heaven sent

By Michael Eric Dyson 

 ”And though it seems heaven sent / We ain’t ready to have a black president.” Today, little more than a decade after Tupac’s lament, we are ready for a black president, and the grief of dreams deferred is lifted. Contrary to many critics, his election does not, nor should it, herald a post-racial future. But it may help usher in a post-racist future. A post-racial outlook seeks to delete crucial strands of our identity; a post-racist outlook seeks to delete oppression that rests on hate and fear, that exploits cultural and political vulnerability. Obama need not cease being a black man to effectively govern, but America must overcome its brutal racist past to permit his gifts, and those of other blacks, to shine.

Earthquake

It has been a long time coming. An estimated 5.7 earthquake has just hit LA at approximately 11:40 am. I hope everyone is okay and safe.

Urgent: SAVE Self Help Graphics & Art

LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY DEMANDS ANSWERS

Community is Outraged that Catholic Archdiocese Secretly Sells Self Help Graphics & Arts Historic Building

Los Angeles, July 11, 2008 — Over the last 24 hours elected officials, community leaders, artists and residents throughout Los Angeles expressed their outrage that the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese secretly sold the mosaic building that is home to Self Help Graphics & Art. After its founding by Catholic nun Sister Karen Boccalero more than 35 years ago, non-profit organization Self Help Graphics & Arts was notified that the Catholic Archdiocese sold the building to a private real estate and investment company. The organization had no knowledge of the sale or pending sale. Community leaders including Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina made it abundantly clear that the Archdiocese must explain its actions.

We need answers, Supervisor Molina said. “The Archdiocese’s blatant disrespect for the community is unacceptable. I commit to working with Self Help Graphics & Art to mobilize my elected official colleagues and other community leaders to demand that the archdiocese tell us why they mishandled this situation and how they plan to correct it.”

As long as the organization continued to fulfill the mission of advancing Chicano and Latino art and developing local and emerging artists, the Sisters of St. Francis, Mount Alverno agreed to allow Self Help Graphics & Art to use the building. With record-breaking print fairs, community festivals such as its iconic Dia de los Muertos celebration which draws thousands of attendees and artists both emerging and veteran flocking to the organization as a place to cultivate their art, Self Help has been undergoing a renaissance. Last Fall Self Help board members were told that the building was not on the list of sites to be sold as part of the Archdiocese’s attempt to raise funds to pay the settlement to individuals who successfully sued the church for sexual abuse.

A spokesperson for the Sisters of St. Francis alleges that Self Help Graphics & Art failed to secure a grant to purchase the building, leading the sisters to transfer title to the archdiocese. They also allege that the organization was struggling financially. 

“It is preposterous to believe that one attempt at a grant a year ago should signal the Sisters and Archdiocese to move forward with a sale with no notice whatsoever,” said Self Help board of directors president Armando Duron. “Common human decency would have been to give us a deadline for purchase.” 

After closing its doors for three months in 2005, Self Help has experienced resurgence with the help of an untold number of volunteers and the support of the community at large. With no federal or state subsidies or major private grants, the organization has thrived in its array of programs and services to the community. Sales for prints from some of the nation’s leading Latino artists and up-and-coming artists have been booming. The organization is considered by scholars and artists as one of the birthplaces of Chicano art.

“For nearly 40 years, Self-Help Graphics has been one of the major community-based arts centers serving Los Angeles. It has earned international recognition for its contributions to the graphic arts and for being a model of community-based art making and art-based community making. In the last three years, Self Help has reinvented itself as a self-sustaining organization, and it has shown the continued vitality and relevance of its mission by reaching new generations of artists and community members through innovative programs and cutting edge artistic production,” said Chon Noriega, professor and director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA.

The terms of the sale from the new owner allow Self Help to remain in the building rent free until December 31, 2008.

Stephen Saiz, Self Help board vice president said the organization will be working with the community, elected officials, foundations, fellow arts institutions and other community leaders to determine the future for the organization.

“We have had a relationship with the Church for almost 40 years and expected them to value that relationship and more importantly, the service we provide to the community” Saiz said. “We are not going to allow their needs for funds to pay off their debts stop us from that service.”

Self Help Graphics & Art is a nationally recognized center for Chicano and Latino arts that develops and nurtures artists and printmaking. Self Help Graphics & Art seeks to advance Chicano and Latino art broadly through programming, exhibitions and outreach to diverse audiences in East Los Angeles and beyond. Self Help Graphics & Art seeks to identify young and emerging artists from the community in all aspects of its activities.