Posted: June 30th, 2005

L.A. River Community Group Award

On May 13, 2005, the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles City Council Ad Hoc Committee on the Los Angeles River awarded the L.A. River Community Group Advocate award to the Center “for extensively publishing research and findings on urban parks and their benefits for the River and for your contribution to the greening of the River through your work on the Cornfields and Taylor Yard state parks.” The Board of Public Works commended the Center for its “commitment, dedication, and outstanding services to the people of Los Angeles.”

The Center is spearheading the creation of a Heritage Parkscape connecting parks and other historical, educational, and environmental links along the River. With the creation of the Los Angeles State Historic Park and El Río de Los Angeles State Park, and $8.5 million in state and federal funding to help green the River, people will be able to play, walk, run, and relax along the River. The greening of the Los Angeles River was an integral part of the 1930 Olmsted Vision for Los Angeles. Today the Center is working with others to make that vision a reality.

LAUSD Withdraws Proposal to Pay to Play at Public Schools

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has withdrawn a proposal to charge non-profit youth groups to use public school facilities, including playing fields and classrooms. LAUSD may reconsider the proposal in December 2005 or January 2006, but before then LAUSD will seek funding from alternative sources.

The Center is committed to working with LAUSD to find funding alternatives to keep school facilities free for non-profit organizations that serve at-risk youth. Children of color and low-income children disproportionately live in neighborhoods without places to play in school yards, parks, or their own homes. Fully 87% of LAUSD children are not physically fit. Physical education classes are bloated with up to 75 students, and physical education is not required after the tenth grade. LAUSD staff proposed a $78 fee plus $28 to $42 per hour to use playing fields. Grassroots groups are providing an invaluable service to keep our children and communities healthy and safe. These groups simply do not have the resources to pay to play on their own public school yards. The Center, Anahuak Youth Soccer Association, the California PTSA, Girl Scouts, American Lung Association, and many others opposed the proposal. The School Bond Citizens’ Oversight Committee has called for the release of information for the public to understand the impact of the proposal on all communities.

Artist Judy Baca and Baldwin Park Residents Defend First Amendment Freedoms Against Terrorist Tactics

Judy Baca writes:

“SPARC’s mural in three movements, ‘You are my other me,’ (pictured above) is truly a case of art begetting art. Many thanks to all the volunteers who helped conceive, construct, and perform the mural, which premiered on Saturday at the ‘Reconquest of Justice, Peace, Liberty and Love.’

“- The first of three movements, ‘Speaking Back,’ ridicules the anti-humanitarian ideas of SOS with quotes submitted from supporters to our website.

“- In the second movement, ‘Turn Our Back,’ we illustrate America turning its’ back on hate-groups and hate-speech, with the decisive show of disrespect coming from silhouettes labeled according to the models’ ancestry: Native-American, Mexican-Irish-American, Cuban-American, etc.

“- Finally, in the third movement, ‘Reconciliation,’ we offer Spanish and English translations of a Mayan concept-word, ‘in lak ech’ that means ‘you are my other me,’ and ‘tu éres mi otro yo,’ to signify that whether we like it or not, we all share a common humanity, and that even the most vitriolic hatred doesn’t change our connection to others who think differently.”

On June 25, 2005, over 600 peaceful demonstrators sang, danced, chanted and beat drums to urge tolerance and support our client artist Judith F. Baca, Founder and Artistic Director of SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center). The City of Baldwin Park presented Ms. Baca with a proclamation to keep the Danzas Indigenas monument intact and declared the matter closed. Sixty members of the anti-immigrant hate group Save Our State — Sink Our State would be more appropriate — staged another unsuccessful protest against the Danzas Indigenas public art monument in Baldwin Park and Ms. Baca. On May 14, 2005, twelve to twenty outside agitators from the hate group traveled to Baldwin Park where they encountered over 1,000 supporters of the monument. The hate group has charged that the twelve-year old monument to multicultural understanding is racially charged, seditious and anti-American.

Ms. Baca facilitated a community process with members of the Baldwin Park community that ultimately created the public art project to reflect the dreams, past, and future of Baldwin Park.

The hate group using terrorist tactics threatens to take action if two statements are not removed. The group’s diatribe against one quote reflects its own ignorance: “it was better before they came.” The group berates that statement because it laments the presence of whites in America, but in fact the quote is from a non-Hispanic white resident who was speaking about Mexican immigrants arriving after World War II, according to Ms. Baca. The ambiguity of the statement as it appears on the monument is the point: about which they is the anonymous voice speaking?

On the front of the monument representing the past is a quote from the Chicana author Gloria Andzuldua, “this land was Mexican once, was Indian always, and is, and will be again.” The quote reflects the fact the monument is one mile from Mission San Gabriel, and descendents of the native Tongva/Gabrielinos still live in the region, making the quote particularly relevant to the increasing indigenous population. The reference is to the land being Native American, and does not advocate a return to Mexico, contrary to the ignorant ravings of the hate group, which dismisses the author as a “dead lesbian.”

Baldwin Park Councilman Bill Van Cleave stated that “there is no race problem in Baldwin Park,” but that the Ventura County based hate group “was bringing one.” The group “threatened my life and told me they were going to bury me in brown soil,” according to Councilman Van Cleave, the only non-Hispanic White on the council. All members of the council have received death threats. The hate group’s web site is filled with violent images of a man shooting at the viewer, people used as target practice, and people beaten and bloodied.

The Center will continue to represent Ms. Baca and SPARC so that artists, public officials, and community members will not be left to face death threats and attacks on their well being because of a work of public art that was created in a public process, and approved by an art committee in the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Save the Zanja Madre at the Los Angeles State Historic Park

When the Zanja Madre or “Mother Trench” that runs through the site of the Los Angeles State Historic Park (the Cornfield) was unearthed and threatened with destruction in March 2005 as a result of construction by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the California Department of Parks and Recreation immediately asked the Center for Law in the Public Interest to help save the Zanja. Working with Councilmember Ed Reyes, the Los Angeles Conservancy, and documents we obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and the Public Records Act, the Center negotiated with MTA to preserve the Zanja that first brought water from the Los Angeles River to El Pueblo de Los Angeles from 1781 to 1913. We continue to work together to determine the optimal way to preserve, interpret, and celebrate this historical icon.

MTA archeologists are preparing a report to determine how best to accomplish these goals. The MTA’s letter to the Center states that the Zanja will be accessible for public viewing, an archeologist will be on site for the duration of any further construction, and MTA will work with stakeholders to determine the best way to preserve the Zanja.

The Center will continue to work with State Parks and Recreation, MTA, public officials, and other stakeholders to serve the needs of the community as defined by the community, and to celebrate the struggles, hopes, and triumphs of generations of Angelenos who entered Los Angeles through the Cornfield and El Pueblo. The Center saved Watts Towers, an icon of public art, and is committed to public art in the public park at the Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Voter Registration and Get Out The Vote with Anahuak Youth Soccer Association

Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu with the children
of the Anahuak Youth Soccer Association, its president and
founder Raul Macías, and Robert García, Executive Director of the Center.

The Center worked with Raul Macías and the Anahuak Youth Soccer Association to educate and register voters and conduct Get Out The Vote drives for the May 17, 2005, Los Angeles election.

What do soccer, voter registration, and democracy have in common? Soccer and voter registration are organizing tools to bring people together to create the kind of community where we want to live and raise children. New Latino immigrants in the United States do not organize politically. They first organize soccer leagues, as documented by Juan Gonzalez in his book Harvest of Empire. Using skills learned in bringing people together, they then go on to organize politically. This is what we are doing with Raul Macías and the families and friends of the 1,500 children in the Anahuak Youth Soccer Association. Anahuak builds athletics, academics, and leadership in inner city youth through green fields and soccer teams. We are diversifying democracy from the ground up to seek equal justice and livability for all. We are making real improvements in people’s lives, showing people a sense of their own power, and altering the relations of power.

This voter registration and get out the vote drive extends the Center’s work with Election Protection in the fall of 2004.

Free the Beach! Public Access, Equal Justice and the California Coast

The California beach is the latest front in the struggle for equal justice. Wealthy beachfront enclaves like Malibu along California’s coast seek to cut off the right of the people to reach the beach. Property owners in Broad Beach in Malibu took the utterly astonishing step of bringing in heavy equipment to scoop up tons of public beach and pile it onto their property in early June 2005. For years before that, phony “private beach” signs have been posted on Broad Beach, and private security guards on all-terrain vehicles have harassed the public on public beaches. The California Coastal Commission has ordered property owners to stop the bulldozing, which cuts off public access. David Geffen and the City of Malibu filed suit to cut off public access to the beach several years ago. The pathway to the beach next to his house was finally opened in May 2005 after Geffen dropped his complaint, which had been dismissed six times. The City of Malibu dropped out earlier. While eighty percent of the 34 million people of California live within an hour of the coast, low-income communities of color are disproportionately denied the benefits of access to the beach.

The Center is spearheading a strategic campaign to preserve public access to the beach, and to prevent any further destruction of the beach.

Our Policy Report Free the Beach! is the most comprehensive published account of coastal access issues in California. A chapter featuring our work on beach access, We Shall Be Moved: Community Activism As a Tool for Reversing the Rollback, is forthcoming in a book on the civil rights movement edited by Denise C. Morgan et al., Awakening from the Dream: Pursuing Civil Rights in a Conservative Era (forthcoming 2005). The Center and others filed an amicus brief on behalf of MALDEF, Latino Urban Forum, and 26 other organizations in the California Supreme Court in Marine Forests v. California Coastal Commission, which upheld the constitutionality of the Coastal Commission in June 2005.

End of Spring 2005 Center Newsletter