For all the folks interested in affordable housing, but then again who shouldn't be!? There's a couple of stories on affordable housing, testimonials, stats in this week's edition. Imma start living online soon enough, the rent is cheaper here anyway. Personalized addresses, saz!
Um, the link won't post, weak. ok no such thing as free rent, cut n' paste it homies.
http://sanfernandosun.com
(EDIT: since Cowboy Galactico didn't know how, I snuck and in hyperlinked it for ustedes... and here's a link to one of the specific articles he mentioned: "Housing Remains at Crisis Stage in Los Angeles County" - Nate)
Showing posts with label In the News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In the News. Show all posts
Thursday, August 16, 2007
"Southland home sales hit 12-year low"
This story highlighted a few things for me:
1) People consider low-income neighborhoods as "entry-level" homes, meaning they have no interest in settling there and starting a community.
2) The housing market is a reflection of the destabilization of the lower and middle class, who can lose all the have very quickly because of the lack of a safety net.
3) An economy based on housing speculation is unsustainable.
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Southland home sales hit 12-year low
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Even most creditworthy borrowers are feeling the crunch.
By Annette Haddad
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 15 2007
Would-be home buyers in Southern California continued to sit on the sidelines last month, driving down home sales to their slowest pace in 12 years and pushing down prices in the region's less-expensive neighborhoods, data released Tuesday showed.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-homes15aug15,1,3968915.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
NYTimes.com: "Cybermural: The Web as the Wall"
Boyle Heights makes it to the New York Times. An interesting story on the intersections of art, gentrification, changing urban landscapes and Latino urbanism.
ARTS / ART & DESIGN | August 12, 2007
Art: Cybermural: The Web as the Wall
By CAROL KINO
An online travelogue strongly suggests a new twist on the Los Angeles muralism of the 1970s...
Sunday, July 22, 2007
"No cars on Wilshire"
This story was sent to you by: lys mendez
An interesting proposal to help reduce traffic in one of the craziest thoroughfares in town.
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No cars on Wilshire
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An above-ground rail line to the ocean, along with bike lanes and a few buses, would ease L.A. traffic immeasurably.
Michael Balter
July 22 2007
Forget the "subway to the sea." It is a dramatic and radical idea to relieve traffic congestion on the Westside, but extending the Wilshire Boulevard Purple Line from its current terminus at Western Avenue to Santa Monica probably won't happen.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-modestproposal22jul22,0,7697988.story?coll=la-opinion-center
Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Another LA Times Pro-Gentrification article
The LA Times loves to make value statements. All of sudden the lives of movie people moving into Westlake are more important then the lives of the thousands of Latinos in the area! I sure many of the Central Americans who live in the neighborhood have much more interesting lives than then industry people. Many of these Central Americans lived through revolutions in their home countries and have change the urban fabric of Westlake area.
I guess as Latinos we do not matter in the LA Times.
James Rojas
Westlake: From gritty roots to the new chic
With crime down and gentrification seemingly inevitable, the Westlake/MacArthur Park area balances its history with its future.
By August Brown and Jessica Gelt
Times Staff Writers
June 7, 2007
There's a scruffy brick apartment building at the corner of 7th and South Park View streets in Westlake that hints at the history and possible future of the neighborhood. On the ground floor, a pharmacy and health clinic with signs in Spanish sit next door to an inexpensive Honduran restaurant. A few stories above, however, in his home studio in the building's renovated Presidential Suite, Matthew Cooke is filming a series of comedy sketches called "Bad Dad" for Fuel TV's upcoming variety show "Stupid Face."
Cooke, 34, a producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Deliver Us From Evil," is the kind of guy who is fond of stylish jeans and vintage French film posters. He is quick to poke fun at the cliché of a white artist moving into a working-class ethnic neighborhood for the cheap rents. "I hope to subjugate the people and build a tower of capitalism on their backs," he jokes, riffing on a journal entry from the ultimate gentrifier, Christopher Columbus. On a serious note, Cooke adds that "having different cultures collide and mix together is a good thing for everyone involved."
Indeed, Cooke is a new kind of resident in the evolving neighborhood that has alternately been one of Los Angeles' toniest ZIP codes and home to its most extensive menu of vices. As downtown becomes prohibitively expensive and nearby Koreatown becomes similarly priced out, local artists, designers and hipsterati are dipping their toes into the predominantly working-class neighborhood immediately west of the city's core. Swanky nightclubs, organic tamale co-ops and art galleries are following suit.
But for the ethnic families who made Westlake home long before it sparkled in a trust-funder's eye, gentrification is an uncertain blessing. With more than 114,000 residents that are 78% Latino, Westlake is one of the most densely populated 3.2 square miles in Los Angeles. Coupled with a median annual household income of just over $19,000, it's little wonder that the May Day immigration reform protest reached a boiling point here.
There's no debate that the neighborhood is changing. The question is who gets to decide what it will become.
A park rallies
MacArthur Park, with its gentle grass slopes and placid lake, is ground zero for Westlake's evolution. Mark Hubert, the park's senior lead officer, traces the area's comeback to intensive clean-up efforts in the park. "What's happened in the park has translated to the entire area," he says, adding that since surveillance cameras were installed in 2004, violent crime in the vicinity "is down over 50%. Families have returned and you see people walking and jogging. Back in '03 you could Google where to purchase rock cocaine and something would come up about where to buy it in MacArthur Park."
Residents such as Nick Macciocca, 23, who has lived on 7th Street for two years, have noticed a substantial change in the neighborhood. "At first it was sketchy; [my girlfriend] got attacked and I got chased by some crazy guy who was running from the cops," Macciocca says. Now upscale dwellings like the American Cement Building lofts, the Medici and the Ansonia are filling with young arty types and urban professionals demanding a new kind of commercial corridor.
Marco Li Mandri, president of New City America, is heading up the effort to create a Business Improvement District for the neighborhood. The creation of a BID downtown set the stage for changes there. Li Mandri has similar hopes for MacArthur Park. The process is a "frustrating bureaucratic shuffle," he says, but he believes "retail will follow residential development."
As Westlake's small but growing slate of new bars, eateries and cultural centers proves, the process has already begun.
Royale treatment
No barfly wandering through Westlake hopes to have a gun pointed at them. Unless, of course, they're seated on the sleek circular couch at Royale, a new lounge and attached restaurant on the corner of Wilshire and Rampart boulevards, where an oversized art photograph of a pistol-packing ruffian looms over them.
The sense of urban chic in the 6-month-old Royale is unlike anything else on its block. The lighting is amber-hued, DJSuprema spins electro and hip-hop, and a fashionable, ethnically diverse crowd chases the Stella Artois with mouthwash from a bathroom dispenser. Not to mention the adjacent restaurant's $5,000 toilet and the triple-digit Kobe surf-and-turf.
"People said there's not a place like this unless you go to downtown, " said Daniel Sevilla, a bartender in Royale's lounge. "The residents are really happy to have us."
Like the Standard's rooftop lounge downtown, Royale is testing the neighborhood's appetite for a relatively pricey new style of nightlife. But if the somewhat slow crowds are any sign, there's a chance they may be a bit early.
A block east of Royale is La Fonda de los Camperos, a cavernous Mexican eatery open since 1969 that hosts nightly performances by the Grammy-nominated mariachi band Los Camperos. The heavily local and Latino audience whistles and hollers at the seven-piece group from plush booths on the ground floor and in the cozy balcony. A dancing couple whirls on stage to perform folklorico stand-bys in colorful costumes.
UCLA student Julian Sakai, 32, was there on a Thursday with friends from an ethnomusicology class. "My father's Japanese and my mother's Mexican," Sakai said. "They met in an English as a second language class and they came here when they were dating."
Blue Velvet, a dashing new poolside restaurant/bar seemingly ripped from the pages of "Less Than Zero," is just west of the Harbor Freeway, technically part of Westlake. Like the nearby supper club Tatou (see review, Page 16), a bartender and hostess preferred to ally it with downtown's renaissance, proving there's still location anxiety among the newcomers. Meanwhile, the Silver Platter, a deliciously shady dive at Rampart Boulevard and 7th has no such qualms and could become Westlake's version of Silver Lake's Cha Cha Lounge as the transvestite hangout-turned-Fader magazine contributors' saloon of choice.
Artistic visions
Nightlife isn't all that's buzzing in the neighborhood. A new artistic culture is gaining prominence in the form of the Hayworth Theatre and a little-gallery-that-could, RampART.
For the last year and a half the Hayworth, housed in a 1926 Stiles O. Clements building, has hosted live productions on three stages. Their current main-stage show, a comedy cobbled together from various Shakespeare scripts, is called "Stories of the Night Told Over." On Saturday, Circus Theatricals will throw its third annual Salsa Party & Cabaret hosted by actor Alfred Molina.
John M. Sofio, the owner of RampART, says that the Hayworth draws an across-town crowd that will also swing by his gallery. Sofio relocated his design company Built Inc. to Westlake because he believes the area is "an icon of L.A.'s past and present being built for the future. It is also the gateway to the downtown scene."
RampART is currently presenting a yearlong photography show featuring a different photographer's take on Los Angeles each month. The Cinco de Mayo opening was a hit, Sofio says, with revelers "drinking, smoking and partying in the streets." (In MacArthur Park, it seems, some things never change.)
RampART's current exhibition features the work of Cement building loft-dweller Robert Todd Williamson. That Wilshire structure, a concrete honeycomb buzzing with a hive of youthful arty types, is also home to Kelly Architects — the firm of choice for downtown nightlife baron Cedd Moses (Broadway Bar, Seven Grand). Similarly conspicuous in the tenant directory: Jet Pack Design, Dance Loft, Blackspot and Monkey Boy.
Still, the new Westlake artistic culture isn't limited to literal castles in the sky. Beginning in August, MacArthur Park's formerly neglected band shell will reopen with a significant face-lift and a five-night-per-week summer concert series.
As of now, Westlake's public life is a genuine mix of its residents' cultures. Time and real estate prices will determine if it stays that way.
Getting a taste
If Sandra Romero has a say in the neighborhood's fate, its current residents won't be lost in the shuffle. The erstwhile Mama of activist hub and Institute for Urban Research and Development experiment Mama's Hot Tamales Café, Romero is the most visible figure reclaiming the neighborhood in the wake of MacArthur Park's cleanup.
Romero began training tamale cooks and hawkers in the park's vending corridor in 1999 and continually works with the Rediscover MacArthur Park campaign to encourage local businesses. A charismatic Latino leader like Romero is invaluable for turning Westlake's economy toward positive, authentic local culture. Chichen Itza, a new upscale Mexican restaurant on 6th Street, seems to be following Mama's lead.
Romero's menu of organic tamales has ingredients like pineapple, red snapper and Peruvian chile escabeche, Latin American cuisine that's fresh, affordable and vegan-friendly. But the new neighbors who are prone to frequent a community-driven tamale shop might drive up rents that force out the very street life they moved to Westlake for.
"There are a lot of lofts coming up, but they're not creating affordable housing," Romero says. "We don't own our own building. A Pollo Campero is moving in next door. What's keeping our landlord from doing the same thing?"
Romero's position as a bridge between the local Latino population, small business owners and city officials eager to revitalize the area is essential as Westlake enters yet another new identity. In the wake of the May 1 incident, during which cameras captured police beating mostly Latino immigration rights protesters in MacArthur Park, the Los Angeles Police Department needed someone local to calm a public desperate to be heard in a confusing time in Westlake and Los Angeles. They looked to Sandra Romero.
"After the May Day fiasco," Romero says, "Chief [William J.] Bratton came here and said, 'We need your help.' "
august.brown@latimes.com, jessica.gelt@latimes.com
COMING SUNDAY: About that song...
In Times staff writer Geoff Boucher's installment of SoCal Songbook, songwriter Jimmy Webb reflects on the iconic "MacArthur Park" and the "intellectual venom" it engenders. In Sunday Calendar
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives a
I guess as Latinos we do not matter in the LA Times.
James Rojas
Westlake: From gritty roots to the new chic
With crime down and gentrification seemingly inevitable, the Westlake/MacArthur Park area balances its history with its future.
By August Brown and Jessica Gelt
Times Staff Writers
June 7, 2007
There's a scruffy brick apartment building at the corner of 7th and South Park View streets in Westlake that hints at the history and possible future of the neighborhood. On the ground floor, a pharmacy and health clinic with signs in Spanish sit next door to an inexpensive Honduran restaurant. A few stories above, however, in his home studio in the building's renovated Presidential Suite, Matthew Cooke is filming a series of comedy sketches called "Bad Dad" for Fuel TV's upcoming variety show "Stupid Face."
Cooke, 34, a producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Deliver Us From Evil," is the kind of guy who is fond of stylish jeans and vintage French film posters. He is quick to poke fun at the cliché of a white artist moving into a working-class ethnic neighborhood for the cheap rents. "I hope to subjugate the people and build a tower of capitalism on their backs," he jokes, riffing on a journal entry from the ultimate gentrifier, Christopher Columbus. On a serious note, Cooke adds that "having different cultures collide and mix together is a good thing for everyone involved."
Indeed, Cooke is a new kind of resident in the evolving neighborhood that has alternately been one of Los Angeles' toniest ZIP codes and home to its most extensive menu of vices. As downtown becomes prohibitively expensive and nearby Koreatown becomes similarly priced out, local artists, designers and hipsterati are dipping their toes into the predominantly working-class neighborhood immediately west of the city's core. Swanky nightclubs, organic tamale co-ops and art galleries are following suit.
But for the ethnic families who made Westlake home long before it sparkled in a trust-funder's eye, gentrification is an uncertain blessing. With more than 114,000 residents that are 78% Latino, Westlake is one of the most densely populated 3.2 square miles in Los Angeles. Coupled with a median annual household income of just over $19,000, it's little wonder that the May Day immigration reform protest reached a boiling point here.
There's no debate that the neighborhood is changing. The question is who gets to decide what it will become.
A park rallies
MacArthur Park, with its gentle grass slopes and placid lake, is ground zero for Westlake's evolution. Mark Hubert, the park's senior lead officer, traces the area's comeback to intensive clean-up efforts in the park. "What's happened in the park has translated to the entire area," he says, adding that since surveillance cameras were installed in 2004, violent crime in the vicinity "is down over 50%. Families have returned and you see people walking and jogging. Back in '03 you could Google where to purchase rock cocaine and something would come up about where to buy it in MacArthur Park."
Residents such as Nick Macciocca, 23, who has lived on 7th Street for two years, have noticed a substantial change in the neighborhood. "At first it was sketchy; [my girlfriend] got attacked and I got chased by some crazy guy who was running from the cops," Macciocca says. Now upscale dwellings like the American Cement Building lofts, the Medici and the Ansonia are filling with young arty types and urban professionals demanding a new kind of commercial corridor.
Marco Li Mandri, president of New City America, is heading up the effort to create a Business Improvement District for the neighborhood. The creation of a BID downtown set the stage for changes there. Li Mandri has similar hopes for MacArthur Park. The process is a "frustrating bureaucratic shuffle," he says, but he believes "retail will follow residential development."
As Westlake's small but growing slate of new bars, eateries and cultural centers proves, the process has already begun.
Royale treatment
No barfly wandering through Westlake hopes to have a gun pointed at them. Unless, of course, they're seated on the sleek circular couch at Royale, a new lounge and attached restaurant on the corner of Wilshire and Rampart boulevards, where an oversized art photograph of a pistol-packing ruffian looms over them.
The sense of urban chic in the 6-month-old Royale is unlike anything else on its block. The lighting is amber-hued, DJSuprema spins electro and hip-hop, and a fashionable, ethnically diverse crowd chases the Stella Artois with mouthwash from a bathroom dispenser. Not to mention the adjacent restaurant's $5,000 toilet and the triple-digit Kobe surf-and-turf.
"People said there's not a place like this unless you go to downtown, " said Daniel Sevilla, a bartender in Royale's lounge. "The residents are really happy to have us."
Like the Standard's rooftop lounge downtown, Royale is testing the neighborhood's appetite for a relatively pricey new style of nightlife. But if the somewhat slow crowds are any sign, there's a chance they may be a bit early.
A block east of Royale is La Fonda de los Camperos, a cavernous Mexican eatery open since 1969 that hosts nightly performances by the Grammy-nominated mariachi band Los Camperos. The heavily local and Latino audience whistles and hollers at the seven-piece group from plush booths on the ground floor and in the cozy balcony. A dancing couple whirls on stage to perform folklorico stand-bys in colorful costumes.
UCLA student Julian Sakai, 32, was there on a Thursday with friends from an ethnomusicology class. "My father's Japanese and my mother's Mexican," Sakai said. "They met in an English as a second language class and they came here when they were dating."
Blue Velvet, a dashing new poolside restaurant/bar seemingly ripped from the pages of "Less Than Zero," is just west of the Harbor Freeway, technically part of Westlake. Like the nearby supper club Tatou (see review, Page 16), a bartender and hostess preferred to ally it with downtown's renaissance, proving there's still location anxiety among the newcomers. Meanwhile, the Silver Platter, a deliciously shady dive at Rampart Boulevard and 7th has no such qualms and could become Westlake's version of Silver Lake's Cha Cha Lounge as the transvestite hangout-turned-Fader magazine contributors' saloon of choice.
Artistic visions
Nightlife isn't all that's buzzing in the neighborhood. A new artistic culture is gaining prominence in the form of the Hayworth Theatre and a little-gallery-that-could, RampART.
For the last year and a half the Hayworth, housed in a 1926 Stiles O. Clements building, has hosted live productions on three stages. Their current main-stage show, a comedy cobbled together from various Shakespeare scripts, is called "Stories of the Night Told Over." On Saturday, Circus Theatricals will throw its third annual Salsa Party & Cabaret hosted by actor Alfred Molina.
John M. Sofio, the owner of RampART, says that the Hayworth draws an across-town crowd that will also swing by his gallery. Sofio relocated his design company Built Inc. to Westlake because he believes the area is "an icon of L.A.'s past and present being built for the future. It is also the gateway to the downtown scene."
RampART is currently presenting a yearlong photography show featuring a different photographer's take on Los Angeles each month. The Cinco de Mayo opening was a hit, Sofio says, with revelers "drinking, smoking and partying in the streets." (In MacArthur Park, it seems, some things never change.)
RampART's current exhibition features the work of Cement building loft-dweller Robert Todd Williamson. That Wilshire structure, a concrete honeycomb buzzing with a hive of youthful arty types, is also home to Kelly Architects — the firm of choice for downtown nightlife baron Cedd Moses (Broadway Bar, Seven Grand). Similarly conspicuous in the tenant directory: Jet Pack Design, Dance Loft, Blackspot and Monkey Boy.
Still, the new Westlake artistic culture isn't limited to literal castles in the sky. Beginning in August, MacArthur Park's formerly neglected band shell will reopen with a significant face-lift and a five-night-per-week summer concert series.
As of now, Westlake's public life is a genuine mix of its residents' cultures. Time and real estate prices will determine if it stays that way.
Getting a taste
If Sandra Romero has a say in the neighborhood's fate, its current residents won't be lost in the shuffle. The erstwhile Mama of activist hub and Institute for Urban Research and Development experiment Mama's Hot Tamales Café, Romero is the most visible figure reclaiming the neighborhood in the wake of MacArthur Park's cleanup.
Romero began training tamale cooks and hawkers in the park's vending corridor in 1999 and continually works with the Rediscover MacArthur Park campaign to encourage local businesses. A charismatic Latino leader like Romero is invaluable for turning Westlake's economy toward positive, authentic local culture. Chichen Itza, a new upscale Mexican restaurant on 6th Street, seems to be following Mama's lead.
Romero's menu of organic tamales has ingredients like pineapple, red snapper and Peruvian chile escabeche, Latin American cuisine that's fresh, affordable and vegan-friendly. But the new neighbors who are prone to frequent a community-driven tamale shop might drive up rents that force out the very street life they moved to Westlake for.
"There are a lot of lofts coming up, but they're not creating affordable housing," Romero says. "We don't own our own building. A Pollo Campero is moving in next door. What's keeping our landlord from doing the same thing?"
Romero's position as a bridge between the local Latino population, small business owners and city officials eager to revitalize the area is essential as Westlake enters yet another new identity. In the wake of the May 1 incident, during which cameras captured police beating mostly Latino immigration rights protesters in MacArthur Park, the Los Angeles Police Department needed someone local to calm a public desperate to be heard in a confusing time in Westlake and Los Angeles. They looked to Sandra Romero.
"After the May Day fiasco," Romero says, "Chief [William J.] Bratton came here and said, 'We need your help.' "
august.brown@latimes.com, jessica.gelt@latimes.com
COMING SUNDAY: About that song...
In Times staff writer Geoff Boucher's installment of SoCal Songbook, songwriter Jimmy Webb reflects on the iconic "MacArthur Park" and the "intellectual venom" it engenders. In Sunday Calendar
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives a
Thursday, June 7, 2007
"The South Central Farmers' Report from the United Nations Visit"
The South Central Farmers’ Report from the United Nations Visit on May, 2007.
By Rufina Juarez
This experience has widened our understanding of peoples’ struggle for access to space and land. This UN session concentrated on the displacement of people all over the world but with a focus on land, territory and natural resources of indigenous people. How we as indigenous people struggle for our culture, language ancestral rights, access to our natural resources and the right educate, designate and retain our own names for communities, places and persons, Our children have the right to all levels and forms of education, all indigenous people have the right to provide education in their own language in a manner appropriate to their culture methods of teaching and learning…this is what the model that we had in LA represented in a vary small scale with the poorest areas in Los Angeles, CA. We learned of the results and effects suffered from people who are displaced from their place of origin, be it the first generation, second and the destruction of their families when you are forced to move.
As representatives of our community, we spoke with conviction about the violent destruction of this model and how it affected these families. We spoke of our “goal” to have basic human rights to “good quality food” and that as a community we have that right by our inheritance as indigenous people. The definition of “human rights“ was developed during a time in history when repression of indigenous people was in vogue. “We” as people need to redefine what our “human rights” are. This self determination forces people to change old definitions that do not fit with or relationship to the land and our ways of planting our food.
The UN experience has marked and elevated the struggle of the SCF to an international level. We have denounced, for the record at the UN, the inhumane treatment of the SCFs by the City of Los Angeles. It was 10 days of hard work and learning how nations report on their different plans on how to save the resource of the world. Now the nations are looking at traditional people to bring back a balance with all the ‘global warming’ that is happening. We participated in the Sixth Session on the Indigenous People Forum with the help of La Red Indigena Xicana. Our intervention was presented on May 18, 2007 in front of the Special Rapporturr on Human Rights violations. Along with other peoples of the world, we waited for our own turn and spoke on displaced people in poor urban settings. ON Monday, 21 we sat on a panel as a speaker on Migration issues in an urban setting. We talked about the need to access land in order to move from a dependent community to an independent community that can feed their families and surrounding communities in order to deal with diseases in our community; obesity and diabetes. If we cannot change this cycle we will only be part of the market that is full of dependent poor communities on medication since they do not have the right to good quality foods! Yes, we will perish as a community due to the diseases that have taken over and our lack to change our behaviors.
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 6th Session
Statement by
South Central Farmers and La Red Xicana Indigena
May 18, 2007
Madam Chair, Indigenous sisters and brothers of the world:
My name is Rufina Juarez, President of the South Central Farmers of Los Angeles and representative of La Red Xicana Indigena. I would like to submit the following statement.
The corporate production of food, such as hybrid corn, soy, and wheat, has taken over the production of local high quality ancestral food (i.e., corn, squash, and beans) through the displacement of traditional agricultural communities who produce food for their own use and for trade. Corporate take over of agricultural lands forces families to flee to local and international urban areas, where they transform from a self-reliant, highly skilled agricultural society, into poor and politically vulnerable substrata of urban society. Economically dependent on low wages for unskilled labor, men, women and children loose their relationships, roles, ancestral knowledge and practices of self sufficiency. Their lack of economic resources makes them dependent on cheap poor-quality food produced by the corporations, which displaced them in the first place. Coupled with the lack of health education and basic health care they are highly defenseless to long term diseases like obesity, diabetes, cancer, and asthma, which make them life time consumers of pharmaceuticals. The rise of childhood illnesses produces long term profit for corporations. Indigenous peoples in diaspora are in fact paying for their own oppression.
For 14 years since 1992, the South Central Farm was the largest and most biologically-diverse urban farm in the US. The farm was organized within a traditional collective structure. A variety of indigenous plants, medicine and seeds from throughout the hemisphere were cultivated and preserved on this farm. Nahuas, Seri, and Zapotecos were among the farmers who brought their traditional plants, seeds and agricultural technology from their homelands, reflecting the contemporary diaspora of Xicanas/os and newly displaced indigenous peoples from México, Central and South America in the US.
After three years of political and legal struggle to save the farm we were evicted due to not having any rights as migrant and displaced indigenous peoples in the US. I am here to put on the UN record, the excessive force and police brutality that occurred in June 13, 2006 when we were forcefully removed in the mist of litigation of the right to title. 350 indigenous farmers have been made dependent on the purchase and consumption of corporate foods. Consequently, we’ve been denied the right to grow our traditional foods and teach our children their relationship with the land. We are an example of a dispersed indigenous population that does not have any rights to practice the continuity of our ancestral traditions outside of their homeland. We are indigenous peoples in the US who need the international protections of the Declaration.
We were evicted and more than 500 trees and all our traditional medicinal plants were destroyed in the name of economic development. This is a story commonly known through out the world, especially when it comes to the exploitation of ancestral land, territories and natural resources. However, here we are referring to a fundamental human right to grow our own ancestral foods and medicine and to pass it on to the coming generations. The nation-states refer to this as “Food Security”, however, if as indigenous peoples in diaspora we can obtain the protections and right to grow our traditional foods it would mean “food sovereignty”.
For this reason we would like to make the following recommendations:
1) We urge the UN member states to adopt the UN Declaration on the Right of Indigenous People as approved by the Council of Human Rights, without any addendums.
2) We invite the Special Rapporteur on Migration and the Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights to look into the abuse of indigenous peoples rights, especial that of children who are in diaspora in the United States and are suffering from the vulnerability of malnutrition and under nutrition, which in effect is affecting the alarming rate of chronic illnesses such as child/youth diabetes, asthma, cancer and lymphatic diseases.
3) We endorse the Women’s Caucus Statement on Human Rights, specifically the statement and recommendations relevant to Indigenous Women and Migration, which urges UN Member states to address the issue of large number of indigenous migrants within and beyond national borders and the particular vulnerability of indigenous women migrants.
4) We endorse the Caucus of Abya Ayala Statement, specifically item #6 and 7, which recommend’s that UN Agencies (such as UNESCO, FAO-Food and Agricultural Organization, CHR-Council on Human Rights, Special Rapporteur’s) work to influence and/or develop appropriate mechanisms, instruments and indicators that would allow for the collection of disaggregated data that would identify the specific conditions of indigenous peoples in diaspora within the United States.
Contact information:
South Central Farmers
www.southcentralfarmers.com
SCF Hotline: 1-888-SCFARM-1
Rufina Juarez: juarezrufina@yahoo.com
La Red Xicana Indígena
www.laredxicanaindigena.com
Celia H. Rodríguez (California): celiahrodriguez@comcast.net
Rosalee Gonzalez (Arizona): xicanista1@aol.com
By Rufina Juarez
This experience has widened our understanding of peoples’ struggle for access to space and land. This UN session concentrated on the displacement of people all over the world but with a focus on land, territory and natural resources of indigenous people. How we as indigenous people struggle for our culture, language ancestral rights, access to our natural resources and the right educate, designate and retain our own names for communities, places and persons, Our children have the right to all levels and forms of education, all indigenous people have the right to provide education in their own language in a manner appropriate to their culture methods of teaching and learning…this is what the model that we had in LA represented in a vary small scale with the poorest areas in Los Angeles, CA. We learned of the results and effects suffered from people who are displaced from their place of origin, be it the first generation, second and the destruction of their families when you are forced to move.
As representatives of our community, we spoke with conviction about the violent destruction of this model and how it affected these families. We spoke of our “goal” to have basic human rights to “good quality food” and that as a community we have that right by our inheritance as indigenous people. The definition of “human rights“ was developed during a time in history when repression of indigenous people was in vogue. “We” as people need to redefine what our “human rights” are. This self determination forces people to change old definitions that do not fit with or relationship to the land and our ways of planting our food.
The UN experience has marked and elevated the struggle of the SCF to an international level. We have denounced, for the record at the UN, the inhumane treatment of the SCFs by the City of Los Angeles. It was 10 days of hard work and learning how nations report on their different plans on how to save the resource of the world. Now the nations are looking at traditional people to bring back a balance with all the ‘global warming’ that is happening. We participated in the Sixth Session on the Indigenous People Forum with the help of La Red Indigena Xicana. Our intervention was presented on May 18, 2007 in front of the Special Rapporturr on Human Rights violations. Along with other peoples of the world, we waited for our own turn and spoke on displaced people in poor urban settings. ON Monday, 21 we sat on a panel as a speaker on Migration issues in an urban setting. We talked about the need to access land in order to move from a dependent community to an independent community that can feed their families and surrounding communities in order to deal with diseases in our community; obesity and diabetes. If we cannot change this cycle we will only be part of the market that is full of dependent poor communities on medication since they do not have the right to good quality foods! Yes, we will perish as a community due to the diseases that have taken over and our lack to change our behaviors.
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 6th Session
Statement by
South Central Farmers and La Red Xicana Indigena
May 18, 2007
Madam Chair, Indigenous sisters and brothers of the world:
My name is Rufina Juarez, President of the South Central Farmers of Los Angeles and representative of La Red Xicana Indigena. I would like to submit the following statement.
The corporate production of food, such as hybrid corn, soy, and wheat, has taken over the production of local high quality ancestral food (i.e., corn, squash, and beans) through the displacement of traditional agricultural communities who produce food for their own use and for trade. Corporate take over of agricultural lands forces families to flee to local and international urban areas, where they transform from a self-reliant, highly skilled agricultural society, into poor and politically vulnerable substrata of urban society. Economically dependent on low wages for unskilled labor, men, women and children loose their relationships, roles, ancestral knowledge and practices of self sufficiency. Their lack of economic resources makes them dependent on cheap poor-quality food produced by the corporations, which displaced them in the first place. Coupled with the lack of health education and basic health care they are highly defenseless to long term diseases like obesity, diabetes, cancer, and asthma, which make them life time consumers of pharmaceuticals. The rise of childhood illnesses produces long term profit for corporations. Indigenous peoples in diaspora are in fact paying for their own oppression.
For 14 years since 1992, the South Central Farm was the largest and most biologically-diverse urban farm in the US. The farm was organized within a traditional collective structure. A variety of indigenous plants, medicine and seeds from throughout the hemisphere were cultivated and preserved on this farm. Nahuas, Seri, and Zapotecos were among the farmers who brought their traditional plants, seeds and agricultural technology from their homelands, reflecting the contemporary diaspora of Xicanas/os and newly displaced indigenous peoples from México, Central and South America in the US.
After three years of political and legal struggle to save the farm we were evicted due to not having any rights as migrant and displaced indigenous peoples in the US. I am here to put on the UN record, the excessive force and police brutality that occurred in June 13, 2006 when we were forcefully removed in the mist of litigation of the right to title. 350 indigenous farmers have been made dependent on the purchase and consumption of corporate foods. Consequently, we’ve been denied the right to grow our traditional foods and teach our children their relationship with the land. We are an example of a dispersed indigenous population that does not have any rights to practice the continuity of our ancestral traditions outside of their homeland. We are indigenous peoples in the US who need the international protections of the Declaration.
We were evicted and more than 500 trees and all our traditional medicinal plants were destroyed in the name of economic development. This is a story commonly known through out the world, especially when it comes to the exploitation of ancestral land, territories and natural resources. However, here we are referring to a fundamental human right to grow our own ancestral foods and medicine and to pass it on to the coming generations. The nation-states refer to this as “Food Security”, however, if as indigenous peoples in diaspora we can obtain the protections and right to grow our traditional foods it would mean “food sovereignty”.
For this reason we would like to make the following recommendations:
1) We urge the UN member states to adopt the UN Declaration on the Right of Indigenous People as approved by the Council of Human Rights, without any addendums.
2) We invite the Special Rapporteur on Migration and the Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights to look into the abuse of indigenous peoples rights, especial that of children who are in diaspora in the United States and are suffering from the vulnerability of malnutrition and under nutrition, which in effect is affecting the alarming rate of chronic illnesses such as child/youth diabetes, asthma, cancer and lymphatic diseases.
3) We endorse the Women’s Caucus Statement on Human Rights, specifically the statement and recommendations relevant to Indigenous Women and Migration, which urges UN Member states to address the issue of large number of indigenous migrants within and beyond national borders and the particular vulnerability of indigenous women migrants.
4) We endorse the Caucus of Abya Ayala Statement, specifically item #6 and 7, which recommend’s that UN Agencies (such as UNESCO, FAO-Food and Agricultural Organization, CHR-Council on Human Rights, Special Rapporteur’s) work to influence and/or develop appropriate mechanisms, instruments and indicators that would allow for the collection of disaggregated data that would identify the specific conditions of indigenous peoples in diaspora within the United States.
Contact information:
South Central Farmers
www.southcentralfarmers.com
SCF Hotline: 1-888-SCFARM-1
Rufina Juarez: juarezrufina@yahoo.com
La Red Xicana Indígena
www.laredxicanaindigena.com
Celia H. Rodríguez (California): celiahrodriguez@comcast.net
Rosalee Gonzalez (Arizona): xicanista1@aol.com
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Metro Fares on the Up and Up
So I've perused the purple pamphlets Metro was passing out last week. And I've seen the press release and read about the public hearing where the official pronouncement was made, thanks to LAist. Fares will be going up in July, and like transit users across LA County, I'll have to figure out what exactly the changes will mean to my own pocket book.
My first thought is that tokens are going to become a lot more popular, as regular fares will stay the same for two years, and because the cost of a day pass will be going up to $5, part of the compromise the Metro Board voted for this past Thursday. Which means you'll want to get a day pass only if you'll be catching 4 or more lines, 3 or less and you'll be better off using tokens.
Figuring out whether I'll need a monthly pass will take a little more figuring...
My first thought is that tokens are going to become a lot more popular, as regular fares will stay the same for two years, and because the cost of a day pass will be going up to $5, part of the compromise the Metro Board voted for this past Thursday. Which means you'll want to get a day pass only if you'll be catching 4 or more lines, 3 or less and you'll be better off using tokens.
Figuring out whether I'll need a monthly pass will take a little more figuring...
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