Los Angeles County

RECENT POSTS

September 27, 2011 | 5:56 PM | By

Will LA County’s Latinos get more political clout, one way or another?

Art by Eric Fischer/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A color-coded ethnicity map of the Los Angeles area, based on census data

UPDATE: Los Angeles County Supervisors have voted down the plans 4 to 1 that would create a second Latino-majority district, so it’s likely the matter will now go to court. 

Will Latinos in Los Angeles County wake up tomorrow with greater political representation via a new Latino-majority supervisorial district? It seems unlikely as the county Board of Supervisors votes tonight, and a court battle may be in order. But there have been substantial fireworks in getting to this point, and there will be more.

At issue is whether the county, which is nearly 50 percent Latino, should have a second Latino-majority district in addition to the one represented by county Supervisor Gloria Molina. She is the only Latino member of the five-member County Board of Supervisors. She and Latino advocacy groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) have long held that the county’s Latino residents are grossly underrepresented.

The board is voting tonight on whether to adopt one of three plans, two of which would create a new Latino-majority district, and one which would more or less maintain the status quo; Molina and MALDEF have maintained that if left as is, the boundaries fly in the face of the federal Voting Rights Act, intended to protect the voting rights of minorities. A four-member “supermajority” vote will be needed, otherwise the issue goes to court.

Meanwhile, close to a thousand people have shown up today for the board meeting at the Los Angeles Hall of Administration – not something that typically happens at county board meetings.

In recent days there have been several good explanations of the redrawn boundaries, the vote and what it represents for Latinos, including these:

The LA Weekly had a three-part “redistricting without maps” series that explains the controversy with a dose of cheeky humor, replete with cartoons and some handy pie charts illustrating quite clearly how the ethnic-racial makeup of the Board of Supervisors differs radically from that of the county’s population. There was another post explaining the politics involve via Venn Diagrams, and final installment asking, “Do People Vote Based on Race?” From the first piece:

What seems clear enough is that Latinos will get a second seat at some point — if not now then certainly in 10 years. Want proof? Check out what happens when you compare the Board’s current racial composition to the county’s total population — including children and non-citizens. Figure that in 10 years most of those children will be of voting age, and you can see that there won’t be three white seats on the Board forever.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Gloria Molina, Los Angeles County, MALDEF, Redistricting, Zev Yaroslavsky
March 30, 2011 | 1:25 PM | By

Angelenos and Angeleños in the age of the Korean taco

Our lovely, smoggy, sprawling town, looking west toward Wilshire Boulevard, December 2008

The title of a panel I moderated last night at KPCC, on the evolving identity of Los Angeles, posed a rather tough-to-answer question: “Angelino, Angeleno, Angeleño: Who are we?”

And while those of us there didn’t come away with any clear answer, we did come away with some great ideas and insightful observations from both the audience and the panelists.

The idea for the panel came out of a piece written a couple of months ago by Southern California author D.J. Waldie on the disappearance of the Spanish consonant ñ, pronounced “enye,” from “Angeleños” in the late 19th century as eastern and midwestern migrants came west, diluting and eventually burying the city’s Spanish-speaking identity.

But with all of the demographic changes that have occurred in Los Angeles since, a discussion of the city’s evolving identity today seemed in order. Waldie joined me on the panel, as did Eric Avila, an associate professor of Chicano studies, history and urban planning at UCLA.

So as Angelenos, who are we?

In a city that is still deeply segregated by race, ethnicity and income, it’s hard to find much of a common thread among its residents. It goes without saying that the experience of being an Angeleno in Boyle Heights is very different from the experience of being an Angeleno in Brentwood, Reseda, South L.A. In a city made up of geographically and economically disparate communities, it’s often easier to define ourselves in other ways.

Still, there is a sense of pride and a sense of connectedness to something bigger, if just to the very concept of Los Angeles as a large, living, breathing thing. A couple of audience members described feeling an even greater sense of connectedness after moving away.

“I’ve always considered myself an Angeleno,” more than one person said.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, L.A. identity, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
January 24, 2011 | 8:24 AM | By

Featured comment: One reader’s plea for ‘space’ in Compton

NYTimes.com

Screen shot of a race and ethnicity map of the Compton area from the New York Times' "Mapping America: Every City, Every Block" interactive project. Blue dots represent African Americans, yellow dots represent Latinos. Each dot represents 25 people.

A post from last week regarding the political scenario in Compton, where Latino residents are vying with the city’s established but shrinking African American community for political power, drew a series of comments over the weekend. While most of the later comments revolved around illegal immigration (and no, the lawsuit filed by three Latina residents trying to change Compton’s local election process has nothing to do with this) there was an intriguing comment at the beginning that I reread a few times.

From a reader identified as “1tag,” the comment, below, captured something beyond what’s often described in simple terms as racial and ethnic tension in parts of Los Angeles County such as Compton, where a traditionally African American population has given way to a Latino majority.

Here’s part of what “1tag” wrote, unedited:

There is many predominantly Latino communities and very few predominantly Black communities. And the ones we have are so fragile. We need the space tackle the bad and develop the good. Just when that was starting to happen, BAM, we’re hit with the demands with the needs of an outside culture we are not equiped to handle. Give us some space will you?

The message gets at a unique kind of frustration. Both groups share a community in which they face the many of the same problems: poverty (the annual Compton per-capita in 2009 was a little over $13,000), rising unemployment, political disenfranchisement, and gang violence that at times pits brown and black young people against one another. The quarters are close and there is little breathing room.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, Compton, Los Angeles County, South Los Angeles
January 21, 2011 | 4:32 PM | By

Compton: A shifting population, except in City Hall

NYTimes.com

Screen shot of a race and ethnicity map of the Compton area from the New York Times' "Mapping America: Every City, Every Block" interactive project. Blue dots represent African Americans, yellow dots represent Latinos, red dots represent Asians and green dots represent whites. Each dot represents 25 people.

When the initial 2010 census results were released last month, the attention quickly turned to the nation’s growing Latino population and, in turn, how it will shape the political landscape.

While the U.S. Census Bureau has yet to release new data on race and ethnicity, it’s already clear that some of the states with the biggest population growth, and which will gain Congressional seats, also happen to be states where Latinos have come to represent a bigger chunk of the population in recent years. But does this necessarily translate into more political clout for Latinos? And as these population shifts take place, what shape do they take at the neighborhood level, culturally and politically?

An interesting case study is playing out in Compton, a working-class Los Angeles County city that was long predominantly African American (some may remember it as the Compton of N.W.A’s 1988 hip hop classic Straight Outta Compton) but where Latinos now make up two-thirds of the population.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 2010 Census, Compton, Latino voters, Los Angeles County, South Los Angeles
December 22, 2010 | 3:36 PM | By

Tamales: Tales, tips, and a recipe

Photo by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC

Patricia Zarate, manager of Homegirl Café, readies a batch of tamales. December 2010

The Latino culture site Remezcla tweeted this today:

Food of the Year: Tamales http://ht.ly/3toSm

Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch. But tamales are the food of the moment, at least in much of Los Angeles, where people are in different stages of making them, ordering them, eating way too many of them, and swearing they won’t eat another one again for a whole year.

I personally haven’t reached that point yet, but the day will come.

For those who have yet to hit the masa wall, here are a couple of tamal tales for a rainy day, plus some tips and a recipe thrown in for good measure.

My KPCC colleague Adolfo Guzman-Lopez recently visited downtown L.A.’s Homegirl Café to report on the Homeboy Industries offshoot’s intensified holiday tamal production. A quote from the cafe manager:

“The shift is beginning right now and we’ll be here at least 8 hours, from 8 to 10 hours, just to supply tomorrow’s orders. Because of the holidays we have plenty of orders. We will be making about 4 to 500 tamales tonight,” she said.

More tamales are in the mix: Homegirl Café will soon have a City Hall outlet and another at LAX.

Remezcla’s tweet linked to a short piece on a Chicago tamalera who defies the bitter Midwest winter to start selling tamales at 5 a.m. on the street:

Besides the loin freezing cold and frost bitten feet from still trying to rock your boat shoes during the transition from Chicago fall to Chicago winter, there is also one sure fire sign that the frozen dawn is upon us. This evident manifestation is the triumphant rise of the tamale lady.

She would scoff, no doubt, at those of us hiding from the rain at the moment.

Eastside LA recently posted some tips for making tamales on a budget, down to where to find cheap chiles:

For fresh chiles, Superking is the place to beat: Pasillas @ 99¢ for 2 lbs! Now that’s a bargain. For $4.22 I got me a big pot of chiles, ready to be cleaned and roasted.

And yesterday, the folks at the bilingual parenting site SpanglishBaby tweeted this “receta básica para tamales” (basic tamales recipe), courtesy of the ubiquitous Maseca brand masa mix. From the English translation:

3 Cups Maseca® FOR TAMALES corn masa flour
2 1/4 Cups Lard or vegetable shortening*
2 1/4 Cups Chicken, beef, or pork broth (for savory tamales); or
2 1/4 Cups Lukewarm water, cinnamon tea, or anise tea (for sweet tamales)
1 1/2 Tbsp. Salt (if tamales are savory)
1 1/2 tsp. Baking powder

*If you prefer, you may substitute 2 1/4 cups of corn oil.

Had enough tamales yet?

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Los Angeles County, Tamales
December 22, 2010 | 1:14 PM | By

Mapping the nation by race, income and more

Screen shot of Los Angeles race and ethnicity map from the NYT's "Mapping America: Every City, Every Block" interactive project

The U.S. Census Bureau has yet to release specific data on race and ethnicity for the 2010 census, the initial results of which were released yesterday. But in the meantime, a new interactive mapping project put together by the New York Times helps make fascinating sense of who lives where.

Called “Mapping America: Every City, Every Block,” the recently released maps do just that, using 2005-2009 data compiled from the census’ American Community Survey. There are maps for race and ethnicity, income, housing and families, and education.

The scale of the project is impressive, in part because it drills down the nation’s population makeup literally to street level. Punch South Los Angeles’ 90001 ZIP code into the search tool and a map of starkly contrasting dots representing the area’s tense mix of Latino (yellow dots) and African American (blue dots) residents comes into view, with each dot representing 25 people. Enter the same ZIP code into the income map, and you get a sobering sense of how many households there survive on less than $30,000 a year.

In addition to the dotted maps, there are also color-coded maps illustrating the percentage of residents from different ethnic groups in every region, as well as maps coded to illustrate the percentage of foreign-born residents.

The aesthetic of the dotted maps is reminiscent of the work of Radical Cartography’s Bill Rankin, which in turn inspired a recent series of 2000 census-based race and ethnicity maps by artist Eric Fischer.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, 2010 Census, Los Angeles County
December 20, 2010 | 3:55 PM | By

For Los Angeles, a ‘multiplicity of corridos’

Art by Gajin Fujita, courtesy of LACMA

I didn’t have a chance to make it to a performance Saturday afternoon by Ozomatli at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the band performed the top entries in a contest seeking the “The Corrido of L.A.” But the lyrics to several of the corrido entries are posted on LACMA’s website (under “submissions”), and they’re worth perusing.

The contest, a joint project between LACMA and the University of Southern California, was held in honor of the centennial of the Mexican revolution. Students in grades 7 to 12 from throughout the city were asked to submit songs written in the traditional Mexican narrative ballad style, in any language, that best captured the essence of Los Angeles.

Not surprisingly, many of the corridos submitted dealt with immigration, itself a central theme of Los Angeles. One 11th-grader from Boyle Heights’ Roosevelt High School wrote a song about last summer’s tragic massacre of Central and South American migrants in the northern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas. Several others wrote about the experience of undocumented immigrants. More than one entry among the top ten dealt with “el sueño Americano,” the American dream.

Many entries, though not all, were in Spanish. Another Roosevelt student, Veronica Zelaya, submitted a song simply titled “Yo soy un ilegal,” with lyrics that begin:

Yo soy un ilegal (I am an illegal)/que ha venido a luchar (who has come here to struggle)/para a mis padres ayudar (to help my parents)/y no se como empezar (and I don’t know how to begin).

The narrator risks drowning in the “Río Bravo” (how the Rio Grande is referred to in Mexico), “Pero ni modo que hacer (but oh well, what else to do)/por un sueño americano (for an American dream).

Other entries dealt with similarly heavy topics, but not all. Saul Sandoval, a San Pedro High School student, submitted the “Corrido de Los Lakers:”

La noche 17 de Junio del año 2010 siempre voy a recordar (the night of June 17 of the year 2010 I will always remember)/los Lakers vencieron a los Celtics 83-79 (the Lakers beat the Celtics 83-79).

As the rules went, whatever best captures the essence of L.A.

There were roughly a hundred corridos submitted, said Ilona Katzew, curator and co-head of the Latin American art department for LACMA. In the end the contest resulted not in a single corrido theme song for the city, but “a wonderful multiplicity of corridos,” Katzew said today.

“It gave students a forum to express their opinions and views about their city and their own personal relationship to it,” she wrote in an e-mail. “What made the event so poignant is that all these voices were brought together for others to hear.”

Previous posts have featured video of some of the entries.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Corrido, LACMA, Los Angeles County, Ozomatli