# data[].attributes.body
What historical conditions led to the formation of gangs in East LA?

How did housing discrimination and lack of opportunities affect youth?

What was daily life like for young people in the 1970s-90s?

How do different organizations try to address gang violence?

What can we learn from those who left gang life?

What is the relationship between the community and the police? How does the existence of police gangs in LA shape community relations?

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How do suspension and expulsion policies push students out of school?

What happens to youth after being pushed out of schools?

What is the effect of trying youth as adults? What supports do they receive from family?

What alternatives to incarceration existed in the 90s? The present?

What are the quality of the largest local schools? How does this create/limit opportunities for young people?

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What different waves of Mexican immigration shaped Boyle Heights?

How did Central American families (from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) come to this community? Why?

What factors in different countries led people to leave their homes?

Citizens in Central and South American countries often face lots of economic hardship, lack of job opportunities and education, violence, natural disasters, war, lack of food and basic resources, and are almost always just looking for a better quality of life that can be found in the US.

What challenges do undocumented families face?

Commonly undocumented citizens deal with behavioral and emotionally factor, such as: Anxiety and fear, being cause by the stress of potentially being deported having root cause of separation of family/loved ones, colliding with the constant attention that is displayed on the media (Ex: presidency election topic being focused on the candidates view of the immigration system and illegal immigration). Undocumented citizens also deal with behavioral issues of social isolation which can be a cause of depression, anger, not having a sense of not belonging to

What opportunities are available to this community?

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Why migrants risk it all | ONU Migración Americas

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Each year, thousands of people leave their homes in Latin America, the Caribbean and other regions in an effort to secure futures that have become practically

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Bryce, Nahla, Colby, Luke, Jordan

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You will have your own set of research questions. Respond to each question individually (in their own post) and place your sources in a comment below.

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5 images that help illustrate what you have learned in your research process.

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Alessandra, Elyssa, Pablo, Tucker, Lauryn

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What happens to youth after being pushed out of schools?

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What happens to youth after being pushed out of schools?

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Schools, more and more, are starting to force students to transfer instead of expulsion to limit their liability. Unlike explosion, involuntary transfers are a lot less regulated and allow the school to be very vague about the cause or justification for it. This loophole has increased the rate of students being kicked out of school. Moving schools leads to a pattern of lower test scores and lowers the students interest in education even more. This leads to significantly lower graduation rates and an increase in GED attempts. By moving students or expelling them leads to lower graduation and college rates.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-04/la-me-discipline-transfers

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Hidden expulsions? Schools are removing students, but vague data can mask the reason

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California has long touted its low expulsion rates. But vague reporting requirements may be allowing schools to mask expulsions as transfers.

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Mathew, Sammy, Thavas

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What alternatives to incarceration existed in the 90s? The present?

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What alternatives to incarceration existed in the 90s? The present?

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90s

In the 1990s, the federal government introduced what came to be known as “tough on crime” policies. These policies began a crackdown on crime, depriving youth across the country of the juvenile justice system’s protections.

This led to a decrease in alternatives to youth incarceration, as there was a shift in how minors were tried. Rather than being tried in a juvenile court, youth began to be tried as adults in adult criminal court — in some cases even receiving the death sentence or a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Present

https://www.dlrgroup.com/work/campus-kilpatrick-youth-facility/

California is behind the rest of the country when it comes to alternatives to youth incarceration. Some juveniles are offered the chance to go to rehabilitation centers but it is still not as widespread as it should be.

Campus Kilpatrick is an example of one of the youth facilities in LA.

Campus Kilpatrick provides trauma-responsive care for youth in custody.

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Youth in the Justice System: An Overview | Juvenile Law Center

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Since the establishment of the first juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois in 1899, states have recognized that children who commit crimes are different from adults; as a class, they are less blameworthy, and they have a greater capacity for change. By the mid 1920s, every state in the country ha…

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What is the effect of trying youth as adults? What supports do they receive from family?

Trying youth as adults is very controversial. Some people believe that if the crime is serious, then serious consequences must be enforced. However, it is proven that incarceration is not as effective as the juvenile justice system believes.

According to Human Impact, “When we lock up young people, they are more likely to be exposed to extreme violence, fall prey to abuse, and suffer from illness. […] Research suggests that exposure to violence can lead to issues with development in youth”.

Thus, trying youth as adults causes more problems than they solve. Mistakes made in youth should not determine the rest of someone’s life. Instead, we should listen to people like Greg Boyle, and INVEST over incarcerate. We should strive to help others make positive changes to their lives.

Depending on family dynamics, supports from family can vary. It really depends on the home environment. Yet, many youth tried as adults come from parents with the same experience.

For example, a child who has committed a very bad crime will not receive support from his barely present parents who commit the same type of crimes.

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– Malachi, charged as an adult at age 15

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Juvenile InJustice: Charging Youth as Adults is Ineffective, Biased, and Harmful

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A report on health impacts of charging youth as adults, with recommendations for increased community investment and restorative justice-oriented solutions.

# data[].attributes.body
How did redlining policies affect where families could live and buy homes?

How did freeway construction (I-5, I-10, I-60, US-101) divide and displace communities?

Which neighborhoods were most impacted by these changes?

What community spaces and connections were lost?

How do these historical decisions still impact the community today?

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What life was like for people involved in gangs from 1970’s-1990’s

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What life was like for people involved in gangs from 1970’s-1990’s

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Between the 1970s and 1990s, life for gang members in Los Angeles was marked by escalating violence, economic hardship, and many rivalries. The Crips and the Bloods, two African American gangs founded in Los Angeles, have been engaged in a gang war since the 1970s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crips%E2%80%93Bloods_gang_war?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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How did freeway construction (I-5, I-10, I-60, US-101) divide and displace communities?

# data[].attributes.subject
How did freeway construction (I-5, I-10, I-60, US-101) divide and displace communities?

# data[].attributes.body
Multiple freeways were constructed through Boyle Heights

The works cut " through ethnic "slums," demolishing approximately 2000 homes and displacing as many as 15,000 people in the process”

Additionally, it divided neighborhoods, disrupted social networks, and contributed to environmental issues like increased pollution.

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Moreno's perspective is one I've written about many times while tracking changes in this lower-income and largely Mexican-American community over the last few years, most recently with regard to developments Metro had planned for a complete overhaul of Mariachi Plaza.

And it's a perspective readers from outside the community often find controversial, associating it with "anti"-ness: anti-outsider, anti-white people, anti-change, and/or anti-development. Or they see it as a NIMBYist position that denies Boyle Heights' own storied history of being a haven for people of many different ethnicities, including Caucasians.

Ever the occasional optimist, I like to think that more knowledge about the history of the community could help remedy this disconnect.

Because when you know the history of how Boyle Heights came to be -- how the institutionalization of racism in city planning and policy via redlining, government-sponsored white flight, "sanitation" sweeps, urban renewal programs that razed housing and funded freeway construction aimed at displacing and isolating poor ethnic communities, overt discrimination in education, the denial of economic opportunity, the labeling of non-white cultures as subversive, immigration raids, police brutality, and deliberate disinvestment constrained Boyle Heights' ability to flourish -- it becomes very easy to understand why the existing residents are raising questions about race, class, and the intentions of both public and private investors in the community.

And knowing how the community managed to thrive in the face of these obstacles and take pride in to help Boyle Heights grow and develop while remaining true to what they believe it represents. And what it represents is community, culture, resistance and resilience, unique voices and forms of artistic expression, struggle, transcendence, family, and heritage. The physical landscape matters, in other words, but it is the people, their histories, and their relationships with each other that give it meaning. the heritage they were once told rendered them "unteachable" and "mentally inferior" makes it easier to grasp what it is that residents like Moreno are looking to preserve and invest in. Rather than "re-imagining," "revitalizing," or "place-making" their community, as is popular in planning now, they seek

These are all things that I've tried to convey in previous articles in one form or another. But it's one thing to read descriptions of how a community feels about itself and another altogether to see it for yourself. Which is probably why the arrival of Betsy Kalin's East L.A. Interchange feels rather timely.

Eight years in the making, it began as the Connecticut-born Kalin's exploration of what made Boyle Heights a place that people were proud to be from and felt rooted in, even long after having moved away.

Early on in the process, her focus was on residents' transcendence of racial boundaries to forge a strong sense of community and enduring friendships in an era when state-imposed segregation was the order of the day. To that end, we hear from a range of elder African-American, Japanese, and Jewish Angelenos (and, occasionally, will.i.am) that grew up in the area in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s and have memories of the days when Boyle Heights was a veritable United Nations of neighborhoods and everyone knew a little bit of everyone else's language.

Cognizant that it is hard to speak about the history of the community without investigating the discriminatory policies that gave rise to it, however, Kalin seems to have shifted gears a bit. While still (a little too) driven by the narrative of multi-ethnic harmony, the film also incorporates the voices of experts like George Sanchez, Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History at USC, to illuminate those links.

It was the right choice.

The history Kalin puts on the screen is engaging and important, and peppered with lots of old photos, archival footage, and narrations by Danny Trejo.

While I really enjoyed the meticulousness with which the film explored Boyle Heights' early years, I do wish it had given the same level of attention to the Mexican-American experience from 1968 onward. The fact that it does not, and that Latinos are not that present in a film about a community that is now well over 90 percent Latino, are significant shortcomings. The oversight is all the more glaring because, at this very moment, the community is asking itself how the identity born out of the struggles of that era can be used to inform and guide development and change in the area.

This oversight may be due to funding issues -- Kalin struggled to raise funds for several years. Or it could be because the film's original mission of exploring multi-ethnic harmony had been accomplished by then. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Either way, the jump from decade to decade in the last quarter of the film makes it feel hurried and somewhat disjointed. And questions raised about how the Gold Line will impact the area make it feel a bit outdated, given that the train arrived in 2009 and an entirely new set of challenges have arisen since then.

Those concerns aside, I genuinely enjoyed the film and recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Boyle Heights and the history of segregation in Los Angeles. I detail some of the history seen in the film below, discuss why focusing on just the harmony within the community is problematic, and conclude with what Boyle Heights' past might mean for its future.
"No Place for Upstanding Citizens..."
At the turn of the twentieth century, Sanchez and other experts explain in the film, restrictive racial covenants meant that non-whites (which, at the time, also included Jews, Italians, the Irish, and Russians) were limited to living in the city's least desirable locations. Located across the river, lacking many of the amenities and services white communities had, and already populated with African-Americans that had fled the South, Russian Molokans that had fled religious persecution, Jewish and Italian immigrants fleeing World War I, Japanese migrants looking to start over after the San Francisco earthquake, and Mexican immigrants that had fled the turmoil of revolution in Mexico, Boyle Heights fit that bill.

As waves of migrants and immigrants arrived in the 1930s and '40s and Boyle Heights swelled in population and diversity, the white establishment became both increasingly suspicious of the community and eager to contain it. This was most explicitly seen in the mass incarceration of Japanese and Japanese-American residents during World War II, when one-third of Roosevelt High School's student body simply disappeared from the rolls in 1942.

But it was redlining, Sanchez and others explain, that played one of the more significant roles in isolating Boyle Heights and setting the stage for the economic and social struggles that would dog the community through the present day.

In 1939, the federally-sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation ( HOLC) described the neighborhood as " hazardous residential territory" with "diverse," "subversive," and "detrimental racial elements" lurking on every block. As such, it accorded the area a "red grade," signalling to private banks, real estate agents, and mortgage lenders that this was " no place for upstanding citizens to purchase a home or get an easy loan."

The impact of redlining was devastating and enduring.

Not only did it make it too costly for Boyle Heights residents to become homeowners in the area, it simultaneously subsidized both sprawl and white flight.

As soldiers came back from the war and sought to purchase homes with their pensions, Sanchez explains, they were funneled toward high-rated places like the San Fernando Valley. Once inconvenient to reach, these suburban areas were made more easily accessible thanks to the Urban Land Institute's recommendations that a tangle of seven freeways be built right through the flats of Boyle Heights.

The construction that began in 1944 and lasted through 1972 " cleared wide urban gashes" through ethnic "slums," demolishing approximately 2000 homes and displacing as many as 15,000 people in the process. (For more, see here.) Land was seized by eminent domain and evicted residents and landowners were given very little compensation in return.

Making a brief appearance in the film, City Councilmember José Huizar affirms that Boyle Heights paid a steep price for this approach to progress.

Not only would the community be almost entirely encircled and divided up by ribbons of freeways (below), but the pollution generated by the approximately 874 million vehicles that traverse the interchange every year would gift generations of its residents with respiratory and other health issues.

The freeways, deterioration of the housing in the area, overcrowding, and stigma attached to being from Boyle Heights, Jewish Historian and former resident Harriet Rochlin explains in the film, meant that, when opportunities arose for members of some ethnic groups to migrate to other areas of town, they jumped at the chance.

For many, that moment came when the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans hit the West Coast in the post-war period.

Faced with a rapidly-growing minority population, the white establishment decided to reconsider its definitions of "whiteness" and warily welcomed Jews and other European immigrants under the now more forgiving label. The shift granted Jews the freedom to join the newly-arrived community of Jews growing in prominence on the Westside, some of whom were developers hoping to attract other Jews to the new housing they built.

Warm ties remained between some of the Jews and the Latino community, even after they had left -- Jewish organizations helped fund the massive voter mobilization effort that saw Edward Roybal elected to the City Council in 1949.

But the solidarity felt within the multi-cultural coalition that worked so tirelessly to elect the first Mexican-American to serve on the council since 1887 (effectively described by his daughter and U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard), wasn't enough to keep those groups in Boyle Heights.

By the late 1960s and early '70s, only four percent of L.A.'s Jewish population remained. Other newly-white residents continued to move west while the African-American and Asian populations dwindled. Only the Latino population of the area -- now at 80 percent -- continued to climb.

Urban Renewal and the Flipside of Harmony
Unfortunately, it is at this pivotal moment -- the very moment that Boyle Heights becomes more ethnically homogeneous, a strong Chicano movement emerges to struggle for civil rights, and the community wages the battles depicted on so many of its walls -- that the documentary loses some steam.

The care with which the early history was addressed gives way to a bit of hop-scotching through the next several decades. The 1968 Blowouts, immigration raids, police brutality, the rise of gangs in the late '70s and the "decade of death" (as Homeboys Founder Father Greg Boyle refers to the period of intense gang violence between 1988 and 1998), and the threat of gentrification are all touched upon, but not explored in-depth. It leaves the viewer with only superficial insights into who the current residents are as a people.

Similarly, while Kalin's interest in upending negative stereotypes that paint Boyle Heights as a violent place (aptly illustrated with a clip from Anderson Cooper's 2005 report on the " Gangs of Hollenbeck") is laudable, the snapshot offered of gangs leaves viewers with the impression that they are an aberration and possibly linked to the influx of Mexican-Americans, neither of which is really true.

Instead, in many ways, the gangs are a direct response to the insecurity created by many of the same discriminatory policies and practices that shaped the positive, multi-ethnic development of Boyle Heights. In fact, gangs had been a part of the landscape in some areas of Boyle Heights since the 1920s and '30s. As waves of migration brought newcomers and, with them, insecurity and economic disparity, residents of all creeds organized to reinforce their claims to particular territories and defend them against both newcomers and incursions by law enforcement.

This cycle reached new heights in the 1950s and '60s with the federal Urban Renewal Program which, in theory, aspired to eliminate substandard housing, construct adequate new housing, reduce segregation, and revitalize urban economies around the country. In practice, thousands of homes in ethnic enclaves were declared unsanitary slums, acquired via eminent domain, and promptly demolished. The land was then often sold at below-market rates to private developers who cared very little about the needs of the poor, responding instead to government incentives to construct commercial buildings and housing for the well-to-do.

Even more troubling was that the $100 million Los Angeles received from the program only provided housing for 10,000 of the 48,000 families that had been uprooted. As families displaced by both the Urban Renewal Program and the construction of the East L.A. Interchange crowded into already over-crowded neighborhoods, new gangs evolved to establish new social infrastructure and defend themselves against the existing gangs. The construction of public housing in the 1960s failed to alleviate these issues. Instead, because the projects were essentially artificial communities, physically isolated from the commercial and cultural cores of the community and restricted in their ability to host visitors, residents placed there had to create their own social infrastructure from scratch. Gangs quickly emerged to fill that void as well as to provide the security that law enforcement did not.

The city's prolonged neglect of the community, disregard for deteriorating conditions, disruption of the social infrastructure, and efforts at suppression that fed gang development then are some of the same factors that feed those gangs that run in the community now.

Interestingly, this reality doesn't make the harmonious relationships Kalin uncovered in her documentary any less true. Nor does it make Boyle Heights any less special than she, I, and anyone else that loves the community believe it to be. It just suggests that the discriminatory policies that the community members in the film had worked so hard to transcend also exacted a tremendous toll on Boyle Heights' most vulnerable residents. And the failure of the city to make any real investments in alleviating the disenfranchisement felt by those residents or that of subsequent generations, means the legacy of those early segregationist policies continues to live on in L.A.'s more troubled streets.
Fears of Displacement, Disruption of Social Fabric Loom Large
I raise all this because current patterns of growth, change, and displacement across Los Angeles have a similar potential to disrupt the social infrastructure in lower-income communities of color.

For a community where that infrastructure has been so vital to residents' ability to transcend discrimination, disenfranchisement, disinvestment, environmental degradation, and denial of economic opportunity, the prospect of seeing it disrupted by displacement is deeply unsettling.

But the unique strength of that social infrastructure, for some, is also a source of hope.

"We made [Boyle Heights] what it is," Xavi Moreno said in a recent conversation. "We didn't have a choice."

As a result, "we lack things," he said, referring to the absence of name-brand shops, entertainment venues, and the amenities seen in well-to-do neighborhoods. "But we [also] don't."

The richness of the community, he continued, lay in its people and their connection to place and each other. Amplifying those connections via ongoing conversations about Boyle Heights' history, what it means to people, and what its future should be, he said, will give the community a sense of ownership and help them grow together.

"It isn't about how we stop gentrification," he said, acknowledging that a strong community spirit is not much of a match against rising rents and ongoing property acquisition by developers, "but how we transform it."

"Like my friend, brother, and barrio mentor Nico [Avina] says," he said, "'The possibilities are endless.'"
Check out "East L.A. Interchange" at the New Urbanism Film Festival. The film plays opening night, October 8, at 8 p.m. at the ACME Theater (135 N. La Brea Ave.). Schedule and program are found here.

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Exploring the Legacy of Redlining via a New Documentary about Boyle Heights - Streetsblog Los Angeles

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Moreno's perspective is one I've written about many times while tracking changes in this lower-income and largely Mexican-American community over the last few years, most recently with regard to developments Metro had planned for a complete overhaul of Mariachi Plaza. And it's a perspective readers from outside the community often find controversial, associating it with [...]

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How did redlining policies affect where families could live and buy homes?

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How did redlining policies affect where families could live and buy homes?

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In 1930 the HOLC which grades communities on possible investment risk (often influenced by racial reasons), gave Boyle Heights a "hazardous" red grade due to its diverse population, labeling it as "no place for upstanding citizens." This redlining practice made it difficult for residents to secure mortgages, hindering homeownership and leading to disinvestment in the area.

https://la.streetsblog.org/2015/10/02/new-documentary-about-boyle-heights-opens-new-urbanism-film-festival?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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Moreno's perspective is one I've written about many times while tracking changes in this lower-income and largely Mexican-American community over the last few years, most recently with regard to developments Metro had planned for a complete overhaul of Mariachi Plaza.

And it's a perspective readers from outside the community often find controversial, associating it with "anti"-ness: anti-outsider, anti-white people, anti-change, and/or anti-development. Or they see it as a NIMBYist position that denies Boyle Heights' own storied history of being a haven for people of many different ethnicities, including Caucasians.

Ever the occasional optimist, I like to think that more knowledge about the history of the community could help remedy this disconnect.

Because when you know the history of how Boyle Heights came to be -- how the institutionalization of racism in city planning and policy via redlining, government-sponsored white flight, "sanitation" sweeps, urban renewal programs that razed housing and funded freeway construction aimed at displacing and isolating poor ethnic communities, overt discrimination in education, the denial of economic opportunity, the labeling of non-white cultures as subversive, immigration raids, police brutality, and deliberate disinvestment constrained Boyle Heights' ability to flourish -- it becomes very easy to understand why the existing residents are raising questions about race, class, and the intentions of both public and private investors in the community.

And knowing how the community managed to thrive in the face of these obstacles and take pride in to help Boyle Heights grow and develop while remaining true to what they believe it represents. And what it represents is community, culture, resistance and resilience, unique voices and forms of artistic expression, struggle, transcendence, family, and heritage. The physical landscape matters, in other words, but it is the people, their histories, and their relationships with each other that give it meaning. the heritage they were once told rendered them "unteachable" and "mentally inferior" makes it easier to grasp what it is that residents like Moreno are looking to preserve and invest in. Rather than "re-imagining," "revitalizing," or "place-making" their community, as is popular in planning now, they seek

These are all things that I've tried to convey in previous articles in one form or another. But it's one thing to read descriptions of how a community feels about itself and another altogether to see it for yourself. Which is probably why the arrival of Betsy Kalin's East L.A. Interchange feels rather timely.

Eight years in the making, it began as the Connecticut-born Kalin's exploration of what made Boyle Heights a place that people were proud to be from and felt rooted in, even long after having moved away.

Early on in the process, her focus was on residents' transcendence of racial boundaries to forge a strong sense of community and enduring friendships in an era when state-imposed segregation was the order of the day. To that end, we hear from a range of elder African-American, Japanese, and Jewish Angelenos (and, occasionally, will.i.am) that grew up in the area in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s and have memories of the days when Boyle Heights was a veritable United Nations of neighborhoods and everyone knew a little bit of everyone else's language.

Cognizant that it is hard to speak about the history of the community without investigating the discriminatory policies that gave rise to it, however, Kalin seems to have shifted gears a bit. While still (a little too) driven by the narrative of multi-ethnic harmony, the film also incorporates the voices of experts like George Sanchez, Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History at USC, to illuminate those links.

It was the right choice.

The history Kalin puts on the screen is engaging and important, and peppered with lots of old photos, archival footage, and narrations by Danny Trejo.

While I really enjoyed the meticulousness with which the film explored Boyle Heights' early years, I do wish it had given the same level of attention to the Mexican-American experience from 1968 onward. The fact that it does not, and that Latinos are not that present in a film about a community that is now well over 90 percent Latino, are significant shortcomings. The oversight is all the more glaring because, at this very moment, the community is asking itself how the identity born out of the struggles of that era can be used to inform and guide development and change in the area.

This oversight may be due to funding issues -- Kalin struggled to raise funds for several years. Or it could be because the film's original mission of exploring multi-ethnic harmony had been accomplished by then. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Either way, the jump from decade to decade in the last quarter of the film makes it feel hurried and somewhat disjointed. And questions raised about how the Gold Line will impact the area make it feel a bit outdated, given that the train arrived in 2009 and an entirely new set of challenges have arisen since then.

Those concerns aside, I genuinely enjoyed the film and recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Boyle Heights and the history of segregation in Los Angeles. I detail some of the history seen in the film below, discuss why focusing on just the harmony within the community is problematic, and conclude with what Boyle Heights' past might mean for its future.
"No Place for Upstanding Citizens..."
At the turn of the twentieth century, Sanchez and other experts explain in the film, restrictive racial covenants meant that non-whites (which, at the time, also included Jews, Italians, the Irish, and Russians) were limited to living in the city's least desirable locations. Located across the river, lacking many of the amenities and services white communities had, and already populated with African-Americans that had fled the South, Russian Molokans that had fled religious persecution, Jewish and Italian immigrants fleeing World War I, Japanese migrants looking to start over after the San Francisco earthquake, and Mexican immigrants that had fled the turmoil of revolution in Mexico, Boyle Heights fit that bill.

As waves of migrants and immigrants arrived in the 1930s and '40s and Boyle Heights swelled in population and diversity, the white establishment became both increasingly suspicious of the community and eager to contain it. This was most explicitly seen in the mass incarceration of Japanese and Japanese-American residents during World War II, when one-third of Roosevelt High School's student body simply disappeared from the rolls in 1942.

But it was redlining, Sanchez and others explain, that played one of the more significant roles in isolating Boyle Heights and setting the stage for the economic and social struggles that would dog the community through the present day.

In 1939, the federally-sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation ( HOLC) described the neighborhood as " hazardous residential territory" with "diverse," "subversive," and "detrimental racial elements" lurking on every block. As such, it accorded the area a "red grade," signalling to private banks, real estate agents, and mortgage lenders that this was " no place for upstanding citizens to purchase a home or get an easy loan."

The impact of redlining was devastating and enduring.

Not only did it make it too costly for Boyle Heights residents to become homeowners in the area, it simultaneously subsidized both sprawl and white flight.

As soldiers came back from the war and sought to purchase homes with their pensions, Sanchez explains, they were funneled toward high-rated places like the San Fernando Valley. Once inconvenient to reach, these suburban areas were made more easily accessible thanks to the Urban Land Institute's recommendations that a tangle of seven freeways be built right through the flats of Boyle Heights.

The construction that began in 1944 and lasted through 1972 " cleared wide urban gashes" through ethnic "slums," demolishing approximately 2000 homes and displacing as many as 15,000 people in the process. (For more, see here.) Land was seized by eminent domain and evicted residents and landowners were given very little compensation in return.

Making a brief appearance in the film, City Councilmember José Huizar affirms that Boyle Heights paid a steep price for this approach to progress.

Not only would the community be almost entirely encircled and divided up by ribbons of freeways (below), but the pollution generated by the approximately 874 million vehicles that traverse the interchange every year would gift generations of its residents with respiratory and other health issues.

The freeways, deterioration of the housing in the area, overcrowding, and stigma attached to being from Boyle Heights, Jewish Historian and former resident Harriet Rochlin explains in the film, meant that, when opportunities arose for members of some ethnic groups to migrate to other areas of town, they jumped at the chance.

For many, that moment came when the second wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans hit the West Coast in the post-war period.

Faced with a rapidly-growing minority population, the white establishment decided to reconsider its definitions of "whiteness" and warily welcomed Jews and other European immigrants under the now more forgiving label. The shift granted Jews the freedom to join the newly-arrived community of Jews growing in prominence on the Westside, some of whom were developers hoping to attract other Jews to the new housing they built.

Warm ties remained between some of the Jews and the Latino community, even after they had left -- Jewish organizations helped fund the massive voter mobilization effort that saw Edward Roybal elected to the City Council in 1949.

But the solidarity felt within the multi-cultural coalition that worked so tirelessly to elect the first Mexican-American to serve on the council since 1887 (effectively described by his daughter and U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard), wasn't enough to keep those groups in Boyle Heights.

By the late 1960s and early '70s, only four percent of L.A.'s Jewish population remained. Other newly-white residents continued to move west while the African-American and Asian populations dwindled. Only the Latino population of the area -- now at 80 percent -- continued to climb.

Urban Renewal and the Flipside of Harmony
Unfortunately, it is at this pivotal moment -- the very moment that Boyle Heights becomes more ethnically homogeneous, a strong Chicano movement emerges to struggle for civil rights, and the community wages the battles depicted on so many of its walls -- that the documentary loses some steam.

The care with which the early history was addressed gives way to a bit of hop-scotching through the next several decades. The 1968 Blowouts, immigration raids, police brutality, the rise of gangs in the late '70s and the "decade of death" (as Homeboys Founder Father Greg Boyle refers to the period of intense gang violence between 1988 and 1998), and the threat of gentrification are all touched upon, but not explored in-depth. It leaves the viewer with only superficial insights into who the current residents are as a people.

Similarly, while Kalin's interest in upending negative stereotypes that paint Boyle Heights as a violent place (aptly illustrated with a clip from Anderson Cooper's 2005 report on the " Gangs of Hollenbeck") is laudable, the snapshot offered of gangs leaves viewers with the impression that they are an aberration and possibly linked to the influx of Mexican-Americans, neither of which is really true.

Instead, in many ways, the gangs are a direct response to the insecurity created by many of the same discriminatory policies and practices that shaped the positive, multi-ethnic development of Boyle Heights. In fact, gangs had been a part of the landscape in some areas of Boyle Heights since the 1920s and '30s. As waves of migration brought newcomers and, with them, insecurity and economic disparity, residents of all creeds organized to reinforce their claims to particular territories and defend them against both newcomers and incursions by law enforcement.

This cycle reached new heights in the 1950s and '60s with the federal Urban Renewal Program which, in theory, aspired to eliminate substandard housing, construct adequate new housing, reduce segregation, and revitalize urban economies around the country. In practice, thousands of homes in ethnic enclaves were declared unsanitary slums, acquired via eminent domain, and promptly demolished. The land was then often sold at below-market rates to private developers who cared very little about the needs of the poor, responding instead to government incentives to construct commercial buildings and housing for the well-to-do.

Even more troubling was that the $100 million Los Angeles received from the program only provided housing for 10,000 of the 48,000 families that had been uprooted. As families displaced by both the Urban Renewal Program and the construction of the East L.A. Interchange crowded into already over-crowded neighborhoods, new gangs evolved to establish new social infrastructure and defend themselves against the existing gangs. The construction of public housing in the 1960s failed to alleviate these issues. Instead, because the projects were essentially artificial communities, physically isolated from the commercial and cultural cores of the community and restricted in their ability to host visitors, residents placed there had to create their own social infrastructure from scratch. Gangs quickly emerged to fill that void as well as to provide the security that law enforcement did not.

The city's prolonged neglect of the community, disregard for deteriorating conditions, disruption of the social infrastructure, and efforts at suppression that fed gang development then are some of the same factors that feed those gangs that run in the community now.

Interestingly, this reality doesn't make the harmonious relationships Kalin uncovered in her documentary any less true. Nor does it make Boyle Heights any less special than she, I, and anyone else that loves the community believe it to be. It just suggests that the discriminatory policies that the community members in the film had worked so hard to transcend also exacted a tremendous toll on Boyle Heights' most vulnerable residents. And the failure of the city to make any real investments in alleviating the disenfranchisement felt by those residents or that of subsequent generations, means the legacy of those early segregationist policies continues to live on in L.A.'s more troubled streets.
Fears of Displacement, Disruption of Social Fabric Loom Large
I raise all this because current patterns of growth, change, and displacement across Los Angeles have a similar potential to disrupt the social infrastructure in lower-income communities of color.

For a community where that infrastructure has been so vital to residents' ability to transcend discrimination, disenfranchisement, disinvestment, environmental degradation, and denial of economic opportunity, the prospect of seeing it disrupted by displacement is deeply unsettling.

But the unique strength of that social infrastructure, for some, is also a source of hope.

"We made [Boyle Heights] what it is," Xavi Moreno said in a recent conversation. "We didn't have a choice."

As a result, "we lack things," he said, referring to the absence of name-brand shops, entertainment venues, and the amenities seen in well-to-do neighborhoods. "But we [also] don't."

The richness of the community, he continued, lay in its people and their connection to place and each other. Amplifying those connections via ongoing conversations about Boyle Heights' history, what it means to people, and what its future should be, he said, will give the community a sense of ownership and help them grow together.

"It isn't about how we stop gentrification," he said, acknowledging that a strong community spirit is not much of a match against rising rents and ongoing property acquisition by developers, "but how we transform it."

"Like my friend, brother, and barrio mentor Nico [Avina] says," he said, "'The possibilities are endless.'"
Check out "East L.A. Interchange" at the New Urbanism Film Festival. The film plays opening night, October 8, at 8 p.m. at the ACME Theater (135 N. La Brea Ave.). Schedule and program are found here.

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Exploring the Legacy of Redlining via a New Documentary about Boyle Heights - Streetsblog Los Angeles

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Moreno's perspective is one I've written about many times while tracking changes in this lower-income and largely Mexican-American community over the last few years, most recently with regard to developments Metro had planned for a complete overhaul of Mariachi Plaza. And it's a perspective readers from outside the community often find controversial, associating it with [...]

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Sebastian, Ryan, Ty, Justin

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How do these historical decisions still affect those today?

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How do these historical decisions still affect those today?

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Many highways take up space that was once used by families for homes and public spaces (i.e. churches, schools)

Acts as a physical barrier, diving the city and preventing easy access from block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood.

Also, environmental causes arise as freeway pollution damages the air quality of the Area and produces an irritating amount of noise

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Bulldozed and bisected: Highway construction built a legacy of inequality

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Will their removal heal historic wounds?

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The daily life for youth in Boyle Heights during this time was filled with poverty, law enforcement/surveillance, and influence of gangs. Many families face economic struggles, and kids are exposed to see how hard their parents work to make ends meet. Despite these hardships, there is a strong sense of community, with traditions like quinceneras and family gatherings. Even with obstacles, many young people are proud of where they come from and want to give back to their community.

https://www.whatkidscando.org/featurestories/2010/06_boyle_heights/index.html

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The 3 main neighborhoods effected by the new policies in East LA were Lincoln heights, Boyle heights, and highland park.

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The Eastside is an urban region in Los Angeles County, California. It includes the Los Angeles City neighborhoods east of the Los Angeles River-that is, Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights-as well as unincorporated East Los Angeles.

Eastside Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times

East Los Angeles was founded in 1870 by John Strother Griffin (1816-1898), who was called "the father of East Los Angeles". In late 1874 the two men offered an additional thirty-five acres, divided into 65x165-foot lots, for $150 each. They planned the laying out of streets of the present community of East Los Angeles and gifted East Side Park (the present Lincoln Park) to the city of Los Angeles.

The Mapping L.A. project of the Los Angeles Times defines the Eastside as comprising Boyle Heights, El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, and East Los Angeles. However, the boundaries are a matter of perennial discussion and debate among the residents of Los Angeles.

The Mapping L.A. definition corresponds to the traditional boundaries, but, beginning in the early 21st century, residents of some of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods west of Downtown Los Angeles but on the eastern side of Central Los Angeles, such as Echo Park and Silver Lake, began to refer to their neighborhoods as part of the Eastside. This debate generated some friction, which, according to Ali Modarres, an expert on the geography of Los Angeles from the University of Washington Tacoma, is to be expected because neighborhood names are "full of meaning, nuances, history, cultural and political relationships". Eric Garcetti, former mayor of Los Angeles and a fourth generation resident, is a traditionalist, stating that "true east is east of downtown".

Map of annexations to Los Angeles: Occidental Addition, Arroyo Seco Addition, Garvanza Addition, Highland Park Addition, and Bairdstown Addition; locations of Rancho San Rafael and Rancho San Pascual

The trend led the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council to declare officially in February 2014 that Silver Lake is not part of the Eastside.

The Sixth Street Viaduct, also known as the Sixth Street Bridge was demolished. Prior to the demolition, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti recorded the rap song "101SlowJam", backed by musicians from Roosevelt High School, and issued it via a video on his own YouTube channel. The public service announcement video advertised the closure of parts of the 101 Freeway to accommodate the demolition of the viaduct.

The official East Area Planning Commission area of the City of Los Angeles is divided into the following communities:

The Mapping L.A. project by the Los Angeles Times lists the following City of Los Angeles neighborhoods in its definition of the Eastside:

The following data applies to the boundaries of the Eastside established by Mapping L.A.:

In 2000, 286,222 people lived in the 20.66 square miles of the Eastside region, amounting to 13,852 people per square mile. The neighborhood was "not especially diverse" ethnically, with a high percentage of Latinos. The ethnic breakdown was Latino, 91.2%; Asian, 5.2%, white, 2.3%; black, 0.7% and other, 0.6%. Just 5.1% of residents aged 25 and older had a four-year college degree. More than two-thirds (66.8%) of the inhabitants lived in shared housing, and 33.2% were homeowners.

1. ^ Barrows, H.D. (1898). Memorial Sketch of Dr. John S. Griffin. Vol. 4. Los Angeles: University of California Press, Historical Society of Southern California. pp. 183-185. doi:10.2307/41167720. JSTOR 41167720.

2. ^ "Street Name". EastLosAngeles.net. Archived from the original on May 30, 2013.

3. ^ Founder of Cities. August 24, 1898. p. 1. ProQuest 163923464.

4. ^ Griffin, John S. (John Strother), 1816-1898. Archived from the original on October 17, 2013.

5. ^ "The Eastside". Mapping L.A. Los Angeles Times.

6. ^ Esmerelda Bermudez (February 18, 2014). "East is East, but Eastside is open to debate". Los Angeles Times.

7. ^ Pedersen, Erik (January 28, 2016). "[WATCH] 101 Freeway Closure: LA Mayor Eric Garcetti Slow-Jams Reminder". Deadline. Archived from the original on February 6, 2016.

8. ^ #101SlowJam on YouTube

9. ^ Area Planning Commission (APC), Boundaries for the seven (7) Area Planning Commissions as established by Ordinance No. 173,492. Feature Layer by GIS@LADCP. Created: Feb 28, 2018. Updated: Dec 31, 2019.

10. ^ "Historic Resources Survey Report" (PDF). Northeast Los Angeles Community Plan Area. lacity.org.

11. ^ "Los Angeles Times Neighborhood Project". The Los Angeles Times.

12. ^ "will.i.am's Aha! Moment". Oprah.com. April 14, 2009.

13. ^ "Death of Narciso Botello". Los Angeles Herald. November 21, 1889. p. 2.

14. ^ "Anthony Quinn Public Library". Los Angeles County. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017.

15. ^ "Reference file" (PDF). Los Angeles Public Library. This file was compiled in 1937 by Works Progress Administration worker Clare Wallace from an interview with Dorsey on June 23 of that year and from newspaper articles.

16. ^ "Honoring a legendary teacher and his legacy". Los Angeles Herald. April 17, 2010.

17. ^ Huey, Steve (2006). "Frost Biography". allmusic.

18. ^ Bethel, Kari Francisco (2002). Henderson, Ashyia N. (ed.). Edward James Olmos. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale. p. 156. ISBN 0-7876-6538-X.

19. ^ "Luis J. Rodriguez".

20. ^ "The Official Website". Hope Sandoval.

21. ^ "CASA 0101 Theater".

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The Eastside is an urban region in Los Angeles County, California. It includes the Los Angeles City neighborhoods east of the Los Angeles River-that is, Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights-as well as unincorporated East Los Angeles. East Los Angeles was founded in 1870 by John Strother Griffin (1816-1898), who was called "the father of East Los Angeles".

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What historical conditions led to the formation of gangs in east LA?

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What historical conditions led to the formation of gangs in east LA?

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They were generally created due to poverty and discrimination during the 1920’s. These gangs grew out of pre existing Mexican culture in the western region, and they grew as a result of mexican migration to California and east LA. Immigrants brought a significant culture with them that was spread by the youth. Youth in these neighborhoods socialized with other immigrant youths in the streets, which ultimately contributed to the formation of gangs in east LA. Many of these immigrants were located in geographically isolated areas where other people from other cultures decided they did not want to live. They were also isolated due to socioeconomic and racial prejudices by many other people during that time. Mexican immigrants as a result became culturally marginalized from white communities. For example, Cholo youth could not fully assimilate into white american culture or develop a culture that was a mix of latino and white american. So many people, joined this Cholo subculture. Gangs were formed from youths who were culturally and socially alienated and who willingly gravitated to barrio hangouts.

https://manshoorylaw.com/blog/los-angeles-gangs/

https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/gangcolor/madness.htm

https://milagro.org/chicano-gang-history-and-culture/

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What are the quality of the largest local schools? How does this create/limit opportunities for young people?

Surprisingly, Boyle Heights' enrollment in K-12 schools is 3.1% higher than the average for the entire state of California.

There has been a lot of growth within Boyle Heights, specifically in the past two decades.

Bachelor's degree attainment has grown 8.9%, and high school graduation rate has grown 8.8%.

Some of the limits include underrepresentation. While Boyle Heights is majority Latino, many higher-education schools such as UCLA are not primarily Latino-serving institutions. There are also significant economic barriers, with the community's median household income being very low. This can create barriers for students seeking specialized training and/or higher education opportunities.

https://heathchancey.com/boyleheights

https://lagente.org/boyle-heights-to-higher-education/

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Policy Frameworks

The goal of the policy frameworks portion of the project was to suggest strategies to address threats and weaknesses in the community by capitalizing on strengths and opportunities from our SWOT analysis. The team focused on addressing the issues of organized crime, an unaccommodating housing stock, and low economic development potential. Below are two summaries of other team members' strategies on crime and housing along with the policy framework I wrote on economic development.

Policy Framework Recommendation #1

Crime Prevention and Response

The policy framework for reducing crime in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood with a crime rate 11% above the national average, focuses on addressing the root causes of crime, particularly the influence of organized gangs on youth and the community. The proposed strategy draws inspiration from successful initiatives like President Biden's 2021 Community Violence Intervention initiative, emphasizing youth programs and gang reformation. The Comprehensive Youth Intervention Program, backed by a $15 million budget, collaborates with community organizations, law enforcement, and service providers to reduce violence, especially among youth exposed to crime.

The framework also includes the Community Safety Program, active since 2011, which has been effective in building trust between residents and law enforcement, leading to increased security and crime reduction. Another key component is the Early Intervention Program for first-time youth offenders, offering an alternative to formal juvenile justice processing, focusing on intense case management and family involvement.

Mirroring the approach of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention, rehab, and re-entry program globally, the policy will combine elements of this successful model with the Community Safety Program and Community Violence Intervention Initiative. It aims to offer at-risk youth services to prevent violence and gang involvement, utilizing community-based organizations, service providers, and law enforcement for intervention and prevention. This holistic approach, emphasizing community involvement and leveraging local pride in small businesses, seeks to significantly reduce gang activity and violent crime in Boyle Heights, enhancing overall community safety.

Policy Framework Recommendation #2

Building Affordable Transit-Oriented Housing

The Boyle Heights Community Plan, introduced in Los Angeles in 2020, is a strategic framework aimed at combating gentrification while fostering transit-oriented housing development in Boyle Heights. Central to the plan is the preservation of multigenerational residential areas through new zoning laws that limit large luxury constructions. Recognizing the neighborhood's lower median household income, the plan leverages the Metro Gold Line's Eastside Extension and extensive bus routes to facilitate affordable and convenient transit access for residents. The plan envisions concentrated development near transit hubs, reducing reliance on carpooling and promoting affordable housing, especially along the Metro B line and Soto Street, which is identified as an ideal location due to its ample public transportation options and vacant lots. Additionally, the plan is supported by city council protections that prevent unjust evictions and rent hikes, ensuring long-term residential stability. This comprehensive approach aims to add 39,000 new housing units by 2040, making Boyle Heights a model for "Transit Affordable Housing."

Policy Framework Recommendation #3

Local Economic Development

Boyle Heights needs more entertainment and tourism amenities. This fact makes it less attractive for young professionals, especially those from the community planning to return after college. Additionally, the need for more job opportunities in the neighborhood, exacerbated by outsourcing jobs to other communities, significantly impedes the area's economic growth potential. Despite these challenges, Boyle Heights possesses a unique advantage in its Hispanic cultural heritage and significance, which can attract local jobs and help retain residents.

While Downtown Los Angeles, across the LA River, features prominent Hispanic cultural centers like Olvera Street and La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Boyle Heights has yet to embrace and capitalize on its rich heritage and authenticity fully. To address this, Boyle Heights could focus on developing cultural and entertainment-related amenities, thus creating a notable tourism hub.

Turning Boyle Heights into a tourist destination involves initial short-term place-making to make the area more appealing to outsiders and creating a long-term strategy to incentivize local investment into tourism-related amenities and maintain existing spaces.

In the near future, Boyle Heights can take action to make the area safer and more appealing by improving local infrastructure and preserving historic landmarks. This past year, Boyle Heights received $37.7 million in grants for pedestrian and street improvements. This money is set to make streets safer and the community more connected for pedestrians and cyclists, laying the foundation for more active streetscapes and greater access to essential destinations (My News LA).

One of the easiest ways Boyle Heights can preserve heritage and boost tourism is through investment in the preservation of historic landmarks. An example of the neighborhood successfully preserving a landmark is the Boyle Hotel. Situated across the street from the renowned Mariachi Plaza, the Boyle Hotel stood in disrepair until 2006, when the East Los Angeles Community Corporation (ELACC) purchased the property to preserve and rehabilitate the building. ELACC would receive $24.6 million in funding across all levels of public dollars to revitalize the facade into its original appearance and provide low-income housing for the community (LA Conservancy). Additionally, removing blight from the building further increased the appeal of Mariachi Plaza. This example shows how public investment in historic preservation can be a win for a community rooted in authentic culture.

While the Boyle Hotel was saved mainly with the help of a low-interest loan in 2008, today, other potential landmarks can be saved with Opportunity Zone investment. As the policy gives tax deferrals and reductions on capital gains taxes, Opportunity Zones serve as an option to incentivize investment in rehabilitation and tourism-related projects.

In supplement to new tourist and entertainment attractions, Boyle Heights has the opportunity to accommodate overnight visitors through building lodging, which might bring in bed tax revenues to invest in other projects. The only issue is that the zoning around key cultural attractions, such as Mariachi Plaza and the cross-section Cezar E Chavez and Soto Street, only allows for hotel usage if they are designated for mixed-use. Adding this use to entertainment-focused nodes in the community would be beneficial to accommodate overnight visitors.

The last placemaking decision Boyle Heights could take to support local businesses and foster culture-oriented tourism nodes is to designate a Tourism Improvement District (TID). TIDs can enhance the area's visibility and sponsor events to attract overnight visitors, potentially boosted by investments in lodging. A TBID could also contribute to a safer environment; in Los Angeles, such districts have been associated with an 11% decrease in serious crimes and a 32% reduction in arrests, making TIDs an attractive option for Boyle Heights (Department of Transportation). In short, TIDs can garner attraction to local businesses and cultural amenities while reducing crime.

When creating a long-term strategy to supply the capital to tourism and entertainment-related projects, Boyle Heights has a few options, such as creating loan and grant programs for small businesses and prioritizing community development projects through opportunity zones.

In San Diego, the city is investing in multiple funds that supply loans to small businesses that might not get a traditional loan because of their credit history but have a good business plan. These funds have given small businesses the capital they need to get off the ground and helped the local small business community prosper (Western Cities). The City of LA and the Boyle Heights neighborhood have the opportunity to create funds to support the tight-knit local businesses community of Boyle Heights. As undocumented immigrants run many small businesses and those that don't meet the criteria to secure traditional loans, a loan program with lower barriers to entry could enable small businesses to grow in the neighborhood, thus creating new employment opportunities and better wages. Moreover, companies receiving capital from the underground market will not have to deal with the intimidation and predatory practices of gangs. This will be crucial to solving the violent crime occurring behind closed doors.

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Boyle Heights Neighborhood Analysis & Policy Frameworks

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Policy Frameworks The goal of the policy frameworks portion of the project was to suggest strategies to address threats and weaknesses in the community by capitalizing on strengths and opportunities from our SWOT analysis. The team focused on addressing the issues of organized crime, an unaccommodating housing stock, and low economic development potential.

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What are ecclesial base communities (comunidades eclesiales de base)?

What is the Medellin Conference (1968) and what role did is play in shaping CEBs?

What is Latin American liberation theology and how does it help you understand the "Catholicism" of the parishioners of Dolores mission?

Who was Oscar Romero and what impact did his assassination have on the Salvadoran community in particular? How did he shape and reflect the concerns of the Salvadoran faithful?

What other faith based communities and organizations have popped up in the community? What support do they offer residents?

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Tycco, Tiago, Claire, Nora, Johann

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How did Central American families (from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) come to this community? Why?

What factors in different countries led people to leave their homes?

What challenges do undocumented families face?

What opportunities are available to this community?

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What other faith based communities and organizations have popped up in the community? What support do they offer residents?

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What other faith based communities and organizations have popped up in the community? What support do they offer residents?

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Los Angeles Christian Health Centers (LACHC)

Non Profit Organization that provides medical, dental and mental health care to homeless individuals. Located in Boyle Heights and a second locations Skid Row, LA.

LACHC has 30 Full time medical, dental and behavioral health providers

11,205 patients are served each year

62,000 Annual visits across their 7 sites

https://www.lachc.com/about-lachc/

Hopeland Church

https://hopelandla.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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What factors in different countries led people to leave their homes?

Citizens in Central and South American countries often face economic hardships, lack of job opportunities and education, war, natural disasters, violence, lack of healthcare, and lots of political instability. Most of these refugees go to the United States for a better quality of life and to seek something beyond their harsh conditions. (other link)

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Why migrants risk it all | ONU Migración Americas

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Each year, thousands of people leave their homes in Latin America, the Caribbean and other regions in an effort to secure futures that have become practically

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Oscar Romero, born in 1917, was an open advocate for the rights of the poor and marginalized communities of El Salvador. He spoke out against government corruption and violence, leading to his 1979 nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1980, Romero was shot and killed while celebrating mass. His final words were “May God have mercy on the assassin.” Shortly after Romero’s death, a 12-year civil war broke out in El Salvador. As a result of his advocacy and work, the Salvadoran faithful view the church as an ally and advocate for social justice.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oscar-Arnulfo-Romero

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Table of Contents

This article was most recently revised and updated by

St. Óscar Romero, in full Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, (born August 15, 1917, Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador-died March 24, 1980, San Salvador; beatified May 23, 2015; canonized October 14, 2018; feast day March 24), Salvadoran Roman Catholic archbishop who was a vocal critic of the violent activities of government armed forces, right-wing groups, and leftist guerrillas involved in El Salvador 's civil conflict.

Although Romero had been considered a conservative before his appointment as archbishop in 1977, he denounced the regime of dictator Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero (no relation). The archbishop also refused to support the right-wing military-civilian junta that replaced the deposed dictator. Further, his outspoken defense of the poor-who were powerless victims of widespread violence-brought repeated threats to his life. In the face of those threats, Romero declared his readiness to sacrifice his life for the "redemption and resurrection" of El Salvador. His unreserved advocacy for human rights made him a hero to many, and he was nominated for the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace by a number of U.S. congressmen and 118 members of the British Parliament. The following year Romero was assassinated at the hands of an unknown assailant while saying mass. The Comisión de la Verdad para El Salvador ("Truth Commission for El Salvador"), approved by the United Nations, later concluded that Romero's death had been carried out by a right-wing death squad. During his funeral a bomb or bombs went off outside the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador, where tens of thousands of mourners were gathered at what has been considered one of the largest demonstrations in the country's history. Gunfire then rained down on the panic-stricken crowd, leaving an estimated 27 to 40 people dead and more than 200 wounded from the violence and subsequent stampede.

Romero's focus on the church's "preferential option for the poor" principle and his call for an end to their oppression by the regime led some Latin American Catholic theologians who were associated with the liberation theology movement to view him favourably. It is unclear, however, how closely Romero associated with the movement, which integrated social justice philosophy with Catholic social ethics and emphasized the struggle of the poor for justice. In 2015, 35 years after Romero's death, Pope Francis declared him a martyr. Romero was beatified later that year. In March 2018, following the medically inexplicable cure of a terminally ill Salvadoran woman whose husband had been seeking Romero's intercession, Pope Francis approved the miracle necessary for Romero's canonization, which took place at the Vatican in October 2018. According to canon law, martyrs require only one miracle for sainthood rather than the standard two.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Melissa Petruzzello.

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Saint Oscar Romero, Salvadoran Roman Catholic archbishop who was a vocal critic of the violent activities of government armed forces, right-wing groups, and leftist guerrillas involved in El Salvador's civil conflict. He was assassinated in 1980, and he is celebrated as a martyr for his defense of the poor.

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What is the Medellin Conference (1968) and what role did is play in shaping CEBs?

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What is the Medellin Conference (1968) and what role did is play in shaping CEBs?

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The Medellin Conference took place in August of 1968 in Medellín, Colombia

All representatives from every Catholic Bishops Conference in Central, South America, and the Caribbean met at the conference to apply the vision and directives

The Medellin Conference promoted a participatory model of the church that’s main focused was social justice.

The Conference promoted lay leadership where poor people took active roles in leadership, decision-making, and evangelization

CEBs became a means to raise political awareness among poor communities, CEB placed the poor at the center of their focus, saying faith should be live by the suffering injustice

https://jesuitmissions.org.uk/the-medellin-conference-1968/

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The 1968 conference in Medellín, Colombia was the second regional meeting of Latin America's bishops whose primary objective was to interpret Vatican II for the Latin American context.
Looking back, Medellín was critical to the shaping of the modern Church and set it on a path which gave us an Argentinian pope who is the embodiment of 'A Poor Church for the Poor'.

The Conference's documents denounced the region's economic, political, and cultural dependency on northern and European powers, criticising a dominance which benefitted a minority, and emphasising a theme of liberation against oppressive structures.

Medellín was a key moment in the development of Catholic Social Teaching and Latin America's contribution to it.

It was during this era in the region that Liberation Theology grew in influence, and after Medellín the bishops officially promoted Ecclesiastical Base Communities, Christian grassroots organisations specific to Latin America which were a vital source of civil society mobilisation in the face of widespread repression.

These are just two examples of the Church's significant contribution to opposing injustice in the region which would not have been possible without Medellín.

It is impossible to interpret Medellín without taking into consideration the Cold War context of 1960s Latin America, of authoritarianism and the accompanying violence which swept the continent.

From the Cuban Revolution, to military dictatorships in the Southern Cone, to Central American civil wars, no corner of the region was untouched by political and physical repression during this decade.

It is also worth noting that during this authoritarian period in Latin America, it was often Church figures who were the most outspoken government critics such as Rutilio Grande, Oscar Romero, Hélder Câmara, Camilo Torres and countless others who lost their lives defending the voiceless.

Since democratisation in the 1980s, Latin Americans have enjoyed greater opportunities and personal freedoms than ever before.

However, the economic injustice highlighted at Medellin is still regrettably relevant to Latin America. On this anniversary, at a time when more people than ever are struggling financially, and the poorest are the hardest hit, let us reaffirm the Bishops' commitment to them.

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The 1968 conference in Medellín, Colombia was the second regional meeting of Latin America's bishops whose primary objective was to interpret Vatican II for the Latin American context. Looking back...

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How did housing discrimination and lack of opportunities affect youth?

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How did housing discrimination and lack of opportunities affect youth?

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HACLA was responsible for the displacement of around 4,000 people, both Black and Latino, from 1990 to 2003. Those that were forced to move from their homes were the poorest of the poor, they were left with no were to go. Public housing residents have been the main target for racist campaigns. By leaving thousands of people without a home, it left many people with little but no choice to do whatever they could to scrape by. Youth was directly affected because of their lack of opportunities, and resources available to them. Without homes and communities, it was easy to find yourself in a situation you shouldn’t be in because of your circumstance.

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LA’s War on Public Housing: An Introduction - Knock LA

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The first article in this 10-part series attempts to recount the demolition and privatization that has destroyed LA’s public housing communities.

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How do suspension and expulsion policies push students out of school?

The consequences of these harsh disciplinary practices are devastating. Students who are repeatedly suspended, or who are expelled, are likely to fall behind their peers academically, paving the way to their eventual dropout. The research correlates dropout to suspensions and expulsions. A student is also more likely to drop out if he or she has been retained for a grade — a common consequence of multiple suspensions.

Schools with higher rates of school suspension and expulsion appear to have less satisfactory ratings of school climate and less satisfactory school governance structures, according to the American Psychological Association. They also appear to spend a disproportionate amount of time on disciplinary matters. Recent research also indicates a negative relationship between the use of school suspension and expulsion and school-wide academic achievement

https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2009/pushed-out#:~:text=Kids%20who%20are%20suspended%20and,way%20to%20their%20eventual%20dropout.

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Zero tolerance policies were supposed to end school violence. Instead, they’re pushing students out of school and into the justice system — and children of color are paying the highest price.

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What is the relationship between the community and the police? How does the existence of police gangs in LA shape community relations?

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What is the relationship between the community and the police? How does the existence of police gangs in LA shape community relations?

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There was a lot of tension between the community and the police. The LAPD was known for corruption and how aggressive they were. Officers were often involved in operations that required them to turn a blind eye to illegal activities in exchange for money. Once the KKK started to get involved in the LBPD, more discriminatory acts started to happen against the community. It shaped community relationships because it gave everyone common ground. No matter what gang you were in, the police were always out to get everyone just the same.

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How crime and corruption built modern Los Angeles

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LA’s sunshine, stars, and glamour are just part of the picture. From the 1920s to the 1950s, it was a city defined by shady underworld characters and police corruption.