The event was convened in conversation with LA2050, an ongoing initiative by the Goldhirsh Foundation, which since 2013 has awarded grants to organizations working to make progress on the question “what does it mean to make Los Angeles the best place to connect, create, learn, live, and play?”

In the past, the Goldhirsh Foundation has awarded these grants based on a public survey that asks participants to choose between organizations. This year, the group has shifted its funding model and asked the public to vote not on specific organizations, but on the issues.

“It creates an opportunity to open up this conversation,” said Garcia, who urged the audience to participate in the survey, and to think carefully about what the real needs driving these issues are.

For example, youth development, which, as Garcia pointed out, is classically thought of as supporting young people through tutoring or sports activities: “Here’s an after-school program, go play basketball. And that was it,” he said. But youth development touches on so much more, he said, gesturing to panelist Gloria Gonzalez, the youth development coordinator at Youth Justice Coalition, an organization working to challenge race, gender, and class inequality in the Los Angeles youth incarceration system.

Gonzalez and leaders of other like-minded organizations across the city and the county regularly work with young people who are the most vulnerable to the policies and practices that funnel students out of the school system and straight into jails or prisons—and she spoke about the issues they face and how to help them the most.

Today, in L.A. County, it costs taxpayers around $800,000 to $850,000 to pay for a year of juvenile detention for one person. That money, Gonzalez suggested, could instead go to community organizations who are working to help improve the situations of these young adults through jobs and housing. “There are no dollars that are being shifted from probation to support young people to excel in life,” said Gonzalez. Her task? “[H]olding the folks in power in these elected positions to look at what the community needs and what the young people need.”

The panel unpacked other major issues that Angelenos are passionate about, such as public parks. Garcia asked the panelists: “For folks listening, what should they consider when supporting organizations that are about green space?”

Sissy Trinh, founder and executive director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance, said that when it comes to parks and green spaces, the question we need to be thinking about is: “How do we create humane places that provide opportunities for everybody for a diverse set of uses?”

That might mean shading and seating for the elderly. Or public programming for people who can’t afford it. For houseless residents, Trinh added, two of the biggest things they ask for—besides clean bathrooms—are water fountains and charging stations for cell phones (if they need to reach their social worker or if they’re on a list to get housing, a cellphone is a lifeline). “There are all of these different things parks can do,” she said.

Alpine Recreation Center in Chinatown is a great example. During the peak of the pandemic, she said, it became a site for distributing vaccines and personal protective equipment such as masks, and for offering COVID testing. It also functioned as a homeless shelter that distributed food. “Parks can be amazing spaces that bring together community, that bring together health and environmental justice and economic justice, and but often times they’re just spaces for over-policing,” said Trinh, who said that a lot of her organization’s work is around green gentrification, which often results in spaces being managed, operated, and used ways that over-polices people of color, houseless residents and street vendors.

The panelists agreed that over-policing is an epidemic in Los Angeles, and argued for reframing the conversation about community safety—“always parallel to policing,” Garcia said—to one about community wellness, in which residents have safe and healthy opportunities to “go out and do the things they need to do to be OK,” as Garcia put it. Gonzalez suggested that one way to achieve community wellness is to invest in peacebuilders—trusted people in the community who receive training “to support and uplift the community and uphold safety that doesn’t involve the over-policing which we see happening.”

The panelists also responded to questions from viewers watching live on YouTube. One wanted to know: “Is LA County too big to implement some of these broad-based solutions to these issues? Do the solutions need to be localized?”

“All three of us would say L.A. isn’t too big to implement some of these broad-based issues,” said Garcia.

California, Trinh noted, has the fifth biggest economy in the world, and it currently has a budget surplus. “It isn’t that we don’t have enough resources, it’s just how we’re utilizing them,” she argued.

Before wrapping up the conversation, Garcia asked the panelists to discuss how people watching could take action now. “Besides voting for these issues, what are things they should be aware of for housing, youth development, education, green space?”

Gonzalez suggested that viewers do some research to find which issues align with what they feel most passionate about. “Every organization is different and the services that they provide, and the atmosphere and resources are very different,” she said. Conversely, every person has their own skills, relationships, and connections they can bring to an organization that make an impact. 

Getting involved with an organization shouldn’t be a one-time deal. Using the analogy of working out, Trinh pointed out, you can’t jog once and expect to be in shape. You have to be consistent. “A lot of time people go in they want to do one big splashy event and they’re done,” she said.

That’s not how social justice works. But for those with limited time, getting involved doesn’t have to demand a big and splashy effort—it could be something small, like 15 minutes a day, Trinh added—everything from donating, to reading to “yelling at your elected officials.”

Vote here now for the issues that matter most to you. 

The post A Better L.A. Is Possible—If We Create Space for All Angelenos appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

These prices remained the same until 1976. As late as 1997, the last full year Walter’s son Peter O’Malley owned the team before selling it to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Group, a box seat cost $12, and you could sit in the pavilions for $6.

In case you’re wondering, $3.50 in 1962 is the equivalent of $28 today. Good luck trying to buy a box seat at Dodger Stadium in 2017 for 28 bucks. If you want to see the Dodgers play the Giants this season from that seat location, you could be paying as much as $600 for the privilege. Present-day Dodger Stadium’s slogan might well be: “Welcome, fans. Bring money.”

But it was not always this way. The O’Malleys’ low ticket price strategy was part of a larger business plan, centered on getting as many repeat customers into their ballpark as possible. Like Disneyland, the theme park showplace that Dodgers executives visited and studied, Dodger Stadium would feature affordable prices that would attract families, and especially women and children. Once they were through the turnstiles and “in the building,” these families would spend money on concessions—lots and lots of Dodger Dogs—as well as all manner of Dodger logo branded souvenirs to be worn, waved, and displayed.

Most important of all was the atmosphere inside the stadium. Beautiful views of downtown and the mountains. Organ music. Friendly and efficient park employees. Cleanliness. Safety. Fan greetings on the scoreboards. Promotions. Autograph and picture days. Not to mention Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Steve Garvey, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, and eight National League pennants in the stadium’s first quarter century of operation.

Dodger Stadium was privately owned, which meant the O’Malleys bore all risks but reaped all rewards—which also let them play the long game. If say, a six-year-old could visit the stadium with his family and have an experience that would make him want to come back again, the seeds would be planted for a lifetime of patronage and profit. “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” runs the famous Jesuit aphorism, and under O’Malley ownership from 1962 to 1997, the Dodger Stadium experience epitomized it.

This business model also served to make the stadium one of Los Angeles’ most inclusive and diverse public venues, since its affordable ticket prices drew fans from across racial, ethnic, and class lines. Club box and dugout level seating, which were class-exclusionary, represented only 3 to 4 percent of available ticketing options at Dodger Stadium in the 1960s. So if any institution in Los Angeles could be termed “democratic,” in the sense of offering the greatest good for the greatest number, it was Dodger Stadium during that time.

No one would call Dodger Stadium democratic today. It is not designed for repeat visitors, unless they are hedge fund managers or employees fortunate enough to get their hands on the company season tickets. The team, owned by Guggenheim, a financial services consortium, has gone upscale. It has spent more on players and stadium renovations, while also charging fans much more for tickets and parking. If you’re planning to come as a family, make sure your monthly rent or mortgage payment is covered first. Even a family of four that bought the cheapest tickets in the ballpark, along with four hot dogs and four drinks, would spend $134. The same family would spend approximately $120 for the same combination at a movie theater, where parking is often free.

The Dodger Stadium that tied a transient, race-and-class stratified city together is gone. Now, the chances that the fan in the seat next to you will be from the same social class and racial background are higher than ever.

In a 21st-century Los Angeles rife with income stagnation, racial separation, and social alienation, we need Dodger Stadium to return to its roots. The emphasis, as it was when the O’Malleys owned the team, needs to be on families and on children. Let kids under 14 in for half price. And give families a special discount. The money lost on the front end would be a fraction of what lifelong Dodger fans would spend over the years at their favorite stadium. A democratized Dodger Stadium would not solve all of the city’s problems, but every small, good thing counts in a time like this.

The post Democracy Strikes out at Dodger Stadium appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.