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In long-maligned South Los Angeles, that time is now, said a panel that included a scholar, a community organizer, a youth mentor, and a former city official during “Is South L.A. an Urban Success Story?,” a Zócalo/California Wellness Foundation event.

The lively discussion was moderated by Jennifer Ferro, president of KCRW, before an overflow crowd at Mercado La Paloma, a former garment sweatshop turned community hub. The conversation covered the evolution of South L.A. into a place that is both far more hopeful and far more complex than stereotypes would suggest.

It’s not that the work in South Los Angeles is done, said Manuel Pastor, a USC sociology professor and director of its Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Far from it. But, he said, a newly released study on Latino engagement in the historically African-American area, which he co-authored, demonstrates both the tremendous progress of the entire community and that, “there’s no single story of South L.A.”

In 1980, South L.A. was 80 percent African-American. Today it’s nearly two-thirds Latino. Over time the relationship between black and Latino residents—especially among younger, second-generation Latinos—has evolved into a nuanced understanding of their community that bridges race. Today, Pastor said, “there’s a very different South L.A. Latino. They’re deeply invested, and they believe they have a future in South L.A.”

Benjamin Torres, head of the grassroots organization Community Development Technologies Center, known as CDTech, agreed that the momentum is behind a collaborative effort to invest from within, in a historically and socially equitable way, rather than relying upon outside development and its consequent gentrification.

“We don’t try to wipe away the knowledge and the history of people who have come before,” Torres said. “Residents are actively saying, we want to actively create a vision, rather than letting outside development drive the change.”

To be effective, you need to be heard, said Valerie Shaw, the former president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works and longtime resident of Leimert Park. To be heard, you need to know, first and foremost, how to organize. And, also, how to complain.

“When I say complain, I mean anything you can imagine, any service you want, that’s how things happen,” Shaw said. “If you want something from your elected official, or city government, if you complain in an orchestrated way and you never give up, you will get it.”

Ferro jokingly suggested Jorge Nuño, who recently announced his candidacy for Los Angeles City Council’s District 9, pay attention to Shaw’s humorous and forthright advice for dealing with constituents and vice versa. Apart from his own political involvement, Nuño mentors young South L.A. residents through his non-profit Nuevo South, teaching them skills they’ll need to become effective community leaders themselves.

“A lot of our young people who have spent time with Nuevo South are going on to college and coming back and asking, ‘What can I do? What can I do to help my community?’,” Nuño said.

In the end, panelists observed, the ongoing progress in South Los Angeles owes much to the resilience of a multicultural community previously crippled by crime and a lack of equal opportunity.

During the question and answer period, the audience contributed to deepening the understanding of “multicultural”—with one questioner reminding the panel of the importance of the Asian community to the history of South Los Angeles and to an inclusive future.

Another audience member asked how political and business leaders can work with the community rather than being perceived as a threat. “Let them be guests at our table,” Nuño said. “We want the investment, we just don’t want the displacement.”

Pastor summed up the sentiment of the evening by riffing on a line from rapper Kendrik Lamar, a Compton native, to observe, “The thing that’s going right in South L.A. is that South L.A. loves itself.”

The post The Secret to South L.A.’s Success Is That It Loves Itself appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The South Central corridor has long defined the larger region. It was a destination spot during the 20th century jazz heyday. Its struggles during the 1970s and ‘80s reflected struggles throughout South L.A. And today, the revival of S. Central Avenue, at the hub of this very dynamic corridor, demonstrates South L.A.’s progress and possibilities.

One of the corridor’s thriving institutions is A Place Called Home, a nonprofit that serves young members ages 8 to 21 with programs in everything from the arts to urban agriculture. Zócalo Public Square asked participants in the summer photography class to document life on the corridor.

Their images capture the improvements of buildings and businesses, and the constant traffic of an area where finding a parking space is often no easy feat. They also show a homeless population far more visible than in the past, a change attributed within the community to higher housing costs and the pushing out of homeless people from downtown, just to the north. Both trends are recounted in an essay by Vivian Bowers-Cowan, longtime owner of a dry cleaning store and retail complex on Central Avenue.

South L.A’s improvements have raised new questions for the corridor, as CVS and other larger retailers mull moving in. How can it accommodate bigger and broader businesses, without displacing smaller shops that have loyally served customers there through earlier, tougher times? The photos capture a signature Los Angeles thoroughfare, growing and adapting to a promising and challenging future.

The post Cruising South Central Avenue appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Outterbridge was born in 1933 in Greenville, North Carolina, where he saw and felt the effects of segregation and took in from his mother the need to “press on” despite racist oppression. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1963, two years before the Watts Riots. Anne Ellegood, senior curator at the Hammer Museum, explained recently how assemblage was part of that moment. For African-American artists, a practice that made profound meaning from what society had cast off was part of a general demand for recognition of under-served communities and unrecognized histories. Assemblage has a varied history—back to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, at least, and including Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, Joseph Cornell’s boxes, and Edward Kienholz’s installations. Outterbridge is part of a prominent group of black artists—including Noah Purifoy, Betye Saar, John Riddle and Senga Nengudi—who nurtured their careers in Los Angeles and remained inter-connected as they rose to prominence. They brought a modernist genre into conversation with African-American heritage, which Angelenos were reminded of in “Now Dig This!” a group show of L.A. black artists active in the 1960s and ‘70s presented at the Hammer and part of 2012’s “Pacific Standard Time,” a multi-venue exploration of Los Angeles’ art scene.

Like several in that set, Outterbridge took his creative practice into arts education and organization as well as art-making. Centering these efforts in the South Los Angeles region, he cofounded the Compton Communicative Arts Academy in 1969. He was later director of the Watts Towers Art Center, housed next to Simon Rodia’s iconic Watts Towers—a mosaiced monument meticulously embellished with salvaged shells, tile and glass—and co-founded by Purifoy after the Watts Riots. Outterbridge worked there for 17 years. He lived the belief, as Ellegood put it, that “art has a social role and can actually change society.” Outterbridge’s assemblage is uniquely suited to this kind of change—since it is open to and valuing all. “Wherever I was,” he said, “anything was available and anything could be used and was used.”

It was a lesson that connected the evolving conditions of L.A. with Outterbridge’s earliest experiences. He learned as a boy the beauty of folk art and the aesthetic wisdom of everyday practices. “The rags that hung out to dry blew in the wind like colorful tapestries,” he remembered, “and I was touched by the perfect order that those rags had.” He treasured ad-hoc assemblage in his neighborhood like “the glass bottles in the trees that made music for me and my siblings.” Outterbridge’s father worked as a so-called “junk man” who would collect and resell discarded objects, so “John really grew up with that kind of ethos,” Ellegood said. “Things could always be re-used.”

The current show—called “Rag Man”—emphasizes how Outterbridge’s recent work, especially, looks back to these childhood lessons. A series called “Rag and Bag Idiom” reuses bits of textiles discarded by L.A. manufacturers—in brightly painted, abstract sculptures that seem more organic the more one looks. Other works are drawn from a series using dolls and reflecting on the way different cultural and religious traditions employ such objects. Curated by Ellegood and Jamillah James, the exhibition opened first at Art + Practice in Los Angeles and is on view this month at the Aspen Art Museum. While it’s not a retrospective, it demonstrates the continuities of Outterbridge’s long, steady career.

Assemblage makes that longevity an especial asset. Recollections are so many bits of material, too. “I put memories … away in pockets and places,” Outterbridge said. “I wrap things up and save them for a time they might be useful. That’s the nature and the practice and the process of assemblage.”

But that’s also, he added later, “what life is. We take it all in and we push it right back out in some other form.” For Outterbridge, his art is a creativity, a philosophy, a politics, an education—and “a celebration.” It’s “an affirmation of life.”

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But South L.A. has a way of surprising you.

The growth and success we’re experiencing are raising new questions for residents and businesses alike. For example, how do we continue to grow and still preserve what we have? How do we attract new businesses so residents can access conveniences in their own community? And at the same time, how do we make sure that the local mom-and-pop businesses that have been part of our growth don’t get pushed out by the likes of CVS (coming soon) or Trader Joe’s (rumored)?

I’m sensitive to the concerns of the mom and pops, because I am the mom in one—as were my mom and my grandmother.

My parents, Alice and Horace Bowers, purchased Smith’s Cleaners from my mother’s parents in 1950 and renamed it. Originally it was on the corner of Westlake Avenue and Temple Street in the Westlake District, and it grew quickly, though the cleaning was done by a subcontractor.

In 1964, my parents purchased a small dry cleaning plant at 2507 South Central Avenue. Bowers & Sons then became a “full service” cleaning operation servicing downtown Los Angeles and surrounding areas from two locations. The Bowers’ served retail and wholesale clients and provided pickup and delivery services. As the business grew, my parents purchased an adjoining building (2509) for expansion. Eventually, they bought the entire block of storefronts on the 2500 block of Central Ave., now Bowers Retail Complex.

Like many families who own their own business, my brothers and I worked at the store. Each of us has held the helm of the ship! We’ve succeeded because we’ve adhered to the business philosophy coined by my parents—“We Care Enough to Add A Personal Touch.” We’ve also maintained the cornerstones of our business—professionalism, quality, reliability, and affordability. Additionally, we believe in being good stewards of our community and giving back to people in need and to community causes. My parents were always there to give financial, business, and even family advice, assistance or employment. My dad would often hire the men down on their luck to do general maintenance, like sweeping, mopping, or painting.

Still, I wanted my own life and career. I married and had two sons, now wonderful young men. For over 20 years I worked in retail sales and management and then as an account executive at Kaiser Permanente, where I earned a good salary, full benefits, and five weeks annual vacation.

In 1994, my parents decided to retire. My dad wanted to close the doors and sell, unless one of their children would take over the plant. Neither of my brothers, who both managed the plant previously and were well into their desired careers—one was a writer, the other an actor-singer-performer—wanted to take it over. Nor did I.

Vivian Bowers-Cowan at Bowers & Sons Cleaners.

Alas, I decided I couldn’t stand the idea of the building going into decline and adding to the community’s blight. My thinking was this: If my parents had succeeded and stood the test of time, I would also. Besides, I’d always enjoyed working in the community and providing a good service.

Many people asked me why would I take over a business in South Central and give up my career. I answered, why not?

I was a single mother, and it was 1994—just two years after the riots—and the neighborhood was having a rough time. My sons, who had worked at the store, asked me not to take over the business, saying it was dangerous and “We’d starve!” But I felt the community consisted of good, hardworking people who deserved professional service. So, I put my faith in God, in the family’s reputation as pillars of the community, and in our location’s proximity to downtown, freeways, and USC. It’s a timeless truth that people will always need to get their clothes cleaned.

Because this was post-riots, I essentially took on two, related struggles—one for the business, the other for the neighborhood. In those first years, I saw drive-by shootings, drugs, and prostitution. At one point I thought about installing bullet-proof glass!

Initially, we had only three employees and there were days the business made little more than $200. I wanted to develop a business plan, and my search for help led me to the Rebuild L.A. program, which referred me to USC’s Business Expansion Program. I completed the Fast Trac II entrepreneurial course, creating a working business plan that I put into action. Within three years, Bowers had grown over 75 percent, added two employees, and redecorated the lobby.

Slowly, the neighborhood also improved. Community members began complaining to the council office and police department about the crime and lack of resources. In response, policing increased resulting in a raid of one of the largest dope houses in the area, which to my surprise was directly across the street. (There’s a bakery there now.) Shortly afterwards, Maxine Waters held a press conference on the corner of Adams and Central, declaring that we wouldn’t tolerate any more violence and unrest in our community.

We didn’t. On our block, I had pay telephone stands used by drug dealers removed, while sweeping and repainting. I had a local graffiti artist paint a mural on the side of the building to discourage other graffiti. Residents and business owners developed neighborhood watch groups and worked with the Community Police Advisory Board. When the local police division moved from Newton Street, which was above Washington, down to 35th Street on the Avenue, the community welcomed their presence.

But the biggest shift was the sea change of residents. South Central was largely an African American community. Over time, many of these longtime residents relocated to other areas of Los Angeles in search of employment and a better quality of life, some passed away, and unfortunately, some went to prison. By 1997 the area was 75 percent Latino and most of the small businesses along the South Central corridor were owned and operated by Latinos. I eventually added staff who were bilingual—I only had so much Spanish from my days at L.A. High.

We also benefited from public and private investment and more attention from our city council office under the leadership of Jan Perry. The vacant lot in the block next to ours (once a super market) was acquired and developed as a mixed-use property with affordable housing and retail space on the street level. Several other senior and affordable housing units soon followed. A shopping center with a grocery store and other services was developed on 20th and Central. A city moratorium on new fast-food places and liquor stores also created space for new kinds of businesses to develop.

Councilwoman Perry built a constituent service center in the 4200 block of Central Avenue—a beautiful LEED-certified building with rooftop space that is great for public use. And our store and several other businesses took advantage of the city’s façade improvement program to beautify our storefronts. The rehab of the Somerville Apartments and of the Dunbar Hotel, the latter famous as a venue during South Central’s jazz heyday, also gave us a lift.

I was fortunate that God sent me a wonderful husband, Greg Cowan, in 1997. He is now fondly called Mr. Bowers in our community! Initially, he’d come down to the plant after work and help me close the shop and service machinery. And after he got laid off from JPL in 1999, he filled in as the delivery driver. I couldn’t let him go! I needed every bit of his help; I was working from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and barely getting a couple full days off per year. He’s helped me survive recessions and the 2008-09 credit crunch, when small businesses had their credit lines pulled. Currently we have nine employees, we are eco-friendly, and we have three computerized point of sale stations. We continue to provide quality, affordable service, and “A Personal Touch.”

Greg and I have become my parents!

Location – and delivery – have seen us through. Our business succeeds because we are less than a mile from the growth and development downtown. We provide dry-cleaning and laundry service to lofts and private residences within a 10 mile radius, corporate clients such as the L.A. Music Center, Los Angeles Convention Center, MTA, various departments at USC, and the Department of Homeland Security. Today, more than 70 percent of our business comes from such routes.

The other businesses in the Bowers Retail Complex are long-term tenants including a dentist, a soccer store, and a computer repair shop, which have all been here for more than 10 years. There’s also a tattoo supply store and a corner store, Amigos Variety, which has been there forever. The newest, A Taste of ChiBas Café, is my mom’s catering kitchen, which she now leases out to qualified licensed caterers.

For several years, members of the Central Avenue Business Association worked on beautification and cleanliness, business growth and development, and safety and parking concerns. When we first discussed the Business Improvement District, it seemed like a strange idea. We were already paying taxes for these services, so why should we send more money to the city? When we researched other BIDs we realized it was a way to maintain high standards and reach our goals. In May 2014, we formed a steering committee, hired consultants, and started the 18-month formation process. The BID of property owners was officially established on December 6, 2015 with a 78.65 percent yes vote. We’ve already hired our Clean Streets Team to power wash the streets, remove graffiti, empty trash cans, remove bulky items, and weed the tree wells. By August, we will have our Safety Ambassador Team on board. Businesses on neighboring corridors have already begun to ask how they can develop their own BID!

I’m thrilled with the BID. It’s added to what I call the improvement moment on the Avenue and in South Los Angeles in general. A variety of projects are currently underway. Meta Housing, which developed the lot next door, has another project in progress on Washington Boulevard. A Place Called Home, a terrific nonprofit focused on children and the arts, is expanding. The city has an interesting pilot program to help some of the small businesses here digitize their operations, so that it will be easier for them to grow.

And I’m very excited about the new, very nice sit-down restaurant that should open early next year in the Hotel Dunbar. (Cross your fingers).

Some things are becoming harder. Homelessness has become a much bigger problem in our area, as the development downtown pushes more people south. And there’s the concern that all the growth and development will displace both people and businesses. How do we welcome the new without pushing out the old?

The good news is that on South Central, we are in a much stronger position to deal with these hard questions.

The post The Little Dry Cleaning Shop Around the Corner appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

An interesting fact about city government is that, for the most part, all city departments (about 40) operate in silos. There is very little formal interdepartmental communication and coordination, and as a result overall service provision is not maximized.

In 2008, during the worst recession since the Great Depression, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilmembers Bernard C. Parks, Jan Perry, Janice Hahn and Herb Wesson decided to work together to improve conditions in South L.A. Their effort—to create and implement a five-year economic development strategic plan for South L.A. The plan was called the South L.A. Initiatives. It was novel because it focused on a region—not a council district or a neighborhood.

I was appointed by the mayor and supported by the councilmembers as the coordinator of the South L.A. Initiatives. From 2008 to 2013, I worked closely with the mayor, councilmembers, political staffers, city department executives and staff, and community members to bring services to South L.A.

It’s common knowledge that the city produces scores of plans that are eventually shelved. But unlike so many other plans for South L.A., this one measured the performance of the plan’s goals on an ongoing basis. Every month for five years, 15 departments reported their progress. Every quarter for five years, department executives met to solve problems, report progress, and identify areas of collaboration. Additionally, a 15-member community committee regularly received progress reports.

As a result of this performance-based strategic planning, the South L.A. region experienced over $600 million of investment, as well as serious analysis and attention from 15 city departments.

At the heart of the initiatives was a $250 million investment in neighborhood infrastructure. Streets, sewers, and stormwater systems were improved. Many trees were trimmed and alleys cleaned. Municipal facilities such as an aquatic center, parks, libraries, and fire stations were constructed.

In the employment arena, 6,000 jobs were created in the region. The city’s workforce center placed 25,000 South L.A. residents in jobs. Mayor Villaraigosa’s summer youth employment program resulted in over 17,000 jobs for local residents.

The South L.A. Initiatives also focused on housing, investing $100 million to develop nearly 2,000 affordable rental units, and $6 million in home repair and security to assist close to 3,000 low-income senior residents. The program also supported the conversion of 180 vacant or foreclosed properties into more than 400 housing units. And scores of city employees worked to move forward the redevelopment of the historic Jordan Downs public housing project.

Even with the economy in free fall, the Initiatives continued to back retail and small business enterprises. Among the projects supported were the Midtown Crossing and the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw renovation and expansion, the repositioning of industrial lands for new uses, efforts to attract national and international employers, and assistance to more than 3,500 small businesses.

The Initiatives also encouraged the planning department to complete the three community plans in the South L.A. region. These plans had not been updated for more than 10 years. The new plans thoughtfully established overlay plans for transit-oriented districts along the Expo and Blue Lines, streamlined land-use entitlements along the commercial and industrial corridors, and adopted a USC master plan.

As the coordinator of the South L.A. plan, it was my job to foster ongoing communication among all participants and to manage the performance measurement mechanism. As a result of the efforts of nearly 100 city employees, who worked thoughtfully and diligently to bring projects, information, and resources to improve the lives of South L.A. residents, the South L.A. Initiatives plan won the 2012 award for Planning Excellence, Large Jurisdictions from the American Planning Association-L.A. Chapter.

Fast forward, it’s now 2016—and what should South L.A. residents do? First, encourage your elected officials to create a regional strategic service plan. Several cities actually have strategic plans, but L.A.’s size and governance structure prevents a citywide plan. So it’s best to advocate for creation of regional plans within the city.

Next, South L.A. residents need to know how to complain. Yes, call 311, but also contact the council office, the Mayor’s South L.A. district representative, and the city commissioner in the department that interests you. Get to know your local service providers—for example, the manager at your sanitation or street cleaning yard, the park supervisor, the area Department of Water & Power manager. Advocate for services and don’t give up.

As Los Angeles continues to grow, the future of each neighborhood is in the hands of its residents. I have lived in South L.A. neighborhoods all of my adult life. I have witnessed the changes, the ebbs and flows. As the neighborhoods change from predominantly African American to mostly Latino or multicultural, we must move forward as one region, connected and committed to improving the conditions of our individual lives and the lives of all South L.A. residents.

The post What Did It Take to Clean Up South L.A.? $600 Million and Cooperation appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This insight was not my own—it’s one of the central ideas of legendary gang researcher Malcolm Klein, an emeritus sociologist at USC. In one of my conversations with Mac, he compared the social relations that bring together gangs to the lifelong affection and solidarity that soldiers have for those with whom they served in combat. In countering gangs, it is vital not to put potential gang members under siege or to give them a common enemy; that just fuels their cohesion.

Applying this insight was an enormous departure in L.A. For 30 years, the city handled gangs as primarily a law enforcement matter. In the 1980s, LAPD Chief Daryl Gates declared war on gangs—which Mac’s research showed was counterproductive. Our overcrowded prison system, too, reinforced gangs by segregating prisoners by race and gang affiliation.

But a decade ago, Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided to shift strategies. They figured out that to disrupt the gang phenomenon, you needed to focus on weakening the social ties between gang members and strengthening other kinds of relationships and social ties among gang-age young people.

In 2006, South L.A. was the source of half of the gang-related violence in the city. By that year, every category of crime was in decline L.A.-wide—except gang violence, which had increased 16 percent in one year. There had been a series of shootings in Watts at the end of 2006, with nine people killed. On the heels of the violence came a report from attorney Connie Rice and The Advancement Project and an audit from Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick that deemed the city’s anti-gang approach a failure, creating enormous public attention—and an opportunity to change.

At the time, I had recently completed two years as chief of staff at Sojourners, the Washington, D.C.-based Christian community dedicated to social justice. I’m also an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. But my expertise and work had been with young people, and figuring out how to engage them during my 17 years at the Bresee Foundation.

Which is why the mayor hired me to develop the new approach to combating gangs that became GRYD. Until then, the city’s anti-gang and youth resources had been spread thinly across 15 council districts in Los Angeles like peanut butter. In mid-2008, we won a bruising political battle to consolidate them, taking the money and targeting it in eight zones where rates of violence were four times more than in the rest of the city. Four of these zones were in South L.A.

In summer 2008, we had our first big initiative, Summer Night Lights. We kept certain public parks open late into the night, turned on the lights, and brought in programming that had been designed in consultation with young people, including gang members. Summer Night Lights was, and still is, an immediate hit with young people. It became the linchpin of our efforts to turn public spaces into places where everyone could participate.

We put two-thirds of the money into prevention programs and activities like Summer Night Lights. We spent a lot of time talking to LAPD officers, and suggesting that they focus their attention only on the hardcore gang members who do the shooting, and stop arresting kids who look or walk like gang members.

We also had researchers at USC create an assessment tool to produce data on who might be most likely to become a gang member. The researchers told us we were actually looking for a very small number of people. Even in neighborhoods considered gang-infested, 85 percent of kids will never join a gang; only 15 percent will join, and most will be active for two or fewer years. So how could we identify those few kids who were most at risk to become hardcore gang members, and focus our resources on them?

The research showed that kids are most likely to join gangs between ages 10 to 14, and we came up with 15 primary risk factors to assess that age group for gang membership. If the assessment tool scored them as likely to join a gang, they were eligible to be in the GRYD program.

This was controversial, especially when the assessment tool contradicted what people thought. People might look at a kid whose father and brother were gang members and say, ‘This is a high-risk kid.’ But it turned out that for some kids, having family members who were gang members provided daily reminders of why they didn’t want to be in gangs.

GRYD brought together city agencies to develop plans for high-risk kids that would include improving their school performances and encouraging activities that built strong social relationships. Some of our biggest allies in much of this work turned out to be grandmothers, who worked with their grandchildren, and some of whom also drove the work of the Watts Gang Task Force, a joint effort of law enforcement, communities, and agencies that has made a huge impact on reducing gang violence.

GRYD was just one factor in the decrease in gang violence in South L.A. Gang-related crime was dropping at the time across the country. We don’t understand all of the reasons why, and it’s not clear if previous strategies will work in today’s landscape, where gang violence has shifted to being done online and through human trafficking instead of drug trafficking. But we do know that aggressive assessment of risks and youth development make a difference in keeping kids away from law enforcement—and out of gangs.

The post How 10 Year Olds, Not Cops, Spearhead Gang Prevention in South L.A. appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I grew up in Watts, and for as long as I can remember I have been hearing negative stories about the community from family, friends, and the people I knew. At a very early age I learned that the crime rate was high, that the neighborhood was drug-infested, that the schools were hopeless, and that Watts was home to many ills.

I heard so much about its dangers that I planned my life around avoiding them. The safest way to live, I figured, was to focus on my education to protect myself—with the expectation that I might one day leave. I spent most of my youth indoors reading and writing, instead of playing outside with the other children.

I must admit that, while I never challenged Watts’ reputation as a kid, I was curious about where it came from. Watts had its problems, but it never felt half as bad in the experiencing as in the telling. And I never felt fearful in the way that people expected me to be.

As I got older, it bothered me that when people who didn’t live in Watts talked about the community, they always seemed to talk about the 1965 Watts Riots. The fact that this is still true more than 50 years later, in 2016, seems bizarre, given how neighborhoods change and how few of the people who were there are still here.

As I studied journalism and learned to write, I decided I had the power to change how people thought about Watts. Three years ago, having entered my mid-20s, I started to publish essays about Watts. I didn’t shrink from Watts’ problems, but I also wrote about my life and family and the joys of it.

One essay I wrote for Zócalo Public Square in 2014 became a sensation. In it, I praised Watts for offering a lot of institutions to help young parents and kids, but I wondered why it didn’t offer what I needed as a young, childless college student who was also working. I couldn’t print out an essay or get college-related advice anywhere in Watts. I closed the piece by suggesting that Watts needed a local neighborhood center with computers and guidance counselors that can get help people trying to get ahead.

The essay was also published in Time magazine and became so popular that reporters started calling to interview me. Of course, many of them were preparing pieces in advance of the 50th anniversary of the Watts Riots. NBC included me in their special on the anniversary. I used every opportunity to talk about the virtues of the community, the ways it had changed, and the need to improve some of the statistics around poverty that fuel our reputation.

I was proud of my work and glad for the attention, but for some reason, it didn’t feel right. I took a hiatus from writing articles to continue my schooling and work while I thought about why I felt unsettled. Was I approaching the story of changing Watts’ reputation wrongly? Had I not done enough?

I was especially frustrated because, with every passing day, the distance grew between Watts’ bad reputation and its improving reality. Schools were getting better, crime and violence were even less common, and there were all kinds of fairs and programs in the community that seemed to lead to people getting jobs and health care.

I didn’t have to go far to see this. Two impressive developments had launched within walking distance of my home. Last year, a College Track program opened in Watts, helping high school students enter college and also working with them so they can successfully complete their degrees. The second development—this January, chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson opened a much-needed restaurant down the street from me and it quickly became a favorite among people in the neighborhood.

Things were looking up for Watts, and for me. I even received a letter in the mail giving me permission to use an old community recreational room to jumpstart my own resource center—exactly like the one I envisioned in my Zócalo article.

Pedestrian bridge over Blue Line tracks, Watts.

But I was less than thrilled—Watts’ reputation still wasn’t moving as fast as Watts.

Then one day, I had a conversation with my neighbor for an article I was planning to write to end my self-imposed sabbatical. He had lived in Watts for as long as I could remember and was very popular in the neighborhood. I asked him what he thought of all the improvements in Watts, and his reply really hit me: “To be real with you, I just lay my head there. I’m like most people, I don’t really pay attention to that stuff.”

I thought this was funny at first. But then I thought about it some more, and some more after that, and it hit me. He was deeply right.

I’m glad for the changes, but they didn’t really mean that much to me, or my own experience of Watts. Because Watts was never to me anything like the place people think it was. And if it didn’t really matter to him or matter to me—we had built lives here—why was I worrying so much about its reputation?

My problem was mine, not Watts’. Why was I making myself unhappy worrying about a reputational problem that wasn’t in my power to fix?

Watts is a fine place, with problems and virtues like other places; I’m proud to live here and I value it for what it’s given me. After all, hadn’t I learned the value of education here in Watts, sometimes from the same people who taught me about Watts’ ills? I have more positive to say about this place than negative (and I’m very grateful to see more and more positive things blooming here). And now that I’ve allowed myself to be happy about Watts, my goals feel even clearer. I won’t stay in my house, and I’m going to go outside and get my resource center up and running.

You can think what you want about Watts. I’m too busy enjoying my neighborhood to care.

The post Why I Don’t Care About My Neighborhood’s Bad Reputation appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I took his words to heart, and have never let them go.

I have never let South L.A. go either. I grew up in the middle of the Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills-Jefferson Park area, otherwise known as Black Los Angeles, a place that punched way above its weight as a center of black life in the United States at the time. Often when whites write (sometimes to great critical success) about Black L.A., they describe it as the sum total of its self-inflicted pathologies, rarely seeing the beauty of the particularity of life there or the complex intersection of class and intraracial conflict.

Sure, I got my ass kicked, and occasionally guns we’re pointed in my direction, but that could happen anywhere in the city of angels. The Black L.A. I grew up in is a moveable feast of memory.

My memories of growing up in Black L.A. are trips to Playa Del Rey beach and Griffith Park. My dad worked nights at the post office, and so he would take me and the neighborhood boys and girls all about the city on a regular basis. It was a one-man Boys and Girls Club. I’ve written many stories about Googie and Onla and the other knuckleheads I hung out with. I still think about the polite criminality and comic mayhem before rock cocaine came to town like an ill wind that kind of ethnically cleansed black folks who fled to the high desert or back to Texas, Louisiana, or Mississippi.

I remember going shopping with my mom at the Boy’s Market on Crenshaw when Crenshaw was still Japanese. And I remember hanging out in the magazine and book section and being terrified by Alfred Hitchcock short stories. Later I discovered that Japanese magazines had naked women in them but no one seemed to notice my 10-year-old self panting with excitement.

The nearby Holiday Bowl bowling alley was probably the only place in the world where you could get sashimi, hot links, grits, and donburi under the same roof. I was lucky to live on the edge of everything—the shining affluence of Baldwin Hills and close enough to the heat of working class neighborhoods. In 1964 we moved to a neighborhood of New Orleans expatriates, and I attended Holy Name of Jesus Christ Catholic Church on Jefferson. I attended their elementary school for just one year because a nun there decided that I was mildly retarded. My mother threatened to rip the veil off of the nun and I was sent to a public school to study with the heathens.

Jervey Tervalon, left, with a friend.

Long before Beyoncé, we were ensconced in celebrity culture in that South L.A. sightings of Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Richard Pryor weren’t uncommon, and Jim Brown was known to crash a party. Who didn’t know someone who danced on Soul Train? Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father on Fourth Avenue, walking distance from my house. And Jim Kelly, of Enter the Dragon fame, courted a lady on my block, though my friends and I would barely look in his direction because we thought he might round house kick our little pootbutts.

If you hung around long enough you’d end up in a movie, like my older brother who had a moment of fleeting fame in The Spook Who Sat by the Door. A casting director found him and his buddy in the unemployment line and needed some “high yellow niggers” for a few scenes for an important and complicated plot point involving passing as white and a bank robbery. My mom even sewed my brother’s dashiki for authenticity’s sake.

I had my distinctly out-to-lunch buddies; we carried staffs and wore flowers in our hair and, like Kwai Chang Caine meets afro hippies, we walked barefoot—and talked about science fiction and the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft incessantly. Perhaps not everyone is up on Afro-Futurism—that school of thought that values black speculative fiction as a necessary means to understand our current and past situations (though I think we thought of it as Afro-Presentism). Understanding white privilege in its myriad forms should be something you can get a Ph.D. in.

I had a great liberal arts education once I got to college, studying with the literary critic Marvin Mudrick—who understood that being raised in a real neighborhood meant you sometimes got beat up. My formal education meshed well with the idiosyncratic education I had before. Mudrick’s love of Chaucer became mine, and my love of Richard Pryor became his admiration. It’s the crazy complicated formula of one’s birth culture and its intersection with whiteness/European-ness and all the variations plus the breadth of one’s reading and interests. That’s how I thought of myself growing up weird ass Jervey, that dude who reads a lot and writes.

I also flew model rockets, studied martial arts, and loved science. I worshiped fan-boy culture: Dracula above all else, science fiction and Lord of the Rings, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Ishmael Reed’s “I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra,” Canterbury Tales, and millions of comics.

Later, when I did more traditional study of literature, my love for reading everything served me well. The canon couldn’t harm me or make me feel like an alien in my own skin—I took what was useful to me and ignored the rest.

I became a writer and teacher. Now, after teaching for over 30 years at almost every level of schooling, at some of the poorest and some of the most prestigious colleges and universities in Southern California, I’ve learned this: every teacher who ever meant something to me was passionate about his or her area of expertise, was generous of spirit, was honest, and made things.

It is hard to quantify these things, the metrics of creativity, but creativity and creative schooling can happen anywhere. Good, enthusiastic instruction. Decently paid, respected teachers. Students who feel respected and challenged. And a reasonable school environment. These are the essentials, but one can make do.

When I go back to South L.A., I teach junior high and high school students at USC’s Neighborhood Academic Initiative Saturday Academy. The academy is one of the enhancements NAI offers the kids in its seven-year program to prepare low-income students for college. (Those who meet USC’s admissions requirements get a full financial aid package). These are kids of color who can get into elite schools because NAI creates the kind of advantages an affluent kid has.

I’m glad for my uneven and even perilous inner city education—it made a reader and writer out of me. And so I do my best to entice NAI students to be passionate writers and readers. I flatter the ones who rise to the challenge and admonish the ones who don’t, even if they’re killing it in STEM courses. NAI and my organization, Literature For Life, give a $1,000 prize to the ninth grader who writes the best short story at a USC community school; we want to expand it to all public schools in L.A.

Too often these days we test kids like lab rats and torture teachers to achieve results that justify their jobs. I think of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” and the power of saying “I would prefer not to.” I will not participate in a process that makes it impossible for a teacher to generate passion in students for reading, that values teaching to a test over the possibility of working to engage students in creative construction. STEM is necessary but so is reading widely and deeply. I want these kids to know the pleasure of reading Kafka and then being shocked that when they’re in biology, they remember The Metamorphosis and wonder about the nature of existence.

These Latino and African-American kids remind me of myself when I was in school, which happens to be the same school—Foshay—that I attended back when Foshay was a junior high and a tough place to be a student. Now Foshay is a K-12 school that produces students who get into USC, the UCs, Stanford, and Harvard. Many of them are the first generation in their families that will go on to college, and they look like me, and many of them are confident in their intelligence and wit.

They are their own weird-ass selves.

The post A South L.A. Novelist on Why He Teaches Kids It’s OK to Be Weird appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

South L.A. is both a remaining stronghold of African Americans in Los Angeles and a place where a new narrative of immigrant integration is unfolding. There, a process of building on the past—or ethnic sedimentation—has taken hold. As a result, South L.A. is now seeing the emergence of complex new identities rooted as much in a pride of place as they are in a sense of race. The area has become home to a new sort of Latino identity and a new sort of immigrant integration, both inflected by blackness.

Understanding these changes is important not just for South L.A. but for the country as a whole. Many other urban areas have been ravaged by unemployment, riven by immigration, and riddled by the rise of gangs and the hyper-criminalization of African Americans, especially, and Latinos. The kind of positive social innovation that’s happening in South L.A. as community organizations forge a Black-Latino unity could be instructive, with the lessons stretching beyond our majority-minority region and time, and touching on the future of the nation.

These conclusions come from research done by a team of colleagues and students at USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration in South L.A. over the past few years. We’ve observed public spaces, done detailed research in and on neighborhoods, and conducted interviews with 100 Latino residents and nearly 20 local civic leaders of all backgrounds. Our research team members are publishing the results in a new report, Roots|Raíces: Latino Engagement, Place Identities, and Shared Futures in South Los Angeles, combining our analysis with specific recommendations for South L.A.’s future.
 
 
Shifting Spaces: Demographic Change in South L.A.

If there is a constant in South L.A., it is change. Once farmland, the area became the paradigm for white industrial suburbs in the 1920s through the post-war period. Black L.A., always a presence, grew dramatically in the war years, particularly along Central Avenue. After racially restrictive housing covenants fell, the black community moved south and west. By 1970, South L.A.—stretching from Interstate 10 to the north, the Alameda Corridor to the east, Imperial Highway to the south, and Baldwin Hills to the west—was 80 percent African American.

But time—and demographics—didn’t stand still. In the 1980s, job loss from deindustrialization and a toxic combination of high crime and excess policing forced many African Americans to reconsider their futures in the area. The 1992 civil unrest gave another push and as the exodus stepped up, Latinos moved into the neighborhood. Many were immigrants driven from Latin America by economic crises and civil wars, lured to the U.S. by changing labor demands, and unable to secure housing in densely packed traditional entry neighborhoods like Pico-Union. With the immigration flow also becoming more female and family-based, the search was on for affordable housing, and the single-family homes of South L.A. made for a good fit.

Non-Hispanic Black population in South L.A. in 1970 (left) and 2010 (right).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Geolytics Inc.

Latino population in South L.A. in 1970 (left) and 2010 (right).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Geolytics Inc.

The ethnic inflows and outflows were not balanced: More Latinos moved in than blacks moved out, and South L.A. became more crowded. Single-family homes frequently became multi-generational affairs, and Latino homeownership rates rose from 22 percent in 1980 to 33 percent in 2009-2013, nearly closing the gap with black homeownership. Now the area that has long been the beating heart of Black Los Angeles—South L.A.—is nearly two-thirds Latino.

The uptick in home ownership—as well as a steady increase in the share of South L.A. immigrants with more than 20 years in the country—signals the process of sinking roots. By contrast, other measures of “integration” or rootedness have remained low, including English-language acquisition and civic engagement. Here is evidence of a rooted but disconnected population: In 2013, while 47 percent of immigrants in Los Angeles County were naturalized citizens, just 26 percent of immigrants in South L.A. had that status.
 
 
Latinos in South L.A.: Generational Experiences

The first generation of immigrants in the neighborhood has complex attitudes towards their neighbors. In our interviews, older Latinos sometimes spoke of racial suspicion or, more commonly, simply noted relationships with African Americans that were polite but not close. But the very same individuals would later wax poetic about the African-American neighbor who guided them through the homeownership process, the black cop who set their errant hijo on the right course, and co-workers with whom they have shared struggles and triumphs.

What is clearer is that younger Latinos who grew up in South L.A.—the children of the elders—had very different experiences. The second generation has shared their lives with African-American neighbors—as classmates, teammates, and first loves. Said one Latino interviewee about interaction with African Americans, “You know, we grew up in each other’s homes, and we grew up together. So to us, it’s a similarity. They’re our people.” Another interviewee put it this way: “You are more in tune with the African-American community, you’re more mixed in.”

Strikingly, both generations are especially proud of being from South L.A.; they celebrate the neighborhood’s resilience in the face of challenges and injustice. Both older and younger Latino residents express a high degree of satisfaction with their community, seeing it as a place where they can realize their own version of the American Dream. Residents do not ignore the difficulties of life in South L.A., including household incomes for both blacks and Latinos that are far below the overall county average, but the struggle to overcome creates a tie that binds.

While the younger generation may indeed be “mixed in,” that has not necessarily translated to the public square. Latinos are dramatically underrepresented in political, non-profit, and other civic leadership roles. This is partly a consequence of the ways in which a more immigrant and younger population limits voting power; while South L.A. is nearly two-thirds Latino, Latinos comprised only 28 percent of the area’s voters in during the 2014 general election.
 
 
Bridging Race: Interdependence and Institutions

Moving forward, our analysis suggests that South L.A. needs strategies of both independence and interdependence. Independence includes leadership training for Latinos and the encouragement of naturalization and voter registration to coincide with the fight for the broader immigration reform.
Interdependence means avoiding “Latino triumphalism,” in which changing demographics yields a sort of “winner takes all, it’s our turn” kind of politics. While it may be easier for Latinos in communities where nearly everyone is Latino to pay less heed to coalition politics, such an approach is problematic in mixed South L.A., where effectively challenging racism (and, in particular, pervasive anti-blackness) and economic disparities requires the support of the whole neighborhood.

Bringing together groups while navigating differences is hard work, but some civic institutions in South L.A. are succeeding. One common thread among those doing black-brown unity work is a commitment to community organizing that is intentionally multi-racial in spirit and approach.

Organizers and civic leaders alike are especially sensitive to the palpable sense that Black Los Angeles is slipping away. To counter this, some organizations deliberately structure themselves so that blacks and Latinos have equal weight (even though the underlying populations may be more one group than another); for example, parent groups tend to be overwhelmingly Latino unless organizers make deliberate efforts to involve black parents.

Understanding personal histories, sharing stories of migration, and celebrating the struggle for civil rights in South L.A. can be key first steps. Organizers believe that such patient work pays off; for example, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) started a successful campaign for green jobs by first hosting a frank and far-reaching discussion on the evolution of black and brown communities in South L.A. Many organizations also find it critical to point explicitly to how pervasive racism is in our nation—how it is woven into the ways our institutions and policies are expressed in everyday life, and how this helps explain the exclusion of communities like South L.A.

Fortunately, there is much on which to build: organizations like Community Coalition (CoCo), CADRE, SCOPE, Community Development Technologies (CD Tech), and other multi-racial organizing institutions are turning out leaders who are imbued in this type of transformational civic leadership. CoCo is a particularly interesting example of leadership development and promotion: It was founded by Karen Bass and Sylvia Castillo—black-brown from the start—and recently President and CEO Marqueece Harris-Dawson, an African American who is now councilmember for District 8, has been succeeded by longtime organizer, Alberto Retana.
 
 
Facing Forward: Toward a Shared Future

There is more to do. South L.A. needs to step up civic engagement in general and Latino civic engagement in particular. This will require creating on-ramps to civic life for people with little history of participation, through activities like beautifying parks and staging community concerts. It also will require an emphasis on leadership: deepening Latino leadership for multi-racial coalitions, while strengthening black-Latino alliances, and enhancing capacity for existing black-led and other South L.A. organizations.

The public narrative also needs to change. South L.A. may be an area with many needs, but it is also a place with tremendous assets. New transit lines are bringing both greater mobility and needed economic development. New organizations are building ties between communities and ethnic groups long portrayed as at odds. New and creative strategies to realize the promise of South L.A. are emerging, with the most recent example being the successful multi-year, multi-sector, and multi-racial effort to secure the Promise Zone designation that will bring more federal resources to a large swath of South L.A.

Civic engagement of Latinos as a share of the total population in South L.A. and L.A. County. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Geolytics Inc.

There are threats ahead. Nearly all the civic leaders we spoke with are worried about gentrification, particularly as downtown development spills south. Fears of displacement are not just economic; Blacks and Latinos alike worry that the community and neighborhoods they have fought so hard to build will be erased. Resisting—or, more accurately, taking advantage of rather than being taken advantage by new economic investments—will be an opportunity for new cross-community engagement.

In the last few years, knocking around the Twittersphere has been an inspiring hashtag, #WeAreSouthLA. It is meant to evoke a sense of pride in a place of struggle; it is frequently connected to people fighting for living wages and better schools, and against police abuse and racial discrimination. And if you peruse the tag, you will notice a myriad of faces, ethnicities, and genders all sharing joy about being from an area others have written off.
It is this more nuanced and dynamic picture of South L.A.’s past, present, and future that we have sought to capture—one in which organizing and civic engagement allow residents to achieve not only their of their own piece of the American Dream, but also their shared goal of economically vibrant, socially inclusive, and environmentally healthy communities.

The post The South Los Angeles Future Will Be Shared appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.