As a passing note I wish to say Thank You to all who have come aboard in debating this issue. I sometimes felt all alone as I argued on blogs about this very topic. Thanks Again!

i reckon the same people perpetrating this whole nouveau eastside-on-the-westside trip are the same ones whining about l.a.’s lack of “culture” and so up to their ears in the pangs of some misguided, chronic inferiority complex they feel the need to reimagine and recontextualize l.a. as new york west.

It took about 10 seconds for someone walking down the sidewalk to say, “This isn’t East L.A.! It’s NELA!”

Now that I know more about this side of town than I do any other part of the earth, I wholeheartedly agree with the quoted statement above about what East L.A. represents to other people (more influential and plugged into mainstream white culture):

“It’s like no people lived here. This was just area where immigrant Mexicans and their gang-banging kids lived: a perfect place for freeways, incinerators, and prisons.”

This is like in college when everyone got on the poc back for all sitting together, well goddamn, y’all are all sitting together.

Why must WE always get called out in regards to intolerant bullshit. This blog is the most intolerant?!!!

I call bullshit and I will start calling out blogs who are truly intolerant and see how many paid journalist say anything. I will bet they won’t say a damn thing other than, “Shut up little brown girl.” But they’ll be all nice about, because they are professional.

A certain LA blog did a whole thing on Illegal is it ok or not, not a damn thing from the professional peanut gallery.

And that still pisses me off as well as that Watts piece by another blog, but on this issue people feel the need to go, “no, no, no, no, you must behave.”

You have got be kidding me.

That is who engineered all of this shit in the first damn place.

Great way to break it down Al!!!!

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Daniel Hernandez wrote:
“Which gets to an uncomfortable point I think we need to consider. This debate is a debate between equal gentrifiers, who one side are brown and Eastside-centric and sympathetic to the removal of immigrants and brown folks but at the same time invariably complicit in that process — you can’t not be — and on the other, the clueless no-nothing new-comers. So I don’t think, for example CHAVO!, that your lack of understanding or knowledge on La Brea is any more relevant or just or pertinent than the new Westsider’s view and lack of knowledge on Soto. You’re both aliens.”

The thing is, it’s those newbies and not us, who are given the chance to define the city, time and time again. It is definitely not “equal.” If it was, this struggle for keeping our neighborhood name and identity would not exist. Folks who moved to LA would be already familiar with the Eastside. Why would they choose a name for their area that already exists elsewhere?
I think it’s unfair the way we’re being brushed away like pesky little flies. It’s like the folks on the other side of the river have planted down their flags and cannot admit they made a mistake based on their own ignorance. And rather than listen to what we have to say, they just would rather we go away and stop pestering them with facts. As I’ve written many times before, I have a long family history in this city and I feel it’s my responsibility to inform and educate. If other folks want to plug into bureaucratic, government institutions and fight gentrification that way, good for them. As for myself, I have access to a keyboard and an internet connection and a job that doesn’t rely on my compliance or conciliatory gestures to those with power.
And you know Daniel, I think it’s insulting that you would label us with the term Eastside-centric, like we are a bunch of EastLos hicks or something. That’s totally unfair. You know from reading our blogs that we come from diverse backgrounds. Also, the barbs like “narrow-minded” and “self important” are ones that have not gone unnoticed. Dude, if I don’t think my voice is important, who will?
The interesting thing is, if another group did take over the Eastside and then decided to rename it or incorporate it into a larger neighborhood of their culture that would be one thing. But the fact is, there is still a large group of people with geographic ties and identities to the Eastide who are still there and have no idea (because they are not plugged into the various media sources) that a whole another group of people have taken their name. It’s like they don’t exist. Vix’s comments are a good example:
“Boyle Heights has some great restaurants, but food alone does not define a hood.”
See what I mean? It’s like “oh there are people there? I only notice the restaurants.”
And you wonder why we struggle?

Also, lets point a finger to a little recognized scoundrel and major player in a lot of crap like this that goes on in this city:
REAL ESTATE AGENTS (don’t get me started, I could devote many pages about this mostly useless parasitic vermin, but not right now) suffice to say that I have first hand knowledge of their constant attempts to redesign and manipulate demographics within entire neighborhoods. Their literature and sales pitches are replete with references to this nouveau “Eastside” directed especially towards new arrivals who have more money and desire to fit “hiply”into these new urban frontiers, than any knowledge or regard for this city’s heritage and cultural worlds outside of their own (except maybe at museums). Drunk with their exploits during the last housing boom and the rampant Gentrifications, As these affluent newbies arrived into the working class hoods, Real Estate agents proceeded to spread mythical descriptions about the local public schools to calm the fears of those newbies who were petrified at the thought of sending their precious larvae into dens of knife-wielding brown kids with assurances that their kids would be able to attend “the good schools”. This precipitated a virtual segregation-like, mini-white flight within certain school districts. “Oh don’t, worry” said one realtor, I’ll tell you how you can get your child out of going to that local school.(but this too, is for a separate post) My point is, let’s identify all the guilty players here, Real Estate agents who re-engineer neighborhoods and laugh all the way to the bank, should be included.
Here is a link to a response on this whole mess I wrote to a site called Gelatobaby:
http://www.gelatobaby.com/2008/09/25/born-in-east-la/

Ethnic means people of color, meaning when people ask you what you are or where you are from they are not asking it as a conversation starter, but to see how “American” you are.

I am aware that white people can be ethnic, but I’m talking in a non-academic way as a quick lazy way to comment. Lazy how America is with the term American. If I were writing a post I would not use that term, if I was writing a paper I would not use that term.

And I’m simply using ethnic the way it is used to describe me (or against me) or people who look like me, like when people call your name ethnic or say that’s ethnic music or that’s ethnic food, in major papers that’s is how we are described.

It is pretty stupid isn’t it? Because we are all ethnic, but only people who are not white get to be decorated with that label after two or three generations of being in the US or Great Britain or Canada. I don’t know why bookstores put books by third generations African-American and Mexican-Americans in the ethnic book section, we should ask them? I don’t know why if you have a Scottish last name, they don’t tell people to go to the ethnic section to find your work.

I don’t know why authors of Irish descent from the UK that write about the Irish experiences are allowed to be in the mainstream section of American bookstores while Sandra Cisneros and Alice Walker are stuck in the corner in the back of the store in the ethnic section.

I don’t know why films by African-Americans about the African-American experience by Tyler Perry are called ethnic films and films by Martin Scorcese about Italian-Americans with Italian in the script with an Italian-American focused plot are called a mainstream or an American movie.

So ethnic in regards to not like white people or “regular” Americans who after two generations can just choose to not be ethnic anymore.

Yes it’s totally stupid. I don’t know why the people who founded this country view Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans as being different and ethnic. I may make a campaign to talk to the book store owners and ask them why are we (POC) are more ethnic than ethnic white people.

What does “non-ethnic people” mean? What is a non-ethnic person?

I remain rigid in my definition that “Eastside” refers to East of the river.