La Bamba as universal truth

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Edward R. Roybal – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ed Roybal (February 10, 1916 – October 24, 2005) was an American politician.

Inspired by El Chavo’s post, on the resistance to the Gold Line route on the Eastside being called the Edward Roybal “Linea de Oro” . I just shake my head a have another drink of wine. Here you have a route named after the great Edward Roybal who was one of the founders of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), who was the first Mexican American LA City Councilman since 1870 or something, first Chicano US Congressman, the first Congressman to get bilingual education into the schools as law, a spokesman for all minority people and probably the greatest Mexican American political leader of the 20th century, from the LA Eastside, (and Roosevelt High), the Honorable Edward Roybal.

But no sir, wait just a minute, we don’t want to piss off Lou Dobbs, Walter (my car radio is speaking to me in Spanish), Moore, The Minutemen, English only nabobs, and the fearful of Latino power, lying sanganabeetches, who oppose any Spanish language in public.  Because in reality they fear to their bone marrow the rise of Latino Americans and see the name “Linea de Oro” as a threat.

What bullshit! Even though they live in a city called Los Angeles, in a state called California, have next door neighbors (Mexico), who speak the Spanish language, they piss their pants if anyone dare propose any further Spanish language inroads into the holy grail of Anglo America. Funny, because if you go to the ancestral mountain pueblo, high in the Sangre de Cristo Mtns.  of that great American, Edward Roybal, in Pecos, New Mexico, (where I was last week btw), and where his and other familia’s go back literally hundreds of years, you will still be greeted in the Spanish language, Hola! Que Tal Señor? Bienvenidos Señor, de donde viene? Ah Los Angeles? Oh, tengo mucha familia en el este de de Los Angeles, no quieres una helada Mano? Como se llama Primo? Gee how dangerous the Spanish language is!

And on the subject of the Spanish language here’s an ambassador of Español that instead of fear and loathing, as in some parts of Los Angeles, brings happiness and brotherhood all around the world.

La Bamba!

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Parque/Tierra De La Culebra, Highland Park

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Over ten years ago I was at the right place at the right time to help set up the Tierra de la Culebra. We would go move out rocks, pull weeds and practice danza Azteca there. One day when it really wasn’t that cloudy, the danza leader said we were going to dance until it rained. It rained within 5 minutes of us dancing hard. I will never forget that day and the magical place it happened. The other day I re-visited and these are some pics I took.

the culebra head

the culebra head

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Tricks Are For Kids 101: Jesus Christ! Where The Fuck Have YOU Been?

grey building, grey people, grey food, grey walls. turned 18, see any hope? think you’ll fit, don’t give a shit, forget your past, cuz nothin’ lasts. see some die, see shallow lies. no going back, no going home, it’s all pitch black. (Dave Dictor)

It happened yesterday. Was it a miracle or just another day at the office? I had 1st period conference. I usually catch up with Adriana in the English Dept. or Liz in the textbook room or clarify something with Deans Zanki or Zubyk. But I got called for Period 1 coverage. I’m sent to the R building, to an English class. I walk in and the teacher leaves. There are 8 students in there. It’s a Special Ed class. They are busy looking up some terms from The Odyssey.

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Cute? A story of MY fire escape.

Baby Rat w/feathers

Baby Rat w/feathers

I went by my girlfriend Noe’s place in Boyle Heights. It used to be my place, but I decided to move downtown.

My girlfriend loves everything and everybody. When I went to her place she was like, “Browne I have something to show you.”

So she takes me to the fire escape and shows me a baby rat. With feathers. I think some people call them pigeons.

“Isn’t it cute?” Noe.

I just sort of stare, she continues, “The mama was there and then there was an egg, so I couldn’t kick it out. It’s nature. It’s beautiful.”

An egg is not a bird, apparently she hasn’t been reading her pro-choice literature.

That nest and egg would have been on the sidewalk on the pavement if I still lived there. A sort of lesson to all of the other pigeons to stay off MY fire escape, but the universe works in mysterious ways and Noe lives there not Browne, so a lucky break for the pigeons of Boyle Heights.

Browne Molyneux

Body in repose, LA Eastside

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Bridge over LA River Date: 02-17-55
Photographer: R. Rittenhouse

A dead body from the book “The Scene Of A Crime” LAPD photo archives.
Under the North Broadway Bridge in Lincoln Hts, the old “Black Railroad Bridge” in the background and Elysian Park. Around this same time, 1955, as a 10 year old playing at the Downey Playground one night, I witnessed some guy get stabbed and thrown over this same bridge onto the railroad tracks (not as far a fall as the body in the picture took) by gangsters from East Side Clover.

Also this picture reminds me that as kids we used to climb under the bridges of the LA River to catch young pigeons for our coops. The LA River was our playground as kids, catching pigeons, toads, sliding down the mossy sides of the riverbank, talking to the hobo’s waiting on the tracks for the train to Seattle or San Francisco.
Around 1955 or 1956 the early horror film “Them” about giant ants colonizing in the storm drains of the LA was shot right where this body is lying.

This area definitely isn’t the East Side claimed by denizens of Silver Lake or Los Feliz.

Saving Los Angeles from Becoming a First World City

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Many of America’s cities are in the crapper thanks to years of policy that’s favored suburbanites and their wasteful consumption habits. And LA has suffered the glut of gentrifying jerks looking for a lifestyle instead of a place to live. Buildings turned into condos, markets turned into  fancy t-shirt shops, restaurants with one word names. It’s like some invasion by rich asshole foreigners, quickly turning Los Angeles into a First World City, instead of an American city.  But this trend is reversible and the opportunity to clean up this city, and get rid of all the cleaned-up-ness, is achievable.

What’s the difference between a First World City and an American City? Let me show you the signs.

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Hands Across The River…

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There was a time when it seemed that some Westside Angelenos perceived life east of the river to be something like this…..

Apparently, there’s been some change of heart by our neighbors to the West. I received today the following email care of L.A. Eastside and I thought it would be worthy of sharing with our readers:
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THEY’VE F@#*ED IT UP!

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The landmark street sign for long time Eastside favorite “CHRONI’S FAMOUS SANDWICH SHOP” recently fell victim to a “hostile makeover.”

The former original version had featured a flickering neon outline that animated the doggie’s wagging tail and tongue. The new flat paint job reduces the sign to a shadow of it’s former self. By simply filling in the original outlines with bright primary colors instead of attempting to restore the original design, the management continues to further alienate us purists by continuing a string of Chroni’s atrocities such as putting lettuce in the hamburgers.

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As an avid preservationist and historian, I lament yet another loss of our city’s original flavor. My only consolation at this point is that I had managed to document images of the original version.

The original Chroni’s sign now becomes yet another bit of L.A. history that we’ll have to find in some future coffee table book. (Sigh) At least we’ll have the pictures, and the memories…………….

The Price of Marijuana

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I know that many of us eastsiders have an embedded belief that using marijuana connects us to our ancient sacred roots, much like the spiritual use of cannabis to the Rastafari. A sprig in rubbing alcohol or as a tea, has been a part of our grandmothers’ homeopathic medicine cabinet for many generations. As an artist, I have questioned the culturally profound and the political correct. [Note: Above image is a self-portrait connecting me to María Sabina and Bob Marley through marijuana.]

I feel that my obligation as a human and artist is to speak out on matters that I find unjust, using whatever power I have. Being a Chicana artist, I have used my body of work as a platform for creating exhibits and art that have a social message. I have worked with many other artists around the world to keep the sadistic murdering of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico current and on our minds through various artistic campaigns. One of the reasons we have come together as a community in LA to demand righteousness for the people of Juarez is because of our history of resistance to injustice. That’s just the way we have been, since California became part of the United States. It was not by chance that in 2001 Raul Baltazar, Rigo Maldonado, Azul Luna, Erika Elizondo and I were invited by the victim mothers of Juarez to strategize on finding a resolution to these crimes—we were a small group of representatives of the greater Los Angeles consciousness.
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In Quotes: “What’s Good for Boyle Heights”

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Working Class Historian Gifford Hartman (a white guy that grew up in East Los by the way) sent me this link to a fascinating piece about the Jewish influence on radical politics and multiculturalism in Boyle Heights during the 1950’s. For those interested in the history of the Eastside, it’s a must read. There’s lots of good quotes I could pull but this has to be my favorite:

Frumkin already saw the distinction between his community of Boyle Heights and the growing Jewish community on the Westside in 1945. There was “an unspoken solidarity among all the neighbors” on the Eastside, including the 60 percent of his neighbors who were Mexican. “We never had a lock on our door, never had a key. You just didn’t do it. I don’t know if it was unspoken, but as poor as we were, nobody stole from anybody else.” In this working-class solidarity, a certain level of contempt was reserved for the more middle-class surroundings on the Westside.

“When we would smoke, for instance, we would keep the cigarettes in the car. We would never dump them out in East L.A. When we used to go to West L.A. to the Jewish Community Center to dances, we’d dump all our ashtrays out, because we knew the streets were going to be cleaned there. But we never did it here.”

Wow, even in the 50’s people were complaining about the disparity of service in our communities. Some things never change. Is ashtray micro-resistance an action we can learn from our Eastside ancestors? It couldn’t hurt!

The full title of the article is “What’s Good for Boyle Heights Is Good for the Jews”: Creating Multiculturalism on the Eastside during the 1950s by George J. Sanchez

Download the pdf from Muse here

or from us at LA Eastside here