The East Los Angeles cultural community and Self Help Graphics & Art held press conference Friday to seek outside help, and demand answers from Los Angeles Archdiocese.

The sale of the building that for now is the home of Self Help Graphics & Art, the East Los Angeles cultural center that opened in 1978, spread quickly through the Latino Arts community this week. By Friday, a morning press conference was held in the parking lot with supporters and artists standing behind Self Help board president Armando Duron and L.A. First District County Supervisor Gloria Molina, and the mosaic Virgin of Guadalupe in the background. The sale is regarded as a slap in the face from the hands of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

As been reported, the Sisters of St. Francis’ lawyers informed Duron of the sale July 3, the day after escrow closed, with no warning that the building was on the market. As he did all week with countless calls, Durango stated during the press conference that the Self Help board was assured in November of 2007 that the building was not to be listed in order to fulfill the priest sexual abuse scandal settlement.

According to spokespeople for the Archdiocese the owners of the building, the Sisters of St. Francis, requested the deed to be transferred to the Archdiocese and asked that it be sold due to a dwindling art center budget.

When asked if that claim was believed, board and supporters said in union; “No!” “This is not the market to sell anything unless you need to,” said Stephen Saiz, Self Help board vice-president, and considered the scandal is causing “the fire sale.”

“The Archdiocese’s blatant disrespect for the community is unacceptable,” Molina said during the conference. “I commit to working with Self Help Graphics & Art to mobilize my elected official colleagues and other community leaders to demand that the archdiocese tell us why they mishandled this situation – and how they plan to correct it.”

The negotiation phase of the sale was so secretive that, according to Duron, the party purchasing the building (who visited the location Friday morning at 6:30 am) was told by the Archdiocese not to visit the site before the sale was final and that the art center was “only on the top floor.”

The Bottom Line

In November 2007, the mosaic-covered building––with a stage and adminstrative offices on the upper floor and a gallery and workshops on the lower floor––was appraised at 1.5 million dollars. As the market softened, it was listed for 1 million.

Self Help has ben using the building rent free, and will continue doing so under new ownership until the end of the year, allowing a short time for a new location to be secured.

The deception will only be fueled when the final sale number appears like an apparition. Sources say the grounds were sold for $700,000–– a price tag many will feel was an attainable purchase price.

Speaking with Molina after the conference, she remarked how the County could have ear marked $250,000 from a cultural supporting discretionary fund, was already offered to be matched by several sources. Solid fundraising could have gone beyond the $700,000 final purchase price.

“If we were told and became part of the dialogue, a solution could have been found.,” added Molina.

While the Los Angeles Archdiocese are no longer accountable for the building, to the East Los Angeles cultural community, they are still accountable for the arts program that has been a springboard for Southern California Latino artists––some whose works are currently exhibited in national art museums.

That same community is now demanding a confession from the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

Previous: LAEastside

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Photos by Ed Fuentes/ VFaL

The north end of Hollenbeck Park became the Boyle Heights Bowl as revelers sat grassy slopes to watch fireworks July 5th. The sounds bounced off the rows of Victorian-era homes, post World War II apartment buildings, and the sound wall next to the freeway ramp–– causing ducks to scatter out of the water into the crowd of people sitting on blankets along the rim of the lake.

Before the fireworks, food booths from local vendors and non-profits made a perimeter around the north lawn, leaving room for those to watch the concerts that scheduled mariachis (Roosevelt High School Mariachi Olympico), funk (Backtraxx), swing (Chico Big Band) and salsa (Angel Lebron y Su Sabor Latino) from 4pm. Around 9pm, CD14’s José Huizar lead a countdown to the fireworks show.

Last year’s inaugural celebration was held at Evergreen Park and outgrew the location in the first year, according to Huizar,  whose office organized the event.  While this year’s crowd was larger, there was a still a very local feel to the day. “The biggest sponsor was Shakey’s Pizza,” said the councilman, who earlier from the stage told the crowd he remember anticipating fireworks each year while growing up as a child in Boyle Heights, and wanted to bring them back to the neighborhood.

The 17 minute display was solid and will be well documented, as many took out cell phone cameras to document light reflecting off the lake and towering Mexican Fan Palm trees appear out the dark and smoke in silhouette. Still, the taped music the fireworks show was set to was generic. With all the music from, and about, East L.A. and Boyle Heights, using some would have made the finale to the day even more local.

It’s worth a survey to see what six songs could be edited into 20 minutes that would reflect the neighborhood.

When I was a little kid, we were too poor to afford fireworks. I suppose I can’t blame my pyrotechnic poverty just on being poor, but more on the fact that my mother didn’t think any part of the welfare check should be spent on frivolity. If we got fireworks, we didn’t get clothes, or we didn’t get food. Sure, it was a practical choice, but as a kid, you just want to rip into the hundred dollar “Independence Day” box of fireworks.

Our fireworkslessness meant that in the days leading up to the Fourth of July every year, we’d visit our more affluent friends and watch them light fireworks. Back then this annual ritual led me to conclude that socio-economic status could be identified by the characteristics of your fireworks.

If you had no color, just sound, you weren’t poor, but you weren’t living in a mansion. You lived in an apartment and shared a bedroom with a couple of siblings. The same went for fireworks with no sound, and just smoke.

If you had fireworks that were colorful, but just rolled around on the ground, you lived in one of the houses in a duplex.

If your fireworks shot color into the air, and did so while crackling, at least one of your parents had a full-time job and probably owned a house with a yard and a driveway (or at least they’d found a way to live in one).

In my family, we didn’t have any fireworks before and up to the Fourth of July. We didn’t get to light something and have sound, or color. Maybe, if we got lucky, someone handed us a sparkler. In the bad years, they handed us the punk used to light the fireworks. Yep, there’s the poor kid, the one with the smoldering ember.

Occasionally, when the sounds of Fourth of July were so muddled that you couldn’t tell the fireworks from the gunshots fired into the air, we pretended to be fireworks. I mean, if you’re a nine-year-old and you scream from a low tone to a very high one, you sound kind of like a Piccolo Pete. And besides, by nightfall, no one even knows what’s going on in neighboring yards, driveways, or streets. Everyone is just staring into the sky, looking for something to make the darkness light. That means there is no risk of being seen joining the cacophony of Independence Day sound, while in your pajamas, from just inside your apartment’s living room window. Continue reading →

The shared protests of the Sandow Birk mural that will not be installed at the new Hollenbeck Station, as LA Eastside noted. Now according to Eastside Group Publications (EGP), both residents and LAPD’s Hollenbeck Division want to know why the Department of Cultural Affairs chose Birk, and why the community was excluded from the selection process of qualified artists.

“Typically the process does not involves members of the community,” said Felicia Filer, Public Arts Director for the Department of Cultural Affairs, at a community meeting held last week.

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