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blogging.la is closing the door
Aww man, that sucks. They had a good run. I assume.
I guess I better go and copy all my old shitty posts. You know, in case people want to be bored in the exciting future.
The DREAM is coming
“This past Monday, on the anniversary of landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education, Lizbeth Mateo of Los Angeles, Mohammad Abdollahi of Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Yahaira Carrillo of Kansas City, Missouri; were detained Tucson, Arizona, after staging a sit-in at Senator John McCain’s office. With this challenge to local and federal law, these youth hope to highlight the urgency of legislative action in Congress, and catalyze mass grassroots mobilization to pass the DREAM Act before June 15th.”
Lizbeth, Mohammad and Yahaira are undocumented students. They are DREAM Act family. Like all the other undocumented students throughout the country, they can no longer sit idly by as life keeps passing us by. Whenever an undoc student speaks out in public, whenever we travel and whenever we organize rallies and protest, we are putting ourselves at risk for detainment and deportation. These three leaders have put themselves on the front lines because the time for the DREAM Act to be brought to Congress as a stand alone bill and be passed. Since it was first introduced 8 years ago, the DREAM Act is the only way college educated undoc students have to fix their immigration status.
King of the Hill
Spotted by Rosa Delgado at 5:16 pm today
After twelve years of searching, the good folks of Audubon Center at Debs Park finally spotted the elusive California King Snake today in the park.
Jeff Chapman, Director of the Audubon Center told LA Eastside:
“These guys have been seen in City Terrace, Ascot Hills, and Flat Top. I used to do reptile monitoring with kids from Franklin before the center and we never found them. Three years ago, we put out boards in the park and checked them periodically, but again we never detected them. So, this is very exciting for us and for the whole human/non-human community in the Northeast!”
If you live on the Eastside but have yet to visit the Audubon Center, now’s the time! There are all sorts of activities for children and adults and a very enjoyable trail from which you can take in the local floral and fauna of Debs Park.
Audubon Center at Debs Park
4700 North Griffin Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90031
(323) 221-2255
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 9 a.m to 5 p.m.
The Audubon Center at Debs Park opened in 2003 as an environmental education and conservation center for the communities of northeast Los Angeles. The Center is located in the third largest park in the city of Los Angeles. More than half of the park is covered in walnut-oak woodland, grassland, and coastal sage scrub, a remnant of the native habitats that once rimmed the Los Angeles Basin. Over 140 species of birds have been recorded here.
My mom was arrested for illegally selling tamales
“You know they cannot do this, without permits, they cannot do this without making sure the Health Department is on board, and the impact it has on the community—you have restaurants that are there with permits and so forth, they have the proper equipment, they have sinks, they have restrooms and then you have people on the streets that are vending illegally and it’s against the law. And now basically what the officers are doing is enforcing the codes,†said Hollenbeck Division Police Captain Anita Ortega. ~ Quote from the EGP News Article “We were treated like common criminals.”
“Although I can understand the plight of the illegal vendors, I am totally against the fact that they have been allowed to conduct business in Boyle Heights and other communities in Los Angeles. It is important to note that these individuals are taking away from the legal business owners who are doing everything that is require by law that includes paying taxes, insurance, rent and often employing others from the community. We need to take a stand and demand that the various agencies that should be taking steps to stop these vendors (police, city and local government taxing agencies, health department and local electeds) should be doing just that….ensure that all laws are enforced….no excuses. It should be noted that most of the City of Los Angeles does not have have this problem due to proper enforcement. We only ask for the same enforcement actions. We need to protect our business owners and the community members against the health hazards and fraud that is associated with illegal vending. Our neighborhoods deserve better. I look forward to our elected representatives to do the right thing and get a handle on this situation. There is no middle ground on this issue. This needs to be stopped NOW.” ~ Comment posted from the same article by Renee Chavez Continue reading
The Saddest Cotton Candy In The World
(Click on photo for a close up)
Seen today at Buddha’s B-day Bash over in Whittier Narrows.
Notice Served: No More Smoke Signals
RADIO SOMBRA’S FRIDAY FILM NIGHTS
FRIDAY May 14, 2010 7pm
NO MORE SMOKE SIGNALS
NO MORE SMOKE SIGNALS
(2008 U$A/Switzerland, 90 mins) English
Kili Radio – “Voice of the Lakota Nation” – is broadcast out of a small wooden house that sits isolated on a hill, lost in the vast countryside of South Dakota. It’s a place that’s long forgotten; lying at the crossroads between combat and hope, between the American dream and daily existence on America’s poorest reservation.
Yet we find people like Roxanne Two Bulls, who’s trying to start over again on the land of her ancestors; the young DJ Derrick who’s discovering his gift for music; Bruce, the white lawyer who for thirty years has been trying to free a militant who’s been fighting for American Indian rights; and finally John Trudell, an old AIM activist who’s made a career for himself as a musician in Hollywood.
Everything converges at Kili Radio. Instead of sending smoke signals the radio station transmits its own signals across a vast and magnificent landscape with a delightful combination of humor and melancholy. Native hip hop and broken windshields: pride has been restored – it really is OK to be Lakota(Kili = Lakota: awesome).
All community screenings held @ 7pm at
Centro Comunicacion Comunitaria
3806 E. Cesar Chavez Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90063
Boyle Heights- East Los Angeles
Just below Self Help Graphics
* Donations go towards keeping Centro Comunicacion Comunitaria operational and East L.A. Radio Sombra except if otherwise posted for a special presentation
K-12 Students Free!
Suggested donation: $3 adults – no one will be turned away
http://radiozombra.wordpress.com
THE GRAND CANYON STATE OF MIND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnvM5tK2_cw
Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds), a right on Chicano conjunto puts it down about the rogue state of Arizona.
With the new law in Arizona banning any ethnic study classes (aimed directly at the Tucson School District), and the direction by Tom Horne the Superintendent of the State of Arizona Dept of Education (who BTW is the Republican candidate for State Attorney General),  to fire any teachers who happen to have an “accent”, I just wonder when this Arizona ethnic cleansing will run it’s course. My suspicion is it will take the Federal Govt to step in and stop the xenophobes from trying to “out Mexican” each other while running for public office. We may witness even more draconian laws and enforcement like no speaking a language other than English in public places or no Spanish language TV or Radio, or mandates to force “Pollo Loco” joints to use English in thier advertising, hell they might become” Crazy Chickens” to go places in Arizona.
It’s going to get verrrry interesting.Â
BOYCOTT ARIZONA!!
A basic guide to immigration
~click to enlarge ~
Low End Theory
Low End Theory at the Airliner
“What part of town is this? This is Lincoln Heights”
There’s been an under-the-radar, beat-thumping musical revolution going on right here in Lincoln Heights. More specifically, it’s been happening at The Airliner, a popular music venue on North Broadway. It’s where a collective of DJs, who favor beats over vocals, has been putting together shows for the past few years under the banner of “Low End Theory.”
As a frequent listener to NPR, I got a thrill out of them mentioning Lincoln Heights in a recent piece they put together about Flying Lotus, a Low End Theory DJ. Here’s an excerpt:
Ellison began creating new-school hip-hop in his bedroom. For years, he traded tracks with other budding DJs and played music in nightclub parking lots. Then the scene got organized, at a club in L.A.’s Lincoln Heights neighborhood.
“Eventually, there was this party started called Low End Theory, which was geared toward this sound,” he says. “It was more of a producer’s lounge, basically. If you got talent and you got tracks and you hang out enough at Low End Theory, eventually someone will hear something and you can do something.”
Visit the site to hear clips of the music and interview with the DJs.
Flying Lotus: ‘Beat Music’ And The Coltrane Family Tradition
Mariscos 4 Vientos
Hey my people – I been on the food blog tip lately, and today I present a good spot for all you marisco lovers. Mariscos 4 Vientos is a food establishment located on the Eastside. This spot is interesting mainly because there are about five, 4 Vientos locations within blocks of each other. Why? I am not sure, but I am guessing it is because the crowds of people that go get their marisco fix daily.
More after the jump
Stream Dreams-Part One: Hazard Park
The title of this post is a nod to the informative and wonderful blog, LA Creek Freak. My discovery of this blog is fairly recently, if I only I had came across it sooner it might have saved me many hours of informal research. You see, for the past two years and a half I’ve been on a meandering quest to find the paths of old streams that once flowed through our urban areas.
When roaming through the city, I look for tell-tale signs: bridges, dips in the roads, large storm drains, stands of old trees, walls and houses made of river rock and street and neighborhood names with tell-tale monikers i.e. Brookside, Willowbrook, Arroyo Ave, River St, Evergreen, etc. Neighbors and long-time residents are also a great source of information. One of the more exciting clues are the actual streams themselves, they often pop up after heavy rains. The water remembers and will often follow it’s old course. It’s why some places in the city continually flood.
The search has been quite fun. Once I think I’ve found a spot, I’ll take photos, go home and check aerial views on Google maps. I’ll look at the way streets curve or sometimes I’ll notice a line of green trees marking the path of the old waterway. I often read through the Los Angeles Times archives and search for references to streams. For instance, I felt like the area around the Fourth Street Bridge and Lorena was a likely place for a stream and while doing research I found a notice by the city placed in the early 1900s, asking for contractors to bid on constructing a bridge over the “stream running at Fourth St.”