In California, there is a long history of excluding and otherizing immigrant workers and families from all over the globe, going back to the earliest years of California’s years under U.S. jurisdiction with cases like People vs Hall (1854). In that case, the California Supreme Court established that Chinese people, like Native and African Americans at the time, were “mongrels” who had no right to testify against whites in California’s court. This had the effect of increasing hate crimes against non-whites, culminating with the Chinatown Lynching of 1871, when at least eighteen Chinese residents were hanged by a white mob.
But what if more of California’s resources were devoted to including those groups it’s historically silenced and deemed unworthy? This is what that looks like. Translation support for our informational pamphlets was provided by friends at the The Armenian National Committee of America Hollywood, The Thai Community Development Center, The Little Tokyo Service Center, the Anti Eviction Mapping Project @antievictionmap, This Side of Hoover’s @samanta_helou, and by moms and pops throughout our neighborhoods, who are the backbones of East Hollywood, and to whom these pamphlets are dedicated.
To pick up a free copy, find it at a legacy business in East Hollywood over the next few days!
And tell a mom and pop near you to RSVP to our panel series at easthollywood.eventbrite.com.
J.T.
[…] five years discussing and dissecting issues of gentrification and city planning both on my own and along a range of colleagues. Based on the last year of work with Making a Neighborhood, the newsletter from East Hollywood with […]