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LOS ANGELES — Once synonymous with black culture, South Los Angeles is undergoing dramatic demographic shift.
There is a Catholic mass in Spanish at the theater where Duke Ellington once headlined. In the hallways of Thomas Jefferson High School, whose outstanding black students come with Alvin Ailey and Dexter Gordon, about nine in 10 academics are Hispanic. Avenue, ranchera music echoes from grocery stores.
But in the city’s 9th District, which encompasses the stretch of Los Angeles once known as South Central, one thing hasn’t changed: Voters have selected black candidates to serve on the city council for nearly six years. decades, adding his current adviser, Curren Price.
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In a leaked recording that rocked Los Angeles politics this month, 4 Latino leaders were heard discussing how to redraw political districts in their favor, racist and derogatory language that has been widely condemned. The audio also revealed frustrations that there were no more Latinos in the district. election, at a time when they are part of the city’s population.
Decades of policy decisions and agreements have resulted in the current composition of the city council, where black and white leaders hold more seats than demographics suggest. The recording also opened a debate about the importance of the racial bloc politics of past generations.
Voter turnout in District 9 is low and some citizens said they pay little attention to city politics, despite their considerations of crime and homelessness. Maria Robles, 30, brings her 8-year-old son home from school in South Los Angeles. , he wondered what local politicians would do to solve the problems.
“I’m not going to vote, I just don’t,” he said. I don’t think any politician represents Latinos. They don’t protect us.
In the city’s political circles, however, the gap between the Latin American population and its point of influence has been a long-standing problem. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in District 9, where 80% of the population is now Latino.
“People feel uncomfortable communicating about it, but Latinos in Los Angeles are underrepresented,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. He conducts surveys and builds teams with city residents, and said that “When we reach out to Latinos in those communities, they would like to have Latino representation. “
In the 1980s, increasing numbers of Latino immigrants settled in South Los Angeles, fleeing Central American civil wars and Mexican economic turmoil. At the same time, production jobs were disappearing, gang violence and drugs were proliferating, and half-black elegance was moving elsewhere. In 1990, according to the knowledge of the census analyzed through SocialExplorer. com, for the first time, more than a portion of the region’s citizens were Latino.
Political representation follows the conversion of demographics, and Los Angeles was no exception. In some cases, Latino leaders signed mutually favorable agreements to maintain district barriers that protected their black colleagues. In others, the heavily Latino hard-working movement in Los Angeles helped reliable black headlines about untested and unknown Latino challengers. Union members provide the voluntary and monetary help needed for the electorate to vote in local elections that might otherwise be low in a major transit city.
Latino citizens are now the largest ethnic organization in 10 of the 15 city council districts, according to city data. The age of the eligible population to vote is less than their % of the age of the total population, a hole that reduces their voting power.
Even before Nury Martinez, a Latina Democrat, resigned as city council president and resigned her seat last week due to the uproar over the audio recording, 4 of the 15 council seats were held by Latinos.
The harmful verbal exchange had the accidental effect of cutting off Latino power, at least temporarily. Martinez replaced as president Tuesday through Paul Krekorian, an Armenian-American. The other two board members on the recording, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de Leon, were fired. of their seats on the Committee and have not attended meetings for a week.
The ninth district was intended as a Latino seat in the 1950s, when Edward R. Roybal became the city’s first Latino alderman since the late 1800s. When Roybal went to Congress in 1962, Gilbert W. Lindsay, a black net organizer with strong execution ties, appointed to update him. Lindsay has become one of the toughest politicians in the city, ruled for three decades and called himself “the emperor of the big 9”. His three successors on the board were black.
When Price, a Labor Democrat and former state legislator, first ran for the District 9 seat in 2013, roughly $1 million he raised in direct contributions to the crusade was supplemented by some $700,000 that task forces spent independently on his behalf.
Union leaders stood firm before Price, much to the dismay of challengers who thought the time had come for Latin American representation.
“I told other people I would run and they looked at me like I had COVID,” said Jorge Nuño, 45, a local activist and small business owner who grew up in District 9 and lost to Price in the 2017 election. . ” They said, ‘No, man, don’t do it, the unions are going to keep Curren. ‘”
Dulce Vasquez, 36, a school administrator and progressive Democrat who challenged him this year, won more than $500,000 in general support, but that is only about a third of Price’s war chest, and no games for union phone banks and campus protesters who subsidized him.
Price also endorsed through his 4 Latino colleagues on the board in his opposite career to Vasquez. He won his third term in a landslide in June.
However, as they walked through the complex, Nuño and Vasquez said they found an authentic thirst for cultural connection among Latino voters. “People need to see leadership that looks like them,” Nuño said. to your living room and have a bread with coffee. “
Both predicted union leaders would have a Latino candidate when Price, 71, leaves office; He begins his final four-year term under the City’s term restriction rules. In another leaked video, Ron Herrera, who has since resigned as head of the Labor Federation, spoke of this likelihood. Asked about finding a Latino candidate for Price, he replied, “We have someone. “
Price, a Stanford-trained attorney and Angeleno’s local who also served on the Inglewood City Council, said about a quarter of a million people living in District 9 have kept him in the workplace because he understands their basic issues.
Outside his Central Avenue workplace last week, a farmer’s market stall featured ruby strawberries, honey jars, egg cartons, composting recommendations. to collect and locate data on food stamps and network resources.
Across the street, every day, there is an unofficial market where Latino vendors sell corn cobs, sacks of hard, garments and toys around the parking lot of a discount store. Walking down the hall, Price looked at them and nodded: Here you are also welcome.
He pointed to signage with the main points in English and Spanish about the region’s heyday landmarks as a thriving center for black Angelenos: the Lincoln Theater on 23rd Street, nicknamed the “West Coast Apollo” in reference to Harlem’s prominent black entertainment venue. The Liberty Savings and Loan Association, a black-owned corporation that presented mortgages to local citizens when white lenders excluded them.
“It’s just for black people,” Price said of the former goalscorers. “It’s also up to the browns to perceive our history. “
The crown jewel at the time was the Dunbar Hotel, where greats like Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, and Ellington stayed at a time when they could draw crowds at Los Angeles performances but weren’t allowed to stay in white hotels. The Dunbar now serves as affordable housing for seniors.
Because of Price’s success, Jose Andrade, a mariachi musician, complained that City Hall had not responded to requests to install speed bumps on residential streets to deter street takeovers. “These guys are running like they’re on the road,” he said. , “and no one is doing anything about it. “
Born in El Salvador, Andrade said he immigrated with his wife, Iris, to Los Angeles in 1983 and moved to 9 because they couldn’t afford rent in the city.
“There were gangs on every single corner,” he said of those days, as he walked the halls of Superior Grocers on Central Avenue, speaking above Mexican country music. “You lived with the worry of being mugged or robbed. “
Black families with means packed their bags and moved inland to San Bernardino or Antelope Valley, where spaces were larger and streets safer. More immigrants arrived, attracted by the fall in space costs in the 9. The economy began to improve, driven by California’s tech boom. . Crime rates, for a variety of reasons, have declined.
In 2000, Andrade bought a three-bedroom home for $170,000 once occupied by a black family. He planted lemon, avocado and mango trees and built two apartments in the back, which he rents to immigrants. Three of her 4 adult children left the community for educational and professional careers.
He became a U. S. citizen a few years ago and said he didn’t vote for Price because he didn’t accept it as true with the councilman.
Price said his district’s assembly of wishes is a work in progress. Out of about 100,000 registered voters in the district, only about 12,500 voted in the February number one in which he was elected.
“A lot of times other people say, ‘Hey, listen, I have to work my third job, I don’t have time to go into a meeting, or I don’t have time to file a complaint, because, you know, anyway, nothing is going to happen,'” Price said.
Elmer Roldan, an American of Guatemalan descent, moved to the community in 1989. He said District 9 citizens have long sought out more parks and grocery stores, and he believes the town domain near the University of Southern California receives disproportionate resources and attention.
Still, Roldan said, his council member’s career has nothing to do with the state of the neighborhood. He said Latino citizens associate with black Angelenos “who have more in us politically and economically. “
“Latinos don’t get assistance because Curren Price is black,” said Roldan, who voted for Price. “They feel that politicians, no matter who they are, are not sensitive to the neighborhood. “
“I don’t think having a Latino councilman will replace those conditions,” he added.
When Price returned to his office, the constituency that pointed to the councilman had a lot to say. A woman selling pozole and fried mojarra outside a window providing zumba categories reported that a street lamp had gone out nearby and she involved security. Another worried about a street light on another block and looked for a traffic light installed.
They addressed him in Spanish. A spokesperson for Price translated for him.
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