Happy 9th Anniversary from JIMBO TIMES!

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From my newsletter this morning:

On Saturday, August *19th* at 7:45 AM, JIMBO TIMES turned 9! 🥳

Cheers! If you’ve already donated to my fundraising campaign for the anniversary, thank you so much! If not, I can now confirm that each supporter who makes a donation of $10 or more will get 5 Los Cuentos stickers in the mail, which go well on laptops, microphones, and much more.

To keep up with the campaign, make sure you’re following J.T. the L.A. Storyteller Podcast via Apple and Spotify. You can also keep up with me via my Monthly Newsletter below. Mil gracias!

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with J.T. the L.A. Storyteller and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from my site. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Yours from 2014 – Infinity,

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J.T.

**This has been updated from an incorrect date noted in an earlier newsletter for the 9th anniversary of JIMBO TIMES.**

L.A. Mayors Ball: 1913 – 2022

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How time flies. Below, from left to right, are 15 L.A. mayors over a 100 years and then some.

Henry Rose, 1913 – 1915. Charles Sebastian, 1915 – 1916. Frederick Woodman, 1916 – 1919. Meredith Snyder, 1919 – 1921. George Cryer, 1921 – 1929. John Porter, 1929 – 1933. Frank Shaw, 1933 – 1938. Fletcher Bowron, 1938 – 1953. Norris Poulson, 1953 – 1961. Sam Yorty, 1961 – 1973. Thomas Bradley, 1973 – 1993. Richard Riordan, 1993 – 2001. James Hahn, 2001 – 2005. Antonio Villaraigosa, 2005 – 2013. Eric Garcetti, 2013 – 2022. Gina Viola, 2022 – 2030, perhaps?

And from our latest at Making A Neighborhood: “There’s also no telling just what the city’s first non-male mayor in its nearly 241 years in existence could achieve for voters with a term or two onto 2030, and all the more so given L.A. city hall’s historically inequitable—and often compromised—structure in any case. But given Viola’s strong position on divestment from incarceration for L.A.’s most vulnerable communities—especially Black Lives—a policy that’s also gained increasing momentum at the voting booths over the last decade, it sure is something different for the city and its neighborhoods in generations; in fact, with the data and ground-game in mind, it’s an unprecedented opportunity.”

Mail-in ballots arrive this May 9th, 2022. And Election Day is June 7th, 2022.

J.T.

That Time 50,000 Pupils Enrolled in L.A. Schools, Taxing Buildings’ Capacity

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“More than 50,000 pupils enrolled in the city schools this morning. By the end of the week the superintendents estimate that a maximum enrollment of 70,000 will be made—50,000 in the elementary, the rest in the intermediate and high schools…

Principal Housh of Los Angeles high school hopes to limit the enrollment of his school to 1900, but may be forced to take in 2000. There were 250 registrations for the senior class, a record-breaking number. About 850 pupils can be accommodated at Hollywood high school, but no estimate could be made this morning whether any would have to be turned away…”

“Miss Maria de Lopez, Teacher of Spanish, Who Has Been Instrumental in Opening the Second School in the City for the Education of the Poor, Addressing a Group of Mexicans in the Plaza,” Los Angeles Herald, September 16, 1912

Source: “50,000 Pupils Enroll in L.A. Schools; Tax Buildings’ Capacity,” Los Angeles Herald, September 16, 1912. California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside, http://cdnc.ucr.edu

J.T.

Please Uplift the Name of Luis Ek, whose daughters now miss their Papa

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This Tuesday, April 13th, in the early morning hours, Luis Ek, pictured above this column at the top right with his two daughters, died of unknown causes just a block away from his home while attending to an errand. He was only 31 years old.

Luis Ek (Licho to friends), second from the left, with his clan since childhood in 2007.

As was customary for youth growing up along Virgil avenue in the early 2000s, Luis attended Lockwood Elementary, King Middle school, and John Marshall High school.

Also true to the fashion for many young Latinx kids in our community, Luis came to love heavy metal music at an early age in his life, and was as true to the form, replete with the rockero style of black hoodies, jeans, and skateboards, as he was loyal to his many friends, primos, and more who knew him.

One of Luis’s life-long friends and neighbors, Rene Martinez, noted of Luis, whose nickname was Licho:

“Happy, always smiling, ready to crack jokes. And always willing to help no matter what. Always had your back.”

In his early twenties, Luis became a father of two girls. After a separation from their mom, Luis faithfully attended to his daughters as their single parent. His daughters will now miss their papa, who could often be seen walking with the girls along Virgil avenue on their way to school, or just out for a stroll along Hoover street and the accompanying thoroughfares.

Constantly on his feet, one could also run into Luis picking up some pupusas after work at local California Grill, or laughing with one of the compradres over a drink after work. He was rarely ever truly alone; constantly on his way to someone, or for someone, in good spirits.

In 2018, for our community’s first-ever Back 2 School Party, Luis attended the show with his daughters, reliably smiling on. Our main photographer for the event, Samanta Helou-Hernandez, captured this photo of the trio.

Luis Ek (Licho), with his two daughters at the first-ever Back 2 School Party in East Hollywood; August 25, 2018. Photo courtesy of Samanta Helou-Hernandez at This Side of Hoover.

Luis is now survived by his two daughters, his mama and papa, siblings, tios, tias, primos, and many friends locally in Los Angeles and out as far as Yucatan, Mexico.

His prima, Genesis Ek, has set up this FUNDRAISER for a proper ceremony with respect to his untimely passing.

J.T.

Defund Jeff Bezos for your Health and nothing less

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If there’s still any question as to how serious this year’s health crisis has become, particularly in the richest nation on earth, consider that according to a report from the Washington Post, after the deadliest war in U.S. history, the four-year U.S. Civil War from 1861 – 1865, an estimated 750,000 lives were lost.

This year alone, as cases from the virus continue to surge, the U.S. has already lost at least 276,000 people to the crisis and counting. THAT’S ABOVE 1/3RD of the total lives lost during the Civil War in a fourth of the time that conflict lasted.

Consider also just a few differences between now and the U.S. 155 years ago:

In the 1860s, when the U.S. was made up just 33 states and less than 31 million people, “germ theory of disease was still a controversial idea and not yet widely accepted” among the predominantly white (27 million), working-class nation.

At the federal level in the 1860s, the 13th amendment, which outlawed chattel slavery–except where people convicted of a crime were concerned–was proposed only during the last year of the civil war in 1865 and not ratified until December of that year, seven months after the war was concluded; also in the 1860s, the 14th amendment, which granted citizenship to any persons born on U.S. land, was only passed by the U.S. Senate a year after the civil war in 1866 and not ratified until two years later in 1868.

More locally in Los Angeles, by 1860, when the county was made up of no more than an estimated 12,000 people (more than 11,000 of which were white, according to records), the L.A. County Sheriff’s department was only ten years old.

Likewise, the L.A. City Council, then known as the Common Council, was made up of just seven members and was also just ten years established; the LAPD, by contrast, originally made up of only six armed patrolmen, would not be founded until 1869.

In effect, as Jeff Bezos alone stands to add nearly $100 billion to his portfolio from the pandemic this year, the U.S. healthcare system is on track to count more casualties than the deadliest conflict in U.S. history in the 1860s, at the time of which the nation’s population count was only about 1/10th its size today, and before the advent of the telephone, mass production of Colgate toothpaste, or Ford automobiles, as well as 100 years before Lyndon B. Johnson would sign Medicare and Medicaid into law.

That’s the world we’re living in in 2020, and the one that, if communities and the “silent majority” don’t continue to demand change for, future generations across this country will have the unenviable burden of coming to grips with. If U.S. history shows anything, it’s that 100 years–or even 200 years–of discrimination can go by very quickly.

J.T.