Here to Stay: 10 Years of Indie Media and Organizing with J.T.

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LET THE CITY KNOW!

Saturday, August 31st.
6:00 – 9:00 PM, All Power Books
4748 West Adams Blvd, Los Angeles

No single day is promised to any of us, which is what makes it fiercely special to invite Los Angeles to my official ten year anniversary bash for jimbotimes.com at All Power Books in Mid-City, just north of Nipsey Hussle’s ole stomping grounds in South Los Angeles; join me to hear some remarks on the special occasion, or to make a cameo in the Q & A session afterwards. “Here to Stay” will also feature a special food vendor with the absolute meanest smash burgers in the city, and even a surprise musical performance or two.

Making Our Neighborhood magazines will also be available for purchase throughout the evening, along with Los Cuentos de Los Angeles snapbacks, because it wouldn’t be L.A. if we weren’t throwing it back old school a bit. RSVP here to enter the raffle (rifa!) for a free snap-back or magazine, and plan to carpool or take Metro’s E Line to the event with a friend, neighbor, and your whole city. This one’s for all of us.

Please also note that if you’re unable to make the event but would still like to show your support, you can donate here to support the party’s setup for the evening!

J.T.

This Juneteenth: Emancipate History to Make Way for A New Future in Los Angeles

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(Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 92)

On June 19th, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, General Gordon Granger for President Lincoln’s Union army issued an order to the people of Texas from Galveston, Texas:

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”


Why does this matter in Los Angeles, California, which wasn’t even a part of the U.S. northern states until 1848? Because chattel slavery in the United States was critically an economic condition, in which masses of laborers toiled daily for next to nothing as a small handful of masters profited immensely in a system enforced by laws, armed forces, and lies.

155 years later, today the relation between labor and profit is still a shining model of masses toiling daily for little return while CEOs like Jeff Bezos stand to make over a trillion dollars. Closer to home, one can find a myriad of bodies at countless L.A. kitchens, delivery, transportation and sanitation services, and at warehouses and factories, where sometimes workers produce for as little as $4.66 an hour, and where sometimes they’re not even properly paid that.

It’s clear then that we’re much closer to the past than it might seem, Los Angeles. But once we learn it, it’s also true that we’re that much closer to the better future we can aspire to.

J.T.

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