Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 54

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One day after Mother’s Day, as I walked past the stretch of Vermont just across from Los Angeles City College, I saw a curious set of signs posted at the local Wesley Health Center clinic. The signs informed visitors that no testing for COVID-19 was available, as well as that there would be no night hours for the clinic until further notice. One sign also asked visitors to try to form a line while others were being pre-screened, but said nothing of the six feet recommended within proximity of strangers.

I mused then about the children just arriving or set to arrive to Los Angeles from their mother’s wombs during this time. It’s an extraordinary historical moment to be born in, and in particular I wonder how so many madres solteras in the community are taking care of their needs given the closure and reduced hours of so many local clinics.

The Wesley Health Center, for one, is a clinic that is already difficult enough to get service at even excluding the crisis. While the clinic’s website states that “We accept most health coverage including Medi-Cal, MediCare, and Covered CA…,” as well as that “No one is turned away for lack of ability to pay,” the fact is that another sign posted on the clinic’s screen specifies that it serves “L.A. CARE MEMBERS.“

I know from experience that this means not just anyone under any type of the public coverage listed on the clinic’s site is able to receive care at the actual location on Vermont avenue. I remember walking into the location not too long ago, and being asked to provide my ID. After looking up my information, the staff told me that I’d have to visit the Department of Social Services office in MacArthur Park to figure out where I could be screened, despite my local residence in the area.

It was a significant but ultimately minor inconvenience for me. But I can only imagine how challenging the run-around process with public assistance and more can be for madres solteras just recently arrived to the country, if not for pregnant teenage women in Los Angeles, of which there are more than we can count.

There are likely also more mothers like them on the way. As one writer noted about policies shutting down school and economic activity during the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, “school closures are costly and have economic and social impacts that affect women disproportionately and hurt the poorest families the most…During the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, for example, cases of teenage pregnancy more than doubled to 14,000.”

Los Angeles may not be a Sierra Leone, but some twenty years from now, when today’s newborns come of age, I hope that on the matter of access to healthcare for vulnerable communities everywhere, we need to make only less distinctions. They all deserve our humanity.

J.T.

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An encampment outside of Union Swap Meet on Santa Monica boulevard in East Hollywood, Los Angeles

Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 49

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At the middle of the week, I am staring well and long at days into the future. For a moment I see myself as a sentient being on earth here temporarily before I sojourn towards other celestial bodies. At another moment, I think I’m more like a machine, in need of a tune up before my parts tumble beneath my head like a sack of potatoes.

But I am only as ambitious as those who came before me. I am only filled with as much wonder as the minds of those who wandered before mine.

I look at the streets of my vicinity for a moment, however, and I’m drawn back to reality. I can still remember the first college essay I turned in when I was only a fresh-faced seventeen year old at Pasadena City College. Believe it or not, I wrote about walking through Los Angeles. I wrote about travailing past encampments along Vermont and Prospect avenues before boarding the Metro 181 bus to Pasadena, which took over an hour. And I wrote about the endless disconnection with the great wealth of my city, which seemed mostly to go to waste. I also wrote about the fountain spring of my mother’s strength, and how her cuento helped bridge my way forward past any impediment over the concrete. Professor Kennedy let me know that he enjoyed the essay, and I felt more than affirmed. I felt at home.

I’m not sure if a person is supposed to “know” their destiny, but I do know that they’re supposed to believe in it. I also believe that as any first great hit can be a young rap artist’s last, it’s also true that any one of these brief meditations can be my final consolidation with the world.

That said, I’m happy to note that I’m finally putting together the final touches for Episode 16 of J.T. The L.A. Storyteller Podcast this evening, which, if the laws of rewards for great efforts continue in service as they usually do, should mean for readers and listeners that the episode will be available sometime tomorrow. I will feature it here on the site, as well as on Apple, Spotify, & Google Play.

“Know your worth.” Another saying that comes to mind. I don’t know if I fully yet grasp the worth of J.T: The L.A. Storyteller Podcast, but I can definitely tell you how much I believe it’s worth. Yet that’s a cuento for another time.

Today also marks one full month with the new Quien Es Tu Vecindario web-page for families, workers, the disabled, and more in East Hollywood. The site now has over 24 “bulletins” for the community with links to nearby resources and other extensions of support. Tomorrow’s post is the 25th.

Tell your friends, Los Angeles. JIMBO TIMES is neither a bus nor a train nor even a spaceship. It’s a planetary wavelength of over 3.5 billion years’ worth of music, ricocheting marvelously through every end of the galaxy, as far as time and space will allow us to go.

J.T.

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Black, Latino and Asian communities represent more than 70 percent of deaths from COVID-19 in Los Angeles

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(Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 42)

A report from the L.A. Times yesterday noted the disproportionate death rate for people in neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles due to COVID-19, in which my native East Hollywood and other vicinities close to home were featured. According to the analysis:

“Working-class neighborhoods such as East Hollywood, Pico-Union and Westlake all have more than 40 deaths per 100,000 people, which is four times higher than the countywide rate of 9.9 per 100,000.”

Exactly a month ago, The L.A. Storyteller first published data from L.A. County’s Public Health Department showing no more than 20 cases of the coronavirus between East Hollywood and the adjacent Silver Lake neighborhood.

Even at that time, it was clear that the number of cases in these areas was higher, but that limited access to testing and other metrics, particularly in East Hollywood, wouldn’t reveal the greater risks posed by the disease here until a later time. Now, it appears that time has arrived, as the higher-than-average death rate for COVID-19 in East Hollywood and other nearby ethnic communities underscores those risks.

A first-of-its-kind map highlights metrics on the virus, detailing info such as the number of cases, number of deaths, and persons tested.

In terms of persons tested, East Hollywood lags well behind neighborhoods on the west side of the city, but is still ahead of many places in south Los Angeles; Sherman Oaks, for example, has tested more than 1,200 people, while East Hollywood has tested a little over 700. The historic Watts community, by contrast, has tested just 239 people in its community. Manchester Square, only 120.

In terms of deaths, the East Hollywood community has seen 17 deaths. Right next door, the Little Armenia community has seen 23. Sherman Oaks has recorded 4 deaths. Its next-door community of Beverly Crest, 2.

But the most dramatic example of the disproportionate impact wreaked by COVID-19 in Los Angeles can be found through a quick scan of the L.A. County Case Summary, where the data will show that just over 71% of the deaths in Los Angeles in the wake of coronavirus have been of Asian, Black, Latino and other residents here.

While Blacks make up less than 9% of L.A.’s population, they account for 13% of deaths to the virus. While Asians make up under 12% of L.A.’s population, they account for 18% of deaths. Latinos, who make up under 49% of the population, account for 38% of deaths to the virus, while Whites, who make up 52% of the population, account for 28% of deaths.

As with our first report, these numbers are likely an under-count, since as of a little over a week ago, L.A. has tested just over 80,000 of its 10 million residents for the disease.

Every death represents a family. And those passed are nǎinai, gran’mas, abuelitas, tatikner, and more members of the communities that give Los Angeles its glowing spirit. May we honor their legacies with a more equal world going forward.

J.T.

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Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 40

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The mayor of Los Angeles announced earlier this evening that delivery drivers, as well as taxi and other transportation workers like Uber and Lyft drivers, can now be tested for coronavirus, whether they show symptoms or not, in a sign of increased testing capabilities for L.A. county.

On the other hand, earlier in the same day, LAUSD’s Superintendent Austin Beutner announced that reopening schools come fall for the district’s communities would be a gradual process, contingent most of all on one thing: access to testing for COVID-19, not only for the district’s employees, of which there are nearly 75,000, but also for the students they serve, whose numbers, combined with those of their families or households, can reach up to 1,000,000 in Los Angeles.

What kind of access schools will have to testing for the virus is an obviously major question that the superintendent is right to pose publicly; only a few days ago, more than a month after the shutdown orders went into effect in California, L.A. County announced that its testing rates have finally reached the capacity to test up to 11,000 people a day.

But while 11,000 tests a day is a key step forward for the county, it’s also just 1.1% of Beutner’s one million. Moreover, as the superintendent noted in his update, we need to know “who” will pay for over a million tests. Obviously, the answer should be that it’s the state who will pay for it, but thus far, there have been scant details from Governor Newsom as to how schools in the Golden State will resume the school-day come the months of August and September, during which LAUSD will not be the only school district in need; charter schools in California, which are not managed by traditional school districts such as LAUSD, and which oversee nearly 630,000 students in the state, will also need access to testing for the virus this fall.

In other words, it’s all quite a bit of homework that requires time, debate, and consensus building with educators, staff and families alike; if the process is circumvented for “quick fixes,” as such things have been before, then the temporary solutions will once again prove costly over the long term, as this pandemic is making clear of decades of disinvestment in the public infrastructure.

Even so, however the story goes, I believe we’re uncovering something critical, Los Angeles. That is, that we’re witnessing first-hand what our state is capable of–and what it still falls short of–when it puts its best minds to the task of addressing all of the citizenry at a truly basic level.

I believe that many people will continue being dissatisfied with the slow process and progress of their government, and that if the protests against Governor Newsom’s stay home orders show anything, it’s that many Californians aren’t at all interested in the general health of the state, but just in their own.

But beyond that, I also believe that all of this showing will allow many of us to consider and visualize what government can still look like in future days to come because it’s important for us to do just that. I believe that whatever failures are seen today, are what those of us leading for tomorrow can turn into successes.

As always, I believe in the next day, the next cuento, and that I’m not alone in this.

I believe Los Angeles will believe with me.

J.T.

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