Let The City Know.
(Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 84)
In our seventeenth episode, we catch up with Ninoska Suarez, of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, to chat about a major gift for the neighborhood in partnership with Rick’s Produce of the Virgil Village area in East Hollywood: More than 125 boxes of fresh fruits and veggies for residents the past three Sundays through COVID-19, AND THEN SOME.
J.T.
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(Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 67)
Truly the best way to honor Memorial Day this year would be to end all wars waged by the United States, which take U.S. lives to fight and lose as well as any others.
But another way to honor lives lost to senseless wars would be to consider every life taken by senseless violence inside the nation’s borders as a life also worth commemorating.
At the local level for yours truly, five years ago this same weekend, a 17 year old named Leonardo Gabriel Martinez was shot and killed at the intersection of Burns street and Virgil avenue in the Virgil Village area. Since that day, eighteen more people have been murdered no more than two miles from that intersection, the overwhelming amount being young, male and Latino. But women’s lives have also been lost due to violence in the area, including one pregnant woman’s.
In a two-week interval this year, between March and April, three men were shot and killed in East Hollywood, while one was stabbed to death.
With respect for each of these lives, which all entail grieving families & communities, listed here are names, age, date of death, and location of decease for homicide victims in East Hollywood during the last five years:
Javier Resendiz, Jr., 27
January 03, 2015
600 block of North Alexandria avenue
Leonardo Gabriel Martinez, 17
May 23, 2015
North Virgil and Burns avenues
Wilfredo Fernando Portillo, 57
March 22, 2016
811 North Virgil avenue
Lauren Elaine Olguin, 32
April 12, 2016
500 North Virgil avenue
Hector Orlando Estrada Maldonado Jr., 20
September 16, 2016
550 North Heliotrope drive
Walter Martinez Jr., 23
September 16, 2016
550 North Heliotrope drive
Marvin Hernandez, 21
May 21, 2018
609 North Virgil avenue
Andre Pierre Warren-Cyrus, 18
June 14, 2018
North Virgil avenue & Middlebury street
Isaac Dubon, 18
November 7, 2018
1000 North Serrano avenue
Cary Rodriguez, 21
May 5, 2019
Melrose and North Westmoreland avenue
Herbert Antonio Martinez, 56
June 10, 2019
5200 West Sunset boulevard
Cindy Yaneth Lopez Vasquez, 28
July 18, 2019
900 North Oxford avenue
Alexis Gihovani Lopez, 22
July 26, 2019
4550 Marathon street
Aristides Antonio Ruiz Jr., 29
October 28, 2019
North Virgil avenue and Lockwood street
Roberto DeJesus Hernandez, 53
December 21, 2019
800 North Mariposa avenue
Fernando Puga, 28
March 21, 2020
1129 North Madison avenue
Duncan Eric Campbell Jr., 51
March 29, 2020
800 North Mariposa avenue
Alexander Wildberger-Negrete, age not listed
April 6, 2020
1648 North Kingsley drive
Joshua Alexander Andrade Galvez, 24
April 6, 2020
4477 Beverly boulevard
J.T.
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In our sixteenth episode, we discuss Japanese American history in Boyle Heights, Roosevelt High school, the Metro Gold Line’s impact on communities in the area, and much more with Victoria Kraus, of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council. A can’t-miss session for listeners.
J.T.
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Earlier this week on Sunday, April 12th, a group of locals and volunteers in East Hollywood distributed over 30 boxes of fresh produce to residents in the neighborhood courtesy of donations and volunteer sign-ups. The effort was led by Feed Folks, a new pilot-program in East Hollywood. Greens and veggies in the boxes were provided by the McGrath Family Farm, of Camarillo, as well as the historic South Central Farmers.
Sponsors for the food boxes included the Little Tokyo Service Center, as well as Cafe Juayua, a local coffee coalition. Volunteers helping to organize and deliver these boxes included Linc Gasking, from Feed Folks, as well as Ninoska Suarez, from the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council.
The coalition of neighbors and community partners aims to continue this program, but will need support from more donors and volunteers.
To donate a Fresh Produce Box for the coalitions next drop-off on April 19, 2020, you can donate HERE. To volunteer to help deliver boxes–with safe social distancing practices in mind–please visit the Feed Folks website.
To sign up for a box for your own household or identify other individuals or households who are food insecure in East Hollywood, the coalition has created a google form in English and Español.
J.T.
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I’d like to dedicate today’s writing to any human being out there besides myself who’s had a difficult time of late due to the health crisis. Although I’ve frequently written about this moment in our nation’s history as something of a collective experience, it’s still true that there are many out there who don’t have the privilege to reflect on time in this way.
In the world before the shutdown, some of my favorite pastimes included boarding the Metro 704 bus across Santa Monica boulevard, or the Metro 754 bus south of Vermont avenue. There was also the Red Line, which I sometimes loathed and sometimes loved, but which was crucial for connecting to Koreatown and Union Station, transporting my footsteps to these and so many other different swaths of L.A. Now, the only time I’ve come together with any of these services has been through the photographs I’ve taken of them while walking along the intersections.
I can still walk, another privilege not everyone has, which makes it more accessible for me to keep up with a new routine despite the challenges. I stroll to places like Villalobos Market, as well as Jons for tortillas and jamón. When time permits, I like to scour the nearby Pacific French Bakery or Guatemalteca Bakery for the conchas I continue holding so dearly.
Nowadays, each of these places are transformed as grocery stores and bakeries all over the world might be, but they are still what they’ve always been: tiny places still storing a world of goods for a people to continue living, for a culture to continue surviving.
When a friend and I spoke for my podcast recently, she mentioned that on seeing the liquor stores and the neon lights illuminating the storefronts, she knew she was in my vicinity. Until she made that comment, I hadn’t stopped to realize just how much I actually reflect these humble establishments. I wonder for a moment exactly when each of these places first came to be, and just how many people’s lives they’ve touched over the years, how magnified that process is now. I see them with renewed eyes, and it’s a privilege to be able to recognize them as stalwart pillars in the community clothed in humble dress; as old and new pueblos in Los Angeles for the way people make them, and for the way they make people.
In Los Angeles, where people daily crush engines rushing past such pueblos in a scramble for their freeways, and where they rush past the silhouettes whose steps extend the life of these pueblos, like photosynthesis, pumping fresh air into the entirety of the land, I hope they can see it all just a little more clearly now; this is our home, our vecindario, overseen by flocks of angels in fluttering strides at every corner.
J.T.
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