In addition I agree with El Chavo and Arrt, LAPD should have nothing to do with gang prevention, they do nothing, but make it worse.

Antonio is the Latino version of Tom Bradley, using that “I’m one of you,” while using you to make them look better. Tom Bradley mayor of LA from 1973-1993 totally sold out South Central while he was mayor, lots of people like to blame Darryl Gates for the events that happened in 1992, I like to point out Bradley had just as much to do with that as Gates.

At the time if you were an adult you probably couldn’t see it, but if you look back and read about historical LA it to me is clearly obvious that Bradley had a great deal of responsibility for the inequality of LA.

He helped make that invisible thin blue line that kept certain people penned in while keeping other people in fantasy land. Tom Bradley was a cop even while he was mayor, hopefully people are smarter this time around, but I’m not sure of the alternatives right now…

I liked Mike Woo on paper he seemed great. Of course because he actually wanted to change things, so now they paint him to be a sort of freak.

Browne

I fell for you having a forearm tat, referencing my bus (68) in your mayoral speaches and all and all bluecollaring it down to rile up EastLos chicanos like myself into a loving fervor. Shite, I even volunteered on the phones down at El Leon Del Oro on 1st during your mayoral campaign, that’s how much I was down for you.

At first you let me down, giving me the “what the fruck do you want” look when I introduced myself and my organization to you. Then you acted like a total dick to me while taking photos with me and some kids painting a mural a while later, smiling for the camera while ignoring the polite comments I made to help you keep paint off your shirt and then snapping at me to “just smile”, that freaken burned. If you didnt have security guards that would have been some old school East LA schoolyard chingasos, but I still sucked it up and told myself you must be stressed or some crap. Then I went to all your Latino Heritage crap, to see all the overpaid hyperbolic Raza lick your culo and try to show everyone else how more VIP they were than everyone else. I ignored the fact that these events seemed SO ridiculously overexpensive and posh, while your aides were trying to haggle down dirt cheap mural prices I gave them and nobody had the funding to respond to the numerous safety hazards I called them about in CD 14. Then I noticed how you had a few fine young Latinas looking like Secret Service/Robert Plant video extras in trenchcoats and short skirts, I know that cost a lot and I know it was an over the top wannabe scarface 1970s brown man thing, but it still was unacceptable to me.

Then your scummy field dep Paul Hernandez got me to spend a summer in the Hazard PJs working with gang kids, and you didnt even pull over to say hi as we painted and you drove by in your limo to enact a gang injunction. That really hurt me,less for the snub and more for the shite I had to deal with because of your stupid injunction press conference. You guys plopped me down there (knowing it was sticky, to which i forged a genuine community bond and helped cool things down) and didnt tell me shite, and then did this injuction thing without so much as a word to me. I found out after the 10th cholo wanted to beat me down for being “one of them pigs” that morning, and had to personally cool off a lot of troublemakers which sucked up a day of productive painting. Then your little deputy gets all arrogant with a trouble giving store owner and tells her to fuck off, after convncing me to continue doing the mural “for our community” when the puta told me off, therefore cancelling a mural I was 80% done with. And what thanks do I get for my commitment and work? Paul then screws me over for $2000 (which is big money for a small nonprofit and a college student with 2 kids) and never calls me again after making numerous promises to redo the mural somewhere else (which he convinced me again to do “for the barrio” despite the money I’d lose on it). I never saw that $2000, and you arsewipe aides down at CD14 couldnt even help me move apitn down to my car for fear of hurting their spaniard hands.

That was the last straw

Remember the last Latino Heritage Day, with the same losers trying to be seen for status? How every connected brown city/county loser cut into the food line to the point where the first folks in line (with kids) never got a plate?

Youletme down bro, you and all the other corrupt arrogatn Latino politicians. You jerks should take a dose of your own medicine and be a positive image of a Latino for once, not for the glory, but to show all the nice brown kids who want to genuinely fix things that it can be done. But it cant be done by you, huh?

I remember the debate over Prop 21 about 8 years ago. Prop 21 had a bunch of different provisions, but one of the central components of the change was to decrease the age at which youth could be tried as adults and what constitutes a gang. Those against Prop 21 spoke about the need to put more funding into educational and prevention programs rather than prisons and law enforcement. But the voters didn’t listen.

I wonder if we’d be better off now without Prop 21.

And I believe his tattoo says, “Born to be photographed.”

Please don’t make generalizations about the working class any more so than any other class. I don’t fit your mold for the middle. I give a shit about trying to make things better. I said on the other post you referenced where I think resources need to be put. Many of us in the “middle” support better schools, parent and education for all of us. My social circle is involved on all those levels because we care to make it better for the community, not just our street.

What I don’t see answered here or anywhere else is how do we reach the root, get those so disenfranchised from society to want to make things better? I don’t want us all to conform, but destroying good people around you can’t be permitted either. How to reach those totally disenfranchised is a multifold problem and as I meander every day I ask people what we can do to break the cycle. Don’t have an answer yet, but I’ll dig until I at least understand better.