Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters hosted a Los Angeles City Council District 14 candidate forum on Feb. 7 at the Boyle Heights City Hall. Four of the five candidates running for the seat participated: Mario Chavez, Nadine Diaz, Jose Huizar and Gloria Molina. 

LA City Council District 14 Candidate Forum

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: I helped create Summer Night Lights. Every park we’ve brought that to has reduced crime about 40 percent. We started with one park. It’s in 32 parks now.

In terms of gun violence, outlawing .50 caliber weapons and bullets in the City of L . A., doing work to crack down on concealed weapons, or recently, a program with the city attorney to go after “straw buyers,” which are people who can legally buy guns, but they buy them to pass on to people who can’t legally have guns.

We need to make sure it’s easier to get mental health care th aen a gun, and right now , it’s the opposite.

Safety

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: I don’t live my life too many steps ahead. I think it could be one of you. It could be any of us. I think the time is right. I think Latinos have flexed their political muscle and have elected and re-elected a President, and helped elect a mayor --... two mayors, in a row. But in politics, a lot of people are like, “ What’s the next thing you’re going to run for?” I haven’t even been sworn in. I’m so excited to be mayor. I can’t even think about the next step ahead.


Presidential  Future

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: The best community plans start with listening to the neighborhoods—not somebody at City Hall telling people what they need. This is what we did in Hollywood. We updated the community plan there. Some people wanted more bike lanes; some people wanted shared cars; some people wanted higher buildings in certain places near the subway. Other people wanted to make sure that historic buildings were protected.

I think it’s the same in Boyle Heights. In some places you need to protect the history, to make sure buildings don’t get knocked down. You need to make it easier to get around, whether you want to walk, bike, drive, or take a bus or rail. One thing I’d love to see here in Boyle Heights is to activate the street life. At least when I was growing up, it was one of those few communities— when nobody walked in L.A. --where you could always see people out on Brooklyn Ave nue., now Cesar Chavez. Emphasizing the pedestrian experience is really important to strengthen and continue Boyle Heights’ progress. When you don’t emphasize the street, and just build communities for cars, people leave the neighborhood to do things, and it makes it tough to make Boyle Heights strong in the future.

Connecting with Communities

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Partnership for LA Schools

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: Yes, I voted for it on the City Council. I actually wrote the legislation before this that recognized “matrícula” cards, which are given to folks that don’t necessarily have citizenship , but live here and need a form of identification. We accept them in libraries or if you are a witness to a crime and want to do a crime report. So that was the first step, and the second step is these cards. The city can help reduce the costs for undocumented residents in terms of banking. Right now, [(not having proper ID]) costs a lot. Places that prey on undocumented residents charge high rates to cash checks to transfer money. It’s a good thing for the city’s budget, as well as the right thing for residents.

ID's for Undocumented

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.
The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.


Audio: I don’t know. They are well served by the attention that they get from the supervisors. Supervisor Molina has brought a lot of resources to unincorporated East LA.
I will say this. I think we have too many cities in the county of Los Angeles. There are 88 cities in the county of Los Angeles. There’s 10 million people in the county, four million in the city of L.A. Long Beach is the second biggest city, with only 500,000. That leaves 86 other cities. All the way down to Vernon next door , which supposedly only has 25 residents, but nobody knows for sure if anybody lives there or not.

I think that makes it tough to tackle big problems. What do you do on traffic? Criminal activity doesn’t stop [(at city borders ]). If East L.A. were to incorporate, it would be a great thing for East L.A. pride. I wouldn’t oppose it, but in an ideal world , we would actually be consolidating our cities so that we could act as one.


East L.A.'s Cityhood

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: I wouldn’t be possible without Boyle Heights. My family came here first. This was the gateway community that my family lived in. Both my Mexican and Jewish ancestors settled here , and I’m very proud of that. Even though I never lived in Boyle Heights, I had that pride about this place. To me, it’s like the seed that was planted for the flower that blossomed that is my family history.


Culture and Identity

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: Economic development is my number one goal as mayor. Because I think everything else is possible when people are working, and businesses are open -- where you all can graduate and get jobs. You can pay taxes , and then we can see streets get paved and firefighters and police officers be hired.

There’s a focus I’m going to bring on youth jobs in the summer. Boyle Heights is one of the communities we will focus on. A good economy starts with all of you first.

Second, I want to put an emphasis in the classroom on skills to get hired , even in tough economic times. It’s not that there’s no jobs. We don’t have enough computer programmers. If you learn computer coding in the classroom , you can graduate even without a college degree and start a job at $70K a year.

In the old days , you took shop classes, and became a mechanic . N, now you need to know computer coding so you can get a job in a digital start up. Lastly, I want to make it easier to start a business. I want to teach entrepreneurism in our schools.

Economic Development

Los Angeles mayor-elect Eric Garcetti discussed his Boyle Heights roots, the economy and whether East Los Angeles should become its own city during an interview with Boyle Heights Beat youth reporters on June 13, 2013.

The reporters, teens from the area’s local high schools, met Garcetti for a press conference at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center.

Boyle Heights Beat/Pulso de Boyle Heights: The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader community.

Audio: I have been here already three times in the interim, and I’ve probably spent more time here than in any other neighborhood. We had our first kickoff of a “listening tour” between the election and my inauguration. We’re going to six different neighborhoods , and the first one was Boyle Heights. We had probably 200 people, a week and a half ago, at [(a meeting at the ]) Puente Learning Center. It was really important for me to start in Boyle Heights. My family started in [(the U.S. in ]) Boyle Heights. It will continue to be high up in my agenda. You know, being mayor is like having 92 children, and you have to make sure that none feel more favored than the others , because the moment I say Boyle Heights is my favorite then Granada Hills gets angry and Wilmington gets upset. So I love all my children equally, but I really love Boyle Heights.

I think I’ll be here for those important commemorations. My grandfather was an undocumented migrant here from Mexico. He became a citizen in World War II because he volunteered for that war. So these veterans who are here in Boyle Heights are very near and dear to me , and every year, for Memorial and Veteran’s Day, if I can, I go to Cinco Puntos , which is where we have the Mexican All Wars Memorial.

Beyond the Campaign

The newspaper –and its sister website– serve an immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles of
just under 100,000. It came into being through a partnership of The California Endowment Health
Journalism Fellowships, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and La Opinión, the
Spanish language daily. It also counts upon many supporters in Boyle Heights’ schools and the broader
community.

Boyle Heights Beat

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