Lefty guide to L.A.

Came across a website that bills itself as A People’s Guide to LA: "an attempt to map sites of racial and class struggle in Los Angeles’ history and landscape." Sites mapped and capsuled include the Black Panther Party headquarters at 4115 S. Central Avenue where a deadly 1969 clash with the LAPD went down; Self-Help Graphics at 3802 Cesar Chavez Avenue, the Chicano-focused visual arts center; Holiday Bowl at 3730 Crenshaw Boulevard, opened by Japanese Americans after World War II; and the old General Motors assembly plant in Panorama City, site of numerous labor struggles. The entry for Century City:

Century City has been the site of two important public protests and instances of police abuse. In June 1967 a massive anti-war demonstration in which ten to fifteen thousand people gathered to protest President Johnson’s Vietnam policy. Protesters were met with batons, clubs, and tear gas. Similarly, on June 15, 1990 when approximately 500 members and supporters of Justice for Janitors (JfJ), Service Employees International Union, staged a peaceful protest in an effort to seek union recognition. The LAPD responded violently, producing many injuries, arrests and one miscarriage. JfJ organizers worried that this beating would prompt workers to drop their bid for unionization, but according to organizer Rocio Saenz, “They got upset and angry, many are people that never had political experience in the past. [They said], ‘That’s it. They cannot treat us like this when we didn’t do anything!” In 1993 L.A. city agreed to pay $2.35 million in damages.

The guide was intended to be a book, but when no publishers were interested it became a website.


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