Introducing Making A Neighborhood

Mar 04, 2022

For those of you who don’t know us, we are Samanta Helou Hernandez, Jimmy Recinos, and Ali Rachel Pearl, three neighbors who came together in the spring of 2021 to tell the story of East Hollywood, the neighborhood we call home.

Who are we?

Samanta Helou Hernandez is a multimedia journalist and photographer covering culture, identity, and social issues. She has published with The LA Times, Playboy, KCRW, and KPCC, among others. In 2017, Samanta created “This Side of Hoover,” an on-going visual archive of gentrification and resilience in East Hollywood. She was an Annenberg Fellow and graduated with an M.A. in Journalism from USC. Her extensive multimedia thesis explored the historical significance of the L.A. institution “La Cita.”

Jimmy Recinos, better known as J.T. the L.A. Storyteller, has published essays, poetry, and more for L.A. since 2014. A lifelong resident of East Hollywood, his work now focuses on history and culture in and around central Los Angeles. Through his podcast, J.T. discusses everything from policy-making on homelessness, to urban planning for communities. He is also the founder of Who Is Your Neighborhood, a non-profit organization for arts and education in the inner city, and the creator of Los Cuentos, a new fashion and photography line dedicated to the city.

Ali Rachel Pearl is a writer, teacher, organizer, and scholar who studies race, archives, surveillance, and digital culture. She received her PhD in English from the University of Southern California, where she currently teaches literary and cultural studies-based writing courses. Her creative work and scholarship appear in literary and peer-reviewed academic journals. She has helped coordinate food justice and mutual aid efforts in East Hollywood and organizes against policing at USC and in Los Angeles.

Why did we start this newsletter?

This newsletter grew out of our 2021 project “Making Our Neighborhood: Redlining, Gentrification, and Housing in East Hollywood,” a panel series, education campaign, and public art project about what it means to make a neighborhood. We wanted to create a platform to continue engaging in this topic long term. Our goal is to deepen people’s understanding of their neighborhoods, whether you live in East Hollywood or on the East Coast. By becoming a paid subscriber you’re supporting our ongoing work examining both the cultural and political implications of racially discriminatory practices, urban planning, gentrification, and community solidarity.

For our first post, we wanted to (re)introduce ourselves and recap our 2021 project to give you the context for our upcoming work in this newsletter.

Making Our Neighborhood: Redlining, Gentrification, and Housing in East Hollywood was a multimedia project about what it means to make a neighborhood, created and produced by Samanta Helou Hernandez (This Side of Hoover) and J.T the L.A. Storyteller. It included three panels about the past, present, and future of East Hollywood, a public art project on redlining, an education campaign featuring redlining & gentrification 101 pamphlets translated into 5 languages, and a 100-page print magazine. The project was featured on NPR, Grand Park LA, and The LA Podcast. The entire project took eight months to complete and was funded by grassroots fundraising. Collaborators included Ali Rachel Pearl, Caroline Calderon of Little Tokyo Service Center, as well as folks at East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, Thai Community Development Center, and The Anti-Eviction Mapping project.

PANELS

The panel series highlighted Black and Japanese American history in East Hollywood, historic policies against home and property ownership for non-white communities in the area, and their relation to current policies impacting Black and immigrant communities in the neighborhood. The series concluded by highlighting current efforts against evictions in East Hollywood, growing homelessness in the area, and city planning with increased community participation.

Descriptions and recordings of the three panels (available in English & Spanish)—attended live by over 500 people across various streaming platforms—can be found below:

Past: Redlining, Internment, and Resilience

A Zoom panel about redlining and inter-ethnic solidarity in East Hollywood, featuring a fourth generation Black resident, her Japanese-American neighbor, and life-long East Hollywood resident J.T. the L.A. Storyteller, moderated by journalist Samanta Helou Hernandez of This Side of Hoover.

Present: Documenting Gentrification

A Zoom panel about the role of documentation as a tool for preserving histories of gentrification, organizing against displacement, and celebrating resilience. A conversation with This Side of Hoover, The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, and the East Hollywood Tenants Union.

Future: The Fight for Housing

A Zoom panel with community leader, Chancee Martorell of the Thai Community Development Center, Caroline Calderon of Little Tokyo Service Center, and urban planner Roderick Hall, about the future of housing and planning in East Hollywood.

PUBLIC ART PROJECT

Photo of a yellow yard sign that says “This Neighborhood Was Redlined” planted in the dirt next to a cactus and a fire hydrant. Behind the sign is a long line of people waiting to order at Courage Bagel.

Photo of a yellow redlining yard sign planted in the grass in front of an apartment building that has a for sale sign on it.

Photo of a redlining sign in front of Erewhon grocery store

Photo of a redlining sign in front of a gentrification fence that lines a red cement building surrounded by flowers.

A public art project featuring street signs stating “This Neighborhood Was Redlined.” The signs highlighted East Hollywood’s history of redlining and utilized QR codes directing community members to the panel series. The sign design was inspired by the “We Buy Houses Cash” posters seen around gentrifying neighborhoods. They were posted in the formerly redlined areas of East Hollywood & Silver Lake. During our installation of these materials, we came across a diverse range of fellow community members who wanted to learn more about redlining and about how they could get involved with our project. This project was designed and executed by Ali Rachel Pearl with guidance from Samanta Helou Hernandez and J.T. the L.A. Storyteller.

EDUCATION CAMPAIGN

Photo of five informational pamphlets in Tagolog, Thai, Armenian, English, and Spanish. They say “Making Our Neighborhood: Redlining, Gentrification, and Housing in East Hollywood.” Below that is an image of a redlined map of East Hollywood.

image of the inside of the English language pamphlet

Redlining and Gentrification 101 pamphlets designed by The Anti-Eviction Mapping project with guidance from Samanta Helou Hernandez and J.T. the L.A. Storyteller. These pamphlets were translated into the neighborhood’s five core languages: Spanish, English, Armenian, Tagalog, and Thai. They were distributed to legacy businesses and longtime residents.

THE MAGAZINE

photograph of the Making Our Neighborhood magazine, the cover for which is described in the alt text for the first image in this post

Archival black and white image of a Black woman holding a Japanese American child on the porch of a house.

Except of a story from inside the magazine with a color photograph of a 68 year old Black woman, Karen Burch, standing in front of her old home, which is a pink stucco building with a red roof.

Image of a title page from the magazine that says “the Hoshizakis” above a color photo of a 97 year old Japanese American man, Takashi Hoshizaki, standing in front of a yellow flower bush

Except from the magazine with a black and white archival photo of Hoshizaki and others posing for a photo at an internment camp

We turned the many stories, essays, and photographs we gathered for the panel series into a 100-page magazine called Making Our Neighborhood, of which we’ve since sold 300 copies. The magazine is currently available at Printed Matter in New York City. It was designed by Chynna Monforte and written & photographed by Samanta Helou Hernandez and J.T. the L.A. Storyteller.

What can you expect when you subscribe to Making A Neighborhood?

Next week you can expect a dispatch from Samanta about the displaced vendors of the now-demolished Union Swap Meet. Future posts will include creative nonfiction from Ali about what it means to be a part of a neighborhood, J.T. writing about everything from local elections to city policy, and Samanta sharing her multimedia journalism and human interest stories. We’ll also be sharing book reviews, local histories, portraits of East Hollywood, and reflections on community making in an effort to not only document our rapidly changing neighborhood, but to connect the struggles and resilience of our area to neighborhoods across the city, state, and country.

For only $5 per month, you will receive weekly stories from Making A Neighborhood. Free subscribers will only receive one dispatch per month and will not have access to our archive. Most importantly, by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter, you will be supporting local artists, journalists, and storytellers.

Selfie of Ali, Samanta, and J.T. smiling at the camera with the downtown LA skyline in the background at dusk.

Making A Neighborhood