Redlining and Gentrification 101
Educational pamphlets and language justice for East Hollywood and beyond
SAMANTA:
In 2021, when Jimmy and I were planning our panel series “Making Our Neighborhood,” the multimedia project that led to the creation of this newsletter, we were still deep in the pandemic. We knew our discussions on redlining, gentrification, and housing would have to be held on Zoom and that as a result, we would risk potentially excluding people in our community who were not familiar with the technology or lacked access, or who were busy surviving through such a frightening time. But some of these very people, many elders, were likely the most impacted by the topics we were discussing.
If information is power, we knew that it would be important to create a resource for people to learn the basics about redlining and gentrification from core definitions and historical data to see how these policies and issues impact our lives.
We began a collaboration with members of the Anti Eviction Mapping Project, who helped us draft and design redlining and gentrification 101 pamphlets.
But if this project was really about meeting people where they are, then we had to consider the diversity of languages in East Hollywood. Once the English language pamphlet was ready, we collaborated with folks to translate these information tools into the neighborhood’s four core languages outside of English: Spanish, Thai, Armenian, and Tagalog.
Then, we set out to deliver pamphlets physically at legacy businesses and institutions in the area from the Cahuenga Public Library branch to local barbershops, markets, and more.
To me, this portion of our project really highlights what it means to fill people’s information needs. It’s an example of how journalism and storytelling can be more inclusive through creative solutions.
J.T:
Language is a primary instrument for how we place ourselves or how we think of our existence. It’s a tool we use to connect with the people and places around us, not to mention with the actions we take and the sensations we experience. Language is also a means of survival; through the Virgil Village area, longtime and former residents can walk or drive on Virgil avenue and simply note the growing absence of panaderias or pupuserias as signs of the historic Latino community’s ongoing exodus from the area and central L.A. overall.
In 2021 the U.S. Census data noted that in the city of Los Angeles nearly 57% of people spoke a language other than English at home. This was accurate in East Hollywood as recently as 2022, where 54% of people spoke Spanish, Asian and Pacific Islander, Indo-European, or other languages besides English. East Hollywood as an area is undergoing gentrification similar to what Virgil Village has seen, but it’s still the case for locals in the area that in less than a mile on Santa Monica boulevard we can walk past store-fronts and signs reaching out to Spanish, Tagalog, Armenian and Thai speakers; I had initially reached out to these same communities as far back as 2018, so in developing the contours of Making Our Neighborhood with Samanta it was a natural decision to do so again.
From there, the question was a matter of how to encapsulate the issues we sought to discuss into small chunks for people to sift through given the limited time they’d have due to work and family obligations. In other words, we had to think of how to engage with “originals” like the people who came to form the community of “La Tiendita de Don Andres.”
We opted to go just with key facts on redlining, gentrification and homelessness or housing insecurity since we had a good sense that all people needed to do was “look around” to see these policies playing out in front of them or in real time. As simple as it may sound, the process of determining just what would be the most accurate descriptions of these issues was time-staking, which is to say we had a lot of back-and-forth on the terminology that would be most effective for readers who might not have encountered these histories in written form before, as well as what would work for historians or others who might review our work at some future point.
Then, once the terms were finalized, there was the work of translating it all! The entire effort of translation was volunteer-led and provided by myself and Samanta, friends of Quien Es Tu Vecindario, the Armenian National Committee of America Hollywood, Thai Community Development Center, and Little Tokyo Service Center.
Today, nearly three years since our panel series, it would be great to update our findings and say more where possible. But of course, that’s another Cuento for another day.
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The pamphlets are a great resource for anyone living in cities that experienced redlining and are now facing gentrification. With that in mind, we are posting them below in the hopes that people will download, print, and distribute them. Keep this information circulating by sharing with neighbors, friends, family members, co-workers, non-profits, cultural institutions, and local businesses!
ENGLISH:
SPANISH:
THAI:
ARMENIAN:
TAGALOG: