The latest act of life in downtown Los Angeles greeted me on a Wednesday afternoon when I parked at the Chinatown lot.
Donald Trump and his students protest against his anti-immigration policies.
A group of about 60 people marched down Spring Street before heading right towards Orbera Street at Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, chanting and blew through the corner, cheering whenever the car was approved. They waving Mexican flags, Salvadors and Venezuelan flags, and the old glory was invisible.
But I wasn’t there to cover the kids: I wanted to see the doodles. On Monday, during a “Immigration-free Day” rally, people tagged the entire Elpu Ebro, the birthplace of the city.
They tainted the American Museum of China and the tour office. Pico House and the city’s first fire station. Interpretation signs ringing the old square. Businesses across the street from Cielito Lindo. Parking lot at La Plaza de Cultura Art.
Prakas is almost the same, referring to immigration and customs enforcement and president. “f—ICE.” “F—Donald Trump.”
The worst place was a two-storey Italian hall. The brick wall facing Cesar E. Chavez was a scrawled palimpus plague. Anti-Trump and Anti-Ice tags include “Ice Out Out of LA” and “LA” in the style of the Dodgers logo, hearts with internal initials, ghostly red “Viva La Raza” and “Viva Mexico.”
Built in 1908, the historic structure features the Italian-American Los Angeles Museum. At the time, the hall hosted a very kind of radical politics that students supported in this week’s protests. Legendary figures like Emma Goldman and Flores Magon Brothers address crowds in English, Spanish, Italian and other languages. Defiling the shrine to past immigrants while fighting for today’s immigrants was a sad irony that I wanted to discuss with the museum’s executive director and co-founder Mariannagat.
Dressed in black with a warm smile, she took me on a short tour. The permanent exhibition tells the history of La’s Italian-American community. Gut is said to be the fifth largest in the country. The display case made Memento famous – Starquist tuna founded in San Pedro, providing jobs to many Italian immigrants, offering personal personal dresses and things like Civic Club badges This is the empty can of Tommy Lasolda jersey. The free museum attracts over 300,000 visitors a year, but most are not Italian heritage.
“We can’t tell you what’s going on right now without a story of what happened in the past,” Gutt said. We were before what she said, an artifact from the museum’s most popular exhibit, when Italian Americans were the diminished immigrants of the day. In her hands were 19th century cartoons depicted by an Italian as a mustache-grown mouse swimming on the American coast. In front of us there was a photo of two Italian men lynched hanging from a tree.
“When I see visitors here stay and read everything, I think it’s encouraging,” Gutt said.
Marianna Gatto is the executive director of the Los Angeles Museum, the Italian American Museum in downtown LA
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
Earlier that day, the museum hosted a group of students at Baker Elementary School in Elmonte. “You see them making connections between what happened to Italian Americans in the past and their own stories,” she said.
The problem is that there are not enough people doing it, as evidenced by the outside graffiti.
Ethnic studies are popular in California and are expected to be a graduation requirement for high school students in 2030. However, the Italian-American experience is rare here, unlike the East Coast and the Midwest.
The California Legislature apologized in 2010 for Italian immigrants and Italian-American state abuse during World War II, but Italians are not mentioned in the curriculum of the Ethnic Studies Model. They are recognized as one of many European immigrant groups, with the longest section suggesting whether Christopher Columbus is a “hero or criminal.”
Such omissions lead to the type of vandalism that took place at the Italian-American Museum, said Professor Alexandro Jose Gradila, Fullerton Chicano Research Professor in California State. He muttered “Híjole” (aaah, no!).
“Youths don’t have failures [who tagged]. We are with us as adult activists,” Gradila said. “We don’t show them the history to give them — that all successful civil rights movements have happened as a coalition. Tagging other people’s places is not the way.”
Gut was more charitable about the lack of knowledge about Italian-American history, especially in Los Angeles.
“L.A. history is unknown,” she said as she continued her tour. “Ask the average person, ‘How did Los Angeles start?’ And they’ll probably say ‘Hollywood.’ ”
Gut, who gave him age as “late 40s,” said he grew up in an age where Italian-Americans celebrated the “good” things, such as politicians, judges, and Frank Sinatra. Ta. “They were this once,” she said, referring to an exhibition of anti-Italian hatred.
However, during her childhood at Silver Lake and Los Ferris, white children didn’t think she was white and said, “Mexican and Filipino children were like, “Why are they wandering around with us?” ?”
Descendants of immigrants from Sicily and Calabria visited the Italian halls they were on board at the time as undergraduates at UCLA and Los Angeles, California, and said, “This must be a museum, I need it. To be a director.” .”
The museum passed after local Italian-Americans fought to save the Italian hall. In 2010, after working as a high school teacher and a curator for the city of Los Angeles, Gut became head of the Italian-American Museum, which moved to the Hall in 2016.
“For me, this is not a matter of ethnic pride, it’s a story from Los Angeles,” she said.
Lincoln Heights, one of LA’s traditional Italian-American neighborhoods, was “split in half” by the construction of five highways in the late 1940s, shortly after Gutt’s father’s family moved there. ”. She said that some Italian-Americans look skeptical of immigrants today: “They will say, ‘We’ve come legally’, and I’m telling them it’s different. I say that, and we need to hear about immigrants today. ”
Gatt points to an exhibit documenting the history of anti-Italian bias in the United States. The miner ad says “there is no need for colour or Italians to apply.”
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
I asked about external vandalism. Gut emphasized that the protest was not fused with graffiti.
“We are very supportive of everyone’s rights to freedom of speech,” she replied. “We want people to respect what’s here and be more thoughtful about how it will affect us.”
Sadly, vandalism has become quite commonplace in Italian-American Museums.
People repeatedly smashed windows in their front yards. Someone once tried to burn the building. Last weekend, a woman launched a temporary display about an Italian-American inventor, naked and stole a plastic mouse. Workers removed some of the graffiti from the “Immigration-free Day” protests, but some were written with a variety of spray paints that require broader and more expensive removal.
The pandemic has covered the finances of the Italian American Museum, which has not yet been rebounded. Some board members have lost their homes and businesses in the recent fire.
“Suppose you’ve been dealt $10,000 in damage,” Gut said he was standing near a small replica of Zamboni’s ice resurfacement machine, invented in Paramount by Italian-American Frank Zamboni. . “Do you know how many children’s workshops to fund? We serve people who don’t go to Getty. They’re not welcome to Getty. Elsewhere, $10,000 will be napkins. I can’t get it.”
She offered a tired smile. “When we are fighting constant vandalism, we are separated from our resources to do more important things.”
Woman destroys the wall outside the Italian American Los Angeles Museum. They were left there after the protest on a “day without immigration.”
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
I asked if I would like to seek criminal charges against anyone tagging the museum on the day of the protest. Gut immediately shook his head.
“As an educator, I would like to think of this as an opportunity to educate. It’s a scary time for a lot of people and it’s going to be getting more and more difficult,” she said. “The prosecution isn’t the answer, but let’s discuss what happens when you scam your property. That’s the scars you’re going to fight. I love seeing young people join, but I’m right Let’s do it the way.”
We said goodbye and I went down the stairs and headed back to Main Street. In front of Sepulveda’s house, a man was urinating through three doors.
I last took a walk around Elpu Ebro before returning to the old plaza. The horns and screams were heard in the distance. Another night of protest has begun.
Guatemalan immigrant Esteban Barientos sat on a bench waiting for his friend to arrive at Union Station.
“That’s not good,” the 64-year-old said of the vandalism. “I’m not against the message, but you have to respect history. I hope they. [students] learn. “
Nearby was Janelle V., 17 years old. He marched in the protest he met earlier that day. Orange County residents gave her the last, first, as she abandoned her school field trip in support of the protest. She said the experience “enhancing and motivating me to participate more.”
I asked about the doodles around us. She looked at the Mexican flag in her hand.
“That’s sad,” she finally replied, “But that comes with the protest.”
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