Radio – Page 2 – Katherine Davis-Young

NEPR: Recognizing Gap In City’s Archive, Holyoke Aims To Collect Puerto Rican Stories

Posted on September 29, 2016April 15, 2017 by Katherine Davis-Young

When Eileen Crosby began working as the archivist at the Holyoke Public Library four years ago, she said she found great resources about the city’s early industrial history, and the waves of Irish and Polish migrants who settled in the town generations ago.

“We had materials on all those groups, but what we didn’t have in the archives, very much of, was any really rich material about any groups that arrived in Holyoke after about the 1950s,” Crosby said.

Specifically, Crosby said, the archive had very little information about the thousands of Puerto Ricans who moved to Holyoke in the second half of the 20th century. So Crosby and her team sought out a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“We really wanted to use it to try to start capturing this missing piece, and I say start because we’re really just scratching the surface,” she said.

The grant project is called Nuestros Senderos: Our Journeys and Our Lives in Holyoke. Its aim is to identify some of the Puerto Rican families who have built their lives in Holyoke. Among them — Julita Rojas, who moved to New York City from Puerto Rico in the 1960s. But when she took a trip out to Holyoke to visit her sister in the summer of 1969, everything changed.

Julita Rojas holds up family photos that she shared with the Holyoke Public Library’s new archive project. The project, “Nuestros Senderos: Our Journeys and Our Lives in Holyoke,” aims to gather information about Holyoke’s Puerto Rican communities.

“I said, ‘Oh, I love this place!’ And then six months later…I moved to Holyoke with all my family,” she said. “Ever since, I’ve been here.”

Rojas raised her four children in Holyoke. She now has six grandchildren and one great-grandchild who also live in the area. And it’s important to her to share her story with them, and with future generations.

“I want them to know the roots,” she said. “I want them to know where I came from and all the things that’s happened in Puerto Rico, yes.”

Rojas brought three family photos with her to the library’s community digitization event on Saturday.

Crosby and her team of volunteers made digital copies of photos and documents that community members brought in to share. They also had a booth set up to make audio recordings of family stories. All those files will be saved in the archive to help fill out the story of the city’s diverse heritage.

“The reason we don’t have more family history materials in general is people think, ‘Well, it’s just my family who would be interested in that?’” Crosby said. “But there’s actually, in that material, the things we collect about our own families, there’s a lot social history…There might be information about the neighborhood, about schools, about cultural traditions.”

Just a handful of families shared their stories and photos at the first event. Crosby said the library is hoping to gather more as the project continues through next spring.

Listen to this story on New England Public Radio

KPCC: Should farmers markets be required to accept food stamps? City Council weighs in

Posted on May 13, 2016May 16, 2016 by Katherine Davis-Young

Update: The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to direct the city attorney to draft an ordinance making it mandatory for all farmers markets to accept EBT cards (the electronic equivalent of food stamps). The vote was 11-0 with four council members absent.

Every Sunday morning, the Hollywood Farmers Market pops up at the corner of Hollywood and Ivar. It’s one of about 60 farmers markets that regularly appears in the city of L.A.

Shopper Kris Jones is a regular at this market. “Vendors here have a lot more information about what makes their food healthy,” she said. “I like that you can ask questions and get answers. Going to your local grocery you don’t always get that.”

Another bonus for Jones–she’s able to pay for her produce at this market using CalFresh Electronic Benefits Transfer, or EBT, the government assistance program formerly known as food stamps.

According to County data, well over a million people in the L.A. area rely on CalFresh to buy groceries each month. Even more are eligible for the program but haven’t enrolled.

But according to the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, more than half of farmers markets in L.A. don’t accept EBT.

“It seemed very curious to us that farmers markets, which we all love, are not as inclusive to our low income neighbors as they could be,” said Clare Fox, executive director of the L.A. Food Policy Council.

Fox’s organization is working with the L.A. City Council to make EBT a requirement at all farmers markets in L.A.

Through the CalFresh program, farmers markets can get a no-cost, wireless point-of-sale device from the state–it’s a lot like a portable credit card reader. Shoppers can swipe their EBT card at the manager’s booth in exchange for vouchers that they can use at the market’s produce stalls.

Kate Miller (right) and Elizabeth Bowman (left) assist shoppers redeeming CalFresh benefits at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Shoppers visit the Farmers Market manager's table where they can swipe their EBT card in exchange for paper vouchers to use throughout the market. — Kate Miller (right) and Elizabeth Bowman (left) assist shoppers redeeming CalFresh benefits at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Shoppers visit the Farmers Market manager’s table where they can swipe their EBT card in exchange for paper vouchers to use throughout the market.

Albert Tlatoa, with the South Central Farmers Cooperative has been working at farmers markets throughout L.A. for 10 years. He’s worked at some that do accept EBT and some that don’t.

“It’s a different system for each market, each organization runs their farmers market differently. We would like to take it, but we don’t take it all the time,” he said.

He said when he can accept EBT, he definitely sees more business.

The Food Policy Council says that’s a common story. Their research suggests farmers markets that add EBT typically see an increase in revenue. Programs like Hunger Action Los Angeles’ Market Match, which provides matching funds to some EBT shoppers to incentivize shopping at farmers markets, often bring even more business to vendors, Fox said.

Even so, some markets have been reluctant to adopt EBT. Fox said many simply don’t know about the program. And getting the program set up takes a lot of paperwork.

“For farmers markets that have mostly volunteers, or a lot of turnover in staff, some of the smaller operations, that might be hard to do,” Fox said.

But City Councilman Jose Huizar, who’s backing the ordinance, said those are minor issues compared to citywide health concerns.

“If you have a farmer’s market that doesn’t have EBT, that individual who uses it is going to to go to a local store that perhaps doesn’t have fresh fruit and vegetables, so at the end of the day this is going to allow for a healthier individual with the use of EBT and a healthier Los Angeles,” Huizar said.

Huizar is optimistic that, if passed, the ordinance could go into effect within six months.

The City Council will face some challenges. Some farmers markets take place in parks, others on streets, and others on private property, so there’s no one-size-fits-all permitting process that would make it easy to enforce an EBT law across Los Angeles.

Fox said the law wouldn’t be a silver bullet solution to the city’s food access problems. There are still many more farmers markets in affluent neighborhoods than in low income areas. But Fox said, “It sends a very strong message that the city is taking proactive steps toward addressing the crisis that we see around obesity, diet-related disease, and access to healthy food facing low income communities and communities of color.”

For shoppers like Jones, the more healthy options, the better. “One of the big draws for me is being able to come here and get fresh local fruit and vegetables and all that and use my card,” she said.

Listen to this story on KPCC

KPCC: UCLA project puts LA indigenous communities on the map

Posted on April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 by Katherine Davis-Young

L.A. is home to one of the largest populations of indigenous people in the United States. That includes those who are native to Southern California and indigenous peoples who have relocated here.

Yet many of L.A.’s indigenous peoples find that awareness of their communities can be lacking among the general population.

“As a teenager I got really frustrated when people would ask me ‘Where are you from? What’s your heritage?’ and I would tell them, and they would know nothing about the indigenous people of this area. A lot of our own people didn’t even know,” said Craig Torres, a member of the Tongva community. His ancestors, sometimes called Gabrieleño, were native to the L.A. basin before European settlers arrived.

Since the Tongva people have never been federally recognized as a tribe, they have no reservation, no official cultural center, and only scattered resources for preserving their heritage. That lack of access to accurate information about L.A.’s Native American communities sparked an idea with a group of researchers at UCLA.

“Really what we wanted to do is create kind of a virtual world where people would have access to the different-layered indigenous L.A.,” said Mishuana Goeman, a member of the Tonawanda band of Seneca Indians, and a professor at UCLA.

Goeman and other faculty and student researchers are developing a new educational website called Mapping Indigenous LA. The site aims to be a comprehensive resource for information about L.A.’s indigenous groups. Goeman and the rest of the team collaborated with community members to piece together L.A.’s history told from the indigenous perspective.

“When we’re looking at everything around us in L.A., everything is fenced off, has boundaries, people own this, people own that,” said Desiree Martinez, a Tongva community member and an archaeologist. “But for native communities, when we look at the land, it’s all connected. So we’re trying to document the way native people look at the land.”

The site points out some L.A. places that indigenous people see differently, like the area of downtown L.A. where indigenous slaves were once traded, or Kuruvunga Springs near UCLA, which was once the center of a thriving Tongva village.

“Those places have been excavated archeologically, but you have to know where to find that information,” said Wendy Teeter, curator of archaeology for UCLA’s Fowler Museum and another researcher for the Mapping Indigenous L.A. project. “Los Angeles’ history really needs to be given back to people and we need to have those first-person stories from the communities talk about why these spaces are important and not to be forgotten.”

The site launched in October and is still in development, but the project goes beyond just information about the Tongva, Chumash, and other Southern California indigenous communities.

Los Angeles has become home to American Indians from across the country, as well as indigenous peoples from Latin America and Pacific Island nations, who relocated here voluntarily or through displacement over many generations. Goeman said each of those communities has its own history within L.A.

“That’s something we wanted to get at: how do you begin to make a place? It’s not like when you get here you forget all your old world.”

Goeman said the researchers are happy to provide the platform and hope community members will come forward to tell their own stories.

The site illustrates those stories through interactive maps, timelines, digitized historical documents, links to other educational resources, and video interviews with community members. Goeman and her team said most of this information was publicly available before, but it has never been conveniently compiled in one place. The team hopes the website will become a trustworthy resource for information that has been vetted by the communities represented.

Goeman said a major goal of the Mapping indigenous L.A. project is to get across the idea that indigenous communities are not a thing of the past in California. In fact, census data shows the state has the highest number of residents with American Indian or Alaska Native heritage in the country—over 700,000.

“If you’re there being presented with a live, living person, it really gets past that stereotype that Indian people are dead or still dying,” Goeman said. “What people don’t realize is we’ve actually increased in numbers, and we’ve increased in knowledge and we’ve increased in the recovery of our languages through revitalization, and that’s kind of what we want to show, that vibrancy.”

Listen to this story on KPCC

KPCC: Man paralyzed in LAPD shooting gets $5.7 million one decade later

Posted on March 24, 2016July 23, 2019 by Katherine Davis-Young

More than 10 years after LAPD officers shot him in the back leaving him paralyzed, Robert Contreras will receive compensation from the City of L.A.

The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday gave final approval to a jury-awarded payout of $5.7 million to Contreras. Including interest and attorneys fees, the total will amount to $6.9 million, the city attorney’s office said.

“We are so happy because this is going to make a huge difference in his life and in his family’s life,” said Dale Galipo, the lead attorney in Contreras’ case.

Payouts of this size are rare — just one LAPD shooting has led to larger settlement in recent years, according to data obtained by KPCC from the L.A. City Attorney. That was a $15 million payout to a 13 year-old who was shot by police in Glassell Park in 2010.

Overall, from fiscal years 2004 through 2015, LAPD-related settlements covering everything from wrongful death to traffic accidents have cost the city more than $320 million—more than $40 million of that from claims involving dozens of LAPD shootings, 22 of them fatal.

Closure for Contreras comes after years of legal wrangling over whether officers were in the right when they shot Contreras in the back in September 2005 as he fled the scene of a drive-by shooting.

Contreras was 19 at the time and a gang member. He was in a van in South L.A. with two other men when witnesses told police that gunfire had come from the van into the street. After a short pursuit, the three men got out of the vehicle and police chased them on foot. Police followed Contreras down a dark driveway and shot him four times.

Officers believed he had a gun, but Contreras was in fact, unarmed.

The bullet wounds left Contreras paralyzed from the waist down with just partial use of his arms.

In 2009, Contreras was convicted on attempted murder charges for his involvement in the drive-by shooting. He served time in prison, but after being released on parole, he filed a lawsuit in 2011 against the city and the two officers involved, saying the officers had used excessive force when they fired at him.

In 2012, the Los Angeles City Council had the chance to settle the case out of court for $4.5 million, but opted instead to take the case before a jury.

At the time, City Councilman Paul Krekorian told KPCC, “It’s really a question of trying to do what’s right in pursuing justice and to stand up for the officers who put their lives at risk.”

The city argued in court that the officers’ use of force was reasonable because Contreras was involved in a violent felony moments before he was shot, and was attempting to flee the scene. The city said the officers believed their lives were at risk because they believed Contreras was armed.

Contreras’ lawyers pointed out that he was shot in the back, so he could not have been facing the officers aggressively, as they claimed. Contreras’ lawyers also said the officers never warned Contreras that they were going to shoot.

The L.A. District Attorney declined to file criminal charges against the officers.

A jury awarded Contreras $5.7 million and the city appealed the decision, taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2015.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, so the award decided in lower courts held.

“In terms of jury award, there are no further levels of appeal of the underlying case, so there’s nowhere left for [the city of Los Angeles] to go,” said Bill Schmidt, one of the attorneys representing Contreras.

Schmidt said Contreras needs 24-hour care and has been getting by with help from his family and public assistance.

“It’s been a struggle for the family. [Contreras] hasn’t seen one cent from the award,” Schmidt said.

The city attorney’s office declined to comment for this story. Galipo said he expects Contreras to receive his money within 90 days.

Listen to this story on KPCC

KPCC: No weapon found in LA Sheriff Dept. shooting in Florence-Firestone

Posted on March 17, 2016March 18, 2016 by Katherine Davis-Young

A man shot by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Florence-Firestone early Wednesday morning appears to have been unarmed. Authorities have identified the man as 23-year-old Cristian Rene Medina.

The incident occurred around 4:30 a.m. near a payphone at the corner of 64th Street and Holmes Avenue.

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Guillermina Saldana said deputies from the Century Station were responding to a report of a robbery in progress nearby. When deputies arrived, Medina was standing alone near the payphone in front of a liquor store, she said. The department said Medina matched the description of the robbery suspect.

Guillermina said Medina took a “shooting stance” as though he were pointing a weapon. The deputies fired and Medina died on the scene. No weapon was found.

Manuel Romero, who lives near the corner where the shooting took place, said he heard the gunshots.

“I heard like maybe eight times,” Romero said. By the time he walked over to see what happened, authorities had blocked off the street.

Neighbors told KPCC Medina lived about a block away but many were reluctant to talk to a reporter about the incident.

A KPCC investigation into officer-involved-shootings in L.A. County found one in four people shot by police and deputies between 2010 and 2014 were unarmed.

KPCC’s data showed that in the five year period, at least eight people were shot by deputies in the slice of unincorporated Los Angeles where Medina died.

The area also has a high gang presence and a relatively high number of homicides, compared with other areas patrolled by the sheriff’s department. In 2015, Century Station has the third-highest homicide rate of any other sheriff’s patrol station.

Overall, crime has been dropping in the area. Violent and property crimes did rise about 6 percent in 2015, compared to the year before. But they’re still lower than they were five years ago.

Listen to this story on KPCC

KPCC: OC Thrift Fashion Gets the High-End Boutique Treatment

Posted on October 9, 2015October 30, 2015 by Katherine Davis-Young

Goodwill of Orange County’s Huntington Beach location has all the hallmarks of a typical thrift store. There are the shelves of used kitchen appliances and stacks of pictures frames, racks of clothes and, of course, bargain hunters.

But this Goodwill location, which is known as an OC Goodwill Boutique, has a notably different ambiance than most thrift stores. It’s one of a handful of “boutique” stores that Goodwill has been opening throughout Orange County since 2012. The goal is to attract more Orange County shoppers by offering a glamorous retail experience.

“[The Huntington Beach OC Goodwill Boutique] has a completely different feel, it’s much more open, we’re not using kind of the mass capacity fixtures that you’d find in a regular store,” said Eric Smissen, visual specialist for Goodwill of Orange County.

Smissen spent more than 20 years working for Nordstrom before moving to Goodwill. Now he’s putting his knowledge of higher-end retail design and merchandising to use. His job is to help dress formerly run-of-the-mill thrift stores with design touches like cleverly outfitted mannequins, exposed brick walls and well-lit dressing rooms.

And it’s not just the layout that’s a little different in OC Goodwill Boutiques. On the racks, shoppers are likely to find highly sought-after labels like Coach, Michael Kors or Marc Jacobs.

The Orange County boutique stores are not the first of their kind. Goodwill Industries operates across the country taking donations of items like clothing and house wares and selling them to raise money for programs to assist disabled workers, veterans and other job seekers with barriers to employment. There are about 60 “boutique” Goodwill stores nationwide, but each one is a little different.

Frank Talarico Jr., president and CEO of Goodwill of Orange County, said when his branch decided to start opening high-end thrift stores in 2012, they wanted to take the concept further than other branches had.

They opened their first OC Goodwill Boutique in Tustin. In the years since, the nonprofit has opened three more in Lake Forest, Anaheim, and now the Huntington Beach store, which was remodeled in June.

“As a matter of strategy we need to make sure that we’re using the boutique model to expand into those ZIP codes simply because to do it with a traditional store is just not going to happen,” Talarico said.

For Talarico, the most obvious way to reach out to more donors and customers and serve more people in need in Orange County is to appeal to the county’s more affluent residents. Now, Goodwill employees in Orange County do an extra round of sorting when items get donated. They pull out name brands to supply a more curated collection to the four boutique stores.

“We took a real hard look at who our market is and understood that they are not just after real good bargains and shopping value, but the shopping experience is one that we have to be really competitive in,” Talarico said.

Customers in the Huntington Beach boutique seem to notice the difference in the store’s layout and selection.

Local resident Camille Hoffman was visiting the OC Goodwill Boutique for the first time. “Everything looks a little more organized. It looks better, it looks nicer,” she said.

Regina Cox, who is a regular Goodwill shopper, said, “I actually found a Michael Kors [purse] it was like $24. It was practically brand new—a real Michael Kors. So you find bargains.”

Even though the added design elements mean the boutiques cost more to build and launch than traditional Goodwill stores, Talarico said the investment has paid off.

“The market likes it, they enjoy it, they come more often and buy more when they do come,” Talarico said.

According to Goodwill, customers to the Huntington Beach boutique spend nearly $10 dollars more in each transaction than they do at other Orange County locations. And in its first full month after its remodel this summer, the boutique’s sales were up nearly 10 percent compared to the same period last year.

Talarico says he hopes to keep expanding the concept. He’s set a goal to open two boutiques per year in Orange County for the foreseeable future.

Listen to this story at KPCC

KPCC: Teddi Boston recalls historic solo hike on the PCT

Posted on August 3, 2015October 30, 2015 by Katherine Davis-Young

Every summer, hundreds of hikers make their way from the Mexican border to the Canadian border on the Pacific Crest Trail. This year the Pacific Crest Trail Association estimates there are well over 1,000 hikers attempting the walk through California, Oregon and Washington, making it one of the busiest years the trail has ever seen.

Much of that traffic is inspired by Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 memoir “Wild,” and the recent Reese Witherspoon film of the same name. But long before there was Cheryl Strayed, there was another woman making a splash on the PCT: Teddi Boston.

Teddi Boston hiked from Canada to Mexico on the PCT in 1976 at age of 49. She was one of the first women to ever hike the trail alone.

Jack Haskel of the Pacific Crest Trail Association says Boston has a lasting legacy in the hiking community.

“People recognize her as one of the early solo female hikers, and today there’s a lot of solo women out on the PCT, and Teddi is one of them that pioneered that,” he said.

Boston credits her childhood in rural Maine with giving her a love of the outdoors. By the mid 1970s, she had four children and was living in Anaheim. She always loved to take her kids camping in Yosemite, and it was during one of those trips that she first got the idea to try a longer outdoor adventure.

“I started meeting people talking about the Pacific Crest Trail,” Boston said. “So when I got home I had to start doing research… And it took me two years before I accomplished it.”

There were obstacles to the challenge. The trail wasn’t officially completed until 1993. Boston didn’t let that stop her. She set out on May 1, 1976, with just a pair of boots and a 65-pound backpack.

“Today, hikers have things like smartphone apps and resupply plans, Teddi would have had to do a whole lot more research,” Haskel said.

But Boston says her plan was pretty simple.

“I was on map and compass. Point the compass south and say, ‘That’s where I want to go.’ Follow the jackrabbit, he’s headed south,” Boston said, with a laugh.

There weren’t many hikers attempting the PCT when Boston did. And among those few, she was unique.

“Most hikers in the 1970s, sort of like most hikers today, are young white guys, pretty physically fit, right out of college, with a lot of time and money and passion on their hands. And Teddi was a mother in her 40s and that was unusual,” Haskel said.

Boston says when she started planning her trek, not everyone took her seriously. One male friend who told her, “‘Teddi, you just can’t do this. A woman alone cannot do this trail.’” Boston said she looked at him and said, “‘Bet-me-binky, you are going to owe me the most expensive steak in Orange County when I get back.’”

Boston did finish her historic hike on October 16, 1976. Family, friends and supporters were there to celebrate with her at the end of the trail. Her accomplishment even made news headlines.

“One of them said, ‘Mother of Four Braves the Wild!’” Boston recalled.

Boston makes her five-and-a-half month journey sound easy. But she faced plenty of challenges along the way. She injured her eye in Oregon, she hiked through heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada, she nearly ran out of water in Northern California. And then, she found herself with too much water in Southern California, when Tropical Storm Kathleen flooded the Mojave and washed away large sections of the trail.

“The desert just filled up, it was like a big lake. Oh my God, was I wet,” Boston said. “I looked like a drowned rat. So I slogged across the desert to Mojave and ended up in front of a motel and I went in and said, ‘You better have a room, I don’t care if it’s a broom closet. I need a place to stay!’”

But even during close calls, Boston said she never thought about giving up.

“You had to get out of the situation. It’s going to be better down the road. You’re here. Buck up, and go ahead!” Boston said.

At 88, Boston is still active in the outdoors. She volunteers with several outdoor organizations and she still loves hiking. In fact, last year, she trekked more than 300 miles on the PCT, just to see if she could still do it. Turns out, she can. And, she says as long as her legs keep working, she’ll still be out on the trail.

Listen to this story on KPCC

KPCC: Cal State helps save Native American Languages

Posted on April 23, 2015October 30, 2015 by Katherine Davis-Young

In a classroom at Cal State San Bernardino, Ernest Siva shares a traditional Serrano story with students. He reads aloud in a language that was spoken by as many as 30,000 Native Americans in the San Bernardino mountain areas before settlers arrived in the 18th century.

78-year-old Siva remembers speaking Serrano at home with his mother and grandfather as a child. But in his generation, pressure to assimilate led English to become the tribe’s dominant language. Now, Siva is one of just two living speakers of Serrano. He’s hoping to pass on as much as he knows.

“I hope more and more people learn enough about it to keep the fire going. It’s our heritage. It does mean something to us and it really was important to the people,” Siva said.

The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians has been making a formal effort to preserve the Serrano language since 2004. Two years ago, the tribe teamed up with Cal State San Bernardino to offer college courses in the language.

The challenge was finding an instructor who could teach a language almost no one speaks.

Michael Navarrete, who describes himself as “Nicaraguan-Sicilian-German-Russian-Jewish,” is one of the people the tribe turned to. Navarrete said he didn’t even realize there were still Native Americans in California when he got the job. But, as a trained linguist, the idea intrigued him.

“It really is kind of a linguist’s dream job that I’m working on. For all intents and purposes it’s an extinct language but I’m trying to bring it back, so it’s very interesting even if I can’t talk to anyone,” Navarrete said.

Navarrete is teaching the introductory Serrano class at the university with Siva’s help. This semester they have just seven students.

None of the participants in Navarrete and Siva’s class have Serrano heritage. Most of them enrolled out of simple curiosity.

21-year-old psychology major, Vanessa Rodriguez already speaks Spanish and Romanian. She said Serrano just seemed interesting.

“I can learn a language outside, but this is a language that not many people know, so it’s not easy to come across to go find a book or something where I can learn from there,” she said.

The university hopes offering these courses will encourage students to take an interest in the cultural history of Southern California and help connect students with other parts of the community.

Carmen Jany, chair of CSUSB’s Indigenous Languages program, said, “The local tribes are part of our university community so we obviously want to serve the tribes as well. What is their main concern? To keep their languages and cultures alive, so we want to help them in that endeavor.”

The university started the program in 2012. They now offer courses in three Southern California indigenous languages: Luiseño, Serrano and Cahuilla. This year, the school also introduced a certificate program in California indigenous languages and cultures. Jany says the courses are available to community members as well as university students. She said she hopes that CSUSB students might someday learn enough about indigenous languages to work on the tribes’ reservations as teachers.

So far, enrollment has been low. The individual tribes pay for language instruction and Jany said without the tribes’ backing, the university probably wouldn’t be able to offer these courses.

Still, it’s an investment the tribes are willing to make in their future.

“Based on my experience, most tribes in the U.S. are playing catch up,” Navarrete said. “Most linguists think more than half the world’s existing languages will disappear by the end of the century.”

Southern California’s native languages are among those threatened, Navarrete said.

Navarrete and other linguists have helped compile a dictionary of about 4,000 Serrano words, but a lot of the language has already been lost. It’s something that concerns Siva.

“The main thing is to pass that on as much as we can,” Siva said.

Siva never thought he’d see a university teaching his language his lifetime. This course makes him feel hopeful.

There’s a traditional Serrano teaching on the matter, Siva said. “If you lose your language, you won’t have the deep roots of the oak, you’ll have shallow roots like grass, which withers and is gone.”

It’s a sentiment he hopes future generations will share.

Listen to this story on KPCC

KPCC: Debate Flares Over Providing Wildlife Artificial Water Sources

Posted on April 7, 2014August 26, 2015 by Katherine Davis-Young

The Mojave National Preserve — a stretch of protected desert northeast of Los Angeles — is currently reviewing its water management plan. One question officials are considering is whether to continue providing artificial water sources for desert wildlife.

As part of the Works Progress Administration, hundreds of concrete “drinkers” were installed across the desert in the 1940s. They’re giant concrete saucers that funnel rainwater into cisterns that animals drink from. But after half a century in the desert sun, most of the drinkers are cracked and needing repairs.

A group called Water for Wildlife has voluntarily repaired these drinkers for years. Now debate is underway on whether these drinkers should be removed.

In nine years, Water for Wildlife’s Cliff McDonald and hundreds of volunteers have repaired about 100 of these drinkers. They come out for one weekend a month during winter and spring. They camp overnight, and little by little, they’re making progress.

“[One] particular drinker had not been working, so we repaired it, and within 60 days there was a tortoise coming out of it where he had just gotten a drink,” McDonald said. “That same tortoise was estimated to be about 60 years old, so he could have watched the guys build it 60 or 70 years ago.”

But even if quail, tortoises, and other desert animals like having easy spots to find water, not everyone agrees that these drinkers should be maintained.

“If you’re trying to manage just one part of an [ecosystem], then you can upset the functioning of the rest of the system,” said Terry Weiner, conservation coordinator with the Desert Protective Council. “The problem [with artificial water] is that it can become what we call an ‘attractive nuisance,’ and animals that would not be drawn to that area before will perhaps go there.”

Like many other environmental groups, Weiner’s organization worries that the drinkers interfere with a desert ecosystem that evolved to survive with limited water.

That’s exactly the argument the Mojave National Preserve is weighing now as it develops a new water management plan.

“From the scientific standpoint there’s really not a lot of evidence that artificial water is all that beneficial,” said Neal Darby, a wildlife biologist with the preserve. “We know animals use it, but we can’t say that if they didn’t have it they would all die. And that’s where the problem is, it’s a very difficult hypothesis to test,” he said.

It’s difficult to test because one possible outcome of taking away the drinkers is that desert wildlife could start to die off.

Humans have been in California’s deserts for centuries, and in many cases, settlers created artificial water sources for their cattle or crops, which wildlife eventually began to rely on too. Humans have also used up some natural water sources throughout the desert. That’s why McDonald and his volunteers say maintaining artificial water is important.

But some environmentalists call McDonald’s motivations into question.

“In too many cases we find the people who are really enthusiastic about establishing guzzlers throughout the desert are people who want to make sure the population of animals is such that the can keep hunting them,” said Weiner. “We’re not opposed to appropriate hunting, but having artificial water sources to artificially pump up the population of [animals] is not a good idea.”

Like many of his volunteers, McDonald does hunt. But, he says of the hundreds of species in the desert that use the drinkers, only a handful are of any interest to hunters. And, he says, keeping all of those wildlife populations thriving should be of interest to everyone.

“If I’m the general public and I do not hunt and I want to come out here to camp, I’d want to see flickers and warblers and blue jays, and they drink this water,” McDonald said.

McDonald also said that hunting licenses help pay for a lot of other environmental projects. Darby agrees.

“There’s not a lot of funding available,” said Darby. “These sportsman’s groups really step up to the plate and help [the Mojave National Preserve] get things done.”

What Darby, McDonald, and other environmental groups can all agree on, is that California’s desert ecosystems should be protected. The question is, whether giving wildlife unnatural sources of water really helps.

It’s a major debate, but it’s not enough slow down McDonald and his volunteers.

“My dad and I hunted together, we fished together and we saw a lot of wildlife. A lot of that wildlife was drinking out of a stream or drinking out of one of these artificial drinkers and I would like the future generations to be able to see that,” McDonald said.

But in drought years like this one, if wildlife can’t get water, McDonald isn’t sure that will be possible.

Listen to this story on KPCC

ARN: City Councilmembers Call for Increased Wages for Hotel Workers

Posted on February 18, 2014August 26, 2015 by Katherine Davis-Young

City Councilmembers Mike Bonin, Nury Martinez, and Curren Price Jr. are proposing increasing the wages of hotel workers in the city to $15.37 per hour. The wage increase would apply to as many as 11,000 hotel employees who work in hotels with more than 100 rooms throughout the city. Hotel workers like Guadalupe Mora think the wage hike will be a big help. Mora, a mother of four, hopes to be able to buy a house someday. The City Councilmembers who proposed the hike agree that as LA’s tourism industry grows, hotel workers derseve to share in the wealth.

But the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Hotel Association of Los Angeles, and other business organizations are hesitant about the plan. Ruben Gonzalez of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce said the wage hike could give Los Angeles a “competitive disadvantage” compared to other nearby cities. He also said he thinks the proposal has more to do with unionizing non-union hotels than supporting workers.

Listen to this story on Annenberg Radio News