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08/15/06
This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
Santa Barbara is known for expensive real estate and million dollar views, but is there trouble in paradise?
Chief Cam Sanchez>> I'm retired LAPD and I worked gang units for many years. It didn't shock me when I got here that there were gangs here. It just breaks my heart to see it. I just think it's a wasted life.
Val Zavala>> And then, one of Los Angeles's favorite comedy groups tackles a serious subject. We talk with Culture Clash about their new show, "Water and Power".
These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.
Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val Zavala>> Listen to these statistics. Gang-related crime is up fourfold over the last four years. Gang membership is up fifty percent. Where is this happening? Would you believe Santa Barbara? That's right. The ultimate beach and resort town is experiencing an increase in gang activity and they're drawn to the heart of the tourist district. Jim Hill spent an evening with the Santa Barbara police to find out what's behind this growth in gangs.
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James Hill>> State Street fills with a festive crowd every year in early August.
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James Hill>> It's a five-day celebration of Santa Barbara's Spanish heritage known as Fiesta.
Sergeant Ralph Molina>> Tonight? Anywhere between fifty to seventy-five thousand people tonight.
James Hill>> Santa Barbara Police Sergeant Ralph Molina will spend his night scanning the thousands of people for something this city is not normally known for: street gangs.
Sergeant Ralph Molina>> "What you got?"
>> "Fighting with the west side. They grabbed him and everybody kind of scattered."
Sergeant Ralph Molina>> There was a fight here. The gang unit guys were right here on the block and grabbed them right away.
James Hill>> The west side and east side mean gang turf in Santa Barbara. Hard to believe in a city where it's difficult to buy a home for less than a million dollars. This neighborhood west of the 101 Freeway is home to Santa Barbara's working poor, mainly Latino families who provide the labor in this posh city. This gang graffiti marks it as west side gang territory.
Eddy Arumbula>> I seen on the news that the east side and the west side have been stabbing each other. I mean, what point is that? I don't get it. So, yeah, there's been a lot of problems with the gangsters lately. I have a son and a wife and I don't want trouble. I don't want any trouble with them at all.
James Hill>> You're afraid of them?
Eddy Arumbula>> Yes, I am.
James Hill>> The rival east side gang lives in this mainly Latino neighborhood in the shadow of elegant hillside homes. Police estimate that the two gangs combined have up to seven hundred members in the city of ninety-two thousand and they're growing, mainly by recruiting youngsters barely in their teens.
Chief Cam Sanchez>> I think that's the saddest part for me, as a parent, as a Latino, to see that young people choose to do this based on where they live and they are the same color, same ethnicity. They come from the same country. They eat the same foods. They speak the same languages and they allow a street or a side of town to dictate who they're going to be. I find that very tragic.
James Hill>> Police say that the gangs are becoming more violent. They found these weapons on suspected gang members in recent months, a period in which there have been two near fatal stabbings. Investigators also fear that some Santa Barbara gang members are expanding from turf wars to drug dealing.
Sergeant Ralph Molina>> Our gangs here are starkly turf gangs. It's about this is my neighborhood, my barrio. I don't like you because you're from that other side of town. So ours have historically been always turf, but like I said, the last year and a half or two years, we've seen that transition into the narcotics. So now we're starting to see the gangs getting more involved in the sales of narcotics.
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James Hill>> State Street and its nightclubs and restaurants are the heart of Fiesta, but this same street literally is the center line. It's the boundary between east side and west side gangs. It was on this street during Fiesta in 1992 that Santa Barbara had its first gang killing.
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James Hill>> The revelry during Fiesta grows wilder late at night. More and more young men from the barrio show up in the crowds to taunt each other and the police.
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James Hill>> Police say that gangs from other cities have been showing up for the celebration here in recent years, so many that up to forty percent of all the law enforcement officers on the streets during Fiesta are pulling gang patrol. Many of the officers are sent here from surrounding cities and counties as far south as Oxnard and north into the San Joaquin Valley. They try to spot gangs from their jurisdictions and move in to stop fights quickly.
>> "I was walking and I see some blows."
>> "Did any of your friends get hit?"
>> "I don't know."
>> "You don't know?
James Hill>> The injured man told police that he was from Ventura. Officers say they found this man running from the scene. He said he's from Oxnard. "Can you tell us what happened?" But he wouldn't talk about the blood on his head, chest and shirt.
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James Hill>> Officers in the gang units rushed from one location to another. Each time they spotted a known gang member, parolee or someone on probation.
>> "This is a local east sider from here. This is one of his buddies from Lompoc. He's here visiting."
>> "On probation?"
>> "Yeah. They both are."
>> "Pull right here on the corner."
James Hill>> Police pulled over cars for traffic violations and questioned those on probation or parole. They checked tattoos to identify possible gang affiliation. Police took two ball bats and what looked like marijuana from this truck, then questioned and released the five men who'd been cruising State Street.
We tried to get suspected gang members to talk with us, but they wouldn't. In the past, they've complained in Santa Barbara news articles that police are harassing them, that all they're guilty of is hanging out with their friends. But police say their heavy patrols prevent violence.
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James Hill>> Police stopped and questioned more than sixty people by the end of their shift and nearly half were suspected gang members. But no one was seriously hurt on this crowded night along State Street. The crowds finally thinned in the early morning hours and another day of Fiesta seemed to be ending on a mellow note.
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James Hill>> In Santa Barbara, I'm James Hill for Life and Times.
Val Zavala>> And now this Life and Times story update. Last month, we told you how Wal-Mart's expansion plans are running into obstacles in California. Well, now there's a higher hurdle to clear if Wal-Mart wants to build a Super Store in Inglewood.
The Inglewood City Council has passed a new ordinance. It requires big retailers to pay for an Economic Impact Study that would examine how jobs and local businesses would be affected. For a long time, Wal-Mart has wanted to build a Super Center in Inglewood, but Inglewood had no way to size up the impact it would make on the community. The controversy led to a ballot battle in 2004 where Inglewood citizens roundly rejected the proposed Wal-Mart.
Today Wal-Mart still owns the land in Inglewood, but now, if it wants to build a Super Store, it's Economic Impact Study would have to be completed and discussed at public hearings before a permit for a new store could even be considered.
Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".
Val Zavala>> He's a former governor, a seasoned and savvy politician, and yet even Roy Romer might not have been fully prepared for the challenge of running the Los Angeles Unified School District. Well, now after six years, he's retiring and we thought it would be a good time to ask him what he learned from Los Angeles schools. Hena Cuevas talked with Roy Romer about his experience.
Hena Cuevas>> Considering some of the previous jobs that you've had -- you've been governor -- how much of a challenge was it to take over the job of superintendent?
Roy Romer>> This was a different kind of a job. One, it's about twice as difficult as being governor, very much more difficult, partly because of the politics of Los Angeles. And, secondly, school districts that are large are subject to criticism no matter what they do. You need to understand that.
I just knew that coming in. I knew it was a very steep hill to climb, but you just take after it and you count it as you go and I'm pleased, but not satisfied, not at all satisfied. Every day you can think of things that you could have done better and faster.
Hena Cuevas>> What about this latest challenge? Right before you're leaving, you then end up having a conflict with the mayor of Los Angeles in his proposal to take over LAUSD.
Roy Romer>> It's a strange way to end six years because this is one of the most successful urban districts in the United States in our performance in the last six years. To have the mayor come in and criticize it did catch me by surprise.
Antonio Villaraigosa>> "I can't say it more clearly. Reforming public schools is the central challenge facing Los Angeles."
Roy Romer>> Look, I understand that he wants to run the schools. I understand that he feels a big-city mayor ought to be able to do that. But he should have come in and said, "Hey, you've made great progress, but we can do it better. Let us help you by changing the governance." He chose rather to say no, it's a failure, you haven't done anything to your status quo and that caused us to fight. It is wrong. It's not truthful.
It's propaganda and I think the people of the city know that, so that issue is still at stake. I like him personally, I respect him as a mayor, but he's just dead wrong in the way in which he's tried to describe this district as a failure. So we were forced to come back and say, "Hey, Mayor, you can't tell people the false statements. We're going to correct them" and that's what we've been doing.
Hena Cuevas>> What about the difference in the conflicting statistics where they say LAUSD is horrible, the students perform horribly, and then there are other statistics that say that actually compared to other school districts, kids aren't doing that bad?
Roy Romer>> The facts are on our side on all counts, on all counts. Anybody who is credible knows that. The fact that is not on our side is dropouts, but here we just have a dropout rate of twenty-four percent. The mayor claims it's fifty percent. He's wrong on this. We still feel that twenty-four percent is too high. We've been reducing our dropout rates.
See, what we have is this crazy argument over have you made as much progress as you need to make on dropouts? I give everybody that argument right up front. No, we want to make more progress on that. But to have a mayor do the damaging attack he's done on the district is a disservice to the children and we all know that.
This will pass, this will pass. After two or three months, we'll be on to other issues, but my job right now is to remind the city that this is a very productive and successful district. The way you really judge us is to look at the growth of our schools, red, as compared to the state of California.
We, in six years, have grown a hundred ninety-six API points. The average school in California grew a hundred twenty-five. Our rate of growth is a hundred fifty percent of theirs and yet we have more students in poverty, low income, and we have a great deal more of English language learners.
Hena Cuevas>> Which are really some of the biggest challenges of a school district like this one.
Roy Romer>> That's elementary and middle school. We outperform the state here again. In middle school, our points grew a hundred twenty-nine and theirs were ninety, so we have been really coming up. You know, it's just unfortunate you got to go through that explanation time and time again, but people are getting it and they understand that this is a political issue, that the mayor is in a political issue that he wants to win and we'll survive that.
Hena Cuevas>> What kind of advice would you have for whoever takes over your job?
Roy Romer>> Hey, you've got to come here with a lot of humility. This truly is a place that you don't want to let your ego get in the way because your work is going to be very demanding and it needs to be measured with hard facts, and don't expect to be praised when you leave. It's just not that kind of work.
I mean, school superintendents are expendable, you know. They use them up and you need to know that coming in. I don't regret that at all. I knew that coming in. I just wanted to do the work and I feel good about the work we did.
Hena Cuevas>> What prompted you to decide to take this job?
Roy Romer>> Well, I'll tell you, as you well know, I'd been governor for twelve years and I wanted a hard job. I took it at age seventy-one and I knew that I needed to have hard work and I wanted a very steep hill to climb. One, I wanted to see if I could climb it. Two, I believe very much in education.
So it was the right work for me and I'm going out, you know, with six guns blazing. If people are going to attack us, you know, that's the way it is. I feel good about the work. I learned a lot here. I learned a lot here.
Hena Cuevas>> And what is in your future plans?
Roy Romer>> I will continue to combine the experience of twelve years as governor and six years as school superintendent. Nobody that I know has ever done that one. So I have some valuable experience and I'll see if I can share it in some useful way. I have multiple tracks that I'm going to explore. I've never really had an opportunity in my life to be totally free and I will be seventy-eight at the time that I retire.
I feel I got another job or two in me and I'm out looking for one that's meaningful. It has to have two ingredients. It has to have great ideas and great action. I like ideas and action. That's what makes me satisfied in the work that I do. I leave it feeling that it was good work, but I also leave it knowing that there's a whole lot more yet to do.
Hena Cuevas>> And also that's the way you want people to remember your tenure as superintendent.
Roy Romer>> (Laughter) What I want them to remember is that Romer left with sweat on his brow because there was work yet to do that day. You know, you don't want to leave this with a bunch of bands playing salutary songs. You want to leave with a handshake with a fellow worker saying, "That was good work we did."
Hena Cuevas>> Superintendent Roy Romer, thank you very much and we wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors.
Roy Romer>> Thank you very much.
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Life and Times
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Los Angeles, California 90027
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Val Zavala>> They gained a reputation as a comedy troupe, but now they're taking a very different turn. Culture Clash is getting serious about Mexican-American issues in history. They tackled the story of Chavez Ravine on stage several years ago and now, as Vicki Curry tells us, they're taking on the powers that be.
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Vicki Curry>> You may recognize the actors, but the scenes might seem less familiar.
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Vicki Curry>> And unusually dramatic for Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza, the performance ensemble known as Culture Clash.
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Vicki Curry>> Culture Clash built its reputation on comedy, but this play called "Water and Power" takes a turn towards tragedy.
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Vicki Curry>> This might surprise long-time fans of Culture Clash. When the group started in 1984, they set out to explore American-Latino life through edgy satire.
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Vicki Curry>> By the early 1990s, Culture Clash had a national audience. They were the first to have a Latino sketch comedy show on television.
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Vicki Curry>> But they're all eager to put those days behind them.
Richard Montoya>> It really has spread out in a campaign to drive a stake through the heart of and kill off the notion of us as a comedy troupe. It just hasn't served us well. We're much more than that.
Vicki Curry>> The evolution of Culture Clash won't surprise those who know that Montoya, Salinas and Siguenza all came out of El Teatro Campesino in San Francisco. But like most American kids, they were also raised on a steady diet of popular culture.
Ric Salinas>> The three of us grew up, of course, watching endless hours of television, sitcoms and growing up with listening to Richard Pryor and Cheech and Chong and Lenny Bruce. So all those influences, Monty Python, you know, so Culture Clash is definitely a product of all that.
Vicki Curry>> And a product of the Chicano political movement and its ongoing focus on equality, education and ethnic identity.
Richard Montoya>> But we took what we thought was the most urgent part of that and infused it with what we had grown up with, which was really television.
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Vicki Curry>> What started as a cabaret style act in the 1980s quickly evolved into full-length stage plays.
Herbert Siguenza>> We talk about society. We talk about our bi-culturalness, you know. We talk about growing up Latino in the United States. And we found out that we were representing millions of people in the United States that grew up just like us.
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Vicki Curry>> It's lines like that that garnered plenty of criticism. Some Latino groups assailed Culture Clash for reinforcing negative stereotypes.
Ric Salinas>> I don't think we'll ever receive the positive Hispanic image awards, you know, because we portray people that are real. They really exist out there. Are we going to deny those people, those characters, on the stage because they do live a life that's alternative, that might be dangerous? We show it. They exist.
Herbert Siguenza>> We're like lone wolves. We really are. I think that's really because we basically create and say and act the way we want. We don't have someone's agenda or some group's agenda. We're just, you know, reporting back, you know, what we see.
Vicki Curry>> In the early 1990s, Culture Clash started seeing even more of America. They began creating site-specific plays based on the experiences of local residents.
Ric Salinas>> We've gone into communities, San Diego, Miami, Washington, D.C., and we interview people and then we tell their stories and we portray those people.
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Vicki Curry>> As the subjects of their work expanded, so did the depth of their writing and acting.
Herbert Siguenza>> And we're interpreting real people with real stories. You know, we couldn't clown them. We had to dignify these people, so I think that really changed our acting patterns to fit, to really create a realistic three-dimensional character.
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Ric Salinas>> We have a good feel of the pulse of communities across the country and that's why I think Culture Clash, you know, we probably are the leading Latino touring company in the country. We've just been able to go into all the repertory theaters, top-notch, and why they bring Culture Clash to those theaters is because we bring in the new audience.
Vicki Curry>> In recent years, Culture Clash has come back home creating a series of plays about California. The first tells the story of Chavez Ravine, a Los Angeles neighborhood sacrificed to build Dodger Stadium.
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Ric Salinas>> When we wrote "Chavez Ravine", it just got so into this whole history of Los Angeles and how there's a lot of history.
Vicki Curry>> Their next play in the California series is called "Zorro in Hell". It goes further back in history by looking at the legend of Zorro.
Ric Salinas>> We took the Zorro character who we had no interest in doing because it's a Spanish concoction by an Irish-American writer, but we found that we could use it telling history, the 1800s, the Californians, the Spanish, the Mexicans.
Herbert Siguenza>> That's a throwback to our old style, very funny, very satirical, very historical.
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Vicki Curry>> Their latest California project, "Water and Power", takes a decidedly darker tone. It's a fictional tale about twin brothers, one a California State Senator and the other an LAPD cop. Through their stories, it explores Latinos' relationships to power.
Richard Montoya>> We haven't quite mastered what the Anglos and Jews probably already know about power, to have it and not use it. And if you do have it, spread it. We're still kind of, you know, "I've got it and you can't have it."
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Richard Montoya>> And when I look at the typical Hollywood Hispanic fare, at the center of it is an authenticity problem. I don't see people that I recognize and this is one thing that we are trying to remedy with "Water and Power". It's in your face.
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Vicki Curry>> But how are audiences reacting to this in your face approach, especially non-Latino audiences?
Richard Montoya>> I see Anglos on their feet every night in this audience and I'm just flabbergasted.
Herbert Siguenza>> We have a specifically very Chicano, very Latino, play, so that just tells you that even if you get specific about your culture, it's still there universal.
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Val Zavala>> Culture Clash's latest production, "Water and Power", is at the Mark Taper Forum through September 17. For details, you can go to the website at centertheatergroup.org.
And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Sponsored in part by:
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