Post-election Vigil Brings People Together in Boyle Heights

Faith communities of Los Angeles come together in resistance after the Trump election

Shmu and Squared at the I Am America Vigil at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, on this rainy day we packed into the parsh church and sat on the floor with the other people coming in to be part of this time of inspiration and renewal.

On Sunday morning the people of the city of Los Angeles came together for an interfaith vigil at Dolores Mission Catholic Church in our working-class neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Hundreds of people came out and lined the pews, the walkways, floors and spilled out the door of the church despite the cold rain pouring outside.

People of all backgrounds came out this day to unite and join our voices as one, to find strength in faith and in each other, to overcome the fear that has gripped us in the post-election season. To unite as one as we see the rise of Trump and racial nationalism threatening the security of us all. We came together – Latino, African-American, Japanese, Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish and LGBTQ – to stand united. Standing with all our brothers and sisters who feel threatened.

This event was organized by LA Voice – a local interfaith and community based organization. Dedicated to giving voice to all people of faith and advancing the pursuit of dignity for those in greatest need in our community. Co-sponsoring and in attendance at this event were the people of:

* ACLU Southern California * All Saints Church * American Muslim Professionals (AMP-LA) * Asian Americans Advancing Justice LA * Bend The Arc * Beth Shir Shalom * CAIR-LA * CLUE * Guibord Center * Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace * Islamic Center of Southern California * IKAR Synagogue * ILM Foundation * Islamic Shura Council of Southern California

* Jewish Voices for Peace * Japanese American National Museum * La Asociación Latina Musulmana de América * Little Tokyo Service Center * Muslim Public Affairs Council * Muslims for Progressive Values * New City Church of Los Angeles * Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress * Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center * Pico Union Project * Temple Isaiah * Sahaba Initiative * South Coast Interfaith Council * St. Camillus Catholic Center * Steven S Wise Temple * Temple Israel of Hollywood

As we joined in prayer and song, gave testimony and spoke of resistance, we also committed to doing more than just cry out. We committed to organizing together as one people.

As I came in out of the rain dripping eves and slipped in through the crowd I heard the words of Deacon Jason Welles of the Dolores Mission Parish: “We are here today to lament, and to share our lamentations together. We are here together to form solidarity. We are in solidarity to encourage each other and to ignite a new work. Because our work did not end of November 8th, our work begins now in solidarity.”

This event was also joining in solidarity with other communities across the nation who were also holding #IAmAmerica rallies in their hometown.

Haru Kuromiy spoke of her memories as a 12 year old girl of being interred with he family at Manzanar during the detention of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. She spoke in “opposition to the proposal to register American Muslims. I do not want to see any community suffer like we did.”
During this meeting people of all faiths and backgrounds vowed to in the face of Muslim registry, we will ourselves register as Muslims.

As I looked across the crowd I was touched by the sight of people I know from across the city, who instinctively came out to join in solidarity. Though I was even more deeply moved to see walls of people who I have never seen in my neighborhood before, all coming out to give and find strength in each other.

Seated on the floor in front of me was Eric A. Gordon, author and director emeritus of the Arbeter Ring (Workmen’s Circle) in Southern California. He wrote an excellent article about the event, in which he rightfully mentions the contributions of each faith community to this event, titled: “Faith communities find a new voice in resistance after election.”

In his article Gordon, an expert on leftist organzing, described this event as filled with “courageous, militant speeches and songs.” I wouldn’t say “militant,” but maybe “radical.” And even then the only thing radical about this event was that it drew people together from across all ethnic and religious lines to stand together against injustice; much like the early political organizing of Boyle Heights from the 1930s through the 1950s. Congregates committing to unite as one people and as part of a single goal, to protect the rights of each person in America. And vowing to neither stand alone nor leave each other alone in the struggle. Something that has been so lost for almost two generations, that it may again seems radical at this point in history.

However, Gordon did a great job on detailing this event journalistically.

So I just want to take a few moments to point out what really touched me and what I felt as member of this very community of Boyle Heights.

Crouched on the floor right next to us was Craig Taubman, Jewish sing-songwriter and founder of the Pico Union Project, who I have worked with for the past year in Pico Union. I was so surprised and glad to see his presence in my own backyard.

When LA Voice had begun to plan the event they had first considered using the fascilities of the Pico Union Project (the oldest standing synagogue in Los Angeles) and the Breed Street Shul (the historic “Queen of the Shuls in Boyle Heights), both located in historically significant, multi-ethnic, immigrant communities. Before choosing Dolores Mission, which would normally accommodate a larger crowd, had it not been for the rain.

As we embraced Craig asked, “Hey, I’m in your hood right?”

I responded, “Yeah. Actually my family was one of the first Mexican land owning families here in the Flats. My great-great-grandparents had their market at the end of this block, at First and Gless, when this neighborhood was still known as Russian Flats. I’ll tell you the truth though, I’ve never in my lifetime seen this diverse of a crowd coming together here in this neighborhood before. This is inspiring!”

Shortly after Craig would be called out of the crowd. He would get the congregation engaged with asking: “How do you say love in Spanish? Amor. How do you say love in Hebrew? Ahavah. How do you say love in Russian? Just checking!” Long had the Russian community left the area and our Mexican families taken root, but he just had to check to make sure no one was left out.

And in the way that only Craig can do, he got the crowd joining in song and motion to the words: “We can build this world with love.” Leaving the crowd glowing in inspiration.

Rabbi Ron Stern from Stephen S. Wise Temple addressed the crowd next. Gordon notes that Stern took to the podium: “remarking about ‘a lot of Hebrew being spoken in Boyle Heights,’ a reference to the fact that this area was at one time the largest Jewish community west of Chicago, and the epicenter of much social activism. He taught the audience the importance of the line from Deuteronomy, ‘Tsedek tsedek tirdof – Justice, justice shall you pursue.’ ‘We’ve always said that,’ as he recalled not just Jewish history but the history of all oppressed people. ‘We’ve picked ourselves up, buried our dead if we had to, and we’ve said Tsedek tsedek tirdof. We will not stop. History tells us we cannot give up. We want to make sure that the world we dream of is the world we will live in.’”

I’ll tell you the truth. Rabbi Stern’s astonishment at hearing Hebrew words being spoken in Boyle Heights that day was none less than my own. And it was really moving to me. Though my amazement was more related to seeing people from the Jewish community coming out to be more that just tourists of their grandparents history, but to actually be part of a living movement and to join in direct social action in the present; and that was something I had never experienced like this before in this neighborhood.

This neighborhood of Boyle Heights is one of Los Angeles’ most historic immigrant communities. And as a large immigrant community of mostly Mexican-Americans today, this community is feeling even more vulnerable and also fearful in the wake of this election.

Though this event had deep impact in that it brought to the forefront the struggles of so many of our other neighbors and friends we need to be mindful to support in the face of Trump’s demagoguery.

Marta Galadery, from La Asociación Latina Musulmana de América.

People like Marta Galadery, from La Asociación Latina Musulmana de América. As a convert to Islam, who helped found the association decades ago to find fellowship among other Latina Muslim women. I’m glad that she was there to speak up for Latina Muslim community, which is most vulnerable in that many people in our community don’t even know they even exist. It was important to hear from her. She spoke of finding herself in fear of discrimination on two fronts, as Latina and as a Muslim. Addressing the crowd she asked and asserted, “How are we all together going to help each other?… G-d has the last word, but we have to act.”

And she’s right we as people of faith and social action we need to act. And we need to consider how we are going to do it, and do it together.

And that was really the important thing about this event, it was all about doing it together as one people.

Rahuldeepgill of the local Sikh community addressed the crowd. Talking about how in his tradition, they had faced the rise of tyrants and persecution. And in the early days their leaders were even eventually put to death for standing up for the rights of others.

Rahuldeepgill passionately stated, “But that is the lesson of my tradition. We take it for one another. The days of standing up for ourselves are long gone. The days of standing up for each other are our future. We need to continue to act.” He words met with cheering and thunderous applause.

He made an even deeper point. That many “confused people” tell him that in the wake of hate crimes that turban wearing Sikhs should go out of their way to let people know that they are not Muslim. So as not be the victims of mis-direct violence, but that it isn’t right. We are in it together.

Preacher André Scott also spoke, saying “Donald Trump, if you make us rally together. G-d bless Donald Trump!” Scott was a former gang banger and also faced the corrections systems, and now ministers to those who are also coming out of those hardships.

Though what gave me the chills was to hear Brother Scott say these words I’ve been waiting for any community leader to have the courage to say: “It’s not about black power, or any of that anymore. It’s about us power!”

That needed to be said. Especially here and now.

One of the realities is that this most vulnerable neighborhood of Boyle Heights has long felt isolation because of prejudice and injustice, but also because it has long been obsessed with simular “brown power.” A neighborhood which has all but forgotten their rich history of inter-cultural social and political activism, and has long been gripped in sole pursuit of our own ethnic and nationalistic self-interests ever since the Chicano rights movement.

The fact is that we can’t counter the rise of the white nationalism as seen in this election with any other form of racial nationalism. We cant counter white power with brown power. In fact it is plainly obvious that all racial nationalism only feeds into the likes of racial separatism and exclusivity. That all needs to end.

So I now repeat what needs to be stated, what is long overdue to be said: It’s not about brown power. Those days are over. It’s about us power now!

And that was the power of that event, to me. That on that day we came together to commit to stand as one. We have risen above self-interest and divisiveness. Above religious, racial and nationalist exclusivity. Not about brown power or black power anymore, but about us power. We stand united.

From the front of the church, a view of the crowd that packed in to the parish church.

Facing the back, from my vantage point on the floor of the church. Individualsd from the audience sharing with the crowd.

One thing that the locals and even the organizers of the event didn’t know was that they vigil they were having that day mirrored another monumental event in Boyle Heights history, which had taken place almost 78 years ago to the day on November 22, 1938. When Los Angeles groups organized a parade protesting the Nazi’s rise to power and their wave of violence against Jews in the events of Kristallnacht. And to raise their voices on behalf of  Jewish refugees, who were being denied entrance by the US and the world powers.

On that night came together people Jewish and non-Jewish, brown and white, black and Asian, adult and children; to show support and stand in solidarity with the Jews who were facing Nazism not just in Europe, but also in Los Angeles.

I had many times heard first hand stories from my friends who were there at this most notorious protest parade. At that key moment in the advancement of social activism and civil rights organizing, which would directly inspire inter-community and interfaith cooperation for decades to come. I often wished I had myself been so lucky to see such a diverse movement of people come together and rise up as one. [“The Anti-Nazi Parade of November 1938. – Local civil rights activism born out of the Jewish refugee crisis.”]

I think in this event I got a prevision of that experience. It’s now up to us to continue to come together to make our actions into a movement, in our days and in our time.

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Check out these videos of the event, posted on Facebook by the Dolores Mission. They capture about the first two hours of the event.

Some of my favorite footage is from when Pastor Delonte Gholston of New City Church of Los Angeles address the crowd and lead us in songs of resistance. I was deeply moved by his song based on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, “Night cannot turn back the night, only light.” That is also the right message for these darkening times. I’ve had this inspirational melody stuck in my head ever since.

Enjoy!

Video #2:

Related articles:

• “Latino-Jewish Relations: Rooted in a Shared Immigrant, Working Class Experience“
• “The Anti-Nazi Parade, Boyle Heights (1938)” – Local civil rights activism born out of the Jewish refugee crisis

Resolving Conflict and Preventing Racial Violence, in the Classic Eastside

How the Jewish and Latino Communities Resolved Conflict in Post-War Boyle Heights (1940s-1950s)

How can we revolve conflict and prevent violence in our changing eastside communities? What can we learn from history regarding this? What should the community keep in mind as we see the demographics changing here once again? What should we consider as we see an uneasy integration taking place here?

Voter registration, during the historic 1948 voter drive in which 15,000 new voters from the barrios were registered by the efforts of the Community Service Organization (CSO). This is what really provided the democratic muscle to help Edward Roybal, our first Mexican-American local representative, get elected to the LA City Council. The CSO received its essential funding and mentoring in organizing from Saul Alinsky, and his Industrial Areas Foundation, under the guidance of his local representative Fred Ross Sr. (see photo,far left). As well as financial support directly from the local Jewish Community Relations Committee (CRC), today known as the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

The reality is that this type of turbulent change, it has happened all before. Community change being met with racial conflicts and classist fears, this has all come around before.

However, it’s important to remember that the people of this community have a profound history of forging inter-community partnerships to conquer prejudice and racial tension.

This was especially true in the late-1940s through the mid-1950s, in the partnerships between the shrinking Jewish community of the area and the growing Mexican American community of Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles.

Recently when discussing notable history of the area I had talked with people a lot about the cooperation of Jews and the minority community in the fight against the Nazi fascism during the 1930s and through the 1940s. Of the Jewish and non-sectarian organizations which they founded to fight fascism, and how many went on to be essential backers of minority empowered organizations in the fight against Jim Crow segregation. [see “The Anti-Nazi Parade, Boyle Heights 1938: How Our Multi-Ethnic Community Responded to the Jewish Refugee Crisis.”]

During the years leading up to and then through World War II many Jewish people and minorities had a lot in common still, because the nature of prejudice and the persistence of segregation in that age. In those days their partnerships were essential and seemed quite natural.

Though I believe that history clearly shows us that the partnerships between Jews and Latinos becomes most interesting in the post-war years. Though sadly, most people write off the history of the Jewish eastside after the war. During a time when such partnerships could be considered counterintuitive to many.

The reality is that telling the story of inter-community relations becomes much more complicated after the war, so many just avoid it at all cost. As Jews and Latinos begin to have less in common with each other, which does result in increased friction. Frictions which were not uncommon before the war, and the specter of which fearfully hung over the Jewish community with even greater concern following the war.

In the decade following the wartime riots, the general population was genuinely afraid of a resurgence of this violence in the form of race riots. The larger population was fearful of Mexican American residents taking vengeance on them after the events of the so-called Zoot Suit Riots, wartime riots in which white sailors and citizens committed vigilante violence against Chicanos; so for several years already the public was expecting an eminent explosion of Mexican American rage in the form of riots.

So what did the Jewish leaders of the area do post-war to resolve racial conflict and prevent violence in the changing community? How did they overcome the issues of having to deal with the communal bitterness felt by the growing racial minority groups regarding housing and job market inequity? How did Jews react with even being perceived as exploiters and absentee landlords controlling these older neighborhoods?

The fact is scapegoating of Jews in the eastside has existed as far back as any of us remember. And it is something that the Jewish community out of necessity realized they had to address more assertively when they found themselves in the role of being the smaller minority here after the war.

We need to more honestly tell the story of the communal challenges of that era. Instead of avoiding the hard truths which culminate at this point in history. We need to recognize the reality that even in the “good old days” of the historic interracial community of Boyle Heights of yesteryear which many are prone to idealize today, even then the established community of Jews of the area had to put a great deal of work and invest a lot of money into dispelling racism, classism, antisemitism and preventing misdirected violence.

The reality is that inter-cultural and inter-faith respect of classic Boyle Heights was not just a given. Living next to people of other races and cultures, it did not necessarily integrate people to one another, nor effortlessly create mixing and understanding.

Again, it took real effort and true intention to accomplish this sense of community cohesion with a diverse population of residents here. Which begs me to ask: So why is it that today people expect it to just happen all by itself? Why is the current establishment of our community federations really doing nothing to support direct inter-community cooperation and inter-racial socialization? How is that today they do not see fit to really contribute anything to mitigate a long history of tensions which are revisiting us here?

I dare say that my fellow community, cultural, religious and interfaith leaders of today really need to learn some pages from our local history. And reflect on how to help our community of today resolve the currently rising tensions, in tried and true ways.

I ask us to consider these selected pages of history here:

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“RESOLVING CONFLICT, PREVENTING VIOLENCE”

from Bridges of Reform: Interracial Civil Rights Activism in Twentieth-Century

By Shana Bernstein

The Zoot Suit Riots’ legacy factored prominently into postwar calculations about the value of cooperating across community divides, especially as the mounting housing crunch and employment discrimination escalated racial tensions in minority areas. As tensions threatened Angelenos’ safety, they stirred Jews’ and Mexicans’ — along with the rest of Los Angeles’ fears that violence would once again erupt in their city. The American Council on Race Relations’ 1945 study titled The Problem of Violence: Observations on Race Conflict in Los Angeles: explained: “There was general apprehension on the part of many who had seen the evidences of friction increasing and apparently cumulating, who had lived through the ‘zoot-suit’ riots.” These people, the study reported, “feared that post-war Los Angeles with its restricted employment opportunities for Negroes and Mexicans, its wretchedly inadequate housing facilities and its greatly increased population would become a battle ground on which Americans battled each other.” The threat of violence forced Angelenos to realize that wartime attempts to improve race relations in the city had fallen short.

Sometimes the tensions and competition for resources did result in violence, both between whites and minorities and among minority groups. Much of the violence was perpetrated against minorities, especially African and Mexican Americans, by whites….

[pg. 151-152; continuing selection with, pg. 154-156.]

These were the terrible living conditions of the Mexican families, living in the settlements of Fickett Hollow, Boyle Heights. (1950)

East Los Angeles Jewish and Mexican community, among whom relations were particularly strained as the two groups’ financial, social, and geographic distance increased, viewed potential violence as an especially salient issue. As Jews in Los Angeles, as elsewhere, confronted housing restrictions and employment discrimination, they, unlike Mexican Americans, also made economic strides, became increasingly integrated, and gradually moved toward the more affluent west side. The Mexican origin population, on the other hand, was “Southern California’s largest and, in many ways, most disadvantaged minority,” according to a 1949 report by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. The group’s poverty, lack of networks to other communities, low voter turnout, and high percentage of non-citizens, according, to reports like these, impeded attempts at securing financial backing to pressure politicians to improve their conditions. A 1946 investigation of racial minorities’ conditions by the ACRR concluded that the Mexican-American community was in even more dire straits other than poor Los Angeles minorities.

Increasingly different class status distanced Jewish and Mexican Americans from one another. In the schools, the ACRR’s report The Problem of Violence observed, “The great barrier to the acceptance of Mexican children by Jewish children is the middle-class bias of the Jewish parents expressed in excessive concern over dirt and disease.” Divergent police actions towards the two groups also, it explained, served to “contribute to the increase of community tensions between middle-class Jews and lower-class Mexicans. The “class bias” was intertwined with a racial bias, too, as Jewish Americans were becoming increasingly integrated into American society and accepted as white, while Mexicans increasingly faced categorization as brown “others.”

Mexican-Americans saw their Jewish neighbors moving to nicer neighborhoods while their own conditions stagnated or deteriorated, breeding “frustration and bitterness.” Alinsky’s Industrial Area’s Foundation reported, “These, in tern, found expression in intergroup hostility and scape-goating with particular reference on the Eastside to the adjacent Jewish community.” Jews who moved west frequently kept east side businesses and retail properties, which sometimes provoked charges of exploitation from their former neighbors. Associating Jews with exploitation stemmed in some cases from anti-Semitic assumptions, since many non-Jews also became absentee landlords.

This growing divide between two communities that seemingly had little in common after the war counter intuitively helps explain their interest in collaboration. Because Mexican Americans’ daily struggle for survival left little money to fund organizations such as the CSO, they sought support from other Los Angeles ethnic communities, including Jews. The Jewish community’s motives for assisting a group increasingly distant from its own population seem less apparent. CRC [the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish community; the predecessor to the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles] leaders, discussing the Mexican, American community, justified support for the CSO by explaining that it “deflects the hostility which exists in that community against the Jews, to constructive social issues of benefit to the Mexican-American and the Jew alike.” The CSO could “by its very existence, prevent race riots such as have happened before in this city.” CRC leaders claimed it already had “no doubt prevented serious repercussions which might have otherwise happened on the East Side.” CRC executive director Herzberg countered a member’s protest that the CRC should stop funding the CSO, since it was not “closely related enough to the activities of the Jewish community,” by explaining that its “prophylactic value” was “a relatively cheap investment” for the Jewish community. Herzberg’s comment that the CSO would help prevent “gang fights and similar anti-social acts” also reveals underlying assumptions about Mexican Americans’ violent potential. Fears of violence also shaped Jewish community interest in the African-American community. The CRC reported Jewish concern about the implications of demographic transformations in the Watts neighborhood, specifically the increasing African-American and Mexican-American populations. Mounting unemployment created a situation of “increasing problems of social relations” that “could be explosive as far as the Jewish community is concerned.” Many of the retail stores on the main street of Watts were owned and run by Jews, it reported, explaining that the year before, “a vigorous anti-Semitic campaign” arose as unemployed residents demonstrated their frustration about limited job opportunities. The report also identified mounting tensions between the African-American and Mexican-American communities in the neighborhood. In response to such tensions, the CRC expressed to the director of planning of the City Planning Commission that it was “deeply concerned about some of the conditions of living in the Watts area of our city.”

A colony on Fickett St. showing a number of bungalows built in a canyon in Boyle Heights. This was one of the poorest barrios, which impoverished Mexicans were relegated to; out of sight and concern to even people of good conscience.

Amidst these complex attitudes, which reflect some degree of prejudice and misunderstanding of each other, both Mexican-American and Jewish-American communities viewed bridge-building projects as critical for their mutual survival. The CSO particularly hoped to secure Jews’ participation since, as Ross explained, “this is the other large group on the East Side and Jewish-Mexican American relations have left a good deal to be desired for some time.” Ross attempted to obtain Jewish community support by emphasizing to the CRC how the CSO’S work improved “deplorable” East Los Angeles neighborhood conditions that “had been reflected in a history of hostility between Spanish speaking colonies and the Jewish Community surrounding the Jewish Community surrounding Temple Street.” The CSO reported in 1949 that two years of efforts had redirected the “scape-goating” of nearby “disadvantaged groups” (specifically the “adjacent” Jews) and had “pav[ed the way] for cooperation with other groups particularly with those in the Jewish Community.”

In short, memories of World War II-era violence and fears of its recurrence helped inspire postwar collaboration. In cases like the CSO, such fears even resulted in important new postwar civil rights initiatives which continued the earlier thrust of reform and demonstrate the continuity between 1935 and World War II era collaboration and its later Cold War incarnation.

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In a previous post I actually went into great detail about the CSO, when talking about the connection between the early garment worker’s movement of the 1930s-1940s, and the rise of the CSO in 1940s-1950s, and the continuity of these social justice aims which eventually gave rise to the United Farm Workers in the 1950s-1960s.

However, I think it is import to revisit some of this important chapter in history:

The Importance of the Community Service Organization (CSO)

The historic influence of the Community Service Organization (CSO) in Latino civil rights and politics cannot be overstated.

Founded in 1947 in the Los Angeles eastside, CSO was envisioned by Fred Ross Sr., while inspired and funded greatly by Saul Alinsky. As well as later receiving essential financial backing from allied Jewish organizations – most notably the Community Relations Committee (CRC) – a Jewish organization founded originally in the early 1930s as an anti-fascist organization; dedicated to fighting antisemitism, pro-Nazi outreach and organized racism. [it would later become know as the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles; also see, “Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. Community Relations Committee (1933-), Special Collections & Archives”]

The Community Service Organization (CSO) was uniquely created to be a “Mexican NAACP.” Ross and Alinsky took notice that Mexicans were by far the largest and yet most ill-treated minority. Mexicans still being the only minority group to not be widely organized. And also standing alone in having no political power or decision-making, with less than 10% of Latino citizens being registered to vote. [see “The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights.”]

In the words of Scott Washburn of CSO:

“In 1947, in direct response to rampant police abuse, a lack of educational opportunities, widespread discrimination in government services, a strong culture of bigotry that allowed even people of good conscience to turn a blind eye to the suffering of their neighbors, and ultimately, to the Zoot Suit Riots and Bloody Christmas, the Community Service Organization was founded by Antonio Rios, Edward Roybal, and Fred Ross, Sr. Quickly, the CSO became a training ground for the first generation of Latino leaders, including Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla. Recognizing the need for a unified Latino voice and for some semblance of political representation, the CSO initially concentrated on organizing voter registration drives in Latino communities all across California. In 1949, the CSO’s efforts culminated in the election of Edward Roybal, the first Latino to serve on the Los Angeles City Council.”

Royball would ride a wave of crucial Yiddish speaking political support in Boyle Heights, backing his ascent to City Hall and further still. The future Congressman Edward Royball would later take his social causes to the halls of the US Congress with him as well.

Fred Ross would continue to expand CSO at the behest of Alinsky, helping establish their presence first in Oxnard and later in San Jose. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, trained by CSO in Alinsky style protest, would then take the cause directly into the local fields; thus founding the United Farm Workers, which is widely considered the most influential and visible Latino organization to date. The UFW is the primary historical and still active model for Latino activism to this day.

[Learn more about the discipleship of Cesar Chavez under the tutelage of Saul Alinsky, and the rise UFW as an outgrowth of CSO. See “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa.”]

Again, historian Shana Bernstein notes:

“While the CSO is represented as a Mexican-American activist group in much Chicano scholarship, it was an interracial endeavor from its very beginning and its membership was diverse well into the 1950s. The grassroots CSO drew its main support from a combination of older Mexican-American activist groups who had participated in the 1930s-era movement and newer ones who emerged out of the war as veterans. It also received significant support from other Angelenos, most importantly Jewish Americans. Its early organizers encouraged multiracial membership. “Although they great majority of CSO members are Mexican-Americans, we have gradually had members of other groups come in,” Ross Reported of its 1948 meetings. “At the last meeting, for instance, we had 15 reps from the adjacent Jewish community, 4 Negros and around 18 so called ‘Protestant Anglos’” In 1949 Ross reported to the CRC that “Orientals, Negroes, Jews and Christians” compose the approximately 12 percent of membership that was not Spanish-speaking. In the early to mid-1950s, the organization’s chairman Tony Rios reported that 15 percent of its more than 3,500 members (approximately 3,000 from three L.A. County branches and 500 from San Jose) were “from the Negro, Jewish, and the so-called Anglo-American communities.”

Community Service Organization (CSO) meeting in 1955. Photo: http://www.fredrosssr.com.

The contributions in civil rights organizing which began here in Boyle Heights with inter-racial cooperation in establishing the CSO, it would bear fruit even beyond this community. Inspiring the pursuit of even larger gains of empowerment of working-class Mexican-Americans. Though it was a multi-ethnic endeavor. And their achievements of this era, they were attributed to their inter-community cooperation.

 Interracial Programming of the Eastside Jewish Community Centers

While Bernstein and I tend to often focus on the labor and political organizing history of this area, it is very important to note the more well known cultural and social activities which contributed to better race relations and for strengthening community cohesion.

The eastside Jewish Community Centers most notably provided programming for all of the community; it was open to Jewish and non-Jewish people alike. Indeed as much as 15% of the members of the Soto-Michigan Jewish Community Center were not Jewish, as well as about 3% membership of the more Orthodox Religious Zionist-based Menorah Center in City Terrace. While these centers offered programming for the members of the local Jewish community, they also sought to meet the needs of all their neighbors as well.

“Students arrive for after-school activities at the Eastside Jewish Community Center on Soto Street, c. 1950. Formerly the Soto-Michigan Jewish Community Center, the Eastside Jewish Community Center sponsored integrated sporting leagues as well as programs designed to introduce cross-cultural understanding. In the 1950s, center director Joseph Esquith was removed because his policy of keeping the facilities available to anyone, regardless of politics, was considered subversive. (Los Angeles Daily News Photographic Archive, Department for Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA)”

Though these numbers might seem modest, this did make a major impact in forging the community’s sense of interracial fellowship; offering after-school programs, sports and swimming. In an atmosphere free from the racial segregation which was common in most other neighborhoods and at many public facilities.

After the war, and after the steep decline of the Jewish population of the area in the decade to follow, these Jewish community centers began to refocus their efforts to further bring the causes of the current non-Jewish residents into their walls. And also giving space to socially progressive causes of the area’s working-class immigrants.

As we will further explore, this progressive stance eventually came with major consequence and persecution for the remaining Jewish community leaders here on the eastside. During the McCarthy era Red Scare which was feverishly consumed with the weeding out of communists. In a political atmosphere where promoting socialism, internationalism and labor progressive organizing made many people targets for being labeled communists enemies of the state.

Inevitably,  it was their open door policy to people of all backgrounds and political persuasions which would in the end doom these Jewish community centers later on in the 1950s.

To be continued…..

Related articles:

• “Whats Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews” by Professor George Sanchez
• “The Anti-Nazi Parade, Boyle Heights (1938)” – Local civil rights activism born out of the Jewish refugee crisis
• “Latino-Jewish Relations: Rooted in a Shared Immigrant, Working Class Experience“