Iglesia de Dios de la Profecia, where a police officer was caught beating a suspect on April 27th. Photo by J.N. Arias . By Jeremy Arias I t was a hot afternoon. All week the humidity had driven me out of the house and into the shade offered by the fig tree out front. It was much cooler outside, and aside from the usual squirrel foraging for food from a perch above my shoulder or the occasional blare of a car alarm, there weren’t many distractions. I was reading from one of my textbooks when I heard a man screaming. Although it was the only voice being raised so loudly, I figured my neighbors had gotten into an argument. I tried to focus on my reading again but was compelled to look toward the east where the yelling appeared to come from. “ Get inside! Get inside!” shouted another angry voice, as if yelling at a dog. I grabbed my camera and rushed out to the sidewalk. I saw a man facing the gate in front of the duplex next door to a neighborhood church....

By Abel M. Salas, Editor With our twelfth annual year-end, holiday season issue in production, Brooklyn & Boyle extends heartfelt and infinite gratitude to the greater family of readers, contributing writers, advertisers, artists, educators, advocates, activists, organizers, community builders and dreamers that have made this significant—but no less hard-won and hard-earned—milestone possible. Conceived, discussed and developed in the fall of 2007 in and around East L.A., El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, City Terrace and Boyle Heights, our plucky, still standing and still independent East Side arts, culture and community issues print publication and online media platform proudly welcomes a new decade with at once vividly intense and subtly provocative cover art by East L.A.-based visual artist Maritza Torres . We acknowledge, of course, the respected curators and arts community colleagues who hipped us to her work early on, foremo...

Gushan, a self-taught painter and sculptor who is, ironically, a highly sought after ecclesiastical artist, in City Terrace. By Abel Salas   Gushan is something of an enigma. To begin with, his name is not really “Gushsan.”  The word is a hybrid compound of sorts.  Think Gustavo. Think “h” something and think Sánchez. But since 1997, when the interdisciplinary artist arrived in Los Angeles and located himself in the middle of one of the most notorious barrios on the Greater East Side, he has worked very hard to grow as an artist and become a more conscious human being in the process. And, as a consequence, he just might be the most famous and important L.A. artist you’ve never heard of. That is, unless you watch Spanish-language TV, listen to Spanish-language radio or read Spanish-language newspapers or magazines, because he’s been on or in almost all of them. Born in Guadalajara but raised in Tijuana, he began teaching himself to be an artist in many diffe...

A 1993 hunger strike at UCLA that led to creation of the César E. Chávez Center for Chicana and Chicano Studies was modeled on a 1987 student action, says Dr. Álvaro Huerta. Photo © 1993 by Abraham Torres/RumbleSkout3.com Editorial by Dr. Álvaro Huerta To borrow—more like crib—from the great James Baldwin’s writings and speeches, I declare to America’s racists that I am not your “wetback.” I am a man. I am a Chicano. I am a proud son of Mexican immigrants—the salt of the earth. I say these words from a place of privilege, having earned advanced degrees from world-class universities. These include a Ph.D. (city & regional planning) from UC Berkeley, as well as an M.A. (urban planning) and a B.A. (history)—both from UCLA. I also say these words because my personal and family backgrounds were indeed plagued by abject poverty, violence and a sense of hopelessness. I spent the earliest years of my life in a Mexican slum (Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, Baja California) and my form...

Josefina López, seated at center, and the cast/crew of Chicanas, Cholas y Chisme at Casa 0101.        by Stephanie Serrano I first heard about Casa 0101 in one of my Chicana Studies classes. My bad ass chingona professor Dr. Terri Gómez gave us—mostly young fiery women of color—glimpses into worlds and options beyond the neighborhoods we grew up in. Josefina López—like Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Rigoberta Menchu, Dolores Huerta, and Frida Kahlo—is a staple, a pillar in Chicano/Chicanx community. She, like each of those named, became a change-maker through diligence and hard work.  They all continue to spark fires in successive generations of revolutionary spirits, and they breathe life into Chicana Feminists when the world attempts to drown out our voices. Since hearing of it, I have wanted to visit Casa 0101, which had grown to include two spaces over the last few years, according to what I’d heard sometime after graduating fro...

Central Park in the Winter, Acrylic on Canvas, 2017 by Roberto Gutiérrez. Review by Abel Salas Artist and studio painter Roberto Gutiérrez isn’t pulling any punches these days. In fact, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say the native son of L.A.’s Eastside is coming up aces more often than not. And when he isn’t walking away from his latest self-imposed challenge with a resounding victory, he’s holding his own with a combination of skill, panache and charisma that forces a split decision in his favor. And with the title belt all but his, he’s primed and ready to face off once more with a few of the most important metropolitan centers in the world. Having taken them on one after another in an allegorical ring where the traditional ropes have been replaced by the outermost edges of a canvas stretcher or a sheet of artist’s paper, the plucky maestro has returned whole, unscathed and reinvigorated from his arresting and emotional encounters with Los Angeles, Paris, and, of late,...

by Luís Reyes Having nothing else to do is the way a lot of shit begins. Some of it regrettable, unfortunately. But not everything. Sometimes it’s fun and memorable. Like the time we went to the Beverly Lanes for the first time. (It wasn’t everyone’s first time there.) That turned-out to be a fun trip. We would eventually learn that we didn’t even have to bowl. We could just sit at the bar and drink cheap pitchers of beer. The bowling excuse had been kinda fun, I guess, but none of us were any good at bowling anyway. Plus, it cut into our drinking budgets. So we just ended up on the other side of the wall, watching whatever sport the barkeep had on. But this new found knowledge wasn’t what made the trip memorable. What made it memorable was that the visit began with weed smoking in the parking lot. There’s no memory of whose weed it was or what method we used to light it up, but we did get high as soon as we got there. Right there in the car with shame obligating us to feel we ...

  Richard Azurdia (l.) and Cheryl Umaña in This Land . Photo: Grettel Cortes Photography by Abel M. Salas What would you do if you were commissioned to write a piece addressing the demographic shifts in L.A. and told to pay especially close attention to places like South Central, Watts and Compton? If you were advocacy lawyer-turned-playwright Evangeline Ordaz and were asked to author a new play for the most prestigious civic theatre in L.A., you would dig. You would draw deeply from the well of unspoken and buried history. You’re assiduous research would take you to places, events and hard, cold truths those well-intended arbiters of culture and high art who award commissions might not have expected, or even cared to be reminded of. Oh well. If you were Ordaz, you would know, instinctively, that whatever considerations lay behind initiatives branded with terms such as “outreach,” “diversity,” “audience development,” “new voices,” “opportunity,” or “enrichment,” writing a p...