By Gil Cedillo One Saturday morning in late August 50 years ago, I finished my household chores early and slipped out of the house to meet some friends. We were going to the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. I was 16 years old, and this would be my first protest march. As it turned out, those were my first steps in a long march toward a more just world. I played quarterback on Roosevelt High’s Rough Riders football team, which at the time was my main goal in life. That day I marched with Mario Chacón and some other friends my parents called greñudos –longhairs. An estimated 30,000 marchers made the Moratorium the largest political protest in Los Angeles history. The Moratorium was a turning point for legions of young community activists. Marchers included political leaders Esteban Torres and Gloria Molina, attorneys Antonia Hernandez and Samuel Paz, photographer Luis Garza, and educator Maria Elena Yepes. My greñudo friend Mario and I wound up being roommates...

By Dr. William Alexander Yankes We live in a scalding time of crisis, but it can be a good thing. Krisis is a Greek term meaning “threshold of transition for choice,” essentially an opportunity for a decision to be made. President Donald Trump’s dismal governance has brought us to a frightening juncture of annihilation or survival. It is up to us which path we take. Our nation’s 45 th president made no attempt to dissimulate his authoritarian and baldly fascist bent when he sent federal forces to stalk the streets of Portland, Oregon and other cities in which news of racially unjust policing had triggered mass protest and civil unrest. By giving plain-clothed federal officers and contracted security agents in unmarked vehicles carte-blanche to assault, kidnap or otherwise detain unarmed civilians and thus stifle political dissent, he expressly attempted to disrupt our democracy. For sometime, he has openly encouraged highly armed militia to attack the very people he was sworn t...

East L.A. activists gatherat Atlantic Park to support BLM and oppose police brutality. Photo: Olivia Llanos By Aurelio Medina At 3:00 pm, on Sunday, June 7th, 2020; my girlfriend, a womyn friend of ours and I arrived at Atlantic Park in East Los Angeles. We approached humbly with our durable poster board signs. These proclaimed: “One Love,” “BLM,” “Capitalism is Cannibalism,” and “No Justice, No Peace, Defund the Police,” respectively in bold lettering. Although made in somewhat of a haste because we strove to be on time, they were no less heartfelt. Walking up to the East L.A. park, distinguished for its proximity to historic St. Alphonsus Church, we observed a growing crowd of peaceful demonstrators gathering to protest police brutality and the disproportionate use of excessive, often deadly force against unarmed people of color by police. Like millions across the country and around the world, the Boyle Heights, East L.A. and Greater East Side youth assembled in the park we...

Angelinos protest the death of George Floyd. Photo by Quran Shaheed, courtesy L.A. Sentinel   By Alci Rengifo “Now is the time of the furnaces, and only the light can be seen”-- Jose Martí The death of George Floyd in Minnesota as the result of nine asphyxiating minutes underneath the knee of a police officer has again lit the spark of popular rage across the imperial United States. From east to west the republic has seen in city after city the bonfires of tensions stemming not only from the country’s violent and complex racial history, but its class divisions as well. Inevitably Los Angeles has seen its streets swell with the justly angered. More than any other great American city, the greater L.A. metropolitan area is a microcosm of the social forces that have shaped this country and are in constant clash. Its wealth and poverty, its cosmopolitan character, its mixture of U.S. gringo culture and scores of municipalities as well as countless streets bearing Spanish name...

  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....