By William Alexander Yankes On January 6th, 2020, President Donald Trump riled a mob to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and disrupt Congress as it prepared to certify the Electoral College votes that would make his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden final and absolute. The certification, to the former host of The Apprentice , might easily have registered as the deafening sound of his own reality TV catchphrase amplified a thousandfold and boomeranging back toward him with a vengeance, "You're fired!" He incited a riot. He did so deliberately, disregarding and defiling our democratic process, much as a dictator would have done, insisting he had won re-election by a landslide. Like a good bait-and-switch snake-oil huckster, he hawked the stolen election as the country that had been taken from them, their country. As true patriots, he suggested, they would have to be strong to get it back. In the aftermath of their violent and unprecedented insurrection, we learned that ...

In the 1920s, Boyle Heights was a multi-racial and multi-cultural community. Photo courtesy of Pinterest        By Shirlee Smith The Rhinehart story is taken from 1988 writings by Richard and Melvin and given to Bernice Pickett Smiley. When the Rhinehart family moved; just to the next block on the same street, two of the older boys, along with a couple of cousins, acted as official movers—no need for a truck. They simply pushed their family piano down Boulder Street to their new dwelling. This action may not be a common occurrence these days, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary for folks back in Boyle Heights, because our families frequently moved just a stone’s throw away from where we’d been living. Or in the case of the Rhineharts; just a piano push away. The family patriarch, Laurie H. Rhinehart, was born in Hickory, North Carolina, in 1902 and joined the Navy during World War I. In 1920, while stationed in San Pedro, California, he met and married Fran...