UCLA/Getty Looks Back on a Decade of Working with Agua Caliente Cultural Museum

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By Professor Ellen Pearlstein, UCLA Information Studies and UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials

UCLA recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the rich collaboration between the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum (ACCM) in Palm Springs and the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials. The first class was taught in collaboration with ACCM in 2007, and the fifth class ended in 2017.

The course, which is required for graduate conservation students in the UCLA/Getty Program, includes collaborations resulting in sharing cultural, technical and analytical expertise among students, ACCM staff, guest basketry weavers, ethnobotanists, curators and community members. Over the past 10 years, a changing ACCM staff, including directors, curators, archivists, tribal board members, and the ACCM Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, have generously shared knowledge with the students about the founding of the museum and its role in the community.

In 2017, the students were joined by conservator ​Özge Gençay Üstün (pictured),
weavers ​Roseann Hamilton and Abe Sanchez (pictured),
and William Pink, curators Bryn Potter and Jan Timbrook (pictured),
Sean Milanovich from Agua Caliente, and Cara Stansberry from ACCM

Students complete thorough research, examinations, conservation treatments and re-housing of ACCM objects—primarily baskets—based on discussions with ACCM staff and guest instructors. Both technical knowledge and a clear understanding of tribal museum goals are imparted to the students, which taken together with community input invariably impact conservation decision-making.

Products of this rich collaboration include a faculty and student co-authored article, as well as both a physical and a virtual exhibit describing conservation methods achieved through collaboration, a virtual exhibit that (temporarily unavailable but described here), and a faculty-student publication describing the impact of that virtual exhibit.

In 2009, UCLA Library hosted an exhibit of ACCM items prepared by UCLA/Getty students. This image is the invitation sent out for the opening event.

Between 1983 and 2005, Pearlstein was assistant, associate and senior objects conservator at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Pearlstein served as an adjunct professor in conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts-Conservation Center at NYU between 1991-2004. In 2005, Pearlstein assumed a faculty position in the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Material. As a member of the founding faculty, she and her colleagues designed a curriculum, outfitted a laboratory, and Pearlstein began teaching graduate classes in the conservation of organic materials, ethics of working with indigenous communities, preventive conservation and managing collections. In 2008, Pearlstein joined UCLA’s Department of Information Studies, and invited students interested in library, archive, and rare book materials into her preservation and management classes.  Her research includes conservation of featherwork, effects of environmental agents; pre- and post-Hispanic qeros from the Andes; developing diversity within conservation, and curriculum development within conservation education. Pearlstein is an elected Fellow in the American Institute for Conservation and, recently, in the International Institute for Conservation, winner of the AIC Keck award, and President of the Association of North American Gradate Programs in Conservation.

 

 

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Dr. Lytle Hernandez and Million Dollar Hoods to be Honored with Freedom Now Award on June 16

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May 15, 2018

Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez and Million Dollar Hoods will be honored by the Los Angeles Community Action Network with a Freedom Now Award for their groundbreaking digital mapping project that uses police data to monitor incarceration costs in Los Angeles. The 8th Annual “Freedom Now” Awards and Celebration will take place on June 16, 2018 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 838 E. 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021.

For more details, click HERE

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Ready to Work, Uprooting Inequity: Black Workers in Los Angeles and California

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By Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, Project Director & Saba Waheed, Research Director

Black people are leaving Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Black Worker Center noticed the trend while doing community organizing work in the area and teamed up with the UCLA Labor Center to conduct a study. Together, they analyzed 2010-2014 data from the American Community Survey and found that employment conditions have a lot to do with it. While the Black community was once a thriving part of L.A.’s landscape and remains integral to the county’s cultural and economic life, they are in the throes of a bona fide jobs crisis – and concern for Black workers has only intensified in response to the new administration.

Here are some of the study’s findings:

  • Black people are significantly more educated than previous generations, yet experience a lower labor participation rate and a significantly higher unemployment rate than white workers
  • Black workers are underrepresented in growing industry sectors and professional jobs and have lower rates in manager and supervisory positions
  • Whether working full or part time, Black workers earn only 75% of what White workers earn (for Black women, the wage gap is even more severe)
  • The Black community’s share of the total population declined from 13% to 8%

Based on their research, the UCLA Labor Center, Los Angeles Black Worker Center and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment released the 2017 report Ready to Work, Uprooting Inequity: Black Workers in Los Angeles and a follow-up California study, as Black Angelenos still make up over one third of the state’s Black population. The report argues for the need to stabilize Black families and communities through community-driven public policy and corporate practice change that create good-paying, quality jobs accessible to Black workers.

Its release was also coupled with the launch of a local anti-discrimination enforcement campaign called #HealBlackFutures that would support policy efforts to respond to discrimination complaints (additional research supported this need for local enforcement).

As a leading global city, Los Angeles already has an important history of worker organizations and movements that have struggled to close the equity gap, increase the minimum wage, secure paid sick-days and provide a platform for worker voices. Since the release of this report, there has been an unprecedented display of Black working-class activism and mobilization in Los Angeles County.

In addition, the governor of California also directed the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to establish a civil rights advisory group composed of relevant state representatives, community advocates, employers and employees to study the feasibility of authorizing local governments to help enforce anti-discrimination statutes.

Studying Black workers in Los Angeles provides a helpful foundation off of which to both produce new research and develop policy initiatives addressing the state of U.S. labor in general. Evaluating the feasibility and clarifying the steps that local authorities are taking to remedy civil rights violations will be critical in curbing unfair treatment at work both in Los Angeles and on a larger scale.

The Los Angeles Black Worker Center is a grassroots action center in South Central Los Angeles dedicated to expanding access to quality jobs, addressing employment discrimination and improving jobs that employ Black workers. The Center’s vision is to build a world where Black workers thrive in an equitable economy that sustains family and community. For more than 50 years, the UCLA Labor Center has created innovative programs that offer a range of educational, research and public service activities within the university and in the broader community, especially among low-wage and immigrant workers.

 

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Chronicling the Transformation of Black LA

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Photo Credit: Leroy Hamilton

By Marcus Anthony Hunter

Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Division of the Social Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, CHAIR, Department of African American Studies; Principal Investigator

Over the course of the 20th century, Black Los Angeles has shifted from the east side of the city (Central Avenue in the early 1900s) to the west side of the city (the Crenshaw district after 1960). The organization of Black life along Central Avenue in the first half of the 1900s was produced by legalized forms of segregation, barring Black residents from accessing housing outside the Central Avenue area. Over time, however, Black residents integrated parts of the adjacent West Adams community that were not restricted by legal forms of discrimination.

Soon, though, the construction of the 10-Freeway in Los Angeles displaced much of the growing Black neighborhood in West Adams, pushing the center of Black Los Angeles further west to Leimert Park. By the 1960s, Leimert Park and the surrounding communities became major destinations for Black migrants from the American South, Africa and the Caribbean. With the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, Black movement out of the Central Avenue area continued, leading to the rise of the area commonly known as South Central Los Angeles. Since then, this area has been the nexus of Black life, culture, entrepreneurship, arts and political power in Los Angeles.

Today, these neighborhoods are poised to undergo the most significant transformation they have experienced in decades. Los Angeles County has increasingly turned to transit improvement projects to alleviate traffic as the region continues to grow. In 2008 and 2016, voters approved sales tax increases to fund the expansion of regional transportation options, including: a light rail; a subway line that will connect the east and west parts of the city; and a Crenshaw/LAX Transit Line linking this network from the north southward to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX). City leaders consider it vitally important to connect the area’s rapidly improving transit infrastructure to LAX as well as the to the newly constructed Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park – especially in advance of major events like the Olympics and Super Bowl. But these changes, and the ways that residents negotiate and navigate them, will inevitably transform Black LA.

So, how are we researching these changes?

The Chocolate Cities of Los Angeles: A Digital and Public Archive of Black Los Angeles is a multi-year, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research project examining the processes of urban displacement, gentrification and rebranding (e.g. Destination Crenshaw) as it is occurring leading up to and through the 2019 opening of the Crenshaw/LAX transit line. Our aim is to develop a lasting and much-needed repository and digital archive of the myriad chocolate cities thriving, surviving and disappearing across Los Angeles and surrounding communities since the city’s founding. Our diverse 12-person team includes members from three countries (the United States, Nigeria, and India), over eight U.S. cities and three UCLA departments (African American Studies, Sociology, and Social Welfare).

Upcoming Events:

Please join us TOMORROW, May 9th, 2018 at the California African American Museum at 6:00 PM to honor and engage in conversation with authors Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria Robinson on their new book Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life. 

This event will encompass an engaging conversation with the authors, amongst other speakers such as Scot Brown, Alma Burrell, Lynnée Denise, and Frankie “Kash” Waddy.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

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Million Dollar Hoods Goes to Sacramento

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May 4, 2018

Last week, Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, professor of History and African American Studies and the interim director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, along with Associate Professor Chandra Ford, Chancellor Gene Block, and UCLA students, journeyed to Sacramento to meet with members of the California Legislative Black Caucus. There they discussed Million Dollar Hoods and the policy interventions and solutions that can be implemented to improve Los Angeles and advance justice reinvestment campaigns. Connecting research to actionable policy is a major objective of Million Dollar Hoods and Professor Lytle Hernandez’s work.

 

Related post: Mapping LA’s Million Dollar Hoods

 

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Mapping LA’s Million Dollar Hoods

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milliondollarhoods.org

By Kelly Lytle Hernandez

Professor of History and African-American Studies

Los Angeles County operates the largest jail system on Earth. At a cost of nearly $1 billion annually, more than 20,000 people are caged every night in county jails and city lockups. Conventional wisdom says that incarceration advances public safety by removing violent and serious offenders from the streets – but the data shows that isn’t necessarily true.

According to Million Dollar Hoods (MDH), a digital mapping project that uses police data to monitor incarceration costs in Los Angeles, not all neighborhoods are equally impacted by L.A.’s massive jail system. In fact, L.A.’s nearly billion-dollar jail budget is largely committed to incarcerating many people from just a few neighborhoods, in some of which more than $1 million is spent annually on incarceration. Leading causes of arrest in these areas are primarily drug possession and DUIs, and the majority of those arrested are black, brown and poor.

The bottom line: the data shows that local authorities are investing millions in locking up the county’s most economically vulnerable, geographically isolated and racially marginalized populations for drug and alcohol-related crimes. These are L.A.’s “Million Dollar Hoods.” Maybe they deserve more.

Additional information on “Million Dollar Hoods” (MDH):

Launched in summer 2016, MDH is an ongoing collaboration between UCLA researchers and local community-based organizations, including Youth Justice Coalition, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Dignity and Power Now, JusticeLA and more. Together, we conceptualized the project, acquired the data and mapped it, making a wealth of data broadly available to advocates and activists who are pressing local authorities to divest from police and jails and invest in the community-based services needed to build a more equitable community: namely health, housing, employment, and educational services. To date, the MDH maps and reports have received significant media coverage and are being marshaled by advocates to advance a variety of justice reinvestment campaigns.  Our research on cannabis enforcement shaped the development of the city’s social equity program. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty references our research in his report on the criminalization of homelessness in America. Our report on the money bail system was the first to document how the money bail system amounts to asset stripping in Black and Latino Los Angeles.

Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez (History/African American Studies) leads the Million Dollar Hoods project. Her research team is comprised of an interdisciplinary group of UCLA staff and students, including Danielle Dupuy (School of Public Health), Terry Allen (Graduate School of Education), Isaac Bryan (Luskin School of Public Policy), Jamil Cineus (Institute for Digital Research and Education), Marcelo Clarke (African American Studies/Sociology), Chibumkem Ezenekwe, Luz Flores (African American Studies), Oceana Gilliam (Luskin School of Public Policy), Harold Grigsby (African American Studies), Andrew Guerrero (International Development Studies), Sofia Espinoza (Luskin School of Public Policy), Yoh Kawano (Institute for Digital Research and Education), Albert Kochaphum (Institute for Digital Research and Education), Ricardo Patlan (Political Science),  Alvin Teng (Luskin School of Public Policy), Taylore Thomas (African American Studies), and Estefania Zavala (Luskin School of Public Policy).

 

Related post: Million Dollar Hoods Goes to Sacramento

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