UCLA LPPI Brief Finds L.A. Black & Latino Neighborhoods Lack Resources During Safer-at-Home Order

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On May 19, 2020, UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, and Ong and Associates (an economic and policy analysis consulting firm) issued the brief, “Struggling to Stay Home: How COVID-19 Shelter in Place Policies Affect Los Angeles County’s Black and Latino Neighborhoods.” It aims to support policies and programs that address inequities facing those in neighborhoods where compliance with shelter-in-place is difficult and to provide guidance for public officials as California rebuilds from the COVID-19 pandemic. The study finds that more than 2 in 5 Blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles County face high burdens from the county’s shelter-in-place rules. These communities are seen to be densely populated with restricted access to open spaces and limited access to food.

The research brief provides five core recommendations for Los Angeles city officials and other jurisdictions with burdened populations:

  1. Expand COVID-19 testing with a focus on neighborhoods who face the highest risk sheltering in place.
  2. Provide transportation assistance and add personal care resources like hand sanitizer at bus stops.
  3. Expand paid leave options for low-wage workers or employees in the service sector to discourage people from going to work when they feel sick.
  4. Increase food assistance.
  5. Expand high-speed internet access and social safety net to include more relief, including Medi-Cal, childcare and early childhood education programs, by expanding eligibility and elongating the benefit period.

This brief is the third in a series of research papers examining the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on neighborhoods in L.A. County. Previous research papers found that Asian-American and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles County were most vulnerable due to the pandemic’s impact on the retail and service sectors, and Latino neighborhoods were less likely to receive the individual rebate under the CARES Act.

Download the full report HERE.

LPPI Media Contact:

Eliza Moreno

E: lppipress@luskin.ucla.edu

P: 310-487-9815

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LA Social Science Presents “Conversations with Changemakers” Featuring Dr. Leigh-Anna Hidalgo & Rosanna Simons (VID)

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The grassroots organization People for People (Gente por Gente) LA grew organically with the help of UCLA students to respond to the needs of the community, particularly during COVID-19. Find out how researchers, Dr. Leigh-Anna Hidalgo and Rosanna Simons, at UCLA along with community members are making a difference and how you can get involved.

Interview Chapters:

0:53 – Initial Involvement with People for People (Gente por Gente)

3:59 – Genesis and Purpose of People for People LA

6:44 – Stories of Students and Community Volunteers Helping the Elderly

10:59 – How to Get Involved

 

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LA Social Science Story: Interview with UCLA Alum and Naval Science Vice Chair CDR Robert Hill

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By Dr. Celia Lacayo, Associate Director of Community Engagement, Division of Social Sciences

Commander Robert Hill is the Vice Chair of the UCLA Naval Science Department and a student in the Executive MBA Program at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is a double Bruin as he received his undergraduate degree from UCLA in Biology (’96) where he participated in the Naval ROTC and earned his commission as an Officer in the Navy.

Commander Hill has an impressive record of military service, particularly with the Navy’s Submarine Force. He is out at sea for three months at a time. He served on the USS Nebraska (SSBN 739) for his first assignment for three years, then earned a graduate degree in the applied physics of Sonar at the Naval Postgraduate School. He has conducted various tours in Hawaii and San Diego where he oversaw ship planning and intel operations. He rose up the ranks to Executive Officer, second-in-command, on the USS Columbus (SSN 762). Afterwards, he specifically led submarine tactical development in the Pacific for six years where he tested new technology in the area of weapon and sensor deployment.

Currently in his second year in the UCLA EMBA program, Commander Hill says the biggest strength of the program is the quality of the students who contribute so much to the discussions, because they come from all backgrounds and walks of life. One of the current projects he is working on is part of his culmination thesis where a group of five students are partnered with a community organization and are given a real-life problem to solve. His group is specifically working with the Chief Information Officer for the City of Santa Monica on a business exploratory project. Commander Hill has used his prior military experience to make huge advances in the project and solidify strong relationships with city agents.

Commander Hill has also made an impact in higher education as a Commander in the NROTC and a lecturer of courses at USC and UCLA. He expresses that it is very important for him to give back and does so by mentoring other military college students. His time at UCLA has been special in part because, as he states, “UCLA emphasizes and supports veterans very strongly.”

Commander Hill has made a wonderful life here in Los Angeles where he resides with his wife and fellow Bruin, Darlene Hill, a fifth-grade teacher with LAUSD.

 

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LA Social Science Summer Course Previews: African American Studies Courses in 2020

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As summer 2020 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

The UCLA Department of African American Studies has exciting courses planned for the summer. Professor Scot Brown is offering a course on Funk Music. Professor Terence Keel is offering a Session C course that will have the class “think about how our bodies are deeply impacted by/shaped by the society around us.”

For more information on these courses, see the videos below, and enroll HERE. For additional course previews, click HERE.

Dr. Scot Brown’s Funk Music and Urban History Course:

 

Dr. Terence Keel’s Race, Science, and Society Summer 2020 Course:

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LA Social Science Summer Course Previews: African American Studies Presents “Reproducing While Black”

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As summer 2020 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

The UCLA Department of African American Studies will be offering C191 – Variable Topics Research Seminars: “Reproducing While Black” (Mondays and Wednesdays 1:00pm-3:05pm) with Professor Ugo Edu. The course will “investigate the stakes of Black reproduction globally, strategies of resistance, and strategies for securing healthy and sustainable reproduction.”

For more information about this course, see the video below, and enroll HERE.

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LA Social Science Summer Course Previews: Gender Studies Courses Offered in Sessions A and C

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As summer 2020 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

UCLA Gender Studies will be offering the courses listed below. Visit www.summer.ucla.edu to enroll or email shogan@gender.ucla.edu.

Session A (June 22nd – July 31st)

185: Special Topics: Feminisms Online!

Instructor: Taryn Marcelino – TR 8:30-10:35

Course Description: Through a framework of keywords such as access, analog/digital, celebrity, censorship, data, fan, posthuman and more, the course will explore issues of authorship, spectatorship, and the ways in which digital content (film, television, blogs, video, advertising) enables, facilitates, and challenges marginalizing social constructions in society. Through feminist critique, students will research and analyze how the internet creates and contests stereotypes and ideas of difference, including exclusionary representations of the human, with a particular focus on how digital technologies are transforming popular culture. A variety of UCLA Gender Studies Department faculty will participate in this class, contributing lectures and other course materials.

M111 Womxn and Film: Lesbian, Butch, Trans, and Queer Media Narratives

Instructor: Candace Hansen – TR 10:45-12:50

Course Description: Cinema and television helps us make sense of our place in the world. Often it is through this artform we are able to come to realizations about lives and identities, and even imagine realities beyond our own. Why is it then that mainstream narratives surrounding queer women and trans people are monolithic, tragic, and lack nuance? In this course we will explore the relationship between sexuality, gender, and cinema, interrogating issues surrounding agency, authorship, and the consequences of tropes for lesbians, bisexual women, butches, trans women, trans men, non-binary individuals, and gender non-conforming people. Focusing primarily on American cultural production, we will consider the ways that race, class, and other elements of identity intersect with and influence cinematic depictions of queerness. We will look at independent as well as mainstream cinema, tv shows, documentaries, art films, and other sources to attempt to track queer narratives through the lens of gender studies, and imagine what the future of representation and film making might hold.

Other Session A offerings include (Gender Studies Core Courses fulfill Diversity Requirement):

  • Gender 10 Intro to Gender Studies (GE) – Instructor: Dee Mauricio
  • Gender 102 Power- Instructor: Shawndeez Jadali
  • 101W Writing Gender: Indigeneity, History & Culture (Satisfies Writing II Req) – Instructor: Laura Terrance

Session C (August 3rd-September 11th)

M133C History of Prostitution

Instructor: Elizabeth Dayton – TR 1:00pm-3:05pm

Course Description: From a global historical perspective, this course will spotlight historical moments and figures within “the world’s oldest profession” to investigate how ideologies of race, class, gender, sexuality, empire, and globalization influence the dominant frameworks of prostitution policy. Beginning in antiquity and ending in the present day, we will trace changing attitudes towards prostitution from the vantage point of sex workers, moralists, medical authorities, and police officials. Course Topics will include: critical analysis of historical policies and attitudes towards prostitution (tolerance, regulation, criminalization, decriminalization); prostitution and the construction of empire(s) and borders (“white slavery” panic, trafficking policies, militarized prostitution & red-light districts); impact of pandemics/disease outbreaks on the sex industry (including syphilis, AIDS, COVID-19); and contemporary sex workers’ rights movements. The diverse contexts in which we will study prostitution may include but are not limited to: ancient Greece, medieval Europe, seventeenth-century Japan, London in period of Jack the Ripper, colonial India, and twentieth-century United States.

M107B. Studies in Gender and Sexuality. (5) Literatures of Resistance: Queer Punk As Method

(Same as English M107B and LGBT Studies M107B)

Instructor: Candace Hansen – TR 10:45am-12:50pm

Course Description: What does it mean when artistic work is world making? In Hansen’s M107B we will be thinking through queer punk as a method by looking at resistant literatures, things that are not just gay but queer, critical, and artful. In the true spirit of queer praxis, literature will not just be understood as written word alone in this course. Music, video, art, dance, performance, ritual, and collective experiences are all works of artistic merit and meaning, and contribute to a body of knowledge that shape queer and punk epistemologies and identities. We will read and analyze work from classic and contemporary creators, writers, musicians, skateboarders, zinesters, dancers, astrologers, and more to think about what it means to make queer art that is oppositional AND affirming AND community building. Work that is creating, critiquing, and negotiating power. Work that is responding to gaps. Students will write a paper and create an original work as part of their final grade.

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UCLA Economics Doctoral Student Selected to Attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings

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Diana Van Patten, a UCLA Economics Department doctoral student, has been selected to participate in the 7th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, which will now take place in 2021. Ms. Van Patten was nominated to be part of this prestigious group by the UCLA Economics Department, then selected as the nominee by UCLA and the University of California system, and finally by the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Held every few years, this next meeting will bring together Nobel Laureates along with 373 young economists from around the world to exchange knowledge, ideas, and experience. To learn more, click HERE.

LA Social Science would like to congratulate Diana Van Patten on this honor.

 

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LA Social Science Student Research Spotlight: Black Feminine Erotic Activism

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Dominique Rocker is finishing a Master of Arts in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. Examining the writing and narrative resistance of Black Panther women in the 1970s, her work seeks to disrupt the prison industrial complex through the nexus of education, artistic outlets, and divingly feminine erotic healing. She will be continuing graduate work in the Department of History at Rutgers University, Newark in the Fall of 2020.

Read the following essay to learn more about her fascinating research and thesis:

The erotic, as described by Audre Lorde, is “a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” It is a “deeply female and spiritual plane.” In a society historically and contemporarily constituted by the socio-political suppression of and control over Black women’s desire, agency, and feeling, the radical and often covert, intangible space between the self and the “chaos” of emotion is a “well of replenishing and provocative force” that holds the potential for radical change, perhaps outside the realm of legibility of the state. My scholarly endeavor is to uncover moments of agency in which Black women of the Black Power Era rooted their activism, whether consciously or not, in Lorde’s articulation of the erotic.[1]

As their partners and brothers were assassinated and jailed, as they themselves faced death penalty sentences, Black women in the late 1960s and 1970s engaged in political action, and used writing and storytelling that centered a divinely feminine power to create momentary visions and versions of freedom.

Activists such as Ericka Huggins used the erotic to discover “how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing.”[2] At the heart of my work is a curiosity not only about the hidden stories and resistance strategies of radical Black women in male-dominated spaces, but a desire to center emotion, sensuality, and joy as tools of survival for activists as well. This project this requires multidisciplinary training as well as mixed methodologies, specifically archival data, oral history, and Black feminist theories of kinship and the erotic.

As an interdisciplinary scholar trained in historical methods and cultural analysis, my work is rooted in counter-hegemonic orientations of history, the archive, resistance, and pleasure. My Master’s Paper explores the political murder & conspiracy trial of former Black Panther leader Ericka Huggins through an intersectional lens and takes into consideration both the narrative put upon her and the one she constructed for herself, a framework generally missing from work on this case. This research project centers the social, legal, and personal experience of Ericka Huggins as documented in newspaper archives, trial transcripts, and interviews to examine the ways in which oral history and personal storytelling through poetry written during incarceration can be pathways for personal and ideological abolitionist struggle. Huggins’ narrative resistance on the witness stand during her trial and in her poetry from prison offer meaningful insights into alternative modes of resistance and freedom-making. Considering the erotic as a powerful and “deeply female and spiritual plane,” my work renders politically engaged Black women visible and centers their survival and resistance through feeling.[3]

This work asks us to shift our understanding of historical moments, of police state violence and surveillance, and most intimately, of the meaning of freedom itself. Most importantly, for me, that has meant a centering of the divinely feminine erotic power that flows through the resistance work and the writings of some of the Panther Party’s less visible but most valuable: its women. When we begin to complicate the lens through which we understand the Black Power Era and the Black Panther Party, we can begin to uncover the nuances of not just revolution itself, but of the human experience of being Black and woman and poet and revolutionary.

[1] Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde, (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 53-59.

[2] Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic.”

[3] Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 53.

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LA Social Science Presents “Conversations with Changemakers” Featuring Dr. Efrén Pérez (Video)

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As the Director of the UCLA Race, Ethnicity, Politics and Society (REPS) Lab, Dr. Efrén Pérez is facilitating cutting-edge research that examines how racial diversity impacts politics. One of his lab’s current projects is an examination of how the identity of People of Color informs political attitudes and what the specific identity means to those who identify as Latinx. The REPS Lab acts as an incubator for rigorous social science research that also provides graduate students and affiliated faculty with a quality data collection platform that is publicly accessible. Overall, the REPS Lab trains and prepares graduate students for a career as a social scientist. Dr. Pérez states that the purpose of the lab is to “facilitate research that can have an impact not only on the person’s own career, but on the world outside the confines of UCLA.”

 

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Pandemics Past and Present: One Hundred Years of California History

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The UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy (LCHP) has released their latest research report, titled Pandemics Past and Present: One Hundred Years of California History. Particularly timely in light of Los Angeles Times coverage on this topic, this report features original research about the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, the AIDS/HIV crisis of the 1980s, and subsequent Influenza outbreaks. To read the report, click HERE, and for key takeaways, click HERE.

True to LCHP’s mission, this report uses an examination of the past to help guide us in our present moment of crisis. As governments and communities across the world are grappling with the COVID-19 crisis, researchers Dr. Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, Jessica Richards, and Talla Khelghati uncover instructive lessons about government responses, public reactions, and economic consequences of past pandemics.

LCHP has also released an accompanying episode on their new podcast, “Then & Now,” featuring a conversation with the report’s authors. Listen to the podcast HERE.

Through their report and accompanying podcast episode, LCHP seeks to provide useful context and guidance during this crisis.

 

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