Poor living conditions effect kids in South LA + First ‘hydration station’ opens at high school

September 27, 2015 By Leave a Comment


Thomas Jefferson High School recently installed a hydration station to encourage students to drink more water. (Intersections South LA)

Thomas Jefferson High School recently installed a hydration station to encourage students to drink more water. (Intersections South LA)

Harm at Home: Mold, roaches in South LA apartments trigger asthma, school absences: Mold and cockroaches continue to plague many residents and can cause a host of health issues. Some children have become so sick that their education has suffered. (Southern California Public Radio)

South Los Angeles Youth Debut School Hydration Station: The first hydration station in South LA was opened at Thomas Jefferson High School. School administrators and the National Health Foundation worked to provide clean drinking water to promote better health for students. (Sentinel News Service)

A Researcher’s Instagram Account Celebrates The ‘Blaxicans’ Of South Los Angeles: An Instagram project from native Angeleno depicts the lives and struggles of biracial people in South Los Angeles. (Fusion)

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New soccer club coming to LA + Nonprofits teach bike safety in South LA

September 23, 2015 By Leave a Comment


Bicyclists in South LA don't have enough space to ride safely on the roads. (Intersections South LA)

Many say bicyclists in South LA don’t have enough space to ride safely on the roads. (Intersections South LA)

Goodbye, Chivas USA. Hello, Los Angeles Football Club!: The Los Angeles Football Club, a replacement for Chivas USA, is backed by figures including Magic Johnson and Nomar Garciaparra. The soccer club is looking to build a 22,000 seat stadium in Los Angeles. (Fansided)

Central Ave. bike count underscores need for better infrastructure: South LA’s sustainability efforts are hindered by a general lack of safety because pedestrians and bicyclists deal with lack of infrastructure while navigating the city. (LA Streets Blog)

How the Los Angeles’ homeless crisis got so bad: A state of emergency has been declared as Los Angeles’ homeless population rose 12 percent over the past two years. Officials have committed $100 million towards solutions. (LA Times)

 

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South LA’s Southern California Library keeps social justice history alive

June 19, 2014 By Leave a Comment


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A wall of the library’s exterior features an Olmec statue. | Stephanie Case

It’s been fifty years since Emil Freed—son of anarchists, a Communist Party member, and staunch activist—founded the Southern California Library to save materials at risk of being destroyed amid fear of McCarthyism. A lot has changed in South L.A. since then: the 1992 riots rocked the city, workers’ unions grew stronger, and race, class and sexuality have been at the forefront of political battles. And today, more people than ever are using the social justice library.

“Maybe less than 200 people would come through the door in a year” in 2002, said communications director Michele Welsing. “Now, we’ve seen those numbers go up to as much as 10,000. And for researchers, we’re getting as many people now in one month as we would get in an entire year.”

Take an audio tour of the library with reporter Stephanie Case:

Freed’s small collection of leftist papers has blossomed into more than 400 archives, including vinyl records, film reels and shelves upon shelves of political pamphlets. [Read more…]

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Metamorphosis launches MetaConnects

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment


Universities are troves of academic information.  But often, the fate of research is to collect dust in the filing cabinets of professors.  Meanwhile, community organizations struggle to get adequate research.  USC’s Metamorphosis Project from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism aims to bridge this gap with the launch of their new website MetaConnects.

MetaConnects is an online platform offering a wealth of information on community patterns, relationships and media consumption.  It was created as a way for academic researchers to share this knowledge with community-based practitioners. 

“We are all devoted to social change and social justice,” MetaConnects says on its website,“ and MetaConnects provides a space to share research findings, strategies, tools, and innovative collaborative projects in pursuit of these goals.”

For over a decade, the Metamophosis Project has studied how residents from diverse Los Angeles neighborhoods communicate and what media sources they learn about their communities.  You can see the results of these studies on their website.

In addition to the website, MetaConnects has an e-mail listserv, ongoing discussions, workshops and events.

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