Prison Issue Inspires Eastside to Do Battle

The latest political battle cry energizing Latinos in Los Angeles and the rest of California is “No Prison in East L.A.” The funny thing about it, though, is that the prison site in question is not on the Eastside.

The 30 acres where Gov. George Deukmejian, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and other state officials want to put a new prison is west of the Los Angeles River, the boundary that separates the Eastside from the rest of Los Angeles. But that doesn’t matter, because the technicalities of the prison project long ago became less important than its symbolism. California Latinos are so opposed to Deukmejian’s prison that he couldn’t make them any madder if he suggested building it in the Vatican.

For a long time it looked as if Deukmejian would get his Los Angeles prison with relative ease. After all, there is merit in the Department of Corrections’ arguments for a prison somewhere in this city. State officials point out that Los Angeles County sends 38% of the state’s male inmates to prison, yet is home to no state lockups. And a site near the Los Angeles Civic Center would be convenient not just for attorneys and law-enforcement personnel but also for the families of prison inmates who live in the inner city.

The trouble started when state prison officials began insisting that the only acceptable site was at 12th and Santa Fe streets, an industrial area just across the river from predominantly Latino Boyle Heights. Deukmejian and his underlings badly underestimated the resentment that many Mexican-Americans feel toward public-works projects--especially on the Eastside, which already has more than its share of unattractive government facilities, including maintenance and storage yards and three large county jails.

If California has a Chicano capital, it’s the vaguely defined place called “East L.A.” But, as a Chicano activist once told me, “East L.A. is as much a state of mind as a place.” When Chicanos think of “East L.A.” they mean more than the six square miles of unincorporated county territory officially designated as East Los Angeles; the term also refers to adjacent city neighborhoods like Boyle Heights.

The sprawling Mexican barrios there grew with the rest of Los Angeles, starting slowly at the turn of the century and speeding up after World War II. The resentment over urban renewal stems largely from the postwar era, when no fewer than five freeways were gouged through the Eastside. That also is when old Mexican neighborhoods were bulldozed on Bunker Hill to make way for high-rise buildings and in Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium.

There was community resistance in all those cases, but stronger political and economic forces prevailed. The resentment remains to this day, however. When Chicano activists rail against the evils of urban renewal, they always cite the freeways, Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine. They are political symbols, and now so is the downtown prison because the Eastside has more political clout today than in the 1950s.

It was a local member of the California Assembly, Democrat Gloria Molina, who last year began rallying residents of neighborhoods near the proposed prison site against the project. She now is supported by a broad coalition that ranges from local chambers of commerce to churches and activist groups.

It was the local state senator, Democrat Art Torres, who made the prison a statewide issue. For several years Torres has been quietly planning a campaign for statewide office, and in the process has developed political contacts with Latinos throughout California.

When Torres held a Sacramento press conference on Sept. 2 to denounce the prison, he was joined by Latino leaders from as far away as San Diego and Santa Rosa. Even Latino activists that far afield know the sad experience that their Los Angeles hermanos have had with urban renewal.

The Deukmejian Administration didn’t catch on, however. A spokesman for the governor even told reporters that opponents of the prison were a vocal minority with no significant support. The next day hundreds of Eastside residents staged a protest against the prison, and were joined by Archbishop Roger Mahony and several politicians--including California Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who now leads the anti-prison forces in Sacramento.

I wonder if Deukmejian finally has realized his mistake, now that opinion polls are starting to show a decline in his support among Latinos just six weeks before the November election. The Times Poll, for example, has recorded a 31-point drop in Latino support for Deukmejian since March. The prison controversy is probably not the only reason for that dramatic decline, but it certainly can’t help.

And it won’t help backers of the prison that the perception is growing among Latinos that Molina, Torres and their allies have fought state government to a standstill. The Legislature has yet to give final approval to the Los Angeles prison plan, despite being called into special session by the governor two weeks ago.

The “East L.A” prison has taken on a life if its own, beyond the merits of the project itself, and the issue will carry heavy symbolic overtones long after it is settled. Whatever the final outcome, the battle cry “No Prison in East L.A.” will inspire Latino activists in the future, and make it even harder for government to put unpopular public-works projects anywhere near the Eastside.