Residents Gather to Talk of Ethnic Harmony

The group of Costa Mesa residents was discussing the problem of overcrowding caused by the living arrangements of some Latino families. City officials, they griped, weren’t doing enough to ease the situation.

Cecelia Arevalo had to interrupt.

“This is a cultural issue,” Arevalo said. “Mexican people are used to living many together. They like that. It is not a problem for them.”

The comment prompted Maria Gutierrez to add: “You have to go and ask them why. Many are not earning a lot of money and they are forced to live together. One solution might be better job training to help them earn more.”

The exchange was an ice breaker for many of the dozen or so residents who gathered on Thursday’s bright mid-morning at the Davis Learning Center as part of a program called Living Room Dialogues. Organizers hope the talks will spark the sort of interaction that can lead to better relations among Costa Mesa’s increasingly divergent ethnic population.

This week, scores of neighbors are meeting in community centers or homes as part of the program, which is sponsored by the city’s Human Relations Committee with support from the Orange County Human Relations Commission. The discussions are intended to bring together recent arrivals and longtime residents to talk about issues of importance to all the community.

Through the round-table talks, sponsors suggest, participants may come to realize that almost all Americans are immigrants or descendants of them--and that change is something to be appreciated rather than feared.

“Change is so scary to everybody, and yet that is the one thing that is certain in this world,” said Mayor Mary Hornbuckle, an enthusiastic proponent of the dialogues. “The simple fact is we cannot discount the numbers. The demographics are changing and we are powerless to stop them.”

Not all of the dialogues were as diverse as sponsors had hoped. Six people gathered at the east Costa Mesa home of Juanella Evans, but were disappointed that no Latinos, Asians or blacks attended their session.

They described the current problems among cultural groups in the city as “growing pains” experienced by people who have been here for years getting used to new arrivals.

“I think it’s important that we form a community and work on the problem,” said John Fitzpatrick, a Costa Mesa police officer who attended the session.

The people who gathered at the Davis Learning Center included longtime Anglo residents as well as recent immigrants from Korea, Mexico and Vietnam.

They were encouraged to talk not only of current problems facing the city but about their own heritages and their experiences with other cultures.

“I grew up in the Fillmore District of San Francisco right after the Depression--with Chinese, Japanese, Blacks, Filipinos, Mexicans. We all lived poor and I didn’t know we were supposed to not like each other,” said Patricia Litten, a Police Department community service worker.

The idea of such educational kaffeeklatsches is not new in Costa Mesa. The first Living Room Dialogues were held three years ago when tensions flared over complaints about mostly Latino immigrants who gathered daily in Lions Park to look for work.

City officials said the meetings were an outlet that helped to reduce tensions.

But many of the issues that created sparks still exist. On Monday, for example, police rounded up and arrested 35 dayworkers in Lions Park, prompting criticism from Latino community leaders.

And city officials admit that some of their own well-publicized actions in recent years may have exacerbated tensions. The city was criticized for excluding illegal aliens from its job center, for its dayworker ordinance and for a since-suspended anti-alien funding policy.

“We’ve come through a dark period and perhaps we are more willing to be optimistic about the future at this point,” Hornbuckle said.

Participants who gathered at the Davis Learning Center seemed to share the mayor’s optimism.

Said Litten: “To learn to live together is the best thing we can do.”