Latino Leaders Protest Plans to Build Prison on Eastside

In Ricardo Gutierrez’s neighborhood southeast of the Los Angeles Civic Center, the state’s plan to build a 1,450-bed prison has been an object of scorn since it was announced seven years ago.

“We don’t need a prison here; we need jobs and better schools,” said Gutierrez, 58, an unemployed warehouse foreman.

On Monday, Gutierrez was among 300 opponents of the prison with plenty to cheer about after listening to several Latino political leaders rail against the proposed $147-million prison at an Eastside Los Angeles rally across the street from its proposed site.

Supervisor Gloria Molina, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and city councilmen Richard Alatorre and Mike Hernandez accused Gov. Pete Wilson of turning a deaf ear to health and safety concerns in the heavily Latino area.

“This isn’t a (not in my back yard) thing,” Molina said. “. . . We already have five prisons or detention facilities (here), and we don’t need another one.” Torres said, “We’ll be in front of the bulldozers if we have to to keep this prison from being built.”

The state, meanwhile, has given no indication of backing away from the plan to build the prison on 20 acres near the Los Angeles River, between Washington and Olympic boulevards.

Last week the state cleared the last legal hurdle to building the prison, when the state Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s environmental review of the facility. The court unanimously declined to consider a charge by Los Angeles city officials that the site is tainted with contaminated soil and polluted ground water.

State Department of Corrections officials then announced that it would proceed as soon as possible with plans to build the prison, although an exact construction timetable remains unclear.

In May, a legislative budget committee voted to transfer $115 million set aside for the prison to a project in San Joaquin Valley city of Madera, but the governor has indicated he will likely veto any attempt to divert money from the Los Angeles facility.

On Monday, Aurora Castillo of Mothers of East Los Angeles, which has long fought against the facility, said the governor “should be ashamed for wanting to dump this prison on our children.”