LOS ANGELES : Seekers of Riot Aid Protest Paperwork ‘Nightmare’
Protesting what they called “a six-month-long nightmare” of endless paperwork and threats of eviction, 75 Latino and Korean-American demonstrators marched Tuesday outside the Pasadena offices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Mr. Bush, where’s my tax money?” they chanted.
Jay Lee, an organizer of the noon protest and owner of a Los Angeles bargain store looted during the riots, said inner-city merchants are going hungry and homeless waiting for federal assistance they were promised shortly after the riots.
“They keep asking us to submit more paperwork,” Lee said standing outside the FEMA offices at 245 S. Los Robles Ave. “Some of the paperwork is costing hundreds of our dollars to process. Many of us cannot pay those fees because our businesses are still down.”
A spokesman for the FEMA regional office in San Francisco blamed insufficient information as a reason many claims take longer to process.
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