EAST LOS ANGELES : Prop. 187 Session to Provide Information

A community group hoping to arm area activists and residents with information about Proposition 187 and other immigrant issues is sponsoring a free workshop Thursday titled, “Speaking Out for Justice.”

The workshop, organized by the Anti-Defamation and Civil Rights Awareness Committee, will center on “training trainers,” said Leonor Lizardo, the committee’s co-chair.

“Our target audience is anyone in the community who wants to get involved,” Lizardo said. “Parents, young people, older folks--anyone in the community who is concerned about issues involving immigrant-bashing and, in particular, Prop. 187. We want them to come and share their concerns and learn how to make presentations about them.”

Proposition 187, which would cut off most non-emergency public services to illegal immigrants, was overwhelmingly approved by voters in November but has not been implemented because of a pending lawsuit filed by immigration advocates in federal court.

Lizardo said the workshop would provide participants with both the data and the direction they would need so they can lead public discussions on Proposition 187 and other hot-button immigration issues.

The workshop is the first public event sponsored by ACRAC, a division of the East/Northeast Networking Roundtable formed last year. The roundtable is a coalition of about 60 people involved in education, law enforcement, health care and youth groups.

ACRAC was organized to protest a Los Angeles radio station that was advertising a morning talk show with billboard images and a slogan that some saw as offensive to Latinos. Although outrage over the “2 Fat Mexicanz” advertisement campaign by KPWR-FM (105.9) provided the initial rallying cry for the group, committee member Minnie Gonzalez said the membership saw an ongoing need for a watchdog.

“There’s a need to empower the community, to train and teach them about what’s going on,” Gonzalez said. “We want to take the media to task, too, for the portrayals of the Latino community. Every time it’s something negative, that’s when the brown faces show up on TV. The positive portrayals don’t seem to make it on.”

Lizardo said Proposition 187 was chosen as the topic for the group’s maiden event because it is a chief concern of the area’s Latino population.

“Prop. 187 is a way of dumping on the immigrant and undocumented population and ignoring the other issues and factors truly responsible for the problems at hand,” she said. “It is mostly a blaming of ‘the other’ for economic instability.”

Facilitators scheduled to guide the workshop include Pablo Alvarado and Raul Anorve of Instituto de Escolar Popular de Sur California, Nancy Cervantes of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and Leonardo Vilchis of Proyecto Pastoral. Lizardo said the workshop will call upon the audience to participate, both in role-playing exercises and in open discussions.

The two-hour workshop begins at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Santa Marta Hospital Education Building, 319 Humphreys Ave.

Information: (213) 266-6550 or (213) 268-1107.