Location, location, location

Where you live should not determine how you live.

But it does.

Something that really affected my classmates about Boyle heights was when we were told and shown how the area was (possibly and most likely) intentionally boxed in through major highways, effectively boxing in it’s residents, keeping them, their poverty, and the pollution from progress confined to a box. This might have affected my classmates more because we come from an international school and almost all of us have gypsy blood, but I agree with their indignation. Those borders that are marked with highways and walls are not much different than the fences we put around our livestock.

The phrase “school to prison pipeline” where also repeated a lot. The understanding is, that if you are born into a certain neighborhood and go to the school, that school is not designed to make you succeed. Because of its proximity to shady neighborhoods and gang activities, kids are highly likely to become involved in them. Furthermore, because misdemeanors in these areas are treated as serious offenses, and because the youth of these areas are likely to be tried as adults, these kids are at a serious risk of ending up in prison. And all because of their location.

This is also important because where you are born affects your access to goods and services. In this image (source), you can see the unequal use of water in neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly, many of the poorer neighborhoods we visited use less water than the rest of Los Angeles, while the expense neighborhoods use water at a rate that is far above what is called for in the local rations:Screen Shot 2015-04-25 at 3.50.29 PM

This significant because as you know, Los Angeles is unsurprisingly one of the most drought stricken places in the United States:

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This is especially unfair because of the lack of social mobility. Those that are born into poverty, under the current system which rewards those that are better off, and penalizes and criminalizes those that are not, stay in poverty. As hard as you try to better yourself, to move out of your current situation, nothing happens. And the louder you cry from the injustice, the more yo are regarded as unstable, or told to be quiet. And we are sorted into these social groups randomly, based off of where you were born.

Another image that affected all of us was a sign in one of the youth justice organizations we visited: “The code of the streets: two ways to leave, in handcuffs or in body bags.”