Category Archives: Rohan

After returning to Monterey from Los Angeles, a certain weight and heavyness fell over me, I had started to bring back all the knowledge and information I had acquired while in L.A to my home setting of Monterey. The harder I tried to ignore the feelings of guilt and how I lived in such luxury , the more it pricked at my conciense, Monterey being one of those places within the state where the rich poor divide is pretty stark and the use and plunder for activities like the Pebble Beach golf Course at the expense of many other individuals acquiring basic necessities like water or even food. I wanted to share how exactly I felt about the very broken and messed up system I had come to know while in L.A which I also realized each and every one of us were a part of, and that hurt more.

A couple of weeek after we returned we were to have a presentation with the Immersive learning group that went to Mindanao, Phillipines to share our experiences and learnings with the rest of our peers and Professors at the Middlebury Institute. The opportunity to actually put into reality what I had been obsessing over for the past couple of weeks sounded exhilirating , almost therapeutic, and to share it with all my group mates and another group that had travelled studying much of the same issues was a welcome chance. When I was younger I was very into the theatre and the power of play acting and method acting to empathize about situations that are harder to understand. I was very blessed during the presentation preparation to be given the chance to use my past experience within this sphere of role playing to express what I had learned and understood while in L.A. I wrote a play with the help of my peers that tried to do justice to the lessons and the experiences we had been through and three topics stood out for us, gang violence, homelessness and mental disability. Through three short and powerful skits we put forward our vision of what L.A was like to us, what the everyday average Joe goes through and how those difficulties relate to the larger themes playing throughout L.A. Like one of the larger themes we connected to gang violence within our role playing context was police and law enforcement brutality.This issue to us, explained largely what the racial minorities and a lot of the populations that have difficulties with gang violence deal with and why they look at the law enforcement with such mistrust and reservation. We also played into the importance of education and how the lack of a strong and stringent education system within the areas where racial minorites and low income families reside is a very dire issue that must be addressed to ensure a more integrated and content immigant and overall population.

The possibility to act out and play into the ideas and themes we had witnessed in L.A was more of a blessing than words can do justice. The most beautiful part to me was that the parts played in the role play about the L.A experience were played by persons from the Mindanao trip and the L.A trip, the idea that we could relate to these individuals who werent even there to take in the everyday the way we had were still able to grasp what we were trying to impart, and that is worth to me more than I imagined. That was my biggest notion of understanding, sharing the experiences we had and went through were as important if not more important that going through the experiences in the first place, and for that I and eternally thankful to this course but more importantly the City of Angels.

After spending a whirlwind week in Los Angeles , visiting a number of organizations that performed work within the city helping the most sidelined and minority populations . I had come into Los Angeles with my own biases and reservations about truly understanding and immersively experience the conflict of homelssness and poverty that was rampant throughout the city. But thats not all I saw, there was more, there was the glamour and the glitz that was the city which was the center of the Media movement of the Western hemisphere if not the entire world. And that was one of my biggest take aways, how this city of wealth and renown had many a skeleton in their closet, which included a population of homeless that were tried to be hidden away or the mentally handicapped who are thrown to the wayside because they do not fit into the cookie cutter ideal of mainstream society.

My week spent in LA, was more than just the class and the NGO’s we visited, for me it was a deeper experience in coming to terms with where I come from and what I look like and my own reservations towards issues like poverty, homelessness and gentrification.Before I left to L.A, I had very little regard or even empathy towards the homeless situation and population in America, I thought, coming from India where I had seen poverty on a much more extreme level that these populations could not compare, and moreover I could not recognize how badly the poverty and homelessness affected these individuals. I particularly had issues with the welfare system heling these individuals at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and how this was helping their situation rather than encouraging more of the same. After spending a week in Los Angeles, I could not be more wrong about the situation of poverty and the conflict of homelessness in the area. I did not understand the differences between the poverty in my own home country of India and in the United States until I spent extended time within the area. The idea that many of these individuals in the L.A area are veterans who served their country and now suffering from PTSD are forgotten and layed to waste on the curb, or the lack of help given to the mentally disabled who because of how expensive the medication they require and the services they need are, turn to recreational and harder drugs to ease their pains. These are the realities of those who live on the streets of L.A that no documentary or film or article can do justice to, these are the realities I only began to understand once it was time to leave. My personal understanding and recognition of the race dynamics in play in the Los Angeles area was one I hadnt felt almost anywhere else let alone where I am from, here it was like the community of persons of colour were one large family. While visiting the many NGO’s and other areas of L.A where we were observing these very conflicts of homelessness and poverty, I noticed how many of the times when a person of colour was giving us a presentation, or helping us understand the dynamics at play in that particular area or even just giving us a history of the art movement in L.A, I was made the focal point of many of these conversations. I believe this was because I was one of two persons of colour in our group, the other being our Professor. The idea that I was made more of a focal point of conversation just because of the colour of my skin told me a story of how far the racial minorities have been pushed out and how much they are at ease only with other people of colour.

Los Angeles, opened my eyes not only to the larger issues of gentrification, homelessness and poverty within the American setting but also within myself the idea and understanding of what race means. We were very fortunate to visit L.A at a time this country is going through much change on the racial and poverty fronts and on amny a level watching the populations of L.A come out and fight for what they deserve. In a time when coloured persons are being killed by law enforcement, and the rich poor divide only gets deeper, L.A stands out as maybe a haven where the people there have had enough, now we need to join this crusade, all of us, so that true change can be achieved.

Growing up in India graffiti and art on the walls was something I grew up around and grew up detesting. I had many reservations against the idea of people “defacing” and destroying public property that was shared by everyone. In India I grew up in a upper middle class neighborhood where the ideal set was that public property had to be respected and nobody was allowed to express themselves on it. I never understood at that young age , that these were the spaces for us, the public to make with it what we could.

After coming to the United States I began growing an appreciation for the art that people called graffiti usually but was more, it was mural art. Art that expressed the voices of the populations that were supressed, who could not talk about their problems, or just had nobody to listen to them. The art movement in Los Angeles is rich and varied and has a long and detailed history, but had a brief stop when the Power that would be thought that it would blemish the “true beauty” of the city. There was a ban on mural art on walls and public spaces in Los Angeles for 10 years until 2013 when it was lifted. The government put this ban in the first place to curb the use of advertising for products under the guise of art, and when the ban was lifted the one thing that still remained was consumer greedy corporations. While in Los Angeles we passed by countless pieces of art which were beautiful and very intricate but sold not a message of the artists choosing but a side of the Big Consumer America chose for them. What struck me the most is that within a city so large and “glitzy” the contant and never ending greed of these corporations to take more from the body they are already sucking dry. The city of Los Angeles is filled with the latest in consumer commodities of various brands and makes and varying ridiculous price tags, and these are already making of the economy of this city a large and very lucrative industry. The stealing of the green and public spaces is to me the last straw, where they are taking something as pure as expression through art and polluting it with their greed and necessity for more wealth. The power of art inspite of these many obstacles, like capitalism and the system in place, is seen in the lower income neighborhoods where the populations of L.A that are “hidden away” reside. These are the populations of Los Angeles, that the government try to sideline and keep away from the true possibilities available to them. Skid Row has some of the most powerful and deep setting mural art and telling the stories of how far pushed away the homeless and the racial minorities have been pushed and shoved.

One particular mural stuck out to me more clearly, in Skid Row told me a story on my first day in L.A that I hadnt truly been able to grasp until much later. When walking into the neighbourhood known as Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, there is a mural on the wall which reads Skid Row , City Limit, Population: Too Many. And thats all it said, with so few words clearly painted the bleek and dowtrodden picture that was a reality to those that resided in this area. It painted the truth of how broken the entire system is, and how far capitalism has pushed us to forget how to care for our fellow man before ourselves. The epitome of greed that has been fostered has winners and losers, and these were the those “losers” , and they were so because the powers that would be deemed them unfit to be part of society. The power of art will prevail and send their message as long as there is an audience to know its importance, we must remember that our greed is not the be all and end all, there are priorities higher than that, causes larger and more importantly fellow humans more important.

The power of information and knowledge is something that really struck me while in Los Angeles. After coming back I had to go and get my documents renewed and I went through the hurdles, but it was much easier for me to complete the task because I was priviledged to have an education and can read and write in English. When I came to this country for the first time, myself an immigrant from India, it was to go to school in Minnesota for my undergraduate degree. I was blessed to be a green card holder so my immigration status was not particularly an issue, but acquiring a basic drivers license without an idea how the american system works, was a huge obstacle. I had so many troubles to deal with, and nobody would anser my questions and even worse having no transport in a cold state like Minnesota is no ride in the park. In Los Angeles the large section of the immigrant population do not have that same priviledge and to acquire anything from medical insuarance to a basic drivers license have to move mountains, and that is if they can acquire the documents needed in the end.

The education system for many immigrants who come into Los Angeles is a difficulty to deal with, the public school system is broken and not equipped to handle bilingual and multilingual students who do not speak english. The immigrant population which is concentrated in a few areas of Los Angeles, like Boyle Heights, Pico Union and East los Angeles have bigger and better funded police stations than schools, Boyle Heights being the best example. The thought that crossed my mind recently while thinking back about it makes me shudder, the idea that the government is sidelining certain populations just because of the colour of their skin and their Immigration status, legal or otherwise. The irony is that these are the men and women that keep Los Angeles running, but always the most ignored and sidelined, the Latin American and South American population being the majority. Many of these immigrants came over the border as refugees from violent wars and coups in their countries and America was their way out of a tortured existence or worse death. The system in place to receive refugees from countries so close is very badly managed. There are however NGO’s which deal with the problem of the uninformed immigrant in the United States.LIFT is one of those organizations, which do an amazing job with the education and providing of information and basic services to the legal and otherwise populations of Los Angeles’ immigrant family. What struck me most about this organization is not just the great work they do with providing of information to the immigrant populations but also the outreach work they do to influential and wealthy persons in the Los Angeles society to educate them on the importance and necessity of making policy towards bettering the cause of the immigrant and not 1% population of the L.A area. They conduct a role play exercise every year where they invite their influential and wealty contacts within the area and reverse role their situations where they have to play immigrants or just Americans who do not speak English, and come from a lower income background and have to acquire medical services or documentation to allow them to be a productive member of society.

Reversing the roles on these the 1% of the Los Angeles population to me is the most important task that is carried out by this organization because it creates empathy. When one goes through the true hardship that these populations of Los Angeles go through just because they do not speak the language or sometimes more insidiously are not the right skin tone, a certain understanding and a bond of sort is created. And that is but the first step in ensuring the betterment of this dire situation of ignored and abused human rights.

Prison, probably after death, is the worst fate to befall an individual in the society we live in. The idea of imprisonment as punishment is by no means a new one, it is as old as the idea of the state itself, and dates back as far as the times of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon around 1750 B.C. This form of punishment was intended to help the accused ponder and perform penance of a sort to absolve themselves of their crimes and sins. Since those times, the prison system has evolved variantly and much around the world, but none as starkly as the Prison system in the United States. The United States holds the dubious honour of having the most incarcerated citizens on the planet,at a rate of 100 prisoners per 100,000 of the population. So for a system that serves such a large population of the country, must be done with respect for their rights and needs to, and thats where the buck stops.

While in Los Angeles, we visited an organization that works primarily with the incarcerated population and the protection of their rights within the country but especially within the city of Los Angeles itself. The general notion sold when one is sent to the prison system is that you have lost all your rights and whatever happens to you within the walls of the peninteniary is absolutely part of the sentence one pays back to society. The assumption that rape, and the devolving of your humanity is part and parcel of one’s sentence is one of the most glaring factors to why change must be made within the system. There have been attempts made to push change upon the Prison system at least in the protection of the incarcerated citizens, like the Prison Rape Prevention Act (2003) which is a universal rule system across the country and a federal law that both the Department of Justice and Corrections have to adhere too. The saddening part is that these laws do not translate as easily to practice especially within the Prisons, that is upto the wardens and the correctional officers to bring the law into being. The statistics for rape and sexual abuse within the prison system is rather abhorrent, such as 4 % of sexual abuse in prisons are in the last 12 months and 3.2% in jails. 1 in 10 persons incarcerated in juvenile detention centers are sexually abused and 80% are by staff of these detention centers, and these are only the statistics of the sexual abuse reported. Most of the time within the jail system sexual abuse isnt reported because either there is the problem that it was committed by the staff of the facility which creates a fear of repercussion if one came forward and there is the fact that most men who are sexually abused within the prison system, are ashamed to come forward because of the connotation of homosexuality within our society. There are other issues also that come into play within the prison system , such as sexual slavery rings which are becoming rampant and puts at risk more of these incarcerated citizens who when are released after time spent , are shells of the people they used to be and not capable to handle normal society anymore.

The idea that imprisonment will solve the issue of crime is quickly becoming a farce, yes it does help the few who when released can be added back into society as a functional member, but the systeme the way it is now is not conducive to that. The Correctional System in the United States now, only further damages the psyche and will of these individuals further and then throwing them out to society where they arent given any aid or help to get back on their feet. The stigma of being a former convict even after one has served their sentence does not encourage the getting better and wanting to be part of civil society. The correctional system has to change within this country to respect that these incarcerated individuals are people too, and no matter the colour of their skin, their economical background or their educational qualification they deserve to have safety and security while they serve their sentences, so as to encourage the idea that there is a society out there waiting for them to return. To be a part of again.

The men and women that serve as police officers in this country over the past year or so have been coming under heavy heat because of the methods and procedures that they follow to “maintain the peace”. Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police, and this is what much of America has come to be if you are on the wrong side of the racial divide. With cases such as the Trayvon Martin incident and the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri only adds to the notion that the police force within this country is racially biased and are putting individuals in their graves for it.

While in Los Angeles, the ever reaching arm of the law was very prominent in certain areas rather than others, which brought up the question of why here, and why so many? Los Angeles as a city, has had her fair share of run ins with law enforcement , most infamously during the Rodney King Riots of 1992 where widespread anarchy and chaos ensued in parts of Los Angeles because of the acquital of police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King. The Rodney King riots were a part of the history of Los Angeles we heard a lot about while in the city, it was like a time where everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing. The most interesting retelling was when we were ferrying between the organizations we were visiting, and our van driver drove past the cross roads of Florence and Normandie where the riots had originally begun on that fateful April 29^th night. He talked about how a truck was stopped at that very intersection and pulled out and beaten by a mob in retaliation for what had happened to Rodney King. The way he told us this story, one could sense the fear in his voice, how close his beloved city of Los Angeles had come to falling into absolute uncivilized chaos. The idea that this was all caused by the abhorrent behaviour of those we put our society’s safety and security in, is beyond what any state should allow, especially the United States. We visited the downtown Los Angeles are and made our way through the many neighbourhoods within, these included the Arts District and Skid Row and alos Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo. The presence of police in the hordes in areas like Boyle heights and Skid Row, where the homeless and immigrant populations reside puts one at a state of discomfort. For one, in Boyle Heights, the substation of the L.A police Department is one of the largest in the entire city and the size of the Boyle Heights area does not warrant it. In Skid Row, while walking around during daytime , I counted at least 4 different police vehicles “patrolling”the area constantly, as if to remind its residence that they better be careful cause they were being watched, constantly. On the flip side, the areas of the Arts District and Little Tokyo are almost devoid of law enforcement to the naked eye, these areas are much wealthier and heavily gentrified and seem to within the idea of what is “acceptable” to the law enforcement there.

 The battle for the soul of Los Angeles, is one that is less subtle when it comes to racial and other minorities against the police, in the eyes of law enforcement, it would seem that all people of colour could be a criminal and vagrant. The idea that the police are for the protection of some and not all is a detail of the system that must be fixed, if there is to be a clear and open dialogue for the improvement of race relations in this country. The irony to me was how the race relations within this country took a turn for the worse once the First African American President was elected into office, there is a troubled notion here that the government and officials working within policy must address, but more importantly those living within this oppressive and discriminatory system must speak out. For change to come, it has to be from self reflection and addmittance rather than a repeat of the Rodney King riots with violence.

The L.A experience opened up to me an issue I grew up around and in for the first 18 years of my life but never noticed, never paid attention and even more sadly never knew was a problem in the first place, this issue for me was gentrification. I grew up in Bangalore, India a sprawling metropolis located in Southern India of 7.8 million persons, where the concentration of population within the city is very high and the surge forward towards development and growth is always pushing. Gentrification to me growing up never occurred, I wasnt aware that certain rights were inalienable to individuals, one being the right to green and open spaces.

While we were in L.A the idea of green spaces, or spaces that were left intentionally without any development so the society that lived in that area could make what they could from, were seen as an inalienable right that was being encroached upon by the City of Los Angeles and especially so by the government and the Powers that would be. In L.A the push to make the city, like the one in the movies that the film industry propogates, has cost thousands of lives and even more clearly the lives of countless landmarks which were not seen for their true value. The gentrification of Los Angeles is more than a story of displacement and homelessness, but a story of injustice and the wielding of power irresponsibly by the sliver of those who control it. The search for development and making Los Angeles, at least look like the “city of dreams” , that it is sold as takes the process of gentrification from one of just pushing out the unwanted and bringing in the new and the more developed, to blaming the people and citizens of the city for not being able to cope with the system in place and get rid of them.

The removal of this “blemish” is truly more harsh Darwinian than required or should be asked of these populations, the evolve or persish mindset to how the city of Los Angeles treats the most helpless and marginalized, is rather abhorrent. Boyle heights is at the very epicenter for this battle, where the city in its infinite wisdom has placed a large sub station of the police Department and a very swanky new hospital when the school in the same area is heavily underfunded. Boyle Heights is also the neighbourhood within the L.A downtown district that has been home to the immigrant population that makes its way across the border legally or otherwise for over 60 years, beginning with the Jewish and Korean immigrants to today with the Mexican, Honduran and Salvadorian immigrants. The idea that the government is targetting the immigrant population and using their lack of resources and knowledge about the system to hoodwink them into seeling their homes, and even livelihoods, puts a spin of insidious and even evil to the larger story of gentrification.

The push for development is one that the entire planet seems to running after with much gusto and even more spirit, to prove that we can and have evolved into this 21^st century in much flourish. But the idea we are doing this to our spaces of living for the betterment of the society that lives there, is a farce and a bold faced lie. The idea that development is for the people on the ground is one that the city of Los Angeles has changed, the development a lot of the times, seems to be to remove the “blemishes” that the 1% sees and is put off by, which range from the homeless, immigrants, low income housing etc. The “overlords” of Los Angeles in search for perfection within their city, forgot that much like the art that adornes the walls of the city, the imperfections bring out the true beauty within.

The violence against women is a an epidemic of rather frightening levels, not only in this country but the world over. The “rape culture” that is prevalent and often reinforced in my home country of India is a problem that we as Indians have done little to solve. There is a certain shame that comes from being recognized as one from a culture that not only pushes down their women but also defends itself for doing it. I personally, have huge issues with how much danger and peril women in India live with each and every day.

One our second day out in L.A , we visited an organization that dealt with violence against women and the measures been taken to overcome these problems. This  wasn’t my first experience with violence against women in this country, while completing my undergraduate studies in Minnesota, a certain athlete was accused of sexually assaulting a woman on campus, and it was a story that made waves within the community but when push came to shove, the administration chose to not suspend or penalize the athlete in any way or form. This behaviour, especially towards persons of celebrity and fame is quite rampant and has occurred much too many times within popular culture, from Kobe Bryant of Los Angeles’ own Lakers to more recently Ray Rice formerly from the Baltimore Ravens NFL team. And in both cases, neither athlete was convicted or incarcerated for any period of time, Ray Rice was suspended from his position on his team but no legal action was taken against him, this is the sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in.

The same epidemic which troubles my home country is one that is rampant here too, the culture of men being in a higher and superior place in society than women are and that patriarchy is putting a heavy and terrible weight that only makes the issue more stark.  What really struck me about the organization we visited was the approaches to dealing with the issue of sexism and rape culture and going to the source of the problem to try to cure it. One of the social workers at the organization told us about how they looked at the problem in the form of an analogy where there is a river and there are babies floating in it every day, and everyday you ask why are the babies in the river,  but one day you realize you want to know where are the babies coming from and why they are in the water in the first place. That’s exactly how the solution for this problem comes around, we have to start questioning why this rape culture is propagated and where it comes from rather than standing idly by while babies float by in the river. It would be unbecoming and even more so shameless, to our fairer and more brilliant counterparts to be put down while we say and do nothing. It would be letting down to all the feminine members in our lives that stood up and fought for us when we couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t know how, so for all of them, our mothers, sisters, lovers, friends, take a stand MANkind, its high time.

     Los Angeles today was open to me in earnest, we visited the heart of the city of sprawling millions. One of the neighbourhoods that constitute Downtown Los Angeles was Skid Row, the area which has one of the highest homeless populations in the United States. The word Skid row, comes from the Pacific coast loggers who when fired, were “sent down the Skid road”,  where society threw out those who wouldn’t fit into their ideal.  This area, is a hop, skip and a Metrolink stop away from the posh Little Tokyo district and the high rise Financial District , and is where the glitz and glamour of L.A stamps down those they would rather not see.

     Like every growing city, L.A too is constantly evolving and some of its residents with lower incomes and physical and mental disabilities are paying the price. Skid Row, being in the downtown area is where much of the services provided to aid those who are in need of these services, be it health clinics, or lower rent housing were available here. But over the years, the evolution of Los Angeles has started straining on these citizens who cannot afford to live in the ideal set up and are “spit to the streets” remorselessly. The process of gentrification is rampant around Skid Row and is creeping upon it, with large scale developers refurbishing low income apartments to high rise lofts in the heart of the area. This is seen as a process to get rid of anything that isnt constantly moving forward or progressing in the city, sadly this progress is not quantifiable in any other way but through income.

     But when walking through this area I would never assume that these, the homeless of the L.A community are unhappy or downtrodden in any way, “uninhibited” would be my guess. The comradery and the general feeling of community is truly wonderful to behold and take care of. These , that society deemed not worthy have gone into an area where there has been no resources or funds put in by the government to better it but treated as the forgotten and ignored. We visited three housing and shelter buildings for the homeless, which included Star Apartments and Lamp Village and the heart of the residents and clients in these facilities resonated with me. A lot of the persons who were homeless previously to living in these permanent housing facilities, were either individuals with a mental or physical disability, recovering addicts or veterans of the United States Armed Forces. And these were people who had been dealt the worst hand in my opinion and you would expect that anger and frustration to be shown loud and clear, the hope that is present in Skid Row is unlike any I have seen before and does give me a sliver of faith in humanity.

     One of the social workers we met yesterday at one of the shelters for the homeless we visited, referred to his organization as a bus stop of sorts for people to find a way back into society by just waiting at the bus stop. I personally believe that Skid Row is that bus stop that if one waits long enough at a bus will come and get to, to take you to a better time and place in your life. With the heavy and rampant gentrification that is going on in the Los Angeles and heading towards Skid Row, to flatten and cement over any resistance to the development had planned. The situation in Skid Row is bleak and rather grey but the hope that prevails no matter among its residence gives faith for a better tomorrow, and for that I salute you, “the Rose that grew out of the concrete”.

The L.A I remember wasn’t one that stood out, I was 16 and visiting the United States for a wedding and more importantly for the first time! I was hoping for the L.A from the movies with all the blaze and glory but i got something much closer to what I had seen at home in a big city in India, and not something i expected in land of the free and the home of the brave. The homeless, the poverty and the extreme rich poor divide especially caught me unawares. I preferred the Seattle and Denver during that trip to L.A, just a Utopian idea of America. Its been 7 years since and I have been living in the United States for 6 of them and i have seen some of the widest and across the spectrum differences in this country, in issues varying from standard of living to education, from sexual orientation to racial equality, which really doesn’t come across to a tourist.

I am writing this from L.A the night before our fieldwork begins tomorrow morning, and this time i feel more aware to the “true” L.A if i might be so bold. I got here earlier today by train from Monterey and the first glimpse of the city was more familiar than i expected, mostly because of the warm weather similar to what I am used to at home. My first experiences on this trip back to the City of Angels have already been very interesting only fueling my excitement to the beginning of the immersion into what constitutes this teeming 3.8 Million person Metropolis. While exiting the train station,  it was very palpable in area around that homeless situation in the city has not changed much since my last visit. And this time I couldn’t help but notice the racial majority of the homeless people in the area were African-American, and in a time where this State let alone this country is going through a time of questioning the truth in the racial equality of her citizens. It stunned me to see all the newspaper articles, and polls and reports that spoke about the huge economical racial divide, so palpable and obvious in front of me. Don’t get me wrong, I was aware that there was a separation of wealth  on the basis of race present in the society, i just didn’t realize or truly wrap my head around the severity of it.

We start tomorrow and i feel that this my opportunity, not only as a man of colour but also as a practitioner in the future hoping to bring about change, to truly pay attention to the racial divide in this one of the United States largest cities and the center of the Western media world. Look past all the “blaze and glory” the younger me was looking for and try to peek behind the curtain to learn a little about Los Angeles, the city of people not Los Angeles the city of celebrity.