From the perspective of a recent East Coast transplant, L.A. is where people come to turn their dreams into reality. Because let’s face it, no one ventures here looking for an easy commute to work or pristine air quality.
Having never known anyone from California or lived in the state myself before, I pictured L.A. in my naiveté to be a city saturated with the aspiring -- actors, screenwriters, directors, etc. Just this week, I’ve met 43 other aspiring journalists like myself!
But what I had not counted on during our group’s trip to the city’s Eastside was meeting lifelong, L.A. inhabitants who were also big dreamers in ways perhaps unforeseeable to those blinded by the region’s reputation for glitz and glamour.
At Homeboy Industries in the district of Boyle Heights, we met Gabriel Hinojos -- a former gang member and prison inmate who now aids at-risk members of his community in finding employment. Under the mentorship of Father Greg Boyle and the staff at Homeboy, Gabriel went from spending 12 years behind bars after a drug and crime-ridden youth to being an assistant supervisor at the site. His smile was particularly broad as he spoke of drinking white wine with First Lady Laura Bush at the White House during a conference on Helping America’s Youth. Keeping his own kids’ future in mind, Gabriel now dreams of helping continue Father Boyle’s work in the community for many years to come.
Practically every available chair at Homeboy when we were there was filled with aspiring “Gabriels;” other hopefuls seeking to meet with the center’s mentors for employment and/or domestic advice.
Homeboy in return offers guidance in the form of jobs at the group’s silkscreen shop, bakery, café and other ventures or by fronting the salary for other employers who sign up their referees. Our tour guide and reformed gang member, Joey Ray, detailed how Homeboy even contracts 9- and 10-year-olds who want work as long as they stay in school with the hope of keeping these kids away from at-risk behavior.
The future also served as an inspiration for the printmakers at Self Help Graphics and Art in Eastside L.A. Today, the gallery and studio continues the work Sister Karen Boccalero started in 1972 by supporting Latino artists. We got to witness as Linda Vallejo worked toward her goal of growing her black-and-white tree designs into blossoming, full-color prints.
So, I learned on my first orientation field trip that I was right to believe that L.A. is a city filled with many dreamers. I just hadn’t counted on discovering that its people’s dreams are as sprawling as the streets here.
Eastside, Hollywood, the Valley… all the places our groups traveled today are just branches of the L.A. County family, and no matter how prominent, each has something to offer as well as to teach its relative.
And hopefully as my preconceived notions about my new home are confronted, I want during my time as a journalist here in the city to get to know them all.