While my "initial impression of LA" post was laced with the pessimism of someone who has been trapped behind a desk in corporate America - shackled to his car at all the wrong times and staring enviously out the window at anyone breathing un-conditioned air - today gave me hope.
Why?
Because in a mere 6 hours, I saw a side of Los Angeles that I have not seen in the previous 6 years. The usual gloomy statistics that accompany any discussion of health in America were in abundance. And I have ventured east of Western and south of the 10 before today, so the neighborhoods we walked through were not the source of the impact.
Rather, it was the people who, one by one, spoke to us with a level of passion and dedication to their respective purposes that one simply does not see within the confines of corporate office culture.
Rosa spoke to us in broken English about the factors which decide whether or not a low-income family with all the health education in the world even has access to the foods required to maintain a healthy diet. Dr. Ward detailed the science behind diabetes and between biological insights, found time to inject her own personal struggle with weight loss and fear of diabetes into her talk. Jeremiah and Pri outlined their SB120 initiative, designed to hold large fast-food chains accountable for providing nutritional information to their consumers, as well as their grassroots efforts to improve food selection available in the same local markets that Rosa's study identified as culprits in the limited selection of healthy foods available to certain communities. Valerie spoke of her involvement in landmark school board legislation banning soda and reforming public school cafeteria menus in LAUSD schools (which ultimately sparked similar legislation in other counties across the nation). And finally, two of Rosa's Community Health Promoter colleagues told us of their dedication to eliminating the threat of lead paint and establishing affordable housing for members of their community.
In everything we heard on all of these varied topics related to community health, the one common denominator was the passion evident in all of these peoples' devotion to their work. It is not the fact that the places I saw today outside of the sheltered, affluent pockets of white Los Angeles actually exist that gave me hope. What gives me hope is the existence of the people that champion something as seemingly esoteric in the national scope as the availability of fruits and vegetables at local markets in North University Park.
One is taught to think in broad, macro-economic brush strokes in the corporate environment. People outside the company are consumers and those within are simply head-count. Listening to those who spend their lives chiseling away at micro-level portions of community issues in hopes that one day their efforts may coagulate into something grander and lasting...I felt invigorated at the prospect of living in this city for the first time in a long while.
