Join us Thursday evening at 6:30 — U.S. Bank Community Room on Crenshaw/Slauson, 5760 Crenshaw — as we unveil our strategy for winning the battle for a Crenshaw-LAX Light Rail Line.
We will not stop. We will not recede. We will exhaust all options in pursuit of a Crenshaw-LAX Line that is built 100 percent underground on Crenshaw Boulevard with a station in Leimert Park Village. With important deadlines quickly approaching, this will be our most important meeting yet. We're going to need you to show up and bring your creative energy.
For the Crenshaw Subway Coalition & Fix Expo Campaign, everything is on the table: legal challenges, political pressure, public demonstrations. For four years, we have loudly articulated the unified community voice demanding MTA not repeat the same Expo Line mistakes on the Crenshaw-LAX Line. In addition to the safety and preservation of our community, at stake is Crenshaw Boulevard, the last African-American business corridor in all of Southern California, and Leimert Park Village, the center of African-American culture. We have come too far as people of color and a society that values multi-culturalism to surrender. We roll up our sleeves and prepare to do the lifting needed to succeed.
At the meeting we will also discuss what actually happened at the May 26 MTA Board meeting on the motion by County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. There was lots of confusion after the meeting. We hope to clear it up.
The Man We Needed Who Didn’t Need Us
With South Los Angeles communities of faith, residents and elected officials united from top to bottom, the one local politician elected to represent the Crenshaw community needed to actually tip the scale in our favor for the Park Mesa Heights tunnel and Leimert Park Village station was not there for us. Attendees of the May 26 MTA meeting witnessed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unleash a premeditated attack not just on the Crenshaw community and the Ridley-Thomas motion, but on the Crenshaw-LAX Line project as a whole, through the cynical use of his two appointees, black right-wing Republican Mel Wilson and former San Fernando Valley politician Richard Katz. Villaraigosa's third appointee, L.A. City Councilmember Jose Huizar stood conspiculously silent throughout the debate but voted the way Mayor Villaraigosa told him: Against the motion, against the Crenshaw merchants, against the safety of our children, against the economic revitalization hopes and dreams of our community. Huizar, who has greater political ambitions than either Wilson or Katz, may believe that his silence will spare him in future endeavors, but influential members of the community said the trick would not work. “Actions speak louder than words.” Other attendees said, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has been sticking it to East L.A. and South L.A. communities for years, better not dare come looking for a vote for Mayor in 2013 south of the 10 Freeway. We are just relaying their messages.
Mr. Goodmon, a journalist-activst, may be contacted at www.FixExpo.org
