‘Your View’/ City students see stars for first time, fight for justice,
Los Angeles residents in a Mono Lake program see stars for first time, share thoughts on racial justice
Ed note: This article contains content about the displacement of Indigenous people and violence towards communities of color, including police brutality. This article was written and inspired by the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe’s traditional homelands and waters – the Mono Lake Basin.
Carried by the Los Angeles Aqueduct, water diverted from snowmelt in the Sierra above Mono Lake flows 338 miles south to the city of Los Angeles, creating an inextricable link between the place the water comes from, and the place it flows to.
The water that forges this unlikely connection also shapes the people who live off it, facilitating an exchange of ideas between Mono Lake and Los Angeles.
The Mono Basin Outdoor Education Center embodies this connection. Founded in 1994 in partnership between the Mono Lake Committee, the Mothers of East Los Angeles Santa Isabel, and other Los Angeles-based community groups, its mission is to “build understanding and appreciation for the Mono Basin-los Angeles watershed.” The OEC brings Los Angeles students and community groups, primarily from historically marginalized communities, to the Eastern Sierra to educate them about the place their water comes from. It empowers them to return to their communities with a deeper understanding of the links between water and power injustices – and resistance – from rural California to the inner city.
Like so much in California, the story of the OEC begins with water. The Sierra Nevada forms what Santiago Escruceria, the Outdoor Education Center Manager, calls “the backbone of California,” as “most of the snow that eventually turns into water, that is used by most of California, falls there.” Without water, there is no life, he says. “No water, no agriculture. No water, no wildlife. No water, no forests. We would not be the state that we are now, if it wasn’t for that resource called water that falls on those mountains up there, on that mountain range.” When students and organizations from Los Angeles, many of whom shower and cook with that very same water at home, come spend a week hiking up and down the “backbone” from which it originates, Escruceria and other OEC program leaders have the perfect opportunity to educate and empower.
Part of the OEC’S legacy lies in its ability to help groups begin understanding the inherent connection between the Eastern Sierra and the place they come from. This summer,
I had the privilege of speaking to OEC participants from two groups who came to the center: East Yard Communities for Environmental
Justice (EYCEJ), an environmental health and justice non-profit that is “working towards a safe and healthy environment for communities that are disproportionately suffering the negative impacts of industrial pollution,” and Pacoima Beautiful, an environmental health and justice non-profit with the mission of “empowering community members through programs that provide environmental education, advocacy, and local leadership in order to foster a healthy and safe environment.”
Over the course of their time at the OEC, members of these groups began to see water as a medium for understanding environmental justice as a linking factor between their communities, and Eastern Sierra communities. The Mono Basin-los Angeles watershed links together two seemingly opposite locations, some told me, by connecting at least one part of the environmental issues they experience, and the people who bear the burden of those issues. In addition, group members believed, conversation among the people of that watershed provides something like hope for a cleaner and more just future.
These conversations provide insight into the stake we hold in one another’s well-being, both environmentally and socially. This article is designed to model the flow of the conversations I had in order to write this article, and thus takes on a very long form (Stay tuned for next week’s issue of the Times where the second section of this article will be published).
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From the moment the OEC participants’ cars reach the Mono Basin, they are thrown into
an environment unlike anything that most have experienced before. Program leaders encourage participants to lean into and embrace this difference, which they say often leads to the most memorable experiences and realizations to bring home. “I need you to take a feel for this place,” Escruceria told the EYCEJ group on its first full day. “That is how you are going to get the most out of being here. What changes, what sounds, what smells? What are you feeling in your heart?”
For many, one of the biggest of those changes and feelings is the nighttime sky. Marlene Ceja, a rising junior at San Fernando High School and member of Pacoima Beautiful, recounted: “In
Los Angeles, we don’t ever see stars. If we’re lucky enough, we can see 5, and they’re really tiny. I’m talking about my home,” she said. “When I look up, I can barely see anything. And when I got here, I would see shooting stars. I think that was the thing that stood out to me most.”
Vianey Moreno, a youth leader at Pacoima Beautiful, similarly reflected: “For a lot of the kids, it’s their first time seeing the sky be so bright, with so many stars at once. Some have gone camping, but for the majority, nobody has ever taught them so deeply about things like what constellations are in the sky.”
Other program participants noticed the difference in sound right away. “It’s so noisy in L.A., right? (You) can hear dogs barking, the freeway, helicopters. There’s so many sounds,” said Tiff Sanchez, a youth organizer at EYCEJ who came to the OEC with a group of coworkers from her organization. “And then when you get here [to the Eastern Sierra] it’s just quiet. And it’s so loud. The quietness is so loud.”
With experiences so far outside their norm, group members often find themselves pushed outside of their comfort zone. America Gonzalez, a rising senior at Sun Valley Magnet School and member of Pacoima Beautiful, remembered how she felt on the first night when her group went on a solo night walk. “The first day we came, Santiago put us to walk alone by the creek in the dark. So many fears came to me. I was like ‘This is so scary.’ At first I didn’t like it,” she said. “But at the same time, I was like, ‘Okay, it’s fine. I’m going to be okay.’” After she finished the walk, Gonzalez said, she had started to love it. “I felt awesome. It was awesome,” she said.
Group members testified that getting to see nature and push one’s comfort zone in this way is especially significant coming from communities with very limited access to outdoor spaces or even green spaces within their city.
“We don’t have access,” said David Diaz, a youth organizer with Pacoima Beautiful. “It’s city city city. That feeling of belonging, like you belong in the natural spaces, we didn’t have that growing up. I know it’s really hard to feel that belonging when you don’t have a lot of access to outdoor spaces, so I’m really happy that we can take [our students] here.”
Gonzalez had similar thoughts. “There are places you can hike (in Los Angeles). But you only see it in the nicer areas, you don’t see it in your own neighborhood. )(Being outdoors) is not a priority, for sure. It’s more like a privilege,” she said.
Being in the outdoors in the Mono Basin, then, is empowering both for the sake of simply getting to be there, and for the knowledge and experiences that group members are able to take home and use to support their struggles for justice in their neighborhoods.
“We are part of what folks call frontline communities, Black, Indigenous communities of color that are burdened with disproportionate costs of pollution,” said Paola Dela Cruz-perez, a youth organizer at EYCEJ. “That means all kinds of pollution, specifically air pollution. We have warehouses, we have refineries… ports, railyards, diesel trucks. All of it.”
Sanchez illustrated what that frontline community looks like when she was assigned to draw her neighborhood during one of EYCEJ’S programs. “I have the bridge, this really busy bridge right across my street,” she said, showing the drawing. “We get these really beautiful sunsets, but that’s because of the air pollution. There’s a large police presence. There are houseless folks living on the streets, and street vendors. I didn’t draw any faces on them, because for whatever reason, society doesn’t deem them as a part of it. Those are our communities.” Ceja spoke to this as well. “My community is very polluted, and we don’t have the best resources,” she said. “We’re looked down upon because we are low-income communities.”
For this reason, group participants explained, they have been forced to realize the importance of slowing climate change and advocating for safe environmental practices, because the repercussions can sometimes be the literal difference between life or death. That’s the reason why these OEC participants joined the environmental justice groups they did, and the reason those groups have achieved many successes in keeping their communities safer from pollution and other negative environmental impacts since their founding.
However, the work is difficult, and the odds – and the structure of our society – are stacked against these groups.
For example, Ceja said, “In Pacoima, there was a methane leak, and we didn’t even know about it. We were trying to shut down the gas plant, because they were trying to keep it a secret, instead of just fixing it. The leak was there for two years, and nobody had a clue.”
Joining Pacoima Beautiful, she explained, inspired her to begin recognizing and fighting against these injustices. “Honestly, I didn’t even realize [what the gas plant was.] I knew that it was there, but I didn’t know what it was until I came to Pacoima Beautiful. I would never have even questioned it. That’s how used to [these injustices] we are,” she said. “I wish things like this could surprise me. I would want an injustice like that to surprise my community. But it doesn’t, because it’s Pacoima, so what do you expect, you know?”
Ed Note: Caelen Mcquilkin was born and raised in Lee Vining. She is a Sophomore at Amhearst College.
Part 2 of this essay will run in next week’s issue of the Times.