Progressive activist Bernard Hyland on how Occupy Los Angeles can effect political change: "If you're going to get what you want from elected officials, you have to make them need you." Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

Bernard Hyland, a software analyst and progressive activist from the Los Angeles area, attends Occupy LA on November 19, 2011 – eleven days before police forcibly expel protestors from their encampment on the City Hall lawn, arresting 290 people in the process.

Hyland shares his thoughts on how the Occupy movement could leverage its power with elected officials to reform the existing system, even as it seeks to make deeper, more revolutionary changes to the economic and political order.

Occupy LA cameraman Jason describes filming one of the movement's protests in front of a downtown bank: "I was switching out memory cards as fast as I can. I didn't want to get tackled and have the police steal my camera." Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

Jason, a cameraman on the Occupy LA media team, discusses the excitement and the obstacles he encountered while documenting the social movement against corporate greed, as he and hundreds of others camped on the lawn at Los Angeles City Hall for two months in the autumn of 2011.

Eleven days after this interview was filmed, 1400 police officers forcibly evicted the protestors from their encampment in the early morning hours of November 30, 2011, arresting 290 people in the process.

Occupy LA protestor Lucas, interviewed eleven days before police forcibly cleared City Hall lawn, said of the encampment, "Anyone who has a dream of creating a better world is seeing things happen here." Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

The Occupy movement has persisted, despite the forcible eviction of Occupy LA from the City Hall lawn by 1400 police officers, in the early morning hours of November 30, 2011, as police sliced through tents and arrested 290 protestors.

Following a similar wave of Occupy evictions nationwide, protestors against greed and the corporate capture of government have turned their focus to other actions, such as foreclosure prevention and participation in the Iowa caucuses. In Los Angeles, Occupy protestors are expected to appear at the Tournament of Roses parade on New Year’s Day, 2012.

As the Los Angeles branch of the movement goes forward, pushed out of its nest by police batons, a look back at the encampment itself – the ad hoc community which protestors created among themselves – may yet be of interest.

Below are two different versions of the same video tour taken on November 19, 2011, eleven days before the eviction.

The first video is a three-minute version of the tour given by Lucas – a mediator for the nightly General Assembly and self-described “green hustler for the grounds.” It provides a brief sense of the encampment, showcasing its surprising population density and architectural invention, while introducing several of the smaller factions, or “tribes,” into which people divided themselves.

Seen or discussed here are Music Tribe, Bike Scum, Camp Apathy, and the Love Tribe. These groups represented only a small fraction of the overall encampment, which stretched across both the north and (much larger) south lawns at City Hall. Good humor and cooperation are prominent features observed at Occupy LA, while mistrust and paranoia also made appearances.

For more texture, nuance, and surprise, the extended version of the same tour (featured below, and running just under nine minutes) provides the protestors additional space to speak for themselves. In addition, tour guide Lucas explains in more detail the layout and workings of the camp. Discussion among interviewees ranges across politics, mysticism, and even drug-fueled delusion.

Within the tribes there are numerous visible examples of creativity, cooperation, and ingenuity. In one instance, an area resident is seen repairing his bicycle. He is not a protestor, and asserts that Occupy Los Angeles has helped him to repair his bike, offering him free parts and tools on numerous occasions.

However, the extended video also explores more of the tensions underlying the Occupy LA experience. While communal living appeared to suit many participants, there are reports of theft, greed, and distrust of fellow protestors, as cliques hardened within the encampment. In an ironic twist, Lucas and a member of the Love Tribe explain how resources at the camp were not equitably distributed among participants; this is the very critique lodged by Occupy LA against the US economic system.

In another exchange, Lucas and a Bike Scum tribesman describe how – in response to a rash of thefts – the free sharing of communal bicycles had gradually given way to private property under constant watch. It appears that even anti-greed protestors consciously striving for a world of greater justice and fairness must still grapple with the darker facets of human nature within us all.

Occupy LA protestor Morris Griffin calls for investment in "manufacturing, green energy, and livable wage jobs." Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

Morris Griffin, a protestor at Occupy Los Angeles interviewed on Day 50 of the occupation – November 19, 2011 – demonstrated the creative nature of solutions to social problems which have emerged from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Griffin laid out the basics of his plan to allocate state lottery money – which he claimed is presently being misdirected – into a massive public & private employment project, which would provide living-wage jobs to thousands of California citizens.

Everywhere one looked in the Occupy Los Angeles encampment, there were people with interesting, innovative ideas for alleviating the economic crisis. Whether or not they would stand ultimate scrutiny by a panel of experts was, considering the short duration of the encampment, less important than the simple fact that the discussion – among citizens rather than elites or technocrats – was engaged in earnest. An environment like Occupy LA was fertile ground for a thousand such ideas to sprout.

While Los Angeles police mowed through the City Hall lawn in the early hours of November 30, expelling all the protestors and arresting 290 of them, it remains to be seen where or when the Occupy Wall Street movement will spring up anew.

Journalist Harold Meyerson on declining wages in the United States: "The de-unionization of the American workforce is absolutely a crucial factor." Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect, a monthly liberal magazine based in Washington, DC. He is also a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, writes on an occasional basis for The Los Angeles Times, and was a longtime contributor to LA Weekly.

On November 24, 2011, Meyerson sits for an extended interview, in which he weaves together several narrative strands, involving the recent history of Los Angeles and the rise of Latinos as a demographic and political force, the decline of labor unions nationwide and the shoddy coverage they receive in the corporate press, as well as his observations on corporate power and the shrinking of the American middle class. Meyerson also weighs in on the lessons which can be drawn from the career – and coverage – of Steve Jobs. Several segments of the conversation can be seen below, in a series of video excerpts.

In the first video, Meyerson describes the demographic shift in Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s, as Latino immigrants changed the face of the city. Meyerson credits Miguel Contreras as having the vision to mobilize this population politically. Meyerson also contrasts the differing strengths of the Latino populations in California and Texas.

In the video below, Meyerson traces the decline of labor coverage in the corporate press, using the wide press reports of the death of 1940s labor leader Sidney Hillman as a point of departure.

Meyerson also observes how the rise of labor history as an academic discipline has matched the disappearance of labor journalism. Meyerson points out that the decline of labor journalism has allowed misinformation about workers to gain wider play, and go uncontested.

The hard questions about the future of manufacturing and the decline in wages go largely unexamined, Meyerson asserts, except in the Left press, which he points out does not have an especially broad reach.

In the following video, Meyerson links the decline of wages to the decline of unions, and points out the historical importance of unions in protecting the living standards even of workers who don’t belong to unions. This relationship has been upset by globalization, and Meyerson points out that in America the shift in class power has been greater than in Europe.

Next, Meyerson touches briefly on how the destruction of private sector unions has been used to generate a backlash against the remaining public sector unions, whose pay and benefits are supplied by taxpayers – citizens who have seen their own salaries and benefits slashed in recent decades.

Below, Meyerson discusses Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, using it as an example of the long-term disappearance of labor from media portrayals of American life. Meyerson observes that in this enormous, richly detailed biography, the 750,000 Chinese workers who assemble Apple’s products are virtually invisible. Neither is there any discussion in the book of how Apple came to shift its workforce overseas, and end its manufacturing concern in the United States.

In the video which follows, Meyerson draws a distinction between two titans of industry – Henry Ford, who paid his workers enough to buy the products they made, thereby contributing to the creation of the American middle class; and Steve Jobs, who was complicit in the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs to China, thereby helping to destroy the American middle class.

Lastly, Meyerson talks about the failure of organized labor to achieve remedies through the degraded American political system. He notes that labor has embraced Occupy Wall Street, which is a break from historical precedent. Meyerson thinks this is a hopeful sign, and he goes on to say that “continuing forms of mass mobilization” will be necessary to rebuild the American middle class.

Journalist and author Charles Bowden on reordering our national priorities: "We can't have social peace without sharing the social wealth." Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

Charles Bowden, award-winning journalist and author of Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, visits California State University Northridge on November 10, 2011 along with co-author Molly Molloy, to discuss their new book about the devastation wrought by the ongoing drug war in Mexico. Bowden shares his views on a variety of pressing social and political issues, as shown in a series of video excerpts from his talk.

In the first video, Bowden describes what he thinks is required to end the War on Drugs, and its many perverse consequences.

Below, Charles Bowden speaks about the crumbling of California’s education system, and the shift in priorities required to begin rebuilding before it’s too late.

In the following video, Bowden fields questions about his writing style, his creative process, and what he hopes his book might accomplish.

In the video below, Charles Bowden tells why he dedicated his book to Armando Rodriguez, a Mexican journalist he never met, who was killed by drug cartels in Juárez, Mexico.

Bowden irises out from there to discuss the role of the journalist in society, the challenge of reporting from a city as violent as Juárez, and his contempt for the mainstream US press.

He also uses examples from his career to describe how to maintain integrity when working within the corporate system. For him the job isn’t about picking sides; it’s about bearing witness to epic struggles.

In the final video excerpt, Charles Bowden offers his analysis of the intersection of numerous social factors – rising corporate power, the importance of government as a check against it, the decline of labor unions, the impacts of illegal immigration, the catalyzing effect of Occupy Wall Street, and the media’s abdication of its responsibility to the people.

“There are no labor reporters anymore,” he says of the press. “Everybody works, but nobody covers it. Did you ever ask yourself about that?”

Architect Kara Hill details her role as lead designer of the Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University Northridge; Paul Laverack / El Nuevo Sol.

Kara Hill, the architect and lead project designer for the Valley Performing Arts Center (VPAC), shares insights into the history of large performance spaces; she also details many of the personal and group decisions that influenced the construction of the VPAC, which opened in 2011 on the campus of California State University Northridge.

Ms. Hill appears on Friday, November 17, 2011 in the Kurland Lecture Hall (which she designed) as the inaugural speaker in CSUN’s Commerce of Creativity Distinguished Speakers Series sponsored by the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.

Following her lecture, Ms. Hill takes questions from the audience, and she is joined by Robert Bucker, Dean of the Mike Curb College, who was present throughout the development of the new performance hall.

Luis Álvarez en un viaje de práctica social en Colombia. El Nuevo Sol

Por JACQUELINE GUZMÁN-GARCÍA
EL NUEVO SOL

Luis Álvarez, de 28 años de edad, decidío regresar a México en el 2009 después de haber obtenido una licenciatura en Ingenieria Eléctrica de la Universidad del Estado de California, Los Ángeles. Su miedo por lo desconocido fue vencido por la esperanza que abrigaba de poder al fin ser legal en un país y poder trabajar en su carrera como ingeniero eléctrico. Aunque la trayectoria fue un poco ardua, el objetivo final se realizó y ahora Luis puede compartir una historia de triunfo en la cual menciona que “El único obstáculo que te detiene de lograr tus sueños eres tú mismo”.

Escuche la entrevista completa

La decisión de luchar por un sueño:

El adaptarse a una nueva vida profesional y cultural:

La importancia de globalizarse:

Una visa y un pasaporte marcan la diferencia:

La dicha de la libertad y un consejo para considerar:

Daniel, de 22 años de edad, vivió en Carolina del Sur por 13 años y decidío regresar a México en el 2007 después de graduarse de la preparatoria y darse cuenta que no habia posibilidades de que continuara una educación universitaria. Afortunadamente, fue aceptado en el Tecnológico de Monterrey en Mexico, donde este año obtendrá su licenciatura en Relaciones Internacionales. Como estudiante del Tec de Monterrey, Daniel obtuvo dos visas para asisitir a la Universidad de Virginia Tech y a la Universidad de Texas, Austin bajo el programa de intercambio de estudiantes.

Cuatro años después de haber tomado la importante decisión que cambiaría su vida, Daniel decidío comenzar Dream in Mexico, una asociación sin fines de lucro que brinda apoyo e información a estudiantes que como él, tienen la eseperanza de continuar sus estudios fuera de E.E.U.U. Él dice que su mayor motivación para iniciar dicha asociación fue su misma experiencia como indocumentado en este país.

By YOSELIN MONTES-CASTILLO

EL NUEVO SOL

Avenue 50 Studio owner, Kathy Gallegos, sits at her desk surrounded by Latino and Chicano art, planning the next art exhibit.

Every month, Gallegos coordinates events and invites some of the most talented Latino and Chicano/a artists of Los Angles, to display their work in order to educate attendees. Artists like Yreina Cervantez, Judy Vacca, Joe Bravo, and Heriberto Luna–along with many others–contribute to the education of art in the Los Angeles community.

More than a gallery, Avenue 50 Studio is a nonprofit arts organization with the purpose of inspiring intercultural understanding.

“We need the (Chicano/a) art to help us understand who we are,” said Gallegos.

According to Gallegos, before the Chicano/a movement spread, the art medium was rarely seen in Los Angeles.

“There was no other Latino galleries in the city… and the Westside wouldn’t show Latino artists, so I opened the door and I filled a need,” Gallegos said.

Since 2010, Avenue 50 Studio has advocated to teach about Chicano/a art, history, the community and self identity.