Deepening Roots: A Conversation with LA-MÁS
This podcast spotlights LA Más, a place-based nonprofit organization supporting communities in the City of LA. Our two guests are Program Managers Alex Ramirez and Linda Reyes, both based in Northeast LA. Hosting this conversation is CoLab Radio Producer Emmett McKinney.
This session was recorded on September 22, 2020, and lightly edited for clarity. The audio podcast is featured, with a transcript of the conversation below. Additional support by Allison Lee, with music by Antonio Moya-Latorre. All images courtesy of LA Más.
Emmett McKinney: Welcome to CoLab Radio. This is a publication of the Community Innovators Lab at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, dedicated to centering the first person narratives of activists, scholars, organizers, and researchers doing the work of social justice. My name is Emmett McKinney, and I am delighted to have with me here today two guests from LA Más.
LA Más is a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that was founded to use urban design as a way to engage marginalized communities in public projects and civic planning. Last fall, LA Más began shifting from an urban design nonprofit to a place-based organization. Recent disruptions prompted a more urgent pivot by the organization. And LA Más made use of social technologies like “phone trees” during its initial crisis response phase, and is now turning to take on more structural issues.
In this episode LA Más discusses how recent crises reflect deeper underlying issues in Los Angeles, and how a new initiative will lay the foundational infrastructure for neighborhood organizing, and provide an entry point for neighbors to build and tap into networks of support.
So I'm super delighted to have with me here today, Alex Ramirez and Linda Reyes, who are both Program Managers at LA Más. Alex, Linda - Welcome, and how are you?
Linda Reyes, LA Más: Great. Thank you so much for having us.
Emmett McKinney: Anytime. So, 2020 has been a year of change, to say the least — and it sounds like it coincided with some shifts that were already underway for your organization. But before we get there, let's set the stage a little bit. Could you talk about the historical context of planning in Northeast LA and the need that your organization was founded to respond to?
Linda Reyes, LA Más: Sure. So I think what we see is that, starkly disinvested communities across Los Angeles have recently, or maybe for the past several years, have been experiencing displacement, as these communities come into the cross-hairs of developers and real estate investors. And Elysian Valley, or "Frogtown", which LA Más calls home and is a neighborhood in northeast LA, is one of these communities. We've seen that the recent LA River revitalization efforts, coupled with market forces have made Frogtown a popular neighborhood for land acquisition and development projects. It really prompts the question of, “Who is this investment for?” As new development attracts, new often more affluent residents, in this historically working-class neighborhood.
Emmett McKinney: Sure, and just to help locate us geographically, you work in Northeast Los Angeles. How do you think about the boundaries of that area?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más : Each neighborhood that we are planning to work in in Northeast LA has its own very unique character. So it's actually really hard to define what makes Northeast LA, Northeast LA. But when I describe it to folks, I say above Downtown, in between North Hollywood on the west side and Pasadena and South Pasadena on the east side. So what our organization really wants to do is to focus on working-class families of color. So those neighborhoods are the ones that we're going to devote most of our time.
Linda Reyes, LA Más: So there's Elysian Valley or "Frogtown", which is our neighborhood, and then Glassell Park, Highland Park, Lincoln Heights, are the other neighborhoods that we've worked with more recently, and then other neighborhoods in Northeast LA include Mount Washington, Montecito Heights, Eagle Rock, Cypress Park and Atwater Village.
Emmett McKinney: So there's quite a bit of diversity there. One of the things that made your organization so interesting is how it originally approached societal change through urban design and specific place-based interventions. So can you talk about how programs, like the Storefront Program for example, initially defined your approach to serving these communities?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: Early on in our work, we did a lot of community visioning projects. We actually did one in our neighborhood called "Futuro de Frogtown". And those were really good opportunities for us to engage with residents about what the priorities were for their neighborhood. That was about five years ago, and we were already hearing from folks the fear of displacement, especially with working-class, and multi-generational families, and the fear of losing the character of the community, which, until then had been largely Latino and Asian families. That work that we did with that community visioning really led how our organization got started.
We were really leading with our skills and expertise of designers and planners, which took us actually out of our neighborhood. We did such a great job with community engagement, that we developed really good relationships with our partners, who then asked us to do projects all over the City of LA — and that included our work like the storefronts and our work developing ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) and improving the public realm.
But we really did miss the connection to our community, and how that helped shape our work. So it's been over a year now that we've been thinking about how to get back to those roots of having our work informed by community voices. And specifically the storefronts and all the programs that we use to run, we really were trying to work with working-class communities, and with our business owners, trying to develop designs that really highlighted their business identity and their values as well.
Linda Reyes, LA Más: I think also we develop these relationships, different partners, and then we're invited to do all these different projects. We have often served this intermediary role, often collaborating with local government on projects, and we were brought on to think about how we can incorporate and center the community's voice. That's an aspect that we have always prioritized in our work. But I think we found that we want to lead first and foremost with the community's voice, as opposed to trying to fit it in, if that makes sense. So I think that assessing that impact also led to some of our shift.
Emmett McKinney: Thanks for setting that stage. You've talked about returning to your roots, and really continuing to center the community. And so as your work has expanded, maybe that means bringing it back to where it all began. Could you help me understand what sparked you to think, "We need to revamp our organization to be placed-based again." What sparked that shift?
Linda Reyes, LA Más: Related to the last point I mentioned, we wanted to see a deeper impact in our work. H aving worked all across the City of LA, and also in parts of the county, we were doing these one-off projects in various neighborhoods, and oftentimes, it was important for us to make sure we were engaging the community that would be participating in, or impacted by, the project. And then we would often hand it off to another local organization that actually had roots there and could help sustain it.
“We want to lead first and foremost with the community’s voice, as opposed to trying to fit it in. That led to some of our shift.”
In our Store Fronts project, we partnered with local workforce development centers or business resource centers. Groups like that could help actually sustain it in the longterm in that specific place. We, as an organization, wanted to have that deeper impact and not just have these projects that we would invest a lot of time in, and then they would end and we hand it off. We wanted to have a deeper, more sustained impact in our community and one that was rooted in our relationships with residents there and could be sustained by community members.
I think also, in terms of the displacement pressures in the neighborhood, and seeing how it's just been a very rapidly changing neighborhood, and thinking about, “Whose voice are we centering in our work? And can we lift up more of the working-class resident in the neighborhood?”
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: Yeah, I think specifically about Storefront Project. We were working in the South Bay Area of LA before COVID hit. We were working with a handful of businesses there. Then, when the shelter-at-home order came, we had to pause a lot of our projects. We continued to check in with folks remotely via phone calls, and during the first two months, a couple of those businesses had to close. That was because they weren't able to access business loans because of their immigration status. These are businesses that had been in the community for over a decade.
So those kinds of situations are the ones that really are hard for us to handle. Because we're not there in the community, we don't have enough resources to sustain them or to connect them. That's the kind of support that we're hoping to build in Northeast LA; so that we can really support the businesses that have been in the community for a long time.
Emmett McKinney: It saddens me to know that these businesses had to close during the pandemic. It's understandable. I think something really interesting that you've just highlighted for us is that, an approach to systemic change — ironically — may mean putting down deeper roots in one particular neighborhood of Los Angeles, as opposed to expanding it geographically. Being able to show all the different places that you work, and how far you're spread out, looks great and feels great for a time. But this question of sustained impact, I think is a lot more dependent on being really rooted in one place.
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: Yeah, and I think we saw that a lot, especially right now during COVID, because our physical relationship to each other really matters. Even though we can do stuff remotely, for a lot of the communities that we're working with, that's a big barrier. So it was really hard for us, for example, to go to the South Bay Area, because it's so far away from our office.
But also, we saw in our ADU work as well, we were working with homeowners all over the City of LA, and every one has a very unique experience. They have a very unique neighborhood, a very unique housing site, and very unique characteristics and needs. So during COVID, we were also working with our homeowners to figure out how can we continue the ADU projects that they were hoping to have, when some of them were very uncertain about their financial future, for example. Whether or not they're going to have employment in the next couple of years.
Emmett McKinney: I'm curious how your approach to physical place changes in the context of the pandemic. When it's physically so difficult and dangerous even to gather together, how does that change the way that you think about connecting with people?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: I think we have to become very creative. So for example, when the first shelter-at-home order came... We have a very small team - back then we were six, now we're seven. We were all working from home. And what we could do was check in with the partners that we already have. And so even though we were working all over the City of LA, our Co-Executive Director, Helen Leung, she grew up in the neighborhood, and because we've been there for a long time, we have a lot of local partners.
We started checking in with folks and seeing how everyone was doing. And that's when we connected with Ceci Dominguez and David De La Torre. And Ceci, she runs the Senior Group in Elysian Valley, and David runs the [Elysian Valley] Neighborhood Watch, and they've been in the neighborhood for, I don't know, over 40 years probably. So they're very well known in the neighborhood. And we were asking them, “How can we help? What could we do?”
They run these organizations alone, but they have a big network of residents. So they were already connecting with each other through this “phone tree”, like informal “phone tree”. It's been a practice that folks in Elysian Valley do, to connect each other with resources, to check in on each other, especially the senior folks. There's a lot of multi-generational households in our neighborhood. A lot of people share information that way.
And so what we did was take that idea of this “phone tree” and expand it. So our team started testing it out for a week, where we got a calling list of about 2000 residents in Elysian Valley. We just started cold calling people with a draft script that was very broad. And it was just a check-in. It was like calling your friends and saying, "Hey, how are you doing?"
We knew from David and Ceci that the biggest concern was people being able to access food and facemasks so that they would be safe. So we were asking folks, "Do you have everything at home you need, including face masks and food?" and then the script would get broader from there. Depending on if folks had those needs, then we started organizing a bi-weekly delivery. So then once we tested that method with our staff, then we started training volunteers and growing this “phone tree” until it got up to 150 volunteers that were making calls to over 2000 residents that we reached in the two months, three months that we ran the program.
Emmett McKinney: What an incredible impact. This idea of social technology is fascinating. We talk a lot about innovation, in a technical sense, as being a solution to any sort of problem we anticipate. But in this case, it was making good use of the networks and the people and the resources that were already in place and had been for a long time.
My question is, what was it about a “phone tree” format, actual person-to-person communication, that you found to be so effective? Why do you think that works so well?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: I think it works really well because when there's a lot of uncertainty, especially like during this pandemic, where we didn't have a lot of information, and we saw a lot of Spanish-speaking families didn't have enough or the correct information, it's really easy to feel very scared. And also there was so much uncertainty.
In a lot of cases, these families, their jobs couldn't translate well to the new circumstances. So they were facing economic strain. Just having that personal touch, that someone cares and someone's checking in with you, was really important. We saw that a lot with seniors. We saw that a lot with our Spanish-speaking families. We also have folks speaking other languages as well. Chinese dialects, Vietnamese. It was that sense of, being able to connect and have someone help you out, help you figure something out.
So, Linda was actually the one who was creating this expansive list of resources. Part of the script was just asking a bunch of questions. "Do you have kids at home? Are you worried about making your next rent or mortgage payment?" And at the end, we would ask, "Are there other things that you need information about?"
And we had this script with all these resources that we would give residents and because we were calling them every week, the next week we could check in, we had all these notes. So we would make notes like, "Oh, I gave this person a recommendation to apply for the Food Stamps Program," or "I gave this person a recommendation of whatever the rent payment was," whatever the research was, and then we could check in with them and make sure that they were able to connect with those resources.
I think it was really helpful in that sense, because we started developing trust with them as well. It really helped that we did the food deliveries. Those were all run by our volunteers, who are amazing. Having that sense that they could count on us to be there, as well, I think really helped.
Linda Reyes, LA Más: I think another aspect, related to the phone chain, maybe also the connection to physical place. We really wanted people to know that we were from the neighborhood, we were their neighbors. I think even part of our script was, many folks weren't familiar with our organization, we specified the cross streets where our office is located. And it surfaces a sense of familiarity, like "Oh, that's near my place" or even a couple of other team members on our staff live in the neighborhood, and specified where they lived. And so I think that also helped with the trust building.
“We wanted people to know we were their neighbors. We specified the cross streets where our office is located. It surfaces a sense of familiarity, like ‘Oh, that’s near my place.’”
And also we have this call list that was already preset, but a lot of the people that we ended up being able to connect resources to were referrals from other neighbors or volunteers. And so I think the way that the “phone tree,” even though we added this infrastructure with a spreadsheet, and volunteers calling that, even though we added that element, it was still just mirroring the existing support networks that were already in the neighborhood, in terms of neighbors being able to connect their family, or friends who lived in the region, to us, as well.
Emmett McKinney: Thanks so much for unpacking that. Several big ideas that stand out to me. One is the parallel with contact tracing. We sort of hear a lot about crisis response, after the crisis has already happened. This has been the response of state and federal level: to only call people once they might be in mortal danger. It’s a similar technology, but used in a very different way.
The approach that you've outlined is to call people and see how they are, COVID or not. To make sure that they have the resources they need, and to really bolster their vitality as a community. I think that's so valuable, and it's proactive, and that makes us not only better able to respond to this crisis, but better able to respond to the next one as well.
Closely related to that, I'm struck by how in this moment, where we feel like crises are happening on a global scale, it makes the interpersonal connection all the more important; to be able to say that, "We are here to help, and I live down the street from you in a physical place." Fostering that sense of connection through place is something that is really lost when we talk about crises on a national or global scale. It's really inspiring what you've done.
I'm curious, going forward, how you think about shifting to a more structural intervention? You talked about going from an urban design nonprofit to a place-based organization. Could you talk about some of the values that guide your pivot to a more structural organization?
Linda Reyes, LA Más: We started this process last fall, and we've been having these conversations and really trying to hone in on what our team's values are, and what it means to make this shift. I think the community response really naturally surfaced a lot of our values and the ways that we could partner with community.
One thing that we wanted to make sure we did was to shift power dynamics. Recalling the fact that we work in this neighborhood where it's been disinvested, certain people have had more access to decision making around neighborhood investment in planning. We really wanted to not only center, but also bring to the forefront, the leadership of working-class communities of color in Northeast LA.
That was something that we wanted to be really intentional about. In the past, we worked with different folks from different groups to find a common ground that would create a successful project. But we really wanted to lead first with the community's values of the community that we wanted to work with, knowing that when we center the most marginalized, we can make a more equitable community for everyone.
““When we center the most marginalized, we can make a more equitable community for everyone.””
So that was one thing that we prioritized. Another was really celebrating the community and really highlighting their strengths. And so, I think through this, we always wanted to make sure that we were in partnership with community and also where possible, just following the leadership of the community members that we were working with.
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: Yeah, as we are running this immediate response effort - and we mirrored it, I'm going to give a shout out to all the social workers out there, because we mirrored the system after a practice that they have that's called "wraparound services," where social workers start working with an individual within a family, but they connect them to all kinds of resources in their community that will support that individual through whatever kind of difficult experience they're having.
And we actually had a social worker come and give us a workshop too, so that we knew how to use those practices that they have in engaging with our residents who are going through really hard times. I mean, we had families that were losing jobs, scared of losing their home. One family had contracted COVID. And then the whole family, you know, these are, again, multi-generational households that tend to live together, so it's not just one family that gets affected; it's several.
We realized quickly that our initiative was not going to be sustainable, because these things that we were seeing are really based on systemic issues. And I think what our team is really good at, is translating informal and formal systems.
So there's a big mismatch, where there's all these systems that are supposed to support communities, or supposed to engage communities for communities can have a voice and say in what their neighborhoods look like. But because there's this mismatch, folks in the communities that we're working with - working-class communities of color - sometimes don't have that access to those systems. So we're playing this game of trying to figure out where the gap was, and bridging that gap, so they could tap into those resources and could start engaging.
As we move forward, our organization is really looking at, What are the systemic issues? When we were talking with residents, the biggest concern for folks was rent - making their next rent payment or their mortgage payment. So we're going to really be focusing on affordable housing and, “What does affordable housing mean in Los Angeles, where most of the properties are single family housing? Where we have a neighborhood with a lot of multi-generational households? Where affordable housing - and not just in LA, but anywhere in the country - becomes politicized? Where there's a big population experiencing homelessness, what will that look like?”
We have our experience developing ADUs. We're definitely going to bring a lot of those values into our work, working with homeowners and with renters. But really as Linda mentioned, focusing on what is that experience like for the individual and tailoring our program to that individual experience, hoping to capture more people.
Emmett McKinney: You touch on your ADU program — and for our listeners that stands for "Accessory Dwelling Unit", which is an additional small structure that one can build in the spare space in their property so that individual homeowners can become providers of affordable housing. LA-Más has run a Backyard Homes Project to facilitate the development of these ADUs. Could you talk about how that project was run, and then amidst the shift to a more structural systems view, how it would evolve?
Linda Reyes, LA Más: So that program was run over the past couple of years through a pilot called the Backyard Homes Project. We're partnering with homeowners across the City of LA, who would receive an all-in-one, one-stop shop initiative of design permitting, optional financing, construction, and leasing support.
We're the designers and the program managers, and then we partner with a collective of other partners - RNLA (Restore Neighborhoods LA) who's a nonprofit contractor, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and Genesis LA, which were our finance partners, Housing Rights Center, LA Family Housing, and St. Joseph Center, who are our housing service provider partners. And finally, the Housing Authority of the City of LA to help with the Section 8 registration. So these homeowners would build these ADUs with us, and then commit to renting the unit for at least five years to a Section 8 voucher holder.
So in terms of how we're looking at adapting that program, related to the point I made about wanting to have a more sustained impact, instead of having these one-off projects in different neighborhoods in LA, I think we want to look at, what does it mean to have more concentrated affordable housing in a neighborhood that's experiencing a lot of displacement pressure? And so we want to adapt the program to a neighborhood scale. And we want to also look beyond ADUs to see what alternative housing models actually work for the existing household structures and dynamics that are present in the neighborhood, and not assume that ADUs are the best way to do that. So we're going to be exploring what those different models are, and really grounding it in the lived experiences of working-class communities of color in Northeast LA.
We're in this fieldwork period of having conversations with community members, maybe having some workshops, and really providing a bit of education about what housing options are there, and then also learning from the community about the ways that they envision affordable housing in their neighborhood or housing stability.
It would be ideal for that program to not just be individuals plugging into a project that they're going to build on their home, but how can we look at it from a more community-driven perspective, where maybe there's a network of homeowners and tenants, and maybe even local construction and design workers who can share resources, or maybe spread the word about if they have a unit available, and really build upon some of that existing social infrastructure that's already there. So, learning from what we did with the community response, like with the phone tree, adapting our program in a way that actually reflects the reality that people are living.
Emmett McKinney: It's a very collaborative effort, is what I'm hearing from you. Could you help me understand the value of having concentrated affordable housing, as opposed to dispersed ADUs all over the city?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: One of the things that we were very happy with, with our Backyard Homes Project, and that we really focused on, was building the homeowners' capacity on what it means to build an accessory dwelling unit. The idea was, you have a property that you own, and a part of that property could become a revenue source for you, especially for working families. The idea behind the backyard home was that there were all of these properties that could be a source of revenue for the homeowners, and that these homeowners just weren't able to go through that process because the construction, permitting, design process is so overwhelming that they'd rather just not even start it. That's kind of how we focus our outreach, and how we design the program.
And we still have the program. The applications are closed now, but we're still working with homeowners who, at the beginning we had interviews with. They were really into affordable housing, because they're going to rent this unit to a Section 8 tenant once it's built. We had to develop their capacity as a landowner, as a person that's going to rent to a Section 8 tenant. There are all these different steps that we took with them, and now they're champions of affordable housing. But we have these homeowners all over the City of LA.
In the process, we realized, "Oh, it's really great when these homeowners can connect with each other and talk about their experiences. If they wanted to go down this route of developing an ADU, we also learned that, because they were really interested in affordable housing, they were really good at influencing other homeowners so that they would be interested in affordable housing. So these are the kinds of things that we really want to develop.
And the other is the concentrated affordable housing in one specific area is needed all over LA. There's a big shortage of affordable housing to begin with, and our sense is that, there's already a lot of working-class families in Northeast LA who are looking at displacement in the next 5 or 10 years. So we still don't know what the capacity is of an area to create enough units for that. We're also focusing on keeping and sustaining the existing affordable housing units that they're already in. So it's kind of an all-in approach where it's not just creating new units, but also sustaining the ones that are already there.
Linda Reyes, LA Más: And I would also add that something that we're exploring, or is a goal for us, is thinking about how we can get to a place of more community ownership. And I think exploring different co-living models and even community land trusts, like models like that, where we can have permanently affordable housing if the community owns it. Or if the community has more agency over what's in their neighborhood. And so that's definitely something we're exploring as part of that shift.
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: One more thing that I'll add is that, you have a lot of homeowners that bought their home decades ago, at very good prices, and now are seeing that their homes are worth over a million dollars, sometimes even two. And they have deep roots in the neighborhood. And we want to make sure that they can stay there. They've not only raised their children, now their children are raising their own children. So there's several generations of folks living in those neighborhoods. And we already see some of those folks moving out. And we want to deter them from doing that.
“It’s an all-in approach, where it’s not just creating new units, but also sustaining the ones that are already there.”
Emmett McKinney: Fair enough. It's a tough position to be in, I imagine, as an organization wanting to preserve a neighborhood while also making sure that people reap the benefits of their really good investment that they made. Making sure that that wealth that's been accumulated stays with those people in that place, is the ultimate goal. Another program that you've recently launched is the Northeast LA Mercadito. Could you tell me a little bit about how that works, and what the inspiration for it was?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: Yeah, so Northeast LA Mercadito is an offshoot of our immediate response initiative. So once we shut down, we ran the first immediate response program for about two and a half months. We were serving 300+ families with these bi-weekly grocery deliveries and facemasks and activity kits for kids and seniors.
We decided to take a step back so that our team could really do some deep thinking about what would be our next step. But we did identify maybe a little under 40 families that were still very food insecure, and that we felt committed to supporting. And so we ran a volunteer-led program, matching those families - the volunteer families and the resident families - with groceries. And we ran that for another two months.
So these have been the last six months, we continue to see a lot of food insecurity in our community. And then we got the opportunity to partner with an amazing organization called Food Forward. They operate out of South LA and they connect nonprofits all over the city with free produce that comes from farmers in the greater LA area.
And this is the third week of setting up an informal farmers market where residents from the neighborhood can come by and pick up whatever they want from this produce. We get four pallets of produce that will serve at least 100 families.
We partner with our community garden, who is the site. It's a really great centrally-located site. We decided to do that instead of our office, because it's just well known in the neighborhood and it has better infrastructure for us. And it also allows us to partner with another amazing organization in our neighborhood called, called LA Compost. Unfortunately, because this produce is coming and there's several hours... anyway some of the produce is rotten, some of the stuff is going bad because it's all boxed up. And so on site, we're doing composting with them as well. It's a great program. We don't know how long we're going to run it for. But our hope is that because we're not food access experts, that we can identify some local leadership that will support this and really take ownership of the program and start embracing it and moving it forward on their own.
Emmett McKinney: That’s so inspiring to me, and the image of the garden really stuck out because it operates as an economic driver. Things get produced out of this physical space and then it provides this social benefit as a physical space for people to gather and it’s more pleasant than meeting in, say, an office. You identified a third benefit, which is that this community garden serves as a critical node in a network. It’s a place where resources can be gathered and shared and distributed.
It strikes me that this is a really needed perspective for assessing the value of resources in a community. That there’s the value that one resource, like a garden, has by itself, but there’s also a synergy. There’s the way that the garden works together, or that the community land trust works together, with various other initiatives, to create a network of support and care.
And part of that, as you mentioned, is identifying other organizations in the area who are carrying out these other services. These partnerships and these networks that you’ve created can teach us so much about what it means to understand the resources that a community has at its disposal.
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: I think it’s very important that - our team is very small, we’re a very multicultural team, we all have very diverse backgrounds, some of us grew up in working-class communities as well - and so I think our values are really embedded in finding the axis of our community. We really see the community as… it has a lot of resources, we just need to tap into them. It has been really beautiful to see - we started this program two weeks ago - last week we had a local bakery give us a bunch of bread that they had leftover for the neighborhood. And it can be this big massive bakery, or it’s also our neighbors down the street that have extra limes or guavas and they bring it in a basket and they put it out there for folks to take home.
So I agree, it’s very inspiring to see how we can start developing these hubs where resources are shared. And our hope is that this is one of many and that we can really nurture hubs all over Northeast LA.
Emmett McKinney: One of the approaches that you outlined in your new mission and vision as an organization is to use design as both a process and a tool. Help me understand what that means.
Linda Reyes, LA Más: Previously we were approaching design as the skill that leads what projects we take on, and our identity was an urban design nonprofit. And so we wanted to step back and realize that, we really wanted to lead with our values and the community’s priorities, and we saw that design was a process for that engagement. A process that could be inclusive, and uncover and amplify voices that might be often unheard, or even not traditionally at the table like these decision-making processes; that it could be a tool to make information more accessible and build the capacity of folks.
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: I think design was product that we were creating for people. I think of our Storefronts work. People tended to see the storefront realized as the end goal of the project. What they didn’t see was all of the design process that was behind that. How we engaged the business owners. How we talked to them about the design. In a lot of these cases, these are not folks that are accustomed to working with architects and designers and talking in, what I would call “design terms,” like color schemes, diagrams and flows. So we really had to tailor that experience so that folks could access that. We believe that folks should have access to really thoughtful, intentional design work. So that was the thinking behind that, is that design is more about, “How do we translate all of that process and stop focusing so much on the product itself?”
Emmett McKinney: Thanks for laying that out. So what are questions that your organization continues to grapple with?
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: One of the main questions that I think about every day when I wake up, “We’re going to run these programs. Where do we invest our time?” Right now, our time is our biggest commodity. We have finite amounts of time, and everything that we do should be something that will benefit the community that we want to work with. And it should be something that is investing in that community, that’s investing in building capacity, and finding amazing leaders in our community, and really having our community inform our decision making as well. And all of that has to do with how we invest our time.
Linda Reyes, LA Más: Another question that we’re grappling with is, in this shift we’re really shifting who we’re prioritizing working with, and that’s communities of color, and thinking differently about how we can be more intentional about our community engagement and involving community leadership. In that, it’s really important to have a culturally-relevant approach and one that’s rooted in a racial-equity lens and anti-racist framework.
And so that’s something that our team is going to be beginning to refine more what that means for us and unpack some of the practices that we may have engaged with in the past, or currently engage in, that might not actually get to the very community-centered intentions that we have.
We’re going to be going through a facilitated process to have that internal dialogue, and see how our experiences are contributing to that work, and then lay out a framework for an anti-racist implementation plan, knowing that this work is going to be ongoing and should be incorporated into everything that we do. So that’s something that we’re just going to be continuing to grapple with in the rest of our work.
Emmett McKinney: Given the preciousness of time, and the importance of community, I’ve been super grateful to be with you here today. I know you have a lot of important work to do. What I’m taking away from this conversation is the fact that resources are really embedded in, and dependent on, community. Maybe the less important story is how one particular organization or individual works, and more about how several different organizations and individuals work together. Maybe our goal is not only the collective pooling of resources, but the collective building of power. I’m really grateful to LA Más for leading that shift and look forward to seeing how you continue to grow from here. Where can we learn more about your work and keep in touch?
Linda Reyes, LA Más: You can check out our website at https://www.mas.la/ and we’re on all social media platforms. Our handle is @Mas4LA. We’re pretty open and transparent, as you saw, about our process in our newsletter and everything we put out. So feel free to stay updated and connect with us there.
Alex Ramirez, LA Más: Definitely subscribe to the newsletter to stay in touch.
Emmett McKinney: We surely will. Alex, Linda, thank you so much for your time. And lastly, this has been CoLab Radio. Like I said at the beginning, we are a publication of the Community Innovators Lab at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. This has been a conversation with LA Más. Thanks again, and we’ll see you next time!
About the interviewer
Emmett McKinney is a Producer for CoLab Radio, where he works to amplify community narratives. Emmett holds a master in city planning degree from MIT (2020). His area of focus includes transportation and water infrastructure, and specifically how equity and justice are integrated into data-driven planning. Outside of CoLab, Emmett can be found running, drinking coffee, and dancing to reggaeton.