Harbor Gateway – Light Coming into Full Focus

By Rick Thomas

Last night, on Feb. 22, the Community Police Advisory Board (CPAB) held its monthly Board meeting in the Harbor Gateway South. For too many years ALL the meetings were held in San Pedro. I have my personal name for CPAB, but that’s for another time, should they choose to continue to prevent the addition of another Board Member from the Harbor Gateway.

For now, I will leave it at that.

Rep. Nanette Barragán was in attendance during the meeting, representing light coming into focus.  She’s from the area and is an alumna of  Halldale Elementary where the CPAB meeting was held.  She is also a USC Trojan alum. “FIGHT ON!!!”  

Tim McOsker, our new city councilman, was present.  For the record EVERY city councilmember for CD 15 has been from San  Pedro since 1951. There is a new City Council office at The Enclave, in our neighborhood. Nothing like that has ever happened in the Harbor Gateway since 1925. Two representatives from Assemblyman Mike Gipson’s office were in attendance as well. 

They represent the new light coming into clear focus as well. But this is just the start, as there are a lot more pounds to bake up, in the words of the philosopher Biggie Smalls.

I moved into the Harbor Gateway five years ago to get out of the Hollywood rat race and live in a community with, well… normal people. So, I’m here. I moved into the most diverse community I’ve lived in for the past 20 years in Los Angeles. There’s no question that every race, creed, and color lives in the area where I reside.     

It is fantastic. I love it here.  

But we have significant issues that still need to be addressed by the city of Los Angeles and our political leaders, which is unacceptable.  

And I get it.  

Most people living in my area are low income, don’t speak English very well, not gonna show up in PDI as voting in the last election and some are clearly undocumented. So, in a way I get it. I understand the political world well after my faded run for Los Angeles City Council a couple of years back.

But I don’t understand how a city ‘intentionally,’ from my perspective, ignores providing basic services to stakeholders in my area of the city.  

This is not something that happens just here in Los Angeles. I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve lived, so this is not something just here in the Harbor Gateway portion of the city. I’ve seen similar phenomena in Boston’s Dorchester, and Roxbury neighborhoods. When I lived in New York, parts of Harlem were ignored by the city.  In West Philly, where I grew up, and North Philly, where I went to college, it was considered “We don’t wanna  do anything for that area.”

That was the attitude of politicians and city officials.  

But that was a hell of a long time ago. It is now time for communities like mine to get recognition. Just because a large part of the constituency near 206th Street and Western are undocumented, can’t vote and English is not their first language does not mean they do not deserve the same services as stakeholders in other parts of the city.

That is discriminatory and quite frankly actionable in a court of law.  

So, to be blunt… our politicians, the city, the county and the state have failed ― with a capital ‘F’ ― underserved communities when it comes to basic services.  

Why?

Because politicians ‘designate’ certain areas of Los Angeles to NOT receive those services. Until someone like me says two words back to said politicians that I can’t fully post here, but the first word begins with an ‘F’ and the second word begins with a ‘Y.’  And we don’t need to know ‘The Queen’s English’ to determine the meaning here.  As an aside, I just found out that there is a ‘Queen’s English’ and there is a ‘Queens English’ as in what verbiage is used by the LGBTQIA community.  

I didn’t know that!  See. You learn something every day.  

I learned over the past five years how politicians and cities refrain from providing services until somebody steps up and calls them out on it.  

As I said earlier in this piece, I will be blunt.  I will not back down on the crap that I have seen when it comes to EVERY city, county and state service to this area. And you can bet the house and the dog… OK maybe not my dog, but you can bet YOUR house and dog that this is happening in other areas of the City of Los Angeles.

That’s got to end.  

-Gatewayat the end of the tunnel.  

We look hopefully to a new future in this fast-growing area. I will continue to use this platform as an opportunity to expose and highlight these significant discriminatory practices by politicians and service providers in Los Angeles. And I will also use it to point out the positive aspects of what is happening in the city, in the Harbor Gateway.  

But there will be no holds barred.  

Buckle up.