Thursday, August 13, 2009
Small Victory against Arson Attack

Picture: Arturo is on the left
THANKS to everyone who called the Councilman's Office in Los Angeles yesterday and around 15 people for showing up to picket.
Several dozen people called the Office. At one point after we'd negotiated some action from them they said called us to ask us to get our supporters to stop calling. They'd got 8 or 9 calls in that 20-minutes alone.
Below is Julia's report:
At around 9:15am Art and I showed up at the Councilman's office. We put up our " Campaign for Renters Rights" sign on the wall and I began passing out flyers to cars. At around 9:45am a field representative Alejandra Marroquin who represented Garcetti's office previously and knew about the first incident of retaliation - tires slashed and didn’t really act) saw us. We walked up to her and gave her a flyer. She was fuming. We said we wanted an investigation because someone could get hurt if there are no consequences. She went inside the office.
At around 10:00am more people showed up. We had about 13 people all together at that time. When the new field rep came out, her name is Aida Alvarado, she came at us and said, "Are you Arturo? Personally I dont appreciate what your doing out here..." We just went on and said, "We are demanding an investigation because Art's car just got burned and it could escalate into more violence if the city does not respond." Then the old field-rep came out with her too. Her name is Alejandra Marroquin and she was upset of the whole protest that we were giving them. She too tried blaming us for not properly contacting the city for an investigation. We concluded and said, "When are we going to get an investigation, when someone is killed? Then what?"
So they offered to set up a meeting with the city attorney's office and get something going. We accepted and went towards the building to the 4th floor. All it took was 30 to 40 minutes to get their attention. After they showed us a room so we could wait until someone from the City Attorney's would show.
In the meantime people got to know each other. We had Art's family, a friend of my Mom's, people from Cal State and other friends. Even tenants from the Delano apartments made a 45-minute bus trip to support! The funny thing is that they had a PacMan game in the office. I wonder if the workers of LA paid for it?!
After 30 minutes the Neighborhood Prosecutor for the City Attorney's office showed up. Andre Quinteros. We explained in further detail our case, the history of harassment for organizing and demanded these things from the City:
1. Extend the deadline for Art's car being towed ( he is supposed to get rid of it by this Friday). We want the car to be used as evidence.
2. The City Attorney must get back to us within a week to let us know what is going on. We will call them and if we do not have a sufficient update we may have another action.
3. Since the Fire Dept ruled it arson we need the police to do an investigation on the cause of it.
The City Attorney sounded like it would be hard to prosecute on an arson case but would try to take up other misdemeanor charges that have been committed and then see how to move forward.
It was good to have been so prepared and to have members of CRR ready with questions, information and advise. It was also emotional for the Velasquez family who have been nervous about further retaliation.
I think our objectives were met for this protest and quickly. We were outside protesting and handing out flyers for only 20 minutes before they hurriedly rushed us inside and got us a meeting with the Neighborhood Prosecutor for the City Attorney.

Features the full detail of the arson attack