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04/11/06
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
MTA crews unearthed dozens of human remains during construction. Why would anyone care about a few old bones?
Irvin Lai>> This is not Chinese history. This is American history. I want them to understand that.
Sofia Quinones>> It's the desecration of families.
Val Zavala>> And then, all creatures great and small take part in a colorful Los Angeles tradition. We visit the annual Blessing of the Animals.
These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.
Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val Zavala>> Construction workers were digging deep into the earth in East Los Angeles building the latest leg of the Los Angeles subway when something stopped them in their tracks. Bones, human bones, from an old forgotten cemetery. But whose bones are they and what do we do now? As Anne McDermott tells us, many of them are from the community that helped build this city.
[Film Clip]
Anne McDermott>> That's a crew from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, working near Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles. Eventually, all this dirt and debris will be transformed into the nearly nine hundred million dollar extension to the Gold Line light rail system.
The project is supposed to be completed in 2009, but it did run into delays this past summer. That happened when MTA crews were digging into the ground near an old Potter's Field just outside Evergreen. And as they dug, the began finding remains, human remains, bones and more dating from the late 1800s and the early 1900s.
Sherri Gust>> "On June 23, the next day, shallow grading was attempted in an adjacent area. The bone was encountered in the first few minutes and grading was shut down."
Anne McDermott>> That's Sherri Gust, one of the archaeologists called in by the MTA once the bodies were discovered. Eventually, authorities found one hundred twenty-eight full and partial grave sites and Gust and her crew determined that at least nineteen of the bodies were Asian and maybe more. Eighty-three of the remains were so deteriorated that they defied immediate identification.
Sherri Gust>> "So this is another picture of a burial we recovered showing the skull preserved. You can see they're not six feet deep. They're about three feet deep in most cases."
Anne McDermott>> What else did they find? Bits and pieces of a Chinese laborer's life. Treasured rice bowls and spoons and ornaments and other mementos interred along with their owners. All work by the MTA ceased during this recovery project as the pitiful skulls and bones were brought up and taken away to a lab in Orange County. But it would be six months before Los Angeles's Chinese community, now four hundred thousand strong, was notified about the bodies and they're angry about that and they vented at a community meeting last month.
Daisy Ma>> "Six months? I mean, I'm sorry, it's not acceptable to us. We're not going to take it."
Anne McDermott>> For the Chinese American Angelenos who worked so hard at preserving the city's Chinese heritage, the MTA's delay was painful and ultimately perhaps foolish. According to Irvin Lai, the MTA should have reached out to the Chinese community at the first glimpse of a rice bowl or Asian coin.
Irvin Lai>> "We can help you with that stuff. That's the reason why the Chinese community is so frustrated because this is not just one or two graves. There's almost two hundred graves and people are asking me now where is my grandfather's grave?"
Anne McDermott>> Where indeed? And who are these Chinese dead? To find some of the answers, we must go back to Evergreen. Evergreen is an old graveyard. See how its angels are aging? But today, it's still a final destination for the dead of Los Angeles and here you'll find the rich and poor, black and white, and Latino and -- well, you get the idea. It's a democracy of the dead.
But back when it was new, back in 1877, this was the end for the city's elite. Oh, there were some poor folk here, but not in the cemetery proper. They were relegated to a tiny Potter's Field just outside Evergreen, a place for those with nothing and no one.
And in an even tinier corner of that Potter's Field were the Chinese. They weren't penniless, but they were Chinese, the lepers of their day, so they were unwelcome in Los Angeles's stores or schools or cemeteries. They were, however, welcome to work. They came to work the railroad and then they came to dig. Jane Cheung is with the Chinese American Museum.
Jane Cheung>> During the 1800s when the Gold Rush came about in California, many Chinese laborers immigrated to the United States in search of trying to strike it rich and trying to seek better opportunity.
Anne McDermott>> The ten thousand Chinese laborers who'd come to Los Angeles by the turn of the century worked hard, very hard, but most didn't get rich and most of them wound up doing California's dirtiest work, the backbreaking, low-paying, menial jobs that no one else would do. And so they worked and died and were buried outside of Evergreen. Decades went by. The Potter's Field was filled, then closed. Ownership changed, development came and, in the meantime, bodies were dug up, some for reburial in China, some for who knows where? But they were all gone, weren't they?
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Anne McDermott>> No, they weren't gone. For some reason, likely lost to the mist of time, some bodies remained, Chinese bodies. MTA officials have said they didn't notify any community groups about the remains until archaeologists finished their work. Why did they dig near Evergreen? Well, MTA officials said they dug in the area near Evergreen only after being assured by their experts that the crews would encounter no problems such as digging up bodies. They were wrong, but the MTA's Dennis Mori says those experts were working from the best available information they could find. But the fact remains that there were bodies there and you didn't know it.
Dennis Mori>> Well, it appears that nobody knew that they were there. Even with the Chinese Historical Society, they commented that we've helped them to rediscover or discover the ancient Chinese cemetery that they've been looking for for over eighteen years.
Anne McDermott>> But surely Chinese Historical Society members would have preferred that the cemetery was discovered some other way, any other way than by bulldozers dredging up bone after bone. And the MTA meanwhile is urging the Chinese community in Los Angeles to help them decide upon an appropriate monument to these long-lost Chinese laborers. There will also be a proper reburial ceremony, though it's not yet known where or when.
Now some might be wondering who really cares about all this. What does it matter to anyone outside the Chinese community? But a lot of people do care, people like community activist, Sofia Quinones, who wonders if this could ever happen to her father or grandfather, her cherished family members.
Sofia Quinones>> It's the desecration of families.
Anne McDermott>> Irvin Lai says he sees another reason for all of us to care about what the bulldozers dug up. The reason is history, our history.
Irvin Lai>> This is not Chinese history. This is American history. I want them to understand that.
Anne McDermott>> And to understand and embrace the idea of how a despised group of lowly workers, all but invisible in the city they lived and worked in, are finally in death being accorded the dignity and honor they deserve. Anne McDermott for Life and Times.
Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".
Val Zavala>> It seems as though every time you open a paper, you're reading a story about a young person in serious trouble with sex, drugs or serious crime. That begs the question: where are their parents? For a frank discussion, we brought three outspoken people together over coffee. Earl Paysinger is the Deputy Chief for the Los Angeles Police Department. John Hill is President of a mentoring program. And Joe Hicks is with Community Advocates, Inc., an organization that encourages innovative approaches to race relations. The topic? Bad parenting.
Joe Hicks>> Bill Cosby said some things last year that got himself in trouble. He talked about a lot of things, in fact. In essence, he's saying some folks just shouldn't be parents. They don't have the wherewithal. They just don't have the ability to be parents and there needs to be some responsibility when you father a child that you should at least understand what that means. You know, he knows all that, yet home boy came down pretty hard. You're looking at me like um-hum.
Earl Paysinger>> But listen, I hate to disagree with Bill Cosby, but let me just disagree with Bill Cosby. I mean, the fact of the matter is, we assume that because people go through the natural biological essence of childbirth that automatically makes them parents and that's not the case.
I mean, the fact is, when you have somebody, a mother in the home who's under the influence of some mind-altering narcotic, the father's in the penitentiary, and you leave the whole parenting cycle up to a grandparent in the home who's already raised five kids, I mean, where does that come from? Where does that come from? Where does parenting come from?
John Hill>> You can't stop people from being parents. That will not happen. People are going to have children. The question is, are they capable of raising those children?
Joe Hicks>> But are they hearing from responsible sources the notion of individual responsibility for your acts? Should there be some kind of campaign, in fact, to talk about what that means so that a twelve or thirteen year old is hearing these messages? If I'm going to have a kid, here's what that means in terms of responsibility for me. I can't just run off and forget that there's this responsibility.
John Hill>> I think what we need to take a look at is this. We know that there are problems with parenting. We also know that, in the African American community specifically, there are problems with fathers. There are not enough fathers in the homes to help raise children. Take myself. We've set up an organization called The Father's Heart.
Joe Hicks>> I think we got to be careful, though. I want you to come back and talk about this. I want to hear what you do. But we got to be careful so we don't give the impression here that only poor inner city folks are bad parents.
John Hill>> No, that's not what we're saying.
Joe Hicks>> We got this case in Orange County where three kids raped a young woman. The father of one of these kids, in fact, was an Orange County deputy sheriff. So clearly, bad parents come in all classes and races and all that. We know that.
John Hill>> Well, we're not talking about just bad parenting. We're talking about the absence of fathers and why children are behaving the way they're behaving. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about bad parenting. I am talking about there's a problem with children out in our community that this community must take some kind of help to help these children become adults. If that does not happen, you're going to continue to have the problems and you will continue to feed the Juvenile Halls and the prison system unless you take some responsibility.
Earl Paysinger>> The problem that I have, though, when we talk about that is whose responsibility is it?
John Hill>> It's the community's responsibility. It is my responsibility to help raise young men to being men who don't have fathers. That's my responsibility.
Joe Hicks>> All of us have indicated there clearly is a problem out here, yet when people like Cosby -- I know you disagree with home boy -- when people raise those red flags, people say, oh, he's blaming the victim. Bill shouldn't have said that. So the message doesn't get received very well in these cases.
John Hill>> Because he's raised the red flag without a solution. We know that there are problems with bad parenting.
Joe Hicks>> But isn't the first thing, though, to raise the alarm and say there's a problem here?
John Hill>> No. The problem when you're Bill Cosby is to raise the issue with a solution. Everybody knows that there's a problem. I know that there's a problem with no fathers in the homes. Sometimes just raising --
Joe Hicks>> -- I know you're doing some stuff.
John Hill>> I'm raising a solution and that is to bring in men who have raised children to help raise the children.
Joe Hicks>> I've given you all kinds of chance to talk about what it is you do, man, because I know you do some stuff. I know what he does. He puts people in jail. What do you do?
John Hill>> And I'm trying to keep them from going to jail (laughter). What we do, we have a group called The Father's Heart. We have cell phone dads. Twenty-four hours a day, any child in Los Angeles County can call and talk to a father figure anywhere in Los Angeles County through a 1-800 number. What we're trying to do is be the surrogate father to children who don't have fathers. We know that that is the huge problem. We know that there's a solution to that.
Joe Hicks>> I find that, in one way, heroic and, in another way, pathetic that there's a need for that kind of organization.
John Hill>> There was a need for the civil rights movement in the 1950s when you had a country that's been around for two hundred years, but that's another story.
Earl Paysinger>> I know John has done a lot of good work in the organization, but the problem that I see is not the implementation of these types of programs, but in sustaining these types of programs and getting other people involved. Because let me tell you something, being a parent doesn't mean being a parent today and tomorrow. Being a parent means being a parent next year and the year after that.
You know, it's interesting because, over the last several years, I've had an opportunity to visit a lot of different juvenile detention facilities and every one of those young men, when it came time for me to leave, you get literally the tugging at the sleeves and the wanting to be embraced. See, that sends a powerful message that you just can't come there for this quick-fix, microwave, get in there and hit it now and leave. This thing happens over a lifetime.
Joe Hicks>> So then, what do we do to begin to turn this around? I mean, it's clear this is a devastating urban community. What is it we need to do?
John Hill>> We can't just sit around and talk about it. You've got to get involved. If you know that this is a serious issue in your community, you've got to get involved and you can get involved in a lot of ways.
Joe Hicks>> The scope of this is so large that it's going to take something much larger. We're talking about a pandemic here. Is this going to take something that is larger than our ability to just get engaged and nurturing and the kinds of heroic efforts like you? I guess what we're saying here is that we need to begin to find some way to launch campaigns to really begin to deal with this problem.
Earl Paysinger>> Look at what we're dealing with the tobacco industry. We made a conscious and a deliberate social choice to educate not a community, but an entire ecosystem of individuals and now we virtually don't have issues involving cancer, at least as it relates to tobacco. If the community has the will to do it, we can get it done.
John Hill>> But you got to do it regardless of race.
Joe Hicks>> We're running out of time and running out of coffee (laughter) and, without coffee, there ain't no conversation. So we have to take this up again. We're going to get out of here. I want to thank both you guys for coming in and having this chat today. We'll see you next time.
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Val Zavala>> It is the most popular artistic book in Jewish history, the Moriah Haggadah, and it's read every year at Passover. What makes this edition so exquisite? Curator Grace Cohen Grossman from the Skirball Cultural Center explains.
Grace Cohen Grossman>> The Haggadah is the kind of guide to one of the most important rituals in the Jewish tradition and that is on the Festival of Passover which celebrates the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt long ago as recounted in the Book of Exodus in the bible. We are each year to remind ourselves as if we were slaves into Egypt, so the Festival of Passover, which is also a festival of springtime and the rebirth of the land, is recounted through a ceremonial symbolic meal, the Seder, in the home or now in other public places and there are all kinds of different Passover Seders that happen.
So the Haggadah is this kind of guidebook. It's a compendium of verses from the bible and some other Hebrew teachings and of poetry and songs and there's lots of these illustrations over time that give a sense of what different customs were in different Jewish communities in different times.
The Haggadah is the most frequently illustrated book in all of Jewish history. It has been the impulse among artists to give their own interpretation through their artwork that very much reflects the time and the place where they lived. Avner Moriah decided that he would like to join the long history of people who developed new editions of the Haggadah.
Avner Moriah is a Jerusalem-born and Jerusalem-trained artist who went to art school in Jerusalem. He was born in 1953 and he was inspired to do an illuminated Haggadah a few years ago, actually when his wife became ill, and it was part of a spiritual journey for him that relates to the meaning of the Passover.
[Film Clip]
Grace Cohen Grossman>> The Passover Seder is very much about educating. In fact, an important component of it is the youngest child asking a series of questions, the Ma Nishtana, "Why is this night different from every other night?" And in this image, we see a fulcrum balancing two sides. On one side are things that we very commonly do and typically do every day of our lives, every night, and on the other side are elements from the Passover ritual and Seder.
This is the page that talks about every generation and this is the message of Passover that, in every generation, we should each feel as if we were slaves in Egypt. The image has a family sitting around the Seder table remembering the period of the slavery in Egypt. According to this biblical story, the liberation from Egypt took place in the middle of the night and here we see the long procession of Israelites hastening to rush past the Sphinx and the Pyramid representing Egypt. They are a very, very tiny little line of people going across here against this very mighty nation of Egypt, but in the middle of this very black night with these stars in the sky.
There's a very old tradition that Jerusalem is considered to be the center of our universe and Avner Moriah gives his own interpretation of that here with this big blue marble of our world and Jerusalem coming out of it, the old city of Jerusalem depicted as it is with this wall surrounding it. The largest building here is a depiction of what was the ancient holy temple in Jerusalem and other buildings that are still referenced there today, including some of the churches and mosques.
One of the favorite songs that is sung at the Passover Seder is called Dayeinu. From one verse to another, we say, "If God had just taken us out of Egypt, that would have been enough. If He would have given us the Sabbath, that would have been enough. All these things we are grateful for and even any one of them really would have been enough and we are grateful for them all." So we say at the Passover Seder, "Anyone who is hungry, come and eat; anyone who is in need, come and be with me." So there's always this hoping for an ultimate moment of peace for all people.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Holy Week is not just a special time for Christians. It's a special time for all God's creatures, including pets. Patt Morrison explains.
[Film Clip]
>> These are my only children that don't talk back.
>> Our cat's kind of riled up all the time and Caitlin over here decided maybe this will go ahead and take a little bit off of him.
>> Sometimes Chulo is a bad boy, so I tell him you got to go and get blessed every once in a while.
Patt Morrison>> This mural is called "The Blessing of the Animals". It's by Los Angeles artist, Leo Politi, who is known for painting, among other things, "Angels Flight". Now this mural was painted in the 1970's, but the Blessing of the Animals has been an event here on Olvera street since 1930. Those, of course, were the days before dog shrinks and cat psychiatrists, so the only recourse for a behavioral problem was to bring them down to the Blessing of the Animals.
Cardinal Roger Mahony>> "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Lord, our God, who has filled the earth with a great diversity of animals, You who have created them with magnanimity and paternally given them to us, You who ordered Noah to gather them into the ark and have destined them for our service, hear our prayer today. We ask You to protect these animals, to bless them so that they may rejoice in Your presence. Help us so that we may honor You with them. Give us the knowledge and the virtue to take care of them and use them well and wisely for Your greater honor and glory. We ask this through Christ our Lord."
[Film Clip]
Patt Morrison>> This is Osgood. When people ask me what kind of dog Osgood is, I say he's a Highland Collie because if I were going to design a Highland Collie, this is what it would look like. But actually, Osgood is a mutt, a Heinz 57, although I think in more politically correct America, we have to call them multi-cultural canines. As you can see, this multi-cultural canine is a little bit on stress overload. I think he likes bagpipes better than Mariachi and certainly isn't accustomed to this much company, but he'll come out of the blessing better than he went into it, I hope. Won't you? Is that right?
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>> Oh, you got to see this. She loves to get her nails done.
[Film Clip]
Patt Morrison>> Here we go. I think he got a kick out of that. Yeah, there we go. See? You feel better now?
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Patt Morrison>> There were so many people and so many pets and creatures here today that the Cardinal wore out his aspergillum, the silver thing full of holy water with which he splashed everybody, and one of his assistants had to run over to a bush and break off some branches and he used that. Actually, that's not quite true. The aspergillum clogged up and they had to go to the branches. You know, Los Angeles, hard water.
Cardinal Roger Mahony>> We've seen the diversity of God's creation and the animals bring us so much love and companionship and they're such a great help for all of us, from little tiny ones to the great big ones.
Patt Morrison>> There were some huge ones, yes.
Cardinal Roger Mahony>> There were some big ones today.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Sponsored in part by:
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