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04/18/06
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
Immigration is currently a hot-button issue among Latinos, but is it just a Latino issue?
Hamid Khan>> An individual turned around and he looked at me and he said, "Where are you from?" I said, "Well, I live in Long Beach." He said, "Where are you really from?" I said, "I'm from Pakistan." So he looked at me and said, "What are you doing here?"
Val Zavala>> And then, where would you go for a crash course in the history of the Los Angeles art scene? Would you believe Paris?
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>> Latinos are in the spotlight these days, but what about the other would-be citizens from other countries who might be feeling a little marginalized? How do they fit into this intense debate over immigration? Toni Guinyard takes a look at the issue from the vantage point of the "other" immigrants.
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Toni Guinyard>> You've seen them by now, the sporadic protests against a proposed law that would make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant living in the United States. It's near impossible to ignore all the flag-waving, loudly chanting people spilling into the streets demanding attention. Some got it, but the voices of others are lost in the crowd.
Hamid Khan>> All of the people were Central Americans or Latin Americans. An individual turned around and he looked at me and said, "Where are you from?" I said, "Well, I live in Long Beach." He said, "Where are you really from?" I said, "I'm from Pakistan." He looked at me and said, "What are you doing here?" You know, we exchanged glances and then I was like, well, it's my issue as well.
Toni Guinyard>> Hamid Khan is out to change the narrow perception that the immigration debate is a Latinos-only issue. As Executive Director of the Artesia-based South Asian Network, Khan is an advocate for the estimated four hundred thousand South Asians living and working in southern California.
Hamid Khan>> We just can't limit it to whether people are legal or illegal. I think we also need to explore why are people here in the first place.
Toni Guinyard>> This man -- we'll call him Azhar -- left Pakistan sixteen years ago. The reason --
Azhar>> Economic depression and a lot of corruption, you know.
Toni Guinyard>> He applied for asylum in 1995, was denied in 1996 and had a son in 1998. The boy is a United States citizen.
Azhar>> I'm a single father and I'm raising my son. I raised him all my life from since he's been born. So far, it's been good. He likes to live here and I like to live here and keep supporting my family back home.
Toni Guinyard>> Azhar is a college grad with an accounting degree. He now makes a living driving a taxi. He fears deportation, so he doesn't want his identity revealed, but he is willing to share his story.
Azhar>> I came here to achieve a better goal in life in the American dream. That's what it is all about.
Toni Guinyard>> What is the American dream to you?
Azhar>> I believe that you work hard and can achieve anything in America. It's a reward. There is no other reward in any other country.
>> "My family is also immigrant. They were immigrants from Russia and they were not welcome to this country either as Jewish-Americans."
Toni Guinyard>> The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States varies depending on whom you ask and what they have to gain or lose. California has long been considered a so-called melting pot, but non-Latino immigrants say the public protests have left them on the outside looking in.
Azhar>> I feel left behind, but I don't disagree with their protesting because they are more in the numbers, of course. The larger group always is heard and we are way too less, I believe. Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis are way too less, so we couldn't make up a big protest.
Toni Guinyard>> While southern California's Latino immigrant community is clearly the most vocal and visible, other immigrants to the area simply aren't sitting and watching the immigration debate in silence. They are mobilizing, albeit quietly.
On this day, the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center is hosting an informal briefing by Washington, D.C.-based human rights activist, Karen Nawasaki.
Karen Nawasaki>> "And the fact that the things in the bill are actually things that don't just hurt people without documents. They actually hurt legal permanent residents."
Toni Guinyard>> This is one of many small meetings focusing on immigration law that the public never hears about. The small group in a quiet conference room is in stark contrast to the big attention-getting public protests, but the Asian community is poised to become more vocal.
Daniel Huang>> The Asian community does not begrudge the Latino community for the attention it's receiving. This issue is important for both of our communities and for many other immigrant communities and for the United States as a whole, for all Americans.
Toni Guinyard>> Daniel Huang is policy advocate for the Immigration and Citizen Project at the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles.
Daniel Huang>> The Chinese community actually probably contains the second largest undocumented population in the United States. Most of the Asian immigrants come on visas and over-stay.
Toni Guinyard>> He says the pro-immigrant demonstrations led by the Latino community provides an opportunity for other immigrant groups.
Daniel Huang>> I think it absolutely opens up the door and we just need to step through it. We need to really take action and join the Latino community in voicing our concerns about the current immigration reform debate.
Toni Guinyard>> Reshma Shamasunder agrees.
Reshma Shamasunder>> I do know that has different demographic information and potentially naturalization information as well.
Toni Guinyard>> She's Director of the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative. It's a partnership of four immigrant rights organizations including the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center.
Reshma Shamasunder>> We, of course, support legalization for the eleven million-plus undocumented immigrants in the United States, but we're also concerned about the other provisions that would also harm both legal and undocumented immigrants within the United States.
Toni Guinyard>> Shamasunder is most concerned with --
Reshma Shamasunder>> Police enforcement of immigration laws at the local levels, longer detention periods for, you know, foreign-born immigrants and indefinite detention periods without people necessarily being able to appeal that.
Hamid Khan>> I would say that, you know, since 9/11 that there is this community that feels under siege, that they just don't want to show up on the radar.
Toni Guinyard>> But that's changing slowly. At a Town Hall meeting on immigration reform hosted by the South Asian Network, they didn't hesitate to talk about xenophobia and civil and human rights violations.
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Toni Guinyard>> The meeting was open to the community and the clash of opinions about immigration reform was clear.
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Toni Guinyard>> His comments an unnecessary reminder of the emotion accompanying the immigration debate, a debate that has an impact not only on immigrant communities, but also the African-American community.
Hamid Khan>> You know, it's also creating divisions amongst, you know, the communities at that level because of the poverty in the African-American community and now there's this rush for, you know, the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
Azhar>> Most of the people think that we are taking their jobs, you know, but if you just consider this taxi driving profession, ninety percent are foreigners. Barely ten percent are local people, so you can see this is not only the only job. There are many other jobs which have low pay and only foreigners do it because they have no other opportunities available.
Toni Guinyard>> Azhar says it's about survival, taking the risk of living illegally in the United States while searching for his version of the American dream behind the wheel of a taxicab. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.
Val Zavala>> Life and Times now has a blog so you can weigh in with your opinion on immigration. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times blog.
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>> A hundred years ago today, San Francisco was in ruins. A massive quake hit at 5:12 in the morning. Experts say it was probably an 8.0, which reminds us that we're overdue for a big one here in southern California. Hena Cuevas talked with Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey about what we can expect when the San Andreas Fault decides to move again.
Hena Cuevas>> You've been following all the different tremors and all the earth movements in California. What is the situation with the big one? What does the scientific community think?
Lucy Jones>> We know that earthquakes are inevitable. We see the rate at which they happen. As far as we can tell, there is not a buildup to the big one. Rather, there's an ongoing process. And the other part, in Southern California, we have over three hundred faults capable of a damaging earthquake, so we need to be concerned about the San Andreas because it's the biggest and fastest of the faults. But we can't put our planning only on that one because there are so many others that we need to worry about.
Now when we get to our biggest one, when we have the San Andreas event, we know that on average that happens once every couple hundred years. The last one was in 1857 near Palmdale. You go down by Palm Springs, there hasn't been one for over three hundred years. That doesn't say it has to happen tomorrow. We've gone three hundred years without one. But it does mean that's a very likely place for it.
One of the big issues is we'll be disrupting our infrastructure in a way that we did not with a smaller event like Northridge. Because the San Andreas surrounds southern California and, when it moves, one side will be moved offset from the other side after the event. That means, for instance, pipelines that cross the fault will now be separated by twenty feet. They're probably not still going to be continuous after that process unless we mitigate. That's what science and engineering can do for us. We can tell you where the motions are going to happen and then we could go in and build the system that can handle that motion.
Hena Cuevas>> You described Northridge as a little earthquake. Can you describe the big one?
Lucy Jones>> Well, let's look at our history as the best way to understand what could happen. If you look over the twentieth century, there were six earthquakes that caused what would in modern terms be, say, over a billion dollars worth of damage. Northridge was one of those, so it isn't just a small one. But of those six, the 1906 great earthquake in San Francisco eclipses the rest of them. It really did pretty much eliminate a city. That's what we're seeing in New Orleans. It's the ability to take out a whole metropolitan area, and the 1906 earthquake did that. So those are the earthquakes that we're most afraid of.
When we get to our magnitude 8, that 7.9 and 8, the one thing is that they can probably only happen on the San Andreas fault. Because to be an 8, you need to have a very long fault and the San Andreas is really probably the only one long enough. But that also means that you need about two hundred fifty miles of fault length to get up to a magnitude 8. That means a two hundred fifty mile area is all going to be right on top of the earthquake and therefore we're going to see a much more extensive area of destruction than we see in something like Northridge which was really confined to a very small area. The earthquake is also going to last for a longer time because earthquakes don't happen at epicenters, but they begin at epicenters.
Then you essentially have a tear that rips down the fault and that travels at two miles a second. Through a two hundred fifty mile long fault, you need a hundred twenty-five seconds. That earthquake is going to last for two minutes. By comparison, Northridge lasted for seven seconds. So we're going to see a much bigger area involved. It's going to take much more time to bring in mutual aid because they're going to have to be coming from much farther away and we're going to have an earthquake that lasts for a much, much longer time.
Hena Cuevas>> When there is an earthquake of that magnitude, what is the range of the area that would be affected, as much as you can predict?
Lucy Jones>> Well, actually, we can predict the consequences of the earthquake very well. The only part we don't get is the time and, of course, that's the part that people want. But to have a magnitude 8 means that we'll have a fault about two hundred fifty miles long. The most likely one for southern California is the San Andreas fault, say, from the Salton Sea up through Palm Springs, through Beaumont-Banning area, up through Riverside-Redlands, San Bernardino, Wrightwood, Palmdale, up to Fort Tejon.
That's two hundred fifty miles. That's a section that we think has gone coherently in the past producing one magnitude 8 earthquake. Anywhere within ten or twenty miles of the fault from Fort Tejon all the way down to the Salton Sea is going to be as badly damaged as the worst part of the San Fernando Valley in the 1994 earthquake.
Hena Cuevas>> So anytime there's a big disaster like this one, it's actually good for you because you're able to get peoples' attention and kind of warn us?
Lucy Jones>> One doesn't want to enjoy anything that's happening here, but there is a positive side that we're watching California really wake up to the possibilities. It's much easier to carry that message that you need to be self-sufficient for a week when they sit and watch what's happening in the Gulf Coast. Let's not just study the earthquake. Let's implement the findings and we can reduce the losses. What I keep on trying to tell people is that the earthquake is inevitable, but the disaster is not and we have choices to make to reduce that.
Hena Cuevas>> Thank you, Dr. Jones, for the information and we'll pass it along.
Lucy Jones>> Thank you.
Val Zavala>> We don't really know what it is and it's hard to describe. All we know is that it's unusual and beautiful, and we sent our photographer there to capture it on video.
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Benjamin Ball>> My name is Benjamin Ball. I'm with Ball-Nogues Architecture and Design and we started this project about a year ago. It's mylar and it has a metallic gold coating on it and kind of an amber tint. It's reinforced with bundles of nylon to give it extra strength and also to prevent it from tearing.
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Benjamin Ball>> It's really about a process and it's about a way of putting materials together and a way of assembling materials and a way of making a shape. I think the inspiration stems from the space that we're in. It really serves a purpose for this particular space, which is to shield you from the sun and to change the environment and the qualities of the light.
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Benjamin Ball>> I think we've actually achieved something here where you don't need to have the framework of a gallery around it to know that you can appreciate it or know that you can experience it. The more people that come through from the community, the happier we'll be. I love to hear about people just discovering it as they're walking their dog down Silver Lake Boulevard. That's like one of the most rewarding things that could possibly happen for me.
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Val>> "Maximilian's Schell" is no longer on view in Silver Lake, but it's got a new home. It's been donated to Los Angeles Trade Tech Community College where it will go on display later this year.
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Val Zavala>> Okay, we don't like to act like we care, but let's face it. When Paris puts on a major exhibition of Los Angeles artists, we can't help but strut a bit. What's not so visible is a key person who made this Paris exhibit a reality. Her name is Lyn Kienholz and, for the past twenty-five years, she's been promoting California artists. Vicki Curry talked with Kienholz about the Paris exhibition.
Vicki Curry>> This exhibit the Pompidou is called "Los Angeles: 1955 to 1985". Can you describe briefly what it's trying to cover? What it includes?
Lyn Kienholz>> Well, it's about the history of Los Angeles visual arts. It was the birth of what we know today. I mean, it's really, believe it or not, an international art scene at this point. It's been amazing for me because I've been traveling for twenty-five years with exhibitions of Los Angeles artists.
It started because people said, well, nothing ever happens in California and I said, wait a minute, I think I lost something because I've sort of been in the middle of this for many years and I thought that, you know, it's not true. The French, the people at the Pompidou, were smart enough to realize that that was the chunk of time that went on to form what we know today, the Los Angeles scene.
There are over eighty-four artists -- and please don't ask me (laughter) to give a list -- but it's the people that you would expect, the Baldessari, the Ruscha, the Kienholz, but it also includes others that are not as well known overseas, like the photographer named James Welling. So it's wonderful. It fills in the chunks. It's the usual things you know. It's like the three-dimensional stuff, assemblage, photography, sculpture. Also, they've touched on performance which is interesting. They also dealt with experimental films. It's all-encompassing, you know.
Vicki Curry>> How did you become involved in this exhibition?
Lyn Kienholz>> Well, I used to work at the Pompidou when they first opened for three years and the director and his wife are long, long-time friends. So one morning when I was staying with them, he said, "What do you think about this idea?" I thought, "How cool is that." (Laughter) So obviously I thought the idea was fabulous and then he asked me if I would collaborate. It was a wonderful joy for me because, you know, the people in the show are mostly all my friends and that's just great.
Vicki Curry>> So what was your role in putting this together?
Lyn Kienholz>> Schlepper (laughter). I was the one that fielded all the phone calls from the artists complaining that they never answer emails and blah, blah, blah. So I wasn't the yenta, but I was the Aunt Lyn. You know, everybody would call and I would try to straighten everything out. I was the person here that made everybody try to feel better because it was tough at times, you know.
Vicki Curry>> How did the folks of Pompidou go about trying to put this together and make their decisions?
Lyn Kienholz>> Well, they had ideas. Then I sent about three or four pages of artists that I knew that were working and successful. I mean, it wasn't just people working. It was people that, you know, had shown and had a reputation. Then they took from that and many of the people that I had on the list were not included and it was very tragic. But it was a very broad representation and I think a very good one.
Vicki Curry>> As someone who's promoted Los Angeles art for decades now, what did you hope this exhibit would be?
Lyn Kienholz>> As large as possible and as many of the real, you know, the important artists. I guess the criteria would have been important artists but important outside of the small circle in Los Angeles. In other words, they had some sort of a reputation in other places whether it be New York or wherever. You know, I was just so happy it was being done. I didn't care (laughter). Just do it.
Vicki Curry>> So you're happy with how it turned out then?
Lyn Kienholz>> Oh, yeah. I mean, we're all happy. We went with fingers crossed, you know, because of the problems and, you know, the lapses in communication. It was very difficult, as I said, for the last year and we thought, "Oh, God, what is it going to be like?" Well, it's stunning. I'm not necessarily patriotic, but I am very patriotic about Los Angeles. It was wonderful.
Vicki Curry>> What are some of the characteristics of Los Angeles art?
Lyn Kienholz>> Craziness. It's a place where you can be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do as long as it doesn't hurt someone. You know, in other words, you can be totally independent which, I think, in many places you can't be because there's always somebody watching you. Here, I don't think anybody really cares.
Vicki Curry>> And that comes up in the arts?
Lyn Kienholz>> I think so.
Vicki Curry>> And is that what Los Angeles art is known for?
Lyn Kienholz>> I think so. I think it's also a look down in some cases as being just out of, you know, a box. So it doesn't fit any criteria, you know. I think that we still have the reputation of being kooky, but that also is part of our charm (laughter). You know, the far out stuff. I think that's one of the attractions of this show in Paris because many of the artists work in a way that they would never think of. You know, like weird stuff put together like George Herms or a Kienholz or, you know, getting on a soapbox through an artistic medium.
Vicki Curry>> What does a large exhibition like this in another country mean for the art scene here in Los Angeles?
Lyn Kienholz>> Prestige. It not only increases the reputation of the artist that's involved, but it also focuses and brings credibility to Los Angeles. It was a two-way street. I mean, we showed them what's going on, but on the other hand, because the Pompidou is one of the three major museums in the entire world. There's the Museum of Modern Art, there's the Tate and there's the Pompidou. To get validation from one of those major museums is an incredible step up the ladder, if there is such a thing, and I think there is.
Vicki Curry>> So we've arrived?
Lyn Kienholz>> I think so, finally. Jeepers, now I can retire (laughter).
Vicki Curry>> Lyn Kienholz, president of the California International Arts Foundation, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
Lyn Kienholz>> Thank you for asking.
Val Zavala>> The exhibit at the Pompidou Center will be up through July 17. Now in case you can't make it to Paris, here is a catalog called "Los Angeles: 1955 to 1985: The Birth of an Artistic Capital". 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.
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