“As I played in my backyard in East Los Angeles on Saturday August 29, 1970, just a few blocks away the streets were aflame. The Chicano Moratorium, a protest against the recruitment of young Hispanics drafted into the Vietnam War and a demand for civil rights, ended with the destruction of Whittier Boulevard, the East Los Angeles’ “main street”. My community was permanently changed. The visual and physical repercussions of that day reshaped the environment around me, prompting me to launch my urban planning career and research in Latino Urbanism.”
Author James Rojas