By Rene Villaroman, Managing Editor
The creation of Historic Filipinotown by a resolution penned by
Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti in August 2002 bestowed upon this former Filipino enclave the gift of reclaiming its historic birthright as the traditional home of Filipino immigrants during the early 1920s until the 1940s. Typically, the events that led to the creation of Historic Filipinotown had the imprints of acrimony, divisiveness and squabbling that sometimes accompanied the birth of an organization—whether it is a chamber of commerce, a non-profit association of Filipino-American
citizens, or in this case, a symbolic Filipino enclave in Los Angeles.
Community activist Arturo Garcia was one of those Filipinos who got his hands dirty early on working for the creation of Filipinotown. “Ever since the 1990s, we’ve been advocating for Filipinotown,” Garcia told this writer during a brief interview at Bahay Kubo Natin, a popular Filipino eatery on Temple St. “Filipinos were always squabbling and involved in intramurals,” Garcia recalls. “The nearest point that we got to creating Filipinotown was in 1995, during the administration of Mayor Bradley.” Garcia, said, however, the Fil-Ams involved in the project “were at each other’s throat.” He relates that there was even an episode when some Fil-Am association members got involved in a fistfight when discussion for a name choice got heated up.
Those incidents, no doubt, turned off the sensibilities of the powers that be at City Hall, and Mayor Bradley and the Councilmember involved in the project – Cathy Goldberg – dropped the ball. When Eric Garcetti was elected Councilmember in 2002. He proposed the creation of Historic Filipinotown again. “At that time walang gaanong sumabog. Bagamat may mga associations, yung mga associations wala na ring clout eh. Kaso, wala na ring naniniwala sa kanila eh. Ni wala nga silang base. Kaya from Unity, ginawa na lang Historic Filipinotown,” Garcia recounts. “Para wala na lang away.”
Several names have been suggested by the different organizations, including Nayong Pilipino, Little Manila, “at kung anu-ano pa,” says Garcia. “Ang nakakatuwa, nang naaprubahan yan, e alam mo na naman ang Pilipino pag advocacy. Nuong meron ng Historic Filipinotown, naglabasan silang lahat at nagpakuha ng retrato. Kami na nagtrabaho wala sa retrato,” Garcia recalls. “Sabi ko nga sa mga bata, hayaan ninyo sila, yun ang gusto nila. They were praising Eric Garcetti; they were even making him an honorary Filipino. Alam mo naman ang Pilipino kung sumipsip eh. Ang advocacy diyan 15 taon. Aba eh yung mga yun nanduon lahat sa harapan ng retrato,” Garcia said.
Filipinotown Becomes a Catalyst
The creation of Historic Filipinotown has given a shot of fresh energy and outlook to Filipinos and Filipino-Americans who still call Hi Fi their home and place of business. Community leaders and business-owners, including Cecille Ramos, who owns and teaches at Burlington School, is one of those. So is Jocelyn Geaga-Rosenthal, whose mother was once the President of the Filipino-American Community of Los Angeles (FACLA). She told me a couple of years ago, that her parents “had the prescience not to sell their house on Temple Street.” Jocelyn had converted that ancestral home into an art gallery and event center. Leo Pandac, PhD, an officer of the Hi Fi Neighborhood Council, has his business office here; and the Rotary Club of Historic Filipinotown meets regularly at the Silverlake Medical Center on Temple Street. But the future is not so bright for Hi Fi if it is looking for validation from City Hall, like receiving certification for its neighborhood council. One of the reasons is its geographical location. This district belongs to the Los Angeles section of Echo Park, and as if by design, it sits on the south side of the 101 Freeway. Before its creation as Hi Fi, this district was simply called the Temple-Beaudry corridor.
“That was nine years ago. In that same year, Greater Echo Park-Elysian Neighborhood Council was certified in April 2002, and in August, Historic Filipinotown was created,” said David Rockello, a volunteer community organizer and President of neighboring Rampart Village Neighborhood Council. That is one of the reasons why Hi Fi will never get certified as a neighborhood council; it lies under the umbrella of Greater Echo Park-Elysian, according to Rockello. David and his Filipina wife, Erlinda Lim, both serve in the Board of GEPE.
“Because of these mismatch of happenings, we got split up between two neighborhood councils – the GEPE and the Silverlake Neighborhood Council,” Rockello continues. “They (the two neighborhood councils) went into arbitration, and in the end, Silverlake said, ‘we don’t need you.’” That left the area from Benton Way in the east and Hoover Street in the west orphaned. At that time, there was in existence a loose organization called RUG or Rampart United Group, and it meets at the Rampart Division of the LAPD at the corner of Temple and Benton Way. “They wanted a neighborhood council, and so they started one and worked for three years in that direction,” says David. In short order, David, who worked tirelessly for the formation of the council, got elected its first president.
David had lived in Echo Park, but moved to the district prior to its creation as Hi Fi. He has always believed that this was the low-rent area, and the area that he could afford to live in. “Then, suddenly, they changed the name to Historic Filipinotown, and I found that very interesting,” David smiled. “What I found more interesting later was how long it took the Filipinos to get recognized in the city of Los Angeles. It took 36 years!” David lamented.
Rockello’s displeasure is partly directed at city government bureaucrats and officers of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council. “The city didn’t help; the city sat on the sidelines and said, ‘as long as these people don’t have things together, we will just keep sitting on the side and do nothing for them,’” Rockello said. And so, in 2002, the city government let Historic Filipinotown be torn between two areas: one orphaned area and one controlled by a very large neighborhood council, which is Greater Echo Park Elysian.
“When I started going to GEPE meetings, they would spend two hours talking about Echo Park and, maybe, 15 minutes about the area south of the (101) Freeway. I was outraged, along with other people, that we had to be split into two areas; it didn’t seem right,” Rockello reasoned. As a result of that division, Hi Fi has two school districts, two different community plans, and two different senatorial and congressional districts. The electoral districts have since been reapportioned.
How Come Rampart Village was
Certified and Hi Fi was not?
In 2007, after the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council was certified by the city government, the Rampart Division of the LAPD moved to a new headquarters on 6th Street in the Westlake District. “At Historic Filipinotown, we filed a petition for certification, but it was not approved,” Rockello said. “The reason was that most of the territory (that Hi Fi occupies) belongs to Greater Echo Park-Elysian, and with all the combined area, it still did didn’t have a contiguous population, so they denied our petition,” Rockello revealed. “We got all our paperwork in by mid-March, and because there was a movement and it was very strong at the time,” Rockello shared. “That (movement) pushed forward Rampart Village’s certification.” Unfortunately for Hi Fi, it didn’t secure certification. Rockello said that the city government decided that it was not going to diminish the Hi Fi’s fervor; that it would not die and roll over and just keep on going. So that’s what the Hi Fi leaders did. They applied for and got approved for 501 (C3) status.
Rockello severed his relationship with Hi Fi in 2009 because he did not see Hi Fi getting certified as a neighborhood council in the future. “I did not see that there was a future as a real neighborhood council,” he noted. He also got elected in 2010 as Vice President of the GEPE Neighborhood Council, together with his Filipino wife, Erlinda Lim, who got elected to the Board. Rockello beat the incumbents. In the 2010 elections, Rockello ran in two neighborhood councils – GEPE and RV – at the same time. “Some people may think that as being a floating candidate. O.K? But with the help of my wife, Erlinda, we were able to get back a whole lot of votes to come in by utilizing the different church groups and social organizations,” Rockello recalled.
I asked Arturo Garcia, who is now also a Project Coordinator of People’s Community Organization for Reform and Empowerment (People’s CORE), and Coordinator of Justice for Filipino American Veterans, to validate Rockello’ claims. “They did not go through the proper process, so they cannot represent the neighborhood council,” Garcia said. “Way back 1999 – I arrived here in 1997 – we advocated for a neighborhood council. Sad to say that the political system in America doesn’t reach down to the lowest level, just like in the Philippines, where it reaches the barangay,” Garcia opined. “They stopped at the city council.” This necessitates the formation of neighborhood councils, whose primary function is to advice the city council.
Even before it was designated as Historic Filipinotown, this Los Angeles district had aspired to organize a neighborhood council, but it failed because it did not go through the motions. “Wala, kasi, they did not even follow the law. So how can they apply for neighborhood council (certification)?” Garcia asked. Hi Fi has applied for and was granted a 501 (C3) status as a non-profit organization. They need that status in order to raise funds for some of their projects. “Malaki ang problema sa Historic Filipinotown Neighborhood Council na ‘yan. Number 1, they want to have their cake and eat it too. Kasi a neighborhood council is not a 501 (C3). According to the law, the neighborhood council is an advisory council to the city council,” Garcia said.
Garcia left Hi Fi a few years ago because he got “tired” of volunteer work. He said that the organization had become a debating club, made up mostly of retired people. “We could not even advise the city council. The youth was not represented. It’s supposed to be a symbol of democracy, but you could get elected by as few as a hundred voters, when the district had as much as 100,000 to 150,000 voters. It was not representative democracy,” Garcia lamented.
Garcia revealed that Rampart Village won neighborhood council certification because its leadership followed the law. They had the petition, the required number of stakeholders; they did their outreach, unlike at Historic Filipinotown. “And it’s funny because the outreach person (at Hi Fi) was David Rockello,” Garcia noted. “Cecille Ramos (of Hi Fi NC) hired him to do the outreach, but he was unable to sign up even 200 stakeholders. That’s one of the requirements. Two hundred.”
A lot of horse-trading was going on when Hi Fi Neighborhood Council was being organized, according to Garcia. Hi Fi wanted to secede from Greater Echo Park-Elysian as one of its five districts. “But they were appeased by GEPE Chairman Jose Sigala, a Hispanic, who promised that he would try to quash Rampart’s ambitions to organize its own neighborhood council. “Magaling din si Jose Sigala,” Garcia said. But later on, after Hi Fi was pacified, he reneged on his promise.” The city government annually gives $5,000 to each of the different neighborhood councils in the City of Los Angeles.
“Filipinotown is fragmented,” Garcia asserts. “This is the only district that has three neighborhood councils inside it, two congressional districts, two senatorial districts, two assembly districts, and two school districts.”
Perhaps the only characteristic that aptly describes Historic Filipinotown, says Garcia, is that it has the longest name in all the ethnic communities of Los Angeles. Less surprising is the fact that it took more than fifteen years to get the Filipino-American community’s consensus on the name choice; two Los Angeles Mayors to push the project forward and get it passed by the Los Angeles City Council, and have that green Historic Filipinotown sign erected at the west and east boundaries of the district on the 101 Freeway.
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