Gloria Molina, the daughter of working-class parents and an unapologetic Chicana who transformed the political landscape of Los Angeles, died Sunday night after a three-year battle with cancer. “Even though we were poor, I was never at home ever felt to be poor,” Molina said in a 2017 interview for Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History. “We …
The fax machine beeped and screeched as it transmitted a two-page document to the FBI. Without the knowledge of my editors and unsure of what I might be dredging up, I faxed a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, searching for clues to a momentous but neglected chapter in Los Angeles history: the slaying, by a sheriff’s deputy, …
About 20 years ago, I visited a Chicano bookstore in Santa Ana to buy “Border Correspondent,” a greatest-hits compilation of pioneering Los Angeles Times writer Ruben Salazar. “Mexican Americans traditionally kept their place so why should the big, important news media take notice of them?” The reporter behind the legend Reading Salazar today, my initial opinion of his skills still …
