I
n October of 2014, Brenda Kyle stood alongside President Barack Obama at a podium at a park in San Dimas. The president was there to sign a proclamation designating the San Gabriel Mountains a national monument. And he was telling her story. “We heard from the community that for a lot of urban families this is their only big, outdoor space,” the president told the crowd. “And too many children in L.A. County, especially children of color, don’t have access to parks where they can run free and breathe fresh air, expe- rience nature, and learn about their own environment. “That was Brenda Kyle’s experience. Today she devotes her time to taking Latino youth to discover the San Gabriels, many for the first time in their lives. She takes her nephews up there to wade in the river and play in the waterfall, and spot new birds, and learn from the incredible natural classroom that surrounds them. And she hopes that one day they’ll take their own families to the San Gabriel Mountains and say, ‘We’re thankful our forest is a national monument. We always knew it was awesome.’”
In his speech, the president called the national monument designation “an issue of social justice.” His words were a vindi- cation for many of us who advocate for chronically park-poor neighborhoods. By definition, to be “park poor” is to have less than three acres of green space per thousand residents. In
Los Angeles, many neighborhoods have no green space at all. “Large open spaces and federal lands are key to alleviating some of the most serious issues facing our community,” says Omar Gomez, director of programs and public policy for El Consejo de Federaciones Mexicanas en Norteamérica. COFEM is not an environmental organization—its mission is to create opportunities for Latino immigrants. Yet it galva- nized hundreds of its members—many from densely populat- ed Los Angeles neighborhoods like Pico Union, Southeast Los Angeles, and Ramona Gardens—in the fight to safeguard the San Gabriels, by framing the issue of conservation around the concerns facing working families. Rather than the standard environmental call for wilderness protection, COFEM members gravitated to a different rally- ing cry: familia. “We talked about la madre tierra, preserving Mother Earth and the San Gabriel Mountains for our children and grandchildren,” says Gomez. “People would say ‘When I was a kid in Mexico, I went to the forest or the river every day.’ Today, maybe they’re not going on a 10-mile hike, but they’re having a picnic or carne asada, which you need after a 60-hour workweek. We also see a spiritual connection, with churches doing baptisms in the San Gabriel River. “In our communities there are not enough parks, and not enough access to them,” Gomez continues. “There are the high rates of obesity, diabetes, and asthma. When we put it in terms of wellness, there was overwhelming support.”
56 · LAND&PEOPLE · SPRING/SUMMER 2016
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