Week Nine • Ellen's Trip to Watts

This week, I was particularly drawn to Ellen Bastrmadjian's post on her trip to Watts. She mentioned that she's never visited Watts before so this was a new experience for her. Ellen briefly explains her reason for choosing Watts as a part of her location topics was because of an article she read about the 20th Anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles. While she was there, Ellen made many observations that showed that Watts is an economically, culturally, and academically poor district.

This is my comment to her post:

Hi there Ellen! First off, I wanted to say how awesome I think it is that we're both working towards the same major (though you're closer to finishing it since we're separated by a year haha). Secondly, I have to express how extremely impressed I am with this post. It is among one of the bests, in my personal opinion, that I have read over the past 8 weeks. You really go into depth and do so without superfluous information. You give the right about of analysis, reflection, an insight to each of your observations in such a professional and organized manner that everything was clear and easy to understand.

The first aspect of your post that I want to comment on is the video you provided. When I first clicked the play button, I wasn't sure what to expect (actually, I was expecting some sort of brief documentary sort of footage). What it turned out to be was something breathtaking and deep in message. While it was artistically stylized, it holds a lot of reality in a general since that in any poor community, violence is bred. Ultimately, I find that the inclusion of this video was a very great addition to your post, especially when you relate it back to the 1965 riots which, as you said, Watts was the center of because it expresses that real aspect that violence of some scale still, very well, exists.

While on that subject, it would have been nice for you to briefly explain the 1992 and 1965 riots in regards to what they were and why they occurred for those who may not be from Los Angeles or may not be old enough to know. Although I've always lived relatively close to the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, I was not aware of these riots until now mainly because the first happened far before I was born and the second when I was only a year old. I had to take a bit of time to research these riots to better understand their relation to the rest of your post. 

With your reference to these riots, it is clear that Watts seems to be founded on social difference, so much that these differences, that were on a racial level, unfortunately lead to these large scale uprisings. Because of this, without needing to visit Watts myself, I agree that Watts may face (if it isn't already) insurance redlining. And if this is the case, it would explain why Watts remains seemingly unchanged 20 years after the last riots and continues to be a poor community. They fall victim to discrimination, as so many other neighborhoods do, which causes a potentially endless cycle of poverty and violence. If a poor community is not provided insurance as it legally has the right to be, they continue to remain poor which leads to poor education systems in the area which then closes the circle of uneducated individuals unable to uplift their community from such a poor state. Unfortunately, poverty tends to lead to lack of proper education due to insufficient funds and as a result, lack of proper educations tends to lead to continued poverty.