The Beginning of El Grito

The great writer H.L. Menken once said that the role of the journalist was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” On the anniversary of El Barrio News, I want to offer my thanks and congratulations to El Barrio News for honoring that tradition.

Weekly, your pages are filled with the faces and stories that don’t get noticed by the mainstream media. Your writing is crisp and colorful. Your dedication to community journalism is unquestionable.

Indeed, you provide a valuable public service and I would urge everyone in our community to support the efforts of this newspaper so that it will continue to grow in pages and increase in circulation. If we don’t, we always run the risk of losing a beacon that serves to unite and inform us all.

Personally, as a former candidate, I was very impressed with the balanced coverage El Barrio News provided during last years City Council race. I met with El Barrio’s writer Hector Sermeno and publisher Pedro Ortega several times throughout the course of the race. In several issues, they ran features about the candidates with pictures and news stories that were balanced and fair.

I can’t say the same about the other weekly paper that supposedly covers our community. It had already been virtually bought out by an opponent. They never made an effort to reach out to my campaign, even after we sent them several press releases. The only time they ever bothered to show up at our campaign, rather suspiciously, was during the last week of the election when they wanted us to buy an ad!

Nevertheless, El Barrio News continued to cover key aspects of this important race to unseat an incumbent with the worst attendance record at City Hall. An incumbent that also had amassed a local record of failing our community in times of need as was the case when a grandmother and her family were attacked and beaten by local police. As was also the case when through nepotism and fiscal shenanigans, an important educational program, the Hispanic Young People’s Alternatives (HYPA), was single-handedly destroyed.

During the race, El Barrio News also provided members of the public with behind the scenes coverage of political campaigns. For instance, they didn’t shy away from writing about one candidate’s attempt to use tens of thousands of dollars from corporate donors and special interests to try and knock me off the ballot, not just once, but four times! And he failed every time.

Interestingly enough, my opponent’s biggest corporate backer, the multinational advertising firm Van Wagner Communications, also failed to win a billion dollar contract with the City to outfit bus shelters with ads. His lawyer also tried for several weeks to keep Margarita Lopez Torres from becoming our first Latina Surrogate Judge. He also failed.

On Primary Day, El Barrio News provided round the clock coverage of all the campaigns. Unfortunately, with a third candidate with lot of money but no community roots in the race, beating an incumbent who has the support of the corrupt local Democratic Party is difficult.

At the end of the day, however, the incumbent still failed to capture even 50 % of the vote and my other opponent instant became a two-time loser. The biggest loser, however, will be the community if the incumbent fails to act on the unsolicited, but very valuable advice El barrio News provided in an editorial after the elections.

There is much work to be done in this great community of ours. Police and community relations remain tense; gentrifications is happening at lightning speed and is displacing many of our longtime residents; our schools are falling apart and many are failing for lack of resources, space and equipment; a park seems destined for our waterfront but the community needs to be more involved in its planning; porno shops continue to open along Third Avenue, many next to our churches and schools; our huge immigrant community is in dire need of adequate social service programs and facilities; the health needs of families, especially in the areas of diabetes and asthma, require extraordinary attention; and our elderly are in great need affordable housing.