Dr. Denis Bettencourt is a Sherman Oaks chiropractor who has been practicing in LA for 30 years. He first became interested in the potential perils of vaccinations when a number of his patients who had problems they attributed to vaccinations, asked his guidance. His interest piqued, his ensuing research uncovered facts about the history of the vaccination process that were alarming to him. He subsequently became a passionate advocate for patients informing themselves carefully about vaccinations - a particularly lively subject these days in light of their potential link to a national epidemic of autism in children.

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How did the practice of vaccinations start?

There was a smallpox epidemic in England in the 1700’s, and a man named Edward Jenner, who wasn't even a physician, thought he could find a cure. Smallpox was highly contagious among all people, but at the same time there was another epidemic among cows called cowpox that only happened to female cows and wasn't that infectious among people. He took a needle and withdrew cow pox from a pustule on a infected milkmaid and injected it into an eight-year-old boy and declared him cured of smallpox. He got the British government to sign on to vaccinations and made lots of money.

Before the government push to vaccinate, there were approximately 2000 people who were reported to have died from smallpox per year. After the government got involved the numbers jumped to 44,000 in just a few years. There has never been, to this day, documentation that vaccinations actually work. I found it interesting that history seems to omit the fact that the boy died at the age of 20 after having been inoculated several times.

A vaccine is a cultured disease organism grown on a certain medium. If you look in the PDR (Physicians Desk Reference), you can read for yourself how they grow it on a variety of horrific things like the lung cells of aborted human fetuses, on human blood, infected human connective tissues, animals. They have to grow it on these things because it’s a disease mechanism.

What are the dangers of vaccinations?

The issue with vaccinations is how much sicker our populations have become over the years. The body tries to protect the bloodstream so carefully, but when you start injecting people with a needle you're interfering with the bodies natural barriers.

With the shots, they've weakened the diseases to below the threshold of triggering the bodies all-out immune response. That weakened form allows these viruses to burrow into your tissues deeper than could've been normally possible had they triggered a natural inflammatory response. They can become latent hidden allergens, showing up years later in life as things like major dysfunctions, degenerative disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Its not just the vaccines themselves, but the additives they put in the vaccines. Most of them have components of formaldehyde, aluminum, and Thimerosal (an exceptionally deadly form of mercury) in them to serve as preservatives which can cause permanent nerve damage and worse. Other countries like Russia, Denmark, Scandinavia, Austria, Japan and Britain have at least done away with Thimerosal additives 20 years ago. For some reason the US has continued to lag behind on correcting this.

How does that affect children?

Well, it is now mandated that kids get up to 58 vaccinations by the time they’re 18. In my generation it was more like 8! Ten thousand US babies die every year now from what they call SIDS. Before mass vaccinations, that term didn't exist. There is a shot called a DPT (a cocktail shot that has Pertussis, Diphtheria, Tetanus in it). No one ever did any studies on whether it was even safe to mix all these items together. Back in 1983 in Tennessee, 200 babies died with in 24 hours of getting this shot.

The coroners office in LA did a study with the parents of 145 SIDS babies. They found that 50% of them had gotten the DPT shot within four weeks of dying, 30% of them died within 1one week, and 11% died within one day of getting the shot.

The chance of a newborn infant getting Hepatitis B is slim unless you're a drug user or in a high risk group. But every newborn gets a hepatitis B shot, which gives them 30 times the EPA safe level of mercury the day they're born! Then at four months they get a DPT, and those have 60 times the EPA’s safe levels of mercury, and then at six months they get another Hep B and a polio shot that have 78 times the EPA safe level of mercury .

They have been discovering that these high levels of mercury are directly connected with autism. Autism has had a huge percentage leap since they've started these shots. If you are willing to invest a little time you should look into the report by the House Committee on Government Reform under the leadership of Dan Burton. You get the truth for a change. His grandson developed autism after getting his "shots." Also there is a recent report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called "Deadly Immunity."

Basically, the overall health of American kids is on the decline, and the things that they are vaccinating for are really on the rise. Prior to the vaccinations starting many of our childhood illnesses had been on a dramatic decline from simply having fresh water and good sewage facilities available.

What troubles me, is how the drug lobbies have turned the schools into agents of the state. In most states if the school can prove that a child has been fully vaccinated, they get money for it. Which is why they try to enforce mandated vaccinations. Its big business. The government is being lobbied to death by the pharmaceutical companies. There is such a powerful lobby because business is growing. In 1994 vaccinations was a $3 billion a year industry and by 2010 it is estimated it will be up to a $20 billion.

Despite all these vaccinations, our country stands at #34 in infant mortality. So, even with all these vaccines, we're not number 1 or 2,we are number 34.

How do you explain the success and popularity of the polio vaccine and other common vaccines?

Polio was pretty much gone by the time they introduced the vaccine. In 1921 deaths were a little over 7000 a year. By 1956 it was already down to 1600 a year just from better health car and hygience and studies found that at the time doctors were over-reporting the incidence of the disease. Even the Center for Disease Control admits all cases of polio in the US after 1979 were caused by the vaccine. It make you wonder if the only ases of polio were caused by the vaccine, why are we still vaccinating people with it with four different shots?

Back in the ‘60s they slaughtered all these monkeys to make the original Salk vaccine. They found there was a disease that came along with it, SV-40, that was unwittingly put into doses of the Salk vaccine. So between 1955 and 1963, millions of American children were given this shot. If you were given a polio shot before 1963, you’re probably infected with the SV- 40 virus. They know this virus is carcinogenic and they found there is a huge correlation between it and non-Hodkins lymphoma, which is now the fifth most common cancer in the US
Albert Sabin, who came out with the Sabin oral vaccine because the injected one was giving people polio, said 30 years later, "Official data has show that the large scale vaccinations undertaken in the US have failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases for which they are supposed to provide immunization.." In essence, it was and is a failure.

What can parents do?

Doctors and the schools try to confuse people about their rights. There is a difference between Mandated and Mandatory. Vaccines are fortunately still just mandated in most states. It doesn't matter what you see in the newspapers or magazines, you don't have to expose your children to these risks. There are three types of exemptions that you can file: medical , religious and philosophical (only 15 states do that one now) and in California the schedule is just mandated. Information on accepted exemption forms for the different states can be found at http://home.fam.rr.com/via/STATES/allstates.htm .

If anyone is truly interested in finding out more information for themselves, I highly recommend they look to a book called the "Sanctity of Human Blood; Vaccination is not Immunization" By Tim O'Shea. It has a wealth of information and documentation. Documentation is probably a third of the book, that's how thorough he is. It's a great book that every parent should read, and every doctor too!

Michelle Danner's play "You're on the Air," which she wrote and directed, has been described on this site as "the best piece of cultural and political comedy satire in LA in some years, just sheer smart fun. Funny as you could want it to be, full of brilliant performances, it is sharp and real with characters plucked from the infinite palette of American cultural types." (See RealTALK Picks)

As it happens, Danner, herself plucked from the infinite palette, doubles and triples as acting teacher and as the founding executive art director of the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, where the satirical play is mounted. Founded in 2003 in the Frank Gehry-designed space on Main St., ECA, as Danner notes, was created to nurture new writers and upcoming talents and by its own description serves as collaborative rehearsal and performance space open to artists of all disciplines and experience levels – "a space in which professional and classical theater productions, dance performances, visual arts and films collaborate with independent, experimental, and student works in various stages of development." The collaborations include those between writers, directors, actors and musicians, and kid performers are welcome.

"You're On the Air" which has been extended through the election, is a product of some of that collaboration. The piece is built around a mock TV talk show whose guests are exaggerations of American types. Danner says the idea "just came to me" one day and her brain soon issued a three-page treatment. She liked it, and accordingly wrote a 12-page treatment and started the casting process. Which is when the development became really interesting as potential cast members, who were selected from among actors with whom she had collaborated earlier and from former and currents students, began, as Danner says, to "do some improv and character work" based on the proposed template of characters in the treatment.

The result was a cast of 21, a finely honed script, a group of outrageous characters who play off each other beautifully - and a sense of "hyper reality" furthered by the fact that 20% of the show each night is improv, much of it with audience participation. The latter constitutes one of the creative reaches Danner takes with the piece, one that works for the audience to the degree that, as one audience member noted, "I never felt so intimate and friendly with any group of actors ever."

Photo: Michelle Danner

Danner's career in arts production and management launched in 1979 with her European tours of the hit shows "Saturday Night Fever," "West Side Story" and "Bubbling Brown Sugar." Later she produced and promoted tours for international stars such as Julio Iglesias, Van Halen, The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the world tour of the Harlem Globetrotters. A later stint saw her as the founding artistic director of the New York Theatre Company (1983-87) before moving to LA in 1990 where she continued producing theater, some of it award-winning. Then she raised $1.3 million and founded Edgemar. Her hits there have included "Outloud"; "Night of the Black Cat," which won Best Musical of the year at the 2005 LA Music awards, and "Mental the Musical" which also got raves and critics pick and is moving to New York in 2009.

In 2006 Danner debuted her film-directing career with "How to go Out on a Date in Queens," which was nominated for five and won four LA Film Awards. As an acting coach she has worked with Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, James Franco, Marcia Cross, Common, Brian McKnight, Christian Slater, Michael Pena, Catherine Bell, Isla Fisher, Gavin Rossdale, Rick Fox and many others. She is currently preparing to direct "Songs for a New World" by Jason Robert Brown and is in pre-production for a movie, "The Will To…"

RealTALK interviewed Danner recently about her madcap current hit, "You're On The Air," which deals with current events as well as longstanding public beefs (Jews and Palestinians) in a format that allows both for laughter and for mind stretching.

First obvious question, what are you trying to do with this play?

I was trying get past that a lot of times in LA, especially in this part of town, no one at a dinner party, no one in conversation, will say what they truly believe - and when it comes to politics, people get shy and no one will say what it is on their minds. The original intent was to spread it [strong opinions] among everyone in the cast, to engage, debate and have people share a viewpoint and tell it as it is and not be politically correct and hold it back.

I know so many people are going to vote for McCain and they are afraid to say it because they are outnumbered in LA. But you know even if you are outnumbered, it doesn't matter. Shout out what it is.

And I wanted to make it interactive with the audience so on any given night it would be different. Also, if you sent a group of comedians to the Mideast, I am not saying it would resolve it but maybe there is a way to resolve it. So having the Israeli in the play and the Palestinian come together and have coffee, that these negotiations could be had and laughed at a little bit, is to engage and open up dialogue.

Ever see another play like this, one built around a cast pretending to be characters from real life on a talk show?

I think the show is unique in concept: building a play around an on-air political talk show and the fact that it involves the audience and the fact that it has 21 actors.

Clearly the actors are doing improv in the part of the play when they are taking tough, unscripted questions from the audience as if they were real characters but how much of the play writing if any actually came out of any actor's improv when you were casting?

At the end of the day there is only about 20% of actual improv in the script. It helped that the actors could stand on stage and own the characters in such a way. It's an achievement that all 21 characters are distinct and all memorable. I really feel this was a workshop and we wrote it in less than two months and that's a fast process.

I think it has to do with the way I work, the rehearsal process. A lot of actors don't like to do the improv work where they are engaging in a process where they say, "I don't know what it will be." What's great is the original treatments I wrote and registered is what's on stage. The impov enhanced it. This is how I teach when I teach acting class and I teach it this way because it makes you shine.

Of the 21 characters, how many changed during the workshop period?

All but two of the characters were set from the beginning in my original treatment and manuscript. The actor playing the doctor came in with his character. That was his idea. And the stage assistant, the guy with the Mohawk, developed that character.

Even though the show's such a hit, how come so few reviews?

We didn't really open it to reviewer because it was a workshop. I didn't know if it would fail. I wasn't attached to anything. I only knew to put it forward and told everyone we might fail and it's okay. It's only my summer experiment. I don't have to take any more risks from now till the end of the year. I did it. I did my risk project. I told my students you have to risk something.

Where is it going after the run is over?

Because one of our missions is to build a bridge from stage to film, I think there is a script here, definitely a movie, and I am going to pursue that. We will also leave it open to other theater companies that want to use more of their members in one play and then if other companies want to do it with a smaller cast, they can double cast it. Each actor can play two or more parts.
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Tickets 310-399-3666. 2437 Main St., Santa Monica, CA. 90405. www.edgemar.org

Remaining Show dates:
Sunday, October 12 7:30 Show
Saturday, October 18 8:00 Show
Sunday, October 19 3:00 Matinee
Saturday, October 25 8:00 Show
Sunday, October 26 3:00 Matinee
Saturday, November 1 8:00 Show
Sunday, November 2 7:30 Show

Rosanna DeSoto’s career on stage and screen has spanned more than two decades of challenging the preconceived notions of the role of Latin-American women in film. Her independent spirit has also been exercised by a more recent diva musical career most visibly represented by her one-woman show, in Spanish, called Canto de Oro/Cuento de Mujere, which means Song of Gold/Storytelling of a Woman. The show is song and dance taken from archives of the golden era of music in Central and South America. She has also produced CDs of her own songs, in English, which she carries off in a lilting sweet and penetrating voice.

DeSoto is best known for her work in Stand and Deliver and La Bamba, films notable for exposing a mainstream audience to some real stories of Mexican-Americans and allowing, as she put it, “The universal to take over and show the human spirit and how much we really have in common that’s so beautiful.” Whatever hint of the sentimental that statement evokes, DeSoto is as quietly tough-minded as she is outspoken on such subjects as the costs of ignorance, education, prejudices, and accents that remind people of their maids.

A woman who once stood alongside Caesar Chavez and continues to promote ideals of equality in Hollywood, DeSoto in a very aware way makes her inner and outer struggles the forces behind her art—and indeed, the moment-to-moment essence and texture of her life. “I need to have that constant effort. That constant tug between the dark and the light is what gives the frequency, the intensity to break out in life,” she said.

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How did you get your start as an actress in Los Angeles?

I came to Los Angeles in ’70 or ’71, after college. I came here and eventually got under contract at the Los Angeles Music Center, doing a play and children’s theater. And then as a result of that I ended up getting on television, because there was an agent in the audience. So he became my agent, and then I started to do television.

Was Hollywood what you had imagined?

More than anything, I was very naïve businesswise. I really didn’t know business. I just knew the acting and the artistic side of it. Didn’t really know how to bring into existence a professional career as an actress. I didn’t have business savvy, so there were several really fine opportunities that I just passed up. I didn’t know that when a Mel Brooks came up to you and said, “I’m Mel Brooks. I did Blazing Saddles. You should be in movies.” I didn’t know that you paid attention to people like this and said yes. I met him at Fox Studios and I was like, who is this guy? What does he want? What is going on here? I didn’t immediately go home and call my agent and say, call Mel Brooks and set up an appointment! I didn’t do that because I was like why is this man behaving like this in the commissary? So it was [a] huge block in my mind of a lack of experience that prevented me from being more successful earlier on.

What inspired you to pursue acting as a career path?

I went to school with Daniel Valdez, and his elder brother was Luis Valdez. When I got to San Jose State, Luis Valdez was working on the Shrunken Head of Poncho Villa. He performed, and I saw that performance and that’s when I met him. I became involved with Luis and Danny, doing political vignettes for Caesar Chavez, whom I met at that time. In college we formed huge protests groups because we were not getting the kind of attention that we wanted to get our program to take off. So it was really political.

I participated with the grapes strikes, here in LA and in San Jose and then Fresno. I helped Caesar wherever I could. I did radio interviews. I was outspoken that way. I remember we did shows for wherever Caesar was. He was in Fresno. We did shows in Fresno.

What was your impression of Caesar Chavez during this period?
Caesar, of course, was a very conscientious man. He was one of the first people who came around and said, “I realize that this is going up against a giant, but in good conscious, I have to bring this to the front.” Here was Caesar Chavez—Mexican ancestry with a very American attitude. I respect people who are able to observe a situation, observe living conditions and in a very mindful, honest and courageous way, speak up. I think that’s very American.

With which culture do you find yourself identifying more often, your Mexican or American heritage?

I’m an American—very thoroughly an American. I was born in this country. I was raised here. And I had two cultures in my home. I am both of these cultures. My father and my mother are from El Chocan, which is deep south in Mexico. My mother was an American citizen because my grandmother had land here, and when my mother was born she was born in Texas.

When I was at San Jose State University there were very few Mexican-Americans there. I remember being in my music appreciation class and having one of my professors single me out and say, “Where are you from?” I said, where am I from? I said, “Tenth Street Pier in San Jose.” He said, “Oh my God. You look like a foreign-exchange student.” That’s a sad commentary, because in fact, there’s a huge Mexican-American population in San Jose.
Despite the prejudices, how did your education prepare you as an actress?

I was very curious. I had a great deal of respect for my teachers. I liked to befriend them and I liked learning about different cultures and things like that. I was very curious. So that curiosity kind of pushed me in the opposite direction of what I already knew. I liked all literature, but I found it very curious that the Bible was never on the reading list. Here is purportedly the word of God. So I finally sat down and read it a couple times over, and it’s become my favorite book.

Do you consider yourself religious or spiritual, meaning do you follow church doctrine or do you find your own interpretation and seek a personal relationship with God?

As a child I always had these unusual thoughts, which I would voice to the priest. I could never understand why I should have to go and confess my sins to somebody else when I could confess to God myself. This was not a popular idea. I didn’t understand why I have to worship on a Sunday. I can worship all day long or the whole week if I want to. That’s how I still think.

Have we as a country improved the quality of the educational experience for Latin-Americans?

Aside from being a Latin-American person, just as an American citizen, I look around and I’m seriously disconcerted by how underemphasized education is and how trivial it’s become. It’s almost like it’s not important anymore. It’s almost like when people go to school they get trained to come out almost robotically and function in their specific field. The education in the broader sense of the word, about world history and art, that’s the first thing they cut out in the programs when they’re cutting down funds for schools. You have tremendous culture to the south. It is not just the people who pick the strawberries here and wash toilets. You know, there’s a huge, huge culture to the south of you. But it takes education to know these things.

Americans are widely considered the worst educated people about other peoples, including, of course, about Latinos. Do you feel media has the responsibility to educate the viewers or is it purely entertainment?

The problems that the Latin-American has in Los Angeles or in the Southwest or in New Mexico become manifest when you see the underrepresentation that we have in films and television. And that makes you wonder what is the psychology behind that. What is the mind-set? Why not tap into that market? What is the hesitation? What is the reservation? What’s the tension? What’s the social dance? What is that?

Why do you think the film and television industries are ignoring the Latin-American market?

I think that that’s just part of the territory, the way things are. I think that Latin-Americans [are] going to have to create more projects that deal with our own experience.

There have been organized attempts among Latino artists to open up the entertainment industry. Given your outspokenness, did you participate?

Some dozen years ago I worked with a group called Nosotros for a while. It would approach different studios and say. “Look, there’s underrepresentation here,” and sometimes some things would come about. Three years ago there was a group that included Eddie Almos, Sonja Braga, Jimmy Smits, who went to Washington to lobby on a bigger scale to get more Latinos in the arts. I did not participate in that. I guess my philosophy has become something my father said once. “If you wanna make a big change, don’t travel in a pack. Travel alone and be very mindful about what you’re aiming for.” Because then you’re more likely to effect more realistic change.

Do you think more Latin-American actors will be offered roles traditionally intended for white performers?

You can’t pigeonhole them into playing Mexican characters or Latin characters. That’s not democratic. Salma Hayek did a huge interview that got a lot of attention. [A] producer said to her, “You know, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be a much bigger star than you are. The only problem is you have the wrong accent. You speak like my housekeeper.” That’s a very horrible thing to say. You can have an accent that’s French and you can have an accent that’s in Russian but you can’t have an accent that’s Spanish—because you remind them of their housekeeper. When I would go on my auditions, I would say, “Okay, I’m going to do one your way and then I’m going to do one the way Latin-Americans speak when they’ve been raised in this country.”

Despite her accent, Salma Hayek has done very well for herself as have other Latina actresses such as Penelope Cruz, Eva Longoria and Jennifer Lopez. Are women of Latin descent succeeding in Hollywood?

There’s a hell of a lot of room for improvement in the way women are portrayed in film and television, the way they’re utilized. And there’s a hell of a lot of room for improvement in the way the Hispanic female is seen and portrayed on film and television. She’s not given that thing that says that she’s a mindful, intelligent human being.

It’s very rare. There are extra ordinary circumstances where that is not true. Where you actually have a Meryl Streep who does a film like Sophie’s Choice, but in general, women are not given those roles. The ones who are the decision-makers, who are the thinkers in films are generally men—the movers and shakers, the ones who do, who effect change. Then when a strong woman does come around and she’s articulate and expressive and she participates, she’s immediately branded with the B-word. They’re not given any respect.

Do you feel this attitude in Hollywood toward strong women weakens the industry as a whole?

That very backward primitive instinct to quantify people or categorize people or box people is like a vestige of something that’s not good for the human spirit and certainly not good for art.

The backbone of art is your own soul. The backbone of artistic expression ultimately comes back to you. You cannot rely on someone for your own artistic expression. And you cannot wait for someone for your own artistic expression. And you cannot allow someone’s quantifying tic to hang you up.

Tao Ruspoli, artist and original filmmaker, might just be a character out of a Wes Anderson film. What with an Italian aristocrat for a father, a Hollywood designer for a mother, a youth spent between LA and Rome, a beautiful actress wife, a degree in philosophy from Berkley, a well-appointed loft in Venice (the beach), and an award-winning film in his satchel, Ruspoli appears more fictionalized character than person.

Who would on surface appearances do nicely, say, in the Tenenbaum family.

Intrigued by Tao's larger-than-life resume and assigned by an editor who thinks Ruspoli is one of the more interesting and compelling young filmmakers cum artists in LA, I went to interview him about his most recent film, “Fix.”

“Fix,” Ruspoli says, is a "concentrated road movie that takes the convention of the road movie and compresses it into one day and one city." LA is the set and becomes a character in itself. "L.A. in ‘Fix’ is a microcosm of the entire world,” he says, “and this one day becomes a transformative journey for the characters Milo [played by Tao] and Bella [Olivia Wilde]."

The catalyst for Milo's and Bella's transformation is Milo's brother, Leo (Shawn Andrews), who is a rambunctious, lovable, and charismatic heroin addict in a bind. Leo must admit himself to a rehab clinic with $5000 in his hand by 9 PM of that day or face three years in prison. Milo and Bella must follow him on a wild journey through the underworld of L.A. to help him procure funds and make it safely to rehab.

Germane to the film is the well-crafted documentary look, shot in HD. "The film was born out of searching for an idea that could bridge my documentary work to a new beginning in narrative and I wanted something that could use the language I had learned over the last 15 years making documentaries, " Ruspoli says. The style is beautiful and engaging. The film itself is riveting. Dispersed between the narrative moments of plot and story, the film transports the audience from scene to scene by creating a lyrical and moving world that amounts almost to visual essays. The technique gives the movie its road feel, and paces the action of the plot.

Once the film leaves the road and enters a different scene, it blends real life with the fictional, weaving a loose and believable symphony of reality.

In fact, the film is as much a documentary as a narrative story: real people and true places are used throughout. Be prepared to learn new things about LA and to experience scenes you have only heard about as the film moves through a dark world.

As one example, a really excellent section of the movie details the characters' misadventure into the Jordan Down housing project attempting to sell marijuana to raise money – an immersion into the real hard knock world of domino-playing gangsters, thugs and O.G.s.

According to Ruspoli, "First I showed up with my friend, Savage Face, a rapper from the Jordan Down projects .He took me around to meet all the 'killers,' and he introduced me around to all the most powerful and dangerous people in the projects to make sure they knew I was coming.

“On the day of, we got there with our small crew and I explained what was going to happen in the scene. Savage Face was already there, and he had been informed that he was going to be the guide there, and then, just like the rest of the film, the actors knew their lines and knew what we had to do - and we pulled it off, as far as achieving the perfect balance between reality and what was happening in the story."

Early in the film, it’s revealed that Leo's nick-name is Hermes, the Olympian god of travel and boundaries, who, according to myth, leads the dead to the underworld. As Leo leads Milo and Bella deeper into his own underworld, they are faced with problems and questions they must answer. as crime and drugs are introduced into their highly principled and clean lives. This is most noticeable in Bella. At the outset she sees Leo as repulsive. Emotionally, the audience begins where Bella is. Most of us are not addicts, and we don't want that in our lives. Around this is where the emotional shift occurs in Bella - and by extension, in the audience.

You'll notice in the film that Bella begins to have fun, and enjoys Leo. It's not that she's condoning his life, but she begins to accept that Leo is a person in trouble; she begins to regard him and the issue of drug addiction with compassion and love. There are many subtle and well-crafted messages in the movie but this is most prominent: by being kind and helpful, in the end this will do more than jail time or rehab clinics.
The end of the film comes quickly, like the snap of a wet towel. It left me with a sense of defeat and hopelessness. It's not the ending you'll want, but it's more or less realistic.

Tao Ruspoli eased my discomfort with this perspective: "My Message in the movie is that it's [drug addiction] not going to get fixed in one day, and that it's a life long journey to try and heal ourselves and each other, and it's not hopeless, but this film is one day closer; it's like the Taoist saying that a thousand mile journey begins with one step."
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Clips and additional information can be found at www.fixthemovie.com.

In addition, Tao Ruspoli’s new documentary, “Behind The Wheel,” is being shown at the Altavista Film Festival In Hollywood at 2:00 PM on October 2 and at the Other Venice Film Festival in the Beginning of October. ”Behind the Wheel” is a Kerouakiian journey across the U.S. featuring interviews with intellectuals, artists and activists in the search of a common voice for change.

Dov Charney is arguably the most interesting capitalist in LA. He pays his 6,000 workers at his American Apparel factory and stores way over scale, shuns foreign production of his goods, provides heath insurance, and manages a factory work atmosphere that is healthy, often fun, and highly productive. His own playful and gallery-worthy photo-based art pieces dot factory walls. There is huge list of relatives and friends of current employees waiting for job openings. Charney himself is a wiry bundle of intense energy, high smarts and relentless philosophic musings. He has some detractors in the labor movement and elsewhere which he handles with reasonable aplomb and characteristic effusion. To say his mind is lively is to say fire is hot.

Charney is 39. When he is not working, which is not that often, he takes pictures, parties, sometimes calls people he finds interesting, pursues women (and sometimes gets in trouble for it) and muses on other entrepreneurial ventures.
What are the advantages of being sweatshop-free, of not outsourcing aspects of your production?

I try to make T-shirts that I like to wear myself, that people love to wear. By not contracting out I can focus on the art by keeping it inside. I can’t tell you how many times we make a T-shirt sampling, go to production, and there’s something about the way the fabric’s handled in production. It could be the most minor change, but it doesn’t feel right. We have a better chance of controlling those little details in-house. So the whole sweatshop-free thing actually is a mask. It’s really a front for efficiency. We’ve now gone 100% kosher in self-manufacturing because we’re trying to prove a point that our company can flourish. Plus the throughput time, the amount of time you have to plan ahead, when you outsource is like, years ahead sometimes.

So implicit in that is the idea that you’re only socially responsible because it’s pragmatic?

Well, I think it’s a safer argument to make to society. It’s my belief that God actually is just a force of efficiency. And that it’s actually more efficient for people to yield a little bit of their self-interest, because in doing so it creates a society where self-interest can be raised for everybody. The self-interest of everyone could be augmented by creating a civil society. For example take property rights. The basic idea is that you know each party respects the other party’s property. You’re not allowed to take this can of Coke away from me. It’s mine. By force of the state, you can’t take my property. If you do you can be arrested. So it’s like, boom, that’s my can of Coke, don’t touch it. If you could, then we’d be living like a bunch of animals. It’d be survival of the biggest, the most brutal; that’s how life would operate.

So we make a social compact between each other, where I say, “Look, you understand this is my can? And I understand that’s your cup of coffee, and we’re not going to violate one another’s property rights.” That’s what sweatshop-free is. It’s basically saying, “You know what? We’re going to cooperate a little more than usual and we’re going to cooperate to make the very best products possible. And we’re going to exploit the cooperative nature of man and its self-interest.”

Nature’s really a baseball bat, and living in caves, and I’m saying adjusting the game of nature and establishing property rights, or maybe a security umbrella with a welfare system, or maybe unemployment insurance. This is what government, society, and freedom is all about. We have chosen to yield some freedoms to create a greater freedom. Some of the richest people in human history, some of the richest men or women, have emerged in these new, these great societies that we’ve built and become even more rich ’cause of the stock market system, which is a form of cooperation, a form of social bargaining.

Do you do much charity work?

Nah. My charity’s right here. If I can sell another thousand shmattes or open up another store or I get another order for 500 bucks, or 500,000 bucks, boom, it’s money on people’s plates. That’s what I do. If there’s any Robin Hooding going on here, it’s that I’m paying these people money. The more work we get in, the more brothers and sisters and cousins we hire and it goes from four days to five days, or five days to six days, six days and overtime. And the more money that goes out the door the better. It’s all about money ’cause the more money they have, the more clothes, the more food, the more secure they are, the more savings they have, the better the apartments, etc., etc.

That’s what it’s all about for me. An emotional, kind of commercial experience. They know it. If the quality’s no good, I tell ’em, “We’re losing orders because of this.” You can see it in the people’s face; they try harder and can lick a quality problem. Just by giving them the visibility, they feel part of the mission. If we’re making money, we get a better lunch program or kick back a little bit, and it works. It works, and it’s a higher form of capitalism and it comes from the union movement. The unions were saying for a hundred years, “If only management would pay workers well.” It’s so important to the lives of the workers. It makes such a difference in their lives, the extra money you can pay ’em. And it’s so important to the community, and it’s so important to society.

Do you belong to any socially responsible business organizations?
No. I barely have time for that. Like I know how to make money right now, and the more money I make, the more people I can hire. I have the highest wages within my industry, and I can get them even higher. I can bring in pension programs. I could run this thing like Microsoft. Understand? But organized labor is pitched in America like, ‘Whoa!’

Pitched to you?

Yeah. Look, organized labor exists because capitalism pushed the game of money and pulled so hard on labor that labor was not just powerless, people were starving. So labor had to collectively organize and pull back. There was a kind of tug of war. But I mind-fucked that because I started paying people so well..

What’s the going wage in the sew shops around town?

Seven, eight, nine bucks. You want to hear something? I love the kids behind the anti-sweatshop movement. I know they’re there for the right reasons, for the most part. But I think the sewing shops are a lot less exploited in this town. They’re still saying that LA’s the sweatshop capital of the world. Now I know a lot of contractors, and there was a lot of fuckin’ around in this town years ago, but I really think they’re making an effort and there’s a herd effect on society. There are great companies in LA, and they deserve some recognition for being thoughtful about their workers, too. I’ve seen Korean contractors come crying when they couldn’t meet their payroll obligations.

What about sweatshops?

It’s not going to last forever. And it’s also not the most efficient path, ’cause I see stuff that comes out of the Third World; I know guys, colleagues of mine that have gone to the darkest of places to do their manufacturing, and they’re fucking losing money. I’m making millions, and they’re losing money. They’re paying a quarter now and I’m paying $13 an hour. There’s something wrong with their science. Okay?

How are you on environmental issues?

I got to be honest with you, and I don’t want to disparage my own reputation, and maybe I’m volunteering too much, but my heart’s on paying the worker well. We are buying organic yarns and we are trying to integrate more sustainable-growth cotton into our general line.

You want to know something? The organic T-shirts didn’t sell that well. Nor does selling sweatshop-free products alone, because there was Sweat X, another company that I think was actually endorsed by the LA Weekly. They always got press, whereas we didn’t, but they were union, and they were allegedly a cooperative. Their cooperative was losing money, so it’s like, “Hey, you want a share of shit? Here it is. You want to share the debt?” They went from 60 workers to 20. They laid off workers. They were earning, at the same or slightly less; you know what I’m saying? Plus, it was 60 workers—forget it. I got thousands. And my high end was 18, 20 dollars; they had no one ever made that there. You know what I’m saying? Plus, I had white-collar jobs and we were making money.

What do you think of LA?

I love LA. I love LA. I think LA’s the hottest place to be in the country. I think it still has some noninstitutional opportunities. New York’s chopped up; there’s no future, man. We’re making money in New York ourselves, but it’s very hard to operate in New York. The real estate’s so expensive. Everything heavily regulated. There’s not one corner not exploited. Here it’s like the Wild West; it’s a young town. Downtown is barely developed, and there’s tons of vacancies in terms of manufacturing space. There are fresh people moving here from all over the world. There’s lots of space for the city to grow.

Do you run the company by yourself?

I have a partner. He was my contractor. We went into business together.

So who were your major influences growing up??

My mother was a little bit of an activist. I knew what the grape boycott was ’cause there was no grapes, and we were in Montreal, Quebec. We weren’t in California. I knew who Cesar Chavez was. Here’s a picture of my mom marching for an abortion pro-choice march. My mom had a sense of consciousness.

Here’s a picture of Mitzvah [father]; he was a member of the workmen’s circle. It’s a Yiddish worker’s organization. Here’s Mitzvah, that’s me. My dad had a guy cooking for us in the house. He’s a real shrink this guy; he was losing his teeth, he was losing his mind. I watched my dad worry about this chef. He was paying him, I guess it was 10, 15 bucks an hour. We suspected maybe he had AIDS. He was gay and his body was deteriorating and we didn’t know what was going on. And I watched my dad struggle with this. What the fuck does he care? He can’t cook the food, get him out of here. But my dad didn’t behave that way.

You see it! People care around you, your parents care, or your community cares, you care.

Photo by Maya Dreilinger

The Latino culture now holds an immense place in LA, likely beyond even its own understanding of its dynamism. The business and job-growth opportunities are “everywhere”—and not only for Hispanics. But to succeed, you’d best comprende the unique characteristics of the culture.

What follow is a look at what works from Jose Legaspi, who has thrived in LA on the strength of being one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on the topic of the Hispanic market, everyone’s hot audience at the moment. Legaspi, who helped former Mayor Richard Riordan get elected based in part on his advice re Latinos and who has quietly impacted the landscape of LA in many ways, has over time accumulated a storehouse of data and perspective about the idiosyncracities of the market along with compelling overview of the immense place the Hispanic culture now holds in LA and the business opportunities therein. He shares his wisdom and blunt insights.

Some background: Legaspi operates Legaspi Co., whose core trade is realty services along with marketing consulting. The firm works primarily with businesses in finding and developing sites for retail stores in Hispanic neighborhoods and then helps design an atmosphere conducive to attracting Hispanics. Separately, he is partnered in managing some major pension funds’ joint venture investments in shopping centers.

For years active in community affairs, he chaired the LA Community Design Center, an oversight role in developing badly needed subsidized housing, one of his two primary current societal interests, the other being education. (He has been a regent at Loyola Marymount University, raising money and promoting scholarship opportunities for Latino students.) Under Riordan he served on the Department of Water and Power board and then the MTA board and was tasked with helping restructure both agencies. Politically, he says, his interest is in supporting educated “heart-with-the-community candidates who understand the overtones and are sensitive to the community.”

Legaspi’s father was born in Iowa, where his grandfather had fled after the Mexican revolution. The family returned to Mexico in 1921, and Legaspi’s mother and father moved to LA in 1965, when he was 14, at his mother’s insistence that her kids have U.S. college education. He went to Roosevelt high school in Boyle Heights, then Loyola University of LA and was graduated with a biology degree and a second major in psychology. On the way to becoming a doctor insufficient finances intervened, there being no scholarships for Latino students at the time. After he graduated, he worked at John Hancock to gain sales experience and found that he was good at peddling insurance. In the mid-’70s he obtained a real estate license to accommodate clients who wanted to invest.

How did you get started as a Hispanic market expert?

The ups and downs of real estate are horrible, so I decided [also in the mid-’70s] to try sales in either TV or radio. I ended up at a fledgling advertising agency that was trying to sell the Hispanic market to advertisers. My scientific background helped me understand the statistics and the population trends and I did pretty well, but I missed negotiating, so I began to do ‘business opportunity’ sales. People told me what it is they wanted and I’d go after it. Someone wanted a beer distributorship or a liquor store, I would find it. I found someone a TV station in McAllen, Texas. That gave me a lot of business background and understanding of operational methods.

One time during a trip to Mexico City I saw a charbroiled-chicken stand. I came back to the U.S. and discovered El Pollo Loco. I subsequently help them open 21 stores. I became an owner of El Pollo Loco franchises. Using the understanding I had about the Hispanic market from working with the advertising agency helped me understand site location for businesses. Denny’s eventually came in and bought El Pollo Loco from the owners and they also bought my units.

From then on I began to develop real estate opportunities for poor people in the Hispanic areas and represented a lot of different Hispanic-oriented businesses into the Hispanic market. I started acquiring a databank of demographics and businesses who would want to reach in the Hispanic world, and I created a system to educate the retailers, the cities, Wall Street on the Hispanic market. We pushed bringing needed goods and services to that world. And so the Legasi Co. was formed right around 1979, ’80. We basically do the market study for where retailers need to be to reach the Hispanic market, then we do real estate negotiations for the acquisition of the sites and then we implement the store buildup. I did a deal recently with Target in San Jose and tried to design centers that provide a gathering place and that comfort level for Latinos so that they can feel good, safe, secure, comfortable and welcome.

You also do the reverse: Go find a tenant for an existing center or one being built. How does that play out?

Years ago I began to create tenancy for clients who operated shopping centers, meaning that if I needed a department store in an Hispanic area and JC Penney and Sears didn’t want to be there, I would go out and find someone and expand them into a chain. In many cases I brought businesses from Mexico to open stores here because I needed anchor tenants to fulfill the mission of providing needed goods and services from Mexico.

When you say you ‘needed,’ do you mean the community needed it or you had a space you wanted to rent out for a client?

It just all depends. For example, I was called upon by a project manager of the Redevelopment Agency for downtown Santa Ana, about ’86, ’87. Downtown Santa Ana had gone downhill and they didn’t know what to do with it. There was nothing going on downtown, the whole demographic had changed. I said, “Okay, we need department stores, restaurants and movie theaters to serve the people who had moved into the downtown area.” We redid the whole downtown just to serve the Hispanic community. It’s called Fiesta Marketplace and it’s like the Third St. Mall in Santa Monica, except we did it eight years earlier.

In order for me to be able to serve the community well, I had to find retailers. A lot of the national retailers didn’t want to go there. I would go and find a specific tenant and say, “Okay, why don’t I help you organize your business a little and move you over to my center? Let me help you expand.” I did that quite effectively throughout Hispanic Southern California. In Pacific Grove, Huntington Park, downtown Los Angeles [on Broadway], San Fernando Valley, San Fernando Road, Panorama City. In Texas, I have another partnership with a private group, where we owned two malls, one in Houston, one in Dallas-Fort Worth and all designed specifically for the Hispanic community. The one in Houston has been sold, though.

What, if anything, is particularly satisfying about your trade?

We have an ability to acquire money from GMAC or Citibank, some of the big Wall Street money sources and have them feel comfortable that we know what we’re doing. They’re not putting any constraints on us by insisting that we bring in only a certain type of retailer, somebody who’s big and powerful and has a big net worth. For example, our conditions with the banks in Fort Worth allow us to bring in mom-and-pop tenants. Now we’re not going to bring in somebody who doesn’t know how to run a business. But we’re able to bring in someone who may not have the operational experience or the net worth to be able to run a business, and we’ll help them. At the end we’re going to leave them alone. Helping the community help itself is the most satisfying.

How did you go from here to marketing expert?

As I began to work with the retailers they would tell me what kinds of things Hispanics are buying and why. How much money they spent. We’d explore can there be a better way to sell to them and can you create better merchandise or a better retail environment? I also became a lecturer at various universities on Hispanic retailing. I lectured about understanding the culture and what the difference is between one Hispanic and another Hispanic and, third, second, and fourth generations and/or from a socioeconomic-level point of view.

Talk about those differences.

I began to realize that the actual Hispanic consumer base had three unique characteristics, and even though you may have Spanish-only or English-only Latinos, they share these three things. One of those is that you need to provide a sense of a gathering place, and whether it is a recent arrival or a second- or third-generation higher-income Latino, sense of place is very important.

Another characteristic is the cultural element, the extended family unit. It’s a social culture rather than one based on individualism. This plays out in many ways, one of which is that a lot of business is done on the basis of personal relationships. It translates into, “Let me help you. Let me do this with you. Let me work with you,” For example, in a large corporation the policy manual may not allow for relatives to work together in the company, or at least within the same department. The assumption is that somebody’s going to exploit the company because now you have a group of people who may have geared one another to screw the company up, steal or whatever. However, it is a bad idea to do it that way with Hispanics. The reason is it’s not an individualistic type of culture; it’s more social. The opposite happens because, I, as a Latino, if I bring my cousin to work with me in that department, I want to make sure that he does his work right, because I don't want to look bad to my employer.

Also, because we’re a social culture, children stay at home until much older than other cultures, even when they are out of school and working. This means more disposable income because they are not paying rents, so we are very good consumers in areas you might not expect.

The third is religion. Most Latinos are Catholic and there’s a huge, strong spiritual sense. It’s a strong element. For example, the Christmas posadas are strong cultural icons that as they are organized as a gathering opportunity, it brings the community together in one place where services and goods can be provided.

What are some examples of difference between one Hispanic and another and between generations?

Differences are less noted in Southern California as they would [be] in other parts of the country. The large percentage of Mexican-descent Hispanics provides for a semblance of homogeneity. On the other hand, there are differences in regards to language acquisition, going from the Spanish-only speaker to the English-only Hispanic. Different perspectives and reactions of the different groups toward the external non-Hispanic world. Socioeconomic differences accentuate this. Strong customer service, though, is imperative for all Hispanics.

What are some of the characteristics of the households that are in the middle class and up?

Mexico is losing a lot of middle class to the U.S. It’s no longer just the rural class. They may not be making more than $10 an hour here, but they certainly have the attitudes of the middle class. Did you know that the biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez sold more units in Spanish in the U.S. than anywhere else? That shows the thirst for elements of cultural quality. There are various authorities who are pushing the theory, which I subscribe to very much, that the Latino community in the U.S. is a culture unto its own, with its own music, its own art, its own literature, its own everything, different from what Mexico may have or Latin America may have.

What do you see as the premier opportunity in the Hispanic business world in LA County?

Everything. Everything. There’s $800 billion worth of purchasing power in the whole U.S. The LA five-county area holds about 8.2 million Hispanics, who hold about $100 billion-plus in purchasing power. Mexico City’s metro area holds about 22 million people with an internal gross product of about $120 billion. And you’ve seen Mexico City. Probably only about 20%-25% of the Mexico City population can be said to have a disposable income. The rest don’t have much money.

But if you look in Mexico City, you find lots of banks, wonderful shopping centers, great movie theaters, great theaters, museums and all of that, and Southern California doesn’t have any of that for Hispanics. So just imagine where the void is: Everywhere. The biggest void is financial services, entertainment, soft goods, hard goods. Any food product. There is a need for a bunch of other kinds of manufacturing. The market is just so big. The No. 1 cheese manufacturer name brand in Southern California is Cacique, bar anyone. Just like the No. 1 radio station is Spanish. And the No. 1 newscast is 6 o’clock, Channel 34, bar any, okay?
Entertainment, movie theaters: The No. 1 world market in Spanish music is Hispanic U.S., with LA being the principal area—only because of the number of people. Miami has become the center of Hispanic music because of its proximity to the rest of Latin America. However, for the Mexican community, it’s LA.

The amount of money that is spent in entertainment is much higher than people assume. Locally, there are a lot of opportunities for entertainment businesses. Right now there are a few dance venues that only specialize in northern Mexico regional music, which is the norteño, which is like the polka. As people get to know that about these, it opens it up for others who are looking for business opportunities to say, ‘Oh, maybe I should do this as well.’ There’s a lot of that going on. So truly, any area, any category, is a high opportunity base.

Talk more about the music business scene.

LA has become a breeding ground for exporting music to Latin America that may be totally Mexican in nature. Actually, LA, I believe, has more Mariachi bands than Guadalajara does, which is where the Mariachi was born. The No. 1 regional norteño music singer in Mexico is a young man who was born in Long Beach, and his name is Lupillo Rivera. The No. 1, Charro, which is a Mexican cowboy that won the championship in Mexico, is from LA, and he’s a U.S.-born grandchild to the owners of a prominent Hispanic supermarket chain in LA.

Is health care an opportunity or growth area?

Health care is a huge issue in the Hispanic market. How do you create insurability of people who don’t have insurance?

How much of the Spanish middle and educated class is adopting LOHAS: a lifestyle of health and sustainability? Like the Anglos who shop at Whole Foods, do yoga and support environmental sustainability./

There is a consciousness of healthiness already in place. Latinos tend to have lower incidents of dying due to heart attacks because they go to the supermarket more frequently than non-Latinos. They go and buy fresh “naturally grown” fruits and vegetables, meat and chicken. They will pay extra. But transferring that philosophy of healthiness for you and your family, which comes from our social natures … transferring it to a society level is not that typical. People have been trying to survive, trying to get rid of racism and to create opportunities. That’s where the focus has been.

Is there an equivalent to Business for Social Responsibility, which looks at adopting high environmental, ethical, employee relation and community give-back standards?

In Mexico there’s very strong environmentally conscious and socially conscious movements.
Here, it’s very basic. It doesn’t translate the same way for Latinos, okay? There’s more toxic manufacturing in poor areas, Latino or otherwise, so people organize to fight it. It’s the same for people organizing for social services because they are personally impacted by poverty.

In general, it’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Values. People first focus on their own survival needs. Then when they get some money and security, they look out beyond themselves. It’s absolutely true, okay? I follow that to the T. Up until very recently the idea was to create opportunities for the Hispanic person, whether they were in business or education or any of that. Now as a lot of these people are coming out of college and getting into business, they have an idealistic streak. My sons, who work with me by their choice, are examples. They are very idealistic.

What are some of the more exciting individual companies you’ve come across?

Oh, wow. There’s a lot of interesting companies. In the healthcare business, for example, there’s Molina Healthcare. Cacique is a private company that’s very sharp. They make cheese, every kind of cheese you can think of. There are the Cardenas supermarkets. They do very good work. They create a sense of place. The other one that’s very much like him is Northgate Gonzalez Market. I call them the Bristol Farms of the Mexican world. And then there is Vallarta in the San Fernando Valley. They have such a wonderful service orientation that even non-Latinos are going there now to buy fresh fish. People from Encino will drive all the way to San Fernando to buy seafood. There’s the coffee company Gaviña They’re here in the city of Vernon. They buy coffee from all over the world. It’s premium coffee.

There’s El Gallo Giro--it’s a restaurant that I call the Jewish deli of the Mexican world, because it’s a hot food deli and they make all the food in front of people. There’s one on Pacific and Florence Avenue in Huntington Park and it’s the No. 3 grocer and restaurant in all of LA County. They make tortillas from scratch right in view of everybody. They take the hominy and cook it and they make the dough and the tortilla right in view of everybody. It’s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful company. There’s a company right near here that’s called BJ Brothers. They make the most beautiful piñatas and people come from all over and they’re wholesaling the piñatas all over the U.S. There is one guy who actually started selling tamales door to door. Now he’s got like five locations and everybody just comes for his tamales in East Los Angeles. Lillianas Tamales does extremely well. Also, the best Mariachi guitars are being made in East LA.

We know Latinos hire Latinos, it’s part of the social culture or bonding. But do Latino employers also exploit Latinos. Do you see much exploitation here in East LA?

Yeah. Yeah, there is. Absolutely. I can tell you that a lot of the garment industry sweat shops are run by Latinos themselves. That’s because people like to work for people who are of the same ethnic background. You will find huge exploitation in a lot of the restaurants. Also for the people who cleaning hotels, office buildings, there’s a lot of exploitation in that area.

Which brings me to another point. I do a lot of business in Mexico and the difference between doing business in Mexico and doing business in the U.S. is truly like night and day because in the U.S., the capitalistic system is based on trust. You shake my hand, I shake your hand, we’re okay. You know that I’m going to close the deal and you’d better take care of me, because if you don’t take care of me, I’m going to go to your competitor. In Mexico you don’t have that. It’s a very monopolistic, materialistic exploitative system. The reason why the middle class doesn’t stay in Mexico is because their attitude is if I don’t screw you, you’re going to screw me first.

I find that there are a lot of young Latino professionals here who are now learning that you don’t need to be exploitative. On the contrary, you need to be giving. That is better business common sense. By taking care of your employees, you’ll be better off than anyone else. And you will find that the employee base will immediately react to that and become a lot more loyal than ever.

Do you see where elements in the Latino business communities are working with elements in the Asian business community or the African-American business community or are they going their own separate ways?

Generally, they’re going their own separate ways. If they are U.S.-born groups of different ethnic backgrounds, you will tend to see a kinship and you will tend to see partnerships. But if they are immigrants they tend not to align themselves with other cultures only because their cultural elements are so far apart. But then, when you have an American culture, it sort of creates a cohesiveness amongst all those groups.

What are some of your disappointments? Where have you run into obstacles and struggles?

Oh, lately, I can tell you my biggest struggles are in cities that may be run by Hispanics themselves. They take an approach of “I know what’s best for my people and what’s best for my people is not necessarily a Hispanic supermarket. I want a Ralph’s.” And so they will put all the obstacles to any Hispanic type of retailing. Its happening in a bunch of cities. Including some predominately Hispanic cities in LA county. ”We want something better than that. Our people deserve better than just Hispanic stores,” they say.

That squares with a lot of people’s view that that class is ultimately a bigger divider than race. When you get the two of them together, you really have problems.

What about Hispanic leadership in politics, business and community affairs?

I don’t think that the Latino community has a choice but to take leadership of Los Angeles, because we are the majority in the city and we will be in the county and we want to make sure that the city works for everyone, including us. We have no choice but to take over that leadership. One thing that I’m very positive and encouraged about is if we can take some of the U.S. system of doing business and then take some of that Latino social culture, “You're my family and I'm not going to screw you, because you’re in my family” consciousness, and apply it to the larger community, very good things can happen.

What are your thoughts about the education system?

It’s a sad story that bilingual education is misunderstood. There’s nothing wrong with having two languages. On the contrary, it’s a huge benefit. Let’s not call it bilingual, let’s call it dual language. Isn’t it wonderful that LA can be the pivotal world city of all people and all these people have the ability to be at least dual-cultural, right? Bicultural and bilingual, whether they’re Korean or Armenian or Chinese or Japanese or Mexican. So what is wrong with allowing it in the education system and starting the kids at a young age? Is Europe all wrong that everybody speaks at least two languages? I don’t think so. Another problem with the educational system in LA and everywhere else in the U.S. is that it tries to take the perspective of the Anglo Saxon world, which tries to invoke the Marlboro Man, the independent man, the individualistic guy, who’s going to go out there and conquer the world. And the way you motivate that person is by saying, “If you want to go and become the wealthiest and most successful person, you’ve got to get straight As for yourself.” Whereas, if you go to the Latino kid and you say, “You want to make your grandmother proud? Get an A.”

When you’re teaching people according to their world view, then you’re not creating confusion. Wouldn’t it be interesting if, all of a sudden, everybody graduates from high school, because now they’re being taught and treated under their own world view? One thing that I learned about me: Because I came when I was 14 I had no qualms as to who I was. I was Mexican. I had no qualms about speaking Spanish. I didn't have to be ashamed to speak Spanish. That is a tremendous, tremendous base to work from. I don’t have to be ashamed of anything. Right? Then I come and learn English. Now I get to pick and choose, culturally, what I want.

Any areas where you’ve made enemies?

No, I don’t think so. That’s one thing I proudly have been very good at. I’m the middle child of this very large family and that’s why I'm such a good broker, because I basically ended up being the bridge between siblings. Sometimes I speak my mind when I find that a Latino may be screwing up. For example, there are individuals that I have found to be unethical in their way of doing business and I will not deal with them. And there are some who are just there to reward themselves and I will speak my mind and I will not accept that. Those are some things that I just don’t like.
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Legaspi on Legaspi – (Box)
Lives: East LA (name town)
Age: 56
Wife: Mary Ellen
Children: two boys, ages 33 and 29, and one girl, 24
Cultural forces that most shaped you: the East LA blowouts of 1968
Like best about LA: Its diversity of people, culture, food, music
Like least: Traffic
Fave music: Jazz, fusion Latin

James Mathers, is one of LA’s triumphantly Bohemian artists and poets - and a man with a vision to convert the “Rodeo Grounds” – the state park land just behind Topanga Blvd. at PCH - into an eco artist park with advanced arts and crafts. Mathers and a some teams of other artists used to squat on the property in a makeshift artist collective until forcibly decamped by the state two years ago, bringing a unique if rumpled Burning Mannish charm to the land. A whole group of people have been getting together petitions for this vision and one wishes in a perfect world it would happen because in a perfect world, artists who can riff about reality and pseudo reality as well and smartly as Mathers, deserve whatever paradise they want. His hero? “Teilhard de Jardin. Top one. He’s my boy. ‘Cause he proposes a true paradise vision of perfected humanity that might be so crazy that it works.”

You can check out his writings and some of his cartoon interviews at www.lifeasapoet.com. His website is www.jamesmathers.net

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What do you do that’s different about you from everybody else?

I think I problem-solve differently from everybody else. I’ve sort of abandoned reason as an organizing principle and have taken on the practice of letting life live me. I don’t try to fix or change things or get anywhere. And it’s had some interesting results and some scary results and some strange results, but I haven’t really seen it done before except I think by really seriously homeless insane people who maybe go fall down that hole.

How long have you been maintaining this practice?

Probably unconsciously all my life, but more and more in the last couple years. I’ve had the leisure to do it, you know, due to my circumstances, my life as an artist.

Is there anything you know that nobody else does or that you think gives you a leg up on the masses?

Not at all. In fact, as my puniverse contracts, I sort of envy the masses and their mass mind and their mass enjoyment. Because they’re free. Ignorance is bliss.

What do you know that deters bliss?

Denial, contraction, aversion. Aversion is bliss destroying.

What are you averse to?

Oh God, the usual things: pain, guilt, horror, being consumed with pity. Destructive emotions.

Do you have a life purpose?

Yeah, to transform myself – somehow. To change, grow, expand, evolve.

How’s it going?

Beautifully. It’s like falling into a poem.

What are your most important values?

Love and bad art.

Can you expound upon “bad art?”

All things complex and degenerated and crap and dented and bented and smeared with its own caque. All things brown and beautiful.

Are there ways in which you’re not living up to these values?

No, at times I feel I over-dramatize them. By kid’s stuff – acting out, performing the little opera of one’s life, even though other people are offended or reacting to it. It’s just so hard to resist, you know? It is after all “show biz.”

What is “show biz”?

All of this, all of life is show biz. Everywhere, everyday, every minute, we’re all, each of us, just in this fantastic drama with ourselves as the protagonists. It’s operatic. That’s the world we live in. Not this simulchre that’s fed to us, but the things that actually go down. Even the illegal immigrant lady that cleans your office at night is at the center of a fantastic explosion of events always. That’s a universal thing. That is our experience.

What are your major gifts and talents?

Stupidity – intense, willful stupidity and a sense of the absurd. Those are my deepest tools.

Are you making the most of these tools?

Only when I have the courage. When my courage fails, I fall back on trying to fix and change things and my thoughts.

If you were going to describe yourself to an anonymous entity, what would you say?

I’d say that I am the lunatic reflected in Dani Katz’ eyes.

Define lunatic.

Isn’t it a man driven mad by the moon?

And that’s how you see yourself?

Yeah. In terms of all the events of my life and how I live, I guess I can only claim insanity as a defense for my actions.

What’s been great in your life?

I used to live in the charmingest little arts community at the bottom of Topanga Canyon near PCH called the Rodeo Grounds. I was running a huge sort of arts atelier where people are coming and making things and having parties.

How do you define the group you belong to?

The most intelligent, beautiful, affectionate bunch of retards that I could ever hope to find. My little tribe. The Rodeo Grounds home team. They’re great. They’re all artists. They’re all nuts. We’re number one. I haven’t found better.

In what areas of your life are you currently learning the most?
I’m making my most exciting strides, I think, in observation of human behavior and my own behavior. Social dynamics: who can get away with what, who can’t, how it all works, how people manage to love each other without actually killing each other or driving each other crazy. It’s interesting to see if it can be done. Because if it can’t, then the human enterprise is over. Because if it can’t be done, then it can’t be done and something else will have to be done. We’d be the creatures that forgot not to kill each other and couldn’t stop, and couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t stop, and then didn’t stop.

Describe your spiritual path.

Kind of a wiggly line, straight into the center of the plasmodium. The plasmodium is the membrane around the eschaton – the final and ultimate thing. The completed thing.

Do you have any guiding spiritual principles on this wiggly path towards this thing?

No. I’ve completely thrown that into a hat with meditation, psychedelic drugs, group settings, research around practical shit, like how to actually maintain an expanded emotional state rather then just going wah-woe-wah-woe-wah-woe - “I like-I hate-I like-I hate” you know? To sort of stabilize out of the attraction/aversion yo-yo machine.

I just sort of go towards what works. If it doesn’t work, if I can’t use it, if my conscience is such that I have to forever live in guilt in shame, then I have to abandon it. I’m open for more and if anyone has any good suggestions, they can leave ‘em in my mailbox up on Topanga Canyon Boulevard: “Do This.”

In terms of what you’re throwing into your hat, who would you say are your most influential spiritual teachers?

I’m an omnivorous fiend – I love Vedanta, old Vedanta stuff from the theosophical societies in the 1920s. I love that stuff. Blabatsky and Leadbeater and all of that stuff and I love crazy ass stuff – Jose Arguelles stuff, I love it. I listen to CDs of Terrence McKenna obsessively. I love the things he proposed and I’ve read all the authors he’s ever suggested reading. I’ve read Teilhard de Jardin’s fantastical paradise image that’s sort of pounded into an observation of geology - and the fucking thing matches reality and you’re like “Whoa!” It’s just exquisite beyond exquisite what his proposal is. Teilhard de Jardin. Top one. That’s it. He’s my boy. This week. ‘Cause he proposes a true paradise vision of perfected humanity that might be so crazy that it works.

Maybe we’re meant to just consume and destroy this planet. And then something will happen – ka-jung! That’s what happens with the bugs. They consume, consume, consume; and then they bury themselves in a hole and melt into the sludge and reassemble themselves into something that has different eyes and can fly which is a completely other dimension of experience. These things happen in nature and we’re nature. We’re the creative end of nature.

What inspires you?

The future. When I see it occurring.

And what do you see?

Fantastic utopian paradise bliss, for sure. Everything’s beautiful and everything’s free and there are no problems.

Is it coming in our lifetime?

It’s here already. We’re just too stupid to see it.

What are you doing or what are you not doing that’s allowing you to see it?

I’m just feeling my way along as it occurs and I see it in people’s behaviors and I see it in the world around me and I also see it’s opposite, you know – battling. But it’s like going toward heat or light, it’s very clear.

What are you afraid of?

Death, disease, disappointment, despair, denial – and flesh-eating insects that fall out of the sky.

What were your major cultural influences growing up in LA?

Doctor Suess, punk rock, classical music, TV to a certain degree – cartoons, certainly.

Who were your cultural teachers?

Aren’t your cultural teachers everyone and everything that you encounter? In my case the whole world in the 1970s. Cedric Wolf. He’s a performance art-dude, yogi artist - consummate artist, playwrite. He had a huge impact on me when I was young. And Norton Wisdom, the painter. And Ole Olofson, painter. My artistic influences were profound and deep – a bunch of painters and writers dragged me through it, man. They carried me. I couldn’t see straight. And everything I consumed around images and experience and “what is truth?” - you know, fucking rad philosophy, Eastern, Western. I was blessed. I am so lucky to have had teachers. I got to take my hat off to ‘em (he takes off his hat).

Where do you encounter societal resistance to what you are doing or to who you are?

Ahhhh…curses. Societal resistance. I experience societal resistance to almost everything I do, generally – to my appearance, generally, to my behavior, generally. Society is sick and repressed and depressed and designed to make you miserable. I’m standing in defiance of a lot of norms, as a hippie, or whatever the fuck I am. So, you know, I wanna run around naked and make art. You just can’t do that down here in fucking Brentwood.

Give me a laundry list of the ways in which societal resistance is manifesting and cramping your style.

Well, there’s a constant sense of a police presence down here where I live –the rangers, the sheriffs, they’re down here all the time, questioning. Topanga beach used to be a nude beach – it was very cool, we were free and did stuff. Now there’s the sense that we must be protected from ourselves. Socially? Gossip cramps my style – people’s opinions about shit they’ve never heard, never seen, never been a part of. Or even people who have and who then talk shit about it even though they enjoyed themselves. That cramps my style. Hypocrisy. The social is a mine field. That’s why I want to find out if it’s possible for people to live in a state of love with each other and not kill each other and if that’s actually possible. Because if that’s actually possible, then we have a chance.

Do you think that’s what’s going on down here?

I think that’s what’s going on everywhere, microscopically, from a child’s relationship with its mother to capital’s relationship to labor to wealth’s relationship to poverty – everything. It’s mirrored into every single aspect of life, so that’s really the question. Because it’s not a question as to will we make it or not, or are we evolving or not.

And if we’re not, then we’re not. Then at least I get to go out the romantic. And the naïve. And die like the trilobite and the coleocant and the brontosaurus and the tyrannosaurus rex and just be covered over with the same cool impunity that nature covers over each of its great thrusts and then, you know, collapses in these huge extinction events that become part of the geological record.

Where do you encounter societal support for who you are and what you’re doing?

Mostly on the personal level –people who I love and who love me and who help each other and go through the mine field with. Society doesn’t really support me that well. I’ve never really been able to milk it that good, except in weird, criminal, opportunistic ways.

What do you see as the overall theme or zeitgeist in the world that you inhabit on a daily basis?

Well…dissolving. The zeitgeist of this particular period in history, I see it as this kind of dissolving. Everything that has meaning, even our interpretations of things, are breaking down and complexifying.

What do you think is behind that phenomenon?

I don’t know – maybe economic necessities, maybe just the introduction of computers into our system, allowing us to handle vaster and vaster amounts of information and pump it –I mean, something is definitely happening to the consciousness, to everyone’s consciousness. Things are getting very, very complicated.

And how is that manifesting in your consciousness or how do you see it manifesting in the consciousnesses surrounding you?

I can only say for myself and for my little group of people that I hang around with. In the world? I don’t believe anything I read in the paper. It’s all simulation. For me it’s a sense, a feeling – a sensory experience. I sense with my body and with my heart this inflation and I see it reflected in the people’s lives around me. If it’s just me, then I’m seeing lots of good things because I feel good. If it’s the whole world, then the whole world must be just amazing. And it is.

Where are you in alignment with your deepest knowingness?

At the moment, in my poetry. I really get to see what a schmuck I am in my poetry. I can go – ha, ha, ha, o.k.,wow. ‘Cause it leaves me a hard copy, a receipt, which is nice. I can look at it and go: “Wow. What a nut case.”

And where are you out of alignment with your deepest knowingness?

It would have to be my narcissism - the great black hole that stares back at me when I wonder who I am. It steals everything.

What are your biggest self-criticisms?

I don’t know the biggest, but lying sack of shit is the strongest weapon I can use on myself.

Is there anything you want to change about yourself?

Yes, yes. I want to be a 15-foot long stainless steel chrome and velvet tarantula…with little tap shoes…and I just don’t know how to get there from here.

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Mathers on Mathers

Born: LA, Nov. 13, 1964
Avocation: Painter and screenwriter.
Lives in: An airstream trailer.
Décor: Sort of post-apocalypse zen.
Family status: Unmarried male about to have a child with girlfriend. Used to be generally poly-amorous.
Style of dress: I get beautiful cheap suits at the thrift store.
Earns: Way too little.
Fun: My God, what don’t I do for fun? I do everything for fun. I love fun more than any other coyote.
Most revisited books: Bhagavad Gita. Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Tertiam Organum.