Events and New Opportunities at LA Plaza (Week 2)- Daniel Guerrero
Week 2, Day 1: 7/12
The start of this week was interesting. After having my project handed over to the advisors to the Native American community advisors of the museum, I went into Wednesday wondering what my next project would be.
After talking to
my supervisor Abelardo, I would be assigned to join some of LA Plaza’s other interns from the Getty Museum. Their work is slightly different from what I was used to as they were working on creating a website for LA Plaza’s education department. While I wasn’t used to this area of expertise, I was excited to start working with them and to meet new people!
Me with the Getty Interns!
After they showed off all of this to us, we went to the top floor where all of the LA Plaza employees work and we had a meet and greet with all the interns and staff! The meet and greet was amazing and had delicious Pan Dulce as well as Café de Olla! Then we explored the Olvera Street market to find somewhere to eat and I was able to show them (arguably) the best spot to eat within the market.
After this, we would have one final event before calling it a day, we would shadow the tour guides of the museum as they showed a group of underclassmen high schoolers around the museum and had a fun arts and crafts activity! This tour of the museum really allowed me to learn more about the specific details of the museum and its artifacts, for example, did you know that the specific “blocky” style of the wings on the UFW eagle is supposed to be a similar design to the Mesoamerican pyramids that also used the same style when creating their structures?
The arts and crafts were amazing too! We focused on something similar to screen printing and used styrofoam as a press to put our drawing onto and then cover in paint to make printed art of different symbols of Latino Culture!
Day 2: 7/13
Day 2 was relatively uneventful as I originally thought I was going to continue working on the website project with the interns but, unfortunately, we were unable to coordinate with them so I had very minimal work to do for LA Plaza on Thursday.
Day 3: 7/14
Friday was a busy day! The entire day would be spent with me working hard on different projects with different people in order to help get ready for that night’s Summer of Salsa event! This would include me organizing the different orders of posters they had collected to direct people or show them where parking was.
After this, I would go down to the (haunted?) basement to work on the major task of taking off all the velcro from the old signs and posters that were mismatched with both the fuzzy and rough sides
mixed together on both sides (I have no clue why they did that in the first place, to be honest). This war with velcro would take up most of my time, only stopping to go eat lunch, and help the marketing department with the printing of the shirts for Gloria Molina’s celebration of life the next day.
Me in the basement working to get velcro off the posters.
The event was super nice and it was adorable seeing all of the older people dancing together to the music. I would spend most of the event printing and solidifying the paint with our iron while answering the same question “How much does this T-Shirt cost?”.
After finishing, I got to enjoy some delicious nachos from the food vendors that had the most amazing salsa I’d ever tasted in my life with some even better agua de sandía to go with it. After enjoying the music for a while, I decided it was time to head home to get home on the metro before it got too dark, leaving to Oye Como Va by Santana.
(Fun Fact: I’m actually related to Carlos Santana!)
Saturday was my favorite day of the week, the Celebration of Life for Gloria Molina! For those of you who don’t know who Gloria Molina is, she was a trailblazing Chicana politician who was the first Latina to be elected to the California Assembly (the lower chamber of California's legislative body), the first Latina to be elected to Los Angeles City Council, and the first Latina to be elected to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. She was also the leader of the efforts to create the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes museum!
This event started later in the day so I had the opportunity to sleep in and enjoy some of the amazing food on Cesar Chavez Boulevard where I stay with my Nina on the days I’m working in person. When I came into the event I was stunned by how amazing the courtyard was set up with misters, a giant screen with an amazing graphic, and (once again) amazing food vendors as well as unlimited pan dulce!
Maxine Waters has always been someone that has been on my radar even before I got interested in politics, with her iconic “Reclaiming my time” quote referenced in TV when I was younger. I will explain why I’m so inspired by her later on so I won’t take up time here to explain it. When Congresswoman Waters was speaker I used my internship advantage to wait on the side of where the speakers exited behind the scenes to hopefully get a chance to talk to her once she was finished. After she stayed much longer on stage than I had expected, I did eventually get the chance to talk with her once she left the stage!
When I went up to the congresswoman after she went off the stage, I went to greet her with a handshake but was immediately greeted with a hug (which I have never experienced out of the many elected officials I’ve met in the past). After the hug, I was able to talk to her and tell her how I’m a fan of her work and hope to go into public service after I graduate. Surprisingly, Congresswoman Waters told me that if I’m ever in DC then I shouldn’t hesitate to ask her for an internship. I was honestly very surprised to hear this and told her I definitely would when I’m in DC for the UCDC program. After this surprising offer, I got a photo with Ms. Waters and one last fist bump before she was on her way. I’m so grateful for the Young Ambassadors Program for giving me opportunities like this to further my career in ways I never expected.
After my talk with Maxine Waters, I went and explored the event more, checking out the photos posted around the courtyard of Gloria Molina, the community quilt to be stitched in her honor, and everything in between!
This event had many other speakers including former Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa and actor from the hit movie Nacho Libre Richard Montoya! Montoya plays Guillermo in Nacho Libre (a cult classic in my family) and I’m so sad I didn’t find out about the fact he plays that role until long after the event finished.
Day 5&6: 7/17&18
Monday and Tuesday were the days when I worked from home! Therefore, I spent these two days working on smaller projects that combined over the two days, therefore, I’m going to combine these two days as they both had me working on the same projects.
These two days had me focusing on two different things, first, I had to look back on our live stream for the Celebration of Life and put timestamps on every different part of the live stream. While a long process, I enjoyed watching the live stream again and being able to truly pay attention to everyone’s speeches and what they had to say about Gloria.
Finally, I was to create a report that my supervisor assigned to me to talk more about why I wanted to meet Maxine Waters and the relationship between Gloria Molina and her.
Attached is a link to my essay talking about both topics: Maxine Waters
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