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Heritage and collective action: examining framing processes in two locally contentious conservation campaigns

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Heritage and collective action: examining framing processes in two locally contentious conservation campaigns

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HERITAGE AND COLLECTIVE ACTION:
EXAMINING FRAMING PROCESSES IN TWO LOCALLY CONTENTIOUS
CONSERVATION CAMPAIGNS

by

Maria Rosalind Sagara

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION

December 2015

Copyright 2015 Maria Rosalind Sagara

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project would not have been possible without the encouragement and support
of my dear parents, family, and friends. You inspire me everyday and I am eternally
grateful. Thank you to my Thesis Committee Chair, Trudi Sandmeier, and Thesis
Committee Members, Mary Ringhoff and Martha Matsuoka— this project has greatly
benefitted from your insights. Finally, thank you to all of my study participants—
community leaders, colleagues, friends— I am excited to keep building movements
where heritage matters. Hasta la victoria, siempre!

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF FIGURES v

ABSTRACT vii

PREFACE viii

INTRODUCTION 1
Purpose and Scope of Study
Key terms
Heritage
Community
Heritage conservation
Social movement
Research questions
Unit of Analysis
Methodology
Research strategy and methods
Data collection
Participant observation and field notes
Interviews
Archival research
Position of researcher
Organization of the Study

CHAPTER 1: HERITAGE AND COLLECTIVE ACTION 10
Heritage
Sense of place
Place attachment
Identity
Memory
Social movements and culture
Framing
Collective identity

iv

CHAPTER 2: SOMOS WYVERNWOOD: PRESERVATION IS ABOUT PEOPLE 24
History of Settlement and Use
Wyvernwood Garden Apartments
Evolution of Wyvernwood Garden Apartments as a Heritage Asset
Community-Driven Strategies for Conserving Wyvernwood Garden Apartments
Community Context
Key Players
Take Back Wyvernwood
May Day March to City Hall
Preservation is About People

CHAPTER 3: RECLAIMING RIVERSIDE CHINATOWN FOR ALL 50
History of Settlement and Use
Evolution of Riverside Chinatown as a Heritage Asset
Community-Driven Strategies for Conserving Riverside Chinatown
Community Context
Key Players
(Re)discovering Riverside Chinatown
SOCC’s City Hall Protests
Students for Chinatown’s Day of Action

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION 79
Framing
Networks
Strategies

CONCLUSION 92
Bridging Disciplines and Practices
Limits and Opportunities for Future Research
Concluding Remarks

BIBLIOGRAPHY 95

APPENDICES 104
Appendix A: Comite de la Esperanza, Campaign Endorsement Letter
Appendix B: Riverside Chinese Cultural Preservation Committee,
Position Statement on the Development of the Historic Chinatown Site

v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Dancing at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments to protest the Boyle Heights
Mixed-Use Community Project, February 2013.

Figure 2.2: Photograph in Life in Wyvernwood brochure, 1940.

Figure 2.3: The Mall at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, 2011.

Figure 2.4: Comite de la Esperanza holds a public meeting at The Mall at Wyvernwood
Garden Apartments, circa 1987.

Figure 2.5: Map of 1987 posadas route through Wyvernwood Garden Apartments.

Figure 2.6: Re-enactment of the Passion of Christ at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments,
1987.

Figure 2.7: “Take Back Wyvernwood: Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit!” rally at
Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, March 13, 2013.

Figure 2.8: May Day March to City Hall, Spanish-language event leaflet, 2013.

Figure 2.9: Councilmember Jose Huizar joins FACE leaders in front of City Hall on May
Day 2013.

Figure 2.10: Graphic design published on Save Wyvernwood Facebook page, April 5,
2013.

Figure 3.1: Riverside Chinatown Matters! Local citizens at Riverside Chinatown, May
2011.

Figure 3.2: Chinese pioneers labor in Riverside, California’s citrus groves.

Figure 3.3: Map of Riverside California’s two Chinatowns.

Figure 3.4: Hand-tinted detail photo of Riverside Chinatown, circa 1910.

Figure 3.5: Proprietors in front of Pow Hing & Company at Riverside Chinatown, circa
1914.

Figure 3.6: George Wong at Riverside County Landmark ceremony at Riverside
Chinatown, July 24, 1968.

Figure 3.7: Last remaining brick building at Riverside Chinatown prior to demolition,
circa 1976.

vi

Figure 3.8: Great Basin Foundation’s archaeological testing program at Riverside
Chinatown, 1984-1985.

Figure 3.9: Artifacts from Riverside Chinatown in I Want the Wide American Earth
exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, California, September
2013.

Figure 3.10: Citizens gather at Riverside Chinatown to protest developer Doug Jacobs’
illegal grading activities on February 14, 2009.

Figure 3.11: Save Our Chinatown Committee and supporters in silent protest at City Hall,
February 24, 2009.

Figure 3.12: Citizens present “scroll of shame” to members of Riverside’s City Council,
February 24, 2009.

Figure 3.13: Students for Chinatown’s Day of Action, event leaflet, February 23, 2010.

Figure 3.14: Students for Chinatown’s Kimberly Zarate in silent protest over the potential
destruction of Riverside Chinatown.

vii

ABSTRACT

This study examines the discourse-building processes of community stakeholders
conserving two heritage assets in Southern California; Wyvernwood Garden Apartments
in Los Angeles and Riverside’s Chinatown archaeological site. How have established
nonprofits and newly formed community-based organizations actively constructed the
meanings of, and needs for conserving these heritage assets? This study takes a theory-
guided multiple case study approach to explore discourse-building processes during key
moments in the respective campaigns.

viii

PREFACE

Ten years before my father and his family were taken from their Japanese
American farming community in Central California to Poston Camp 2 in the Arizona
desert and then maximum-security Tule Lake Segregation Camp to live out the duration
of WW2, my mother’s Chinese grandfathers were encountering another form of racial
injustice across the border. By 1932, xenophobic laws and attitudes directed at Chinese
immigrants had reached new heights. Like what was happening in places across the U.S.,
Chinese were driven out of their communities in Northern Mexico and beyond in
unprecedented numbers. While one of my great-grandfathers left Mazatlan, Sinaloa for
Hong Kong during this time, another went underground to keep his family together.
Today, I see my place in a long transnational lineage of Japanese, Chinese, and Mexican
migrants who have been excluded and driven out by people, governments, and policies.
Disruptions to place, community, and identity had a direct impact—we suffered great
losses, but we survived to imagine and build communities again. These are among the
stories and experiences that have influenced my work to lift up social and cultural capital
as vital components of livable and equitable communities. I view this research project as
part of this work.

1

INTRODUCTION

“Conservation is a complex and continual process that involves determinations about
what constitutes heritage, how it is used, cared for, interpreted, and so on, by whom and
for whom.”
-Erica Avrami, Randall Mason, and Marta de la Torre
Values and Heritage Conservation

As preservationists seek to grow our base of support, cultivate new leaders, and
innovate, research aimed at better understanding what motivates people to conserve
heritage assets is critical. This study takes inspiration from a special issue of the APT
Bulletin (The Journal of Preservation Technology) on values-based approaches to
heritage conservation published in 2014. The issue built on values-based preservation
research supported by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and affiliates in the late
1990s. The GCI dialogues and research highlighted the need to better understand heritage
conservation as a process (rather than a set of objects and places), the values that
underpin heritage conservation, and the role and influence of stakeholders.
1
In addition,
researchers called attention to the need for case studies that would allow for systematic
comparative analyses of conservation practices. According to Marta de la Torre, who
headed the heritage values research at the Getty Conservation Institute, the weight of
results came from the fact that they emerged from dialogues among multiple disciplines
and perspectives.
2

As I delved into this research project, I found the literature on participation and
heritage conservation to be primarily descriptive in nature. It often privileged historical
contexts, did not connect theory with praxis, underemphasized the sociocultural contexts
of heritage, and omitted the psychological and political factors that drive individuals and
groups to participate in heritage conservation. Acknowledging these gaps, I looked to
sociology, planning, environmental psychology, and social movement literatures. The
social movement literature has been particularly useful in considering heritage
conservation as a form of grassroots environmentalism. Another factor influencing my
research design was the discovery that many of my study’s participants did not view their

1

Marta de la Torre, “Values in Heritage Conservation: A Project of the Getty Conservation Institute,” APT
Bulletin 45, no. 2/3 (2014): 19.
2
Ibid., 20.

2

involvement as heritage conservation, but rather as a form of protest against the siting of
a locally unwanted land use, or LULU mobilization. Indeed, several participants did not
know what heritage conservation was, and if they did, viewed it as a limiting project.
Nevertheless, organizations had been activated and established to protect local heritage,
and this spoke volumes about the potential of heritage to mobilize people and
communities to action.

Purpose and Scope of Study
This study examines the community-driven efforts to protect Wyvernwood
Garden Apartments in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights and the
Chinatown archaeological site in Riverside, California from urban developments, with a
focus on the discourse-building processes of key organizational stakeholders. These
campaigns were chosen because the threatened heritage assets are atypical of those
supported by traditional, or mainstream heritage conservation organizations. Though both
heritage assets have been landmarked, they are rather unremarkable from an architectural
standpoint. Yet, these heritage assets hold significant social and cultural value. Thus, this
study expands research of values-based preservation, with a focus on community
perceptions about why local heritage is important. This study also provides insight into
what motivates stakeholders to participate in efforts to protect local heritage. In addition,
many of those who participated in this study are primarily new, or have limited
experience in campaigning to protect heritage. Therefore, the case studies presented here
may yield useful information about the potential for building support for heritage
conservation work from new, or non-traditional partners. In sum, this study offers new
perspectives on heritage, social movements, and collective action.

Key terms

Heritage
This study views heritage as socially-constructed, negotiated, and often contested.
Heritage is not something intrinsic, but rather contingent on a set of shifting values held
by people. In Uses of Heritage, archaeologist Smith conceptualizes heritage as a
multilayered performance embodying acts of remembrance and commemoration while

3

negotiating and constructing a sense of place, belonging and understanding in the
present.
3
By highlighting its performative quality, Smith emphasizes heritage as a cultural
process. Heritage actively engages in and for the present. A heritage asset is a form of
intangible or tangible heritage that has been previously valorized by people, through a
formal, or informal process. As such, heritage is context-bound and power-laden.

Community
Community is defined as a group of people in this study. Community will be
examined at the local level. Also germane to the discussion will be the concept, “sense of
community,” collective identity without fixed geographical boundaries.

Heritage conservation
This study defines heritage conservation as a form of grassroots mobilization
within the environmental movement. It specifically examines actions taken to protect
threatened heritage.

Social movement
As advanced by sociologists Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, social movements
are challenges to elites, authorities, other groups or cultural codes by people with
common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites, opponents and
authorities.
4
Furthering our understanding of social movements and protest, social
psychologist Bert Klandermans, in The Social Psychology of Protest, posits: “Social
movements, then, are populated by individuals sharing collective goals and a collective
identity who engage in disruptive collective action.”
5

Research questions

• How have community stakeholders framed the issues around conserving
Wyvernwood Garden Apartments and the Chinatown archaeological site?

3
Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, 3.
4
For further discussion on social movements, see Sidney Tarrow Power in Movement: Social Movements,
Collective Action and Politics and Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004.
5
Bert Klandermans, The Psychology of Social Protest, 2.

4

• How have Wyvernwood Garden Apartments and the Chinatown archaeological
site evolved as heritage assets?

• Why have community stakeholders become involved in protesting proposed urban
developments that threaten Wyvernwood Garden Apartments and the Chinatown
archaeological site?

Unit of analysis
This study takes the campaign as its unit of analysis. The campaigns studied here
aim to protect and conserve Wyvernwood Garden Apartments and the Chinatown
archaeological site from threats posed by urban development projects. In “Social
Movements, 1768-2004,” Tilly presents a campaign as a defining characteristic of a
social movement. For Tilly, a campaign is a “sustained, organized public effort making
collective claims on target audiences.”
6
della Porta and Rucht add,
Campaigns are situated on a middle ground below the level of a movement
but above the level of individual activities. As such campaigns are units of
analysis that neither lump together activities that are not linked by social
interaction nor de-contextualize individual activities that are indeed part of
a broader endeavor.
7

Further, sociologists della Porta and Rucht posit, “Different campaigns within a social
movement may be completely unrelated and therefore will not influence each other,
although the actors and external observers may still consider them as part of the same
movement.”
8
In this study, while the Wyvernwood and Chinatown campaigns are not
directly related, they represent current cases of grassroots mobilization to protect heritage
assets important to communties of color, thus providing useful information for students
of heritage conservation. By studying framing processes in these campaigns, a step
further is taken in understanding why and how individuals and groups take action to
protect heritage assets. della Porta and Rucht note that comparative analyses of
environmental campaigns “allows identification of patterns of divergence and
convergence within and across movements that otherwise would remain unnoticed.”
9

6
Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004, 3.
7
Donatella della Porta and Dieter Rucht, “The Dynamics of Environmental Campaigns,” Mobilization 7,
no. 1 (2002): 3.
8
Ibid.

9
Donatella della Porta and Dieter Rucht, “The Dynamics of Environmental Campaigns,” Mobilization 7,
no. 1 (2002): 4.

5

METHODOLOGY

Research strategy and methods
The research uses a multiple case study approach with qualitative content
analysis. According to Yin, “The distinctive need for case studies arises out of the desire
to understand complex social phenomena…the case study method allows investigators to
retain the holistic and meaningful characteristics of real-life events.”
10
As this study
examines why and how organizational actors participate within two environmental
campaigns, the research is explanatory in nature. Yin argues the usefulness of the case
study approach to answer “why” and “how” questions. Case studies have been widely
used in organizational studies and across academic disciplines, including in architecture
and urban planning. Further, as mentioned earlier, scholars of values-based preservation
have called for case study research to provide comparative analyses of conservation
practices.
This study employs a theory-guided analytical method when examining
communication materials created by the respective campaigns’ stakeholder groups,
drawing inspiration from social movement scholarship.
11
The following studies have
been particularly illuminating for this study. In examining campaign materials of two
protest campaigns in Germany, Gerhard and Rucht, aware their analysis represented a
subjective interpretation, present several strategies to compensate for methodological
problems. First, through sampling they limited their analysis to one leaflet for each
campaign. They asserted that the identified materials were highly meaningful in
representing commonly shared interpretations for each protest campaign. Second, they
reduced the total information of each leaflet to a bare-bones graphical representation
using techniques for analyzing decision-making processes by Robert Axelrod. Third, the
campaign materials were provided to the reader in the Appendix to check the plausibility
of the frame analysis. I found the overall approach used by Gerhards and Rucht to be an

10
Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3
rd
ed., 3.
11
Florian Kohlbacher, “The Use of Qualitative Content Analysis in Case Study Research,” Forum
Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 7, no. 1 (2006), accessed December 7,
2014, http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/75/153#g522. Kohlbacher argues that
a theory-guided analytical method can help ensure the quality of content analysis, especially validity.

6

appropriate fit for comparing the general interpretative frames of early endorsement
processes of the respective campaigns I examined. I did, however, make some
adaptations. I employed two of three methodological strategies offered by the authors:
sampling and access to the original campaign materials. I also omitted a graphical
representation of the master frames and did not offer hypotheses concerning the
mobilizing capacity of frames.
While most qualitative content analyses of social movements examine textual
material, this study also hones in on the importance of visuals and visibility in the
respective case studies. In her study of symbols associated with social movements,
Goodnow offers meaning interpretation of symbols and discusses the rhetorical functions
for their respective campaigns.
12
Building on the argument that images have a critical role
in deepening our understanding of social movements’ aims, strategy, and collective
identity, Daphi et al. present systematic visual analyses of images produced and
employed in anti-surveillance protests in Germany.
13

Data collection
This study gathers evidence from multiple sources aimed at triangulating on the
same set of research questions. Below the sources of data that were collected for this
study are discussed.

Participant observation and field notes
Since Spring 2008 to date, I have been an active participant in the campaign to
protect Riverside Chinatown from destruction by urban development. From June-
November 2008, I was an active member of the Riverside Chinese Cultural Preservation
Committee (RCCPC), serving on its Executive Committee. I attended public hearings and
meetings with City officials related to the Jacobs Medical Office Building Project as well
as membership meetings of the RCCPC. I am a founding board member of the Save Our
Chinatown Committee and have served as the organization’s Community Outreach Chair

12
Trischa Goodnow, “On Black Panthers, Blue Ribbons, & Peace Signs: The Function of Symbols in
Social Campaigns,” Visual Communications Quarterly 13, no. 3 (2006).
13
Priska Daphi, Anja Lê, and Peter Ullrich, "Images of Surveillance. The contested and embedded visual
language of anti-surveillance protests," ed. Doerr, Nicole, Alice Mattoni, and Simon Teune: Advances in
the Visual Analysis of Social Movements 35 (Bingley, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013).

7

and currently serve as its Board Chair. From January-June 2010, I served as a mentor to
student leaders of the University of California at Riverside’s Students for Chinatown,
during which time I attended several of their campus and community meetings and
events.
From May 2013-June 2014, I participated and took field notes at several
Wyvernwood campaign events, including the May Day march and rally that is explored
in Chapter Three. While my participant observation of the Wyvernwood campaign has
not been as extensive as the Chinatown campaign, in-depth interviews with key
informants have increased validity of the documentation of my observations.
Lastly, I am a current member of the electronic mailing lists of the RCCPC,
SOCC, and Comite de la Esperanza, and I regularly monitor the respective campaigns’
social media sites, which have provided additional insight for this study.
14

Interviews
In developing an interview plan for this study, I was guided by research by
community psychologists that posit individuals cannot be understood apart from their
actions and interactions in various organizational/community settings to which they
belong.
15
Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with active participants,
many whom served as core leaders of the respective campaigns. The participants were
selected on the basis of their identified leadership role in the respective campaigns as well
as for comparative research purposes; they provide insight into the “why” and “how”
questions this study poses. To clarify, the Wyvernwood campaign is an example of a case
influenced by participation of extant nonprofits and organizations in the local
environment while the Chinatown campaign is representative of a case influenced by new
nonprofits and organizations. Together, the participants represent new partners in
environmental campaigns focused on protecting heritage assets.

14
I have created and disseminated content for electronic mailing lists of the RCCPC and SOCC as well as
SOCC’s website and social media sites, namely Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.
15
For further discussion on the links between individuals and the organizations of which they are part of
see J.G. Kelly, “An ecological paradigm: Defining mental health consultation as preventative service,”
Prevention in Human Services 4, no. 3/4 (1987) and E.J Trickett, “Toward a distinctive community
psychology: An ecological metaphor for the conduct of research and the nature of training,” American
Journal of Community Psychology 12 (1984).

8

The participants of this study were identified through archival research,
participant observation, and leads provided by key informants as well as other study
participants. Interviews were conducted in-person and over the telephone during the
period of March-December 2014. With the exception of one interview conducted in the
participant’s home, all in-person interviews were conducted in public places and were
tape recorded with the consent of participants. All participants in this study were
provided an informational letter (available in English or Spanish) about the research
project and consented by signing the letter. Those participants who were interviewed via
telephone were not provided an informational letter, but instead were asked verbally if
they consented to participation in this study. Their consent was provided by an
affirmative verbal response.

Archival research
Archives at the City of Los Angeles City Archives and Records Center, County of
Los Angeles East Los Angeles Library, City of Los Angeles Central Library, Los
Angeles Public Library Photo Collection, USC Digital Library, Riverside Main Public
Library, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, National Archives at Riverside, and private
collections were reviewed for primary and secondary sources relevant to each case. In
addition, a review of historical newspaper articles covering Wyvernwood and Chinatown,
and their respective local environments, was conducted as well as a review of the current
websites, social media, audiovisual recordings, and printed publicity materials of the
campaigns and organizations examined in this study.

Position of the researcher
While my primary sources of data have been participant observation, interviews,
and archival research, my reading of this material and the development of my arguments
are informed by my own experiences as a participant and observer of several heritage
conservation campaigns in the past seven years, including to greater and lesser extent, the
two examined in this study. My experience as a feminist of color and Alinsky-influenced
community organizer working with underrepresented communities, particularly

9

immigrant Latinos and Asians in Southern California, further influence the position I take
in this thesis.

ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This study is presented in subsequent chapters as follows. Chapter One examines
the literature that provides the conceptual and theoretical frameworks for this study. It
considers interdisciplinary research examining the uses of heritage and social movement
theories. Chapters Two and Three present the case studies in heritage conservation,
Wyvernwood Garden Apartments and the Chinatown archaeological site (also referred to
as Riverside Chinatown), respectively. Lastly, Chapter Four provides a close analysis of
framing tasks of early endorsement efforts of the respective campaigns along with a
related discussion on the networks and strategies that supported overall framing processes
of the respective campaigns.

10

CHAPTER 1

HERITAGE AND COLLECTIVE ACTION

Since the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, heritage
assets have been closely associated with local, state, and national environmental laws as
well as the economic incentives available for conserving them. David Brown, Executive
Vice President and Chief Preservation Officer of the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, writes, “In many of the places we save, and in the way we approach their
preservation, we often talk about the “period of significance.””
16
Contemplating how
preservationists might adapt to change, become more relevant, and win new supporters,
he asks, “What if the period of significance is now?”
17

Those engaged in local preservation must consider local contexts and meanings of
heritage, but also how preservation can better serve the community. One can begin by
examining and evaluating current local preservation initiatives and citizen-driven
campaigns. In Place, Race, and Story: Essays on the Past and Future of Historic
Preservation, Kaufman writes, “Between the nation’s history as presented at its historic
sites and as lived by its people lies a significant diversity gap.”
18
While nonprofit
organizations and heritage professionals have called for a more diverse and engaged
preservation movement in the U.S. for over a decade, governments and everyday citizens
are seeking change as well. Where I reside, in California, the current Statewide Historic
Preservation Plan envisions a bold future:
A majority of Californians will feel a sense of stewardship for historical
and cultural resources in their communities and, therefore, consider
themselves preservationists. This majority will represent all walks of life
(ages, abilities, professions, cultural and educational backgrounds, etc.)
and will actively use, maintain, and advocate for historical resources.
19

16
David J. Brown, “Preservation in the 21
st
Century: Preservation is About People.” Preservation
Leadership Forum (blog), July 8, 2014,
http://blog.preservationleadershipforum.org/2014/07/08/preservation-21st-century-preservation-
people/#.VbWrnxNVikp.
17
Ibid.
18
Ned Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story: Essays on the Past and Future of Historic Preservation, 75.
19
California State Parks, Sustaining Preservation: California’s Statewide Historic Preservation Plan,
2013-2017, 10.

11

How we achieve these goals will be up for the public and private sectors to figure out
(preferably together) in the years to come. Key to driving this transformational change
will be citizen-driven projects to conserve heritage assets in local communities. Studies
undertaken on community values, availability of resources, and framing processes will be
important in predicting and supporting citizen engagement in heritage conservation. This
study examines two community-driven campaigns to protect local heritage assets in
Southern California, Wyvernwood Garden Apartments in the City of Los Angeles and the
Chinatown archaeological site in Riverside, California. In both cases, diverse community
stakeholders have been adapting to change, becoming more relevant, and winning new
supporters for their preservation campaigns. This study finds a home in critical activist
scholarship wherein the perspectives and approaches of community stakeholders are
central. This project seeks to fill a gap in the literature on heritage conservation and
collective action. In what follows, I present interdisciplinary scholarship written about
heritage and social movements that have provided useful conceptual and theoretical
frameworks for this study.

Heritage

An understanding of heritage as a cultural process will consider the context in
which heritage is deployed. In their research on assessing values in conservation
planning, de la Torre and Mason emphasize the importance of understanding heritage in
relation to geographic, historical, and social contexts, and of asking “who is defining and
articulating the value, why now, and why here?”
20
Understanding how values and social
contexts shape heritage and conservation is key.
In Heritage: Critical Approaches, Harrison argues that irrespective of its values,
heritage is often invoked in the context of debates and protests about things and practices
considered threatened, or at risk.
21
He writes, “Even where a building or object is under
no immediate threat of destruction, its listing on a heritage register is an action that
assumes a potential threat at some time in the future, from which it is being protected by

20
Marta De La Torre and Randall Mason, Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage Research Report, 12.
21
Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches, 7.

12

legislation or listing.”
22
From both a temporal standpoint, heritage is indeed always
already at risk. Building materials won’t last forever, nor do individual, or collective
memory. Despite this, there are cases of proactive conservation of heritage assets, notably
building rehabilitation and brownfield redevelopment projects. These projects are more
often driven by financial incentives and rewards, and less often by threat of decay, or
loss. Examination of the contexts in which heritage emerges provides a more holistic
understanding of its role (and, ours) in contemporary society.
This study considers why and how individuals and groups confront heritage at
risk. This process is political, as Smith notes, not only because different interests have
unequal access to power, but because heritage is a political resource itself.
23
To illustrate,
Smith draws on the research of Ndoro and Pwiti when considering the location of
Christian churches near major South African cultural sites. She views the siting of the
churches as a colonial tactic of those in power to suppress African cultural activities and
expression. “Heritage places and the associated processes of remembering and meaning
making that occur at them are ‘resources’ in wider struggles over the political and
cultural legitimacy given to Indigenous aspirations – in short they are resources of
power.”
24
In Archaeology, Heritage, and Civic Engagement: Working Toward the Public
Good, archaeologists Little and Shackel write of heritage as “not only that which is
already uncovered or cared for in a conventional archaeological sense, but also that which
remains to be discovered, because that material – extensive, unidentified, unrecognized,
undocumented – does matter.”
25
Elaborating on the “standard approach” in U.S. heritage
management, they posit, “[It] matters until someone with the power to decide makes the
decision that it does not matter. If it does not matter, than the physical traces of the
heritage are not deemed worthy of study, preservation, or memory and can be
destroyed.”
26
Additional conceptual frameworks associated with heritage follow. They
illuminate why community stakeholders take action to protect heritage resources, even
those that may challenge the public’s notion of what’s historic, relevant, and valuable.

22
Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches, 7.
23
Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, 281.
24
Ibid., 282.
25
Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel, Archaeology, Heritage, and Civic Engagement: Working Toward
the Public Good, 40.
26
Ibid.

13

Sense of place
The use of heritage to create and maintain a sense of place is considered in this
study. Smith and Waterton write, “[S]ense of place is not only about a physical or
geographical sense of belonging, but is also concerned with placing ourselves within
social space. That is, heritage is a process through which individuals and collectives
negotiate their social position and ‘place’ within particular societies.”27 Writing about
the high concentration of Western European heritage sites on the World Heritage List,
they posit,
Heritage thus becomes a cultural tool that nations, societies, communities
and individuals use to facilitate self, identity and belonging. Moreover, it
becomes a cultural and social framework for dealing with the present. It is
also a highly emotive process, with very real emotional power. This power
works to legitimise the sense of place, belonging and identities that those
values engender.
28

If heritage is understood and activated as a political cultural resource, or tool, it certainly
may serve as a cultural and social framework, or proxy for contemporary issues. This
brings to bear in a meaningful way Brown’s question, What if the period of significance
[of heritage] is now? Little and Shackel imagine that today’s “heritage arena” might treat
interrelated topics such as identity, rhetoric and narrative, civic engagement, democracy,
reconciliation, collaboration, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding.
29
Additional
concepts associated with heritage follow. These illuminate why communities lift up,
sustain, and protect heritage resources, even those resources that may challenge the
public’s notion of what’s historic, relevant, and valuable.

27
Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton, “The Envy of the World?” Intangible Heritage in England,” in
Intangible Heritage, ed. Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (New York: Routledge, 2009), 293.
28
Ibid.
29
Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel, Archaeology, Heritage, and Civic Engagement: Working Toward
the Public Good, 13.

14

Place attachment
The concept that people are connected to places through affective bonds is known
as place attachment.
30
In this study, place attachment figures as a potential factor for
predicting participation in heritage conservation. Considering the physical and social
dimensions of place attachment, sociologist Maria Lewica asserts,
Some people feel attached to a place because of the close ties they have in
their neighborhood, generational rootedness, or strong religious
symbolism of the place, that is because of social factors; others may feel
attached to the physical assets of places, such as beautiful nature,
possibility of recreation and rest, or physically stimulating environment.
31

In addition to the physical and social dimensions of place attachment, Brower
examines the psychological and emotional dimensions. He defines place attachment as a
“feeling of possessiveness that an occupant has toward a particular territory because of its
associations with self-image or social identity.”
32
In his study of territory in urban
settings, he established that place attachment should not be equated with ownership. He
found that a sense of attachment frequently accompanied the acquisition of title to a
place, but it did not necessarily come with it. Alternatively, he noted that lack of
ownership could exclude, or hamper certain forms of appropriation, but people also
appropriated places they did not own. These concepts are particularly useful as the
community stakeholders whose views are included in this study do not own either of the
heritage assets examined.
Finally, disruption to place attachment, or the threat of disruption to place
attachment is also of relevance to this study. In “Finding Common Ground: The
Importance of Place Attachment to Community Participation and Planning,” Lynne C.
Manzo and Douglas D. Perkins posit, “Those who feel their relationships to their

30
Place attachment has been researched extensively in the social and behavioral sciences in the last two
decades. See Irwin Altman and Setha M. Low, “Place Attachment: A Conceptual Inquiry” in Human
Behavior and Environment: Advances in Theory and Research (12) Place Attachment, ed. Irvin Altman and
Setha M. Low (New York: Plenum Press, 1992), 1-12.
31
Maria Lewica, “Place Attachment: How far have we come in the last 40 years?” Journal of
Environmental Psychology 31 (2011): 213.
32
Sidney N. Brower, “Territory in Urban Settings” in Human Behavior and Environment: Advances in
Theory and Research (4) Environment and Culture, ed. Irwin Altman, Amos R. Rapoport, and Joachim F.
Wohlwill (New York: Plenum Press, 1980), 192.

15

community places are threatened by redevelopment may consequently resist a proposal
regardless of its potential value.”
33
As both cases examine heritage that are threatened
with demolition, it is critical to understand how disruptions to place attachment may
affect stakeholders.

Identity
Geographers Graham, Ashworth, and Tunbridge, investigate the social and
political uses of heritage and their role in the construction, elaboration, and reproduction
of identities. They are concerned with what counts as heritage and whose heritage is
valued and privileged. They recognize this process as contested and draw attention to
interesting variants – deliberative self-inheritance and disinheritance. That is, when a
social group challenges, or denies its own heritage as changing circumstances destroy its
relevance, or utility. As a social group may deny its heritage, it may also privilege it.
Scholarship on indigenous and immigrant groups who have organized the
Tamejavi Cultural Exchange Festival in California’s Central Valley is particularly
illuminating. Since 2002, immigrants living in California’s Central Valley have created a
public space for the arts, creative expression, and traditional cultural practices that reflect
their indigenous and immigrant experiences. In “Critical Praxis: Tamejavi Builds
Immigrant Voice, Belonging, and Power,” Kohl-Arenas, Martinez Nateras, and Taylor
write, “Cultural organizing is an important strategy for claiming public space, and
building a sense of belonging for immigrants in new places that are often
unwelcoming.”
34
Through the Tamejavi Cultural Exchange Festival, traditional cultural
practices that have been preserved over time are celebrated and shared. The festival is a
vehicle through which social groups can express themselves, stimulate a sense of
belonging, and build new relationships and understanding among immigrants and long-

33
Lynne C. Manzo and Douglas D. Perkins, “Finding Common Ground: The Importance of Place
Attachment to Community Participation and Planning,” Journal of Planning Literature 20, no. 4 (2006):
337.
34
Erica Kohl-Arenas, Myrna Martinez Nateras, and Johanna Taylor, “Cultural Organizing as Critical
Praxis: Tamejavi Builds Immigrant Voice, Belonging, and Power,” Journal of Poverty 18, no. 1 (2014): 5-
24, accessed December 20, 2014, doi: 10.1080/10875549.2013.866804,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2013.866804.

16

standing residents of the Central Valley, while promoting civic engagement.
35
In
addition, the festival is an opportunity for immigrant festival organizers to share and link
their heritage to a larger human rights project that aims to challenge histories of
invisibility, marginalization, and inequality in the Central Valley.

Memory
Conserving heritage can be understood as an act of remembrance and
commemoration. Kenny asserts, “Memory reflects experiences and social relations, but
memory also shapes daily life and the ways in which people think about social relations,
transforming contemporary lifeways and objects into sites of memory.”
36
In her account
of identity work, collective territory rights, and participation in heritage tourism by the
remanescentes de quilombos, descendant communities of ex-slave or fugitive slaves in
Brazil, Kenny asserts that the creation, form, and expression of collective memory
depends on a range of individual, family and community experiences which are
negotiated and reinterpreted in the present by community members. Collective memory
does not offer consensual meanings and values of a homogeneous community. Memory,
like heritage, is an active cultural process. Similarly, Smith affirms, “Shared or collective
memories are socially constructed in the present, and are collectively legitimized in that
they make meaningful common interests and perceptions of collective identity.”
37

Memory may also provide a sense of collective identity. In his study of two
Native American social movements, Gongaware found that participants maintained
collective identity by organizing and attending powwows, preparing traditional meals for
formal gatherings, offering prayers that mixed English with tribal languages, and holding
meetings or events at places with significance to the Native American communities
involved. Gongaware asserted that various cultural components observed at these events
reflected underlying values and beliefs of the respective groups and “served as a
reminder, a prod to the collective memory, of the movement’s past and current relation to

35
“About Tamejavi,” Tamejavi website, http://www.tamejavi.org/resrcs.php?page=about_tmj.
36
Mary Lorena Kenny, “Deeply rooted in the present: Making heritage in Brazilian quilombos,” in
Intangible Heritage, ed. Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (New York: Routledge, 2009), 156.
37
Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, 59.

17

a Native American culture. The prod, then, provided a sense of collective identity through
its continued presence.”
38

I have turned to interdisciplinary research on heritage that provides a deeper
understanding of heritage as an iterative process as well as why and how individuals and
groups may take action to conserve heritage. As this study treats the topic of heritage and
collective action, social movement literature provides a fitting complement to the heritage
literature highlighted above.

Social movements and culture
Scholarship on social movements and culture, in particular, highlights cultural
intepretations over structuralist concerns. In analyzing the perspectives and approaches
taken by community stakeholders engaging in campaigns to conserve heritage assets, I
draw on this body of literature to round out study’s conceptual and analytical framework.
In their analysis of women’s movement culture, Taylor and Whittier write, “All social
movements, to varying degrees, produce culture,” demonstrating the utility of calling on
different theoretical traditions of social movements.
39
Three of the four conceptual
frameworks used to examine the women’s movement correspond well with the study at
hand. First, the emergent norms and interpretive framework is offered for examining
resistance culture. This framework builds on the classical emergent norm approach of
Turner and Killian and Snow et al., who view social movement culture as distinct
interpretative frames defined in the course of mobilization. Second, drawing on new
social movement theory, they offer the framework of collective identity. “Collective
identity arises out of a challenging group’s structural position, challenges dominant
representations of the group, and valorizes the group’s essential differences through
actions in everyday life.”
40
Third, they focus on a public discourse framework, which
considers the symbolic codes challenging groups create in social movements. While

38
Timothy Gongaware, “Collective memory anchors: Collective identity and continuity in social
movements,” Sociological Focus 43, no. 3 (2010): 228.
39
Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier, “Analytical Approaches to Social Movement Culture: The Culture of
the Women’s Movement,” in Social Movements and Culture, ed. by Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 163.
40
Ibid., 164.

18

Taylor and Whittier acknowledge the overlap of these three cultural dimensions, they
offer the frameworks as varied approaches to cultural analyses of social movements.

Framing
Social movement literature offers framing as an important component for building
social consciousness in grassroots mobilization. Scholars take a variety of approaches to
studying framing in social movements. Drawing on Goffman’s understanding of frames
as “interpretative schemata,” Snow and Benford conceptualize meaning construction, or
framing as an “active, processual phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the
level of reality construction.”
41
They continue, “It is active in the sense that something is
being done, and processual in the sense of a dynamic, evolving process. It entails agency
in the sense that what is evolving is the work of social movement organizations or
movement activists.”
42
That is, social movement participants “frame, or assign meaning
to and interpret relevant events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize
potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize
antagonists.”
43
To analyze the mobilizing capacity of frames, the authors consider three
core framing tasks: diagnosis, prognosis, and motivation. They define these as follows:
Diagnostic framing is the “identification of a problem and the attribution of blame and
causality”; prognostic framing is a “proposed solution to the diagnosed problem that
specifies what needs to be done”; and motivational framing is a “call to arms for
engaging in ameliorative or correction action.”
44

In addition to the three main framing tasks described above, scholars have
theorized how frame bridging influences collective action. Snow et al. define frame
bridging as “the linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally

41
Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and
Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 26, 614.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
For further discussion on framing processes see David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology, frame
resonance, and participant mobilization,” International Social Movement Research 1, no.1 (1988): 197-217;
David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Master frames and cycles of protest,” in Frontiers in Social
Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1992), 133-55.

19

unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem.”
45
They argue that frame
bridging may occur at the organizational level, between two social movement
organizations within the same movement, or at the individual level, involving linkage of
a social movement organization to “aggregates of individuals who share common
grievances and attributional orientations, but who lack the organizational base for
expressing their discontents and for acting in pursuit of their interests.”
46
In the latter
case, authors posit that for mobilization targets, collective action is not preceded by social
consciousness, but because they are connected to a social movement organization that is
already engaged in the movement.
When considering whether interpretative frames activate potential movement
participants, we may look to the concept of frame resonance. Snow and Benford identify
two sets of interacting factors that impact the degree of frame resonance: credibility and
salience. According to Snow and Benford, credibility encompasses three main areas:
frame consistency, empirical credibility, and credibility of the frame creator. Frame
consistency is defined as the congruency between a social movement organization’s
articulated beliefs, claims, and actions. In this sense, a frame’s consistency would be
compared against the creator’s previous or current articulated beliefs, claims, and actions.
Empirical credibility of a collective action frame has to with whether articulated claims
are considered believable. The more evidence provided regarding the problem, the more
believable the claim will be. Credibility of the frame creator has to do with whether
potential participants view the creator as knowledgeable or persuasive. In addition to
credibility, salience is another factor that impacts the resonance of a collective action
frame. Snow and Benford have identified three dimensions of salience: centrality,
experiential commensurability, and narrative fidelity. Centrality has to do with how
important beliefs, values, and ideas associated with frames are to the targets of
mobilization. Experiential commensurability has to do with how resonant the frames are
with the personal experiences of the targets of mobilization. Third, is narrative fidelity,

45
David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, “Frame alignment
processes, micromobilization, and movement participation.” American Sociological Review (1986): 467.
46
Ibid.

20

which considers whether frames are culturally resonant. That is, do frames resonate with
the cultural narrations of the targets of mobilization?
Although this is not a quantitative research study, there is value in highlighting a
few such studies, in particular, frames that have been associated with grassroots
environmental action.

Place frames
In a study of how organizations construct place-based frames to sustain collective
community and political identity in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota,
Martin posits,
[Organizations] use their territoriality bounded political identities to
constitute a justification for place-based action and to foster concern and
community at the scale of the neighborhood. They do so through place-
frames, which legitimate neighborhood-based action and define the
neighborhood community organization as the best actor both to represent
neighborhood residents and to respond to neighborhood needs. Place-
frames discursively legitimate the sphere of the neighborhood, siting
blame at the local and regional level, but action within the neighborhood.
47

Injustice frames

Another study by Taylor considers both frame bridging and resonance as
important components in mobilizing communities of color around environmental issues.
In “The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social
Construction of Environmental Discourses,” Taylor writes,

47
Deborah Martin, "Place-framing" as place-making: Constituting a neighborhood for organizing and
activism,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93 (2003): 746.

21

In the 1980s and 1990s, the injustice framing that linked environmental
issues with labor, human rights, and social justice issues was the obvious
bridge that made environmental issues salient to people of color. Because
of their environmental experiences, the distinction between environment
and social justice is an artificial one for people of color. The EJP
encourages its supporters to view the home and community, work, and
play environments as interconnected environments. Therefore, efforts by
NEP supporters to isolate and concentrate only on certain aspects of these
environments is an anathema to people of color.
48

Health frames

Studying community responses to proposed development in the Czech Republic
after the fall of the communist regime, Carmin posits, “Residents of local communities
take action in response to proposed development based on their understanding of the
situation and its relationship to their personal concerns and values.”
49
Carmin found that
although most of the frames she studied were important, those related to concerns about
human health were more consistently significant. She posited that the significance of the
frames and their relationship to expressive forms of action demonstrated the value
residents placed on towns and villages throughout the country. In addition to
investigating to what extent actions were influenced by values, she examined how the
availability of resources, and the local political context influenced community responses
to proposed development. Her findings revealed that many Czechs felt a strong
connection to their family homes and communities:

The transition in governance may have increased these sentiments as these
locales may have provided an island of stability in a world of change. As a
result, a perceived threat to family villages by proposed forms of
economic development may have reinforced this sense of attachment and
feelings about the surrounding natural environment.
50

48
Dorceta Taylor, “The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social
Construction of Environmental Discourses,” American Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 4 (2000): 558. EJP
stands for environmental justice paradigm, which is associated with the Post-Three Mile Island/Love Canal
Era (1980-present) of the U.S. environmental movement. NEP stands for new environmental paradigm,
which is associated with the Post-Carson era (1960-1979) of the U.S. environmental movement.
49
JoAnn Carmin, “Local Action in a Transitional State: Community Responses to Proposed Development
in the Czech Republic, 1992-1996,” Social Science Quarterly 84 (2003): 195.
50
Ibid.

22

Carmin’s study found that people’s place attachments figured prominently in people’s
response to proposed developments.
The three studies highlighted above confirm that frames associated with
grassroots environmental action reflect stakeholders’ personal concerns and values.
Place, injustice, and health frames all figure prominently in the campaigns examined in
this study.

Collective identity

Understanding how collective identity is imagined and activated in the public
arena is critical to this study. Sociologists Francesca Polletta and James Jasper offer the
following definition of collective identity:
[A]n individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a
broader community, category, practice, or institution. It is a perception of
a shared status or relation, which may be imagined rather than experienced
directly, and it is distinct from personal identities, although it may form
part of a personal identity.
51

Research by new social movement theorists emphasizes the importance of defining,
celebrating, enacting, and deconstructing identity in recent movements. Polletta and
Jasper, highlighting a study of identity politics in 19th century Britain conducted by Tilly,
found that new patterns of claimsmaking replaced local identities such as “neighbor,” or
“tenant” with broader identities such as “citizen.” Rather than appeal to a powerful
landlord, claimsmakers increasingly made public demonstrations of their numbers and
commitment to bid for participation in a national polity.
52

Tracing solidarity in social movements may reveal how collective identity attracts
potential movement participants when shared identities and networks do not exist. This is
particularly useful when considering how groups identify, recruit, and mobilize new
supporters for heritage conservation. Polleta and Jasper found that identity work to be
critical for sustaining solidarity and commitment in movements. When individuals and
organizations stopped believing the movement represented them, they left movements.

51
Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of
Sociology 27 (2001): 285.
52
Ibid., 288.

23

Polletta and Jasper attest, “Identities need to be integrated with injustice and agency
frames so as to clearly distinguish “us” from opponents and bystanders.”
53

Lastly, understanding how collective identity relates to continuity in social
movements is of particular interest to this study, as both cases are active campaigns. As
raised earlier, in his ethnographic study of two Native American social movement
organizations, Gongaware observed how references to the past impacted elements of the
collective identity process. Specifically, he theorized the concept of “collective memory
anchoring,” drawing on a social drama model, in which participants cite and make use of
“narrative commemorations,” narratives that express “links to past experiences and which
are exchanged in the everyday interactions of group members.”
54
Gongaware found that
collective memory anchoring influenced a social movement’s collective identity process.
By drawing on preexisting networks, culture, and collective action frames, collective
memory was presented as an important resource for the collective identity process.
55

In the next two chapters, I trace how the concepts discussed here have been
activated by community stakeholders engaging in two important heritage conservation
campaigns in Southern California.

53
Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of
Sociology 27 (2001): 292.
54
Timothy B. Gongaware, “Collective Memory Anchors: Collective Identity and Continuity in Social
Movements,” Sociological Focus 43, no. 3 (2010): 217.
55
Ibid., 233.

24

CHAPTER 2

SOMOS WYVERNWOOD: PRESERVATION IS ABOUT PEOPLE

Figure 2.1: Dancing at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments to protest the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use
Community Project, February 2013. Photo courtesy of Kris Fortin/LAStreetsblog
(http://la.streetsblog.org/2013/02/22/residents-protest-demolition-of-wyvernwood-apartments-seek-
preservation/). Permission pending.

Built in 1938-1941, Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, or Wyvernwood, located
in the southwestern section of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood was one of the
first of several large-scale multi-family residential developments constructed to meet the
housing needs of the City’s growing population.
56
Encompassing approximately 70 acres
and now home to over 6,000 residents, Wyvernwood has been formally determined
eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district. In
2007, Wyvernwood’s current owner Fifteen Group unveiled a redevelopment plan for
Wyvernwood— Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project, or “New Wyvernwood,”

56
According to Los Angeles’ Annual Report of the Department of Building and Safety Commissioners,
1937-1938, between 1903 and 1938, the City of Los Angeles grew approximately ten times in size and
population: from 44 to 450 square miles and 136,533 to 1,336,000.

25

a $2 billion high-density mixed-use development that would demolish the historic
apartment complex and replace it with new housing, retail, office, and commercial space.
In a press release, Fifteen Group Executive Vice President and Principal Steven Fink
affirmed, “We intend to make this significant investment to improve the quality of life in
Boyle Heights, upgrade an underserved neighborhood, and create new homeownership
and housing opportunities in a city that needs it.”
57

According to 2000 U.S. Census records, Boyle Heights is one of the densest
neighborhoods in the City and County of Los Angeles, with a population of 91,481.
58

Poverty in neighborhood is twice the nation’s average and the majority of its residents are
renters.
59
In addition, a land use survey shows 46 percent of the Boyle Heights’ total area
is currently utilized for freeways, streets, and industrial uses.
60
While Fifteen Group has
claimed its proposed project would bring needed investment to the neighborhood,
stakeholders point to its disinvestment, in particular, disruption to Wyvernwood’s tight-
knit community, net loss of affordable housing, and loss of a valued heritage asset. This
chapter is organized in three parts: 1) History of Settlement and Use; 2) Evolution of
Wyvernwood Garden Apartments as a Heritage Asset; and 3) Community-Driven
Strategies for Conserving Wyvernwood Garden Apartments.

History of Settlement and Use

East Los Angeles, or the Eastside, was mostly rural due to its location on the
bluffs above the Los Angeles River and lack of access and infrastructure that connected it
to Downtown Los Angeles. This changed in the 1920s when the City built and expanded
several bridges, roads, and transportation systems, connecting Downtown Los Angeles

57
“Fifteen Group Land & Development LLC Unveils Vision For Model Community in East Los Angeles,”
last modified August 27, 2015, http://www.fifteengroup.com/company/011108_wyvernwood.htm.
58
City of Los Angeles Local Population and Housing Profile using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, Los
Angeles Department of City Planning, June 2015,
http://planning.lacity.org/DRU/StdRpts/StdRptscp/StdRptcpBHt.pdf. Last modified June 3, 2015.
59
Building Sustainable Communities – Boyle Heights, Quality of Life Plan, Update, Revised Goals &
Strategies for 2012-2015, LISC Los Angeles and East LA Community Corporation, 2.
60
In the 1940s-1960s, proponents of urban renewal highlighted the public benefits of freeway construction
when placing four freeways in Boyle Heights. These projects divided neighborhoods and displaced
thousands of residents. See “Boyle Heights Community Plan,”
http://planning.lacity.org/complan/pdf/bhtcptxt.pdf and Gilbert Estrada, “If You Build It, They Will Move:
The Los Angeles Freeway System and the Displacement of Mexican East Los Angeles, 1944-1972,”
Southern California Quarterly 87, no. 3 (2005).

26

and the area west of the Los Angeles River to Boyle Heights.
61
To meet the needs of an
increasingly urbanized region, large swaths of agricultural land in the County were
withdrawn and set aside for residential and industrial uses by the 1940s.
62
At this time,
City and County governments adopted land use ordinances to keep industry out of certain
residential areas, but they were permitted and encouraged in the Eastside and South Los
Angeles.
63
By 1940, industrial sites at the northern, western, and southern boundaries of
Boyle Heights surrounded the neighborhood’s residential areas.
By 1940, due to restrictive covenants that excluded working-class migrants from
Mexico and Asia, but also from the American South, and others from residing in middle-
class Protestant communities in Los Angeles’ Westside, large numbers of working-class
migrants from vast cultural backgrounds settled in the area, adding to the diverse ethnic
composition of Boyle Heights.
64
The neighborhood would continue to reflect a diverse
social and ethnic makeup well into the 20th century, with emigrants from vast nations
and citizens from across the continental United States arriving in Los Angeles with
housing and employment needs. When freeway construction cut through and
reconstituted entire communities in Boyle Heights in the 1940s-1960s, Wyvernwood
Garden Apartments was one of the few places in the neighborhood that provided
continuity of place.
65

Examination of the 1940 U.S. Census records for residents living at Wyvernwood
Garden Apartments (Wyvernwood) reveal its original residents were primarily middle-

61
Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley, Univ of CA Press,
1967), 88, 93, 173; Scott L. Bottles, Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 14-15; Ricardo Romo, East Los Angeles: History of a
Barrio (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 68, 78-79, 81; Wendy Elliot-Scheinberg, “Boyle Heights,
California.” In Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West, edited by Gordon Morris
Bakken and Alexandra Kindell, 70-8. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006.
62
Mel Scott, Metropolitan Los Angeles: One Community, 56-62.
63
Dana Cuff, The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2000), 100, 116; Christopher Boone, “Zoning and Environmental Inequity in the Industrial East
Side,” In Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles, edited by William
Deverell and Greg Hise, 167-78. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg, 2011; Mel Scott, Cities are for People,
20. Gilbert Estrada, “If You Build It, They Will Move: The Los Angeles Freeway System and the
Displacement of Mexican East Los Angeles, 1944-1972,” Southern California Quarterly 87, no. 3 (2005).
64
George Sanchez, “What’s Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews”: Creating Multiculturalism on
the Eastside during the 1950s,” American Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2004).
65
Wendy Elliot-Scheinberg, “Boyle Heights, California.” In Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in
the American West, edited by Gordon Morris Bakken and Alexandra Kindell, 67. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications, 2006.

27

class Americans of European descent. In April 1940, only one person of Mexican
ancestry, Mercedes Vasquez, lived at Wyvernwood. She was the live-in maid for a family
who resided at Wyvernwood. Over time, due to a continuing influx of Latino immigrants
to Los Angeles’ Eastside and White flight patterns in the 1970s and 1980s, Wyvernwood
became home to a predominantly working class immigrant Latino community. Today,
over 97 percent of Wyvernwood’s resident population identifies as Hispanic or Latino,
closely mirroring the ethnic composition of the neighborhood at large.
66

66
Geneva Toledano, Sophia Tieman, Aric Ponce, and Julia Smith. “Power in Numbers: A Demographic
Study of Development Impacts on the Wyvernwood Community in Boyle Heights” (unpublished
manuscript 2014), 21, Microsoft Word file; City of Los Angeles Local Population and Housing Profile
using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, Los Angeles Department of City Planning, June 2015, accessed June
3, 2015, http://planning.lacity.org/DRU/StdRpts/StdRptscp/StdRptcpBHt.pdf.

28

Wyvernwood Garden Apartments

Figure 2.2: Photograph in Life in Wyvernwood brochure, 1940. Photo courtesy of Nathan Marsak
(http://live.laconservancy.gotpantheon.com/sites/default/files/files/documents/Life_in_Wyvernwood_Broch
ure.pdf). Permission pending.

Predominant multi-family property types of the pre-Depression era included
duplexes, fourplexes, bungalow courts, and courtyard apartments.67 Beginning in the
1920s in the U.S., urban planners and founders of the Regional Planning Association of
America (RPAA), Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, championed garden city principles
in community planning. Stein and Wright were inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s garden
city planning principles, which sought to provide a solution to England’s inadequate
housing conditions found in its rapidly industrializing cities at the turn of the 20th

67
For an excellent discussion of multi-family housing types prevalent in pre-Depression Los Angeles, see
Architectural Resources Group, Garden Apartments of Los Angeles Historic Context Statement, 9-10.

29

century. Howard envisioned a new way of living that turned away from an unhealthy,
urban, capitalist-driven city lifestyle toward a beautiful, convenient, clean, and well-
cared-for town without a slum, where sordid and sinister aspects of life could never find a
place.
68
In this sense, key components influencing Letchworth, England’s first garden
city, were aesthetics, functionality, comfort, and interiority.
In 1924, Americans Stein and Wright traveled to England to carefully study the
site plan and design of Letchworth Garden City. There they met with the town’s
architects Parker and Unwin. Upon their return to the U.S., they began adapting garden
city principles to U.S. conditions. Their first project was Sunnyside Gardens, a 77-acre,
low-rise apartment development built in 1924-1929 in Queens, New York. They
constructed row house groups that ran along the perimeter of each city block, enclosing a
large central shared garden. In addition, the plan included recreational amenities.
69
In
1929, Stein and Wright further refined and adapted garden city principles in Fair Lawn,
New Jersey. The Radburn Plan would create “a town for the motor age,” implementing
residential “superblocks” and specialized roads to separate pedestrian and vehicular
traffic. A superblock site plan combined multiple city blocks, or parcels into a single
property in order to create a safe, yet accessible residential community.
As Los Angeles grew, new housing forms were developed to meet the needs of
the population. Constructed in 1938-1941, Wyvernwood was the first of many large-scale
garden apartment complexes to be developed in Los Angeles. Designed by architects
David J. Witmer and Loyall F. Watson, Wyvernwood offered affordable, safe, and
modern housing. The apartment complex covered 68 acres within the Hostetter Tract in
the southwestern section of Boyle Heights, conveniently located ten minutes away from
Los Angeles’ central business district, and in close proximity to schools, a shopping
center, and employment opportunities. The cost of the construction was estimated at $6
million dollars, half of which was insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA),
making it the largest single project affiliated with FHA’s rental housing program at the
time.
70

68
Mervyn Miller, Letchworth: The First Garden City, 12.
69
Architectural Resources Group, Garden Apartments of Los Angeles Historic Context Statement, 13.
70
“California Private Housing on a Notable Scale,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 1, 1940.

30

When Wyvernwood’s first phase opened in 1939, housing units were grouped in
two-story, frame-stucco buildings, placed in a unique park-like environment. The site
design and common landscaped grounds set the residential development apart from
surrounding residential neighborhoods, which followed a grid pattern established when
Boyle Heights was subdivided in the early 1900s. Supporting the overall site plan,
vehicular access through Wyvernwood was limited to three curvilinear streets. The
largest of the common landscaped grounds was the central commons, or The Mall, which
ran east to west across the property following a natural ravine that served as the
property’s primary drainage channel.
71
The Mall was a continuous grass lawn, bordered
and linked to smaller greens, tree-lined footpaths, and landscaped courtyards, which
together defined the Wyvernwood property.
72

Figure 2.3: The Mall at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, 2011. Photo courtesy of Steven Keylon.
Permission pending.

71
Steven Keylon, “Garden Cities at Risk, Chapter Three: Hammond Sadler, Wyvernwood Landscape
Architect,” Baldwin Hills Village and the Village Green (blog), June 22, 2011,
http://baldwinhillsvillageandthevillagegreen.blogspot.com/2011/06/garden-cities-at-risk-chapter-three.html.
72
For more information see Historic Resources Group, Wyvernwood Apartments Historical Technical
Report, 2011.

31

Figure 2.4: Comite de la Esperanza holds a public meeting at The Mall at Wyvernwood Garden
Apartments, circa 1987. Photo courtesy of Comite de la Esperanza.

Evolution of Wyvernwood Garden Apartments as a Heritage Asset

This chapter considers a range of actions taken by government agencies and
community stakeholders to identify and document Wyvernwood as a heritage asset. Such
actions can be viewed as the foundation upon which future conservation strategies were
built.
In 1997, the Los Angeles Department of Housing and Community Development
conducted a Section 106 review of Wyvernwood, which formally determined it was
eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district.
73
When
such reviews take place as part of a federal regulatory process, the heritage asset
automatically is listed California Register of Historical Resources and determined eligible
for listing as a City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument.

73
Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) requires Federal agencies to
consider the impacts of their undertakings on historic properties. State and Tribal Historic Preservation
officers as well as stakeholders must be given a reasonable opportunity to comment. The historic
preservation review process mandated by Section 106 is outlined in regulations issued by the Advisory
Council on Historic Preservation and can be found online at http://www.achp.gov/106summary.html.

32

In addition to its historic designation, Wyvernwood’s multiple layers of history
and rich social capital make it a unique and irreplaceable heritage asset in Los Angeles.
Since the mid-1980s, Wyvernwood has been a hub of Latino-led community and cultural
organizing in Boyle Heights. Primarily driving this place-based organizing has been
Comite de la Esperanza, Wyvernwood’s oldest and largest tenant association. Established
in 1983 by Father Helios del Serra and parishioners of nearby Santa Isabel Catholic
Church in Boyle Heights who lived in Wyvernwood, Comite’s early beginnings focused
on providing spiritual guidance and connecting residents to needed social services. In
time, Comite would advocate for tenants’ rights and create cultural and recreational
programming for youth and adult residents.
74
Comite has also led efforts to enhance
public health and safety in and around Wyvernwood. The group has worked with the
local school district to add Wyvernwood to the school bus route and with city
government to install a traffic light at the intersection of Marietta and 8th streets.
75
In
1998, Comite achieved one of its most significant organizing victories to date, winning a
six-year anti-lead paint campaign that resulted in a historic Proposition 65 settlement
against then owner, Samuel S. Mevorach.
76
Despite alterations that took place following
the lead abatement, Wyvernwood still remains in plan and design an excellent example of
a garden apartment.
As part of their mission to improve tenants’ quality of life at Wyvernwood,
Comite has created cultural and recreational programming for residents. Since the 1980s,
popular religiosity practices of posadas (The Inns), a religious festival that occurs on
December 16-24, and La Pasion de Cristo, a theatrical re-enactment of the Passion of
Christ, have contributed to Wyvernwood’s social value and helped define the historic
garden community’s place identity. Rooted in Catholicism, the posadas preserve
traditions and rituals of Wyvernwood’s Latino residents, who come together in

74
Leonardo Lopez, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, March 30, 2014. According to founding member and
St. Isabel Catholic Church parishioner, Leonardo Lopez, Comite eventually became a nonprofit
organization, separate from St. Isabel’s parish evangelization ministry.
75
Leonardo Lopez, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, March 30, 2014.
76
Rich Connell and Robert J. Lopez, “Landlord OKs Settlement in Toxic Lead Case,” Los Angeles Times,
April 15, 1998, http://articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/15/local/me-39456. Proposition 65 also known as the
Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 requires the State to publish a list of chemicals
known to cause cancer, or reproductive toxicity. For more information on Proposition 65, see State of
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65.html.

33

performance and fellowship over a period of nine days every year. Comite President
Leonardo Lopez says, “These nights are special for us. These are our traditions as Latinos
that we practice every year. They remind us of our hometowns. We have brought the
traditions practiced in our hometowns here.”
77
Cynthia Gonzales, who grew up in
Wyvernwood, says of the posadas, “When I’m out there, it feels like I am united with my
community. I get to walk around with people and enjoy the small moments.”
78
Leonardo
and Cynthia point to a visceral sense of community, sustained through shared human
experience in a particular place over time.

Figure 2.5: Map of 1987 posadas route through Wyvernwood Garden Apartments. Photo courtesy of
Comite de la Esperanza.

77
“Posadas in Boyle Heights,” YouTube video from events filmed on December 16-24, 2011, posted by
“boyleheightsbeat,” December 24, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3ABcGu4Haw.
78
Andrew Roman, “Celebrating Las Posadas: Wyvernwood Keeps Traditions Alive.” Boyle Heights Beat,
December 31, 2012, accessed December 20, 2014, http://www.boyleheightsbeat.com/celebrating-las-
posadas-wyvernwood-keeps-traditions-alive-476.

34

Events such as posadas anchor residents to the physical environment and to each
other. Depicting a map of the Wyvernwood property, Figure 2.5 indicates the direction
and route residents walked during the 1987 program. The map also identifies the location
of the eight homes participants stopped at along the route, providing a glimpse into
existing social networks at Wyvernwood during this particular time. Although the
posadas routes changed from year to year, residents’ shared experiences and memories of
walking particular routes created strong place attachments, thus enhancing the
sociocultural value of Wyvernwood.
In “Cultural Organizing as Critical Praxis: Tamejavi Builds Immigrant Voice,
Belonging, and Power,” authors Kohl-Arenas, Martinez Nateras, and Taylor posit,
The process of cultural organizing creates opportunities for immigrants
and under-represented cultures to practice and transmit their cultural
knowledge to one another. Public cultural expression also combats the
common immigrant experiences of isolation and invisibility through
claiming of the public stage.
79

Like the annual posadas, La Pasion de Cristo (Passion Play), pictured in Figure 2.6,
brings residents together at Wyvernwood to express shared spiritual and cultural values.
Activities such as these allow residents to activate the built environment, in particular, the
shared open spaces. They reimagine and claim Wyvernwood as their own, affirming the
significance of Wyvernwood as a public commons, but also an important part of their
everyday lives. In so doing, residents cultivate social capital and their shared cultural
heritage and identity.

79
Erica Kohl-Arenas, Myrna Martinez Nateras, and Johanna Taylor, “Cultural Organizing as Critical
Praxis: Tamejavi Builds Immigrant Voice, Belonging, and Power,” Journal of Poverty 18, no. 1 (2014): 5-
24, accessed December 20, 2014, doi:10.1080/10875549.2013.866804.

35

Figure 2.6: Re-enactment of the Passion of Christ at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, 1987. Photo
courtesy of Comite de la Esperanza.

Community-Driven Strategies for Conserving Wyvernwood Garden Apartments

Community Context

Despite losses sustained from land use decisions that have disproportionately
negatively impacted the Eastside, residents and community stakeholders in Boyle Heights
have come together to fight unwanted land uses. In the early 1980s, groups of local
mothers in Boyle Heights, including the Mothers of East Los Angeles, Santa Isabel
(MELA-SI) worked with other community groups to stop the construction of a State
prison in East Los Angeles. A few years later, community members successfully fought
against the LANSER project, a “waste-to-energy” municipal garbage incinerator in the
adjacent City of Vernon. Such collective actions are poignant examples of individuals
and organizations, working together to create a community shaped by and for its
residents. In recent years, several organizations and community-wide initiatives,
including Comunidades Unidas de Boyle Heights (CUBH), Local Initiatives Support
Coalition (LISC) and the Boyle Heights Collaborative, Los Angeles Neighborhood

36

Initiative (LANI), and the California Endowment’s “Building Healthy Communities”
have undertaken projects to improve employment opportunities, education, housing,
neighborhood safety, unhealthy environmental conditions, and access to transit and
healthy foods.
Limited access to developable land in Los Angeles has left Boyle Heights’ older
buildings susceptible to the pressures of redevelopment and gentrification. Efforts to
preserve Boyle Heights’ sense of place have also resulted in the conservation of the
neighborhood’s heritage assets. As one of Los Angeles’ first suburbs, Boyle Heights has
some of the City’s first public institutions, private residences, schools, cemeteries, and
religious facilities. Currently, twenty-two of these resources have been designated as
Historic Cultural Monuments (HCMs), or are listed in, or formally determined eligible
for the California Register of Historical Resources and the National Register of Historic
Places. In 2006, the Los Angeles Conservancy helped the East LA Community
Corporation (ELACC) secure financing for nearly $25 million to purchase and revitalize
the Boyle Hotel, a heritage asset from 1889. The Boyle Hotel project placed thirty
rehabilitated housing units and twenty-one new units into the affordable housing market.
The project illustrated growing collaboration between nonprofit housing developers and
historic preservationists in places where such partnerships had been limited, or had never
before existed.

Key players
Countless residents and community stakeholders have voiced concern over the
Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project since the proposed development was made
publicly available in 2007. In this study, I focus on the perspectives and approaches of
three key organizations that have contributed to the community-driven efforts to conserve
Wyvernwood.
With their homes and sense of community threatened, Comite has led community-
based opposition to the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project since 2007.
Comite has a long history of tenant rights organizing in and around Wyvernwood. They
have organized public meetings, gathered signatures, and shared information about issues
that impact the residential community. They have framed their opposition to the Boyle

37

Heights Mixed-Use Community Project as part of an ongoing rights-based struggle at
Wyvernwood. Leonardo Lopez, President of Comite, recalls,

Fifteen Group bought [Wyvernwood] in 1997 and that year is when the
problems started. There was some renovation work conducted and we
were treated poorly. Since we were Latinos, they thought we didn’t know
how to stand up for our rights…They would throw our belongings around
and they would get damaged…The work was done quickly and it was
poorly done. We had to fight for our rights for six to seven years. We had
protests…They wanted to take away our garages…We had a meeting with
the company’s national maintenance manager…He said, “Do what you
will, we’re going to demolish the garages.” So, the next day we stood in
front of our garages.
80

As noted in the previous chapter, collective memory anchoring is a useful tool to
influence a movement’s collective identity process. By recalling residents’ long
embattled relationship with Fifteen Group, Comite aims to connect present and past
injustices at Wyvernwood and show continuity—not only regarding the deteriorating
conditions and continued unjust treatment of residents at Wyvernwood, but also a legacy
of community action to alleviate such conditions. In this sense, opposition to the Boyle
Heights Mixed-Use Community Project could be viewed as a needed community
response to years of disinvestment by Fifteen Group.
The Los Angeles Conservancy (LA Conservancy) has joined Comite in
advocating for the preservation of Wyvernwood. As the largest membership-based
historic preservation organization in the country, the organization has found preservation-
minded solutions to many high-profile historic preservation battles, including those
threatening historic garden apartments.
81
Their involvement in the campaign against the
Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project also extends engagement with Latino
communities to conserve heritage resources throughout Los Angeles County. In 2009, the
LA Conservancy was awarded a grant by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to
document Wyvernwood’s cultural significance and its community contributions. This
project helped highlight the historical significance of Wyvernwood, while also

80
Leonardo Lopez, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, March 30, 2014.
81
Los Angeles has the second largest collection of garden apartments in the country. For more information,
see the LA Conservancy’s microsite on garden apartments, “Garden Apartments,” last modified June 8,
2015, http://www.laconservancy.org/gardenapartments.

38

illuminating the social value of the garden apartment complex as viewed by its tenants.
The project provided an opportunity to develop relationships with residents the LA
Conservancy had previously no formal ties to. Since their collaboration in 2009, the LA
Conservancy has provided research and technical support, including but not limited to
cultivating political support for preservation of Wyvernwood, creating a bilingual
laypersons’ guide to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process, and
bringing members of Comite and residents of other Los Angeles-based garden apartment
communities together to learn and share experiences about their respective communities
as well as their preservation struggles and successes.
East LA Community Corporation (ELACC) has also joined the community-driven
effort against the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project. Representing nearly
three-fourths of the existing affordable housing in Boyle Heights, ELACC recognizes that
preserving Wyvernwood is a critical component in maintaining affordable housing
options for residents and combating gentrification in the neighborhood.
82
Like the LA
Conservancy, ELACC has developed extensive knowledge of local land-use planning
processes. Since 2010, they have created the Plan del Pueblo (People’s Plan), a resident-
centered planning document, including residents’ recommendations for “better land-use
and planning practices in their neighborhood.”
83
They have also developed an extensive
network of loose and formal allies, including but not limited to local and national
nonprofit housing advocates that have supported the Save Wyvernwood campaign. In
what remains of this Chapter, I examine the varied ways key local organizations within
the FACE coalition framed the meanings of, and needs for conserving Wyvernwood
during a key moment of transition in the community-driven campaign.

82
Plan del Pueblo (People’s Plan), 2014. East LA Community Corporation, Appendix A, 80.
83
Ibid., 12.

39

Take Back Wyvernwood

Figure 2.7: “Take Back Wyvernwood: Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit!” rally at Wyvernwood Garden
Apartments, March 13, 2013. Photo courtesy of Comite de la Esperanza
(http://www.facebook.com/202850936403848/photos/pb.202850936403848.-
2207520000.1441246127./561190520569886/?type=3&theater). Permission pending.

By February 2013, Frente de Apoyo al Comite de la Esperanza (FACE
Collaborative, henceforth FACE) emerged to amplify the Comite-led campaign against
the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project. Serving as an umbrella organization
for the many grassroots and community-based organizations that had to date supported
Comite’s efforts to protect Wyvernwood from redevelopment, FACE provided a formal
structure where ideas and resources could be shared amongst Comite and other coalition
leaders. Most of the organizations within FACE had existing ties with Comite and had
supported the organization in a range of ways throughout the years, including providing
organizational, research, creative, and technical support for their tenants’ rights work.
In March 2013, FACE held its first public event, “Take Back Wyvernwood: A
Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit!” which kicked off the Right to the City Alliance’s

40

(RTTC) national “Homes for All” campaign in Los Angeles.
84
The event included a rally
at Wyvernwood’s Mall and subsequent march to the apartment complex’s rental office.
At this stage in the Save Wyvernwood campaign, FACE leadership felt city decision-
makers were not engaging tenants in a transparent dialogue regarding Wyvernwood’s
proposed redevelopment.
85
“Take Back Wyvernwood” was identified as the first of a
series of planned actions to educate the community about the risks associated with the
Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project.
86
The event referenced “Take Back LA,”
a RTTC-supported event organized in 2012, which brought city and neighborhood groups
together to protest Metro’s control of property in low-income areas and to undo cuts to
bus services. ELACC, a Los Angeles-based member of the RTTC, had assisted in the
planning of “Take Back LA” and called on this network of organizations to support
“Take Back Wyvernwood” as well as the campaign against the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use
Community Project.

May Day March to City Hall
Following the success of “Take Back Wyvernwood,” FACE organized its second
public event, a march from Wyvernwood to City Hall. The May Day March to City Hall
was the first planned action outside of Wyvernwood since the proposed project’s public
environmental review and was an opportunity for key members within the FACE
leadership to bring needed media attention to the issue. This event took a step further in
linking the community-driven campaign against the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use
Community Project with other highly visible rights-based movements in Los Angeles,
notably labor and immigration reform. Intended to coincide with events planned in
Downtown Los Angeles to celebrate International Workers’ Day, or May Day (May 1st),
event planners aimed to build campaign momentum and publicly confirm

84
The “Homes for All” campaign aims to “protect, defend, and expand housing that for low-income and
very low-income communities by engaging those most directly impacted by the housing crisis through
local and national organizing, winning strong local policies that protect renters and homeowners, and
shifting the national debate on housing.” For more information about the campaign go to
http://homesforall.org/about-us/.
85
Jose Fernandez, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, August 19, 2014.
86
“Take Back Wyvernwood: Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit!” Right to the City press release, March
13, 2013, on Right to the City website, http://righttothecity.org/los-angeles-ca-press-release/, accessed
August 7, 2015.

41

Councilmember Jose Huizar’s support for preserving Wyvernwood.
87
Both “Take Back
Wyvernwood” and the May Day March to City Hall demonstrated the potential of
building a local grassroots movement for heritage conservation through the mobilization
of loose, yet interconnected networks and the use of strategic communications. Certainly,
both events could be viewed as representative of the movement to protect Wyvernwood.
Observers of these events would witness Comite, LA Conservancy, and ELACC’s
strategies to engage and mobilize a wide pool of potential participants to support their
efforts.
In Carmin’s study of community responses to proposed development in the Czech
Republic, she found residents took action in response to development proposals based on
their understanding of the situation and its relationship to their personal concerns and
values.
88
In the case of the Save Wyvernwood campaign, the May Day March to City
Hall gave FACE leadership a public platform to speak loudly about community
stakeholders’ concerns over the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project. May Day
has long been recognized by the global community and is often commemorated by
workers with day-long public events. In Mexico and many Latin America countries, May
Day is a public holiday. That FACE would organize a campaign event on this day
demonstrates the leadership’s ability to take advantage of evolving opportunities on the
ground, in ways that would resonate with potential supporters. For the May Day March to
City Hall, FACE coalition leaders did this in a variety of ways, including but not limited
to creating effective public communications leading up to the event.
To rally support among residents for the May Day March to City Hall, Comite
created an event leaflet for distribution at Wyvernwood. Prominently featured on the
leaflet was an image of Comite’s President Leonardo Lopez, mic in hand, fist raised.
Written in Spanish, the leaflet called on Wyvernwood residents to march for tenants’
rights, labor rights, immigrant rights, and human rights on May Day.
89
Though Comite
did not explicitly mention the efforts to conserve Wyvernwood, the use of Leonardo’s

87
Telephone interview with Jose Fernandez, January 8, 2015 and telephone interview with Manuel Huerta,
January 9, 2015.
88
JoAnn Carmin, “Local Action in a Transitional State: Community Responses to Proposed Development
in the Czech Republic, 1992-1996,” Social Science Quarterly 84 (2003): 195. Author’s italics.
89
“Este 1ro de Mayo 2013, De Wyvernwood al City Hall de L.A,” Comite de la Esperanza event flier, May
1, 2013.

42

image served to link the event to the conservation effort. In her study of symbols in social
movements, Goodnow defines symbols as nonverbal and often acting as a logo for the
movement itself, an organization within the movement, or an event designed to promote
the movement.
90
Indeed, Leonardo’s image had the potential to promote Comite as well
as the community campaign to protect Wyvernwood.

90
Trischa Goodnow, “On Black Panthers, Blue Ribbons, & Peace Signs: The Function of Symbols in
Social Campaigns,” Visual Communications Quarterly 13, no. 3 (2006): 170, accessed January 1, 2015,
doi: 10.1207/s15551407vcq1303_4.

43

Figure 2.8: May Day March to City Hall, Spanish-language event leaflet, 2013. Photo courtesy of Comite
de la Esperanza.

As a highly visible resident-leader at Wyvernwood, Leonardo was recognizable to
most residents and FACE coalition leaders. By putting Leonardo’s face on the leaflet,
Comite demonstrated their understanding of the importance of frame resonance in
reaching potential supporters. Snow and Benford argue that credibility in framing has to
ESTE 1RO DE MAYO 2013
EMPIEZA A LAS 12:00 EN THE MALL DENTRO DE WYVERNWOOD
(ORME AND GLENN AVE) 2802 CAMULOS PLACE 90023 LA
2DA PARADA EN MARIACHI PLAZA A LAS 1:30PM
(1ST AND BOYLE) 1831 EAST 1ST STREET LA
3RA PARADA EN EL MUSEO JAPONES AMERICANO A LAS 2:00PM
(CENTRAL AND 1ST) 100 NORTH CENTRAL AVE LA
PARADA FINAL SERA EN EL CITY HALL A LAS 2:30"
MARCHA PARA DERECHOS DEL INQUILINO
DERECHOS DEL TRABAJADOR
DERECHOS DEL INMIGRANTE
DERECHOS HUMANOS
DE WYVERNWOOD
AL CITY HALL DE L.A.
PREGUNTAS - COMITEDELAESPERANZA@YAHOO.COM

44

do with whether potential participants view you as knowledgeable, or persuasive.
91
With
nearly three decades of tenants’ rights activism in Wyvernwood, most residents
intimately understood the role Comite, and Leonardo, in particular, had played in
improving the quality of life at Wyvernwood. It should also be noted that the leaflet was
distributed in-person, further affirming the group’s local knowledge of, and direct
engagement with residents.
92
Though the event leaflet may have resonated strongly with
Wyvernwood residents, if intended for a broad and looser network, the content would
need to be modified for greater impact.
While Comite’s event leaflet focused primarily on local knowledge to achieve
frame resonance with potential supporters, the May Day March to City Hall’s main press
release, created by ELAAC, focused on identifying the campaign’s shared leadership and
purpose. Its heading read, “Eastsiders March to demand City save Wyvernwood from
demolition,” followed by the subheading, “Councilmember Jose Huizar maintains his
opposition to proposed demolition of 1,200 units.”
93
The heading served as the overall
central interpretive frame for the campaign event, situating the proposed redevelopment
of Wyvernwood as an Eastsider issue. Density increases, car pollution, an unhealthy
fifteen-year construction period, and displacement of hundreds of long-term residents
were identified as the negative impacts the development would bring to the Wyvernwood
community, “home to more than 6,000 low-income residents, many of which are
monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants.”
94
In contrast, Fifteen Group was presented
as an out-of-town development company planning to destroy the homes and social capital
of a community vulnerable to the pressures of gentrification. Though several
organizational leaders within the FACE coalition had supported Comite’s campaign

91
David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, “Frame alignment
processes, micromobilization, and movement participation,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 4
(1986): 467.
92
Telephone interview with Comite President Leonardo Lopez, January 6, 2015.
During the initial public environmental review of the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project,
Comite produced a two-page bilingual leaflet, which was used to identify and recruit support from residents
for the campaign against Wvyernwood’s redevelopment. During a period of at least six months, Comite
leaders would engage residents on the issue in one-on-one settings. This approach resulted in successfully
obtaining the endorsement of Comite’s No Demolition position from over 800 Wyvernwood households
and more than a dozen community-based organizations, which Comite presented at public hearings.
93
“Eastsiders March to demand City save Wyvernwood from demolition,” East Los Angeles Community
Corporation press release, May 1, 2013.
94
Ibid.

45

against the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project in key ways to date, this press
release would highlight FACE’s role and its shared leadership and base of support for
advancing the Save Wyvernwood campaign.

Figure 2.9: Councilmember Jose Huizar joins FACE leaders in front of City Hall on May Day 2013. Photo
courtesy of Comite de la Esperanza
(https://www.facebook.com/202850936403848/photos/pb.202850936403848.-
2207520000.1441246481./580832838605654/?type=3&theater). Permission pending.

In contrast, the LA Conservancy kept the focus of its own press release on
Wyvernwood and its public review process. They provided more detailed information
about the upcoming public hearing associated with the proposed project. And while they
stated their intention to march on City Hall as well as their membership within FACE,
they did not identify the coalition as a distinctly Eastside coalition, as the ELACC press
release had. They described their own group as a county-wide preservation organization
and announced the premiere of a new video they produced about Wyvernwood, thus

46

identifying additional resources their group brought to bear on the campaign.
95
By
releasing the video to coincide with the May Day rally, the LA Conservancy framed their
participation in the event as one of many, yet specific ways in which they supported the
campaign.

Preservation is About People

Figure 2.10: Graphic design published on Save Wyvernwood Facebook page, April 5, 2013. Photo courtesy
of Comite de la Esperanza (http://www.facebook.com/202850936403848/photos/pb.202850936403848.-
2207520000.1441246484./570643152957956/?type=3&theater). Permission pending.

95
The LA Conservancy’s video highlighted Wyvernwood’s shared open spaces and provided reasons why
resident-leaders valued and aimed to conserve this garden apartment community. The video allowed
viewers to imagine what it would be like to live among vast open and verdant surroundings, and educated
the viewer about what made garden apartment communities unique; in particular, how architects intended
to provide working class people with livable places. The video also grouped Wyvernwood with Village
Green in Baldwin Hills and Lincoln Place in Venice, well-known and preserved garden apartment
communities in Los Angeles. Lastly, the video included footage of a Comite-sponsored event that captured
District CD-14 Councilmember Huizar stating his support for improving and investing in, not demolishing
Wyvernwood. Like the march on City Hall, the video underscored the critical role Councilmember Huizar
would play in conserving or allowing Wyvernwood to be redeveloped. To view the video, see
https://vimeo.com/64195651.

47

The previous section attended to the various ways FACE coalition leaders
publicly framed what the campaign against the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community
Project was about. In the month leading up to the May Day March to City Hall, Comite
and members of FACE heavily promoted the event online. Many calls to action were
posted on Twitter and Facebook, including one graphic design, which presented the Save
Wyvernwood campaign as a matter of public health. This particular image illustrates how
groups engaged in conserving heritage assets might forward a vision of preservation
primarily focused on people.
Appearing on the Save Wyvernwood Facebook page in April 2013 was a graphic
design that featured a black and white image of a man wearing a surgical mask with the
slogan “Save Wyvernwood” written on it. The man was standing in Wyvernwood’s Mall,
where a young child appeared to be playing in the background. The juxtaposition of these
images conveyed residents’ concerns over the proposed project’s negative impacts to the
environment, namely human exposure to toxic pollutants. Included in the graphic design
was the accompanying text: “PM10 is among the most harmful of all air pollutants. When
inhaled these particles lodge deep in the lungs.”
96
Information about PM10 worked
together with the images of the masked man and child to convey the serious
environmental threat posed by the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Project.
97

The text below the design, “On May 1 we march for environmental justice,”
placed the Save Wyvernwood campaign in the context of the environmental justice
movement. Residents may have already viewed the environmental threats posed by the
Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project as an extension of previous threats

96
“On May 1 We March for Environmental Justice,” Comite de la Esperanza graphic, April 5, 2013, on
Save Wyvernwood Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/202850936403848/photos/pb.202850936403848.-
2207520000.1433719071./570643152957956/?type=3&theater, accessed June 10, 2015.
“Take Back Wyvernwood: Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit!” Right to the City press release, March 13,
2013, on Right to the City website, http://righttothecity.org/los-angeles-ca-press-release/, accessed August
7, 2015.
97
Wyvernwood’s demolition and the subsequent fifteen year-long construction period would produce
unavoidable PM10, particulate matter with a diameter of 10 micrometers or less, that is among the most
harmful of air pollutants. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website, “Major
concerns for human health from exposure to PM10 include effects on breathing and respiratory systems,
damage to lung tissue, cancer, and premature death. The elderly, children, and people with chronic lung
disease, influenza, or asthma, are especially sensitive to the effects of particulate matter. For more
information, see “Particulate Matter (PM-10),” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed June 7,
2015, http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrnd95/pm10.html.

48

experienced at Wyvernwood in the 1990s, namely the lead poisioning issue. Still, the
Save Wyvernwood campaign was one of many campaigns underway in Boyle Heights
that aimed to combat cumulative pollution caused by industrial land uses and the
convergence of numerous freeways bisecting the neighborhood. In 2011, Boyle Heights
was identified as one of three “toxic hot-spots” by local residents and researchers who
sought to establish needed green zones in Los Angeles.
98
From this vantage, an
environmental justice frame had the potential to resonate with more diverse participants
than discrete place, injustice, or health frames would.
The caption read, “On May 1st we will be marching from Wyvernwood to City
Hall for Environmental Justice…Que queremos! JUSTICIA!”
99
Though the caption
reinforced environmental justice and rights-based frames, the added Spanish phrases,
“Que queremos! JUSTICIA” (What do we want! Justice!) spoke directly to a Spanish-
speaking audience. Finally, that Councilmember Jose Huizar from Council District 14
was tagged in the Facebook post is worth mentioning. One of the event goals was to
confirm the Councilmember’s support for Wyvernwood’s preservation. In this sense, the
tag served as a program note of what to expect at the event. The tag could also have been
seen as an attempt to directly link the campaign to the Councilmember, bringing
campaign grievances to the Councilmember’s attention in creative and specific ways.
Returning to the visual components of the graphic design, I would argue that the
surgical mask helped to expand the purpose of the May Day March to City Hall. Two
other graphic designs depicting children wearing surgical masks accompanied by
information about PM10 had been previously posted to the Save Wyvernwood Facebook
page in February and April 2013. Those images directly quoted sections in the Final
Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) of the proposed project that discussed the proposed

98
“About Us,” Clean Up Green Up website, accessed September 7, 2015,
https://cleanupgreenup.wordpress.com/; Kristin S. Agostoni, “Wilmington Activist Backs Clean Up Green
Up Proposal,” Daily Breeze News, November 27, 2011; Rocio Zamoro, Up in the Air: The Fight for Clean
Air in Boyle Heights (KCET SoCal Connected, 2012), 00:54, from a video published on KCET website
February 24, 2012, http://www.kcet.org/shows/socal_connected/content/health/community-health/up-in-
the-air.html.
99
“On May 1 We March for Environmental Justice,” Comite de la Esperanza graphic, April 5, 2013, on
Save Wyvernwood Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/202850936403848/photos/pb.202850936403848.-
2207520000.1433719071./570643152957956/?type=3&theater, accessed June 10, 2015.

49

project’s impacts to public health. All three images appeared after the FEIR was made
publicly available and in advance of public hearings regarding the proposed project. In
addition to the use of frames, campaign leaders also employed “moral shocks,”
information intended to evoke a strong sense of outrage in potential supporters who
would be inclined to take political action.
100
Not only were these images used to bring
attention to specific campaign grievances, but also to place focus on the Boyle Heights
Mixed-Use Community Project’s impact to people.
As of September 2015, the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project
remains stalled at City Hall, three years after its public environmental review process.

100
For more discussion on moral shocks, see James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture,
Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements, 106.

50

CHAPTER 3

RECLAIMING RIVERSIDE CHINATOWN FOR ALL

Figure 3.1: Riverside Chinatown Matters! Local citizens at Riverside Chinatown, May 2011. Photo
courtesy of author.

The Chinatown archaeological site in Riverside, California, also known as
Riverside’s second Chinatown, or simply Riverside Chinatown, currently encompasses a
3.19 acres of undeveloped land, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. Located at the
northwestern corner of Brockton and Tequesquite Avenues in Riverside’s Downtown
Health Care District, Riverside Chinatown has been formally designated as a historical
landmark at the City, County, State, and Federal levels. Though the City’s Downtown
neighborhood includes a wide diversity of land uses, ranging from commercial to open
space, the Downtown Specific Plan states, “[t]he intent of the Health Care District is to

51

create a major medical center to serve the City of Riverside by providing for existing
Riverside Community Hospital and medical related uses in this area of Downtown.”
101

Figure 3.3: Map of Riverside California’s two Chinatowns. Map courtesy of author.

In 2007, Jacobs Development Company, Inc. (Jacobs hereafter) entered into a purchase
sale agreement with the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE) to acquire the
Chinatown archaeological site to develop a three-story, 65,281 square foot medical office
building for $2.8 million.
102
As part of the approval process, the City hired an
environmental consulting firm to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR), subject
to the CEQA review. Details regarding the Jacobs Medical Office Building Project
(JMOB) were made available to the public in Spring 2008. The JMOB sparked a
contentious debate over Riverside Chinatown’s heritage value. Though Jacobs claimed
the proposed project would bring a needed commercial amenity to the City, stakeholders
highlighted the archaeological site’s information potential and called for its conservation
and use as a public amenity. This chapter is organized in three parts: 1) History of
Settlement and Use; 2) Evolution of Wyvernwood Garden Apartments as a Heritage
Asset; and 3) Community-Driven Strategies for Conserving Riverside Chinatown.

101
See Chapter Ten, Section 10.1 in the City of Riverside’s Downtown Specific Plan, accessed June 20,
2015, https://www.riversideca.gov/planning/pdf/SpecificPlans/downtown/Chapter10.pdf.
102
See “Agreement for Purchase and Sale Agreement and Joint Escrow Instructions Between Riverside
County Office of Education and Jacobs Development Company,” 137.

52

History of Settlement and Use
Fleeing wars, famine, and civil unrest in mid-19th century China, thousands of
men and women from Guangdong Province in Southern China journeyed to California in
search of Gum Saan (Gold Mountain).
103
They dreamt of economic security and found
work in mining, railroad construction, agriculture, and other industries. After the
completion of the transcontinental railroad line in 1869, Chinese began to concentrate in
Southern California.
104
Many of Riverside’s first Chinese settlers would find employment
on ranches as cooks, servants, and field workers.
105

Figure 3.2: Chinese pioneers labor in Riverside, California’s citrus groves. Photo courtesy of Riverside
Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, California.

While some Chinese lived with employers in bunkhouses, or servants’ quarters, others
concentrated over the entire block of Main, Orange, Eighth and Ninth Streets in Riverside

103
Thomas W. Chinn, Him Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, eds. A History of the Chinese in California: A
Syllabus. San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 11-15.
104
Ibid., 23.
105
Citrograph, 1891 January 17:15.

53

within the Downtown “Mile Square,” the city’s first square-mile town-site, bounded on
the east by the Santa Fe Railroad, on the west at Pepper Street, on the north at First
Street, and on the south at 14th Street.
106

In 1882, the U.S. banned immigration of Chinese laborers with the Chinese
Exclusion Act, the first federal law to exclude immigration on the basis of race or
ethnicity alone.
107
By 1885, rents in the “Mile Square” skyrocketed and ordinances
outlawing laundry businesses and wooden structures were passed by local government,
making it extremely difficult for Chinese residents to live and make a living in
Downtown Riverside.
108
By 1886, these factors led the community to move en masse
from Riverside’s first Chinese settlement in Downtown to a property located in the
Tequesquite Arroyo, just outside of the “Mile Square.”
Chinese community leaders Gin Ah Git (also known as Duey Wo Lung) and
Wong Nim formed Quong Nim & Company and arranged to lease, then purchase 7.5
acres of farmland in the Tequesquite Arroyo owned by John O. Cottrell. By the end of
1885, the company hired local contractor A.W. Boggs to construct twenty-six permanent
wooden buildings. Other semi-permanent structures added shape and dimension to the
rural landscape. The settlement met the residential, commercial, social, and spiritual
needs of Riverside’s Chinese pioneer community. In July 1893, a fire swept through
Chinatown, leaving only eight buildings standing. Within two days, work to rebuild
Chinatown had begun. Two long brick buildings were constructed along Chinatown’s
main street and over the remains of the site’s earlier architecture.

106
Laid out in 1870 by Los Angeles surveying and engineering firm of Goldsworthy & Higby for the newly
formed Southern California Colony Association, Riverside’s Downtown “Mile Square” had 169 blocks of
two and half acres each. For more information see Tom Patterson, A Colony for California, 42-47.
107
The Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted on May 6, 1882. See the full text at
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/chinese_exclusion_act.asp.
108
Riverside Press and Horticulturalist, September 25, 1885, 2; Riverside Press and Horticulturalist,
October 3, 1885, 3; Riverside Press and Horticulturalist, October 15, 1885, 3; Riverside Press and
Horticulturalist, October 20, 1885, 2. For more information about Riverside’s Downtown Mile Square see
Tom Patterson, A Colony for California, 42-45.

54

Figure 3.4: Hand-tinted detail photo of Riverside Chinatown, circa 1910. Photo courtesy of Riverside
Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, California.

55

Figure 3.5: Proprietors in front of Pow Hing & Company at Riverside Chinatown, circa 1914. Photo
courtesy of National Archives at San Francisco; Case file 18889/17-5, Record Group 85.

Up to 2,500 people lived in Riverside Chinatown during harvest seasons from
1885 through the 1920s. Chinatown’s residents provided skilled labor to the region’s
citrus industry, while others ran businesses, including farms and restaurants. They

56

worked in the service industry as house servants, hotel workers, and as laundrymen. A
number of factors led to the slow decline of the community, namely aging of the resident
population, continued restrictions placed on immigration, and growth opportunities in
other locations. The last business in Chinatown closed in 1938.
By the 1940s, all of Riverside’s first wave of Chinese immigrants had passed
away, returned to China, left to seek other opportunities in other cities, or had been driven
away by institutional and/or more subtle forms of racism. This left Wong Ho Leun
(George Wong) as Riverside Chinatown’s last resident. In 1941, George purchased the
Chinatown site, following the death of Wong Nim, who at the time was the site’s sole
owner. In the late 1940s and 1950s, George demolished some of the more dilapidated
buildings along the eastern and southern borders of the property and invited contractors
to dump truckloads of fill dirt over the rubble.
109
In the 1960s, he leased a portion of the
property near the southwestern corner to a gas station. During his tenure as owner,
George entertained offers to lease, or sell the property, but never agreed to sell.

Evolution of Riverside Chinatown as a Heritage Asset
This section discusses the various actions taken by government agencies and
community stakeholders to document and conserve Riverside Chinatown as a heritage
asset. These cumulative actions conserved Riverside Chinatown following the death of its
last resident through the current period.
In 1968 the County of Riverside’s Board of Supervisors was the first government
agency to designate Riverside Chinatown as a historic resource. In addition to County
landmark designation, County staff submitted an application for recognition at the State
level, which resulted in the site’s listing as a State Point of Historical Interest. The City of
Riverside expressed interest in designating the site as a local landmark as early as 1971,
but was reportedly thwarted by George Wong, who had appeared at a City Council
meeting to object to the designation.
110
While no record of his objections could be
located, popular perceptions were that George may have feared designation might lead to

109
National Park Service, “Chinatown archaeological site, National Park Service National Register of
Historic Places Registration Form,” 4, accessed January 2, 2015,
http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/90000151.pdf.
110
Minutes of the City of Riverside Cultural Heritage Board, June 12, 1974, 3.

57

some form of eminent domain. In 1976, two years after George’s passing, the City
Council added Riverside Chinatown to the City’s landmarks list. Citing unsafe
conditions, the City approved the demolition of Riverside Chinatown’s last standing
building following a fire at Chinatown.

Figure 3.6: George Wong at Riverside County Landmark ceremony at Riverside Chinatown, July 24, 1968.
Photo courtesy of Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, California.

58

Figure 3.7: Last remaining brick building at Riverside Chinatown prior to demolition, circa 1976. Photo
courtesy of Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, California.

In the two years that followed, the Chinatown site changed ownership twice, but
neither party was able to implement their vision for commercial development. By 1980,
RCOE purchased the property, transferring site control to a public agency after almost
100 years of private ownership. Shortly after purchasing the site, RCOE sought to
construct a maintenance facility on the western portion of the property. The project would
have gone ahead as planned, but due to its local landmark status, triggered a public
review by the City’s Cultural Heritage Board. The Cultural Heritage Board, concerned
that the construction and grading activities might damage the historic site, stipulated
several conditions of approval, including an archaeological test and assessment
program.
111

Paul Chase and Associates was hired to develop an archaeological mitigation
program, which confirmed the site’s potential to yield important information about the
Chinese American experience in Riverside. Funds and permission were secured to

111
Minutes of the City of Riverside Cultural Heritage Board, February 18, 1981, 4-5.

59

conduct an archaeological testing program at the site. In 1984, members of then Save
Riverside’s Chinatown and Chinese Historical Society of Southern California contacted
the Great Basin Foundation, a research affiliate of the San Diego Museum of Man, to
assist in the archaeological testing program. The Great Basin Foundation agreed and the
project ensued in 1984-1985.

Figure 3.8: Great Basin Foundation’s archaeological testing program at Riverside Chinatown, 1984-1985.
Photo courtesy of Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, California.

In keeping with professional best practices, a decision was made to focus on the
site’s least sensitive areas, leaving the bulk of the site undisturbed for future study.
Efforts were made to involve public volunteers. During the archaeological testing
program, archaeologists identified building foundations, filled-in basements, the remains
of a Joss House (temple), and artifact-rich trash pits. The immediate reconstruction of the
settlement following the Chinatown Fire of 1893 had preserved the 1885-1893 features of
the site, as had dumping of fill dirt in some areas during George Wong’s tenure as owner.
Field Director, Paul Chase ascertained, “More than two tons of artifacts have been dug up
from the site. That adds up to more than three times the amount of artifacts from all

60

Chinese digs anywhere outside of China.”
112
However, due to budgetary and time
constraints, only a portion of the data recovered was analyzed and curated. Following the
archaeological testing program, all excavated artifacts were donated to the Riverside
Municipal Museum (now Riverside Metropolitan Museum) and two volumes of historical
and archaeological information were published by the Great Basin Foundation, which
formed the basis for the site’s successful nomination to the National Register of Historic
Places in 1990.
113

The archaeological program sparked interest in commemorating Riverside’s
Chinese community. At the urging of residents and community stakeholders, a feasibility
study for creating a Chinatown Historical Park at the site was conducted. By 1989, a
$220,000 State grant had been obtained to purchase the site from RCOE. In 1990, the
Riverside County Board of Education passed a Minute Order, outlining criteria for the
utilization and disposition of the site. The resolution was guided by the core principle that
future use of the site would conserve the cultural, historical, and archaeological values of
the site, and benefit public education.
114
However, the deal to sell the site for the purpose
of developing a historical park fell through by 1994 when RCOE refused to sell. Inaction
by City and RCOE officials in subsequent years evidenced that political support for the
Chinatown Historical Park concept had waned. With a sense of dreams dashed and
urgency lost, Riverside Chinatown would fade into the background, as any other
abandoned historic property might, given similar conditions.
Multiple historic designations and projects associated with the archaeological
work of the mid-1980s have enriched the City’s historical record and affirmed Riverside
Chinatown as a valued heritage asset. The archaeological work privileged the site’s
scientific and educational values and connected audiences with the site’s material culture.
Over the years, the public’s interest in conserving Riverside Chinatown’s cultural and
historical values and those associated with the site have been observed. A growing

112
Cindy Yingst, “Unearthing Chinatown – in Riverside,” San Bernardino County Sun, February 18, 1985.
113
Laura Bellow, “Little Gom-Benn: Historic Archaeology from a Museum Perspective,” Journal of the
Riverside Historical Society 11 (2007): 30.
114
Riverside County Board of Education, “Minute Order,” March 21, 1990.

61

number of local residents have participated in public programs sponsored by SOCC,
including site tours, research projects, and the annual Ching Ming ceremony.
115

Figure 3.9: Artifacts from Riverside Chinatown in I Want the Wide American Earth exhibit at the Japanese
American National Museum, Los Angeles, California, September 2013. Photo courtesy of author.

Community-Driven Strategies for Conserving Riverside Chinatown

Community Context

In recent years there have many community, university and government-
sponsored opportunities to highlight the stories, places, and people of Chinese American
heritage. In this section I mention some key projects to provide some context for

115
Beginning in 2009, SOCC has hosted an annual Ching Ming ceremony. Ching Ming, or “Grave
Sweeping Day,” or “Day of Purity and Brightness,” is the day Chinese families go to their ancestors’
gravesites, clean them and have a small offering and prayer ceremony. From the 1880s through 1940s, it
became the responsibility of Riverside’s Chinese pioneer community to take care of these rituals, because
families were back home in China, due to the various Exclusion and other discriminatory laws.

62

imagining where and how the project to conserve Riverside’s Chinatown archaeological
site may fit in.
In 2010, the community-driven 1882 Project was launched in Washington D.C. to
educate lawmakers and members of the public about the Chinese Exclusion Laws and
their lasting impact on Chinese Americans.
116
With the help of several national civil
rights organizations, including the Chinese American Citizens Alliance and the Japanese
American Citizens League, and with the support of House Representative Judy Chu (CA-
27), the 1882 Project successfully worked with the 112th Congress to pass two
resolutions (H. Res. 683 and S. Res. 201) expressing regret for the passage of the Chinese
Exclusion Laws.
117
This grassroots project demonstrated the opportunities available to
Chinese Americans for becoming more engaged in the political arena. In 2012, Stanford
University professors Gordon Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, with support from the
university’s president, launched the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project,
aiming to create new scholarship, curricula, public events, and a digital archive of
materials and resources concerning the contributions of Chinese workers in building the
transcontinental railroad in the U.S. In 2013, I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian
Pacific American Story, sought to reclaim and highlight the histories and contributions of
Asian Pacific Americans on a national level. Created by the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific
American Center and organized for travel across the country, the exhibition featured
items from Riverside Metropolitan Museum’s Chinatown archaeological site collection
and was on display locally at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles in
Fall 2013 and at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum in Spring 2015. All three projects,
related, yet distinct, found needed public and private support, demonstrating a growing
interest in remembering and promoting the histories and heritage of Chinese Americans
to wide audiences.
In addition to the projects highlighted above, there are many reasons why the
conservation and interpretation of Riverside’s Chinatown archaeological site resonates
with local residents and city government. Established in 1979, the Old Riverside
Foundation (ORF), a nonprofit membership-based organization has been dedicated to the

116
http://www.1882foundation.org/about-2/.
117
Ibid.

63

recognition, appreciation, and preservation of the built environment throughout Riverside
and the Inland Empire. In 2008, ORF filed its first lawsuit in an attempt to overturn
Riverside City Council’s approval of a portion of the Fox Plaza project, which the
organization argued represented the greatest degree of removal and demolition of historic
buildings in Riverside’s Downtown district. Although the lawsuit was unsuccessful in
overturning the redevelopment project, it demonstrated the local community’s
willingness to use legal tools to protect important local heritage assets.
To date, 116 City landmarks and eleven historic districts have been designated in
Riverside by the City’s Cultural Heritage Board and private individuals. More than one
third of these designated landmarks are located in Riverside’s Downtown neighborhood.
Currently, the City of Riverside’s historic preservation program is administered through
the Historic Preservation, Neighborhoods and Urban Design Division of the City’s
Community Development Department. The City has been recognized as a Certified Local
Government (CLG) by the State of California’s Office of Historic Preservation, giving it
greater responsibility in identifying, evaluating, registering, and preserving the City’s
historic properties. CLG status has also provided increased access to federal funding to
assist with historic preservation programs. In July 2015, the City of Riverside was
awarded a CLG grant to prepare a historic context statement associated with Riverside’s
Chinese American history.

Key Players

Several organizations raised concern over the JMOB’s potential impacts to
Riverside Chinatown. The Riverside Chinese Culture Preservation Committee (RCCPC),
an ad-hoc citizens’ committee, was formed in 2008 in direct response to the proposed
project. The group would provide input during the proposed project’s public review
process. RCCPC’s active members were primarily local first generation immigrants from
China, many of whom were learning about Riverside’s Chinese American heritage for the
first time, and had limited, or no experience working with the local government and the

64

regulatory frameworks that safeguarded historic sites in the U.S. The group also had
loose ties to Huaxia Chinese School in Riverside and Inland Chinese Association.
118

Following the Council approval of the JMOB in October 2008, the Save Our
Chinatown Committee (SOCC) was formed. The majority of SOCC’s original board
members had been active members of RCCPC. Core leadership was made up of local
activists, archaeologists, and academics with close ties to UC Riverside. In its initial
formation, the Old Riverside Foundation served as SOCC’s fiscal sponsor. In 2011,
SOCC achieved nonprofit status. Over the years, the group has organized a number of
cultural heritage programming, including site tours and the Ching Ming Festival, an
annual graveside ceremony to honor Chinese pioneers who were buried in Riverside, but
left no descendants to carry on this tradition.
Another key player in the community campaign to protect Riverside Chinatown
was Students for Chinatown, a student solidarity group that aimed to support SOCC-led
efforts to protect Riverside Chinatown. Under the leadership of undergraduate students
from the UC Riverside, Students for Chinatown helped raise awareness and participation
of college students through campus organizing, actions, and communications.

(Re)discovering Riverside Chinatown
Following the release of the JMOB, RCCPC primarily functioned as a
communications network, disseminating historical information about Riverside’s Chinese
pioneer community and updates associated with the threats to the Chinatown site and the
Chinese Pavilion to social and business networks in the local Chinese American
community.
119
Initially, RCCPC’s leadership framed conservation of Riverside
Chinatown in terms of cultural respect, as evidenced in a sample comment letter the
group circulated in Summer 2008. The letter raised three key concerns: 1) The Chinatown

118
In May 2008, HuaXia Chinese School officials asked Dr. Vince Moses, historian and former Director of
the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, to give a talk on Riverside Chinatown to its parent-teacher
community. Dr. Vince Moses had been involved in arranging for the Riverside Chinatown artifacts to be
transferred to the care of the museum following the test excavations of 1984-85. Following his
presentation, Some of the parents of the students of Huaxia Chinese School would reach out to Dr. Moses
to ask him to serve as the Vice Chair of RCCPC to help guide them through the JMOB’s public review
process.
119
Built in 1985-86, Chinese Pavilion is the only other heritage asset reflecting Chinese American heritage
in Riverside. In 2008, conceptual drawings of the proposed expansion of Riverside’s Downtown Public
Library did not show the Chinese Pavilion in situ, raising concerns over its ongoing conservation.

65

archaeological site was a unique and important cultural resource in Riverside; 2) Several
local Chinese organizations interested in the Chinatown archaeological site had not been
notified of the proposed project, and, therefore, had been denied the opportunity to
participate in the public review process; and 3) Not enough time was provided to evaluate
the feasibility of the proposed project.
120

In time, RCCPC drafted and circulated a mitigation proposal for Riverside
Chinatown. Although it identified preservation as the group’s top priority, recommending
the site’s archaeological resources be preserved in situ (in place), the group did not
express unequivocal opposition to development at the site. The concept of a historical
park at Riverside Chinatown was presented as the best option for preserving the
archaeological resources. The group also identified the importance of interpreting and
sharing the history of the site and its associated community with the public.
121
James Lu,
Chair of RCCPC lamented, “It was a shame that many of us didn’t know anything about
[Chinatown] for so long. It was such a tragic, miserable site when we first looked at it.
What? This was a historic site?”
122
For some members of RCCPC, the value of the weed-
covered Chinatown archaeological site was debatable. Cross-cultural views regarding the
historical value of material culture may have also played a role in highlighting, or
devaluing the importance of archaeological preservation at this time. “[Some] may feel
[Riverside Chinatown] is not significant because it is a few hundred years as compared
[to] thousands of years [old],” shared Amber Zhao, a first-generation Chinese American
member of RCCPC. “On the other hand, because the U.S. has a shorter history span,
that’s even more important…People who came from China know we lost a lot of
knowledge for all the reasons.”
123
When Amber referred to losing a lot of knowledge in
China, she was referring to the Cultural Revolution in China. Amber and many active
members of RCCPC lived through the Cultural Revolution and knew firsthand how
government could swiftly use its power to devalue and destroy culture. It would follow

120
Sample comment letter expressing concern over Jacobs Medical Office Building Project’s Draft
Environmental Impact Report, submitted electronically to City of Riverside Senior Planner, Yvette
Sennewald, Councilmembers Mike Gardner and Frank Schiavone, and Mayor Ron Loveridge, May 27,
2008.
121
Riverside Chinese Culture Preservation Committee Mitigation Proposal for Jacobs Medical Office
Building: Riverside Chinatown Archaeological Site, June 26, 2008.
122
James Lu, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, August 20, 2014.
123
Amber Zhao, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, August 9, 2014.

66

that those RCCPC members may have been more sympathetic to the cause of heritage
conservation.
As the public review process continued over Summer 2008, attempts to bring
RCOE into discussions regarding alternative development proposals for Riverside
Chinatown proved futile. It was becoming evident that Jacobs would not agree to
preserve the archaeology in situ. There was also growing disagreement among RCCPC
members regarding the group’s preservation priorities. Some members felt the group
should continue talks with City staff and Jacobs to find a compromise solution. Others
perceived continued negotiations as endorsing the destruction of a heritage asset.
Following much internal debate, RCCPC ratified a position statement on the development
of the Chinatown archaeological site on August 3, 2008: “The RCCPC’s top priority is to
protect the undisturbed archaeological resources in the site of Riverside’s Chinatown and
to retain its listing on the National Register of Historic Places.”
124
Following this action,
several members limited their involvement, or stopped attending meetings altogether.
Soon after the approval and circulation of RCCPC’s position statement, The Press-
Enterprise published an endorsement of the developer’s proposed project, arguing a
central premise, “Riverside cannot preserve what no longer exists.” It described the
heritage asset as a vacant lot, “home for transients and a target for trash-dumping.” The
newspaper argued, “The only really valuable history rests in whatever artifacts lie
beneath the surface.”
125

An Opinion Editorial penned by RCCPC Chair Dr. James Lu and Co-Vice Chair
Dr. Vince Moses disputed The Press-Enterprise’s claim that Riverside Chinatown did not
exist, citing its historical designations and abundant research findings. Reaffirming the
group’s preservation position, they called on the developer, City planners, and County
Board of Education to do more to honor the early Chinese pioneers.
126
As the City
Council vote neared, RCCPC members secured the endorsement of their position
statement from over nineteen organizations from Riverside and across Southern

124
“Position Statement on the Development of Chinatown Site,” Riverside Chinese Culture Preservation
Committee, August 9, 2008.
125
“Preserve Wisely,” Our Views, The Press-Enterprise, July, 19, 2008.
126
“Save Chinatown: Put a Park; Not a Medical Office Building, On Sensitive Riverside Site,” Opinion,
The Press-Enterprise, August 6, 2008.

67

California, including the local chapters of the Japanese American Citizens League and
the NAACP. In October 2008, the City Council adopted a statement of overriding
considerations, reinforcing their position that the public benefit of a medical office
building outweighed conserving a heritage asset. Despite wide and vocal opposition, the
City Council voted unanimously to approve the proposed project.
Within a week from the City Council’s approval of the JMOB, some of RCCPC’s
members formed SOCC, a separate community-based organization, which would provide
ongoing leadership for the community campaign to conserve Riverside Chinatown. By
the end of 2009, the group contracted a lawyer and filed a lawsuit with the hope of
overturning the City approval.
127
SOCC Cofounder Jean Wong explained,
We believe that the City of Riverside simply failed to follow either the law
or common sense in considering this case. They did not seriously consider
alternatives that would protect the site from destruction, they discarded or
ignored the practical advice of hundreds of concerned residents and
experts, and the outcome of the process appeared to be predetermined in
favor of whatever the developer wanted. We are determined to protect our
precious heritage, and see that the City of Riverside and the Riverside
County Office of Education follow the law.
128

The group presented legal action as a necessary approach to protect the Chinatown
archaeological site from destruction.

127

SOCC’s lawsuit was aimed at the owner of the property, Riverside County Office of Education; the
developer who sought to purchase the property, Jacobs; and the lead agency approving the project, the City
of Riverside.

128

“Lawsuit Filed Against Planned Building on Riverside Chinatown Site,” Save Our Chinatown
Committee press release, November 6, 2008, on Save Our Chinatown Committee website,
http://saveourchinatown.org/docs/SOCC.PR11-6.pdf, accessed June 7, 2015.

68

Grading activities at Riverside Chinatown commenced four days after the City’s Cultural
Heritage Board approved a controversial archaeological treatment plan for the JMOB.
The in-field discard policy called for the disposal of artifacts based on four different
criteria.
129
Early in the morning of February 14, 2009, the start of a three-day holiday,
earthmovers arrived at Riverside Chinatown. Because SOCC members had begun
monitoring the site on a daily basis beginning in February, the group was quick to
respond. SOCC leaders reached out to their social and professional networks. By noon, a
small crowd gathered at the site to protest the developer’s actions. Community members
photographed and filmed the grading activities, which would later be used in court to
obtain a temporary restraining order, and subsequently, a permanent injunction. The
police fined the project foreman, ordering him to cease and desist, though the work
continued for two more days. SOCC dubbed the developer’s actions on February 14-16,
2009 as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” framing the events at the Chinatown
archaeological site as an assault on heritage. The Valentine’s Day Massacre illustrated
the contentious debate over the meanings, values, and uses associated with Riverside
Chinatown.

129
The Archaeological Treatment Plan for Riverside Chinatown allowed for the discard of the following
items: 1) “Artifacts less than 45 years old that are considered to lack data potential. Materials excavated
from these contexts will be documented and reburied within the feature; 2) Surface sheet refuse that is less
than 45 years old that is considered to lack data potential will not be collected; 3) Glass and ceramic sherds
smaller than 1 inch in diameter that no unusual or distinctive qualities, and that lack markings or
decoration, will not be collected; 4) A representative sample of chronologically diagnostic, marked, or
unique examples of the following materials will be retained and remainder discarded: Window glass,
amorphous and fragmentary ferrous metal, brick, plaster, concrete, paving stone, mortar, sewer pipe, and
similar construction material. As appropriate, this material may be weighed before it is discarded,” 72. ICF
Jones & Stokes. “Historic Property Treatment Plan for Riverside Chinatown,” December 2008.
http://aquarius.riversideca.gov/clerkdb/DocView.aspx?id=94652&dbid=0 Last modified August 10, 2015.

69

Figure 3.10: Citizens gather at Riverside Chinatown to protest developer Doug Jacobs’ illegal grading
activities on February 14, 2009. Photo courtesy of James Koga.

Archaeologists Little and Shackel forward a vision of heritage that is “not only that which
is already uncovered or cared for in a conventional archaeological sense, but also that
which remains to be discovered, because that material – extensive, unidentified,
unrecognized, undocumented – does matter.”
130
Building on this concept, they posit:
The same level of threat is perceived with an attack on the abstractions
and imaginaries with which we commemorate our versions of the past—
our histories, our beliefs, our knowings—all of which constitute the
meanings we create for the heritage we recognize. Threats to choices
about which histories matter, how we go about creating and discovering
them, and the ways in which they are presented and shared are as serious
as threats to tangible fabric.
131

As the potential loss of places elicits strong community responses, so too will threats over
the meanings and uses of heritage assets. Initial community responses over the potential
loss of Riverside Chinatown affirmed heritage conservation as a contested process. In the

130
Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel, Archaeology, Heritage, and Civic Engagement: Working Toward
the Public Good, 40.
131
Ibid., 41.

70

next two sections, I turn to the framing processes of SOCC and Students for Chinatown at
two key events in the Save Riverside Chinatown campaign.

SOCC’s City Hall Protests
Following the Valentine’s Day Massacre, SOCC’s legal team requested and was
granted a temporary restraining order preventing Jacobs’ from further construction
activity at Riverside Chinatown, pending the resolution of the CEQA case. Despite this
legal victory, SOCC was aware of the potential for increased development-related threats
to the heritage asset and therefore would appeal to local elected officials and potential
campaign supporters.
Figure 3.11: Save Our Chinatown Committee and supporters in silent protest at City Hall, February 24,
2009. Photo courtesy of Christi Gambill.

The first of two actions took place outside of Art Pick City Council Chambers in
advance of a planned City Council meeting on February 24, 2009. About forty
community members stood in silent protest in front of the City Council chambers for
approximately fifteen minutes. Each participant held up an 8.5 X 11-inch image of

71

George Wong’s face in front of their own face. Some participants also held hand-drawn
posters, some of which read, “Stop Erasing Our Stories,” “Respect Our History,” and
“First Chinatown, Who’s Next?” These slogans reinforced key issues associated with the
community campaign to conserve Riverside Chinatown.
In their study of two currents of anti-surveillance protests in Germany, Daphi et
al. conclude that a systematic methodological approach to analyzing protest images
deepens our understanding of social movements. They write,
Images do more than illustrate existing political messages: they play a
crucial role in formulating groups’ different strategies as well as
worldviews. In this vein, images are not only a product of movements, but
also part of the symbolic practices which constitute the movement and its
identity, and are embedded in national and sectoral contexts.
132

That George Wong, the last resident and caretaker of Riverside Chinatown, figured
prominently in SOCC’s silent protest demonstrated the group’s intent to activate local
memory and employ symbolic practices in the movement to conserve Riverside
Chinatown. The act of placing George Wong’s face in front of one’s own face not only
linked citizens advocating for site conservation with Riverside’s early Chinese pioneers,
but affirmed solidarity and commitment through a discourse-building process that
highlighted the group’s collective identity.
Following the silent protest, participants entered City Council chambers. During
the public comments portion of the City Council meeting, ten SOCC leaders and allies
expressed their concerns over the developer’s actions during the Valentine’s Day
Massacre. During one presentation, two participants unfurled a twelve foot-long “scroll
of shame,” which presented several violations committed by Jacobs during the
Valentine’s Day Massacre.
133

132
Priska Daphi, Anja Lê, and Peter Ullrich, "Images of Surveillance. The contested and embedded visual
language of anti-surveillance protests," ed. Doerr, Nicole, Alice Mattoni, and Simon Teune: Advances in
the Visual Analysis of Social Movements 35 (Bingley, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013),
76.
133
SOCC leaders anecdotally referred to this Save Riverside Chinatown campaign ephemera as the “scroll
of shame.”

72

In The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social
Movements Jasper writes,
The prospect of unexpected and sudden changes in one’s surroundings can
arouse feelings of dread and anger. The former can paralyze, the latter can
be the basis for mobilization. Activists work hard to create moral outrage
and anger, and to provide a target against which these can be vented.
134

The presentation of the “scroll of shame” was intended as a moral shock, conjuring moral
judgment and outrage directed at City officials, whom SOCC partially blamed for the
Valentine’s Day Massacre.
The actions at City Hall illustrated the importance of discourse-building in the
community-driven efforts to conserve Riverside Chinatown. SOCC recognized the need
to create opportunities to enhance solidarity and commitment among existing and new
supporters. Since SOCC’s formation, students played important roles in advancing the
community campaign. Following SOCC’s City Hall protests, several SOCC leaders
focused time and resources developing new student leaders. Beginning in 2010, SOCC
created formal service-learning opportunities for undergraduate students in conjunction
with UC Riverside’s “Undergraduate Research in the Community” program. Students for
Chinatown emerged from this context.

134
James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements,
106-107.

73

Figure 3.12: Citizens present “scroll of shame” to members of Riverside’s City Council, February 24, 2009.
Photo courtesy of Christi Gambill.

Students for Chinatown’s Day of Action
In 2010, Students for Chinatown, a student-driven solidarity support organization
based out of UC Riverside, met a critical need in the community campaign to conserve
Riverside Chinatown. Identifying the conservation of Riverside Chinatown as “vital to
the educational enrichment and growth of future generations,” Students for Chinatown
would direct their attention to the Riverside County Office of Education.
135
“It’s not just
a piece of land, but there’s a history behind it. And it’s also for our future. I think that
[the issue] spoke to us on a deeper level because we had experienced being outcasts,”
reflected Students for Chinatown Cofounder, Chardae Chou.
136
Chardae saw her own
identity as a second-generation Chinese American student at UC Riverside as intertwined
with Riverside’s Chinese pioneer community. From this vantage, Riverside Chinatown

135
Students for Chinatown Letter to President Adolfo Mediano, Jr., February 23, 2010.
136
Chardae Chou, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, August 27, 2014.

74

was a proxy for a broader racial justice project. She continued, “When I was little, I
always wanted to be White…I think it’s important for kids, and, myself, as a young adult,
to understand that being Chinese, I can be proud of it and not hide…I’m important
enough to remember in history.”
137

On February 23, 2010, Students for Chinatown led UC Riverside and Riverside
Community College students on a march from White Park in Downtown Riverside to
RCOE’s headquarters, a few blocks away. The purpose of the march was to deliver
students’ letters to then RCOE Board President Adolfo Mediano. These letters expressed
students’ concerns over the potential commercial development of Riverside Chinatown.
While students recognized that conserving Riverside Chinatown as a public park could
boost community pride for local residents within the Downtown neighborhood, and the
broader Asian American community in Riverside and beyond, their group led with the
primary message of conserving an educational resource for students and youth.
138
The
Students for Chinatown “Day of Action” was the first public demonstration against
RCOE since plans for the Jacobs Medical Office Building Project were made public in
2008.

137
Chardae Chou, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, August 27, 2014.
138
With a population of 11,235, the neighborhood’s residents make up less than 0.5 percent of the City’s
total population, and more than half are renters. The poverty rate in the neighborhood is 21.5 percent,
hovering above the nation’s average and slightly higher than the 17.2 percent found at the County level.

According to 2010 U.S. Census, 7.2 percent of the City’s total population identify as Asian, while only 2.2
percent of the residents in the Downtown neighborhood identify as Asian. See U.S. Census Bureau, 2011-
2013 3-Year American Community Survey, Poverty Rates in Riverside County;
http://www.riversideca.gov/planning/pdf/demographics/2010/downtown.pdf;
http://www.riversideca.gov/planning/pdf/demographics/CityProfile-2010.pdf.

75

Figure 3.13: Students for Chinatown’s Day of Action, event leaflet, February 23, 2010. Photo courtesy of
Students for Chinatown.

In the weeks leading up to the RCOE action, Students for Chinatown distributed
an event leaflet at UC Riverside. Along with logistical details, the leaflet included an
image of hands holding a picket sign in the foreground, and in the background, an image
of George Wong. In addition, Students for Chinatown included George’s birth and death
date, and identified George as the last resident of Chinatown. This content at once
remembered and foreshadowed an important symbol in the community-driven campaign
to conserve Riverside Chinatown.

76

Part of the action directed at RCOE included a street-side protest at the corner of
Market and 13th streets, where half of the students remained in place, chanting protest
sayings, holding up images of George Wong’s face in front of their own. Recalling
previous City Hall demonstrations, the action reinforced the importance of symbols and
images in the movement, in particular, the importance of activating the memory and
legacy of Riverside’s Chinese pioneers. In “Images of Surveillance: The Contested and
Embedded Visual Language of Anti-Surveillance Protests,” Daphi et al. assert, “[V]isual
analysis could also provide a crucial tool to explore possibilities for and restrictions to
coalition building in and between movements.”
139
Both SOCC and Students for
Chinatown used the image of George Wong to activate the memory and legacy of
Riverside’s Chinese pioneers. While the image of George kindled the memory of
Riverside’s early Chinese community, because he was Riverside Chinatown’s last
resident and had lived and protected the heritage asset for so many years by himself, his
image was closely associated with the heritage asset as well. As no tangible Chinatown
structures remained, leaders of SOCC and Students for Chinatown relied on images,
including those of George Wong, to deepen potential supporters’ interest in and
connection with the efforts to conserve Riverside Chinatown. That both organizations
employed this strategy demonstrated their solidarity, but also the effectiveness of their
visual communication.

139
Priska Daphi, Anja Lê, and Peter Ullrich, "Images of Surveillance. The contested and embedded visual
language of anti-surveillance protests," ed. Doerr, Nicole, Alice Mattoni, and Simon Teune: Advances in
the Visual Analysis of Social Movements 35 (Bingley, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013),
76.

77

Figure 3.14: Students for Chinatown’s Kimberly Zarate in silent protest over the potential destruction of
Riverside Chinatown. Photo courtesy of author.

In their campus organizing, Students for Chinatown identified lapses in their
formal education and saw their involvement in the Chinatown issue as part of their
personal development and growth. Cofounder Kimberly Zarate would later recall some
important questions students had asked themselves while participating in the community
campaign: “Why [did we] not learn more about local history? [Not] learning about
certain histories [contributed] to [our] erasure from collective, institutionalized,
formalized memory. Who gets to decide what we do, or do not, can, or cannot learn and
why?”
140
These were some of the questions that motivated Kimberly, Chardae, and other
student leaders to confront RCOE in direct action. These questions were integrated as
themes in the planning of, and materials created for, the group’s Day of Action, and thus

140
Kimberly Zarate, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, August 27, 2014.

78

contributed to the iterative discourse-building processes that advanced the community-
based effort to conserve Riverside Chinatown.
As of September 2015, SOCC has been working with City planning staff to assess
the feasibility of acquiring Riverside Chinatown for the purposes of developing a park at
the historic site. At a recent meeting of the City’s Development Committee, committee
members recommended staff present a report of the Planning staff’s findings at a future
Council meeting.

79

CHAPTER 4

DISCUSSION

This study has traced framing processes in two community-driven campaigns to
conserve heritage assets in Southern California, seeking a deeper understanding of why
and how individuals and groups participate in campaigns to protect heritage at risk. In
earlier chapters, I have illustrated how organizational leaders bridged interests and
created resonance through framing processes at key moments of transition in the
respective campaigns. It seems appropriate now to spend some time considering how
framing tasks – diagnostic, prognostic, and motivation –as defined by Snow and Benford,
revealed campaign opportunities and challenges as understood by organizational leaders
engaged in the respective campaigns themselves. This level of close analysis offers an
opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of the respective campaign communication
strategies. Following an analysis of framing tasks associated with early endorsement
efforts of the respective campaigns, I highlight some strategies and networks key
organizational leaders brought to bear. These strategies and networks indeed reflected
leaders’ worldviews and how they understood and framed key issues of the respective
campaigns.

Framing
In “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Polletta and Jasper argue for the
importance of identity work in sustaining solidarity and commitment in social
movements. They posit this work must be integrated with injustice and agency frames to
clearly distinguish “us” from opponents, or bystanders.
141
Slogans employed at key
events in both campaigns, such as “A Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit” and “Stop
Erasing Our History,” not only highlighted foundational issues of the respective
campaigns, but also defined those who sought to conserve heritage assets. Iterating on
why heritage conservation mattered to them, another widely-used slogan in the Save
Wyvernwood campaign, “Somos Wyvernwood – historia, cultura, familia,” (“We are

141
Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of
Sociology 27 (2001), 285.

80

Wyvernwood – history, culture, family”), forwarded a vision of individuals and groups
coalescing in solidarity, around history, culture, and family. Seen from this vantage, this
slogan expanded a place frame that identified Wyvernwood as an active creation of
interacting individuals, not necessarily bound by place, but by a shared people-centered
approach to tackling urban issues.
The Save Riverside Chinatown campaign also privileged a people-centered
conservation strategy. During the silent protest at City Hall following the Valentine’s
Day Massacre, leaders and supporters of SOCC held up George Wong faces and signs
that read, “Stop Erasing Our Stories” and “Respect Our History,” among others (my
italics). These slogans could be read as campaign demands. They also reinforced the
campaign’s focus on people— Riverside’s Chinese pioneers who were invisible, or had
been forgotten; those presently engaged in efforts to conserve Riverside Chinatown; and
wider publics that stood to benefit from the heritage conservation effort.
Both campaigns were driven by grassroots leaders of color with varying levels of
experience with mainstream preservation strategies. Affirming the importance of frame
bridging and resonance in mobilizing communities of color around environmental issues,
Dorceta Taylor writes, “Because of their environmental experiences, the distinction
between environment and social justice is an artificial one for people of color. The EJP
encourages its supporters to view the home and community, work, and play environments
as interconnected environments.”
142
For many of the leaders engaged in the two cases
studied here, protecting the heritage asset had everything to do with improving quality of
life and social justice.

A Brief Account of Early Endorsement Projects
Prior to the circulation of the Draft Environmental Report of the Boyle Heights
Mixed-Use Community Project, Comite used, among other organizing strategies, a two-
page bilingual endorsement form to confirm and identify new support for their campaign

142

Dorceta Taylor, “The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social
Construction of Environmental Discourses, American Behavioral Scientist 43, no .4 (2000): 558.

81

against the proposed project.
143
Organizations who had previously supported Comite’s
work on other issues were approached to endorse the organization’s stance on the
proposed project. The process for acquiring endorsements was informal, open, and
occurred during a period lasting at least six months.
144
In contrast, the process for
securing endorsements for RCCPC’s position on the potential development of the
Chinatown archaeological site in 2008 was formal, highly organized, and lasted just
under two months. RCCPC members sought endorsements from new and existing
organizational allies. While most of the organizations approached were local and familiar
with RCCPC’s stance on the proposed project, some organizations were from outside of
the immediate region, or had no information about the campaign. What all the
organizations had in common was a personal tie to one, or more of the members of
RCCPC. Unlike Comite’s endorsement project, which developed organically as the
campaign progressed, RCCPC’s endorsement project followed much internal debate and
a rift among members over the direction of the organization’s overall campaign. It is
worth noting that RCCPC was not only a new organization that emerged in response to
the Jacobs Medical Office Building Project, but had only learned about the project six
months prior to the proposed project’s final approval by the City Council. In contrast,
Comite had not only been engaged in neighborhood issues since the mid-1980s, but had
known about the redevelopment plans for Wyvernwood for at least three years prior to
the endorsement project.

Master Frames

Fifteen Group seeks to destroy the Wyvernwood community

1. Fifteen Group’s proposed project will:
a) Destroy a community of families living in Wyvernwood that has developed and
been strengthened over time.
b) Destroy a landmarked apartment complex, whose design, buildings and open
spaces represent an important part of Los Angeles’ history.

143
Telephone interview with Leonardo Lopez, President, Comite de la Esperanza. January 6, 2015.
According to Leonardo, Comite produced two bilingual endorsement forms (English/Spanish); one
intended for Wyvernwood residents and the other for organizations. This analysis focuses on the
endorsement form for organizations.
144
Leonardo Lopez, interview by M. Rosalind Sagara, January 6, 2015.

82

c) Eliminate 1,187 rent-stabilized units and replace with 660 affordable housing
units for low income and senior citizens residents. This will cause displacement of
residents.
d) Upzone and increase density in the neighborhood.

2. Central to the above argument was that belief that the proposed project was a
continuation of Fifteen Group’s oppressive treatment toward Wyvernwood residents
(“Wyvernwood is a unique community fighting for its life.”): a history of displacing
families through evictions, threats, and harassment.

3. The demands of mobilizing actors follow from points 1 and 2. Problems articulated
could be solved in the following ways:
a) Endorse Comite’s position on the development of the site and return signed leaflet
to the organization:
1. Keep the neighborhoods’ current density and zoning.
2. Preserve the historic apartment complex and protect open space.
3. Do not evict residents or raise rents outside of what is permitted by the rent
stabilization ordnance.
b) Educate your staff, group, or organization on campaign demands.
c) Mobilize members to support the anti-Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community
Project campaign; participate in meetings and activities to stop the proposed
project.

Developer Doug Jacobs’ proposed project will destroy Riverside’s second Chinatown

1. The proposed project will:
a) Destroy a historic Chinatown, its archaeological resources, and jeopardize its
landmark designation.
b) Destroy the history and heritage of an ethnic neighborhood and attendant
community central to the history of California and the nation.

2. Central to the above argument was the perception that the developer’s proposed
project did not include a meaningful commemoration of the site’s Chinese history and
heritage.

83

3. The demands of mobilizing actors follow from points 1 and 2. Problems articulated
could be solved in the following ways:
a) Endorse RCCPC’s position statement on the development of the site, which asks
developer to:
1. Avoid remaining underground archaeological resources of Chinatown by
resituating the footprint of the building further west of the property line.
2. Refill scooped out area with new dirt.
3. Landscape property in Chinese style and preserve it as green space.The
endorsement of RCCPC’s position statement will let the City of Riverside and
the Riverside County Office of Education know that many community
members value history and heritage, including the Chinatown archaeological
site.

Mobilizing Capacity of the Two Master Frames

I draw on three framing dimensions as defined by Snow and Benford – diagnostic,
prognostic, and motivational – to compare the internal structure of the master frames
described above:
145

• Diagnostic framing is the “identification of a problem and the attribution of blame
and causality.”

• Prognostic framing is defined as a “proposed solution to the diagnosed problem
that specifies what needs to be done.”

• Motivational framing is “a call to arms for engaging in ameliorative or correction
action.”

Diagnostic Framing
Both frames identify several problems associated with the proposed projects. In
the case of the campaign to protect Wyvernwood, though interrelated, grievances
activists raise are distinct. Together, they may be understood as an injustice, or place
frame. In contrast, the problems identified with the Jacobs Medical Office Building
Project all pertain to the potential loss of a heritage asset, and all relate to the Chinatown
archaeological site. As such, they encompass a place frame.
In their study of two protest campaigns in West Germany, Gerhards and Rucht
posit, “The range and multitude of the problems defined by the master frame creates

145
David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, "Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant
Mobilization," International Social Movement Research 1, no. 1 (1998): 199-200.

84

points of leverage for a host of political groups focusing on one or several of these
particular problems.”
146
In turn, they hypothesized that the larger the range of the
problems covered by a frame, the larger the range of societal groups who could be
addressed with the frame and the greater the mobilization capacity of the frame.
147

Following this hypothesis, it follows that the campaign to conserve Wyvernwood would
have a greater potential to reach a range of organizational supporters, and thus have a
greater mobilization capacity than the campaign to conserve Riverside Chinatown.
However, interviews with organizational representatives and review of the public record
associated with the public review periods associated with both campaigns revealed
otherwise. Eleven organizations endorsed Comite’s position against the Boyle Heights
Mixed-Use Community Project and twenty organizations endorsed RCCPC’s position
against the Jacobs Medical Office Building Project. It should be noted that six additional
organizations submitted individual or co-authored comment letters during the public
review period of the Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project; these letters
highlighted one or more of the problems identified in Comite’s endorsement form.
Similarly, there were two additional organizations that submitted individual comment
letters in advance of the City Council vote on the Jacobs Medical Office Building Project,
which cited problems as identified by RCCPC. If we separate the comment letters from
the results, we see that the endorsement campaign of the Save Riverside Chinatown
campaign garnered almost two times the amount of endorsements than that of the Save
Wyvernwood campaign. I will consider what may have accounted for the discrepancy
later in this section.
In addition to enumerating multiple problems, the frames attributed problems to
specific causes and causal agents. In both cases, the causes of the problem are linked to
proposed commercial development projects and the causal agents are the drivers of the
proposed projects. In the case of the anti-Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community Project
campaign, the causal agent is Fifteen Group, the current landlord and developer of the
proposed project. In the anti-Jacobs Medical Office Building Project campaign, developer

146
Jurgen Gerhards and Dieter Rucht, “Mesomoblization: Organizing and Framing in Two Protest
Campaigns in West Germany,” AJS 98, no. 3 (1992): 580.
147
Ibid.

85

Doug Jacobs, City Planning Office, the City Council, and the Riverside County Office of
Education are identified as causal agents. Whereas Doug Jacobs and the City Planning
Office have brought forth the proposed project, the City Council will decide whether to
approve or reject it. The Riverside County Office of Education is mentioned in RCCPC’s
position statement, but the frame does not clarify what their role in creating the problems
are.
Prognostic Framing
Solutions in the form of demands are presented in both frames. While
endorsement of the respective organizations’ positions on development of Wyvernwood
and the Chinatown archaeological site are primarily sought, the campaign to conserve
Wyvernwood views solutions to the proposed project’s problems as larger education and
mobilization project. It asks potential adherents to join the campaign and commit to
educating group members on the requests of the campaign and mobilizing them to
participate in Save Wyvernwood campaign meetings and activities. While the Save
Riverside Chinatown campaign also situates the endorsement effort as part of a larger
project to transform the Chinatown archaeological site into a meaningful community
memorial, it does not clearly articulate what that may entail. Building on Raschke’s
research that found social movements to have a high capacity for raising problems but a
low capacity for problem solving, Gerhards and Rucht argue, “prognostic framing is
apparently far less important to social movements and protest campaigns than diagnostic
framing.”
148
Still, both frames propose endorsement of the respective organizations’
positions on the development of sites as a solution to the problems associated with the
proposed projects.

Motivational Framing
The use of motivational rhetoric in the frames is present, but not primary.
Although Comite’s leaflet uses terms and phrases such as “preserve,” “fighting for its
life,” “fear,” “do not demolish,” “erase,” “historic preservation” and “protection” to
evoke a community and environment under threat, most of the content provided is factual

148
Jurgen Gerhards and Dieter Rucht, “Mesomoblization: Organizing and Framing in Two Protest
Campaigns in West Germany,” AJS 98, no. 3 (1992): 582.

86

and anecdotal information about the proposed project’s problems. No sense of urgency is
attached to the endorsement request. The request is not given a time-specific deadline,
nor do authors explain what the ultimate end of the endorsement campaign is. When
reviewing RCCPC’s leaflet, I identified terms such as “preservation,” “preserve,”
“preserving,” “danger,” “protect,” and “retain,” as evocative of a community or
environment under threat. Unlike Comite, RCCPC makes clear the purpose of the
endorsement request: “to be used in a number of public contexts, including the next stage
of negotiation with the City Council.” Additionally, it identifies September as a potential
date of the City Council vote on the proposed project.
In his study of ideal and real-type frames, Gerhards offers two concepts that may
increase the mobilizing potential of frames, intentionalization and moralization.
Intentionalization links the cause of a problem to a deliberate action taken by a causal
agent. He writes, “Intentionalization is particularly heightened if the intention of the
causal agent’s action was the pursuit of a particular interest, such as personal enrichment,
and thus opposed to the collective good.”
149
Moralization is presented as the
stigmatization of the causal agent, which transforms a difference of opinion on an issue
into a discrimination against persons who have expressed the opinion.
150
By opening with
“Wyvernwood is a unique community fighting for its life,” the authors of Comite’s leaflet
situate the campaign as a fight, or struggle. By subsequently providing concrete examples
of Fifteen Group’s history of displacing families through evictions, threats, and
harassment at Wyvernwood and offering the proposed project as a continuation of this
oppressive behavior, the leaflet succeeds in moralizing the problems of the proposed
project. In RCCPC’s campaign leaflet, collective actors propose, although obliquely, that
the developer, City of Riverside, and Riverside County Office of Education are opposed
to the community’s beliefs regarding the value of history and heritage. By highlighting
unsuccessful negotiations between the developer and City Planning Office, and need to
let the City of Riverside know community members’ positions on the value of history and
heritage, the leaflet positions the causal agents as unwilling participants in lifting the

149
Jurgen Gerhards, “Framing Dimensions and Framing Strategies: Contrasting Ideal- and Real-Type
Frames,” Social Science Information, 34.2 (1995): 231.
150
Ibid., 231-32.

87

Chinatown archaeological site up as an important part of the City’s heritage and
developing a meaningful community memorial at the site. The last line of RCCPC’s
position statement, “RCCPC will continue to fight for these top priorities until all
RCCPC resources are exhausted,” makes clear, like Comite’s leaflet, that the community
effort to protect the Chinatown archaeological site is perceived as a struggle. While both
frames sparingly use motivational rhetoric, the use of intentionalization and moralization
work together to increase the mobilizing potential of the frame.
The analysis of the early endorsement projects by organizational leaders of the
Save Wyvernwood and Save Riverside Chinatown campaigns provides a counterpoint to
the framing processes that have been discussed in previous chapters. Viewed together, we
understand framing as an iterative and critical component of building engaging and
inspired campaigns.

Networks
Although Comite had a long history of serving the Wyvernwood community, the
group was constrained by limited financial resources, primarily the lack of an
organizational budget and paid staff. As such, the group relied heavily on the availability
and expertise of resident-leaders. With extensive knowledge of and access to
Wyvernwood’s residents, Comite has been well-positioned to identify, recruit, and
mobilize residents on issues that directly impact the Wyvernwood community. Still,
limited resources have led the group to develop an extensive, albeit loose network of
organizational allies.
Family and neighbors who help run, organize, or cook food for meetings might be
viewed as Comite’s informal network, whereas LA Conservancy and ELACC, who have
provided in-kind services and materials ranging from legal advice to photocopies, could
be viewed as a more formal network of support. In addition, LA Conservancy and
ELACC have brought to bear years of experience in local land-use planning and
policymaking to the Save Wyvernwood campaign. While LA Conservancy focuses on
finding preservation-minded solutions to complex land-use problems in Los Angeles
County, ELACC works in community development, with a focus on creating and
maintaining affordable housing opportunities for Eastside Los Angeles’ residents. Both

88

organizations have developed informal and formal networks of support around their
respective organizational missions. Their local, regional, and national networks offer
expanded resources. Some of the networks that have had a direct impact on the Save
Wyvernwood campaign to date are the LA Garden Apartment Network and the Right to
the City Alliance (RTCCA). The LA Garden Apartment Network is an informal network
that provides resources and opportunities for owners and residents of historic garden
apartments in Los Angeles County. According to the LA Conservancy’s website, “The
Network is intended as a means of building greater understanding and appreciation of
garden apartments.”
151
A more formal network of support is the Right to the City
Alliance (RTTCA), which “seeks to create regional and national impacts in the fields of
housing, human rights, urban land, community development, civic engagements, criminal
justice, environmental justice, and more.”
152
ELACC is a local member of this national
network and supports national strategy through local organizing efforts. In addition to
ELACC, four other organizations in RTTCA are based in the Los Angeles region. All of
these organizations have supported the Save Wyvernwood campaign to date. As
established nonprofits with experience working with governments, LA Conservancy and
ELACC also offer the FACE coalition direct access to their ties to city and county elected
officials and staff.
In “Collective Memory Anchors: Collective Identity and Continuity in Social
Movements,” Gongaware examines how collective identity is maintained in social
movements. Building on the scholarship of Melucci, Gongaware posits that the collective
identity of a movement is created as supporters share definitions of their means, ends, and
environment in which their action takes place, and as they activate shared networks of
relationships and contribute emotional investments.
153
“Take Back Wyvernwood”
brought residents and other community-based organizations together at Wyvernwood to
lift up a common struggle to protect, defend, and expand affordable housing for low-

151
“Garden Apartments,” Los Angeles Conservancy, accessed June 8, 2015,
http://www.laconservancy.org/gardenapartments.
152
“Mission and History,” Right to the City Alliance, accessed August 17, 2015,
http://righttothecity.org/about/mission-history/.
153
For more information on collective identity and social movements, see Alberto Melucci, Challenging
Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

89

income communities of color. In the event’s press release, Maria Cabildo, President and
Co-Founder of ELACC stated,
We lose so much if we allow history to repeat itself. We lose community
and social capital, the intangible ties that keeps Boyle Heights’ residents
advancing forward in the face of adversity and scarcity. Community, once
lost, is lost forever. It is just never the same no one can prove otherwise.
154

Losing Wyvernwood would have a devastating effect on Wyvernwood’s residents, but
would also impact Boyle Heights, the Eastside, Los Angeles, and the greater national
network of communities of color working together to prevent gentrification from
displacing low-income communities of color. “Take Back Wyvernwood” was an
opportunity for diverse local, regional, and national housing rights’ advocates to
participate in framing the meanings of Wyvernwood and the need for conserving the
residential community.
In contrast to the Wyvernwood case, the organizations engaged in the Riverside
Chinatown case were newly formed and all-volunteer-driven. As such, these
organizations were constrained by a lack of experience and political clout. These
conditions led organizations to activate individuals’ personal, business, and political
networks. For example, in 2008 many of RCCPC’s key leaders were parents of students
who attended HuaXia Chinese School in Riverside. The HuaXia Chinese School
provided a central hub for disseminating information about the Save Riverside
Chinatown campaign. The school community was particularly tight-knit, with parents
often staying at school while students attended classes. During this time, parents took part
in recreational and cultural activities, forming bonds with other parents and students. The
HuaXia Chinese School functioned in many ways as the Wyvernwood residential
community, providing a central hub of activity and pool of potential participants.
Similarly, Students for Chinatown, based out of UC Riverside, accessed resources
available at UC Riverside’s Asian & Pacific Student Programs Office. This included the
use of an office for meetings, but more importantly, direct contact with other Asian

154
See “Take Back Wyvernwood: Wyvernwood for People, Not Profit!” Right to the City press release,
March 13, 2013, on Right to the City website, http://righttothecity.org/los-angeles-ca-press-release/,
accessed August 7, 2015.

90

American student organizations, many of which would support their contributions to the
community campaign.
As SOCC included members who were engaged in local, regional, and national
community work, their cumulative personal and professional networks were vast. One
key affiliation included support from Old Riverside Foundation, a local historic
preservation nonprofit, that served as SOCC’s fiscal sponsor until the group was able to
achieve its own nonprofit status. Also, personal ties to the Chinese Historical Society of
Southern California (CHSSC), Chinese American Citizens’ Alliance (CACA), and Asian
& Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP) provided access to
additional resources and contacts.

Strategies
Leaders of the campaigns to conserve Wyvernwood and Riverside Chinatown
seized and created opportunities to construct meanings of, and needs for conserving the
respective heritage assets during key moments of transition.
Shortly after the formation of FACE coalition in 2013, organizational leaders of
the Save Wyvernwood campaign sought to amplify their cause on a public stage. Both
Take Back Wyvernwood and the May Day March to City Hall were opportunities for
coalition members to highlight key issues and alliances. To illustrate, Comite created a
variety of ephemera that activated movement symbols and emotions for dissemination
online and during the event itself. ELACC and LA Conservancy both created press
releases highlighting specific campaign information as well as organizational concerns.
In addition, LA Conservancy released a video it produced about Wyvernwood in
conjunction with the event. Together, these individual organizational strategies expressed
key stakeholder issues, while building commitment and solidarity among residents and
interconnected networks.
The strategies observed in the Save Riverside Chinatown campaign following the
Valentine’s Day Massacre were also intended to build commitment and solidarity among
key stakeholders, while amplifying key issues associated with the conservation cause
with the public at large. In form and tone, the protest actions could be understood as
needed escalations in response to increased threats to Riverside Chinatown. That

91

particular components of SOCC’s City Hall protests and Students for Chinatown’s Day
of Action were highly prescriptive, namely participants’ act of placing George Wong’s
face in front of their own, illustrated organizational leaders’ intent to highlight particular
strategies and foster protest participants’ collective identity. Students’ direct action on
RCOE sought to bring attention to RCOE’s role in the destruction of Chinatown, while
also highlighting their perspectives on conserving the heritage asset as an educational
resource for students and youth.

92

CONCLUSION

Bridging Disciplines and Practices
This project uses a theory-guided multiple case study approach to explore why
and how individuals and groups have participated in campaigns to conserve Wyvernwood
Garden Apartments and Riverside Chinatown in Southern California. Guided by
scholarship on heritage and social movements, I examine the discourse-building
processes of community stakeholders at key moments of transition in the respective
campaigns. Sociology, environmental psychology, and planning literatures provide
additional connections.

Limitations and Opportunities for Future Research
This study is for anyone engaged in creating more sustainable and equitable
places: advocates of heritage conservation, affordable housing, and transit-oriented
development as well as planning, environmental psychology, and preservation
researchers. Limits on this study include my own positionality as an activist researcher,
and the action repertoires I chose to examine. By focusing attention on pivotal moments
of transition in the respective campaigns, I sought to explore how individuals and groups
responded and adapted (or not) to campaign challenges and opportunities. While I
provided some background on the involvement of organizational leaders prior to the
moments examined in this study, more can be done to compare differences and
commonalities in approaches before and after transitional moments. Such an approach
would allow for a deeper understanding of the efficacy of particular organizing and
communications strategies.
Scholarship that bridges heritage and social movement literatures is limited; this
study has aimed to contribute to research on participation and heritage conservation.
There are many useful quantitative studies in the fields of sociology, environmental
psychology, and planning that examine framing and collective identity processes in social
movements. Comparative approaches, in particular, provide fruitful discussion. Future
research examining movements to conserve heritage may consider these approaches. As
an activist researcher and practitioner, I value the ability to assess and make informed

93

decisions based on current data. Ethnographies and surveys are additional methods to
delver deeper into the questions of why and how people participate in efforts to conserve
heritage assets. These should be encouraged as well.
My research revealed that collective identity processes figured prominently in the
action repertoires of the respective campaigns. We saw in the Wyvernwood case, in
particular, a tension over who FACE coalition was and what its focus was. In “Movement
Intersectionality: The Case of Race, Gender, Disability, and Genetic Technologies,”
Roberts and Jesudason discuss three approaches for building solidarity in movements
through illuminating differences. “First, it is only by acknowledging the lived
experiences and power differentials that keep us apart that we can effectively grapple
with the “matrix of domination” and develop strategies to eliminate power inequities,”
they write. Next, “[s]earching for and creating commonalities among people with
differing identities through active engagement with each other is one of
intersectionality’s most important methodologies not only for feminist theorizing but also
for political activism.” And, third, “[a]nalysis of our commonalities reveals ways in
which structures of oppression are related and therefore highlights the notion that our
struggles are linked.”
155
Acknowledging stakeholder commonalities and differences will
allow for more authentic, inclusive, and equitable movements to conserve our shared
heritage.

Concluding Remarks
In Archaeology, Heritage and Civic Engagement: Working Toward the Public
Good, Little and Shackel underscore the political act of developing and negotiating
heritage. They assert,
Heritage connotes authenticity although the way it is developed and
negotiated is often about a group’s relationship to power. Places of
heritage can be centers that heighten dialogue, or create significant rifts
between groups that may have very different memories of a place or
events. Decisions are made to promote one form of heritage over another,

155
Dorothy Roberts and Sujatha Jesudason, "Movement Intersectionality: The Case of Race, Gender,
Disability, and Genetic Technologies,” Du Bois Review 10, no. 2 (2013), 315-16, accessed August 12,
2015, doi: http://dx.doi.org.libproxy1.usc.edu/10.1017/S1742058X13000210.

94

and academics, politicians, or influential community leaders often
influence and support these decisions.
156

Why and how individuals and groups understand, relate to, and care for heritage assets
underpins decisions to develop and promote them. Collaboration among advocates
interested in creating sustainable and equitable places begins when we reflect on why
heritage assets matter from a materialist vantage, and it increases when we integrate
humanistic and culturalist perspectives. Let’s continue to more deeply explore why places
of heritage matter to all of us, now.

156
Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel, Archaeology, Heritage, and Civic Engagement: Working Toward
the Public Good, 42.

95

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104

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: Comite de la Esperanza, Campaign Endorsement Letter, Page 1
(English)

JOIN THE CAMPAIGN TO PRESERVE
THE WYVERNWOOD APARTMENTS

Wyvernwood is a unique community fighting for its life. Before the arrival of Thurman LLC and Fifteen Group, there was no fear
of being evicted for having a dinner, a party, or a guest. People used the green areas without fear. Wyvernwood was designed to
foster community. Its unique sense of community has developed and strengthened over time, and cannot be replicated. This is
changing because of harassment from the management Wyvernwood’s company. The owner wants to demolish the historic
complex, quadruple the density of the site, and erase Wyvernwood’s important place in the history of Los Angeles.

4,440 UNITS IS TOO MUCH DENSITY
"Density" refers to the number of housing units in one place. Currently there are 1,187 units.

660 AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS IS NOT ENOUGH
They promise only 660 affordable housing units (15% of the project) for people of low income and senior citizens.

1,187 HOUSING UNITS UNDER THE RENT SABILIZATION ORDINANCE WILL BE LOST
Many families have been displaced by evictions, threats & harassment. This has caused rents for these units to rise to market
rate. They have reduced the number of affordable housing units by displacing people who paid low rent.

WYVERNWOOD IS IRREPLACEABLE
Wyvernwood is a historic landmark that was designed to foster community. Its unique sense of community has developed and
strengthened over time, and it cannot be replicated.

The campaign to preserve the Wyvernwood Apartments asks Fifteen Group to:
Keep the current density
Preserve the historic design, buildings & open spaces
Do not increase the zoning
Do not demolish Wyvernwood
Do not evict and increase rent outside what is permitted by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance

What Can You Do? Join the campaign and commit to the following:
Fill out the campaign Endorsement Form below then scan and return it by e‐mail or fax
Educate your staff, group or organization on the requests of the campaign
Mobilize your members to support the campaign to preserve the Wyvernwood Apartments
Participate in meetings and activities to stop the demolition of Wyvernwood
Write letters, send emails, and make phone calls in support of the campaign

I support the position of the Comité de la Esperanza against the increase in density, demolition, evictions, and
rent increases in favor of historic preservation and the protection of open space.
Organization:
Contact person:
Email:   Phone:
Address:
City, State, ZIP Code:
Signature:

The campaign to preserve the Wyvernwood Apartments is a coalition of residents, community leaders and non‐
profit organizations from Los Angeles County that fight for the good of the community in many areas.

Fill out this form then fax 323‐221‐8327 or scan and e‐mail to Leonardo Lopez leo.estrella_14@hotmail.com

For more information about the campaign contact Leonardo Lopez at 323‐263‐7873 or leo.estrella_14@hotmail.com

105

APPENDIX A, Cont’d: Comite de la Esperanza. Campaign Endorsement Letter,
Page 2 (Spanish)

UNASE A LA CAMPAÑA PARA PRESERVAR
LOS DEPARTAMENTOS WYVERNWOOD

Wyvernwood es una comunidad singular luchando para sobrevivir. Antes de Thurman LLC y Fifteen Group, no había temor de ser
desalojado por tener una cena, celebrar una fiesta, o albergar un huésped. La gente disponía de las áreas verdes sin temor.
Wyvernwood fue diseñado para fomentar un sentimiento de comunidad. Con el tiempo, un extraordinario sentido de comunidad
se desarrolló y fortaleció y que no se puede replicar. Todo esto está cambiando por cuenta del acoso constante de la empresa
gerente de Wyvernwood. El propietario de esta quiere demoler este complejo histórico, cuadruplicando la densidad del lugar y
borrando a un lugar tan importante como Wyvernwood del mapa histórico de Los Angeles.

4,440 UNIDADES ES DEMASIADA DENSIDAD
“Densidad” se refiere a la cantidad de viviendas en un solo lugar. Ahorita son 1,187 viviendas.

660 VIVIENDAS ECONÓMICAS NO SON SUFICIENTES
Prometen solo 660 apartamentos económicos (15% del proyecto) para personas de bajos ingresos y de la 3
ra
edad.

SE PERDERAN 1,187 VIVIENDAS BAJO LA ORDENANZA DE CONTROL DE RENTA
Muchas familias han sido desplazadas por medio de desalojos, amenazas y hostigamiento. Esto ha resultado en que las rentas de
esos apartamentos suban los niveles del mercado. Han reducido la cantidad de viviendas de baja renta al desplazar personas
que pagaban baja renta.

WYVERNWOOD ES IRREMPLAZABLE
Wyvernwood fue diseñado para fomentar comunidad. Su sentido extraordinario cómo comunidad se ha desarrollado y
fortalecido con el tiempo y no se puede replicar.

La campaña para preservar los departamentos Wyvernwood le pide Fifteen Group que:
Mantengan la densidad actual
Preserven los edificios, el diseño histórico y los espacios verdes
No se aumente la zonificación
No demuelan los departamentos Wyvernwood
No desalojen, ni aumentos de renta fuera de lo que es permitido por la ordenanza de control de renta

¿Qué Puede hacer? Únase a la campaña y comprométase a lo siguiente:
Únase a la campaña llenado este formulario y envíelo e‐mail o fax
Eduque a su personal, grupo o organización sobre las peticiones de la Campaña
Movilicé sus miembros para apoyar la campaña y preservar los departamentos Wyvernwood
Participe en juntas y actividades para parar la demolición de Wyvernwood
Escribir cartas, mandar correo electrónicos, y hacer llamadas en apoyo de la campaña

Apoyo la posición del Comité de la Esperanza en contra del aumento a la densidad, demolición, desalojos, aumentos de renta y
a favor de la preservación histórica y de la preservación de espacios abiertos.
Organización:
Persona de Contacto:
Correo electrónico:   Teléfono:
Domicilio:
Ciudad, Estado, Código Postal:
Firma:

La campaña para preservar los departamentos Wyvernwood es una coalición de residentes, líderes comunitarios y
organizaciones no lucrativas del condado de Los Angeles, que luchan por el bien de la comunidad en varias áreas.

Llene este formulario y mande por fax 323‐221‐8327 o escaneen y envié por coreo electrónico a leo.estrella_14@hotmail.com

106

APPENDIX B: Riverside Chinese Cultural Preservation Committee, Position
Statement on the Development of the Historic Chinatown Site

!
!
Riverside!Chinese!Cultural!Preservation!Committee!
!
POSITION!STATEMENT!ON!THE!DEVELOPMENT!OF!THE!HISTORIC!CHINATOWN!SITE!
!
Ratified!by!the!RCCPC!general!membership!on!August!3,!2008.!
!
The!RCCPC’s!top!priority!is!to!protect!the!undisturbed!archaeological!resources!in!the!
site!of!Riverside’s!Chinatown!and!to!retain!its!listing!on!the!National!Register!of!Historic!
Places.!
!
The!RCCPC!asks!developer!Doug!Jacobs!to!revise!the!plans!for!his!proposed!Jacobs!
Medical!Office!Building!at!Brockton!and!Tequesquite!Avenues!as!follows:!
!
• To!avoid!the!remaining!underground!archaeological!resources!of!Chinatown!by!
resituating!the!footprint!of!the!building!further!west!of!the!property!line.!
!
• To!refill!the!scooped!area!with!new!dirt.!
!
• To!landscape!the!property!in!Chinese!style!and!to!preserve!it!as!green!space!(see!
CEQA!Resource!Code,!Section!21083.2:!best!mitigation!measures!for!
Archaeological!Resources).!This!action!might!make!it!necessary!for!an!additional!
parking!variance!or!the!construction!of!a!parking!structure.!
!
Should!the!City!of!Riverside,!the!Riverside!County!Office!of!Education,!and!developer!
Doug!Jacobs!refuse!to!satisfy!our!top!priority,!the!RCCPC!will!continue!to!fight!for!these!
top!priorities!until!all!RCCPC!resources!are!exhausted.!
!
V.1,!August!9,!2008!
!
Table!1:!Riverside!Chinese!Cultural!Preservation!Committee,!Position!Statement!on!the!Development!of!the!Historic!
Chinatown!Site!

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study examines the discourse-building processes of community stakeholders conserving two heritage assets in Southern California

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Asset Metadata

Creator Sagara, Maria Rosalind (author)

Core Title Heritage and collective action: examining framing processes in two locally contentious conservation campaigns

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Heritage Conservation

Degree Program Heritage Conservation

Publication Date 09/17/2015

Defense Date 09/10/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag campaigns,Chinatown archaeological site,collective action,conservation,discourse-building,framing,heritage,multiple case study,OAI-PMH Harvest,Riverside Chinatown,Wyvernwood Garden Apartments

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sandmeier, Trudi (committee chair), Matsuoka, Martha (committee member), Ringhoff, Mary (committee member)

Creator Email mrsagara@gmail.com,rosalindsagara@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-182757

Unique identifier UC11273490

Identifier etd-SagaraMari-3921.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-182757 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-SagaraMari-3921.pdf

Dmrecord 182757

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Sagara, Maria Rosalind

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA