Los Angeles dreamers

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Content LOS ANGELES DREAMERS by Lauren M. Whaley A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM) August 2010 Copyright 2010 Lauren M. Whaley             ii            Dedication This audio-visual thesis is dedicated to my mother, Sharon Anne Dwyer, who showed me – through her tireless work, direct eye contact, contagious smile and constant encouragement – that changing the world is actually possible.             iii            Acknowledgements Thank you to Judy Muller, my thesis chair, who introduced me to a new world of storytelling in sound; you are an inspiration to me as a journalist and as a woman. Sandy Tolan, who helped me develop my long form voice and who urged me to be critical. Travis Longcore, who gave me a Google Earth tour of Los Angeles when I first arrived and who inspired me to look for the small beauties in this chaotic city. Larry Pryor, who I almost didn’t meet before leaving Annenberg; I look forward to more collaboration in the future! Craig Dietrich, who spent hours helping me code the tiniest details to make the website sing. Rachel Stevens, graphic designer and dancer extraordinaire. Also, Roberto Suro, Michael Parks, Dan Birman and the inimitable KC Cole. And, thank you, of course, to my wonderful subjects: The Bicycle Kitchen, The Loorz Family and The Dervaes Family. They all endured hours of questioning with a microphone in their faces and a curious girl in their spaces. Thank you to my Specialized Journalism colleagues, especially Pekka Pekkala, Elizabeth Aguilera, Shirin Parsavand, Erica Phillips and my number one weekly coffee date, Deborah Starr Seibel. Thank you to my incredibly talented siblings (and role models): Mark Timothy Whaley and Anna Kathleen Whaley. Thanks to Dad, Mary and John, Carey and Zachary and all the other people who helped me get into, through and beyond school (Swifty – that means you!!).             iv            Most especially, I would like to thank James Alexander de Grazia, who would wake up at 4 a.m. to put on the kettle for my coffee and snuggle me until the water boiled and the kettle whistled. It’s because of Jake that I completed this ambitious three-profile project. Jake – you are the ultimate noticer, partner and friend. I love you!             v            Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Abstract vii Preface viii Chapter 1: Happy Birthday Bicycle Kitchen, Script 1 Chapter 2: Happy Birthday Bicycle Kitchen, Website Text 6 Chapter 3:Alec Loorz’s Climate Change Stage, Script 8 Chapter 4: Alec Loorz’s Climate Change Stage, Website Text 14 Chapter 5: God’s in the Green – The Dervaes Family’s Farming Revolution, Script 15 Chapter 6: God’s in the Green – The Dervaes Family’s Farming Revolution, Website Text 24 Chapter 7: LAdreamers.com 25 Bibliography 32             vi            List of Figures Figure 1: Welcome Page Screenshot 26 Figure 1.1: Welcome Page HTML Code 27 Figure 2: Portal Page Screenshot 22 Figure 2.1: Portal Page HTML Code 30 Figure 3: LAdreamers.com Main Page Screenshot 31             vii            Abstract This thesis profiles in audio, photographs and text three visionaries in Los Angeles: A teenage climate change activist, an urban farming family motivated by religion to live off the land and a community of bicyclists who dream of a carless L.A. These stories all have some sort of twist. These subjects are not typical heroes; they’re not immediately victorious either. But, they all believe in what they’re doing. And they’re all trying to make The City of Angels a better place.             viii            Preface Los Angeles County houses at least 9,862,049 people. While stuck in traffic on the 10 Freeway, it’s not hard to resent these people, their exhaust, the pollution and the concrete. But, look a little closer. Peer behind the house into the urban backyard; sit in on a school group discussion. Keep an eye out for cyclists. And you’ll see a concrete jungle splashed with green. An anonymous city full of community. Dreamers in unexpected places.             1            Chapter 1: Happy Birthday Bicycle Kitchen, Script HOST INTRO: L.A. is not a city built for bicycles. But, cyclists are trying to change that. One group doesn't do it by yelling at meetings or staging protests, but by literally building community, one bicycle at a time. In an ongoing series about California’s dreamers, Lauren Whaley reports. AMBIENT: traffic and clanking. LAUREN: This tiny storefront on Heliotrope and Melrose in East Hollywood has six bike stands spread out in the shop … piles of chains, mountains of wheels and rows of bicycles hanging from the ceiling. AMBIENT: clank. LAUREN: The place is packed with parts and people – all working toward the dream of getting more Angelenos off of four wheels and onto two. JIM BLEDSOE: There’s a strong environmentalist component to supplant the automobile with bicycles.             2            LAUREN: That’s Jim Bledsoe. He's one of 50 volunteers who call themselves cooks. Anyone can come to the Kitchen to build a new – or fix an old – bicycle. It costs $7 bucks an hour to use the space, the parts and help from the cooks. Here's Jim again. JIM: Cars … were a wonderful idea a hundred years ago when there weren’t any. Today, if you drive a car, you’re going to sit in a 2-300 horsepower coffin and go 19- miles-an-hour. It’s ludicrous. It makes no sense. Instead of complaining about that, though, we’re here to show people other alternatives to it. LAUREN: That alternative started over five years ago in a kitchen in East L.A.’s Eco Village. Founder Jimmy Lizama. AMBIENT: street sounds. JIMMY LIZAMA: Tuesday nights, I said Alright Folks. Eco Villagers: Free pizza. You bring the beer. We’ll work on bikes. And we’ll just make it happen. So many people came it was incredible. That love, when you walked into that room, you felt that love. People were all, I want some of that. It was just contagious. AMBIENT: street sounds, clanking.             3            LAUREN: This little community’s big dream is to teach people about bicycles in a city built for cars, and eventually, to create a different view of Los Angeles. AMBIENT: clanking/bicycle kitchen underneath. BEN GUZMAN: It’s a pretty crazy city. But, on the other level, there are tons of places to explore, which is why I love L.A. So much. LAUREN: Ben Guzman was there at the beginning with Jimmy. BEN GUZMAN: Exploring it by bike is really awesome. You hear sounds, you smell things, you see things that you would never experience in a car. All of a sudden, you go, those tacos smell awesome. Oh my gosh, look at that crazy bar, I’m gonna go in there. Or, hey, I found this nook and cranny of a spot and it’s your own little adventure. KELLY MARTIN: It’s kind of funny now, or quaint, to think back that around 2003, if you saw someone riding a bike, they were automatically your friend. LAUREN: Kelly Martin is Ben’s wife AND the non-profit’s only full time employee. She says now it’s rare NOT to see cyclists pedaling down Sunset or Hollywood Boulevards. KELLY MARTIN: I feel like in L.A., there’s almost not an excuse to not bike. … Los Angeles is geographically and climate-wise, a bicyclist’s paradise.             4            LAUREN: Paradise? With its freeways and potholes, L.A. still has some work to do. But, this year has been a big one for cyclists. The new 8-mile path along the L.A. River is almost done. There's a new draft of The LA City Bicycle Plan. And for the first time ever, the L.A.P.D. said it’s going to train officers in cyclists’ rights. So, the Kitchen, for the part it has played in empowering people to get on bikes, has something to celebrate. Here’s Kelly. AMBIENT: street sounds again. KELLY MARTIN: Hey Everyone! We’re about to leave on the anniversary bicycle ride of the bicycle kitchen on Heliotrope and Melrose. AMBIENT: Cheering. LAUREN: Forty cooks, with red balloons tied to their bicycles, some in costume, some on tandem, mount their rides. They spend the afternoon pedaling through town. AMBIENT: bells, bicycle sounds. Cycling sounds. LAUREN: Back at the Kitchen, the cooks celebrate a birthday. Their own. AMBIENT: Kitchen. Then, group singing Happy Birthday To You!             5            LAUREN: That's the sound of five years of hard work. KELLY MARTIN: This place, the bicycle kitchen [choked up], it’s a magical place to me. I can never really talk about it without choking up. … As I get older, it gets more and more embarrassing, like, Oh God, get over it already. LAUREN: But, neither Kelly nor her pals really want to get over it. AMBIENT: Cheers. LAUREN: This is Lauren Whaley for Annenberg Radio News.             6            Chapter 2: Happy Birthday Bicycle Kitchen, Website Text Jonah Schwartz is a 16-year-old cook. But, his specialty isn’t biscuits or baklava. It’s bicycles. Schwartz is one of about 50 people who volunteer at The Bicycle Kitchen. Their mission: teach people about bicycles and get more riders on the streets of Los Angeles. “Everyone is just trying to help everyone else out,” Schwartz said. The Bicycle Kitchen is a non-profit that runs on volunteers and small donations. Anyone can visit the small space on Heliotrope Drive and Melrose Avenue to learn about bikes, fix bikes or build bikes. The Kitchen provides tools, teachers and used parts. Between the Kitchen, group rides, bicycle advocacy and help from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (which recently started a bicycle blog), there are an increasing number of two-wheelers popping up in this land of freeways. This year has been a good one for cyclists. The city released its Draft Bicycle Plan, albeit to some criticism. Google added bike routes to its maps. The L.A. County Bicycle Coalition made a formal count of pedestrian and cyclist commuters. And the Bicycle Kitchen, which has been operating since 2002, celebrated five years at their current space.             7            In its early years, the “cooking” happened in East L.A.’s Eco Village. People came to work on bicycles in ad-hoc gatherings headed by founder Jimmy Lizama. They’d work on bikes, eat pizza, drink beer and go for bike rides. Soon, the group got too big for Lizama’s dinner table. “There was a really amazing movement happening in that small room there,” Lizama said. “We have movement. We have possibility. How are we doing it and why are we doing it? We wanted everybody to be on a bicycle and we wanted people to feel empowered.” And so, the group moved from the cramped kitchen to a bigger small space in East Hollywood. They’ve been cooking there ever since. “You can power the bicycle with two things: burritos and love,” Lizama said. “The car takes a lot more than that. That’s what it’s about.” In this audio slideshow, listen to the voices of the people who came together to create the Bicycle Kitchen. And imagine the smell of melting cheese and bicycle grease.             8            Chapter 3: Alec Loorz’s Climate Change Stage, Script HOST INTRO: In Washington, lawmakers are scrambling to revise a climate bill that’s a little tougher on offshore drilling. In California, one climate change activist says humans need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels completely. This activist has become famous for the talks that he gives all over the country. His name is Alec Loorz. He just turned 16- years-old. In an ongoing series about California’s dreamers, Lauren Whaley reports. ALEC LOORZ [on stage]: What we really need is a revolution, a REAL revolution that completely redefines everything that we do. LAUREN: Alec Loorz is a 16-year-old rising star in the environmental movement. He’s preaching about climate change to a crowd gathered at a film festival in Ventura, California. ALEC LOORZ: This really is a huge challenge that we have before us. I believe that we as youth, we as a country and we as a planet are up to the challenge. So, thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. AMBIENT: Crazy cheering from the audience.             9            LAUREN: This isn’t Alec’s first time at the podium. Since he started his quest to stop climate change, he’s spoken to over 25,000 people, most of them children. He says this is his life’s work. ALEC LOORZ: I feel like I’m called to stop global warming within my lifetime. LAUREN: But, let's back up. To Alec's epiphany. His path to the climate change stage began when he saw Al Gore's Movie An Inconvenient Truth. AMBIENT: Al Gore [from the DVD An Inconvenient Truth] “The solutions are - in - our - hands. We just have to have the determination to make them happen.” VICTORIA LOORZ: What hit me deeply was his reaction to it. LAUREN: That's Alec’s mom Victoria. The single mom works with Alec to accomplish his dream. VICTORIA LOORZ: He won’t admit it, but he started crying when he watched it. Heeheehee. He watched the whole thing over again. ALEC LOORZ: I guess with me, I realized when I saw that movie, and I was just thinking this is going to affect my generation more than anyone else.             10            LAUREN: After seeing the movie, 12-year-old Alec wrote to Gore asking if he could give Gore's climate change presentation. He got a form letter back saying You're Too Young. So, Alec went out on his own speaking to kids’ groups. He remembers the first time he spoke in public. ALEC LOORZ: The main speaker, like the keynote speaker, dropped out at the last minute. So, I was suddenly the keynote speaker. I had to ask my mom what keynote meant. From that presentation, doors open from there and doors open from there and I haven’t had to set up a presentation since then. LAUREN: Alec’s presentations to school groups led him to start a nonprofit with his mom called Kids Versus Global Warming. He’s been at it for over three years, beginning when he was 12. Alec already has a full ride to college. He is now the youngest member of Al Gore’s climate presentation team and has his own talking points. ALEC LOORZ: I've spent like almost three years researching on how to solve this crisis. LAUREN: And he has a three-part solution. ALEC LOORZ: Conservation, Innovation and Sequestration. LAUREN: Sequestration?             11            ALEC LOORZ: Replanting forests. That's one of the only and definitely cheapest ways to sequester carbon that's already in our atmosphere. LAUREN: Alec has a plan to make his solution a reality. He's organizing what he hopes to be a million kid demonstration called the “I-Matter March.” He hopes lawmakers will take to heart the message that kids care and want to see climate change legislation. ALEC LOORZ: And with this march, we're going to be presenting them with actions that we're doing. Like saying, at my school I did a biking to school project and here, I did a tree planting project, but what are you gonna do for our future? LAUREN: Alec and Mom will spend the next year planning the event. Here’s Victoria. VICTORIA LOORZ: His role in it is purposeful [sigh.] and that really keeps us going when ... And we hit this pretty regularly. It’s just so stressful. This pace is ridiculous. LAUREN: So, there's a price for all this: a normal childhood, a social teenage life. Alec is so busy that he attends an independent study high school, so he can work from the road and go to school only to take tests. ALEC LOORZ: That's kind of one of the big things that I have not had as much of, and I need to have more of it… just the whole social thing and just having friends. I mean, I still have contact with youth because that's what I do, kind of for a living.             12            VICTORIA LOORZ: Every year around New Year’s, we sort of come up with a phrase or a term or something that we want the New Year to be about. We cut out pictures and collages and stuff. But, this year, Alec’s word was “Friends.” LAUREN: The single Mom says it's sometimes hard to draw boundaries between coworker and parent. Alec's parents are divorced, but his dad lives nearby. Alec says Dad is not involved in the project, but supports him. Dad will even watch the dog (and cats and birds and chickens) sometimes when Alec and Victoria are on the road. But, back to the mother-son team. Here's Victoria. VICTORIA LOORZ: But, it is all kind of overlapping. And it does, it does make it difficult. Because we’re peers one minute then I gotta remind him that I’m the mom the next minute, and then he reminds me that he knows everything the next minute. LAUREN: The mother in her wants him to try LOTS of activities. Like rock climbing. Like finishing his geometry homework. The things normal kids do. But he's not a normal kid. After all, not everyone organizes a million kid march and has a shot at pulling it off. Not every kid spends his free time putting up signposts at the local beach to show people where the water level will be if sea temperatures continue to rise. And not every kid has such an insane schedule.             13            ALEC LOORZ: Then, after DC, I flew home, then and took my standardized testing at school and did all five tests in one day, which should have taken three days. And just kind of crammed it all in and fried my brain. And just I killed myself... LAUREN: And that's not all. After less than week in California, he's heading BACK to the east coast. ALEC LOORZ: I don't even know what days are which any more. It's been super crazy. Then, tonight, the reason I'm going to DC is because I'm on the advisory board of the united steel workers union. They heard me speak one time and I was like, you need to include youth. And they were like, come on, come to this meeting. There's like 10 other PhDs and then me so I don't know how I'm going to contribute. LAUREN: When Alec gets back from DC, he has to help pack up the house. Their neighbors complained about the pet chickens, so now the Loorz family has to find a more chicken-friendly residence. Still, Alec hopes next month will be a bit calmer. Maybe he'll even take a day off to surf. At the beach, just down the street. But, a planet away. This is Lauren Whaley for Annenberg Radio News.             14            Chapter 4: Alec Loorz’s Climate Change Stage, Website Text Alec Loorz is a teenage celebrity. He lives in Southern California, but he’s not a Hollywood Star. He’s famous for something else. For his dream of trying to stop climate change. In this story, I get to know the 15-year-old behind the dream. You’ll hear him speak in public. You’ll hear him talk about how he feels called to action. How this calling motivated him to create Kids vs. Global Warming. He has spoken to over 25,000 people around the world, targeting kids with his message that they can do something to stop what he calls a global crisis. We also hear about what he is giving up to live his dream: the drums, surfing … and a normal childhood.             15            Chapter 5: God’s in the Green – The Dervaes Family’s Farming Revolution, Script HOST INTRO: In this city of fast food joins, dollar stores and freeways, one family carves out a natural niche. In an ongoing series on the city of dreamers, Lauren Whaley reports from a farm run by a family of four. In the middle of the city. AMBIENT: Goats being loaded into the truck. JORDANNE DERVAES [in actuality]: C’mon. C’mon. Up we go… LAUREN: Sisters Anais and Jordanne Dervaes load their two goats into the family’s biodiesel-fueled pickup. AMBIENT: slam. LAUREN: The goats are wearing dog harnesses for their weekly walk on the bike path by the Arroyo Secco river in Pasadena. AMBIENT: Walking on the path. LAUREN: Anais is the older of the two sisters.             16            ANAIS DERVAES: The white one she’s a Nigerian Dwarf and we call her Fairlight or Lady Fairlight. And that one’s Blackberry. AMBIENT: Goats walking. LAUREN: Lady Fairlight and Blackberry eat the family's food scraps and provide manure for the family's urban farm. JORDANNE DERVAES: To me, this is my Zen moment. LAUREN: Jordanne is the younger of the two sisters. JORDANNE DERVAES: They’ll lay next to you and they’ll start chew their cud. I just sit here. I actually look forward to walking the goats every week. It’s kind of life get away from everything and go back to something simple. AMBIENT: Transition from goats to house. LAUREN: Going back to something simple is the Dervaes family mantra. Anais and Jordanne, along with father Jules and brother Justin wake up every morning at 6 and spend the entire day running what they call their little homestead in the big city. Their house sits on a suburban street in Pasadena, a few blocks away from the 110 highway and interstate 134. But, they are miles away from being the typical suburban family. They             17            have farm animals – goats and chickens, ducks and fish. And, they grow all their own produce - six thousand pounds worth each year - on just a 10th of an acre backyard plot. Back at the house, Anais shows me her kitchen. AMBIENT: Door slam. ANAIS DERVAES: We’re getting a little down because we’ve been eating it all fall winter. But this is our pantry. LAUREN [in actuality]: One, two, three four five shelves, three cabinets deep of... ANAIS DERVAES: grape leaves in brine, marinated peppers in like oil and spices, canned tomato sauce, pickled peppers guava jam, fig jam … AMBIENT: fade Anais Dervaes under Lauren narration. LAUREN: Anais bakes and cooks using hand-powered appliances. In fact, the only thing that uses electricity in the kitchen is the energy-efficient fridge. ANAIS DERVAES: jalapeño jelly, which is really awesome…We grew all of this. We grew all of this, so it just got canned. It all came from the garden.             18            LAUREN: Growing tons of produce takes a ton of time. Anais doesn’t seem to mind staying at home. ANAIS DERVAES: Do you have to go out and find fun? Do you have to go to a movie theater? Do you have to go to a bar? Well, for me, you just sit in the garden or you watch the bees or you watch the chickens or you just sit and knit in the garden. That to me is vacation and fun. I don’t need to pay or I don’t need to go out and find it. It’s here. LAUREN: For 10 years now, the family has been here, farming in the city. They call themselves eco-pioneers. But, Anais says she's gotten some flack for being a stay at home farm girl. ANAIS DERVAES: Work at home, you stay at home. You garden, you know? You do all the things that women are supposed to, in a sense, you know?... I mean, nothing is more satisfying to me than making a great meal. LAUREN: To those who call her a slave to the farm, she says ... ANAIS DERVAES: I said, pick your slavery and I pick mine. Just like I said, making your daily bread, preserving, dealing with the animals. Sure, there’s are chores, but it’s not a chore.             19            LAUREN: The chores have paid off. They have solar panels, make their own bio-diesel and hand-mix all their ingredients for meals. They bathe outside in their solar outdoor shower. And all this is documented on the family's blog called The Path To Freedom. ANAIS DERVAES: I remember the very first entry. It was like we planted corn and I remember thinking, who is gonna care? Doesn’t everybody plant corn? LAUREN: Apparently, people do care. The Dervaes family has five thousand Facebook fans, a thousand twitter followers and have made an award-winning documentary called Homegrown Revolution. They've also been featured on Oprah, PBS and the Food Network. ANAIS DERVAES: People want you. They want you to teach them and inspire them. But, you have to continue to do it yourself, too. So, that's our struggle. LAUREN: So, they're online, but off the grid. In the city, but kind of isolated. Which brings up another thing. The sisters share a room in dad's house. So, finding a partner is a bit tough. ANAIS DERVAES: We're a farming family. If you meet somebody, they have to want to do the same thing you’re doing.             20            LAUREN: A potential mate would also have to be OK with a nontraditional education. The Dervaes kids were homeschooled. ANAIS DERVAES: There is a different kind of learning. We call it life school. Practical learning. You can take problems that are on a more practical level. With these two hands, like my dad said, you can make something. You can plant a garden. We can make food. We might be able to do theorems. JULES DERVAES: She didn’t take chemistry, but she knows cooking. LAUREN: That's Jules. ANAIS DERVAES: We know basic math. We have to do math. We did take up to algebra I think. Yeah, up to algebra. Angles. Dad and Justin are always working with angles. Geometry. JULES DERVAES: Practical stuff, not abstract. LAUREN: Practical stuff includes making the front yard part of the farm as well. Jules ripped out the lawn, JULES DERVAES: killed it basically. and started planting edible landscaping. Guavas, blueberries, loquats.…             21            LAUREN: Jules says the hard work is worth it. JULES DERVAES: And if you want to know what too much work is, go on that freeway over there and make your life part of the rat race. So, this is work, yes, but it’s work for freedom. LAUREN: But, there's something else there. The Dervaes family is motivated by a higher power. JULES DERVAES: Well, basically, when you’re working with nature, you’re working with god. When I started with the children, how I explained my beliefs to the children, I tell them that my religion would be described as being an Indian, with a bible. American Indians or any native people would see here and understand right off the bat when I'm doing here. LAUREN: Jules tells me they are members of a religion called Church of God. They believe Jesus is the messiah, but they celebrate Jewish holidays and never do farm work on the Saturday Sabbath. JULES DERVAES: First of all, we’re not owners of the planet, we’re tenants. And we’re supposed to be stewards and we'll be held accountable.             22            LAUREN: Why hadn't I read about this on the blog? JULES DERVAES: We don't preach it. We don't go around saying that. We do this and we let it speak for itself. If you didn't ask a question, you wouldn't have known. LAUREN: The Dervaes family's path to freedom won't end in Pasadena. They want to expand their practice beyond the tiny three-bedroom suburban home and garden. ANAIS DERVAES: Here, we can’t have – we have people calling us and saying can we come intern, can we come learn – it's like wait a minute, we’d already maxed out here. However, you know, it’d be nice to have a bigger space where people can come through and learn on a larger scale. That’s what we’re looking for. JULES DERVAES: Yeah, I call it Freedom Village. It'd be back to a community of kindred spirits or like-minded people. LAUREN: For now, aspiring homesteaders and those who are just planting their first tomatoes ever ... will have to be content with online inspiration. Anais says everyone's path to freedom is different. ANAIS DERVAES: It’s a journey. And you might be lookin' at us who are maybe three quarters up the mountain. And you've just started. So you're like, ugh. But, keep walking             23            on the path and you turn around and see how far you have come. Yourself. It all makes sense. The path to freedom is what you make it. AMIENT: highway sounds. LAUREN: From the city home's little front yard path lined with berries, and flowers and fruits and bees, this is Lauren Whaley for Annenberg Radio News.             24            Chapter 6: God’s in the Green – The Dervaes Family’s Farming Revolution, Website Text The Dervaes family grows all their own produce for the entire year (that’s 6,000 pounds of food) in their city backyard. Their dream is to be completely free. Fuel independence, food independence, water independence. … The story is about their path toward that end. And the family’s dream to live like the characters in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, except about a mile from the freeway in Pasadena, California.             25            Chapter 7: LAdreamers.com The culminating presentation of this thesis can be found on a website of my own design and coding. The site begins with a graphic that illustrates the intention of the piece: to find beauty in the chaos of the city. The next page is a portal that gives viewers the option to choose one of three entry points to the story experience: Cycle, Grow, Act. Each of these takes the viewer to the corresponding story on LAdreamers.com/stories. The last part was built as a blog using wordpress.org. The other web elements were hand-coded using HTML and jQuery.             26            Figure 1: Welcome Page Screenshot             27            Figure 1.1: Welcome Page HTML code Los Angeles Dreamers Testing

Los Angeles Dreamers
the stories

            29            Figure 2: Portal Page Screenshot             30            Figure 2.1: Portal Page HTML Code Dream Portal

cycle
grow
act

            31            Figure 3: LAdreamers.com Main Page Screenshot             32            Bibliography Bakke, Janice. Email correspondence for PathToFreedom.org. January – April 2010. Bledsoe, Jim. Personal interviews. The Bicycle Kitchen. Los Angeles, California. January – April, 2010. Dervaes, Anais. Personal interview. 610 Cypress Road. Pasadena, CA. January – April 2010. Dervaes, Jordanne. Personal interview. 610 Cypress Road. Pasadena, CA. January – April 2010. Dervaes, Jules. Personal interview. 610 Cypress Road. Pasadena, CA. January – April 2010. Dietrich, Craig. Personal correspondence regarding LAdreamers.com. January – May 2010. Guzman, Ben. Personal interviews. The Bicycle Kitchen. Los Angeles, California. January – April, 2010.   http://www.Kids-Vs-Global-Warming.com  Lizama, Jimmy. Personal interviews. The Bicycle Kitchen. Los Angeles, California. January – April, 2010. Longcore, Travis. Personal correspondence. University of Southern California. Los Angeles, California. August – May 2010. Loorz, Alec. Personal interviews. Ventura, California. January – May 2010. Loorz, Victoria. Personal interviews. Ventura, California. January – May 2010. Martin, Kelly. Personal interviews. The Bicycle Kitchen. Los Angeles, California. January – April, 2010. Muller, Judy. Personal correspondence. University of Southern California. Los Angeles, California. August – May 2010. http://www.PathToFreedom.Org Pryor, Larry. Personal correspondence. University of Southern California. Los Angeles, California. April 2010.             33            Schwartz, Jonah. Personal interviews. The Bicycle Kitchen. Los Angeles, California. January – April, 2010. Tolan, Sandy. Personal correspondence. University of Southern California. Los Angeles, CA. January – May 2010.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis profiles in audio, photographs and text three visionaries in Los Angeles: A teenage climate change activist, an urban farming family motivated by religion to live off the land and a community of bicyclists who dream of a carless L.A. These stories all have some sort of twist. These subjects are not typical heroes

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Whaley, Lauren Marie (author)

Core Title Los Angeles dreamers

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 08/10/2010

Defense Date 08/10/2010

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

Tag activism,climate change,creation care,documentary,Environmental Studies,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,photography,Radio,Transportation,urban farming,visionaries,website

Place Name California (states), Los Angeles (counties)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Muller, Judy (committee chair), Longcore, Travis R. (committee member), Pryor, Lawrence (committee member), Tolan, Sandy (committee member)

Creator Email laurenmwhaley@yahoo.com,whaley@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3386

Unique identifier UC166134

Identifier etd-Whaley-4002 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-381685 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3386 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Whaley-4002.pdf

Dmrecord 381685

Document Type Thesis

Rights Whaley, Lauren Marie

Type texts

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

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu