Palengke Politics

In a palengke (market), there's tons of activities going on but in the midst of all the chaos, exchanges of goods are had, individuals communicate but everything can never really seem to come together and work in unison. I witnessed a wonderful example of palengke politics tonight. SIPA had a community meeting for two of our housing developments.

Magnolia Tree is on 2nd & Lake. It's an affordable housing development with 46 family units. We're going to break ground in October and it's going to go off without a hitch.

Mango Tree is the mixed used, Seniors' housing development that's going to be across the street from our existing offices. It has received little backing from the City of LA, thus far. The purpose of the community meeting was to get names and people to physically back the project so the logistics could start getting processed by the City of LA.

First of all, the presentation of the material was a bit confusing, particularly for the audience. It wasn't even clear to me at first what was going to happen. A presentation was made about SIPA and then they went in to the transit survey and the housing developments. When you are presenting to an audience who is a bit physically older and mentally slower, holds English as a second language, you might not want to frame your statements with words and concepts that are at a higher intellectual level. I was a bit astounded at how things were presented. There were several times I just wanted to grab the mics out of all of the speakers hands and clearly explain everything.

The community was brought together to:
1. learn more about SIPA and the services that are offered to the surrounding community-in-need
2. participate in a transit survey to improve the conditions of the bus stops in Historic Filipinotown
3. get more information about SIPA's two housing developments
4. pledge their committment to physically call the council district office to state their support for the Mango Tree project

Why did it take more than one hour?! Granted, people did eat but some of the questions that were asked were a bit ridiculous only because the material was not presented in a very clear manner.

When information was being given about SIPA and our services, you could hear the leaves rustling in the wind. Statements like case management and counseling, telecom rights campaign, and empowerment and leadership programs were way too sophisticated of words for the audience. You would think that presenters would get this way before-hand. Things were being translated in Spanish but I don't think that helped very much either!!!

The transit survey was presented and things just kept going downhill. All they needed to say was, "We want to improve all of the bus stops in Historic Filipinotown by placing seats with covers and lights at the most frequented stops. We need you to fill out this survey with your comments and needs so we have proof to give to the City of LA so we can tell them that the community really does want to make these changes!"

The housing part was what killed me the most. It took forever for people to freakin' get the point that Magnolia Tree had no issues. Mango Tree was the development in danger. If no calls and/or backing gets to the City of LA, there will be no development, there will be no senior housing, there will be no new townhouses, there will be no new SIPA offices so we can do more and the future of other affordable housing developments in Historic Filipinotown becomes greatly jeopardized. Why that was so hard to get was solely based on the fact that concepts were just way too intangible for the audience.

In the midst of the entire event, people were talking amongst each other. People were answering cellphones. This one man kept standing up and started to walk around the room for whatever reason. Those who were hard of hearing were freakin' yelling at each other while they were attempting to ask questions of each other. Peter was laughing hysterically. Staff told the audience several times to give their attention to the speaker. Al Garcia had to give his interepretation of all the concepts in loud-ass Tagalog every so often. I was a bit jealous since I really wanted to do the same damn thing but in English so the other presenters could see how to properly address the audience.

I'm so addressing this madness at our next management meeting!