This was the Mafundi Institute: an arts education center focused on community empowerment, founded in the wake of the 1965 Watts Uprising.

The Institute’s building still stands today, but the music, art, and dance came to a halt in the 1970s, owing to financial divestment from the government and a high-profile board member’s assault charges. Only two tenants currently remain on the property: the Watts Coffee House and a charter high school that offers specialized job training courses. 

Their future has been thrown into upheaval ever since the city announced plans a year ago to lease the building to a developer and turn it into apartments. As a result, community activists have renewed their quest to revive arts programs and save this historic space. 

At a Watts Neighborhood Council meeting last year, Amde Hamilton, a former Mafundi Institute teacher and member of the Black poetry collective The Watts Prophets, eloquently articulated the importance of the building; his speech promptly inspired a group of local residents to fight against the city’s plans. Shortly thereafter, Watts natives founded Friends at Mafundi, an organizing collective aimed at preserving this hallowed ground. 

Inside the building itself, its tenants say that the city’s lack of communication has fueled mistrust. 

According to the proposal, the city encourages developers to preserve the Watts Coffee House. But the fine print offers a loophole allowing potential buyers to propose demolition and relocation of all existing tenants. 

Relations between Watts residents and the city have deteriorated so rapidly that some fear the city might tear down the building in the middle of the night. 

“As genuine as Councilman [Joe] Buscaino is, he’s misguided. He’s not talking to the community,” says Rita Cofield, the main organizer of Friends at Mafundi. Buscaino’s district extends from Watts to his home in San Pedro. “Housing won’t solve our mortality rate, or why our young people are being disenfranchised. It won’t solve education or jobs. Also, housing for whom?”

Branimir Kvartuc, the senior advisor and communications director for Buscaino, claims that Buscaino has heard the calls from community members who want him to leave the building alone. However, he counters that Watts is in dire need of more apartments, and that the Mafundi building is one of the most suitable city-owned properties ripe for redevelopment. 

READ MORE: Amde Hamilton, the Watts Prophets co-founder talks gentrification, poetry and jazz

“We need housing, and all sorts of housing. That’s a fact,” says Kvartuc. “This isn’t the only property that this is happening to. This is happening all over the city.”

“What type of housing” is the question that has made local activists wary of the city’s intentions. According to the proposal, favored bids for the project will combine “innovative housing, (which could include market rate, affordable, or a combination of the two) with local community-serving commercial uses.” It claims that “the most qualified project will reflect a strong understanding of the cultural significance of the site, the unique fabric of the neighborhood, maximize housing choices for local residents, provide robust community benefits, and deliver an expeditious, financially self-sustaining project.”

For some community members, the inclusion of the phrase “innovative housing” and the possibility of market rate housing being built is troubling, especially in light of Councilmember Buscaino’s history of questionable dealings with real estate developers.

Over several years, Buscaino, a former LAPD officer, received at least $94,700 in campaign contributions from individual donors connected to real estate developer Samuel Leung, according to the L.A. Times. Leung pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of conspiracy to commit campaign money laundering. He was sentenced to five years probation, 500 hours of community service, and he agreed to pay an undetermined amount of restitution to the city of L.A.  

In addition, Leung lavishly donated to Buscaino, Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Council president Nury Martinez, and indicted former City Councilmember Jose Huizar. It was allegedly part of his campaign to win the alteration of zoning laws around his Sea Breeze apartment complex in Harbor Gateway, a thin strip of the city of L.A. that connects Watts to the San Pedro, Wilmington, and Harbor City areas. The Los Angeles Times has noted that Buscaino was an enthusiastic supporter of the Sea Breeze apartment complex project, despite the opposition of local residents.

Another phrase in the city’s proposal that sets off alarms for activists is “leverage Opportunity Zone funding.” A little-known bit of legislation tucked into Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, these designated “opportunity zones” allow investors to delay and ideally avoid paying capital gain taxes for building in low-income neighborhoods. Some local activists consider it just another way for multi-millionaire real estate barons to benefit from the acceleration of gentrification. 

“It’s a concern that it could help increase gentrification — especially in well-situated underserved neighborhoods that are about to pop — rather than local businesses or things that benefit local residents,” says Bill Fulton, the director of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. An urban planner who once served as mayor of Ventura, Fulton has extensively studied the effects of Opportunity Zones.

While the idea for the Mafundi Institute was originally hatched in Watts by local artists and activists, the building itself has been owned by various city government departments since the institute’s inception. The first landlord in the mid-’60s was the Economic and Youth Opportunities Agency of Greater Los Angeles, but the Mafundi Institute managed the building. After the institute disbanded, the deed was passed down to what was then the Community Redevelopment Department; the city retained control after the agency folded. 

Funding for the Mafundi Institute’s arts programs mainly came from a hodgepodge of various federal and state programs that flooded into Watts after the uprising as part of its “War on Poverty.” But support for the institute began to fade away in the late ‘60s, when President Nixon and Governor Reagan slashed funding for public programs including inner-city arts initiatives.

Then, in 1971, Mafundi Institute board member Ron Karenga (now known as Maulana Karenga) was convicted of assaulting and torturing two women. Karenga, who co-founded a Black empowerment organization that was considered a rival of the Black Panthers (it was controversial in part because it received funding from the Los Angeles Police Department), stepped down from the board before his trial; but the damage had already been done. Financial resources and public support ran dry and classes at the institute ceased in 1975. The building was then turned into office spaces and a local credit union. After the 1992 uprising, the Watts Coffee House and a charter school moved in.  

Friends at Mafundi imagines a reinvigorated Institute, with creative and performing arts classes for neighborhood kids, and a museum dedicated to telling the history of Watts and Black Los Angeles. They want to preserve the Watts Coffee House, along with apartments for seniors and aging artists from the community.

“There’s nothing in South Central now that can identify African-American culture and history,” Hamilton says. “We want to bring back the artists and have programs for kids. Something that African-American children can be proud of. We want to preserve our history and contributions to the city and to California.”

But for some members of Friends at Mafundi, it feels like the forces of gentrification and exploitation are encircling Watts, as with nearby Inglewood, where the recently opened SoFi Stadium has rapidly driven up rental prices.

“It’s in such a good position if you look at a map. It’s close to transportation. It’s not Larchmont, but hey…,” says Ruby Barbee, a member of Friends at Mafundi.

Barbee invokes other forthcoming Watts developments that add to that impending fear of displacement: the ongoing redevelopment of the Jordan Downs public housing project and developer Thomas Safran’s two mixed-use developments next door to the Mafundi Institute building.

Although community activists acknowledge the dire need for affordable housing, Barbee and others interviewed for this story say that housing labeled “affordable” often isn’t affordable for people in the communities where the housing is located.

RELATED: The Rent Strike That Sparked a Movement

Every year, the U.S. The Department of Housing and Urban Development calculates the Area Median Income for every geographic area of the country.  The federal government and local agencies use that figure to determine eligibility for affordable housing. In Los Angeles, according to calculations updated in April of 2020, a low-income family of four makes around $90,000 a year, while a “very low income” family of four makes $56,300 a year. But the median wage for a family of four in Watts is $46,276, or far below that federal calculation, according to census data. 

Compounding the issue, many affordable housing developments were created with covenants that set limits for when the housing stops being affordable and transitions into market rate costs. According to a report released in 2019 by the California Housing Partnership, over 12,000 affordable rental properties in L.A. County are in danger of converting to market rate housing in the near future. 

In Watts, some residents feel powerless when it comes to deciding what gets built and what gets destroyed.

Barbee notes that the Mafundi Institute building is the last major monument to the memory of what Hamilton remembered as “the Watts arts district.” The area of community-centered spaces, educational centers, and arts venues that sprang up after the uprising included the Watts Repertory Theatre Company, Studio Watts, the Watts Writers Workshop, and the still-standing Watts Towers.

Buscaino’s representatives emphasize that they are aware of the concerns of community members.

“We know this project needs input. The conversation is just beginning though,” Kvartuc says. “It’s not a clean thing, not like someone just turning on a lightswitch. It’s not perfect.”

To date, just four developers have submitted proposals for the project, according to Kvartuc. While he won’t say which developers have submitted proposals, he did say that the city’s Municipal Finance Committee had identified the strongest candidate and will meet in late January to discuss the project further.  

Kvartuc pushes back on the idea that community members won’t have any say in the Mafundi building’s fate. “Once the developer is chosen, they’ll go into the community and ask the community ‘How do we maintain the soul of Mafundi and expand it?’” he says.

For Friends at Mafundi, saving the Mafundi Institute building isn’t just about saving the building itself — it’s about preserving an important piece of history of Black Los Angeles, expanding on its legacy, and bringing it into the 21st Century for the young people of modern day Watts.

“We don’t want to stop progress,” says Cofield, the organizer behind Friends at Mafundi. “We want to be a part of it. When you try to destroy one of our cultural sites, you’re not making us a part of it. I have to keep fighting until the bulldozer comes in.”

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Running a D.I.Y. space in Los Angeles was a Herculean task even before COVID-19: Community-based venues perpetually have to make hard choices when it comes to rent increases, competition from behemoth promoters, and license and permitting requirements. 

But this year, as public gathering spaces around the world were forced to close to help stop the spread of COVID-19, already-struggling D.I.Y. spaces were among those hit the hardest. We caught up with three D.I.Y. spaces about how they’re finding creative ways to survive, at a time when community is more important than ever. 

The Smell: 247 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Jim Smith first opened The Smell in North Hollywood in 1998, partly as a response to the closure of former D.I.Y. spaces like Jabberjaw. He relocated downtown in 1999 after his rent increased following the development of the North Hollywood Arts District.  In the years that followed, the drug-and-alcohol-free venue became ground zero for one of the most exciting scenes in punk music. Its shows, which rarely cost more than $5 to attend, helped to launch the careers of bands like No Age, Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, Silver Daggers, HEALTH, Together Pangea, and Captain Ahab. More recently, punk bands like Surf Curse and French Vanilla have carried the torch for experimental music at The Smell.

In May of 2016, Smith’s longtime landlord served him a demolition notice, sending waves of shock through Southern California’s punk scene. Although the panic turned out to be premature  —  the landlord has not yet acted on demolition plans  —  many in the community have for years shared the fear that The Smell is operating on borrowed time.  The pandemic has only made that fear more real.  After losing money from shows that were cancelled beginning in March, Smith told his landlord he could no longer pay rent — and so far, his landlord hasn’t hassled him about it. But Smith worries about what will happen in the months to come, with no end to the virus in sight and little relief from L.A.’s city government, save for an eviction moratorium set to expire soon. “I don’t know what’s going to happen if things get back to normal. I kind of find it hard to believe that a year from now, everybody reopens, and the landlords say ‘Well, you all owe back rent. Pay up,’” Smith says. “That could lead to a whole other economic downturn… Something needs to be done that addresses both renters and people that are paying mortgages that aren’t getting any income at the moment.”

But for the time being, Smith is optimistic that The Smell might come out of this with even more community support than before. “I’m hoping that when we do come out at the other end there will be a real hunger to go back in appreciation of what people have missed,” he says. “Maybe it’ll inspire more interest in these venues and what we offer.”  — Additional reporting by Suzette Aguirre

Sun Space: 9683 Sunland Blvd, Shadow Hills, CA 91040

It’s a Tuesday night in Sunland, long before the quarantine started and the whole word began to shutter. Noel Rhodes is belting out a mutated torch song while wearing a fantastical papier-mache monster mask of his own creation. His son, Gaia, 30, plays electronic soundscapes and sputtering beats on his computer in front of a crowd of 20 or so local teenagers plus a few old timers. 

The event is called Unusual Tuesdays and it takes place every week at Sun Space, a D.I.Y. music and arts venue tucked into a strip mall, between a medical transport business and a Pilates studio. The curated open mic night features local musicians, artists, poets, comedians, comic book authors, and even, occasionally, a paleontologist like Andrew Ellis, who gave a lecture on early dinosaurs last spring. It’s one of the best, and wildest events in town — on a Tuesday, or any day of the week.

In addition to Unusual Tuesdays, Sun Space’s calendar is full of shows put on by local punk bands, dance music DJs, and even local heroes like Mike Watt, formerly of the Minutemen, and Joe Baiza of Saccharine Trust.  Noel and Gaia first put on Unusual Tuesdays after-hours at Hillbilly Hip, an eccentric thrift store in Topanga. Seeking a space of their own after the store closed, Noel found a vacant storefront in a strip mall in Sunland, which just so happened to be close to where Gaia was living at the time. “Sunland was just a lot more affordable to rent than other places in L.A., and it’s quiet,” said Noel, who pays rent on the space on sales from tickets alone, which rarely exceed $10 each. “And there’s lots of parking.”

Van Shydner, the lead singer and songwriter of a band called Jody, has been coming to Sun Space from her home in Van Nuys ever since her former hangout, legendary D.I.Y. space Pehrspace, was evicted from its Historic Filipinotown strip mall to make way for a yoga studio in 2016. “It’s kind of like a mish mosh of a family run business and a D.I.Y. space,” Shydner said of Sun Space. “I can do whatever I want here. It feels like a creative incubator.”

Since the city’s stay-at-home orders were put in place in March, Noel has kept Unusual Tuesday’s going by performing by himself in the space and live streaming the performance onto platforms including Twitch. 

“That’s the one thing I try to keep doing no matter what happens,” Noel said. “Gotta keep the Tuesdays going.”

Noel asks former participants to send in videos of themselves performing in their homes, and he’s added a feature where audience members can call into the live stream and chat with one of the characters that he plays. While the streaming sessions have helped maintain a sense of community from afar, they’re not likely to bring in revenue for a venue that was — even before the quarantine — on shaky financial ground. “I really don’t know what the future holds at all. We haven’t brought any money in,” Noel said. “We’re just kind of in a holding pattern. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s so much unknown.”

Noel said Sun Space’s landlord isn’t hassling him for rent, in the interest of preventing the space from having to close. But the rent hasn’t been forgiven. They’ll still have to pay back rent, eventually. If and when he’s able to reopen, he hopes to turn it into a kind of collective studio for artists to use, one at a time, if that’s possible under the public health orders, which have forced him to rethink the function of art spaces. “I don’t think that people will want to go into a really tiny space after this is over. It’s going to be different that’s for sure,” he said. “I’m very much in a state of uncertainty. But I tend to be a very optimistic person.” He adds, “There’s a lot of energy around the place. So that counts for a lot.”

Bridgetown D.I.Y.: 1421 Valinda Ave, La Puente, CA, 91744

It’s a late summer night deep in the San Gabriel Valley. The words “quarantine” and “pandemic” are still months away from entering the minute-by-minute torrent of horrible news headlines. And live music is still something we all took for granted. Hardcore screamo band Nuvolascura are blasting through an ear-pummelling set, limbs, instruments, and chords flying through the air. 

Nestled between a water store and a Zumba studio on the border of La Puente and unincorporated Valinda, Bridgetown D.I.Y. acts as a space for both local bands and touring acts alike — the punk outfit Downtown Boys and the trans-feminist hardcore band G.L.O.S.S., to name a few — to play to for all-ages crowds. Like the bands they typically book, Bridgetown is grounded in its political convictions. The space is run by a volunteer collective — rather than a single owner — which organizes community workshops in areas such as self-defense, political organizing, and even baile folklorico.  

“Bridgetown definitely has roots in anarchism, but we’re not evangelizing,” said Erica Estelle, a member of Bridgetown’s organizing committee, and the nicest person in the world until she gets on stage as the lead screamer of the hardcore band Nuvolascura. 

Bridgetown is a safe and sober space, which means drugs and alcohol are not permitted, nor is discrimination of any kind. “A lot of us recognize the correlation between drugs and alcohol and violence,” said Estelle. But the ban also serves a practical reason: “It’s also so we don’t get shut down.”

Cameron Anarres, who was a part of the committee that established Bridgetown in 2013, hopes to secure enough funding so that there’s no pressure to hold events all the time. “We want to develop the space as a neighborhood center and to have events rooted in the community,” he said.  Trips to Che Cafe, the D.I.Y. space on the UC San Diego campus, and Hyde Park Half, a now shuttered D.I.Y. Space on the West Side of L.A., provided Anarres with a template for community organizing.  

“There’s an implicit value in having places that are non-commercial. That’s where these politics take route in people, even if they aren’t explicitly anarchist or communist,” he said. “We do what we can do to support our region. But we don’t want to be the only D.I.Y. space like this in L.A.”  

When the stay-at-home orders were enacted, Estelle was looking forward to the spring and summer, when more bands were set to tour, bringing in some extra money for Bridgetown. She and other organizers had hoped to not only put the revenue towards paying rent, but also toward hosting community workshops and classes. 

Since the beginning of the year, Bridgetown has been mostly substituting off a $5,000 grant from Vans, the skateboarding apparel company, but that grant has dwindled significantly to only $1,000. With little money left, Bridgetown has temporarily put its venue-based aspirations on hold to fundraise for a more urgent cause: distributing masks and hand sanitizer to people.     

“It’s important for us to be there for the community in this time, more than just to provide shows,” Estelle said. 

“Even though we’re shut down, we’re still going to do what we were founded to do. Right now we have to focus on doing mutual aid. Whatever happens happens I guess.”

This article appears in Vol. 2, Issue 2 of The LAnd. Click here to pre-order your copy.

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There used to be a lot more trees on this stretch of 103rd Street, but most of them were cut down so police helicopters could watch Watts’ residents from the sky. Amde Hamilton, 78 years old, still moves down these streets that he grew up on with a glide you can imagine him having in the late ‘60s, when he formed the Watts Prophets with Otis O’Solomon and Richard Dedeaux.

Formed out of the fury of the Watts Riots in 1965, the Watts Prophets were young black poet-performers railing against police brutality, institutionalized poverty, American hypocrisy, complacency and the possibility of revolution; they went so hard that they often shouted over each other during performances.

Accompanied with percussion, and later by pianist Dee-Dee McNeil, the Watts Prophets style of performing — between street talking and revolutionary sermon — laid the stylistic foundation for West Coast hip-hop. On 1997’s “I Remember Watts,” Dedeaux, who once challenged Muhammad Ali to a poetry fight (spoiler: Ali lost), recalled the town as a kid: “warm days of running around with no shoes and socks/but lots and lots of cops!”

The neighborhood has changed a little since Hamilton and Dedeaux were kids. It’s now a majority Latinx community, much like a good portion of South L.A. But many of the same problems still persist. Hamilton is still as invested in seeing the community flourish as ever. He is the kind of guy who says hello and honestly cares to hear how everyone he passes by is doing; high school kids walking home, old timers reminiscing on a porch, abuelitas waiting at bus stops.

Hamilton has started a new Watts Writers Workshop for kids in the community, so they can tell their own stories through the arts. He is still writing the direct, socially attuned poetry that he wrote with the Watts Prophets years ago.

We talked while Hamilton drove around Watts, and in his small apartment in Leimert Park, where his albums, African and Caribbean art and pictures of him when he was an ordained priest in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are scattered around the living room. The conversation considered his life, his poetry, and how South L.A. is and always has been changing.

What are your earliest memories of Watts?

There was music on Central Avenue on both sides….from downtown around Fifth Street, all the way into Watts, and into Compton. But it stopped right there in Watts. African Americans couldn’t live across Alameda going east. And that was our community. Integration is the disintegration of those being integrated. When we integrated everybody left and the community was not supported by the black mayor [Tom Bradley]. He was a wonderful guy for some people, but he wasn’t for us.

Where did those folks go?

They went west. The white flight, they came and took over those homes. The whites moved further west.

So South L.A. was being gentrified even back in the ‘60s?

There always was gentrification and social engineering here in Los Angeles. After the Watts Riots, social engineering became kind of like a cottage industry. That’s what’s going on now. We’re watching it. We’re watching gentrification. Nothing’s changed. South L.A. is like when Bob Marley talks about Trench Town. It’s only a microcosm of what’s happening in the rest of the world, and that’s the same thing the Watts Prophets were doing for our community. We weren’t addressing anybody but ourselves, but our message happened to have a universal ring to it.

How did the Watts Prophets start?

The Watts Prophets started at Budd Schulberg’s Watts Writers Workshop. He was a Hollywood [screenwriter and novelist] who came to Watts shortly after the riots — almost when the flames were still burning. His career was at a low, and he saw that one little building was left standing at 10950 Central, and so he went in there and asked what he could do. And all he could do was write, so he said he’d start a writing program. That was the beginning of Budd Schulberg’s writing workshop. I happened to come to the workshop in 1967, and that’s where I started my career as a poet. You don’t become a poet until your lines are living.

Is it true that you met DJ Quik and he recited some of your poetry to you?

That happened one time. I didn’t know anything about sampling, but people had been telling me they been hearing my poems. So one day a girl asked me if I’d go to a concert in Bakersfield with some rappers. It was Eazy-E, DJ Quik, and AMG, and several others. She brought me through the back gate, and left me in a corridor saying that she’d be right back. While I’m standing there, down the hall comes DJ Quik, Eazy-E, AMG and when they get to me, I don’t know them, but when they pass by me, DJ Quik stops and goes ‘Hey, hold on guys, do y’all know who that is?’ And they all go, ‘no man, we don’t know who that is. Who is it?’ He says, ‘That’s Amde of the Watts Prophets.’ And they all start doing one of my poems. Each one were doing a different one. It was the first time that I realized that young people were listening to my poetry. They had actually memorized it. It was like a beautiful rose just grew right in front of me. So you asked me how do I know? Well, it tends to come back at you.

Do you still write?

Of course. The Watts Prophets always write. We’ve never lost our point. We’ve been together 46 years, and we still do some of the same poetry from 46 years ago. We always had something new, and always added something, but we never changed our point. We want to keep pushing. Breed what you need. Talk up not down. We wasn’t going to stop saying that over and over. We had a constant in our poetry. We weren’t book sellers, we were truth tellers. And when you tell the truth, there’s consequences to that.

When the Watts Prophets started, how influenced were you by the local poetry scene like Jayne Cortez, and the jazz scene like Don Cherry or Ornette Coleman?

Those were the cats that encouraged us. And Ornette was my personal friend. A very close friend. Billy Higgins was a close friend. We were all raised in Watts together. And so they were the ones who first told us, ‘this is something hip that y’all doing. Just keep it up.’ Because nobody was listening to somebody behind a podium at some library, and the poets, African American poets, took it from the page to the stage. And that’s how this poetry movement that’s really eating the world, that’s where it really started.

When you played shows, would they be at coffee houses or more traditional venues?

Everywhere. The Watts Prophets, the world was our stage. It’s still our stage. We didn’t have to get booked to do poetry. We were poets on the corner, in the bathroom, in the cafe, at the school, at the community center, with the winos at the back of the shop, with the people sitting on the corner, at the schools. That’s how we were able to spread our poetry: verbally. It was all done word of mouth really. When your lines live, as Shakespeare’s lived, people pronounce them all over the world like they do now. Evidently ours did. We never had a PR campaign. We never were published. We were just some poets from Watts who were doing our thing. Saying what we wanted to say to people. To me, all the great poets had one love, and that was the truth. But a universal truth, not just their truth.

What are your memories of the riots?

During the riots, I was in an insane asylum. So I wasn’t there. I didn’t get out until ‘66. I was a drug addict, and the insane asylum was in the federal pen. They had a program in Ft. Worth, Texas where they sent drug addicts.

That’s a full year after the riots. What did you notice had changed about the community?

The influx of carpetbaggers. There were millions of dollars that were coming after the riots through LBJ’s war on poverty. People came from everywhere to get that money. Poverty programs came up everywhere, the government was pouring money in. It was the first signs of social engineering that we could see because we watched our community and how they would change it.

How has it changed since then?

Oh, it’s completely changed man. There was a black community here. Now it’s kind of liquid. It’s not a solid African American community. Leimert Park is not the essence of black culture and tradition and history and art. Black culture is a whole community. It’s not just a couple of blocks. It’s a nice place to exhibit your art, but that’s not the complete picture of creativity of African Americans. That’s a portion of this community. That’s what it represents. It always has represented a lot of great artists. This is where Lester Young is from. Dexter Gordon. Eric Dolphy. Horace Tapscott.This is all their community. It’s always had a tradition of rearing great artists. Just the same in Watts. Usually they came from Watts and moved west. They came from Central Avenue. There were as many jazz musicians on Central Avenue as there were in New York, but they didn’t get the play, the P.R. But Central Avenue had jazz on both sides of the street when I was a boy. All you heard when you walked down was music. But I’ve never left. I just started the new Watts Writer’s Workshop at the W.L.C.A.C. [The Watts Labor Community Action Committee.] African American children out here are really being neglected. It’s like people don’t see us anymore. I work with everybody; it doesn’t make any difference, but I see the great need in the African American community. Thing is, I’ve never stopped working in Watts. Even when I was living in Humboldt because my wife was sick and I needed to be there for her, I never stopped coming down to do stuff here. I’ll be here until I can’t do no more.

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