Jaime Cruz’s Pico Neighborhood Walks

Long time resident, community leader and educator Jaime Cruz has developed Pico neighborhood walks in his role as a teacher at Santa Monica College and Cal State Northridge. Cruz sees them as an opportunity to walk through areas of the neighborhood that students may be unfamiliar with and also to talk with local residents and hear different perspectives. He points out the typical landmarks of working class neighborhoods or areas that are not politically represented: liquor stores, rehabilitation centers, landfills, among others. Sites, he says you don’t find in affluent neighborhoods.

With the collaboration of Antena Los Ángeles, a language justice collective in Los Angeles, Jaime Cruz lead a bilingual walk through Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood on November 12, 2016 for local residents.