Ancillary 6+ 7

I am from Pasadena, which is a part of LA County, but my friends from school lived all around LA, so my community was not restricted to Pasadena. The first photo shows my brother playing hockey right around the corner from my house. It gives stereotypical neighborhood vibes, and I think it pretty much sums up how the rest of my neighborhood looks. The next photo is of my soccer team walking into the rose-bowl stadium for one of our playoff games. The stadium and street photos depict Pasadena fairly well since the city is widely known for its nice neighborhoods and annual rose bowl parade. Next is South Pasadena elementary school, where I used to skateboard with my friends. I get “it’s just like the movies” a lot from people visiting Pasadena for the first time because of the big houses and wide streets, and while there may be a lot of movies and T.V shows filmed here, it’s not all that special. My friends and I would mostly just go find a place to skateboard, as seen below, or we would drive up/ climb up to the mountains. The next photo is taken near my friend’s house at the dodge stadium hike. The skyline against the greenery of the mountains beautifully shows our ability to be both inside and out of an urban setting. Lastly, there’s a photo of us doing yoga on the side of the road. We would constantly speed up this windy road next to our high school in La Cañada to get to Angeles National Forest, and similar to the dodger stadium hike, we had an amazing view of both the city and the mountains.

• Read the article “ There’s a huge race gap in LA County incarceration rates, study shows”
• Read the article “When the Gang Life Chooses You”

I wanted to research the incarceration rates in LA to find out which people are initially disadvantaged when it comes to police profiling. According to the article, Los Angeles is 2nd in the state for “racial disparity” since they incarcerate significantly more black people than white. They imprisoned “1.6 per 1,000” white people and “20 per 1,000” black people. Additionally, the police kill two times more Latinos than white people and 4x more black people than white. These statistics do not reflect the mix of races that we have in the city, and they absolutely do not follow the stereotype of inclusivity surrounding our city. Along with this, I wanted to know about gang violence and how unavoidable it is. The article I read gave the story of someone who grew up in a LA neighborhood that was mostly run by a gang. He spoke about the community as being lost and not really knowing anything outside gang life. Since they were born into this community, the ethos of the gang is ingrained into their lives, and they do not have the resources or knowledge to get out. They see their friends and family engaged in this illegal activity, and in order to get out, they have to go against everyone closest to them. This article made it clear that this type of dangerous lifestyle is usually not a choice but rather an inevitability for people born into these areas.