They lit candles, grasped rosaries and passed out poster boards and N-95 masks.<\/p>\n
The 50 or so people gathered in front of Resurrection Church in Boyle Heights on the evening of Aug. 6 getting ready to pray and fight for the Eastside once again.<\/p>\n
For generations, the 103-year-old Catholic parish has been a beacon of solace and resistance for residents angry about the latest indignity to befall the historic heart of Latino Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The Lineage warehouse fire, which erupted a mile away nearly two months ago, still blankets the church every morning with the fetid stench of millions of pounds of rotting food that have yet to be trucked away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pray because we have suffered for a century due to environmental racism,\u201d said Sofia Quinones from the podium during the vigil. Around her stood people in T-shirts with the same illustration featured on the church\u2019s bulletin that week: a phoenix representing Boyle Heights rising from the flames of a hellish warehouse.<\/p>\n
Quinones paused for a few seconds as a loudspeaker crackling from an LAPD helicopter circling a few streets over ordered a shooting suspect to turn themselves in. \u201cWe ask that you open the hearts and mind of the powerful,\u201d she continued. \u201cWe ask you, Lord, to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The faithful recited the Lord\u2019s Prayer and a Hail Mary. Then, they marched from the Resurrection entrance to the school\u2019s multipurpose room for a pl\u00e1tica, or teach-in, on Lineage, singing in Spanish a song based on the 118th Psalm:<\/p>\n
This is the day that the Lord has made<\/p>\n
Pueblo of happiness and joy<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s walk to the meeting of the Lord<\/p>\n
It was a stirring sight \u2014 and yet a sad one. If Resurrection Church is famed in Catholic and activist circles across Southern California, it\u2019s because parishioners over the decades have had to deal with afflictions on the level of Job.<\/p>\n
A proposed prison off Olympic Boulevard. Lead-spewing plants. Gang violence. Gentrification. The COVID-19 pandemic. ICE raids. Now, a burnt-out putrid warehouse that has devastated businesses and forced residents to remain inside their homes during a sweltering summer, as flies and giant rats infest the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kinda crazy what this parish has gone through,\u201d said Father Jorge Moncada, who didn\u2019t know about Resurrection\u2019s history until he arrived last year on his first assignment as a priest. \u201cThey\u2019ve been through a lot and carried a lot of burden. But they\u2019ve responded, they have risen to fight against injustice again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old Moncada is quickly learning the ways of Resurrection under the legendary Monsignor John Moretta, better known as Padre Juan. In the rectory dining room before the vigil, the burly 85-year-old priest said he wasn\u2019t fazed that his working-class parish has weathered so much since arriving in 1983.<\/p>\n
\u201cSin never stops,\u201d Moretta said in his distinctive gruff voice, a Roman collar peeking from his black guayabera. Earlier in the day, he and a busload of parishioners had testified at a South Coast Air Quality Management District hearing about how the Lineage fire had impacted their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I think the problems are done, they start popping up again,\u201d Moretta said. \u201cBut I\u2019m an idealist. I can never live all these years in this parish if I weren\u2019t an idealist.\u201d<\/p>\n
I scoffed. You really think things have improved in Boyle Heights despite the nonstop procession of problems, Monsignor?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he replied, \u201cI know so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Resurrection\u2019s battles read like a history of modern-day Latino politics in Los Angeles. The Mothers of East Los Angeles \u2014 the legendary women\u2019s group that took on Eastside politicos in the 1980s and 1990s \u2014 was born in Resurrection\u2019s pews. Members had fought off plans for toxic waste incinerators and power plants. Politicians from the late LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina to former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to LA City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado have sought Moretta\u2019s counsel and helped parishioners in their various crusades.<\/p>\n
Former Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo remembers being \u201cwowed\u201d when she held a community forum at Resurrection in 2016 that drew hundreds of people. They were outraged about the lack of government accountability surrounding the closure of the Exide battery recycling plant in nearby Vernon that had contaminated thousands of homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was both inspiring and surprising to see how quickly [the Resurrection] community organized around this issue,\u201d said Carrillo, whose home parish is another historic Boyle Heights progressive powerhouse, Dolores Mission.<\/p>\n
She credited Moretta for allowing Resurrection to flower but also noted that what makes the parish more activist than most of its Eastside sister churches is its proximity to unincorporated East Los Angeles, which is governed by the county.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They lit candles, grasped rosaries and passed out poster boards and N-95 masks. The 50 or so people…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1030885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[8624,1582,276,2961,224,5337,59981,90692,365,74566,412281,8057,412282],"class_list":["post-1030884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-boyle-heights","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-parish","tag-prayer","tag-religion","tag-religious-practices","tag-resurrection","tag-warehouse","tag-wendy-carrillo"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117178679225189327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1030885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}