Community-Led Advocacy: Saving Places and Building Power

Cindy Olnick 0:00
Today on Save As, we’re taking it to the streets with heritage justice hero Rosalind Sagara.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Save As: NextGen Heritage Conservation. I’m Cindy Olnick.

Trudi Sandmeier 0:22
And I’m Trudi Sandmeier. And we’re really excited you’re here with us today to talk to one of our local heroes, Rosalind Sagara. So this episode is one of our Where Are They Now episodes.

Cindy Olnick 0:34
Where are they now, now, now.

Trudi Sandmeier 0:38
Yes, indeed. Thank you, Cindy.

Cindy Olnick 0:40
I had the pleasure of working with Rosalind for several years and it was wonderful to reconnect and chat with her. So Rosalind has a really fascinating history with social justice activism and collective action, which she will talk more about. And she wrote her thesis on that using two case studies, one of which she was personally involved in and one of which I was actually involved in at the [L.A.] Conservancy before she came on board.

Trudi Sandmeier 1:09
When Rosalind was deciding where she was going to go to graduate school, I have such a vivid memory of talking to her and being so excited about her background and community activism and organizing and all the different things that she brings to the table. And I was thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I really hope she comes here because I have as much to learn from Rosalind as she might have to learn for me. That’s always an exciting moment. And happily, she said yes, and she came to USC.

Cindy Olnick 1:39
Fantastic.

Trudi Sandmeier 1:40
So let’s take a listen to your conversation with Rosalind about her thesis and her career and what she’s been up to since.

Cindy Olnick 1:50
We are here with Rosalind Sagara. Welcome to Save As. Please introduce yourself to the Save As universe.

Rosalind Sagara 1:58
Hi, Cindy and listeners. I’m Rosalind Sagara. I’m a public historian and architectural historian, and currently working at the Los Angeles Conservancy as the Neighborhood Outreach Manager.

Cindy Olnick 2:11
So Rosalind, you got your master of heritage conservation degree from USC in 2015. Is that correct?

Rosalind Sagara 2:18
Yes.

Cindy Olnick 2:19
So, this is a Where Are They Now episode, so we’re going to talk about your terrific work. But I love how there’s a really strong thread here that it seems like everything in your career, including your thesis, centers on collective action, and organizing and advocacy, which is so important. In fact, your thesis is called Heritage and Collective Action: Examining Framing Processes into Locally Contentious Conservation Campaigns. Why did you choose this topic?

Rosalind Sagara 2:50
I wanted to write something that hopefully would be useful for others working in heritage conservation, and in particular, preservation advocacy.

Cindy Olnick 3:00
Yeah, you’ve got a background in community organizing, right?

Rosalind Sagara 3:04
I got involved as, you know, a student in various campus issues and community issues that continued through graduate school. I was always attracted to this idea of people building power, having a platform to raise concerns about issues in the community. I took a job with a labor union, HERE, at the time, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, a union that represents hospitality workers, and I worked on a statewide campaign to unionize Indian casino workers. And that was really where I developed a lot of my organizing strategies. And I just got a lot of exposure to working with workers and developing relationships with workers building coalition with other community-based organizations or other stakeholders to meet some of the needs that are top of mind for them. But I look back at that time as kind of a pivotal moment in my development.

Cindy Olnick 4:16
And this idea of organizing and building power among communities that don’t have it is also deeply personal for you.

Rosalind Sagara 4:25
Yeah, absolutely. My father is Nisei second generation Japanese American from Southern California. He and his family were sent to World War II concentration camps. They first were sent to Poston and then later to Tule Lake which was the maximum security camp. I am a descendant of camp survivors, and that’s very much part of my identity, very much inspires me to stand up for social justice and respect for history and learning from our past.

Cindy Olnick 5:06
How old was your father when that happened?

Rosalind Sagara 5:09
He was quite young. I would say he was, I believe like a preteen at the time. In fact, he wasn’t able to finish his high school education due to the camp experience. And following the incarceration, he ended up finishing his schooling in New Jersey. I mean, that was one of many disruptions to our particular family.

Cindy Olnick 5:33
I’m so sorry that it happened. But you’re channeling it in a very positive way, you know, and you’re making the world a better place. Why don’t we talk about the premise of your thesis.

Rosalind Sagara 5:47
I was trying to bring together, you know, understandings of heritage, kind of provide some background as to what constitutes heritage and why that’s important to people, and then kind of marry that with collective actions, with some examination of social justice movement literature. And, I really wanted to explore this concept of framing, making a case for preservation, and how people understood historic places, how they related to them, and then kind of what really motivated people to participate in efforts to preserve these places. And I really wanted to place heritage conservation in the broader field of environmental justice studies, because I really see it as fitting in there, in many ways, at least in the cases that I explored.

Cindy Olnick 6:51
So you looked at two preservation campaigns, one of which you were personally involved in. Tell me about that.

Rosalind Sagara 7:00
This was an effort to preserve the Chinatown archaeological site in Riverside. It’s the location of Riverside’s second Chinatown. This is just on the outskirts of the downtown area. In fact, the second location emerged because the community in the first Chinatown were essentially driven out of the downtown area. And so by like 1886, the community had to re-establish themselves just outside of what they called the Mile Square. That is where the core of the community remained through 1940s and 50s. And the community dwindled. And, by the 60s in the 70s, there really was only one resident who remained on the property, and he came into ownership of the property. And after his death, the property was sold, and eventually, our County Office of Education in Riverside purchased the property. In the mid 1980s, there was a test excavation of the property. It yielded tons of artifacts. Following that excavation, there was an effort to list the property in the National Register as an archaeological site. As early as the late 1960s the property had received county designation. And then later state and city designation. There had been a lot of work pre-dating our involvement and preserving the site. And so really, we see ourselves as a continuation of a long lineage of people who have cared about this property and work to preserve it. In 2007, a local developer started to make plans to purchase this property and develop a medical office building. I learned about the project through a friend and I was by no means an expert of the Riverside Chinatown. I wanted to learn more. It was a community meeting that was talking about this proposed project and that’s how I got involved.

Cindy Olnick 9:01
Did you live in Riverside at the time?

Rosaline Sagara  9:17
I lived in Moreno Valley, which is like the next city over but I had ties to Riverside. I went to high school and college in Riverside. We were asking for the archeological remains to be protected by modifying the project. And you know, we really were trying to work with the developer to change the plans. We weren’t against the medical office building. We understood that it was a needed amenity, but we just really had a problem with the way that the project would essentially destroy the the archaeology and we weren’t going to let that happen.

Cindy Olnick 9:59
So you did a lot of different things, one of which was an action where everybody held up pictures of, was George Wong who was the last resident.

Rosalind Sagara 10:09
Yes.

Cindy Olnick 10:10
Held up pictures of him in front of their own faces.

Rosalind Sagara 10:12
This was a protest that we organized in front of City Hall in early 2009 following some illegal grading activity at the property on a holiday weekend. We wanted to let our city council know that this was not right what happened. And we wanted to honor the memory of the city’s Chinese pioneers. And George Wong was probably the most well known caretaker of the Chinatown property. A lot of people knew him. We had this idea, you know, we would print the image of his face and put it in front of our faces. In many ways. It was a moment of reflection and meditation in community that was recognizing our connection to George Wong and his efforts to preserve the Chinatown for so long, but also to present ourselves in silent protest to the actions that had to happen and to evoke kind of a moral high ground.

Cindy Olnick 11:25
So how did it resolve itself or is it still ongoing?

Rosalind Sagara 11:30
We were successful in preventing the proposed project at the site, we had to file a lawsuit, but we did prevail. We did work with that developer to find a new location for the medical office building, which has since been built. We continue to advocate that that site be turned into a heritage park, that would not only preserve the artifacts, but also help tell the story of the community. So in 2016, the city was able to get a grant to fund a city wide historic context statement around Chinese American heritage, I was fortunate to be able to work on that. So now we have a guiding document that helps future developments understand our Chinese American heritage in the city. And our group has continued. We have held various cultural programs, we do a Asian American walking tour, we do neighborhood cleanups around the property. And all of these efforts are helping to build community amongst people who care about the property. And we continue to develop relationships with city council members given such a long time frame, there’s new leadership and so new priorities. Our goal is to develop a long term preservation plan, but that’s taking time and we’re in it for the long haul.

Cindy Olnick 13:07
And then the other case study that you looked at was an issue that I was actually involved in at the LA Conservancy. That would be Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, which opened in 1939 in Boyle Heights, and it was the first of several large scale garden apartment complexes in Los Angeles. And it’s a very special place. So tell me a little bit about the campaign to save it and why they needed to have one.

Rosalind Sagara 13:36
Wyvernwood is a big place. Seventy acres and more than 4,000 residents. The owners wanted to redevelop the property, they unveiled a plan to do so in 2007 and proposed quadrupling the size of the apartment complex, which would drastically change what is there now. They would have to destroy about 1,200 units. You know, it’s over the years built up a tight knit community. And so this project would change that.

Cindy Olnick 14:15
Because the open space at Wyvernwood is so central to its function, it would actually change how it worked. Families could let their kids run around after school then not have to worry about them.

Rosalind Sagara 14:29
It was very much like a park-like setting which is not always available to residents in LA not easily accessible, right. This was communal space where residents held cultural events, birthday parties, celebrations, organized soccer tournaments, it’s unlike any other place in LA and what was being proposed would really erase that and erase, you know, these cultural traditions, or essentially stopped them from continuing because it was the space that allowed for these activities to take place. Residents had already formed a tenant’s rights organization that had been active for decades prior to this news. And so that served as the foundation to to mobilize residents and others to oppose this proposed development. What I think was really remarkable about this campaign was that it was led by residents, that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re living there, and your landlord wants to make these changes. That took a lot of courage.

Cindy Olnick 15:51
You looked at how the community organized around it, and even how they communicated, you know, the flyers that they used and things like that, what do you recall, learning from that campaign?

Rosalind Sagara 16:05
Well, I learned that it’s important to acknowledge kind of what each organization’s strengths are, and to utilize those resources when needed. A lot of different organizations that were involved in supporting the tenants’ efforts brought to bear, you know, their own resources, their own expertise, and that really helped the campaign develop in critical moments. You know, there were residents or allies who were really good at graphic design. And so they were able to produce some really compelling graphic images that help to inspire people to turn out to meetings or protests. People who had skills in video production or storytelling were helping the residents tell the community and decision makers, more importantly, why this place was important and why essentially, they were taking the risk to oppose this project. For those community based organizations like the Conservancy, or ELAC.

Cindy Olnick 17:17
And ELAC is the East Los Angeles Community Corporation, correct?

Rosalind Sagara 17:22
Yes. You know, those organizations had a lot more experience in urban planning. And so they were more familiar with the planning processes, and could advise tenants kind of how to get their voices heard, and also kind of had media relations that they could connect the residents with, as well.

Cindy Olnick 17:44
Rosalind, do you happen to know where the project stands now?

Rosalind Sagara 17:47
Thankfully, in 2019, the director of city planning terminated the project, due to inactivity, and so credit to the residents, and all of the organizations and stakeholders who got behind them to fight for this place. It was over 10 years of work, and resources. So for now, that project isn’t a threat. There may be other projects that are proposed in the future for redevelopment. Boyle Heights is changing and there’s a lot of development. You know, this is probably one of the largest apartment complexes in the city. And there’s rent stabilization. It was really a critical campaign around fighting for the preservation of affordable housing, but really fighting for this community of Boyle Heights, and really fighting to keep the community together. And so I was just really fascinated with the aims of this campaign.

Cindy Olnick 18:57
So what do these two campaigns have in common?

Rosalind Sagara 19:01
Well, they were both kind of happening concurrently. And a lot of these leaders were people of color, were not professional preservationists. And that’s not to say that there wasn’t professional preservationists who supported or assisted. But a lot of the leaders were from the community. And in my research and talking with various folks involved in the two campaigns, I found that many people hadn’t really thought of themselves as heritage conservationists. And, so I thought that that made sense. But I think it was an interesting takeaway for us in heritage conservation to recognize that most of the people that we’re going to work with in community don’t see themselves like we do. And so they’re coming to this work from a different angle and have different experiences and that we should really learn from them, too.

Cindy Olnick 20:00
So what other insights did you get from your research about heritage and collective action?

Rosalind Sagara 20:05
Well, I would say in the aspect of making a case for preserving these two places, they both centered the threat around something bigger than just buildings or the resource itself. In the case of Wyvernwood, it was about preserving affordable housing, posing a potential public health issue with respect to the demolition of buildings and kind of the pollution that that would create. You know, in the case of the Chinatown archaeological site, it was more tied to the heritage asset. But it was more broadly understood as preserving a sense of community, a sense of identity, making visible a community that didn’t feel like they really had a say in the planning process. So, it was more about these broader issues.

Cindy Olnick 21:00
And did you learn anything about what motivates people?

Rosalind Sagara 21:04
You know, these campaigns, especially ones that last so long, you know, you really have to have a personal connection to the issue, you really have to understand why you are spending so much time on this, because it’s much easier to give up, you know, and I think, to move on. And so I think it’s that personal tie, and kind of a deep understanding of what one can do when working in community. In those moments, when I felt like I wanted to give up, I turn to others who were involved to get inspiration to be re-inspired to remind myself that it wasn’t just about me, and this was a bigger issue. And I do feel like that same feeling was present in the Wyvnerwood campaign. I remember talking to Leonardo Lopez, who’s been the longtime president of the Comite de la Esperanza, and, you know, having some really honest conversations about like being tired and being burnt out. This was like, as I mentioned, more than 10 years of trying to get people to meetings and getting people to keep caring, and that’s hard. And it does take a toll. But I think that in community, you know, there’s strength, and I think both of these campaigns really did a good job in building community.

Cindy Olnick 22:45
Let’s talk about Rosalind, the superstar. So in 2012, the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave you the American Express Aspire Award recognizing emerging leaders in historic preservation. So what were you doing in 2012?

Rosalind Sagara 23:03
Well, I had just started at USC. I had been so heavily involved in the Chinatown archaeological site that I really started to think about heritage conservation as a career. Like, maybe I could do this and get paid for it. Maybe my experience might be valuable to somebody. And for me, it made sense to go back to school. USC was a good choice for me, because I really appreciated that a lot of our teaching staff is working in the field, and I really wanted to gain that practical experience.

Cindy Olnick 23:43
So you get out of USC and then you join the LA Conservancy staff. Is that right?

Rosalind Sagara 23:48
Yeah, not right away. I took on some consulting jobs. And then after that, the opportunity came up to to work at the Conservancy, and I applied.

Cindy Olnick 23:58
And we got to work together.

Rosalind Sagara 24:00
Yeah, we did.

Cindy Olnick 24:00
That was fun. So tell me what you’re doing these days at the Conservancy.

Rosalind Sagara 24:04
So I’m the neighborhood outreach manager, I work in the advocacy department. And essentially, right now my work is to identify and develop local leaders and to support priority projects that they may want to pursue, such as local landmarks or providing input on community plan updates or other planning documents, particular neighborhood issues that impact historic places. I currently oversee the Legacy Business Initiative, which we launched a few years ago, to raise awareness about our long time businesses in LA County. Especially during the pandemic they’ve really struggled to hold on. You know, we really feel that the City of LA should adopt a legacy business program. And so we’re really hopeful that there’s some momentum to do that. So we’ve been trying to raise the profile of these important legacy businesses. I also manage our community leadership bootcamp, which we launched last year. This is training that we offer to county residents who want to learn how they can get more involved in preserving places in their neighborhoods.

Cindy Olnick 25:33
One of the things that you have worked on is actually recognizing a historic site of collective action itself. That being the Chicano Moratorium.

Rosalind Sagara 25:45
That’s right. It was a project that was existing when I when I came on staff at the Conservancy, it was something that I managed through adoption of our of our National Register nomination. So we submitted a landmark nomination to recognize sites associated with the Chicano Moratorium, in particular sites related to two protests, one in ’69. And then in ’71. And these sites were located in East LA and some in Boyle Heights.

Cindy Olnick 25:48
That was a pretty groundbreaking nomination.

Rosalind Sagara  26:24
It was. I think, the Conservancy was breaking new ground and conceptualizing this type of a project. It was looking at multiple sites that were non-contiguous, but related by a theme, a theme of these important moments in our social history. You know, also over time, there have been some changes to the properties. And so it was also kind of a recognition that these places were important because of cultural significance, more so than architectural significance. But we had to make a case for that. And again, this project took several years. So we had to maintain community support and communication over time, that can be challenging at times, too.

Cindy Olnick 27:13
And, of course, the Chicano Moratorium was protesting the disproportionate numbers of people of color who were dying in Vietnam.

Rosalind Sagara 27:21
And that many of the communities these soldiers were from, were facing a lot of injustice here in the US.

Cindy Olnick 27:30
Right, education, housing, jobs. I mean, you name it, right. All right. Last, but certainly not least, you are also on the board of the national nonprofit, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation, I’m exhausted just saying it,

Rosalind Sagara 27:46
Which is why we use our acronym APIAHiP. We are dedicated to preserving historic places associated with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. We do this through direct advocacy on individual projects, but also on a national level. It’s really about bringing more resources to those efforts, financial resources, and advocating for public and private funding to do this work. And we also develop some public programs. And we hold a biennial conference, which we call the Forum, we have a mapping project that’s called East at Main. And we also monitor threatened sites through an APIA endangered sites watch list.

Cindy Olnick 28:38
Can I just say that that Forum actually inspired one of USC’s current students to go to school. She was in San Francisco, I think that’s where it was, and she was like, yeah, I’ll stop in see what’s going on. And she was so like excited about it, that she was like, Hey, I think these are my people.

Rosalind Sagara 28:55
I was also a participant of an APIAHiP Forum, prior to making a career shift. And so I would say I also was inspired by APIAHiP to do this work. I will say that I am really inspired by our field’s commitment to building on our diversity, equity and inclusion work. I think it’s an important moment in history right now. And I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to reimagine what our profession looks like and who it serves. And I’m excited to be part of that.

Cindy Olnick 29:44
And what does it look like to you?

Rosalind Sagara 29:45
I think we all understand the concept of diversity. We all have different backgrounds, and we want to learn from others who are not like us, and we think that everyone brings a unique perspective to the field. I think we we all understand that but I think where we need to do more is around the concepts of equity and inclusion. I think, with regards to equity, it’s really kind of being honest about who has the power to make decisions in our work, and who’s the most impacted by those decisions that is gonna require sharing power and kind of moving back or moving forward when needed. And I think in terms of inclusion, it’s about creating a stronger sense of belonging for everybody who is part of our work, including the people who don’t consider themselves a heritage conservationist.

Cindy Olnick 30:43
Well, you’re doing that with the boot camp, I assume that the community leaders you’re identifying are in all sorts of areas, right?

Rosalind Sagara 30:51
Yeah, definitely. We are working with people from all different backgrounds. We can provide a lot of technical expertise and share that with folks, including resources and kind of break down processes, but it’s really about encouraging and developing these local leaders to take action. Some of that work has nothing to do with heritage conservation. It has to do with building confidence, identifying problems and solutions. There’s so much that goes into developing effective leaders in heritage conservation. As we recognize more culturally significant sites and sites associated with communities of color, we will observe that there are people who are talking about these places in vastly different ways, then what we traditionally have known

Cindy Olnick 31:51
Rosalind, you are the future. Thank you for all you have done, are doing and will do. And thank you for sharing your time, insight and expertise with us on Save As. my pleasure.

Rosalind Sagara 32:03
My pleasure. Thank you.

Trudi Sandmeier 32:09
Thanks, Cindy. That’s always fun to listen to the journey of one of our alums out there in the real world make it happen. And thanks so much for such a great interview with Rosalind.

Cindy Olnick 32:19
Well, thanks to Rosalind for spending some of her very valuable time with us. Tell you what, I was exhausted just like listening to her talk about all the stuff she’s done.

Trudi Sandmeier 32:29
Well, I think at this point, we all deserve a little bit of a winter break. So we are going to see you our faithful listeners again in the new year.

Cindy Olnick 32:38
Yes, we wish you and yours the happiest and healthiest and safest have holiday seasons. But wait, there’s more. For photos and links from this episode, please go to our website at saveas.place. And please do not miss an episode by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts or on our website. And, you know, probably the best gift you could give this season that you don’t have to wait for in the supply chain is telling a friend about Save As.

Trudi Sandmeier 33:14
Absolutely. And for those of you who believe in New Year’s resolutions, this is your chance. Save As every other week for the year ahead. Put it on your list.

Cindy Olnick 33:26
There will be a quiz.

This episode was produced by the great Willa Seidenberg with a tiny assist from me, Cindy Olnick. Our original theme music is by Steven Conley. Save As is a production of the Heritage Conservation program in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.

Trudi Sandmeier 33:52
Happy New Year everyone!