who is Angela Flores?
Early Life
Angela Flores grew up in a politically conscious home in El Sereno and later South Pasadena learning the value of education and hardwork from her second generation parents. Angela recalled, “Growing up in a socialist family many people would refer to us as the red diaper babies, you are in this radicalized, political family and you are aware of your surroundings and of a lot of the social injustices that are happening throughout LA.” Angela was born in Monterey Park and then her family moved to a beautiful craftsman home on Navarro Street in El Sereno. She has two older sisters and one younger sister and brother. Their parents had full-time jobs, so they could not always be there for them, which taught Angela responsibilities like how to make dinner, do her homework on her own, and there were times when they had to walk to school in the early morning alone she remembered, “We were just little babies… we were latchkey kids… we had keys to the house.” Her family lived comfortably in El Sereno, and eventually when Angela was 11 years old they moved to nearby South Pasadena to rent a home from Caltrans. Angela’s family felt fortunate to live within a stable income household and her parents instilled in her that she should always give back to others, be critical, and ask questions.
Early School Years
Although Angela’s parents were not devout Catholics, she went to All Saints Catholic School during her elementary school years. Her father was concerned about the connections between the Catholic religion and colonialism and violence towards people of color, but it was her mother who felt they were in a low-income area and she wanted to have her kids receive the best education possible, so they should compromise. By the time she was ready for middle school Angela’s family had moved to South Pasadena, so she attended South Pasadena Middle School and had a great experience although she stated, “It was definitely a culture shock moving from El Sereno to South Pasadena… I was happy we had this new start, but also I was very resistant in trying to build relations with kids who were different from me.”
There was a very small population of Latino students in South Pasadena Middle and High School. At this time Angela also developed a deep appreciation for the arts, often with influences from her older siblings, but it was her younger sister who Angela stated, “We were like twins… we had the same friends, we went to the same school, we were always looking out for one another.” Eventually, Angela began to feel suffocated by the lack of diversity and representation of Latino and Chicano culture at school and in the media. Her mother decided to enroll her in Lincoln Heights High School in the middle of her Freshman year. “To have to go from an all white space to an all brown one was intimidating, challenging and humbling,” Angela stated, “there were so many subcultures at Lincoln Heights High School it was overwhelming and I gravitated naturally with the punks and goths.” She had an exhausting commute to school and after a while school was not so intimidating anymore as she remembered, “It was like all the brown kids needed to survive, we all did, everyone was trying to survive the training grounds of capitalism… We have these structures and systems of hierarchy.” Even at this age Angela was someone who questioned authority and society. Her mother also had decided to go back to school and while at USC she would bring her studies home and talk to her children about what she was learning. Her mother instilled a sense of value in education and staying involved and emphasized the importance of being aware of the things that are happening in your local community as well. Even though Angela and her sister were mirror images of one another, the two still had their own pathway. Angela leaned more into the artistic and music culture, whereas her sister was more involved in street culture. At one time her father took her sister back to Mexico to show her another life in an effort to open her eyes and bring a new perspective. Even today, Angela mentioned she has always been very close to her sister, and that she is like a second mom to her sister’s four children. “They call me nina, I am their nina…”
High School and College Experiences
Even though things were going better for her at Lincoln, Angela’s heart was set on going to LACHSA, a local performing arts high school. She auditioned for the theater program and was accepted there for her sophomore, junior and senior years of high school. LACHSA is on the campus of Cal State LA and is more specifically located in El Sereno. Many El Sereno kids did not know that they had this incredible academic resource in their neighborhood with arts accessible to them. At the time Angela attended LACHSA it was predominantly a white student population. In order to create solidarity with other Latino and Chicano students Angela began organizing alongside other students attending neighboring high schools to create a MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) club at LACHSA to provide a space where they could talk about culture. She was very proud that it had the potential to make an impact, but realized, “It’s good to be proud of your culture and your heritage, but you don’t want it to be so narrow, nationalistic… It’s just about Chicanos… It’s just about Mexicanos… No, there are other oppressed people out there in the world and we need to make sure that we are in solidarity with them.” Angela understood the value of being inclusive when organizing.
Angela started her college education at Pasadena City College taking an array of courses that complemented the performing/visual arts and social sciences. She had also started working as a Teacher’s Assistant at a community-based charter school in El Sereno called Semillas de Pueblo. Angela continued her course studies at East Los Angeles Community College and Los Angeles Community College, eventually transferring to CSUN to study screenwriting and film. Throughout her college career Angela maintained a connection to El Sereno as she helped to build up the community organization The Eastside Café.
Community Organizer and Housing Rights Activist
Angela and her family have been Caltrans or the California Department of Transportation tenants for the last 30 years. In the South Pasadena, El Sereno, and Pasadena neighborhoods there are hundreds of homes that were eminent domained decades ago to extend the 710 freeway system. This freeway extension is never going to be built, and while some of the homes have been rented out for decades, others have remained completely empty and boarded up, even in these desperate times of housing shortages and a rising unhoused community. Unfortunately, Caltrans, whose function is transportation, has no business owning houses and has been ill-equipped over these decades to be a landlord and in reality has been a slumlord with little to no regard for their tenants. As the Flores family began to connect with neighbors in similar situations, Angela understood that there was no one to advocate for them as tenants. The Eastside collective was natural for her because she was able to create something starting with having pláticas/discussions in their living room with her dad and a cohort of students, artists, teachers, and Caltrans tenants who really wanted to see a different community. These meetings continued for a whole year and they thought, “What we have to do is a mobile collective and figure out how that could be applied in El Sereno, what we need to do to take care of each other and that we are able to create an awareness and a culture of community care and empathy.” They went to different cultural events to talk to folks about what was going on, “When you live in poverty you know the injustices, the systemic injustices that are not designed for us.” The group’s idea was to provide classes and alternative education, even though they had limited resources in their community, they decided to start in academia and the arts.
Angela started teaching jarocho, and it turned out she was a good teacher and taught for around 10 years while she helped develop the infrastructure of the Eastside Cáfe, which has become a community organizing headquarters and collective for the El Sereno and adjacent South Pasadena area. Angela, along with many other helping hands have worked tirelessly to bring performance arts and cultural collectives, groups of like-minded individuals who work on different projects for the community, and cooperativas to the Eastside Cáfe. The El Sereno Garden is just one branch of the Eastside Cáfe along with the El Sereno community food fridge that was launched during the pandemic, a land trust, and the United Caltrans Tenants’ movement. The world that we live in today is a product of colonialism, however Angela is working with like-minded allies in the community to help create an alternative narrative, one that is more inclusive and community-based.
Accomplishments in the Housing Crisis
Angela is immensely proud of her involvement and participation with the Reclaiming our Homes efforts. This movement to reclaim Caltrans' empty homes began as the housing crisis in Los Angeles became exponentially worse, yet Caltrans continues to leave hundreds of livable homes empty in the county. There has been an intergenerational resistance and organizing movement around the housing crisis and the reclaimers are setting the example of new alternatives for housing. She voiced, “It not only sent a message out into the world globally about the rising homeless crisis and housing insecurity, but it exposed to the larger public the injustices that Caltrans had inflicted on its tenants, and we need to hold them accountable. For too long tenants have felt that they have had no one to hold accountable.” Angela continues to fight the good fight and is currently one of three plaintiffs trying to sue Caltrans on adjusted inflation to ensure they are not exploiting renters, and holding Caltrans accountable to the language in the Roberti Bill for the sale of the homes the transportation department controls. The Eastside Cáfe continues to be a volunteer-run space that is the center of this fight, but it is beyond volunteerism and sweat equity Angela expressed, “It is like you treat this place as if it is your second home… You want to make it look nice… You want to make it look welcoming for the community… What do we have to do to build it up and make it look like it’s accommodating for all ages and all people of all different types of backgrounds…. People power and that we need to believe in each other, and we need to believe that we will rise up as a people, we are stronger when we are together.”
consejos/advice for the next generation of Latinas & Youth
“It warms my heart to see young women rise up against the patriarchy. Be loud, take up space. Be unapologetic in your questioning and I would just say if you ever feel silenced, ask yourself who is in the room that is making you feel silenced and why do you feel like you need to be in the room with them… You know? Be around the people that are always going to support and that you are going to feel good around and definitely speak up. Two identities that we have been historically, suppressed and oppressed. Speak out against it, know your value and know that they are lucky to even have you around them.”
