UCLA researchers and student filmmakers have been working for over a year to focus their lenses on inequality in Los Angeles. Today and Friday, they will showcase their findings during a two-day symposium on campus.
The collaboration is part of an effort to publicize problems unique to Los Angeles and reach out to those who can take actions to solve them, said Abel Valenzuela, professor of Chicana/o studies and urban planning.
“The first and most important audience to reach is the UCLA community – from students to faculty and administrators,” Valenzuela said, adding that the symposium would also target both local and federal officials.
Titled “Dreams Deferred, Denied, Realized: Confronting Inequality in Los Angeles and Beyond,” the symposium will discuss topics such as immigrant workers, the L.A. school district and the UCLA admissions policy.
Valenzuela said he will make a presentation on inequality in employment for immigrants in Los Angeles.
For more than 10 years he has been researching L.A. day laborers, who wait under freeway overpasses and street corners for their jobs.
Valenzuela said he sees the symposium as the culmination of efforts to bring faculty research from across campus together for collaboration.
Sociology Professor Ruth Milkman plans to make a presentation on the immigration protests that occurred last spring in response to a stricter immigration law that was moving through Congress at the time, as well as the future of the debate over immigration.
Faculty contributing to the symposium come from several areas on campus, including the UCLA School of Public Affairs, the Social Sciences Division within the UCLA College, UCLA School of Public Health, the UCLA Department of Social Sciences and the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
The symposium will also showcase student films about inequality.
UCLA students Babatunde Akinloye, Trashon Shallowhorn and alumnus Sean Murphy will screen a film they produced last spring called “Access Granted? Admissions Crisis. Here. Now. UCLA.” The film addresses admission policies and ethnic representation at UCLA.
The goal of their media company Str8UpNDown, which produced the film, is to take research and present it so it is more accessible to people who can take action, Murphy said.
“We’re trying to visualize research,” said Murphy, who graduated this spring but is still part of the trio’s media company.
The UCLA alumnus hopes his film inspires more student action.
Since the film’s production, UCLA has changed its admission policies to be more holistic, in hopes of being more equitable to students with disadvantaged backgrounds.
But even so, Murphy said he would like to see more effort on the part of UCLA to address the falling numbers of underrepresented minorities admits.
“I don’t think (UCLA) is using all its resources,” Murphy said. “People need to be more united to take care of these problems.”
Akinloye spoke about the ailing state of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which he attended for high school.
This summer, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation giving Mayor Villaraigosa an unprecedented amount of power to preside over LAUSD, which has struggled to improve test scores and graduation rates. Villaraigosa now has the power to appoint the superintendent and fire employees and directly manage three high schools, including the elementary and middle schools that feed into them.
Akinloye said there is a need for the district and UCLA to collaborate more on these issues.
“I went to L.A. Unified, which is close to UCLA, but I don’t feel students felt that (connection) to it,” Akinloye said. “It’s not just on UCLA to improve things, but in order for things to change, I think UCLA needs to be at the helm of that effort.”