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Are you looking for a new podcast that will make you laugh, learn, and say get.
Yeah, Then tune in to Look At Though Our Radio Season ten Today, Okay.
Look at Our Radio is a radiophonic novella, which is just an extra way of saying a podcast.
Season ten of Look At Thought Our Radio is totally nostalgic. We're diving in with a four part series about the Latinos who shaped pop culture in the early two thousands.
But that's not all.
Season ten is also launching in the wake of LA wildfires and a new Trump presidency. As always, we're leaning into community by conducting critical interviews with people leading the efforts to rebuild LA and fight back against oppression.
Tune in to Look at Our Radio Season ten. Now that's what I call a podcast.
Love with every listen right at your fingertips.
Loga l.
Ola, La Loka Morees. Welcome to season ten of Loka to a Radio. I'm Theosa and I'm Mala. Loka to a Radio is a podcast archiving are present and shifting the culture forward. You're tuning in to Capitolo doos Row twenty four.
Last time on Loca to a Radio. We spoke to Maria Garcia about Selena's impact on the early two thousands.
I do genuinely believe that Selena was sort of like the the beta, like the first sort of like proto artists that birthed what would be later, what would evolve into like what we now know as modern Latinida.
In today's episode of Loca to a Radio, we're going to be talking about the communities of Altadina and Pasadena who are rebuilding in the wake of really devastating wildfires that just took over La at the top of twenty twenty five. And the reason why this is important for us to talk about as Angelino's but b also because THEOSSA and I grew up in the area. I went to high school in Pasadena. We lived in East Pasadena
at the beginning of my life, and Pasadena Altadena. We always had my siblings and I friends, classmates, family, community members who lived up in the hills and whose houses we would visit. Dances were held at people's homes in high school, so we were just like in the community. And I haven't lived in Pasadena and in the San Gabriel Valley for a very long time now, not since like twenty fourteen, but I still love the community and I still consider it to be my community.
Yeah, I love that. It feels like everyone that I've talked to that has had either roots in Alsadina or Pasadena like always considers that home. And for us, in particular with my family, there is such a deep and personal connection to Altadena because when my grandparents immigrated, they immigrated to Texas and then ended up in Altadena, rented, eventually bought a house on Harriet Street in Altadena, and that was the family home until two thousand and three.
And it was because it was the family home, Grandma's house, my Grandpa's house, It was where everybody lived at some point. It was literally the safe haven. Anytime Mathias were going through a divorce, they would go to Grandma's house and Grandma Grandpa would you know, kind of mend, mend the family, mend the heartbreak, take care of the kids. And so that was definitely like such a special place for all
of us. It was where I grew up going and until we moved to Southeast Dele like Altadena, Pasadena was home for us, and my brothers went to high school in Pasadena, my mom went to Blair High School, and we are just felt feel still so rooted in the community, even though we haven't lived there for over twenty years at this point. And so when we heard that the wildfires broke out, everyone in the family was like, what
about Grandma's house? Even though it's not Grandma's house anymore, but it was still like, is her house still at even though it hasn't been ours for so long? And so, like you, I felt like that is still home even though it hasn't been our home for so long. And I think that a lot of people feel that way because if you're not familiar with Altadena, it is a black and brown neighborhood and it was a safe haven for so many people, and I think that's why there's
a lot of grief. In addition to the physical homes being lost, it's like the community that was lost as well.
Oh absolutely, And there's been I think more writing done on this, but that Alta dina being a place where working class black and brown families could buy homes and like back in the day, like in the seventies, you know, and we're able to like own property, own land.
That's what my grandparents brought bought their house in the seventies.
Yeah, in a suburban environment. And something about la that I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about la is folks tend to like really hyper focus on like East Los Angeles South Central as being the locations where people of color live and exist, and we don't always talk about the suburbs as being very sea heavy places and places where people of color for many, many years and for multiple generations have deep roots and entire like like you've said, entire communities. And I think of the
San Gable Valley as being one of those places. Right, Like our suburbs in La County are not necessarily all white suburbs, right, That's just not the reality of the County of Los Angeles, and Altadena has no exceptions. And you actually went out into the field and you went to the community to work being done out there in Pasadena, Altadena, and you conducted an interview. Can you tell us more?
Yeah, So recently I was able to connect with this project, this mutual aid effort called Dina Heels in the city of Pasadena on the historic Colorado Boulevard is the Paseo in Outdoor Mall. If you're local, you probably know what I'm talking about and surrounded by retail stores and restaurants, is Dina Heels, a marketplace and wellness center imagined by Revolve Impact, the Bito Coffee, Colibri Collective, and Homeboy Industries.
Dina Heels is a mutual aid site offering a unique shopping and holistic experience for community members specifically affected by the Eden Canyon fires. In this interview, I speak with Carola Secata and Shieldba Shaw about their mutual aid efforts and what they're doing to help the folks recovering from the wildfires. Here's my interview.
My name is Carola Secada she Ada pronouns. I am director's people of at Revolve Impact with Social Impact Creative Agency, and we are now at the space that we have named Dina Heels. That was an immediate response of a coalition that was built in response to the Eaton fire.
And tell me about the space, Dina Heels. What kind of programming are you doing? Tell me about the space itself. It's multi use, it's very large, walk.
Us through it.
So Dina Heels. It was started as a little spark, so I was also I'm a team member of the Revolved team, but also I was impacted by the fires and lost my home, one of our cars, and all of our possessions, and so I took a couple of weeks off work and then when I came back, my team said, Hey, Corolla, we're actually going to meet.
At this space.
And I came and it was Dina Heels. So our team, in collaboration with Homeboy Industries, the city of Pasadena really came Antipedo Coffee came together to like it was like truly like old school Black Panther mutual aid style, like what are we all going to do? How are we going to show up? And so in working with the Paseo, they gave us two retail spots that had no cost
through April. So one we made a mutual land marketplace with three Well we have a lot of relationships with a lot of values aligned brands and so they were able to donate thousands of clothinges. And across the way is the Wellness Center where we just provide healing centered activities, community building activities like healing circles, sound baths, one on one therapy, no cost of the community for fire impact of people.
How does it feel to be working in this neutual laid effort while also being directly impacted.
It's overwhelming. Number One, the generosity of our community in Altadina. I loved Altadina's the first community where I haven't had to hide any part of my identity. Right, I'm a first gen Peruvian queer mama, and I can be all that in Altadenas. So when this happened, the our put of love was just so overwhelming. And it still is. The generosity of everybody that I've had to really decide. Am I a participant in Dina heels or am I the organizer representing revoll Field?
And how do you choose which god all lives showing up today?
I really think that I have to ground myself and really be honest with myself. Do I need to be held or can I hold? And that's how I decide how my day goes these days.
It's so important. And I want to go back to what you said about mutual aid. Can you define mutual aid for us? And how maybe Revolved is using mutually as an effort to assist the local community.
Yeah, well, mutually comes as just like community members coming together to meet the needs are most vulnerable, right, And ideally, no strings attached, no political transactions, nothing is just it's kind of like a fellowship of the rings. Everybody comes with their own gifts and like revolves the L's and colib recollective. Who is running our mutual aid marketplace comes with that knowledge and that gift of running a storefront.
Who would you say, are the folks that are coming in? Obviously they've been impacted, but if you could maybe give us a profile.
So we've had from families that had six homes, actual structures that lost them all, to a single parent with a child, to today. We had a person that was a musician and had lived in her house for thirty years and lost all her instruments and lives by herself and because of insurance bs was had to live in her car for a couple of weeks because they were writing insurance was putting the wrong name on her chast. So it is really a white spectrum of folks, but it's very much a mare of Altadena.
Yeah, the start of the fires are the onset, and even in the immediate weeks of the aftermath, we saw droves of people volunteering.
We saw a lot of mutual aid, monetary aid, it's been a couple of months. It's been about two months at least since the initial fires started. Do you think people are still showing up the same? Is there still energy? Could as a broader LA community be doing more? What's your temperature on that?
I feel like the intensity of how people show up is the same. I think the numbers might have dwindled a little bit. But also it's funny because now after two months, people are starting to realize and know that Dina Heels is here at this shopping So we're seeing like now in upswing of people. So for example the marketplace, it's just by word of mouth and there's like five hundred people on the list waiting to shop. Our process, coly recollective process is very dignified. So it's you fill
out this form and then you make an appointment. So each family has their own shopping appointment. We welcome them, give them coffee, give them a meal, and they have a shopper that helps them curate the stuff that they need and so so it's just their time, which just from an impacted person who I've been to donation centers where it feels like everybody's just kind of rushing it feels like a Black Friday energy because they feel like they just lost so much and so they feel like
they have to grab quick. But then there's a los sense that your neighbors right next so you also needed to grab stuff, you know. So so yeah, so I think it's it's funny because I think that the key players are coming in for the long term, and so we're starting to see that.
So there's a lot of wellness happening clearly at the wellness space from yoga, and I also know there's healing circles. Can you tell me about some of the healing circles that are taking place here in this space.
Every other Thursday there is a men's healing circle and it's led by Mariela Rochell Signo Lessons and also in partnership with yanc from Hands and Soil, and it's been from what I hear, it's been very fruitful, very healing, very vulnerable space and starting in a couple of weeks the alternate Thursday, we're gonna lead a women's circle like a mother's led circle.
And you mentioned there being very targeted efforts to let the community know that this exists. What are ways that you're letting them know. Is it word of mouth? Is it social? How are you reaching the folks that really need this mutual aid?
That is a continual effort and we're learning every day and so we also have a very diverse So there's the blocks that we're encountering our language right, digital literacy access into a generational issues that elders might not be so equipped to just navigate digitally. So we are really leaning on the community orgs to let us know what is the best way to communicate. Is it a flyer? Is it an in person presentation? Do we also sign it?
We have a partnership with Ultimate. They have promo dodas promotes. Do we use them to let folks know that we're here. So we're using like all grassoms, organizing all the digital media, and every day we learn a little bit more about how we can emphasize this.
It sounds very collaborative, which is the nature of Revolved and they'll do and the partners that y'all have. Do you think that do you feels can be a potential model for mutual late efforts in LA and beyond?
I mean absolutely, I really we're trying to make the case that we need to be here for at least two to three years. That is at the minimum, what this rebuild is going to take. And yes, we're as a revolve, we're trying to capture the model, trying to make a blueprint of this is what it takes. These
are the values that everybody has to agree with. These are the conscious relationship agreements that each org and each partner has to come in and being unapologetic about and also coming in with enough I don't know what I don't know to be able to learn, and that I think when we find people, especially now in the political climate that there's so much distrust even within movements, I think we have to be very clear on those things, on those values so we can make this flow.
And you mentioned that you have this space until March, I'm sorry, until April. The April and you want us. You're making the case that you should be here longer. So what can we expect for the next couple of months. If anyone is listening and in.
The area, you got to sign up to Dina Hills dot com and we have a weekly newsletter of all the events that are going Our partners are now giving us information so we can populate that that newsletter as well, from like legal aid to any healthcare stuff to housing, even renters' rights, whatever you need. We're trying to just compile all the information because there is an access and overwhelmness of.
Go to this source, go to this source.
It's just that itself is overwhelming. So do that also our Instagram, we have stories and we're just uh and our events that are coming up from the protections themselves so they can explain to the folks what they're what they're experiencing. And just a lot more like partners and brands the mutually marketplace. We're getting a lot of tractions in terms of donation from some bomb and do fashion brands and I just keep an eye.
Out, amazing, what do you want people or anyone listening to know, as someone that was impacted, if you could put that hat on for us and let the audience know what they should know and how maybe they can just show up.
That grief is like the ocean, and sometimes it lulls, sometimes it's tsunamis And after two months, barely our shock is wearing off, or adrenaline is wearing off, and grief is barely starting to set in. So to really just remember that advocacy for systems change to make sure that we're made whole is important as well as the healing, the community, building, the proximity, the joy. It needs to be equally as important.
Thank you so much.
If everything else you want, the.
Ship got the radio for president? Look at that radio for president.
Test.
My name is Sheelda shaw A. Working on a fire relief project and this has taken taken on an epic proportion of its own. But so we founded an organization called the Galibi Collective and it is working with Dina Heels to provide a marketplace to provide goods for Bamient members and households that have lost their home. Tell me more about the collective. Yeah, we originally started out the entire organization was really by the seat of our pants.
We saw a need, we filled it, saw another need started feeling that and people felt very called to this mission and we were just we threw up a pseudo name. We just put Eaten Fire Support Roo. You're running it very quickly, just focusing on execution, and over time there were the same ten women twelve women that kept coming
back and there was this beautiful energy. The place would hump and I think that positivity of women working together, inspired by something just coming from all different walks of life joining together and then collective really resonated with us.
And so we started to look at real names, and Glibri felts very appropriate because Galibris and Latin culture represents strength and resilience, especially after trauma or grief, and so seeing one, it's like a symbol of renewal or resurgence, revival, and it's exactly what we were doing, and it felt very attuned to the mission and the women and the energy that we were celebrating. Tell me about the marketplace that you're running and how you got involved with that.
Background is in retail and fashion from a brand perspective, and so I ran I ran called Viana for thirteen years. I was the co founder alongside Carla Gargo, and so she's continued to run the brand, and I, you know, as with the fires on January seventh, felt very called to contribute and I felt like I was uniquely positioned to do certain things. I knew a lot of brand founders I could reach out to that to get donations.
I knew I have a user's center background, so I knew I could ask families what they needed, and what I really we really started with was a lot of people were jumping in for donations, which was incredible, but very few people were stopping to ask the families what would actually be useful or supportive. So we started there with the form and just gathering needs and then sourcing donations.
We started packing care packages out of Finance Intervention program in Lincoln Heights and so we were running a full distribution center making it very easy for volunteers to shop
a pack for families. We're able to do twenty twenty five famals a day at the height of the center, and our whole goal was to really start to get to phase two of this project, which we jokingly call let me choose my own underwear, to really empower our families more so, our whole vision with all that background is to say, we challenge ourselves to think, could we create an experience that gave these families the respect and dag maybe they deserved right these households, to give them
a sense of normalcy that they could actually choose their own items. Try it on, get a coffee right for just a few you know, like a few hours in that day shop and like we used to, right like they used to, And so that's what we did. So we created an entire storefront. We have a full back of house with everything bend to organized. We have a full front of house, the floor. We're offering everything for men's, women's, and child. Who are the types of people that are
coming in and are shopping at the marketplace? Actually, I could give you a very strong demographic profile because we were very intentional, intentional about who we went after in the beginning. And when I say when we went after, I mean who did we want a service from our mission? So we primarily targeted marginalized communities of the Eton fire
only people of color. We went through all the gofundmes, the African American list, the Filipino list, the disabled lists, the LATINX list, and we basically actually even went to the ones that were most underserved. So on the go fundme, for example, I said twenty five percent filled, but it's a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars raise. That was
not necessarily who we were targeting. We were going after the families that only asked for five you know, and had one hundred percent lost everything and didn't have insurance, so we started there and then we partnered with a lot of group some community centers in Outstema directly, and then from there we went word of mouth. So anyone who came to pick up a package, do you have a neighbor who's elderly that hasn't been able to complete afore? Do you know someone else that you want to compete
this for? So it was a very word of my mouth. We potentially did not rely on social media so we could attract the same population and it's been really amazing to see that these people know each other and there they're in each other's neighbors. What is the shopping experience? Like, I know that you have your intake arms and there's appointments, but if you cole walk us through what Clobal shopping
experience looks like. We designed the shopping experience and flow and process to be the most empowering for households when they come. So the first step is to fill out the form. We get all your hushole information. We understand where you're at, what your other needs, so do you Our whole mission, just to back up real quick, is to provide something that's efficient, curated and safe, and the safe for it is why I wanted to highlight that safety for us from the beginning was is it a
suitcase if I deliver it to convention center? Do they have a way to move it? Arount?
Right?
Is it bad to give them new products when they might pick target on their back right? So it was always about creating safety, adding dignity, making it efficient, and making it curated. And so safety to us in this context with the store is to create opportunities for them to shop in a relaxed way. So we don't want it to be too crovid. So once they fill the form, we make sure that we have the sizes for what
they've requested. I don't want them to show up and not have things for them, so we make sure that we have the things to meet their household needs. We run the list every night, so it takes us about an hour an hour and a half to run the list for twenty to twenty five that are coming the next day, So there's two households that are invited for half hour and then when they get there the hot hours. Really for us to control the inflow, there are a lot of day as long as they walk, we have coffee.
They're given a wagon, there's people to pull sizes for them, help them shop for their households. Like there was a man yester was shopping for a family four, but he didn't know what his wife liked. Right, So we help them, We help them with that process. They're encouraged to try on. We have dressing rooms. They some people stay two to three hours. Some people weave in forty fives. Right, So the entire process is to really just give them as
much of a human experience as possible. We have food, we give lots of hugs, We spend time connecting on their stories. So for that reason, it's a little slower, but the day is designed so that the family with the families in mine with the most respective attention. I want to bring up in this word danity. You used it a couple of times to describe the type of work that you're doing and wanting.
To give family dignity they deserve. How would you define dignity in this context and why maybe that's something we should consider when where maybe volunteering or want to connect with an organization that's doing work and having dignity at top of mind.
Yeah, it's the it is and I'm glad you picked up am. That is the real central driving value of all of this, the volunteer effort, the outpouring of donations, the outpouring of money and love in Los Angeles has been unreal. Like I've heard from friends who have said they thought La didn't have a soul. Their transplants from New York and they are blown away and they take back their words, like they understand what Los Angeles is about because of how the community has come together. That said,
people don't always know how to direct that love. And so what we've seen pop up are a lot of experiences that require family members to drive places when they don't have time, to wait at super long lines to enter, to not have the items that they need to have to sift through bins of used clothing, and so everything in the store is brand new, and we ensure that they don't have to wait when they get here. Those
kinds of things really give them that dignity back. And the main thing that we do that we spend hundreds of hours doing, like hundreds of hours, is it takes a lot of work to revenue tail right. And so in these donation center it's an event or a pop up where they're doing it for three days, one day, six hours. The packing, sorting, displaying, you're doing the best you can. You're putting it in bins. You're kind of sorting it enough. Oh extra small, small can go together.
We can put three decks and fours and five excel in one bin. Not really going to resonate when you're shopping. When you're shopping in a store, you know where your size is. It's all presented to you. So we've spent extra time most of the time again, hours and hours to make sure it's that kind of shopping experience. Two months ago. They never would have even imagined where they were, so to give them any kind of dignified shopping experience,
that's where the dignity is. It's in those little details that people don't even realize that their things are hung on a rack, there's a size label, right, there's a nice white bin in which it's displayed. It's on a shelf. Right. They don't have to reach down and go through something on the floor, those kinds of things. It's those little details.
I'm sure there's also families like you mentioned that never could have imagined that this is what would have happened, and there's so much vulnerability in that there's only really asking for help. And what are the kind of feedback You've been getting from members of the community that I've come by and gone through the shopping experience. The feedback has been real. Like they say, it's the first time
they felt normal. It's the it's like a very human experience that it you know, for a few hours of the day. It was what brought them joy that they were able to just they felt like themselves again. That's why we do it, that's why we pour I mean on paper, you know, this is a lot of people are playing a numbers game, right on paper. We have already serviced over three hundred families roughly at five to six members per HOUSELD. Right, so that's you know, close
to fifteen hundred people roughly. I'm not counting that to that level. But we gave fifteen hundred people I dignified shopping experience, do you know what I mean? And that's that took hundreds and thousands of hours to produce.
Right.
We put up a store in one week and it took so many hands on deck to do it right. And in partnership with community and so I think that's the part that I want people to really walk away with. It's in those little things that make something takes it from a Okay I helped to like I serviced.
Talk about that.
What's the difference between helping and being of service?
We've seen we've been calling it kind of in the community. It's doctor astrod Hager. Violence intervention programs use these words that her father used to tell her when she was little, about this concept of cheap grace. And it's where you're kind of just you're sending a few dollars, you're asking people, oh, I checked in with someone so, and look, I think that any grace in the situation is appreciated. But there's something difference between being in service to someone versus just helping.
And to me, a lot of the help I've seen majority has been cheap grace, a lot of words. You know, a little bit of volunteer time here and there, which all of it is necessary to need that stuff, but to really help build back the whole community, you need to be in service, and you need to sit with them and you need to hold their hand. And what we tell them all the time is that we cannot
bring back their home. We cannot bring back their memories, We cannot take away this streak, but for a brief moment, we can walk alongside them and be in service. And I'm gonna help share that.
For more information about Dina Heels, head to Dinahels dot com. Also, if you'd like to contribute directly to carolaz Gofundmes she and her family rebuilt, We're going to link that in the show notes. Thank you for listening.
I See Those.
Look At Radio is executive produced by VIOSFM and Mala Munio.
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