LASA Learns Baseball On April 25th, we met downtown at the Los Angeles Public Library to start our day.  Maddie Resch, one of our interns from Occidental College, started us off with a superb overview of Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles history.  Neighborhood, controversial site of public housing plans, eventual home to the Los Angeles Dodgers (and, briefly, the Angels) …

On March 21, we met downtown at the Los Angeles Public Library.  We started things off with a wonderful presentation about Food Forward (foodward.org) given by our very own Occidental intern Lillian Krovoza.  It was a terrific introduction to a grassroots organization which harvests fruit and vegetables from across greater Los Angeles and gets them out to the neediest in …

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank Two cans of vegetables. One can of fruit. A jar of peanut butter. A bag of rice. Cereal, milk, and juice. A foil pack of beef and one of chicken. All placed in two bags, then the bags go into red or blue bins. The bins get stacked six deep, five high, on pallets. …

LASA Learns Transit! On the 10th of January, we started the New Year learning about transit.  How do people get around the vastness of the LA metropolis?  How do decisions about transit, transit systems, and the future get made? How are the huge infrastructural projects, like light rail and the colored lines of Metro’s trains, paid for? As usual, we …

On Saturday, November 15, LASA participants spent a fascinating day talking about law enforcement.   We were incredibly fortunate to begin the day at the Los Angeles Public Library with Robert Saltzman, one of five members of the Los Angeles Police Commission.  Commissioner Saltzman provided LASA participants with a general overview of the LAPD, emphasizing the many changes that have taken …

On October 18th, we met at the usual time at The Huntington, and then divided our morning into three sections.  First up was Rick Wartzman, the Executive Director of the Drucker Institute.  Rick, the former head of the Business section of the Los Angeles Times and now Executive Director of the Drucker Institute, took us through the ins and outs …

  For our September session of LASA, we gathered first at The Huntington, where we reacquainted ourselves with one another, introduced some new students and interns to the group, and reviewed our summer institute and its themes.  We then took our LASA bus over to the studios of Southern California Public Radio in Pasadena, where we were greeted by our …

We are thrilled to begin a new year with a new cohort of great LASA students.  We began just this past week with our intensive summer workshop, and we are excited to share the highlights with you. On Monday, August 4th, we began at The Huntington by meeting and introducing one another.  LASA students worked on “Los Angeles As We …

LASA was recently featured on USC News – Getting the big picture of the big city

May 17th at LACMA We had a very good last day on Saturday, May 17th, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Education docent Jen Reid took us around on an informative tour of a few installations: we saw Metropolis and talked about what it made us think about, past and present.  It was especially interesting to be in …