Radio Abundance LA: Safe Streets with Jonathan Hale

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: 

Hello, my name is Zennon Ulyate-Crow. I'm here with Radio Abundance, live from Los Angeles, California!

I'm here with Jonathan Hale. Jonathan, want to introduce yourself and what you did for our community?

Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:

Yeah! Hey, how's it going? My name's Jonathan, and what I did was I organized a group of neighbors. We painted a set of crosswalks here at Stoner Park, and we got the city to remove them. Then, the city repainted them. We took advantage of the backlash from them getting removed to force the city to repaint the crosswalks and make other improvements around the park, which we're really excited about.

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: 

Can you tell me more about how these crosswalks came to be?

Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:

Yeah! So, when we started out, I got together a group of my friends and neighbors, and we painted crosswalks at the corner of Stoner Park. We figured that crosswalks near a park and near schools and near daycare should be the default, especially with Summer Camp right around the corner. This was at the start of the summer when we painted these.

So, we decided we were going to paint crosswalks. We knew that there was no, quote unquote, 'right' way to do it. So, we did our best, and I don't think a lot of people noticed at first. But then The West Side Current, a local paper, published a story about the crosswalks, and then that led to the city removing them.

We took advantage of the fact that the city removed them and the backlash that they've generated to call for the city to repaint the crosswalks and make improvements to the park, which they did.

So, you can see the new city-painted official crosswalks are behind me.

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: 

Tell me more about why this crosswalk was so important for the community?

Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:

Yeah, I think it's important, well, because it's a park, and I go here a lot. I know there's always a lot of kids here, but, more importantly than that, I think this represents the city saying, "okay, it's time to stop 'letting the perfect be the enemy of the good' and actually get stuff done," which they did! The city replaced this crosswalk within a week of it getting removed And that was because of the backlash and because our neighbors reached out and pressed the city to get this done.

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: 

Why do you think it took the city so long to install a crosswalk right next to a park where kids play every single day?

Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:

I think the city's worried about the liability risk, and, frankly, I don't think there's a lot of willpower to get basic quality of life improvements done. Too often, I think we say, "it is what it is," or "that's just the way things are," and we say that as if it were the solution and not the problem itself. And, I think, hopefully this sheds some light on the fact that this is the problem and we need to change the status quo.

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: 

You mentioned that there's one other thing nearby that is another example of the failure of LA city governance to get things done. You want to talk about that a little bit more?

Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:

Yeah, for sure. Well, we're actually a couple houses down from 1747 Stoner, which is the site of an ED-1 project that's 100% Affordable Housing and that gets around parking requirements because it's affordable. It's non-subsidized Affordable Housing. And there's so much community resistance to this Affordable Housing and round after round of community input and meetings that we don't need because people's lives are at stake.

Just like here with the crosswalks, people's lives are at stake if we don't make these improvements. Somebody will get hurt. With housing, people's lives are at stake because, if we don't build housing, people will become homeless and people will struggle to pay their rent.

And so, I think this is just an example of how we need to get things done across the board because the stakes are high and we need to stop waffling about this stuff.

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: 

What's next for the crosswalk movement?

Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:

Yeah, for sure. Well, I guess, for starters, I'm not really affiliated with an organization. I get help from The Crosswalk Collective. They're an amazing group that does work mostly in Hollywood and Mid-City. But, I think the point of this is that we need to cultivate this culture of civic engagement and community-building, and we need to stop pretending like this is somebody else's problem. It's our problem. It's all of our problem.

So, the thing that's next is, this Sunday, we're going to be painting crosswalks in Venice and then going to CicLAvia, and, the city has agreed to a meeting where we're going to talk about infrastructure improvements and practical things that we can do to speed up our bureaucratic processes and get stuff done. Which I'm excited about.

But, in the meantime, we'll keep painting crosswalks. We'll keep doing guerilla urbanism until the city actually demonstrates it's serious about getting stuff done.

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