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 Bus Tour Highlights Health and Food Crisis in East L.A. On a community bus tour through East Los Angeles, faith leaders, health care providers, educators, students, and residents from throughout the city called upon elected officials to adopt a city-wide policy to address the grocery divide between communities in Los Angeles. The tour—organized by the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores—featured stops at a local high school, a health center, a church and the site of a former major supermarket. The market was the only one of its kind in the community before it closed its doors over a year ago, displacing workers and leaving residents with few shopping options. “This is truly a crisis for those of us who live here not to have access to good food and other basic necessities. We work hard to support our families, and we want the best for them like anyone else wants for their family,” said Olga Peres, a 30-year resident of Ramona Gardens Housing Project. The tour is part of a LAANE-led effort to pass a city policy that would address the lack of quality grocery stores in low income communities and the deteriorating quality of jobs in some segments of the industry. In 2008, A Blue Ribbon Commission, convened by the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores, released a report urging L.A. city leaders to take the lead in remedying a growing gap in the grocery industry’s treatment of underserved and affluent communities. In spite of repeated efforts to expand access to good grocery options for underserved parts of the city, whole swaths of the Los Angeles are “food deserts,” the report found. Even in those low-income communities where major chains have opened, the quality of food and service is inferior to what is offered in stores in more affluent neighborhoods, the report showed. “Children in low-income, ‘food desert’ communities don’t have enough healthy food options – and it’s hurting them in a very dramatic way,” Dr. Cheryl Resnik of the USC Fit Families Program told participants in the tour. Many of the children who receive care in her program suffer from—or are at high risk for—diabetes and other chronic diet-related conditions. Because most stores in “food desert” communities of East L.A. are independently owned and non-union, their workers are paid less and receive less training than those who work in West Los Angeles. “Grocery workers in East L.A. earn an average of $7,000 less per year than grocery workers at stores in West. L.A.,” said LAANE’s Elliott Petty, director of the Health Grocery Stores Project, citing an analysis of state payroll data. “This is a wage disparity that we see in East Los Angeles, South Los Angeles and the Northeast Valley. Parts of the city have access to good jobs and good food, and other parts of the city are being left behind.” To learn more about the Healthy Grocery Stores project, please visit, http://laane.org/projects/current-projects/healty-grocery-stores Watch A Video About the Tour: |
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