LAANE’s latest board member is one of its founders: researcher and author Manuel Pastor.

LAANE’s newest board member, Manuel Pastor, is also one of the organization’s founders. In the early 1990s, Pastor worked with LAANE’s Executive Director Madeline Janis and Board President Maria Elena Durazo to launch the organization that would become LAANE. Now, 11 years and some 70 articles and 5 books later, Pastor has returned to Los Angeles from UC Santa Cruz, where he served as Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and co-director of the Center for Tolerance, Justice and Community.

Pastor is thrilled to be back in Los Angeles and has a full research agenda. An economist by training, he is joining the University of Southern California’s Geography Department and launching the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, a research initiative, which will be housed at the Center for Sustainable Cities.

Born to Cuban immigrant parents, Pastor has broad interests—from the racial and environmental politics of post-Katrina New Orleans to the impact of civil war on the economy of El Salvador. His most recent book, co-authored with Chris Benner and Laura Leete, is entitled Staircases or Treadmills: Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy and examines the role that temp agencies, union hiring halls, and community-based organizations play in an environment of increasing economic insecurity.

What does returning to Los Angeles mean for your future research plans?

Part of the reason I came back to L.A. is that this is where it’s all coming together. It’s a place where there is tremendous political movement, great research topics, and it fits the kind of work I’ve done—which is to align university research with community-based organizations and find what’ll make a useful contribution.

How do you ensure that your research passes academic muster and is still accessible to people who may not easily grasp the vocabulary of the social sciences?

You don’t have to lower the level of the ideas—though you may have to change the language some. I’ve had the experience of giving a talk to professionals, then giving the same talk to communities, some of whom have English as a second language. Clear explanation is a challenge all of us in research should take up, regardless of audience. But first and foremost, remember—people are not dumb. They know the issues, the problems, and many of the solutions.

Along that line, you talk about the need for a “democratic conversation” among different stakeholders of a community. What does that mean?

We have a very polarized politics in the U.S., and that tends to feed on itself. The problem is not, for example, that we always have a “good” community and an “evil” developer—or a good developer and an evil mass of ruffians opposing business. Usually you have two sets of interests; sometimes they diverge and sometimes they overlap.

Someone said recently, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” I think that’s a wonderful phrase. A democratic conversation is one where you talk with seriousness, honesty, and try not to demonize the folks on the other side. That applies a lot to my work about cities and suburbs; instead of pitting the two against one another, the challenge is to find common interests.

Your research on Katrina refers to the “legacy of distrust” due to New Orleans’ politics. Do we have a legacy of distrust here in Los Angeles?

We’ve had a historically anti-union town. L.A. also has a history of significant racial discrimination and neglect. Development used to be just downtown-oriented with few benefits to working communities. If you look at distribution of environmental toxics, these literally were placed in poor communities. If you look at the geography of L.A., you see that new communities were created to separate themselves from poor communities. This leads to distrust. Still we are faced with the question, how are labor and government going to work out the future of a new Los Angeles together?

But labor is clearly on the table now—and smart business leaders are recognizing this. You can no longer ignore that communities are aware and are strong. Southern California’s economic future depends on getting those neglected regions going—labor needs it, business needs it. So the real task is making sure that neighborhoods are assured that the issues of air pollution are addressed; that policy makers will take up the challenges of the downtown building boom and gentrification. We have had a development strategy in the past that has created a distrust of development now. Still, everyone needs development.

What’s changed the most in L.A. since you’ve
been gone?

The real arc is comparing 1992 to today. In 1992 deep recession and the civil unrest were dominant forces in Los Angeles. But out of the darkness, of that despair, has grown a series of groups that have made such a difference. We’ve seen LAANE come into being and the living wage ordinance pass. Environmental groups and transit justice have come to the fore. You now see a flowering of progressive thought and action here.

The civil unrest of 1992 revealed the inequities of Los Angeles. It really peeled the onion, so to speak. And it made progressives realize: "If you’ve got that much anger and you can’t get a social movement out of it, there’s really something wrong with you." So there was a lot of rethinking, and LAANE and many other organizations began to reframe the message, developing a set of strategies to take the lead and create the opportunity to forge social justice.

I’ve always loved LAANE as an organization and simply as a name. Say it and you’ve captured the imagination—we’re going to try to embrace the new economy and insist that equity is part of the cutting edge. I think that embrace helped create space for new politics—and eventually a new mayor. The arc I’ve seen is that political arc. It feels great to come home just as progressives are coming to the policy table—and not just finding a seat but setting the agenda.