Ben's Intro
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Wonder Valley Music Festival
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Imagine a dark road careening between mountain ranges... imagine the crazy Joshua Trees, the butts of Jack Rabbits disappearing on both sides of the road. Imagine, out of nowhere, coming up on a crowded bar with a small stage and a chandelier out back, hanging in a tree. Brett Neely went to check out the fourth ever Wonder Valley Music Festival,
which was put on by musician Ben Vaughn put on the fourth ever in April.
Read more about Ben Vaughn and the Wonder Valley Music Festival
Find out more about the The Sibleys
Crossing the Border
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Francisco Garcia and his brother Alex Arvizuin are two participants in the largest mass migration in the history of the world. Francisco and Alex tell the story of crossing the border from Mexico to California as young boys. The migrated to the "other side" to find their mother.
Border Smuggling
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Reporter Scott Carrier interviews a man who once worked as a driver for a coyote, a person who brings Mexican migrants across the border. Sitting in his well-traveled Toyota Tacoma, the driver breaks down the business of smuggling people into the United States.
Water on the Border
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John Hunter says there's a murderer, of sorts, in the Imperial Valley and nobody cares. The killer?
It's the desert bordering Mexico and it's become the illegal entry point into California. It's also
taken the lives of dozens of Mexican migrants. John says saving them comes down to one simple
element, water. Laura Belous interviews John, who is the founder of Water Station, a non-profit group that puts water all over the eastern San Diego and Imperial County deserts.
Lynchings
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The immigration debate is laced with the mythology of the Old West - Migrants coming here to write their own destiny... anti-immigration people warn of "frontier justice" to stop illegal crossings. Ben talks to an artist who traveled up and down the California taking these beautiful photographs of old trees. Ken Gonzales-Day is writing a book about our whole notion of "frontier" or "cowboy justice." The trees he photographs are places where men and sometimes women were hung. Ken tells Ben that California needs to accept its past, which is just better than Alabama, just worse than Arkansas.
See pictures of the
California Lynch Trees project.
Hot Spots
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Notions of justice and race and law enforcement have always been complicated in Southern California - even since before California began. Connie Rice, is an attorney. She's co-chair of the
Advancement Project
and a member of the KPCC board of directors... Connie tells Queena we should look to three areas of Los Angeles to see where our city could be headed. Those areas are Imperial Courts, Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens or what Connie calls "Hot Spots."
LAPD Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger
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Los Angeles Police Department
Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger oversees the South Bureau, which includes some of the hot spots. The Deputy Chief talks to Frank Stolz about how the LAPD is trying to address what is sometimes called "the most violent piece of real estate" in the nation.
Francesca Lia Block
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Francesca Lia Block has written a series of books about a character named Weetsie Bat - they're sort of urban fairy tales about this strangely wonderful family. There are five Weetsie Bat books and now, this summer, there will be a sixth. Ben met Francesca on the Santa Monica Pier by the carousel. They had their fortunes told by that creepy fortune-telling machine and found a quiet place to talk about how they keep from drowning in the face of all the bad news these days.
Song Break: Starfish & Coffee
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From Prince's 1987 album "Sign of the Times"
Kymaerica
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Discover Kymaerica! Ben meets up with Eames Demetrios, who has been putting up plaques commemorating the history of Kymaerica. Among
some of the plaques already installed is one of remembering Krblin Jihn Kabin, a restored temple for a cult that believed all the events of the Bible happened here in Southern California.
Eames is putting up a plaque at Kulver Glade
on June 25, 2005.
