Taking Back the Boulevard by Jan Lin

Author:Jan Lin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press

We saw the writing on the wall: rampant development was finally coming into this little Arcadian community that we all cherished.… At seven o’clock the next morning I got a phone call from Kathleen Aberman, a woman I had met the night before who would later become my surrogate mother. “They’re tearing down the buildings!” she said, “Can you come by and help me stop them? I’m going down there right now.” I went down to the site immediately, and half the buildings were already being demolished. I got really angry. Kathleen, this very fashionable, gutsy lady who had parked her new Jaguar right next to the trash truck so that debris was falling all over it, was up on the roof of this building, getting arrested. (Fellows 2005: 153)

Aberman’s brave act was highly personal as it wasn’t an organized collective action of TERA, but she proved to be inspiring figure to many, such as Samudio, who were galvanized by the Schumacher Building demolition to devote themselves in the future to preservation and the defense of the community against overzealous land development.

Around this time, TERA was officially formed by a group that included Kathleen Aberman (TERA’s first president), Linda Allen (owner of Heart and Home, a folk art and retail store), and Roe Muzingo (of Roe’s Corner, a dress retailer). Allen and Muzingo had both been displaced from the Johnson Schumacher Building. According to Linda Allen, TERA was formed to establish an organization that could address the lack of land-use planning in Eagle Rock that had resulted in the building’s demolition. Nadine Oddo, a Wells Fargo bank manager, was supportive. So was Howell Ellerman, legal counsel at Occidental College during the tenure of president John Slaughter. Frank Parello, a Los Angeles city planner, was also an advocate.

Kathleen Long, like Jeffrey Samudio, recalls being inspired to join TERA through the courage of Kathleen Aberman that she read about in a front-page feature of the local Boulevard Sentinel. She describes the growth of TERA as “like a hologram around Kathleen Aberman”:

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