South Central, Los Angeles, CA–Protest began to spring up around the U.S last week against state sanctioned stay at home orders enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Los Angeles saw similar anti coronavirus protest in downtown Los Angeles.
Republican candidate, veteran and South Central native Joe Collins discussed with me in a sit down interview his decisions to organize the protest and his thoughts on the stay at home orders enforced in L.A.
Collins dislikes the fact that Governor Gavin Newsom announced a relief package granting millions to undocumented workers.
He feels this aid should go directly to the inner city communities of Los Angeles, who also desperately need the money to survive this coronavirus pandemic.
“My thing is, California is shut down, Los Angeles is shut down, but people in the inner cities are still left hanging. We live in the most underserved communities in southern California. When you shut down the economy where people can’t work and they need to work to pay their bills in order to take of their children, what are they supposed to do? Especially our senior citizens,” said Collins
Collins also touched on his decisions to run against a long-time political leader of South Central, Maxine Waters. Collins says that Waters has been ineffective in her leadership style and he would like to see her out of office.
“Talking trash doesn’t pay the bills,” Collins expressed. “Talking trash is not gonna put your kids through school or bring good jobs back here. It sounds good. But at the end of the day how productive is it if we still have our run down city?”
Waters currently serves the 43rd District in the U.S House of Representatives, and has represented communities in South Central and Watts since the early 90’s.
“I joined the Navy in 2004 and I’m retired. I could have moved anywhere but I came back to south L.A. I see the same conditions–even worse–than back then,” Collins detailed.
“We still have gangs, we still have a lot of crime, We don’t even have great jobs. McDonald’s and Security is not a job, you can’t retire off that. Poverty rates still high. The only difference is we have more homelessness now, than back then.”
Collins shares his decisions to join the Republican Party, as well as the blind loyalty of African-American’s to the Democratic Party and the need for change.
1 Comment
I don’t agree with everything he said, just like I don’t agree with everything the Democratic Party says but some good points were made. Still skeptical of his beliefs and view points but it was good to hear that he and others are offering free help to the community around financial literacy.