The Need For Racial Equality Hits the L.Á. Literary Community
By Brian Dunlap
The United States is now in the midst of its strongest push for racial equality since the Civil Rights era. Civil unity and protests sprung up instantly after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police last month in Minneapolis. The calls for police reform have been loud and wide, including calls for justice for Breonna Taylor who was killed by Louisville police as she slept.
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The National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. (NBPF), a not-for-profit organization founded in 2016, has selected Rich Ferguson to serve as the State of California Beat Poet Laureate for a two-year term from Sept. 2020 to Sept. 2022.
During this time of social unrest, the country visibly upset over the continued killing of innocent black men and wemen at the hands of police, the Los Angeles Poet Society has issued a submissions call for social justice poems. On Facebook they announced:
For Asain/Pacific American Heritage Month, Los Āngeles Literature is recommending books about Asian L.Á. written by Asians and books written by Asian Angeleños. This history of the city’s Asian American literature extends at least as far back as the 1920s, as historian Valerie J. Matsumoto chronicles in the chapter “Sounding the Dawn Bell: Developing Nisei Voices” from her book City Girls. 
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We write as a coalition of Los Angeles-based literary arts organizations and allies committed to supporting this city’s writers and literary professionals struggling amid the COVID-19 epidemic. We support the prioritization of health and safety measures until the crisis subsides, but request that you include writers and the literary community in forthcoming funding decisions related to recovery from the pandemic, recognizing the essential cultural and economic role they play in our city.
The first poem in Anatalia Vallez’s “the most spectacular mistake” is called “bond,” and it’s about honoring the generations of Mexican women who came before her.
Without Lewis MacAdams, an avowed poet, Los Angeles might have completely forgotten the river that birthed the city. “There would not be a movement to save or restore the L.A. river without him,” said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. “He was able to provide some romance, some poetry, some vision that you didn’t see.”
There are many independent bookstores throughout Southern California. 51 by my last count. From Fullerton to Sylmar to Venice to Boyle Heights to Leimert Park and Pomona and everywhere in-between. They all need our support.
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