A recent chat with Santa Monica’s youngest and most controversial elected official began with a personal touch one might not have expected from a brazen politico.
However, Oscar de la Torre, 34 — school board member and director of the Pico Youth & Family Center — began to share the story of his life not with a tirade against economic and social injustice — a topic he’s more than willing to discuss — but a driving tour through the neighborhood where he grew up, on the eastside of town.
Some might even say Pico’s most outspoken advocate is coming of age.
He certainly would. Recently married to his wife, Maria, and due for a son in April, de la Torre says becoming a family man is adding a personal dimension to his life, convincing him more than ever that his commitment to struggling youth is the right path for him.
Ironically, perhaps, his tour started at Woodlawn Cemetery.
“For me, Woodlawn is an interesting place,” he said. “For a lot of people it’s just a cemetery, but for me it used to be a park.
“When we were kids we played hide-and-go-seek here, games like that.”
De la Torre noted the graffiti on a nearby fence. For better or worse, it seems youth still visit the home of the dead.
“There was a large population of Japanese living in Santa Monica who were sent to a concentration camp during World War II,” de la Torre said, pointing to a tall monument outside his car window, dated 1959.
“Before the Japanese left, they installed this memorial,” he said, and read the inscription. “‘In memory of Japanese ancestors.’
“So here’s an important part of our history in the Pico neighborhood that few people know about.”
De la Torre said the Pico neighborhood has been the historical heart of Santa Monica’s cultural and ethnic diversity.
It’s also a tradition he hopes continues in the future. However, the Pico neighborhood, like much of Santa Monica, is becoming increasingly gentrified. Small homes are selling for $700,000 and a lot of old-time residents — many African American and Latino — are leaving the city in search of more inexpensive living.
“I hope the fate of the Japanese community that left long ago won’t be the same for Latino and African American communities, which, unfortunately, we’re seeing being dislocated,” de la Torre said. “Once these people are gone, I doubt they will ever be able to afford to come back to Santa Monica.
“One of my passions, having grown up in this neighborhood, is to help protect its ethnic and cultural diversity.”
“One of my passions, having grown up in this neighborhood, is to help protect its ethnic and cultural diversity.” — OSCAR DE LA TORRE Community Activist
From Woodlawn Cemetery, the tour of de la Torre’s life continued around the corner, to a two-bedroom apartment at 1841 16th St. That’s where his mother and father — who originally hale from Jalisco, Mexico — moved his seven bothers and sisters in 1980. De la Torre, born at UCLA Medical Center, was 9 when his family moved into the apartment.
His mother, once a laundry woman, worked in the same building where he now heads the Pico Youth & Family Center, a non-profit organization committed to strengthening opportunities for people of poverty, many of whom locally are Latino and black.
His father, a welder, worked for CAL- R, a company once located in the Pico neighborhood.
De la Torre attended the Santa Monica public school system, including Will Rogers Elementary, John Adams Middle School and Santa Monica High School.
While his parents were loving and supportive and provided the ingredients of a strong family, neighborhood troubles seemed to find a way into de la Torre’s life at an early age.
He said those troubles, ultimately, have shaped his life.
The first person de la Torre saw shot to death was when he was 12. By then, he was on the way to a troubled life himself. Of the 32 homicides committed in Santa Monica since 1989, de la Torre says he knew more than half the victims.
He described himself as a “C, D” student until his junior year at Samohi, when he began to realize he lived in poverty.
The most practical way to get out of it, he figured, was to attain a higher education.
By his senior year of high school, de la Torre was on his way to turning his life around and finding his calling in community activism and politics.
What’s life like in Pico? “This is the neighborhood I grew up in, 16th Street and Delaware. When I grew up the homeowners here were all African American, and the renters were all Latino. Now it’s become very Anglo. There’s still a lot of Latino renters, but now we’re starting to see a lot of Asian renters, who are coming as international exchange students through Santa Monica College. So the demographics are changing in the Pico neighborhood. It’s a little distressing because I can’t come here and say ‘hi’ to the families I used to know.
“It’s true, the majority of gun-related homicide and shootings occur here. It’s also one of the highest concentrations of youth and poverty. Look at all the bicycles there are here. Lots of children, not a lot of yards to play in. They need support and as many opportunities as possible.
“See how there’s a fence right there? That’s a relic to the crack epidemic that swept Pico in the mid-1980s. There was so much traffic going through there, crackheads and drug deals going on. The neighbors started a collection and put that (tall iron) fence there.
“But because of that fence, one day we heard a commotion, and we all came outside and there was a young man caught up in that fence. There were two guys who came out of a car and were chasing him with a shotgun, but that young guy could-n’t get over the fence, so he had no where to go and was screaming for help, so when we saw what was going on, we pretended we were going to go after those two guys with the shotgun, yelling back and forth to each other, ‘get the gun, get the gun,’ to scare them off. Luckily, it worked. We freaked out the guys with the shotgun and they left. We, the neighbors, saved that young man’s life.”
What was Samohi like? Sports? Activities?
“I served as the Latino student body president from 1989 to 1990. I was also co-captain of the football team. I played strong safety. I took my aggression out on the football field.
“Football was going on while I was becoming aware of the poverty, and that consciousness is very important. Once I realized what poverty meant — gang violence, drug addiction and neglect from the government — after that it was just church, family and football.
“Football also gave me what a lot of youth find in gangs. It gave me a sense of belonging, team spirit and camaraderie. More importantly, it also taught me discipline and sobriety. You need heart to play. It also expanded my circle of friends, and that helped me out. It was very diverse. I met north of Montana and Malibu kids, who I developed good friendships with.
“That exposed me to a different way of life. Having friends whose parents were college educated changed my perspective. Once I saw they had the nicer homes and lived in better neighborhoods and their children were having less of a risk, I said to myself, ‘I want a college education. I want to provide that to my children one day.’”
How did you get involved in politics? “My parents were a-political. They did-n’t even vote. So, I got my political sense from my sense of injustice. I was living in a roach-infested apartment and going to a high school where some of the kids were showing up in Beamers and Porsches while my mamma’s taking the bus to work, you know?
“That developed a sense for me that, ‘wait a minute, something is really wrong here.’ I didn’t have the answers yet, but I knew we were under-represented. I knew the image of Mexicans was ‘dirty’ in the city of Santa Monica. So, I wanted to change that. I wanted to not be a victim and change the stereotypes.
“That’s why I decided to run for student body president. I was in a Spanish class at Samohi and honors kids were talking about who’s going to be the next student body president. And joking around I said, ‘I’m going to run and beat those guys.’ They started laughing and telling me I was never going to win.
“I asked them why. A friend of mine, very honest, said, ‘First of all, you’re not an honors student. Second of all, you’re a jock. Third of all, you’re Mexican. When was the last time a Mexican was elected student body president?’
“I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Go look at the pictures on the wall in the student room and find out.’ I did. There was only one Mexican on the wall. His name was Manuel Carbajal, elected in 1948.”
What’s your educational background? “Basically, I graduated from Samohi with a 2.9 GPA. I went from being a C, D student to an A student by my senior year. Then I went to Chico State University. My first scholarships were all local... the Optimist Club, the Soroptimist Club... the Rotary Club... they all supported me.
“I graduated from Chico with a 3.5 GPA. I was also the university’s first Latino student body president. I was very politically involved. Then I went to University of Texas at Austin on the Woodrow Wilson fellowship Award. I received a masters degree in public administration. I had a 3.8 GPA.
“Studying public policy and working in the Texas legislature, I became more deeply involved in politics. I was working for a senator from Austin and I was his education analyst. I was offered a job in the Texas legislature making a good amount of money but I had a vision to return to Santa Monica and help my community. So I took a paycut, so to speak, to come back here and work as an outreach specialist at Samohi.”
There are rumors your first taste of controversy was in college. Over what?
“You can Google me and find out. But what happened is this. There was an anti-affirmative action case that won in the Court of Appeals. The impact of that decision was to eliminate all the programs that had got me into the university. They helped me get in, but after that I was on my own, so I consider myself a proud product of affirmative action. It got me in, but it didn’t get me out. I did all my work, writing the essays and taking the exams. I had to work for it.
“We founded an organization on campus called ‘Students for Access and Opportunity,’ basically to combat the forces against affirmative action on campus. It was a relatively conservative environment compared to here.
“We developed a protest movement, bottom line. We held a sleep-in at the law school and closed it for a day. We did so because a professor there made racial comments challenging the intellectual capacity of Latinos and blacks. Essentially, he said the reason we needed affirmative action is that we’re not intellectually competitive with whites, but he seemed not to be taking into account hundreds of years of slavery and all of that.
“We had 10 points we hoped to achieve with the protest, and after negotiating with administration, we were able accomplish three of them. I’m proud of that.”
How did you get where you are today? “In 1996 I had a vision, a dream, more like a nightmare. There were all of these white crosses that popped up in the area where someone had been gunned down in the neighborhood. In this nightmare, I’d drive around the neighborhood and see these white crosses grow out of the concrete. It was freaky, but it was also kind of hopeful, that those who have died from violence are being remembered.
“I started working at Samohi and I started to realize, you can’t have strong schools in weak communities. If you have a drug problem in the community, you’ll have one in school. The same goes for racial problems and violence. The school within itself can’t deal with these multitude of problems to be found in the Pico neighborhood.
“There was a series of shooting in October of 1998 and in a matter of two weeks, four people were dead and five shot in the westside of LA. So when all of this happened, the community was paralyzed. A lot of innocent people were killed. The majority weren’t even gang involved. So that was a very sad thing, knowing a 3-year-old son wasn’t going to see his father anymore.
“So in November of that year we organized the largest demonstration against gun violence in our city. It was a vigil for peace on Nov. 2, 1998. We also made the white crosses for those who have died. We walked right by here, where I saw my first shooting.
“Eventually we went to City Hall, and (then) City Manager Susan McCarthy recognized that Pico needed help, so she started the process.”
What are you doing to improve relations with the Santa Monica police?
“First of all, we recognize that there is a role for law enforcement. I’m a strong believer there needs to be a partnership between law enforcement and low-income, high-crime communities.
“However, I think more’s needed. We need a paradigm shift to prevention and intervention. Hey, someone commits a major violent crime, they need to go to prison. But what happens afterwards? There’s a felon, he or she can’t get a good job, so what do they do? Crime pays, so they get back into crime. We need to do more to rehabilitate, just like we do with drug addicts. We can do the same with gang members. We can rehabilitate them. I believe in that. Sometimes I’m criticized, because people think I want to coddle criminals. But I believe the cycle needs to end somewhere, and giving people more opportunities for a second chance would certainly help. Bottom line is, if we want to help our community, we need to invest in it.
“I have asked to meet with the police chief, but he won’t meet with me. However, he brought gifts to the PY&FC and visited there for the first time recently, and I think that’s a step in the right direction. But the PD has nothing to do with me, and I hope that changes, because the community needs that change.
“I look forward to working with the new city manager, because we need one who will see public safety beyond a law enforcement approach. We need a model of public safety that also has a prevention and intervention model, to get kids away from violence and drugs.æ What are you doing to build your constituency?
“I’m a progressive, left of center, no doubt about it. There are issues I might be seen as more conservative, such as allowing prayer in school, but basically I consider myself a progressive.
“As such, I’m challenging the status quo, and sometimes people don’t like that. Challenging the status quo, so to speak, makes me a controversial figure. When youngsters go out and protest the war, it makes me proud. As a school board member, I’m not happy about what that does (for our budget), but I’m glad students are doing what they believe is right in their hearts.
“I realize it’s important for me to reach out of the Pico neighborhood at this point. I’d like to start addressing Pico issues with people north of Montana, so they can start to understand. I also want to build better relationships with the Chamber of Commerce. They’ve helped some of our at-risk youth find jobs, and it’s been very good. I want that to continue.”
How are your relationships with school board members?
“They are a highly educated group of people, and I think we all have the students’ interests at heart. John Deasy (superintendent) is doing an amazing job. I think a big challenge for Santa Monica will be when we have to replace him. He has done so much for the schools. Our school system is definitely one of the best in the county and the state. Public education has given me the opportunities I have now. Without it, where would I be? A quality education is the great equalizer.
“Besides math and English, I want our schools to teach our children to become leaders. This is really a focus I want when I run for re-election for school board, which I want to do a better job of next time around. I believe one of the new houses at Samohi should be a ‘leadership house’ which offers leadership or a public policy class. We need to teach ethical leadership in our schools, classes about government and just how our society works.
“Students also need to learn how to become involved and the principles about giving back to their community. We live in such an individualistic society today, it’s just me, me, me, everyone’s trying to make money, that sometimes we fail to think about there are more important things than making money.
“I think students need to learn the importance of giving back to their communities and realize the strength that comes in that, for themselves and for their communities. This is an area I did not do a lot of work on, and I want to.”
Where will you be five years from now? “Building Pico Youth & Family Centers around Los Angeles. Right now, it’s a model, but there are communities in Los Angeles that need such centers more than we do.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 2, 2006. Read the original PDF.