Would just like to thank everyone for joining us tonight for a Virtual Event with eric in conversation with janice preventing his book stealing home, los angeles, the dodgers and the life cutting between, were very excited and grateful that her book is continuing to bring authors in their works to our Community Giving this uncertain time, we will be hosting more rituals in the future and you can learn about them on our website as well as our social media our next event this this tuesday april 28 at 5 00 p. M. With leanne dolan in conversation with susan briggs who we havent seen her book the sweeney sisters. Also updates on it fence feel free to subscribe for a newsletter, you can do that by going to the bookstore. Com. This evenings Virtual Event will end with the q a so if you would like to submit a question go to the ask a question button at the bottom of the screen right over there, if you see a question on the list that you would like or interest you to asking our authors to answer, you can click the light button on that question will try to answer as many questions that were allowed. If youre interested in supporting or bookstore by purchasing a copy of the books, you can click on the purchase button and directly below the viewer screen, the link will direct you to our website and you can continue and we have selling digital audiobooks for those of you who are interested. Let me introduce you to write interviewer and author janice is an awardwinning journalist and producer at mpr latino usa, she began her career and over the past five years, she had shifted her focus to audio sharing about communities of color, during her time as radio producer she has history, Language Access and culture and histories with voices, her work has been featured in the New York Times mprs curbs which, and more. Our author tonight is eric ms. Palm, he is a former suppors editor and he has appeared in esp met unto magazine, sports illustrated, also the daily review and the best american writing anthology. Eric was born and raised in l. A. , he has spent many hours attending games at the stadium and sitting in traffic for most of those games as many of us have. They are here tonight to present erics book stealing home, i would like to now turn over to them and before we get to the q a session later, we will let you know and please enjoy this. Janice, eric, thank you so much. Thank you. Hey janice how is it going . Your muted. I just want to say congratulations on the book i cant imagine what it feels li like. Is a really good feeling i remember when the first knock came to the door and opening up and see the actual book in hardcover, it was surreal. I cannot imagine. There are some quick intros that i want to say little bit more about life and how they came together for you to write the book. Sure, this book was in my head before i even had a career, i was a High School Student and a man named frank who is one of the central figures in the book in my u. S. History class in clover hi and he told the story of his life and he was a housing official who was dramatically blacklisted in 1962 for his membership in the communist party, the reason he was ousts as a communist, he was trying to develop a Public Housing project were Dodger Stadium now sits. His story began with the phrase Dodger Stadium did not exist and i was a kid who love baseball and that was shocking to me and empowered the story and as a group and became a journalist and a writer, i never really let it go and i think on some level i wanted to add my contribution to the story of Dodger Stadium in the communities that perceive it the whole time. When you heard the phrase that it should not exist, that is one thing to know about women who realize that ill give you a brief rundown, if you read the book you will see he was a true believer in public, his belief that Dodger Stadium should not exist because Dodger Stadium should be the leader park heights which is a grand Public Housing project. , he did not get into the community too much and as i learned more about them, and as bishop i had a much deeper understanding of the real tragedy in the story which is that families lost their homes and ultimately saw their land sold by the government to a private businessman and theres a lot of drama and how that happens but thatll happen. We had the conversation earlier and we talked about this pocket and when you the decision to not just make it into an article for what the book was like, what was the decision like that for you . Part of it, i dont think i couldve fit everything into an article, i really wanted to tell the story as complete the other could, within the reason and within single volume, i wanted for as long as they could be, when youre ready to write an article, even a long article, a feature of covered story articles, they have a certain length in a certain focus, its one or two subjects and if you go beyond that, its confusing and it doesnt to the subject justice, i knew the subject of this book really needed a longer telling on the page but they needed more time and more research to be told right and as a journalist, you only have so much time to get to your neck story and hit your deadline and i cannot have done enough work as a reporter in researcher to turn this into a magazine story. Just going to where the characters are, in the book there is a lot of history whether history about baseball, mexico, the u. S. General and historical pension between mexico and the u. S. , you also write about people in different chapters and it was different people involved in the bigger story but you specifically focus on two characters and i would imagine and frank, how did that decision come about for you and focus on their stories . When i first started i did not have the specific about focus, i had a broader set of idea envisions of the book probably. But on one level of the storyteller, yup the best way to tell a story is to peoples lives, two individuals, something about those lives in particular stuck out to me and she was a really remarkable person who lived a life that in many ways was pretty normal, she was her mother and her grandmother and she worked hard and took care of her family, shoes and immigrant but she also ends up rubbing up against the big historical forces that bring her life around and theres something about her that caused her to resist those forces in a way that other people did not, not because they couldnt or did not want to or whatever, theres Something Different about her personality that drew me in and you see the Dodger Stadium in the images of families getting evicted from the house, i was curious what it was about this family in their journey that led them to be violently evicted by sheriffs deputies, that did not happen to most of the neighbors and with frank. Frank was the inspiration and the person who took a story in my head, he was also just a fascinating character, he lives a life like at the end of the movie, he was bit by a coyote as a child, he traveled europe in the 30s, he went from being a conservative methodist to a radical communist, he had multiple second acts in his career, he ended up and he goes to jail to protest with the american activities committee, he was a handful and also and he was somebody whose ambition and career were similar in forces beyond his control, i was curious about that. Going to the book and denying it moving from arizona to california, still part, but also in the book we have one person one year end another person in another year and you clash into that moment where is intersection, what did you see come together during your research . I knew early on the book was going to center around the Inflection Point where that was good to be 1949, 50 when the Housing Authority is evicting people which is where they live. I knew that would be the place where they met and then you that their lives are going to go into Different Directions after that, a lot of the work of the book was first of all getting their timelines down, seeing where they were and what they were doing and put the focus on and then balancing how to tell the stories in a way that you cared enough for the both of them with the understanding they will have a tragic meeting i guess. Throughout history chapter after chapter in the book, i also seen the story brought to life the way you do, Additional Research which im sure you look reached out to a lot of family members to build the portrait of them, was not something he found different and the people reaching out to them. Some members wanted to speak about her in people in the community wanted to speak about her and i dont think i reached out to everything a person, i did not because theres too many and its a testament to her that she was a memorable person who left an impression on those who knew her, and putting her grandchildren my background is a reporter then is a historian, doing that stuff is more natural than going to an archive that im an outsider but her and her family were mistreated in the 50s when this was all happening, i think if there was distressed it was pretty justified. When you are speaking to the family members and people of the other communities, do you sense that pain came back with their stories or even more specifically in the era . And throughout the generation . I think so, i think even for people who have a more forgive him forget attitude, if you lose your home and your family loses its home, that is painful, for some people its very visceral and seconds later they are still really hurt over it. There was not a lot of almonds made by anybody for what happened to these communities. In the experience of being mistreated by government and by business and having to get on with your life, without the community that you build and you love is a heavy experience and i never experienced it myself so i cannot speak to their pain but the people, when you go through Something Like that it does not go away. Also, you talk about the grandchildren and all the greatgrandchildren. Were not going to be told from generation to generation. Theres greatgrandchildren who were outdoing activism in a group called buried under the blue who has surrendered in displacement and activism in the file, they inherited trauma is the phrase that i heard. Whether its Dodger Stadium or project or anything else, they have lingering effects on communities. Is there something that you thought you knew and you like i have annoyed you. I was struck repeatedly, i feel like this is going to be bad because they criticize the media earlier and im a member of the media, i was struck by how transparently onesided and how propaganda was in the 50s, the Taylor Family is notorious and was notorious for using the paper as a political but reading the actual article and seeing how sensationalist and plainly untrue a lot of the stuff that they published was to advance the potable agenda of the owners was something that left an impression for sure. Its definitely i love the paper, i think the other times right now its amazing but reading about the Los Angeles Times in the 50s in reading those articles was mind blowing. Was an interesting experience while making this book . The interesting experience, one thing about this book that i love is getting the chance to speak with people about their lives in getting the trust of the other stories, i think thats a secret thing and its hard to overstate, the responsibility that i feel 176 down with me and my favorite memories from writing the book are probably sitting in somebodys dining room or kitchen and hear them tell their stories, a few of the people i interviewed, i started writing the book and thats heavy as well, a guy in the book and they did not get to see the product but im also grateful that i got there time and i got the chance to tell their stories. In the historical book, usually there are images that have places in the book and i realize they have illustrations, do you want to talk a little bit about that. Illustrations are by adam, hes a friend of mine and their incredible, i feel like i should take the book down to put something over to show you. I thought about doing photos in the book but one thing about getting photos in a book is that you have to get the rights to put them, some of those voters were trickier than others and have to pay for those as an author outofpocket and i thought of and going to be pain for these in the book, i really wanted something that was going to be special and different and given impression and maybe create more for the reader and i asked adam if he would draw the book for me a little bit and he did and he came out great. Hes really excited about that, seeing the pictures and also my kids like the pictures in the book and it makes me so acceptable to them. And i think reading this we talk about from the beginning about how everything came together to write this book, im just going to read it really quick, i never would Dodger Stadium of so many people. Dodgers fan, angeleno, and the experience from beginning to end with reading the book has accomplished such struggle, has it changed anything for you . I think it becomes that struggle is like the question of the book and i came to believe that is good to struggle with that kind of question, i love the dodgers and not as much as a care about what traits to make all the way do that as an institution part of my life, i love the city of l. A. But i wanted to explore that a little bit, if you love something its okay to be critical and its not even okay, its good to do them good to say i love this but it is not right, you can do that with your religion or family or with the city that you live in, i love l. A. But l. A. Has a lot of problems and i dont thing anybody would tell you otherwise. If youre a fan of the theme for an institution like the dodgers, its okay to say this is wrong and this was not right in with this book its much more about the city of l. A. In the county in the region in the u. S. History then is about a Baseball Team but i think that question of whether you can love a place and have problems with it at the same time expanded from being Dodger Stadium to being los angeles. Holding accountable something we have to do and i feel like youre right about los angeles and he guarantees away that happens in the government that were in impacted by the. Kind of explain everything from the president s, in your opinion of a journalist, what is happened. The dodgers are not like the guilty party in this book, this is not a book criticizing the dodgers, its critical of the dodgers but it is about a failure of government more than anything else and i think the dodgers and the city of l. A. In the county government and State Government and federal government, i think there should be an acknowledgment of what happens and that is wrong, that would be a very basic first step, im not a member of the community and evicted with the animate domain to build a Housing Project only to see my house become a baseball stadium. Its not for me too say what they should do but i think saying something would be a really good start. Even 20 years ago when the dodgers were owned by fox, they had a very small ceremony at a church in the canyon and the extended branch to some Community Members but it was very much a onetime deal and now the doctors dont talk about this, its not on the agenda for the team for whatever reason. In the making of this book there were places that you wrote about that are no longer there. It is interesting because you go up to elysian park or the hills around Dodger Stadium and some of the roads are still there in the streets are still there but theyre not really the same, the construction of Dodger Stadium changed the landscape geographically of what the area would look like, and went a few times to the picnic where people who live in the community will go every july and have a picnic at elysian park in utah with the elders and say where was soandso and the truth is, they can give you generally where things were but the hills are not the same, the dodgers moved hundreds and thousands of tons of dirt to rebuild the stadium, theres new access roads and freeways, its a different looking place and feeling place than it was then. And the family members as you interview them, did you notice that the state around the area in los angeles or how they completely moved. Most of them stayed in l. A. , a lot of people moved to Lincoln Heights or Boyle Heights or nearby areas, i think some people even went to the canyon, and other parts of l. A. , long beach, it was not like they were banished from the country but they got absorbed back into the city where everybody else was, was not the same would say we went back to whatever neighborhood and we did not know her neighbors and we did not have the same sense of community we had before and losing the sense of community in the sense of pride was a big loss in addition to the physical loss of the homes. The loss of community and the children signing over and the parents and elders is something that was lost in the history and be able to go back home is not available anymore. The community was mostly evicted and then in 53 the housing crisis crashed, it was almost empty in and sat empty for long time except for a few families, people like kids, High Schoolers would come back on friday night to hang out in the empty old neighborhoods, can you imagine doing that, its such a strange feeling but thats what it was like. I want to know i hope the entertained and enjoy the book and they come away with deeper understanding of this during ellies history and a sense of how people and institutions around us interact and how power works in cities and that was a revelation for me when i was writing it for sure to see how things can really become deeply intimate very quickly. And then we talked about this how this book in the story specifically has changed more