Baldwin Park: Double Decade Experience
Within the first few months of being born my parents decided to move into a slightly larger house to welcome their third child. Immigrating from Mexico to the United States in the early 1990s, my parents decided to reside in the small city of Baldwin Park that I now call my forever home for over the past two decades.
Until just last year when I got my own apartment across the street from CSUN, all I ever knew my whole life was this city. Baldwin Park is the neighborhood that captures my experiences of growing from youth to adulthood. My similarity with this community brings me comfort and security being around the friends and family. However being bound to such a small community with the the population being 74% Latino and/or Hispanic and majority being lower income households limits ones access to certain resources.
Even though the CBS News coverage above was reported in 2011, many of the same issues still reside in the city. If you want healthy option you usually have to go out of town to get it. Almost within 2 minutes of driving around Baldwin Park you will find a fast food restaurant you can pull into- in fact just a mile away from my house they are constructing a Raising Canes fast food restaurant.
I start to wonder if vegans, vegetarians, or anyone with a strict diet is able to meet all of their needs from consuming only in Baldwin Park. I would love to know what the residents of my community feel about this issue and if so, what changes would they want to see?
My parents and I believe a large portion of the older Latinx population in my community consume their daily news through broadcast television and specifically through Univision. For my parents in particular I started to see them critique information and news they would see on Facebook. Like myself I also consume my daily news intake though social media sites like Twitter but I always resort back to the actual news publication to fact check.
Since Baldwin Park is such a small city I do feel like it is underrepresented at the local level. Crime and vehicle incidents are typically the only news you will hear from this area. Majority of the city’s population isn’t aware of what is occurring at the executive level. Years of fraud accusations against the city’s mayor and board has had a few of the resident’s attention but more media coverage would help residents really understand what is going on and can help influence votes in future elections.
