Poll: Should DTSA be a Wellness District or a Drinking District?

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• You know what I find most amusing about all of this? It is the fact that this rhetoric about Latino people being stuck in the past is not actually true. In reality this is a projection as is the shadow side that asserts itself in xenophobia that persists among those who have been working to change the face of Santa Ana for decades. I can not count the number of times I have heard from people statements about the Latino population in Santa Ana claiming "racial superiority" etc. Even the words are ridiculous in the spectrum of things.

  When we speak about the nostalgia for the past, It seems from all the pictures on the walls of new establishments, that those stuck in the past are enamored of hanging the old historic images on the wall, representing the lost "Golden Years" which they are trying to recreate. This is what it looks like to be stuck in the past, while failing to recognized the history of white flight and a city that was abandoned by the predominantly Anglo residents who left the urban core and provoked Urban Sprawl in Santa Ana while moving to the suburbs. Meanwhile the stabilization of the city through the grit and establishment of businesses by the immigrants who moved into the city and preserved its Urban core through paying the commercial taxes that helped keep the city afloat. The city would not have survived without them.

  It is activities that currently support the politics of dis-belonging that are being challenged. These callous acts of gentrification, shows of overt racism, real estate speculation, imposition of the PBID Tax that was found illegal where the city voted as a property owner in the downtown, all in the name of neighborhood revitalization, has shown its workings to betray the democratic ideal of having an equitable and just civil society. The real question is: "What exactly is the social imaginary at work in these urban redevelopment activities at the core of the city" What is the real plan behind the cities work under the re-adaptation of the original renaissance plan? What is this strange separation between people when sorting is dominant rather than the creation of mixed use spaces? What is it when enclaves of privilege are developed rather than infill development in the downtown? What is important when the benchmark of success is held in the dead American dream image of a truck vendor who is aided in turning into a successful brick-and-mortar restaurant and a building renovated to recreate a Market that existed in the past only with the changes of marketing to the millennial generation with a back patio whose Art work glamorizes what the cities youth are arrested for on the street?

  Redeveloped spaces enact and create identity. Shared activities within these spaces allow personal memories, cultural histories, imagination, and feelings to enliven the sense of “belonging” through human and spatial relationships. There are memories that already live in these spaces that are just as important as what is new. Therefore, having a political understanding of what one is doing when one says a person is in or out is also central to this discussion and the question of civic vitality. The downtown if it was looking at the future rather than the past would be thinking of how to amalgamate the two eras rather than recreate a past that no longer exists in an era where much has changed including women having the right to vote. How do we recreate and re-affirm an aesthetic that values inclusion, belonging and diversity? How do we make something that serves all interests in our downtown. As a city we don't need to go back to the foundation but continue to build as every layer is part of the larger evolution of place.

  • Typical boring blabbering from Omar.

• If this is really about economics, then marketing to Latinos would be the obvious choice especially in a city like Santa Ana where Hispanic youth over 80% of the K - 12 school age population. The reality of the situation is that opposition to Latino branded downtown isn't driven by the economy, it's clearly about racism.

  Even Disney and all the major networks know that going Latin is where it's at. When will Santa Ana leave it's clan past behind and embrace the dynamic and multi-cultural future which is already at our doorstep?

• Seamus McDuff/Junior/Skalleywag, is another mentally ill blogwhore, who is willing to sacrifice young men and women for sex to strange guys black.

  Mike, methinks you drink too much, sell out the kids, GOD SAVE MATER DEI!

  If they need to sacrifice the virginity of 10, 20 kids so be it. MATER DEI.

  SACRIFICE THE FLESH CHILDREN!!!!! It's MATER DEI.

  • You are phuked in the head carpetbagger. It must be miserable being you - or perhaps you wallow in your cesspool of madness.

    • I am not the one who championed the rape of children and celebrated the very institution which promoted and enabled it. Nor was that last comment mine.
      Besides it's better to be "Phucked" in the head, then to be "Phucked" by a preist, in the name of Christ.

• BTW, DTI is not DTSA and DTI has not driven over anyone's dreams and no one dreams of a "crap-hole." In reality The City of SA and DTI conspired to subsidized DTI with all the tripled tax assessment money from the other downtown businesses to fix up their buildings with new facades and make the improvements they have made. I would call that stealing not winning. It was kind that the Latino, Jewish, Asian and other businesses found it in their hearts not to sue. But this behavior is not new, the City used HUD funding to put up the police department, They stole the redevelopment money from South Main Street and only recently settled on the Peebler case since he had the guts to sue them. They lent money to Mater Dei in the amount of 11 million to put up parking lots, They have Sold out the local parks to neighboring cities for games. A few property owners have had their electricity subsidized by Pulido for years on the taxpayers dime as well. There has been money laundering going on through the water department. It seems that the only people being subsidized in this city by our Democratic elected are those who need it the least while those who have nothing but their own blood sweat and tears in this city have had enough. Who passed the Transparency law, set the city on track for Strategic Planning and Open Budget Hearings. The Corruption will end, it is all about time and those who never had the best interest of the city in mind but only their own selfish, self interests are not TO BIG TO FAIL. That is why DTI will open up and realize that they require the Latino shopper to keep their businesses afloat. They can try to manufacture a market but sustaining a market that is unnatural will only go as far as they go to include the community they serve first.