Orange County News Blog

Brenice Lee Smith and Friends circa 1972

​Orange County Sheriff's Department inmate number 2537327, better known as Brenice "Brennie" Lee Smith--or Dorje to his family and fellow Buddhist devotees--has been behind bars for almost two months now thanks to a pair of nearly 40-year-old hash smuggling charges. At the moment, the founding member of Orange County's Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the group of hippies who sought to transform the world one acid trip at the time and even produced its own trademark acid Orange Sunshine, is awaiting trial at the notorious Theo Lacy Men's Jail across the street from The Block in Orange.

​Sorry to say I don't know much about Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. I went there once with a cute Vietnamese girl in 2001 to hear Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu speak, and I once asked South Orange County Community College District trustee and longtime GOP head Tom Fuentes about his feelings regarding the Diocese of Orange sex-abuse scandal (the very first Ex Cathedra story) after a board meeting at the hilly campus. And my chica once presented there, so I had to drop her off.

My first actual visit to the campus happened last week, at a well-attended lecture that was well-attended only because nearly all the attendees earned extra credit. I took a quick glance at the school's newspaper, the Lariat, before my speech and became speechless. There, in the sports page, was the logo for Saddleback's sports teams' nickname, the Gaucho, the fabled cowboy of the Argentine pampas. Except it wasn't a Gaucho--it was a dirty Mexican that looked just like my dirty Mexican!

Above is the logo for my Ask a Mexican! column. Click on the jump to see Saddleback's "gaucho."

McWilliams: The Original Gunkist Historian...

​This week's cover story on the controversy in the retelling of the historic Mendez vs. Westminster decision has a brief mention of the case's best chronicler: the great progressive historian Carey McWilliams. The Fullerton College professor quoted in the story isn't the first person to admit they originally heard about the landmark desegregation lawsuit in McWilliams' 1948 book North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States--no less a figure than Sandra Mendez, the youngest sister of Sylvia, says she learned about her family's involvement when reading the book during the 1970s for a UC Riverside Chicano Studies class.

McWilliams devoted three pages to the story, two-and-three-quarter more pages than the totality of Orange County chroniclers bothered to give their locale's greatest contribution to American civil rights until the 1990s (Leo Friis' 1965 Orange County Through Four Centuries gave but a paragraph). This followed his March 15, 1947 article in The Nation (of which he would eventually edit) on Mendez vs. Westminster titled, "Is Your Name Gonzales?" in which he prophetically wrote that the "decision may sound the death knell of Jim Crow in education."

But the Mendez trial wasn't the first time McWilliams beat Orange County historians at writing about the county's tortured relationship with Mexicans.

Brenice Lee Smith: Welcome Home, Now go to Jail.

​

Wow, that was fast.

Yesterday I blogged that a judge denied a request by Gerardo Gutierrez, the lawyer for Brenice Lee Smith, the onetime member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love who has spent the past three decades living in a Nepalese monastery, to reduce his client's bail from $1.1 million to $50,000. Smith has now been behind bars for a month, apparently awaiting trial on 40-year-old charges that he conspired to smuggle a bunch of hashish from Afghanistan. In the post I mentioned that Gutierrez hadn't filed a motion to have the charges dismissed but that he planned to do so no later than Dec. 7. I also outlined some common-sense reasons why Smith should be set free immediately.

Today, Gutierrez emailed me a copy of that very motion, which essentially argues that the 1972 conspiracy indictment against Smith and more than two dozen other Brotherhood defendants failed to convincingly charge anybody with any specific crimes, instead simply stating that all of the defendants had conspired to form a church, live in Laguna Beach, deal acid and smuggle hash. (And yes, one of the charges in that indictment really was living in Laguna Beach, and yes, every single person charged in that indictment either pled guilty to lesser charges or had the charges dismissed with prejudice, meaning they can never be refiled).

Nick Schou

Brenice Lee Smith at his first court hearing

​A man accused of of membership in the so-called "Hippie Mafia"--and who has spent the past three decades living a peaceful, possession-free life in a Nepalese monastery--has now been languishing in jail for more than a month.

Brenice Lee Smith was arrested at San Francisco International Airport on Sept. 26 after four decades on the run. A founding member of the Orange County-based Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which formed in 1966 with the intention of promoting peaceful transformation of self and society through consciousness expanding drug experimentation, Smith now stands charged with smuggling 100 pounds of hashish from Afghanistan to California in 1968. After returning from overseas with the intention of moving his Nepalese wife and daughter to the United States, he was extradited from the Bay Area to Orange County's Main Jail.

Many observers who commented on the Weekly's initial blog post, which was picked up by the OC Register, Associated Press and UPI, have expressed shock and amazement that authorities have the time and resources to punish a man who clearly returned to US soil voluntarily and who by all accounts has dedicated himself to peace. Part of the explanation may be that the prosecutor handling the case, Jim Hicks, is the son of DA Cecil Hicks, who presided over the 1972 conspiracy case against the Brotherhood, and who is said to be retiring next March, meaning this case could be his last hurrah.

In the latest developments, Smith had an October 23 hearing in front of Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg, who happens to be married to the chief of the District Attorney's sex crimes unit. Froeberg denied a request by Gerardo Gutierrez, Smith's Chicago-based attorney, to reduce Smith's bail from $1.1 million to $50,000, thus ensuring that his client will remain behind bars for the time being. The next hearings in the case are set for November 7 and December 7. The latter date, Gutierrez said, represents his "drop-dead" deadline for filing a motion to have the case dismissed in the interest of justice.

Scroll down to just below this photo for the latest news...

Click to enlarge.

​
First the bad news: Despite hopes that the Orange County District Attorney's Office would have come to its senses and drop the charges by now, the bizarre case of the People vs.  Brenice Lee Smith, continued to crawl forward today. In a hearing this morning before Judge Thomas M. Goethals, Smith pleaded not guilty to the 40 year old indictment that brought down the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and which is now responsible for Smith being in jail. Meanwhile, the DA's office asked for a week to review a defense motion to reduce bail from $1.1 million to $50,000, which might allow Smith to get out of jail sometime soon. The next hearing in the case will be on October 23, by which time Smith will have spent nearly a month behind bars. DA Hicks told the judge he expected the trial, which will be scheduled on the 23rd, to last "at least" a month.

Now the good news:  In a brief interview outside the courtroom following the hearing today, Hicks made a point of saying that his investigation into the charges against Smith is still continuing, and an important part of that investigation will be determining what Smith has been doing with his life for the past 40 years--see below for some answers on that--and "what his prospects are" after getting out of jail. Supposing that Smith really was living at a monastery as a Buddhist monk in Nepal and isn't really the Kingpin of Kathmandu, the DA seems to be saying that would work in Smith's favor. Although Hicks said that dropping the charges against Smith wasn't something he's considering, he did allow that, rather than being determined to see this case go to trial, he's just looking for a "fair resolution."

Check out next Thursday's OC Weekly for a print story about Smith and check Navel Gazing  next Friday for the latest courtroom drama.

From his laughable campaign...

​Did you nearly spit our your morning orange juice in amazement like me upon reading that the Weather Underground tried to bomb the Fullerton offices of legendarily homophobic state senator John Briggs? Probably not, since I'm a nerd and you're cool. But that brief mention in this week's cover got me scrolling through the ol' Los Angeles Times microfilm at UC Irvine to learn a bit more.

Here's the skinny: on November 20, 1977, the feds arrested five Weathermen in Houston and Los Angeles just hours before they were to plant explosives in Briggs' office. It was to be the grand debut of a campaign of assassinations against politicians. The terrorist organization targeted Briggs specifically because of his anti-gay views; he was already in the process of campaign for the ultimately disastrous Proposition 6, which sought to ban homosexuals from teaching in California schools. Two FBI agents spent seven months infiltrating the Southern California faction of the Weathermen to foil the plot, ultimately arresting their former pretend pals--but not before shaving their beards and cutting their hair.

Photo courtesy Orange County Archives

Caspers, at the park which would bear his name

​One in an occasional, ongoing, eternal series...

All I ever knew about former Supervisor Ronald Caspers is that there's a Wilderness Park named after him and that he mysteriously disappeared at sea. Why didn't anyone ever tell me he was Mexican-bashing bigot?

But that's what happened in the fall of 1972. Caspers, annoyed that a Mexican-American group of county employees were demanding affirmative action (he had accused one of the leaders of not being an American citizen), called them "bandidos" during a board meeting, then asked county counsel to explore moving the county seat from SanTana to whiter environs because "we are in an area which does not have a normal ethnic balance."

But wait, Barbara Coe! I thought SanTana was a gabacho paradise in those days, and that they liked Mexicans! No racism until the illegals, and they deserve it because they're ILLEGALS.

Back to reality, Caspers ended up apologizing for his gaffe during a board meeting, and the other supervisors reprimanded him publicly. Caspers claimed he didn't know bandido was an offensive term to Mexicans, a bullshit excuse considering Chicanos had just successfully axed the Frito Bandito the year before.

Funny aside: a Caspers staffer at the time was Tom Fuentes, who would eventually become the longtime chair of the GOP and has always proudly stated he has Spanish blood in him, not wab.

Guerrero with her mural

​ I cringe every time I drive past Anaheim's GardenWalk and its fortress of chains. This isn't my Anaheim of immigrant shops mixing with longtime businesses in cheap strip malls, nor does it have the Googie charm of the original hotels and stores that sprung around Disneyland with free-market glee  before Anaheim officials passed some type of code or other that makes every damn property in the so-called Resort area have the same Mission-esque marquee outside...where was I? Yes: the reason to visit GardenWalk.

The always happenin' Anaheim Historical Society and other organizations (including the Mouse) commissioned a bunch of artists and kiddies to paint murals of historical Anaheim to display at GardenWalk, and they even allotted one for Mexis! Since city fathers wouldn't take too kindly to images of striking citrus workers or protesting parents against school or pool segregation, artist Christina Guerrero (full disclosure: probably related to me since we're from the same incestuous village of El Cargadero, Jerez, Zacatecas that has dominated Anaheim Latino life since, oh, the 1900s) instead drew a beautiful visage of a dancing baile folkorico couple and an Aztec serpent. But where's the tamborazo? Kidding, Christina! Good job. The artists will exhibit their murals for about six months, at which time these movable feasts for the eyes will go elsewhere. But isn't this a great idea for the rest of our soulless open-air malls like Bella Terra in Surf City, or Mission Viejo's Kadeiloscope? Hell, you could spill a bucket a paint on Kadeiloscope's walkways, and it could liven things up by a billion.

Graphic we did on Dvorman and the FBI files that found no dirt on the man...

​Got an email from a former resident of Orange County that...well, read it below. She references Orange County's original liberal martyr, Joel Dvorman, and my two articles on the Magnolia School District trustee who was recalled from his seat because he dared host a meeting of the ACLU in his Anaheim backyard. By the way, when is the ACLU of Orange County going to get a clue and rename their chapter after Dvorman in his memory?

The obstructive uproars at several town halls in August of 2009 reminded me of the bad old days in Orange County, during Joel Dvorman's anguished final months on the school board.
At the time, I taught at St. Boniface, and was married to a somewhat left-leaning man who was active in the ACLU.

Your account is quite accurate; the uproar that I witnessed was during a meeting to "discuss" whether ACLU meetings  could appropriately be held in public school facilities after hours.   The John Birch Society was present in substantial numbers, and made reasoned discourse impossible. Like the rowdy crowds we see on tv nowadays, they yelled hysterically, stomped their feet in unison and shook their fists at the speakers. These were modest- looking middle- class people who had lost all  self control or sense of decorum. 

Not long after his recall from the board, Joel did indeed die of a heart attack, in his thirties, leaving a widow and two children, if memory serves [Gustavo note: she was correct; his widow still lives in Orange County]. 

What do these orchestrated groups of thuggish Babbitts hope to accomplish? Certainly not exchange of thoughtful opinions, in the best American tradition.

So when Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas calls the behavior of the screaming stompers "unAmerican," she's quite right. We still don't know what their positions are in regard to health care reform: their screaming and stomping have drowned themselves out.
 
Because I was married to [the ACLU member] at that time, Father John Quatannens fired me from my teaching job at St. Boniface. I was pregnant, and supporting a husband and small son. It was December 1960.

Water over the dam, amigo.

Fourth Street, SanTana: mid 1950s. What was so great about these segregated days?

​ Orange County is a place where booster myths have masqueraded as fact and history since the days of Serra, but an article in this month's Orange Coast by former Los Angeles Times writer Agustín Gurza on SanTana and its Artists Village takes the orange crate label. It starts with the title ("The Resurrection of Santa Ana," implying the county seat was once dead, which should come as a surprise to all the Mexicans who've continuously been around the town for, oh, the past 110 years) and only gets stranger and more inaccurate from there.

Gurza's thesis is that all the controversies surround the establishment of the Artists Village in the middle of one of the most Latino big cities in the United States are over, that hipster and bohemian now cohabit fine with wab, and that he can't believe it but now firmly does, and did Mayor Don Papi Pulido mug Gurza and take over the keyboard for a bit? There is no mention in the article of the Renaissance Specific Plan, about its chronic infection of conflict-of-influenza, and how those same activists Gurza describes as essentially accepting of the city's initiative to establish a hip downtown by subsidy (bowdlerized in the piece as redevelopment funds) were the very "rabble-rousers" who stopped that plan cold last year. Or the vacancies plaguing the area. Or all the struggles that the annual Dia de los Muertos event have in trying to placate the loft dwellers next to the Yost Theater (no mention of that place at all), or the organizers' eternal suspicion of the artists in the area for better or worse.

And some of Gurza's statements are flat-out wrong.

Am deep in the vaults for an upcoming...something, when I stumbled across an ad in the then-Santa Ana Register for the 1969 Orange County Fair. The theme for that year? "Fiesta of Fun," with its logo a clown wearing a sombrero that read, "¡Vamos Amigos!" (upside-down exclamation point in the original!). The theme was picked to celebrate California's bicentennial in the wasichu world, and the text for the ad boasted that the fair would feature mariachi bands strolling around the fairgrounds to give attendees a feel of "Old Mexico."

Was this the only time in the history of Orange County where Mexicans were encouraged to stroll around and play their music? And that gabachos got the upside-down exclamation point right? And that there wasn't a single Letter to the Editor railing about creeping bilingualism? Oh, for those halcyon dias!

Anyhoo, since I don't have the logo, here's the mariachi classic, "Adelita," as sung by Nat King Cole. That cat could sing:

​Another part of old SanTana disappeared this week as Phoebe Olivos passed away July 23 at 89. The artists and hipsters who currently troll the city's downtown, marveling at how authentic the area is compared to the rest of OC while munching down on $9 "street" tacos owe her respect, as she was the matriarch of the Olivos clan who helped keep one of the county's few brick-and-mortar downtowns from the wrecking ball through their Yost Theater.

For decades, the movie palace located on SanTana's Fourth Street screened Mexican films, brought in film and movie stars from across Latin America, and served as the cultural focal point for OC Latinos. After gabachos left SanTana to the Mexicans in the 1970s (although don't believe the Know Nothing hype: wabs were always there), it was the Yost's continued vibrancy (and, in later years, the West Coast Theater the family purchased) that ensured those old buildings kept tenants and saved them for the city council's current gentrification plans. The Yost's takeover by city officials in 1985 remains the Chavez Ravine of Mexican OC history, an episode so traumatic it drove Phoebe's beloved husband Lewis to insanity and the rest of the family to ruin. Thankfully, after a quarter-century of use as a Pentecostal Church, the Yost is alive again, although few who use it, whether hipster or immigrant, know its full history.

Phoebe and her familia also helped desegregate SanTana's ritzy Floral Park neighborhood in the 1950s, only to be greeted by burning crosses. Born in Calexico but raised in Anaheim, Doña Olivos received her only real public recognition in a 1999 Los Angeles Times profile of the Olivos family. "It was a dream come true for [my husband] once we got the Yost, to have his own theater," Olivos told the reporter, but also adding that city officials "just wanted us out of there" as the years went on. The more things change...

According to the paid Orange County Register obituary in today's paper (how about a story on Phoebe instead of a front-pager on a $27,000 bed?), Olivos' viewing is tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m. and a "Celebration of Life" service Saturday at 9:30 in the morn; both will occur at First United Methodist Church of Santa Ana, 609 N. Spurgeon Street. Burial at Fairhaven Memorial after.

I've been doing book signings across the region recently (shout-outs to the Buena Park Public Library, the Long Beach Car Show, Long Beach Rotary Club, and the Patrick Henry Democratic Club OC chapter!), and nothing is better than fielding questions from the audience. In Buena Park, we started talking about how quaint and wonderful the city is in comparison to others--for chrissakes, no one could think of a derogatory nickname for it! Someone mentioned an all-time classic--Guadalahabra, for La Habra--and I countered with my hometown quartet: Anacrime, Anaslime, Anagrime, and Wabaheim. One of the young librarians mentioned he grew up in Mission Viejo, now called Pendejo--HILARIOUS.

We've done short lists of the various derogatory nicknames people give O.C.'s cities over the years, and I thought I knew them all. But I've never heard Mission Pendejo before, nor Laguna Nighetto for Laguna Niguel (gracias, Spencer!). After the jump are the ones I know, but please, gentle readers: add new ones to the list.

My May post about Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez's wishy-washy support of undocumented college students considering her Aztlanista tendencies unleashed quite a Democratic flurry against me, but it also sparked outrage among college administrators, professors, and counselors who work with DREAM Act students. From those ranks comes a Loretta flub of Rohrbacher-esque proportions.

October 1999--I accompanied my oldest daughter and a group of about 15 [high school] students as a chaperone on a Model United Nations (MUN) trip to Washington, D.C., and a competition at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.  One of the parents, who didn't go on the trip, made arrangements for us to visit Loretta in her office. We go there late in the afternoon about 4 p.m. or so, I am expecting the usual grip and grin type of event of 5 minutes of pictures and chit chat and out of the office. Loretta has the whole group of about 15 students, 2 teachers and 2 chaperones sit down in her office and we spend almost 90 minutes talking with her lots of back and forth, good questions and answers. One of the kids in the group is - Devon Nixon - the great grand nephew of Richard Nixon.  As we are leaving the office Loretta says directly to him "One of the worse things I ever did is vote for your uncle."

I'm sure Clockwork Coker will wax wonderfully about the latest secret recordings of former President Richard Nixon, but I also want to use the occasion of this round of the gift that keeps on giving to draw attention to Nixon's entry in the Rotten.com Library. Don't worry: you can click on the entry and not find decapitated heads, legs swarming with maggots, and the like--that's plain ol' Rotten.com, and they don't update as much as they used to. Anyway, the beginning of their entry, and it only gets better from here--and do click on all the hyperlinks, as they'll lead to the best rabbit hole since the TV show Lost:

Perhaps best known for faking the Moon landing, 37th US President Richard Milhouse Nixon died on April 22, 1994. He left behind him an astonishing range of sins: Alcoholism, pill popping, wife beating, perpetuating the Vietnam War, and calling Helen Gahagan Douglas a filthy lesbian.

Tricky Dicky's ultimate crime was confirming the suspicions of an entire generation of fuckoffs that they, in fact, were the chosen people of their place and time. The results may be seen in the merciless attacks on the human spirit masquerading as '60s nostalgia, ridiculous cam girls indulging in astrology, and the otherwise unexplained persistence of adulation for Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Made two visits to China to meet Mao. Appointed Elvis a secret special agent of some sort.

According to convicted Watergate criminal John W. Dean, Nixon wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute think tank, because they had possession of certain unspecified, but apparently important documents. Yes, firebomb.

While everyone else publishes hagiographies about the 75th anniversary of Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant (good food, btw), which eventually became Knott's Berry Farm, let's remember the man behind the landmark for what he was: a paranoid loon who used the massive revenues from Ma Knott's kitchen to publish some of the funniest anti-commie pamphlets this side of Jimmy Utt's mimeograph, help start the Lincoln Club, and organized the Orange County School of Anti-Communism, a crucial spark to create our unique brand of conservatism.

Here's Walter on the classic Groucho Marx show, You Bet Your Life. By all accounts a stern man (and you would be, too, if you grew up in Calico), at least he cracks a smile for Groucho :
 

OC Weekly contributor and my occasional KPFK-FM 90.7 producer Gabriel San Roman wrote a great recollection on his personal blog about his days as a varsity basketball player for Savanna High School in Anaheim during the late 1990s. The ostensible reason for the post was a response to arrogant lefties who decry sports as the opiate of the masses; San Roman pointed out that playing prep hoops proved crucial to his political formation.

"There was never a separation nor was there a sense that basketball and politics were mutually exclusive," he explained. "This was most pronounced when I played for my High School Basketball team and matched up throughout the years against the wealthier school of Brea Olinda in Orange County. Because of a class consciousness that was known through life experience, not by reading Marx, these games amped me and my teammates more than any others. The smugness of Brea labeled our school and its students as 'apartment dwellers.' Their campus resembled a junior college. Ours? A steel cage match."

San Roman goes on to reveal their team's rallying circle cry when playing against the Wildcats: "Minorities on 3! 1,2,3, Minorities!"

This incident reminded me of another Brea Olinda High student racialist moment: my senior year at Anaheim High, when we played the Wildcats at their beautiful home field for a football game, our quarterback didn't even bother with code to bark out the plays--he spoke to his teammates in plain Spanish, infuriating and flummoxing the non-Latino opposing side (this bit of Reconquista was documented in the small-but-excellent Anaheim Colonists Football: A Century of Tradition).

What San Roman failed to point out (although we joke about it all the time) is that Savanna's mascot is Johnny Reb and that for decades, the school proudly hung the Stars and Bars!

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Wacko Heights) hasn't spoken to the Weekly since--take your pick--Moxley exposed him as a Taliban sympathizer or we published a photo of him in mujahideen garb (or was it the one where he wore an Uncle Sam hat and glassy, besotted eyes?). So can someone out there ask Dana to make sure he never, ever uses a penny of Social Security money lest he be proven a hypocrite again?

Let me explain. A source who knows my love of unofficial Orange County history forwarded me a copy of a April 4, 1969 Los Angeles Times article documenting a Young Americans for Freedom protest outside the Old County Courthouse. The YAFers were burning Social Security cards to protest the retirement program as a "fraud." Guess who was there?

The caption to a photo reads, "John Schurman holds a card for Dana Rohrabacher, head of the group, to burn." The picture is too grainy to make out the face of young Dana, but clearly visible is his hand holding a match while another grasps a sign that reads, "Social Security is a Tax on Youth"

Dana doesn't have much of a record on Social Security other than trying to deny it for illegals, but he's also not such a zealot about it that I can find any recent activity against it. He's quickly approaching retirement age--will old Dana renege on the promises of young Dana? Someone ask him, please!

In anticipation of the Barrio History Symposium held this Saturday morning at Golden West College by the Orange County Mexican American Historical Society (I'll lecture on the 1936 Citrus War), here's a blast from the county's Mexican-hating past. From the Sept. 6, 1918 Los Angeles Times:

Ask a Mexican to work, and if he refuses, arrest him. That sentiment, promulgated by [Orange County] Dist.-Atty. L.A. West and Sheriff C.E. Jackson, has been O.K'd by a labor investigating committee of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber of Commerce also proposed this be a statewide measure, but haven't done the research yet to see if this idea went anywhere--oh, wait, cheap Mexican labor has been the state's main engine since time immemorial...

And now, the Simpsons in Spanish!

Legendary Olympian and longtime Orange County resident Sammy Lee was honored two days ago with a spot on the Anaheim Walk of Stars, and it was fascinating to see history in action in this day of Wikipedia, press releases, and the loss of institutional memory. The story in the Orange County Register mentioned his back-to-back gold medals in platform diving during the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, and that he served for years afterward as a coach. But it didn't even hint at Lee's involvement in one of the uglier moments in Orange County history.

In 1954, Lee--an Army vet, licensed doctor, two-time gold-medal winner and recent recipient of the Sullivan Award as the best amateur athlete in the United States--tried to buy a house in Garden Grove but was refused. Twice. All because he was Asian. Garbage Grove's racism was condemned worldwide for the obvious reasons, and even Ed Sullivan and then-veep Richard Nixon spoke publicly in favor of Lee, who eventually did buy a home (Click here for a Hearst Agency picture with the telling caption, "Sammy Lee and wife now welcomed to Garden Grove"). His struggle to buy a house was an important step in the battle to end housing segregation in Orange County that ultimately culminated in the Mulkey v. Reitman Supreme Court case.

Does the Register story mention Lee's inspiring tale? Nope, but in fairness to reporter Joshua Suddock, the official press release by the Anaheim Walk of Stars didn't bother to include the housing segregation incident. Even O.C. Archives worker Chris Jepsen, who knows better, also committed the historical slight in his post on Lee's award.

Sigh...I can make the obvious conclusion and say Lee's Garbage Grove incident doesn't mesh with the orange-crate school that dominates Orange County history, but some of ustedes will dismiss me as a whiny Mexican. So, let's punt to them: any reason why such civil rights history should go down the rabbit hole of naranja memory?

The Los Angeles Times story published this Monday telling the world Anaheim is now majority-Latino has drawn nothing but derision from the Latino Anaheimers I know (read this musical takedown by Weekly contributor and KPFK-FM 90.7 Subversive Historian Gabriel San Roman). "Oh no, they didn't put in a picture of lucha libre!" another pal cracked, referring to the Mexican wrestling matches that have been occurring every Sunday at the Anaheim Indoor Marketplace for so long that the second piece I ever did for this rag was explaining it to gabachos. I'm not going to knock the piece, since author Tony Barboza is a good guy who can write great articles. But I will take him to task on one issue: his retelling of Anaheim's racial history.

"Latinos have not always felt entirely at home in Anaheim, which was founded as a colony of German farmers in 1857 and has a history of racial tension," Barboza wrote. "In the 1920s, four Ku Klux Klan members were elected to the City Council and briefly took control of the government, earning the city an uncomfortable nickname: 'Klanaheim.'"

Stop right there. Mentioning that the Klan controlled Anaheim, even staged a 10,000-strong rally in the city, is the easy jab people always employ against Anaheim specifically and Orange County in general whenever they want to describe us as fundamentally racist. But, as I wrote in my expose of Orange County founding father (and the proud Klansman shown at right) Henry W. Head:

How Head's KKK membership was wiped from the Orange County history books is really a story of how local scholars highlight selected parts of our story. The Klan's rise in Anaheim and other cities during the 1920s is well-documented--as a stand by good people against racist terror, an easy narrative to write and honor. The misdeeds of Head and other notorious county moments in race relations such as the Citrus War, the 1906 burning of Santa Ana's Chinatown and the lynching of Francisco Torres? Not so much.

Besides, the Klan's time in Anaheim had little to do with suppressing minorities--especially Mexicans.

Don Papi Pulido is a Floral Park resident

This weekend, the Floral Park Neighborhood Association  hosts its annual Home and Garden Tour, a fantabulous two days where residents can pretend they don't live in SanTana. "Stroll tree-lined streets, enjoy the ambiance of a simpler time gone by," reads a promotional brochure, and ain't that the funniest code for "before the Mexicans ruined the town" you've read in a while? The starting point will be on the corner of Santa Clara Avenue and Victoria Drive, a place where the docents can lay down the true history of Floral Park but probably won't because look at how pretty the houses here are!

According to the association's history, Floral Park began as a place where World War I vets could return to live--indeed, nearby Memory Lane is dedicated to the soldiers of the Great War who didn't return. "During the prosperous years of the 1920s, it was said that 'every man could have his castle and he could have it any style he wanted'" reads the brief recap, before listing architectual schools such as Spanish Colonial and English Tudor revivals. What the Floral Park folks didn't include was the style of Whites Only.

Not Esquire.

Gustavo blogged him up as "OC's Eternal Loser" in 2007, but Esquire magazine's May 2009 issue (the one that allows you to create your own horrifying Obama/Clooney/Timberlake/monster man cover) labels him as "The Man Who Never Was." We're talking about Todd Marinovich, the Newport Beach kid who was engineered by his father to be a legendary quarterback and, eventually, became a legend for the wrong reasons.

He led Mater Dei and Capistrano Valley teams to greatness in the late 1980s and became the protypical OC-bred USC star. But after only three years with the Los Angeles Raiders, the drugs and partying caught up with him and he was forced out of pro sports, consigned to chasing heroine and occasionally getting busted for skateboarding on Balboa Island. A few forays into Arena Football and Canadian teams didn't pan out (though he set a few records in his short time in the Arena); now, he's living -- supposedly sober -- in San Juan Capistrano.

It's an Esquire profile, so it's a good read even if you hate football and live in Fargo. Get it online here.

But if you live in Orange County, there's the added fun of playing spot-the-reference in Marinovich's life story. You probably know what's being referred to when it's mentioned that Marinovich surfed naked at a "spot near a nuclear power plant." Bonus points, though, if you can identify his "old hook spot in Santa Ana" where Marinovich liked to buy black-tar heroine.

Stephen Glauser / Flickr / Creative Commons

The Capistrano Insider posted last week an entertaining, slightly depressing exchange between Capistrano Dispatch editor Jonathan Volzke and a Long Beach husband and wife who were considering moving to San Juan Capistrano. That is, they were considering moving there until they came down to Camino Capistrano on the night of the Swallows Day parade and saw some awful stuff. Just awful. They sent the Dispatch an email to carp:

Schmitz: Why is this man laughing?

Spencer's excellent cover story this on skinhead-happy Old World Village allows me to post on a bit of Orange County history I've been keeping for a while: how this Surf City Alpine fantasy came to host a meeting of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review back in 1989.

Years ago, Cyndie Bischof, daughter of Old World founder Josef, wrote this hilarious letter criticizing a piece written by then-calendar editor Anna Barr. Regarding the IHR conference, Cyndie wrote:

In regard to the birthday celebration of Hitler and the Historical Society conference under the church, Josef Bischof did not participate in any such events. Yes, these events took place at our establishment by promoters we do not even know personally. You see, we have four banquet facilities, which we rent out weekly to business conferences, weddings, birthdays, reunions, etc. While we do not ask specifics because we are not in any way racial, someone or a group of people decided to throw a party and conference, and because it took place at Josef Bischof's establishment, of course the public wants to blame it on Josef because he is German and all. This is discrimination, for he did not even participate in these events.

Cyndie Bischof's version isn't the one remembered by IHR head Mark Weber. In a 2001 remembrance of late, crazy, former O.C. politician John Schmitz, Weber was particularly thankful for Schmitz arranging the 1989 IHR conference to be held at Old World Village after a hotel booted out Weber and his Holocaust-denying pals. "It seemed that the Conference might be cancelled just as it was to begin," wrote Weber. "In this emergency, Schmitz contacted Joe Bischof, a friend who owned the Old World shopping center in nearby Huntington Beach. Bischof graciously offered his facilities, and the Ninth IHR Conference -- one of the most spirited ever -- was held in a packed basement meeting room, in spite of continued harassment by [Jewish Defense League] thugs."

Too bad Schmitz isn't around anymore to tell his version of the truth, as only his wonderfully demented mind could do...

Type "Augustin Cebada" on YouTube to hear his take on plain ol' white folk!

The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles has a fascinating article in tomorrow's edition about "La Causa," a show that airs Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KPFK-FM 90.7 and is hosted by a 1960s refugee who calls himself Augustin Cebada (not his real name) and allows some of the worst anti-Semitic bile to soil Southern California since La Voz de Aztlan--and more on that connection in a bit! I'm quoted in the piece by reporter Robert Loiderman, probably because I host a show on KPFK but more likely because I got the Journal to pay attention to anti-Semitic lunatic Latinos years ago with this piece on La Voz. Loiderman did a great job, although a bit too measured for my tastes considering "Cebada" has previously allowed listeners to rail about ZOG and insist Jews have their symbols on American currency. Most importantly, Loiderman forgot to mention the Orange County connections to "La Causa."

One of them is La Voz de Aztlan, the gay-bashing, Jew-trashing website run by a former Buena Park employee named Hector Carreon (note: Carreon is a Sephardic last name) who operates his bit of Internet caca from Whittier. "Cebada" is so far off the deep end that he interviewed Carreon in 2007 as if La Voz de Aztlan was a legitimate voice. The audio is no longer up on the KPFK archives, but Carreon still has a page crowing about his appearance on "La Causa" and even claimed he'd be working with "Cebada" on the show. "La Voz de Aztlan is working with the staff of 'La Causa' to create additional radio programming at KPFK for La Raza. Anyone interested in this project should contact La Voz de Aztlan," Carreon wrote. Did anything come out of this partnership of pendejos? Still does: "Cebada" and his guests still give shout-outs to La Voz and frequently use the site as talking points the way conservatives use Rush.

But La Voz isn't even the closest Orange County connection to "La Causa." That would be a weekly moron who calls himself Tlaloc.

The fight against Orange County's historic Chicano murals has opened up a new front against the man who virtually invented the genre: historic muralist Emigdio Vasquez.

On Feb. 25, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas filed another of his wonderful gang injunctions, this time against the Orange Varrio Cypress (OVC) gang based out of Orange's historic Cypress Street barrio (it hasn't been publicized yet, for some bizarre reason). In the more than 500 pages of evidence included to make the charges stick against dozens of folks (including an eight-year-old boy) is a strange diatribe against the work of Vasquez by Orange officer Joel Nigro.

Apparently, the cholos have claimed the mural above as part of their turf--an unfortunate development, for sure. But Nigro quickly goes off the deep end in an expert declaration for T-Rack. "Emigdio Vasquez has also painted several other murals [sic] reference the OVC gang and the gang lifestyle, including pieces such as, 'Vatos Locos,' 'Sunday Morning in OVC,' 'Vatos Locos de Barrio,' and 'Cypress Street Pachucos.'"

Only one problem: on his personal website that shows those murals in question, Vasquez writes, "These paintings show people and events in and around a Barrio in Orange, California where Emigdio spent his childhood." That childhood was during the 1940s; the neighborhood, the Cypress barrio. But according to Nigro, OVC wasn't established until the 1970s.

This evening, iconic Chicana author Betita Martinez will speak about her latest book, 500 Years of Chicana History, an excellent--if a bit too ¡QUE VIVA LA RAZA! for genteel (read: gabacho) historians--collection of pictures and facts at the Teamsters 952 Union Hall, 140 South Marks Way, Orange, at 7 p.m. In honor of her appearance, I present something I rarely do: a list! Here is my top five Mexican women, in slightly chronological order, in Orange County history that are no longer with us:

1. Modesta Avila: The first convicted felon in Orange County, and someone who set the template for Mexican-gabacho relations. Literally railroaded to an early death in San Quentin.








2. Martina Espinoza Burruel aka La Chola Martina: Historians have long maligned Espinoza for her role in the 1857 shooting death of a San Juan Capistrano shopkeeper by a gang led by bandit Pancho Daniel but forever associated with Juan Flores. With no proof whatsoever, O.C.'s historical Brahmins have claimed Espinoza messed with the guns of L.A. County Sheriff James Barton, was Flores' lover, and some still claim she was a witch. Another template: O.C. Mexican history distorted, maligned, or ignored.

Eastman

I appeared on KOCE-TV Channel 50's Inside OC with Rick Reiff a couple of weeks ago to debate Chapman Law School Dean John Eastman on Proposition 8 and other topics on which we mostly agreed. Eastman is one of the legal minds behind the Yes on 8 arguments that will be argued tomorrow before the California Supreme Court. Obviously we don't agree on gay marriage, but that's fine. What's not fine, however, is Eastman's insistence that same-sex marriages have never occurred in California. It's a point he made on Inside OC, and one he repeated ad nauseum yesterday on Patt Morrison's KPCC-FM 89.3 program.

Sigh. As I wrote back in October, not only has gay marriage occurred in California, it happened here in O.C., amongst the Juaneños, and I'm sure other tribes practice same-sex marriage in California. Eastman and his ideological ilk need to drop the absolutist arguments once and for all and just admit they're scared shitless about the gays being just like breeders. Oh, and John? For you to say that gays do have the right to marry--they just gotta marry someone else of the opposite sex? CLASSY.