The Brief

Graffiti writing as a common form of street art makes a lot of sense in a place like Los Angeles.

Long, frequent commutes make boulevards and freeways the ideal canvas for artists to get eyes on a statement they're trying to make or a conversation they're trying to start.

Like many forms of art, graffiti writing is not without controversy — it is often used in acts of vandalism and has been associated with gang activity because of its use by those groups to mark territory. But graffiti writers will tell you their art form is not only about communicating with each other as artists, it's about starting conversations about things like identity, politics or movements the artist feels aren't being had.

LAist talked with local experts on street art and graffiti writing, as well as graffiti writers and artists themselves, about the earliest iterations of this type of street art in Los Angeles, how it morphed into the graffiti writing we see today and its significance as a form of artistic expression in the Southern California art scene.

'Hobo graffiti' and early examples

Some of the earliest graffiti you'll still find in Los Angeles today dates back to the 1870s, from a Civil War-era building in the neighborhood of Wilmington.

Graffiti from around this era was part of so-called "hobo times" according to Susan Phillips, a professor of environmental analysis at Pitzer College and author of The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti.

A wall along the Arroyo Seco with hobo graffiti referred to as "Kid Bill," it contains old writing and markings that date back to roughly some time between 1914-1921.

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Courtesy of Susan Phillips

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"As the country transferred from an agrarian society to more of an industrialized society post-Civil War, you just get massive numbers of people who are displaced and travel all over the country," said Phillips. "And then [they] eventually create these incredible written traditions with their own history."

So for the decades following, you'd see the "hobo graffiti" era take shape in these small-scale hieroglyphs made for writers as a means of communicating with one another.

L.A. graffiti writing as a form of protest

As graffiti writing evolved over the years, it also became a way for artists to tell a political message, or call attention to an issue they feel isn't being represented in other forms of media.

"The wall is almost both a first and last resort for telling an alternative story and history ... and it's meant to get people maybe a bit angry, maybe a bit annoyed," said Stefano Bloch, professor of cultural geography at the University of Arizona and the author of Going All City: Struggle And Survival in LA’s Graffiti Subculture.

"It's meant to bring information to people who have a different form of literacy. So, wall art or murals or graffiti or whatever you want to call it ... gets people riled and it does that on purpose," said Bloch, who was himself a noted graffiti writer who went by the name "Cisco" in Los Angeles in the 1990s.

One of the most notable political murals still around today can be found on Olvera Street — Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros's América Tropical: Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos, one of three pieces done in the artist's time in political exile in Los Angeles.

América Tropical and his other public project, Street Meeting, were seen as controversial and ultimately whitewashed (literally painted over with white paint), although the former was found to still be intact in the 1960s.

Projects like these helped fuel parts of El Movimiento in Los Angeles. One group that is well known for its political art in L.A. was Asco, a collective of Chicano artists whose work includes performance art like Stations of the Cross and graffiti writing like Spray Paint LACMA.

"I do remember is their uses of public space, photography, and street theater in a sense ... pushing the boundaries of all that [and] was a great celebratory moment [for] the Chicano movement," said Phillips.

But even within the Chicano movement, graffiti artists had to fight for recognition. Chaz Bojórquez, who is seen as the "godfather of West Coast graffiti," has noted that some Chicano artists viewed graffiti as anti-Chicano that undermined the larger goal of the movement.

Increase name recognition

Dating back to some of the earliest known graffiti writers in L.A. like Bojórquez, graffiti was a creative outlet that was meant to be a political statement and also a means for artists to get their name out there.

Two graffiti writers, including one who goes by "Cisco," writing on a wall.

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Courtesy of Stefano Bloch

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Not every artist who grew up in Los Angeles could get their art seen through traditional means. It's why Professor Bloch considers graffiti writing as a means for "other people [to] see their name and think about them."

"They're doing it in an aesthetically pleasing way sometimes, sometimes they're doing it [cryptically] … but it's always about a conversation with surfaces," Bloch said. "The legality of surfaces, the appropriate placement of surfaces, and subcultural hierarchy."

How graffiti writers are making money

When graffiti writer Man One began his career in 1980s, the first thing he tagged was a bus.

"When I first started, I started talking about transit ... because the bus is what moves us around as kids. I was 16, 17 years old and taking the bus all over the, all over the place."

He has since spun that desire to start conversations into exhibitions across Southern California, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the Parco Museum in Japan, and more.

Man One said when he was starting out, magazines were one of the only ways that graffiti writers like him could get exposure, at least beyond people happening upon their work in public.

"The first magazines that I saw were probably coming out of L.A. [like] Can Control Magazine ... but the book Spray Can Art, that came from New York, that was one of our Bibles," Man One said. "Subway Art was another book, but Spray Can Art spoke to the world ... artwork that was being painted on walls [and] not just on subway trains."

Not only did these magazines serve as inspiration, but getting any of your work published could mean getting into an art exhibition and eventually making a living from your work.

A mural titled "Faces of Pomona" by Man One, commissioned by the city of Pomona.

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Courtesy of Man One

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Growing through every new piece of graffiti writing, or other artistic projects writers did, is what helped create word-of-mouth that eventually translated to commissions.

"I remember the first time I got paid $50 to paint a garage door. I was like, 'This is it. Someone paid me $50, that means I can make $100, that means I can make $200, and it just snowballed from there," Man One said.

Since then, social media has become more of a platform for folks to find your work. Graffiti writers of all generations across the country have found similar artistic mediums that help grow their portfolios.

"Graffiti writers in the East Coast go into graphic design, tattooing, many different types of artistic endeavors that pay," Bloch said. "Here on the West Coast, a lot of graffiti writers go into the film industry as set designers or set dressers, background dressers, or any kind of artistic endeavor, even into fashion and television writing."

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said it had approved the merger of local television giants Nexstar Media Group and rival Tegna, the same day that two lawsuits trying to block the deal were announced.

Nexstar said last August that it would buy Tegna for $6.2 billion. The deal would create a company that owns 265 television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, most of them local affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the company had agreed to divest itself of six of those stations.

The deal needed the approval of the Republican Trump administration's FCC because the government had to waive rules that limit how many local stations that one company can own. Nexstar said it had also received approval from the Justice Department, but attempts to independently confirm that were not immediately successful Thursday.

"We are grateful to President Trump, Chairman Carr and the DOJ for recognizing the dynamic forces shaping the media landscape and allowing this transaction to move forward," said Perry Sook, Nexstar's chairman and CEO.

Attorneys general in eight states and DirecTV filed lawsuits with the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California, seeking to block the merger. The lawsuits make similar arguments that the deal will lead to higher prices for consumers and stifle local journalism.

The action was filed by the top lawyers in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia — all of them Democrats. "If this merger moves forward, cable prices will spike for consumers in New York and across the country," said Letitia James, New York attorney general, on Thursday. The state lawyers argued the merger would run afoul of federal laws designed to protect against monopolies.

Similarly, DirecTV predicted the deal would allow Nexstar to jack up the price it can extract from DirecTV and other distributors to carry their stations, "which will force them to raise prices to their subscribers."

Given Nexstar's tendency to consolidate newsrooms in communities where it owns more than one station, both lawsuits expressed concern that the merger would hurt the already struggling local news business. There are 31 markets across the country where Nexstar and Tegna own at least one station, according to the states' lawsuit.

In approving the deal, Carr said that "if you care about local news, you should care about the future of local broadcast stations." He said the deal will ensure that the broadcasters have the resources to continue investing in those operations. Sook, too, said Nexstar will be a stronger company, "better positioned to deliver exceptional journalism and local programming."

Nexstar had no direct comment on the lawsuits, a spokesman said.

The merger was endorsed in February by President Donald Trump, who wrote on social media that "we need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks."

Anna Gomez, a Democratic member of the FCC, condemned the Republican-controlled agency's decision, saying it was done behind closed doors without an actual vote.

"Local journalism is under extraordinary strain," she said. "Across the country newsrooms are being consolidated, reporters laid off and editorial decisions made far from the communities broadcast stations are licensed to serve. The Nexstar-Tegna merger will accelerate exactly that trend, concentrating broadcast power in fewer corporate hands, shrinking independent editorial voices and prioritizing national business interests over local needs."

Nexstar flexed its muscles last fall in ordering its ABC stations to yank late-night host Jimmy Kimmel following comments he made about assassinated Republican activist Charlie Kirk, briefly leading to Kimmel's suspension. But ABC brought Kimmel back following an outcry, and Nexstar backed down.

The attorneys general said they were open to having other states support their actions — even those whose chief legal officials are Republicans.

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Public officials across California are contemplating what to do with dozens of streets, parks and libraries named in honor of civil rights icon César Chávez in the wake of allegations he sexually assaulted two girls and a woman decades ago.

The allegations surfaced in an investigation by the New York Times published earlier this week that sent shock waves across the country.

Chávez, who was head of the United Farm Workers union, is widely recognized as one of the most influential labor leaders in U.S. history, known for founding the union and for leading national boycotts of grapes to improve working conditions for farmworkers.

Chávez died in 1993.

Many state and local leaders, including L.A.’s mayor and county supervisors, suggested changing the César Chávez holiday on March 31 to Farm Workers Day. March 31 was Chávez’s birthday.

In Sacramento on Thursday, Democratic leaders of the state Legislature said they would push for such a change.

“The farmworker movement was never ever about one man,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said at a news conference. “It was built by tens of thousands of workers. People who labored in the fields, people who organized, people who sacrificed and who stood up when it was hard.

“We have a responsibility to remember the movement and to move it forward with integrity.”

Also on Thursday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed a proclamation renaming the city's César Chávez Day holiday as “Farm Workers Day.” The city recognizes the holiday on the last Monday of March.

“I grew up as a child admiring the farmworker movement,'' Bass said. “I didn't think I was ever going to eat grapes again because my family boycotted grapes.”

The grape strike, organized in part by Chávez, lasted five years from 1965 to 1970.

Multiple allegations of sexual assault

The New York Times investigation uncovered multiple allegations that Chávez had sexually assaulted girls and women in the 1960s and ‘70s, when he was head of United Farm Workers, including union co-founder Dolores Huerta.

Huerta, now 95, told the Times the rape and sexual assault resulted in pregnancies that she kept secret. Huerta said she gave the children up for adoption after birth.

In a statement, Huerta said in part: “... for the last 60 years [I] have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”

Bass said Thursday she met Chávez once and “thought it was an opportunity of a lifetime.” She said her heart “broke” this week when she heard the allegation that Chávez had raped Huerta.

The mayor said renaming the holiday would allow people “to reflect on how the struggle of farmworkers has elevated working people everywhere.”

She added that the city would need to consider changing the names of buildings, streets and other things named in honor of Chávez.

For example, César Chávez Avenue runs through the heart of the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Several murals of Chávez dot the city.

Bass said she had been in contact with Chávez's family, and they supported her action.

The mayor was joined at the proclamation signing by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, who said in a statement that the farmworker movement has always been about the power of the people, “especially the women whose labor built it and too often went unseen."

“As we honor that legacy, we also have a responsibility to tell the truth about harm and stand with survivors,” Hernandez said.

Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado also attended the news conference. She said the movement doesn’t belong to one person.

“Farm Workers Day honors the workers, families and organizers still in the fields and still fighting for fair wages, safe conditions and dignity,” the statement from Jurado read. “And it recognizes that this movement is carried forward every single day by people whose names we may never know but whose impact continues to define the spirit of Los Angeles.”

Other cities and counties 

Many other cities and counties are considering wiping Chávez's name from public spaces.

L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said she would introduce a motion looking at renaming the county’s César Chávez holiday.

Supervisor Janice Hahn suggested the county consider renaming Chávez day “Farm Worker Day.”

“For those of us who grew up admiring the farmworker movement, today's news is heartbreaking,'' Hahn said in a statement Wednesday. "But as in any other civil rights movement, men were only half the story. The abuses of one man will never diminish the extraordinary sacrifices, accomplishments, and legacy of the women of the farmworker movement.

“It's time we put them first.”

The process for renaming streets and other public structures varies from city to city and school district to school district. It could take months before many cities move to erase Chávez's name from public spaces.

You can follow your city council agenda to keep up with what’s going on, or better yet, reach out to your representatives on the council and county Board of Supervisors to make your voice heard on the issue.

California, along with a coalition of 23 other states and a dozen cities and counties, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for rolling back the scientific finding requiring it to regulate greenhouse gas pollution.

“This isn’t a small technical change,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference in Sacramento. “It’s a sweeping decision that would increase pollution, worsen climate change and put the health of millions of Americans at risk. And it’s not based on any credible science.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeks to reinstate a 2009 conclusion known as the endangerment finding — that carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases threaten public health and welfare.

The climate rule served as the scientific basis for the agency’s ability to limit emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration finalized the repeal of the endangerment finding Feb. 12. A post on the EPA’s website stated the change would also dissolve restrictions on vehicle emissions and save Americans $1.3 trillion.

“As a result of these changes, engine and vehicle manufacturers no longer have any future obligations for the measurement, control and reporting of GHG emissions for any highway engine and vehicle, including model years manufactured prior to this final rule.”

Sanchez said California’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the landmark 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, “remains unchanged.”

Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties also were parties to the suit.

KQED’s Laura Klivans contributed to this report.

California voters are split along party lines on two controversial proposed ballot measures — a billionaire tax and an initiative requiring voters to show government ID when they cast a ballot — according to a new poll.

The survey from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found 52% of voters backing a proposed one-time, 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires. The money would be used to fund health care programs, which are being cut by the Trump administration; 33% of registered voters said they were opposed and 15% said they are still undecided.

Whether voters back the measure, which is being pushed by a health care labor union, is highly correlated to their partisan leanings: 72% of Democrats said they’d support the billionaire tax if it qualifies for the November ballot, while the same percentage of Republican voters are opposed. Voters with no party preference were more split, with 51% backing the wealth tax.

The voter ID ballot measure is more evenly divided, with 44% of voters in support and 45% opposed. Republican voters said they would overwhelmingly vote “Yes.” Democrats are unified in opposition, with only 19% in support.

IGS co-director Eric Schickler said that while neither measure has qualified yet for the ballot, most voters surveyed said they are aware of the proposals.

“The Billionaire Tax Initiative starts out in a relatively strong position, but with it polling just above 50%, that still leaves room for what will be an intense, expensive campaign,” he said. “The Voter ID Initiative looks like it faces an uphill climb: given the strong Democratic opposition, it needs very strong support among nonpartisan voters, and it currently seems to be falling short. But it is still very early.”

If they move forward, the campaigns around both measures are expected to be expensive and bruising. Democrats are split on the billionaires tax: Gov. Gavin Newsom is opposed, Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna said he’s in support, and many other Democrats — including legislative leaders and candidates for governor — have offered support for the concept but expressed concerns with the details of this proposal.

Some billionaires have already left California, and others, like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, are lining up huge campaign war chests to fight the measure.

And Democrats are gearing up to fight the voter ID measure, which several Southern California Republican lawmakers are pushing. The proposed ballot measure comes as the U.S. Senate debates what’s known as the SAVE Act, a far more draconian voter ID measure.

Backed by President Donald Trump, that legislation would require a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, essentially eliminate mail-in ballots and require states to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government. It already passed the House but is facing a steep climb in the Republican-led Senate.

The poll was conducted between March 9 and 15 among more than 5,000 registered California voters. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 2 points.