Bass, Garcia lead hearing on federal immigration actions
Driver in crash that killed Alhambra officer charged with murder
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Deliver us from overnight delivery By Tess Eyrich Valley Truck Farms was once a rural refuge for Black families who built homes, gardens, and community just south of San Bernardino. Today, only a handful of houses remain, overshadowed by warehouses and surrounded by truck traffic. It’s a pattern that echoes across the region. Inland Southern California has become a hub for global commerce, but the costs to families, neighborhoods, and public health are mounting. Through a collaborative public history and art project called "Live From the Frontline," researchers and residents are documenting the transformation — and toll — of supply chain communities in flux.
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he “for sale” sign outside St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church belies the electricity that crackles inside the 97-year-old house of worship. Take a seat on one of the church’s 18 wooden pews, covered in plush, blood-red velvet, and you’re likely to count at least a handful of fascinators, jeweled brooches, and crisp pairs of gloves in the congregation. During more sedate stretches of the service, you might see paper hand fans wave lazily, rhythmically — that is, until the time comes to stand and sing and clap. St. Mark’s was built in 1928, but it’s far from a time capsule. The church’s walls are lined with blown-up photographs of families: men in suits, women in dresses, babies on laps, older children arranged in height order like the bars of a xylophone. These are the Savilles, the Whites, the Overstreets, the Greens, and so many others who populated Valley Truck Farms, a once-thriving, predominantly Black community in San Bernardino for which St. Mark’s is one of the last remaining visible vestiges. At its largest, the footprint of Valley Truck Farms covered about 1 square mile of southeastern San Bernardino and housed around 500 families. They began to trickle east, often from Los Angeles, in the
A semitruck leaves a warehouse across the street from St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church on June 8 in San Bernardino. | Photo courtesy of Stan Lim/UC Riverside
latter half of the 1920s. The subdivided parcels of Valley Truck Farms offered these families the promise of land ownership, which was too often limited by discriminatory housing policies. Between the 1930s and ’70s, the population of Valley Truck Farms bloomed; residents not only built homes and grew their families but also cultivated the land, allowing for self-sufficiency and economic independence. Percy Harper, who is only the fourth pastor in St. Mark’s near-century-long history, grew up in Valley Truck Farms and attended St. Mark’s as a congregant before becoming pastor in 1988. His mother and her family arrived in Valley Truck Farms from Arkansas
in the 1940s by way of Los Angeles, part of the Great Migration of millions of Black Americans out of the South and into other corners of the United States that began in the early 1900s. Harper’s memories of Valley Truck Farms are colored by its entrepreneurial spirit; many residents grew food — namely corn, black-eyed peas, potatoes, tomatoes, and fruit trees — and raised livestock, including dairy cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. Harper had planned to go to law school until he was in a serious car accident the day after graduating with his bachelor’s degree from UC Riverside in 1976. He describes waking up in See Warehouses Page 08
the hospital as a critical turning point in his life, one that reoriented him back toward Valley Truck Farms and St. Mark’s. He assumed leadership of the church amid a period of gradual but dramatic transformation in the community. Beginning in the late 1960s and ’70s, Harper says, local government officials quietly initiated a series of zoning changes in the area, redesignating land use from residential to commercial and reshaping neighborhood infrastructure to serve corporate interests rather than homeowners and families. Over time, the homes and gardens of Valley Truck Farms were replaced by a patchwork of
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LA County board considers ICE mask ban; reps want answers about immigrant deaths By Joe Taglieri joet@beaconmedianews.com
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os Angeles County supervisors unveiled a proposed ordinance Monday that would prohibit federal immigration agents and other law enforcement officers from concealing their identities, while two Southern California members of Congress are seeking answers on the 25 reported deaths of immigration detainees. The proposed county law is up for a vote Dec. 2 and seeks to prohibit all officers with local, state and federal agencies from wearing masks or personal disguises while interacting with the public in unincorporated areas. If approved, the ordinance also would require that all law enforcement officers wear visible IDs and agency affiliation. "I never thought I would see the day when a masked, anonymous federal police force would be swarming our neighborhoods, targeting people based on the color of their skin or the language they speak, and forcing men and women into unmarked vans at gunpoint. This is how an authoritarian’s secret police operate – not legitimate law enforcement in a democracy,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement announcing the proposed ordinance that she co-authored with Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. Hahn acknowledged the move will likely draw opposition from the federal See ICE Page 31
government, which has already sued California over similar laws requiring officer identification. “If this means a fight with the federal government, I think it is a fight worth having," Hahn said. "We cannot give in now and make this okay in America." Administration officials said increasing violence against immigration agents was a motivation for masks and lashed out at state and local officials. “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from wearing masks is despicable and a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers," Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "To be crystal clear: we will not abide by a state’s unconstitutional ban." McLaughlin and White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said violent attacks against federal agents has increased "1000%." McLaughlin cited increasing "terror attacks, cars being used as weapons (and) bounties to murder them placed on their heads. ... We’ve also seen thugs launch websites to reveal officers’ identities to dox and threated their families. We will prosecute those who dox our agents or lay a hand on law enforcement to the fullest extent of the law.” Jackson said in a state-