"I'm standing in the northern section of MacArthur Park with City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, and the modern-day struggles of the historic space is all around us. People lie on the sidewalk or stand hunched over and motionless. Others lounge on spotty lawns near overflowing trash cans. Graffiti besmirch trees. Police and firefighter sirens wail in the distance. So much to see, so much to consider in a place that has transformed into a Rorschach test for how some people see the challenges of Los Angeles."
""We redid all of them in this area," the first-term council member proudly said. "And you're probably thinking, like, 'Girl, like, that does not look like it's redone.' But the amount of labor and resources that we had to put in to get this done, even if it's not pretty anymore, that's just a little tiny bit of the work you do around MacArthur Park.""
"For decades, dispatches from here - in mainstream and social media - have depicted an out-of-control park two steps away from "The Walking Dead." The area is so nationally notorious that the Border Patrol chose it to stage an invasion here in July, complete with a literal cavalry of agents trotting down a soccer field where kids usually play while National Guard troops sat inside armored Humvees on Wilshire Boulevard."
Northern MacArthur Park shows visible distress: people lying on sidewalks, spotty lawns, overflowing trash cans, graffiti, and distant sirens. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez points to recently redone red curbs as an example of invested labor and resources despite their faded appearance. The park has long national notoriety, including a Border Patrol operation that used a soccer field and National Guard Humvees on Wilshire Boulevard. The park serves as the backyard for a dense immigrant neighborhood, and successive council members have worked to protect its safety and reputation; Hernandez is running for a second term amid multiple challengers.
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