Henry Apodaca of the Skid Row History Museum and Archive joins The Archive Room to explore what community archiving looks like when the archive itself is embedded in the neighbourhood it documents. Henry takes us through his own path into archival work, from record collecting and a background in anthropology to earning his masters in library and information science at UCLA, and eventually landing at the Los Angeles Poverty Department. We talk about the history of the Skid Row neighbourhood and where the name actually comes from, the decades long fight between the city's redevelopment plans and the community's own response, and how that fight shaped the single room occupancy housing that still stands there today. Henry explains how the archive is funded, how researchers and members of the public can access the collection, and why some parts of it carry deliberate restrictions rooted in the community's own history. We also get into a choice that says a lot about how Henry approaches this work: preserving people's own words and language exactly as spoken in oral history transcription, rather than smoothing them into something tidier. And we talk about why Henry sees history as cyclical rather than linear, drawing a direct line between the sweeps of the 1984 Olympics and the concerns already building around the Games returning to Los Angeles in 2028. This is a conversation about what it means for an archive to genuinely serve and reflect a living community, not just store its past. Henry also joins Sandra for the Quickfire Round before we wrap up. The Archive Room is brought to you by Silversalt Restoration, the UK's foremost film and television restoration company, and part of the John Gores Studios family. You can find them at SilversaaltRestoration.com. Welcome to the Archive Room, the stories behind the footage. Yeah. I promote my archive and our programming in person, on foot, in the 50 blocks that Skid Row was at. I walk through Skid Row every week. As a matter of fact, I'm walking through Skid Row after this after this interview. I found that to be critical to the work. I consider it community-based instruction. So, in today's episode of the Archive Room, we're on the front lines of archiving in the historic Skid Row neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. We're talking community archiving with Henry Apadaka of the Skid Row Museum and History Archive. And we talk about how his organization has documented this community, its history, and its people. And we learn what it really means to build an archive that lives in the street, not just on a shelf. Absolutely fascinating, so stay tuned. Welcome to the Archive Room. My name is Domin Dare, and this is my co-host Sandra Coilo. Hello everybody. So today's guest is Henry Michael Apadoka. He served as the inaugural 2018-2019 UCLA Mellon Community Archives intern at the Skid Row History Museum. With undergraduate training in anthropology and 15 years public teaching experience, Henry is an educational specialist, turned archivist. Who received his MLIS degree from UCLA in June 2019? Henry's interests include locating media archival professionalization on the landscape of community archives by triangulating human, financial, and technological resources that motivate decision-making processes towards archival best practices. And we're gonna learn and understand that later. Additionally, he's interested in ontological design, epistemic justice, and tension emerging knowledge production models that nuance traditional notions of cognitive authority represented in archival records. Henry is also an avid record collector, disjoppy, and father of two boys. So Henry, welcome to the archive room. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Listen, we're we're really delighted set to have you today. and we're gonna be focusing on your archive, what you do there and how that's built. just for our sort of edification, could you just tell us a little about yourself? What led you into archival work and how did you end up working at at Skid Road Museum, History Museum? Yeah. I'm just gonna start beginning From the beginning and just you know, ride the wave. So I'm originally from San Mardino City, which is in San Mardino County in Southern Inland California. And had a typical childhood, you know, went went through elementary, Yeah. middle school, high school, but it was really in my high school years where I was becoming keen about who I am and what I like, specifically through music. I started to record collect in high school, which would have been in the mighty nineties. the generation of the nineties that I come from. And I was collecting a lot of records around the world, From around as well as stateside. musics that would really interest me were anything from R B, house, hip hop. I was actually also collecting from Sheffield, England, completely To be comp. honest. Well we we know all about that. Yeah. But this is without knowing it at the time, I was a custodian of records. I had records that These records I would collect. I had playback devices, I had output and monitor devices, but it wasn't conceived of in that way. It was more for leisure on my end. And it was also more for the adulation of playing music, mixing music and whatnot. I ended up getting admitted into the University of California Riverside. where I studied anthropology under a Dr. Michael Kearney. there still DJing, still record collecting, but I'm also tingling my intellectual and academic how would you say, interest, specifically transnational migration, labor, human rights. and this is where I fell into the lap of anthropology as a very young adult, probably around the age of 20 years old. Upon graduation, I went into public education. I saw it as a noble move on my behalf to serve Serve. the community that I live in and the communities that I come from and identify with. Taught anything from general education, but towards the end of my teaching career, I was teaching special education to children who are considered medically fragile. This is very formative at this point in my I guess you can say my journey. Teaching a class of special education students, one realizes that your students are all unique. They're ontologies, their epistemes. Everyone learns and reads an environment differently. You know, with my anthropological training as an undergraduate, I've become a proponent of something called historical materialism, which is essentially posits That ideas rise from an interaction from your environment as well as the material in that environment. Taking that notion and blending it into the public education domain gave me great success. I was able to identify the specific needs of individualized students. I was able to address and scaffold their learning. And it was all done person by person. I'm, you know, this is not running a classroom where I'm expecting all 20 students to do what I'm saying. This is really individualized education. Within that, I was also tasked with progress monitoring my students' development with incremental, I guess you could say, milestones for goals that I would create both socially and academically. Again, in hindsight, I was documenting. The progress of my students. I was evidencing their There being able to learn, their being able to track along in this educational curricula that I had for them at the time. I wasn't even conceiving of myself as a documentarian or a memory worker in this case, or even someone who was evidencing a student's education through their progress. I just really saw myself as an educator. Around 2015, I left the classroom, went on a sabbatical for a year. And during that time, I delved right back into my record collecting. And let me tell you, it is it's a hole, and you get to decide how deep you want to dig into that hole. I was getting to the point where I was buying VPI record cleaning machines. I was making my own solution to clean vinyl records. And this is where the story gets interesting. I go onto the Library of Congress's website looking for the best materials, solutions, or I guess you can say surfactants that I would mix to clean my vinyl records. And get on. I'm still perusing the website. Fine, whatever. And the Library of Congress was really cool because someone had left a document accessible online basically saying, Do you like this? Would you consider being a media archivist? Now mind you, this is like a 3 a.m. the morning and I'm zoned out. on track sketch solution correct and I I read the document. I learned about the MLS programs that are offered in the United States, but specifically the programs that were offered and accredited in California, which at that time were between two universities, the University of California, Los Angeles, Go Bruins, as well as San Jose State University, which is a completely online program. USC Current you and I gotta get this in. USC, they were in process of being accredited. At my time of application. So they weren't even an option for me. the Masters of Library and Information Sciences is perfect. Very specific. You can only go to certain schools for them that have been accredited, and that's done per state where they are being offered. So lo and behold, when I came into this knowledge about this education and this program, and knowing that it was already July, I got an application together. in a record period of time, had people behind me, submitted it off, essentially told a story that I just laid out right here for everyone. And by the following March, I got notice that I was accepted and the trajectory of my life and my journey was about to take take part and it was about to veer in a different direction than what I thought I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. I thought I was going to teach and retire in the classroom, but they were plans for me. We'll be right back in a moment. But first, a word about the hard work that goes into keeping our cinematic heritage alive. Silversalt Restoration is renowned for its care, expertise, and attention to detail and has delivered award-winning restorations for studios, archives, and labels across the globe. You can find them at silversaltrestoration.com. So I get into UCLA, mainly focused on audio archives. That's my big thing. That really comes from digitizing previously in the last 10 years my dub plates, my 12-inch records, my seven-inch records. I was digitizing cassette tapes and reels. And I was geeking out on the specs. I was geeking out on capturing the highest fidelity of audio that I could possibly get. With what I had available to me. And this was a great introduction, pathway into UCLA to study media archives through my program out over there. Once in UCLA, I gravitated and absorbed everything that was thrown at me. But I I must admit, you know, after having been in the anthropology department at UC Riverside some 15 years before. And then going into UCLA, you know, what I took notice was is that, you know, these schools of thought, especially at a graduate level that we are taught, I was not being exposed to what I was exposed to as an undergraduate, specifically historical materialism or the historical materialism versus cultural idealism debate. My department wasn't teaching that. They were a little bit more along the lines of, you know, traditional archiving and we would. We would how would you say interrogate some traditional notions, you know, for instance, the archivist as neutral, which I find to be completely ridiculous, the archivist and h hidden and hidden behind a door and inaccessible to the community writ large. You know, Right. I was really intrigued by this idea and understanding that a lot of archival science rose out of the aftermath of World War II, especially when nation states were claiming through evidence. And documentation, what was theirs, rebuilding and making a claim to whatever the claim was, you know, in my mind, this notion of evidence was tangible, at least as as it was being taught. It was a noun. But again, with this with this trajectory with an anthropological background as well as an educator for special needs kids, I came to my own conclusion that. Evidence needs to shift from a noun to a verb. My students were evidencing what they learned physically. There was nothing they could hand me. There's nothing they could write. I had to take notice and watch and recognize the milestones that my kids were bringing to me. I also take that notion from tribal archives where indigeneity through an indigenous Emic point of view is not necessarily tangible. Someone would evidence indigeneity through song, dance, language, but through a Westerner's point of view, indigeneity is evidenced through blood quantum, documents, and being recognized by the federal government that you are indigenous. The latter part I find to be completely ridiculous. You know, so the notions that I was developing as an up-and-coming archivist was evidence, definitely. You we need to be able to shape shift this, at least. the conceptualization of evidence from a noun to a verb, because with certain communities. Having it as a noun does not fit. It does not work. It's not fluid. It's not universal. I'm sorry. And being able to also understand conceptualizations and reconceptualizations of worldview, which I take from my anthropological background, poverty, which I also take from my anthropological background, I wanted to bring into my archives program and throw a spin on it, but at the same time, season the broth with my love for media. Season the broth with my love for audio and digitization. And you know, I got through that first year of this two year terminal program. In my second year, I was given an internship opportunity with the Los Angeles Poverty Department's Skid Row History Museum and Archive, where I was able to flex what I know. I was able to put things into place and to implement these notions. Whether it's knowledge production, whether it's a redesignation of cognitive authority upon those who have lived experiences. But then also as an archivist, looking at the social forces that affect lived experiences and the lives of people who who go through these, you know, it's particularly on on a policy level, particularly people who are criminalized and with logics of criminalization being incarceration. as opposed to rehabilitation. You know, I've had to be a spectator of the world in an effort to get to where I'm at. Now I'm in this position. Eight years later, you know, I've been here, I never left since I got here at UCLA. And I love it. You know, it's ironic that I do work for a theater group, considering my notions on evidence and performativity. But You know, things fall into place, just as fall out of order as well. A you know, a natural affiliation, natural growth, just archiving came innately to you. that idea of evidencing for communities that can't, you know, might not be in the normal kind of realm of archiving where you think, well, we've got this content, we're going to put it in the archive. You're you're really talking about, forgive me, because it's quite a complex notion that you're talking about actually finding ways, a non traditional ways to take that evidence, that community and put it into an archival form, right? Is that a fair summary? And so let's talk about is that I mean, yeah, is that fair summary, would you say? Yeah. Yeah, I think fair summary and it falls well in line with media because you know, I could I could document a dance on video tape back in the nineties and then the eighties. Yeah, indeed the carrier is physical, but the idea of the evidence is found in the performativity of what it is that we're looking at. So I say that is a very fair summary. You know, it's it's you it's really interesting. We've been making a documentary with you know, on South Dakota on the Pine Ridge reservation there with the Lakota tribe. And we've had a huge amount of issues with that in terms of kind of expressing their archives and what they have for their own, you know, individual expression of their communities. But I think for for this purpose, so we've landed we've landed with you this affinity for archivals, this amazing background that brings together this intellectualization and understanding of anthropology and evidencing and then your background in education. You land at Skid Row, right? Our audience will probably have heard the name or understand Skid Row. Maybe not much more than that. So let's talk about where you've landed in this community. Give us the history of Skid Row so that people can understand where you're physically working and what the community's like. Absolutely. I'll start with where I am exactly, but I think it'd be a good point to backtrack to the rhetoric of Skid Row and the derivations of what that means. So Skid Row, yeah, Yeah. through the eyes of governance here in City Council, Skid Row is Central City East and Don and downtown Los Angeles. it's about fifty square blocks. And And it houses approximately anywhere between well I should say house, but it contains anywhere between 4,500 to 5,000 homeless individuals and houseless individuals, as well as those who are housed but are experiencing extreme poverty. So I want to make that point. Homelessness is not a a a a black and white people There are who are also in the gray area, betwixt and between homelessness, who are juggling between transitional housing in an attempt to get permanent housing, or sometimes People that get into transitional housing and may take a step back. That's one thing to remember. It's not black and white and it's a bureaucratic process to say the least to get into this situation. Skid Row, for those that may not know here in LA. is a community. I need to say that outright. Even though City Council has shot down two attempts at a Skid Row neighborhood council. We in the aftermath get absorbed into the downtown neighborhood council, which doesn't necessarily represent the interest or the community writ large Skid Of the c of Row as a community. I think that's a very important point. Skid Row is in crisis to its society. You know, if we were to take Foucault's notion of heterotopias and the seven requirements that he has for heterotopic environments, which I know he Kind of alludes to in a in a garden, in a display or in a in an exhibition. Skid Row does definitely satisfy one of those those qualifications, and that is being in crisis to its society. It's in crisis by forced erasure, by history, or being ahistoricized in certain ways, as well as popular, I guess you can say narratives. Which in my mind is either misinformation or disinformation that disseminate upon Los Angeles writ large. There's a lot of stereotypes here about Skid Row, but would you believe me if I told you it had a rich arts community? Skid Row here are pet lovers. Skid Rowers Member help each other work together, create systems through Through neglect or out of neglect. From city council. And this neglect that I'm talking about, whether it's cleaning a street, having parks, having restrooms, public restrooms, I mean, completely neglectful. And my ideas from tension, emerging models of knowledge production come from this. I see the neglect as a form of tension. And because of that tension, we have the opportunity to do a couple of things. One is to understand. where this tension is coming from and mobilize ourselves to solve the problems that we have identified in our own community. Is there drug use? Yes. Is there human trafficking? Yes. Is there alcoholism? Yes. But you could probably say that about the majority of communities across this nation, to be completely honest with you. And Skid Row should not be singled out for any one of those human ills in society over here. But for some reason, we remain in crisis to our society. We are at we are at risk of being swept off the street with all of our belongings being taken or being uprooted and planted in another part of the city where no network exists for community members. In my mind, it's a disintegration of community. These attacks, these slow nooses and these lingering intentions of. Men of of Of of city council trying to sweep everything out of view, particularly with the up up and coming Olympics slated for 2028 to be hosted in Los Angeles. We are looking into our archive of what happened in '84 and we're ready to go. We are ready to go. Now, I want to backtrack a little bit as far as Skid Row and the terminology. So as I understand it. It's not native to Los Angeles. the I Term. skid road R-O-A-D comes from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. But let's just say between Portland, or you could even say San Francisco, but I'm gonna say between Portland and Seattle. It comes out of the lumberjack tradition. basically, skid skid roads were those roads that lumberjacks would carry in skid, Greased up logs and slats as they were being pushed into a sawing mill. this is going on, I'm gonna say, at the second half of the 19th century. And this is particularly in Seattle, where Henry Yesler had and owned a mill up. The connotation comes from this: a lot of people were going and working seasonal jobs. In the lumberjack industry, in the timber industry, as transient workers, itinerant workers passing through, working, and when the season's over, they're gone. So, and in doing so, especially with the skids in the road, they created like this corduroy type of road. You know, it just kind of got its name, skid road. when people were being laid off, when people were being fired from the industry, they were basically going back. Down the other direction of Skid Road. and that's where this term on the skids comes from. You lost your job or work ran out because the season is over. Now, in Seattle, just as you would say here in Los Angeles, Skid Road is a divider between the disparities of rich and poor geographically. in Seattle, it was the same thing. On one side of the road, you had the camp houses, the hotels, the hotel. the brothels, the bars, the drug use. And then on the other side, you had the rich and affluent communities that probably ran the industries in that area, including the sawmills. The same argument can be made in paralleling the reasoning with Los Angeles. Skid Row, if you if you take Fifth Street, you will go all the way from what was now what was known as Bunker Hill, but it's probably one of the major financial centers in the world. In Los Angeles. If you take Fifth Street From there. eastward, you're gonna drive through Skid Row. In the maintenance, in the repair of the communities between what is probably about a mile and a half. different realities exist on both sides of. Of this area. I would probably say the same thing about the Tenderlorean and even old Chinatown in Portland as well. But a little history on the background of that of that terminology. it it it does come from workers. It comes from people who were in tran in in transit looking for work. Now, this is around the time of 1849 and the 49er rush and you know the gluttony of wanting to have the gold and you have a lot of people coming westward. not just for gold, but maybe even some fulfilling their manifest destiny. But you could say the same thing about this happening in Los Angeles. 1862, the transatlantic railroad completed in LA. And that railroad brought itinerant workers, mainly men, into this area where there were what we call single-room occupancy hotels. They were occupying these hotels. There were drunkenness on the street. There were bars, there were drug use. Kind of exactly what happened in Seattle and probably in many other places where single men congregate, to be completely honest with you. Not letting myself off the hook. but It is it is a good point to make when you are again seasoning this broth of with the mode of transportation, especially long distance transportation by way of railroads. seasonal work or itinerant work. You have no family around you. These areas have kind of been denoted as an oblivion's beach where people go maybe don't come or where people go and just stay because the rent's cheap. I can get a room for a fraction of the price of where I could where I'm from. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic and the way things rose and the characters that the characterizations that Skid Row has. But I think if you look at it historically, kind of like in the twenty five cent definition that I just gave you, it it makes sense, you know. It it does and it does. And so so and I didn't know that's really interesting. And then I I think there's a I think there's a, you know, that transient nature. often people believe that that doesn't create community because it's kind of just transients coming in and out. And I think that's often a misconception about Skid Row, which we will get into. Let's talk about the archive. So does the archive doccu is the archive documenting that railroad hitting LA? Like when does it when do you start recording, you know, physically? When when when do the materials start to document this area? You know, our materials begin to document this area with our records of the Los Angeles mission being in LA circa 1892. Wow. We're on something called now, now before I get into that, let me backtrack for a second. As far as the completion of the railroads and the migration of people coming into Los Angeles, that's something that I'm actively working on right now. And I am turning towards city archives as far as the development of Los Angeles during that time, trying to patch together a quilt, meaning a story that is in conversation with what's going on or what has happened in the past and how that relates to us in the future. So that's something I'm actively on, just so we know. But as far as our some of our oldest documents, the Los Angeles Mission, which was a faith-based organization. And continues to be in Skid Row till this day, they had something called the Gospel Wagon. It was a horse carriage, not horseless, but a horse carriage that would go around preaching the word of the Lord to those in blight on the street. From 1862 to about 90 to 1891, it was already an issue. It it rose out of an issue. And the gospel was being preached. To the people in this time. Now, mind you, this is before World War One, the Great Depression. This is before anything occurring in the 20th century. People congregating in this area were congregating in such a fashion that this faith-based organization was out there preaching on the gospel wagon. We have some pretty we have a a copy of a of a photograph from that era, and it's it's very striking to be completely honest with you. But as far as our records that we've actively collected here, I would say going back to 1891, 1892 with the Los Angeles well with the Los Angeles mission mission, and then as well. Maybe not so far back, but looking at documents that we have that probably 40 years later, the United States federal government or at a federal level put into place something called the Community Redevelopment Agency. And it was an agency that the government set into effect for cities that were suffering from blight, poverty. And the idea was that federal funds were going to come into the city and the city was gonna div devise systems. And plans and infrastructures that were going to relieve the city of the blight. And somehow magically poverty was going to diminish and people were going to seep back into society. Right. Culturally ideal, to say the least, in my opinion. I'm just going Just to put it out there. And you're going to have, and I'm I'm always going to bounce back to my frameworks because it helps. But you know, this was an idea, and the CRA was in effect for a very, very long time. But I would say in the archive here, we do a lot of collecting that stays within the realm of the 20th century. probably more so from World War II onward, to be completely honest with you, which is kind of cool because it also is the same time period that archival sciences was rising, you know, and and this this this this parallel through time, I think I find to be very interesting because what I see on the city's behalf was in the effort to document the ills of society, but then at the same time make one of many ongoing attempts to resolve the issue. this is what we have in here. A lot of it is the redevelopment of Skid Row or Central City East here in Los Angeles, which would probably take up more of the second half of the 20th century. And we also have other other collections in here, you know, one of them is organizational that tracks It traces the arc of our performativity as a Los Angeles Poverty Department, but then also the research that goes into performance creation and generation. we assession collections from community members and organizations that we work with here, documenting more political activism and activity, or I should say advocacy. or see. and then we also document just our ongoing. Organizational doings as well as what we currently have going on now. Now, mind you, Los Angeles Poverty Department, which is led by John Malpede and Henriette Browers, who are currently in Amsterdam, so they're closer to you physically and temporally than they are to me. They Me. they're busy people, high artistic output, high levels of activism and advocacy, and I'm trying to keep up with them. You know, it's not an easy task, but they are and stay in motion. Before we continue, a quick word on what the restoration process actually looks like. Silver Salt Restoration works frame by frame, combining film conservation expertise with the latest digital tools to bring archived material back to broadcast quality. It's meticulous work, and it's exactly the kind of work the guests on this show spend their careers trying to protect. You can learn more at silversalt.com. Restoration dot com Henry Yes sorry, Henry, can I ask w where does the material come from? Who's who's shot all this material? Where where are you finding all this content? So okay. the core of our collection is from our organization. being a theater group, John and Henriette, I think kind of innately wanted to keep track of what they did. So anything from A V to ephemera to document scripts, workshops, notes and and and booklets, it's all it all came from within the organization. Now some of this other material that we accession come from Believe it or not, organizations that the Los Angeles Poverty Department was born out of. I think it's one one one important thing to consider is that we just didn't come to existence. We just didn't spawn and Yeah. we were on the scene, or in this case, on the stage. We are a part of a lineage that leads back to the Catholic worker, yet another faith-based organization in Los Angeles, which gave rise to like inner city law or free legal clinics. Which gave rise to John Malpeed's introduction into Los Angeles, where he started the Los Angeles Poverty Department. Even though we do share a similar lineage as far as organizations, and many times we were sharing the same space. So some of so some of a lot of the collection here are from other politically active organizations. For instance, we have a Los Angeles Community Action Network collection. we have Echo Park Lake Rising Collection, which I was archivist advisor for for their collection development and policymaking. but we also have collections from individuals. For instance, Nancy J. Minty, the first private attorney in Skid Row, to litigate against property owners on grounds of neglect of maintenance and repair as well as to sue for rest as well as to sue for fees for the tenants living in here. Other activists include Molly Laurie, other activists include Alice Callahan, who were very at who were highly involved with not just housing, but also having skid role and evidencing skid roll as a community. You know, I I have a collection from Molly Larry, for instance, that are just the majority of it are just newspaper clippings from like 1976 all the way to the early 2000s. And it really contextualizes everything else that we have in here. If they're filling gaps on a timeline that we would love to create. But aside from that, we have John Malpeed's personal collection. So he was a performance artist in from New York, but originally by way of Chicago and before that, Wichita Falls, Texas. performance artist in his own right. we decided to ingest his collection because we thought it would be a great. way to look at how he came into developing the Los Angeles Poverty Department. And if you were to bridge his works over overlapping with the LAPD works, it makes complete sense. Performance art, street theater. I guess some people would say community theater or I guess you would even avant-garde type of theater. I don't think he would agree to any of those terms. But Street theater is something that I thought was really cool because we continue to do theater in the streets, just like he did in 1974. so it's a really great arc to trace back. Henriette Browers, his partner, she joined the troupe in 2000s, and we ingested her collection in here as well to do the exact same thing. Now, Henriette Browers studied Corporal Mine at the Academy in Paris, and she's originally from Amsterdam and you know, from the Netherlands and she was an artist in her own right as well. But you can see the influence that she had on the group once she came and the onset of 2000 and how the group performs, mainly a lot through movement. Yeah. recognition of the community. And I think what is interesting to me, and I know we talked about this before, was you know, archives operating independently of their communities being behind closed doors. You mentioned at the beginning of your thing, you know, it should be done into abstraction. I think what's really interesting to me at least is for you to talk about how you this archive serves that community. Because I think it feels to me as though this archive is the community in many ways. You take on a lot of interns, for example. So How does y how does the community feed the archive and vice versa in if that makes sense? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start on a real granular level, a granular level right here. You know, I'm not from Skid Row originally. I came here knowing I had to be philosophically and theoretically proc with this work for this community specifically. And my descriptive work, I can only go so far. My ontology and my episteme only go so far. So the way we serve the community is we involve the community in co-description. Co-conservation, co-preservation. We steward and make sure that they're represented in the archive long term. I look for feedback on materials that I myself cannot decipher or look for other interpretations of materials that the community holds. I think that's very important because I cannot describe this stuff on my own. I am ontologically limited. And I need the community to push my ontology in the sense of memory work, in the sense of documentation. Another way we hook in the community is to train them in the archive. I have a community, I've had multiple community members who have found interest in digitization, cataloging, assisting researchers with pulling materials. And I teach a very specific skill set. One Dash is information organization. Another dash, obviously preservation conservation. Another dash, let's go into digitization and the discoverability that an archivist goes through while digitizing materials that are not entirely apparent at first glance. And what I'm talking about is more A V material. You can have something written on a carrier, it doesn't matter it's on there. It could be. A a ninety six championship game of the Bulls. Here in Los Angeles. And I say that because we have something just like that here. And Michael Jordan tucking on everybody. I hook in in a more informal way. I hook in the community by assisting with any technological information need that they have. Now, mind you, there's a lot of data surveillance in Skid Row. And I know that for a fact because I have members recurringly coming to me. Their phones have been hacked. They need to get their their photos off the cloud. I need to get it off my phone. Or how do I access the internet? And Do something for SSI, which is our social security program here. Can you help me with my benefit? My job here as an archivist is well beyond being an archivist. On one hand, I'm here to help give out clothes, give out, you know, something to drink to those who are thirsty or something to eat to those who are hungry. At the same time, I'm here to help with personal issues like. getting images and data off of a cloud or helping people avoid and teaching them information literacy as to the best way not to be surveilled in Skid Row. And to be completely honest with you, data surveillance in Skid Row is an academic endeavor that I have to write on, to be to be honest, aside from knowledge production and aside from a couple of other A couple of things. community wise, our organization, we offer monthly free recurring programming. To anyone who wants to come, but we gear it towards Skid Row. I promote my archive and our programming in person, on foot, in the 50 blocks that Skid Row was at. I walk through Skid Row every week. As a matter of fact, I'm walking through Skid Row after this, after this interview. I found that to be critical to the work. I consider it community-based instruction. I have contacts in Skid Row. I meet new people in Skid Row. And my recurring presence, I think, helps build informal rapport with the peoples and the organizations that we have there. I'm out there, I'm out there like the gospel wagon from the Los Angeles mission. I'm like, hey, we got a free program. We got movie night coming up. We have open mic. We have Jamaican Independence Day, Bob Marley Day, sock puppet making workshops. And a lot of these, a lot of this. Programming is done by our community members as well. So we hook them in to not just participate, but to also host the actual event. one of things that we always try and celebrate on this show is that archives are alive and they grow and like and that and they're they're connected to their community where they can be because the misconception is that they are just dusty old boxes kept there. Can I just ask a quick question, Henry? Where's the funding come from? Do you get money from the government to help support you guys or? Yeah, so the majority of our funding comes from federal and foundational grants. We also get funding at more local levels, like municipal and city levels and county levels, to put on recurring projects that we have. So for instance, we may get a grant every year from the county or the city to host our walk the talk parade where we celebrate pillars in the community on a route with the New Orleans style brass band. In Skid Row, another way we hook in, you know, the community. We also host, and that's a biannual event. We host an annual festival for all skid row artists that evidences the arts community in Skid Row, where on during a weekend in late October, anyone from the community can sign up and demonstrate their modality of art. It could be singing, dancing, it could be jokes, musicianship. It could be you know, it could be many different things. You know, again, an act, an evidence as a a verb that is showcasing the arts, the rich, rich arts culture that exists here. I think it's fascinating, but to answer your question blatantly, yeah, we do get federal, state, and local funding from government institutions as well as from private foundations. I mean c so people can don donate if if they want to, they can donate as well. Absolutely. on our website, lapovertydept.org, we do have a link at the bottom if you are interested. personal donations tend to either come in physical check, which I have which I actually handle in an analog old school fashion way, as well as through PayPal. So, you know, if anyone is interested, it's it's We'll put put that on the pod, I think. We should definitely put there if in case anyone wants to donate. And in addition to my archival work, I've been groomed to administer daily functions of our space here. So I do the ledger here. I'm a custodian of financial records with the organization. I I deal with the repair and maintenance of the building. I have a couple of tiles that I'm gonna replace later to later, later. deal with, you know, not just the archive. You know, it really isn't just the archive, but the archive is the focal point and the archive is the citadel. in which I've been tasked with maintaining and and looking over. So I take it serious. Yeah, I mean it's incredibly inspiring and you know, and we can imagine all the challenges of working in that environment. you know, let's just ch just change tack a touch. So part of this podcast is that our audience in some shape or form are professional archival producers that look to source content from archives around the world. And so I'd like to just talk briefly about the access for private individuals to yourself and to the content and how you manage that. is that a source of revenue? How do you how do people contact you? How do people look at what's in there? Can they even do that? So So if you could just walk a yeah across that would be great. So typically, I'm gonna give you the typical scenario, then I'll give you the most restrictive scenario. So typically anyone can just walk in, engage me, let me know what they're trying to do, what their research interests are. That comes from our engagement with our community. Anyone can walk through that through our door. If they need a a glass of water, if they need to charge their phone, or if they're interested in researching, doesn't matter. The space has an open door. It's a safe space. That's how we like to refer to it as. But for those researchers that are out there interested, typically I can I get an email again on our webpage. We have an archive email that you can contact, set up a date where I can engage you, as well as to learn more about the archive. We also have an online archive, which is our walk the talk archive, which is a hyperlick. Excuse me, a hyperlink is embedded on our homepage that researchers can access from afar. But I always prefer the in-person engagement. And I'm going to tell you why. For my community here in crisis to its society, I need to be perfectly aware of why people want to utilize our materials. If someone is coming in here with a different agenda, let's just say, and they're trying to access materials and use materials, I want to be sure that they're being interpreted in the spirit in which the community interprets them as well as the way that I interpret them. If I feel that I need to restrict. Access, I am going to do that. I am completely going to do that. We demand the researchers to share their research as well as the ongoing progress of the research. Because we again, because of how in crisis we are to our society. This is information that can be detrimental if used in the wrong way. When it comes to certain collections here, and that just let me just say that's kind of like A general way someone can come in here. Shoot me an email, stop on by. That's fine. I'm still going to inquire about who you are and what you're trying to do. Now we have collections here that have been placed with restrictions. specifically a collection that I advised on, which is the Echo Park Lake Rising group. And one of the restrictions there is. No agent of law enforcement can have access to this collection. And that's done for a specific reason. That's a there's a historic motivation behind that. They our Echo Lake rising folks, who I love dearly, had a land struggle at Echo Lake Park, or at Echo Park Lake, excuse me, where the community was actually swept away under the guise of redevelopment. Fencing around that. I remember it better. Yeah. A huge thing out of that, and a collection evolved. I got contacted by a professor Anonymo Roy, At the UCLA Leskin Center for Inequality and Democracy, asking for advisement and leadership and their and their archival development and their collection development and policy making. And that's exactly what I did. That consumerated in a freedom school in which I taught here, as well as an exhibition that we held with the Echo Park folks. So, you know, it's it's that is a very like sensitive collection that not just anyone can get their hands on. But again, for the vast majority, maybe like 90% of the collection, it is open for, it is open for research and to researchers coming here. Is it a major source of funding? No, it isn't. It really depends Maybe really on who's looking for it. You know, I think we we do a good job about that, but we are mostly concerned with processing the collection and develop it developing the collection even our our collections even further. And I'm thinking development towards digitization. I feel that's like the Yeah, exactly. Right. And so that you know, that's a struggle for every archive, right? Which is managing different formats, paperwork, photos, pneumatics, one inches, various piece. You know, what what's the what's the goal for you? Where how is it physically housed? I mean, have you, you know, how how how do you how do you go through and make sure there isn't degradation? How do you kind of manage that on a day to say basis? That's tough. So you see the lignin-free and acid-free boxes behind me. Before Both. anything gets placed in a box, we go through a preliminary conservation routine. Take out staples, take out paper clips. we basically mine materials for anything that is degrading. And if you've worked in archives, you've seen a whole And if you an old a staple from the 80s, it's already rusting the paper. We try to house things at least in an acid-free, lignin-free box, if not in polypropylene slips and sliders, let's say for instance, or newspapers or even like or mylar materials for like photographs, for instance. but we do try to get a nice run of things just to kind of give you this is our north wall in the archive. we try to get everything housed. It's more of an attempt at passive preservation first, just to secure the materials. once things have been secured preliminary, preliminarily, we get interns who I train and teach to process those materials or those collections that need further processing. So I have a little bit of a, you know, I got a little motor running. And it's for the most part, it the the oil's tanks full. Good and you know People come back. I have interns I've had over like eight years ago who still come back, who still want to help. I have my my UCLA intern, the eighth one that I'm working on, they just graduated with their master's degree this past June. They're still coming back. You know, we in very much the same way that John Mel Pede has created community out of his theater workshops. I took that lead and I tried to do the same thing in the archive. I built a community here in the archive with the help of my organization, with the help of expanding my rhizomatic network here, whether it's engaging researchers, students, the public, or physically me being in Skid Row, promoting what we do. You know, it's it's it's beautiful. The best way to describe that is like a rhizome. And that's the com without hierarchy, by the way, with the community understanding and knowing, hey, we're here if you need to be, if you need to come. But I also need to know where my community is at. So that's why I meet people where they are. I I I completely prefer to do that. It informs my practice. A hundred percent. I mean that connectivity is just so important. You know, so it's a rather crash question, but I think it's important. Tell us some of the highlights, like kind of what's the stuff that's in there where you'd like people to know about? Yeah, what what part parts of the collection do you go? I wish more people could access this or understand it. man. For me, it's the 80s productions and performances of the Los Angeles Poverty Department. These are highlights because I look at history as cyclical, not linear. I completely see it like a spiral. So when you look at the early performances of the Los Angeles Poverty Department, you're looking at stuff that is continuously an issue today. We were talking about sweeps in the 80s. The Olympics in the eighties, criminalization in the eighties, even before that. We were talking about may maybe not using the rhetoric of the time, but using our presentism rhetoric of housing as health care. Redevelopment history here. All the conversations that we're having, even our current exhibit on SRO Hotels and Crisis, this is not the first rodeo. This has been an ongoing problem that governance in this area has failed to address and resolve, especially without the input of community members. This is where my ideas of cultural idealism come into place because you have a city council member with an armchair perspective. Setting forth yet another 12-step program to resolve homelessness that's just gonna dissolve in the next year or two. This is it's it's it's oppressive, it's neglectful. And in many ways, depending on how policy is enacted, for instance, the street sweeping of people in public space, by the way, if that's not an oxymoron, is the draconian in nature that the city imposes. on our community. We are under attack. It's it's shocking and phil I mean, I've witnessed it firsthand. I was in Hollywood and I saw the dump trucks going by and just people's belongings It's called and just being thrown in the back of a dump truck. This is a few years back. It's truly oppressive. I mean, I you I don't want to get too political where people make their decisions. What are some of the joys? What are the joys and and you know, is it the diversity of people there? You know, I mean, I guess that's probably gotta be part of it, right? You must get so many viewpoints, languages, backgrounds. I think one of the joys is is is being able to interact with the community, to to know people and to have long-term or to establish long-term relationships with people and to see them through their own journey, to progress. Maybe people getting housed, someone finding a job. You know, these may not be the biggest accomplishments, but to me they are. You know, to see someone evolve. Into something better and understand that they're doing that. It's very fulfilling. Or there was an incident that we had where I had a family member from I think it was South Carolina write to us in search of her brother. And using my network and my resources, I was able to put them in contact with one another. So, you know, and and that particular incident, I was able to put an estranged family member in contact with. With someone who loves that person very much. Yeah. We have people just walking in through the door who never met, don't even know them, who are in crisis. And I can address it immediately, especially with my training and crisis response and intervention as an educator. I take I bring I hold that dearly to me here, especially with high levels of anxiety that people may be going through. Being able to give whether access to see yourself in the archive and know that you are important because you're worth being in here and to keep that alive, to keep your point of view alive, to keep your flavor and your rhythm alive. That's very important, even down to the point of our transcription work on our walk the talk archive. I made a directive. We are not correcting English. When we do transcriptions, I want the flavor. I want the broth. Give it to me. I don't, I don't care Care. I don't care. if it's out of order. I might take out the ums and the I might do that, but As far as as far as the way someone presents themselves. Yeah. I want that. I want that. That and that that goes right back to your point from the start about, you know, design and and making sure that you're reflective of this and transporting that art, that performance, that whatever it be, and kind of positioning somewhere where it's those so people can understand better. you know, let's just touch real quickly on are we we're gonna have a quick follow-up, we've been conscious of time, but I I just wanted to shoot back and I because I kind of didn't miss it in the conversation earlier. Can you explain to me? What is the issue gonna be going on with the Olympics again? I d I didn't quite understand what yeah and then. So, like, you know, in 1984, the Olympics was a huge culprit for street sweeps and criminalization in our community. Anywhere from undercover police bus to literally sweeping you completely off the street street, uplifting you, putting you in another part of LA, essentially disintegrating the community and putting you in another part of Los Angeles where you don't have any resources or any kind of network. You're really or putting you in jail. You're really affecting someone's life, doing that all for temporary economic gain. You know, the Los Angeles is getting ready to set the table for the world to come and eat at. And just like they did in the 80s, they're getting rid of anything that might be a sore sight to look at in someone's mind. Now, mind you, it's not just Los Angeles. Here with Jinado, I think, did it with the favelas and the freeways where they were building walls so the tourists can still be on the freeway but not see the poverty in the area. But LA is the exact same way. We're putting up a front in Los Angeles and making people think that one, they're safe, two, this is a place to be. It's all a front. It is all a front. And so this is a huge concern. With the Olympics that are slated for 2028. We don't we don't want to see that history cycle back to us again. If anything, we would want to use our archive to affect policy here. And essentially, what the Olympics is to us, it's temporary economic gain at the expense of lifetime consequences. You know, you are literally changing people's lives. You are disintegrating this community with these practices. One of the One of the infamous municip municipal codes over here is 4118. And that's basically being sweeping you off the street, not being able to be in a public place. That's crazy. If that isn't the most crazy I don't even know what To call it like play on words and intention. But as far as reversing that, that's wild. That is like one of the most wildest things. And it's because no one wants to see you in sight. We have this thing where it's, you know, this notion is called NIMBY, not in my neighborhood. And, Right? And you know, you know, poverty can be anywhere else, but not in my neighborhood. And it's kind of like this blender effect. Everyone's like, okay, it could be somewhere else, just not here. I'm not gonna do anything about it, not gonna do anything about it. And That's that's a lane. That's a lane ideology. Land you has the World Cup affected you guys, the FIFA World Cup? I don't think it's affected. Us. To the degree that the Olympics has. I mean, there are again, we do have a lot of tourists coming here, specifically from Europe and Western Europe, who are here for the World Cup. But I haven't noticed anything strike strikingly resembling the Olympics. And I had actually been on the Outlook for that, especially when in the streets, to be honest with you. There I I know the city implemented this, we call them the purple shirts, but They're not police officers, but they're intermediaries between a police officer and a civilian or or someone, you know, someone on the street. And they'll sit there and they'll gauge you. They want to know what you're doing. They'll sit there and they'll just talk to you. But they're really, it's really reconnaissance. It's really reconnaissance for what you're doing. Who Yeah. are you? And they'll check in every once in a while. It's kind of like the good cop syndrome, right? Like, yeah, I'm your friend and blah, blah, blah. But The World Cup, we really didn't have a lot of that particular issues or a lot of those particular issues that we did in '84. And I'm thinking a lot of it has to do with because the games and the and the I was gonna say partidos, but the the soccer matches or the football matches are not centered here in downtown LA. They're outside of our area. So whether how much of an impact that has, I don't know. But I do know that we weren't experiencing here. With the World Cup, what we were experiencing in 84 with the World Olympics. I feel like the World Olympics is a greater stage, probably many more people and countries being represented. It's gonna be a dense party to say the least, but it's something that we do wanna keep track on and we wanna keep tabs on because we know better. We know what happened in '84. And that's what the archive is good for. Absolutely. And that's, you know, the reason why we found you, Henry, was that, you know, your social media post with that photo of the guys up against the wall from eighty four. And I was like, dude, we've got to chat with this guy. This is really, really interesting. So I think that's great. I think history being cyclical is so true. I really feel that myself. And not learning from history is too depressing for words. You know, it's let's got let's let's hope let's hope it doesn't happen. I mean You know, we're close to time. We we have a a little what we do is a very quick quick fire round, Henry, which is gonna put you on the spot. Hopefully not too badly, but I will I'll let Sandra take it over. Today's quick fire round is brought to you by Fremantle Archive, which includes talent shows, game shows, and the iconic Thames TV catalogue. So Henry, this is a quick fire round. Quick questions. First thing that comes into your head. You ready? You game? Totally. So Henry, first one. The oldest thing material you've ever handled. In this archive, I'm gonna take it back to the eighteen ninety one picture that we have of the Gospel Wagon from the Los Angeles mission. your favourite archival format. Ooh. Mm-hmm. VHS video cassette. I love Love that. Love that. A piece of Skid Row history everyone should know. Piece of Skid Row history everyone should know. They should know the history, the redevelopment history of Skid Row, specifically the trajection the trajectory between the silver book and the blue book. Sorry, can you just quickly explain that? 'Cause that was in my notes to to ask you about that, Henry. Can you just explain? Yeah, so so and so real quick side note, Silver Book was the city of Los Angeles's redevelopment plan for Skid Row, which was dubbed Bunker Hill 2. Bunker Hill used to be a residential area that was flattened where our skyscrapers now stand. The city council wanted to do the exact same thing in Central City East, Skid Row, to get again under the CRA, the community redevelopment agency. To wipe out the blight and put in a bustling economic hub east of downtown Los Angeles. That was countered with the community's response and activism by way of the blue book. That was an insider's point of view. The community activists were like, no, there's community here. We were legitimated through a Bloomberg report. We were legitimated through other activists that are saying, hey, there's community here. There are people here here. You just can't disseminate this area. What ended up happening was city council agreed and felt that the blue book should be included in this development plan. That essentially saved all of the SRO housing, as well as the community and the structures as we see it today. Without the blue book, we would be walking into a Starbucks right now. Right now. Or we would be, you know, doing something I you would never catch me doing. So blue book, silver book, and the relationship between the two, definitely. And essentially, Sandra, what I think they should know is about the redevelopment history of Skid Rome. One word. Word you would describe use to describe Skidrow. Real. If you could rescue just one box from the archive, which one? my god. Just one box. You got me looking back here. Figuring it out. A Yeah, it's it's gonna have to be Have to be the the seventies and eighties VHS cassette tapes here. It's or I take a hard drive. Two more. Finish the sentence. Without archives we lose. Memory. And the final one in one word, what does the future of Skid Roll Archive look like? Right. It looks very bright. You did very well, Benway. Well done. Little round of applause there, because that's that's not it's not easy to be put on the spot. I think that has come to our time for this. So a huge thank you, Henry, for your incredible intelligence, your expertise, your passion, your explanation. I've learned a huge amount. It's really, really inspiring to me personally to know that people like you are out there. And hopefully, you know, we can do a little, very small job to shine a bit of light on what you're doing. So Many, many thanks for your time. May I may I just say one last thing before we go? I'm hope I'm really hoping that I gave everyone what they were expecting to find, maybe something that they didn't expect to find. But you know, working for a theater group here in Skid Row and using the modality of theater, we are able to throw a curveball. We're able to talk about issues on stage that would otherwise be very difficult to talk about in person. I say this because I want to forward the arts movement. And culture here in Skid Row and working with the theater group is no better place for me to demonstrate that that that sentiment. I think theater is a perfect way, performative, just like I've been talking about, political, just like we've been talking about. Perfect modality to exchange ideas on dialectical planes, or in this case on a stage, where the issues that would would go. under the radar otherwise or not even be talked about otherwise can be exposed and surfaced. So on that note, I thank you Sandra. I thank you Dom. This has been a great interview. I This thoroughly enjoyed this and I look forward to possibly a reprise in the future. You've been listening to the Archive Room, presented by Silver Salt Restoration, world-renowned experts in film preservation and digital restoration, and a John Gore Studios company. You can find them at Silversaltrestoration.com