CNN Interviews

The  video of my speech and Mayor Guerra’s rebuttal was beginning to be seen by the first members of the public when a tip to CNN led them to interview 3 of us in the very infancy of the Avenue Arts Foundation (literally a few hours old). These are transcripts of the interviews that CNN conducted on June 12th, 2009. The video is currently being edited and has a planned release of mid-September 2009. So for now, enjoy these transcripts!

George Redfox

Harold Tseklenis

Jared Head

Interview with George Redfox

Ron: So if you pronounce your name, spell it and also give you official title.

George: My name is George Redfox, that’s Redfox R-E-D-F-O-X and I’m a teacher actually at Warren High School and I’m a representative of the Downey Historical Society.

Ron: And sir being from the Downey Historical Society how important is it for you to preserve some of the fine history that the city has?

George: Well Downey is actually known for its fine history. We’ve had a lot of famous artists and singers come out of Downey. We’ve had a lot of landmarks in the city. The Original McDonald’s is here. We have the Johnnie’s Broiler which is now going to be a Bob’s Big Boy and among others things we have The Avenue Theater.

Ron: And speaking of, let’s talk about some of the other things like Johnnie’s Broiler. Unfortunately we saw that you know, get destroyed, before someone stepped in to save what’s there. How important is it to keep these places? Again I understand that the Carpenter’s house itself is being remodeled or something—

George: —Well actually part of the Carpenter’s house is actually…it’s been destroyed. Part of it has already been demolished.

Ron: So how important is it to preserve these things?

George: Well for me it’s very important, I believe it’s also for the community, it’s an important part of the community because our forefathers that put this community together have laid the foundation for us and we need to preserve that foundation. It’s a tribute to the people that have lived here in the past.

[Car alarm interrupts the interview]

Ron: If you would, The Avenue Theater: your thoughts on the young people that are trying to preserve it.

George: My thoughts are that it’s good for the community; it’s good for the young people. It gives them something to do. It gives them a place to go at night and it also gives not only the kids and the students of the community but it gives everybody in the community something to do and something to look forward to on a Friday night or a Saturday night or any night throughout the week. We can interchange the venue as far as what’s going to happen there. We’d like to have more than one set of musicians come in. Maybe some Jazz one night, maybe comedy one night, shows one night. It’s just good for the community and for the people, everybody.

Ron: The steps that they are taking, do you have any suggestions for them in what they’re doing and how they’re going about it?

George: The students?

Ron: Yes.

George: I think the students are doing a great job. The students in their early-20’s, as far as that goes I think they’re doing a phenomenal job. They’re really getting the word out there with Twitter and MySpace and all the technology, it’s just a great thing and it’s really spreading the word.

Ron: They were met with a little opposition from the Council, that’s warranted. Your thoughts about the democratic process and them using it.

George: Well, I think that they’re using it really well. And I think that sometimes things go back and forth as far as the democratic process goes and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. This time we’d like to work with the Council if we possibly could to, you know, get something in there that the whole community could use. It’s not our idea to always be against the Council, but it’s our idea to work with them if possible. That’s what we really strive for right there.

Ron: As a teacher I’m sure you’ve got to be pretty proud to see some of your former students go on to this sort of pursuit.

George: Yeah, I’m very proud actually of a lot of my students here. One of them Carl Johnson, right over here is another student of mine and he’s really involved too. And I’ve known Jared for only a few weeks now but you know he’s a great guy and doing a great job.

Interview with Harold Tseklenis

Ron: If you could just pronounce your name, spell it and give us your title.

Harold: My name is Harold Tseklenis, spelt T-S-E-K-L-E-N-I-S and I’m a citizen of Downey, an active citizen I would say. And I’m here really to congratulate these young men for bringing about something that is needed in the city. An area that is under-served. Young people with a cultural interest and even us older people that don’t get a chance to see fine films or documentaries unless we run to Pasadena or Santa Monica and we think the City of Downey can provide those venues right here in Downey not only for the Downey citizens but also the surrounding area that is underserved in this area.

Ron: Programs like that would fit pretty well here in Downey due to the fact that you have Downey Studios and a lot of other different films have gone on here in the past.

Harold: That’s right; really it’s the geographical center for some 1.5 Million people that have no access to that kind of thing without running clear across this city.

Ron: I know you have one venue here that a lot of performances and plays happen [The Downey Civic Theater]. Why is this place so special and why should one be here [The Avenue]?

Harold: The Downey Theater is a very fine theater but is a large venue, 750 seat theater, takes a lot of money to operate it and is really not suitable for small improv groups or small films showing of let’s say people that are common interest. They can’t afford to pay the thousand of dollars it takes to rent that space for the evening.

Ron: The reason I’m doing this program, this story, is because I really like the energy these young people are exhibiting. What got you involved and why are you so fired up about this?

Harold: I’m a good friend of George Redfox and I met Jared recently and I was invited to…because I’ve also started something similar to that trying to get input to the development of this theater. Unfortunately the city has proceeded without getting adequate, and I stress the term adequate input, by those interested in what’s happening on Downey Avenue.

Ron: Finally, these young people are using the democratic system; they’re going through City Hall. Do you have any words of wisdom to give them as it relates to doing it?

Harold: Stay with it, use The Patriot, letters to the editor, really get the message not only to the city officials that are in a position to act, and also get the word to the community and get the community energized to bring about their wishes known to the City council. After all it is governments role to serve its people, all segments. We can build skateparks for the skaters. We can build Senior Centers for the seniors. How about the 20+? Can we build things they can use? They’re also a significant part of the community and the idea is to serve the entire community with input from the community.

Interview with Jared Head

Ron: First of all can you pronounce your name; spell it and official title please.

Jared: My name is Jared Head. J-A-R-E-D H-E-A-D. I guess I’d be one of the founders of the ACAF [now the AAF].

Ron: If you would Jared tell us a little bit of what’s going on as it relates to The Avenue Theater.

Jared: Well, The Avenue Theater was built in 1922 and it’s one of the old art houses during the golden age of theater. It was in operation up to the late-90’s until it fell into disarray over a 20 years span and it was abandoned. Last year the City of Downey purchased The Avenue with housing funds and they’re planning on tearing it down and putting apartments on it. Recently this week they’ve said they would like to work with us for putting a theater on the ground floor, so we’re advocating keeping a theater there for the community to use.

Ron: How did you get your group of people together to champion your cause?

Jared: Well it was a large group of people, like-minded individuals. It wasn’t just me, it was 50 people who came to a City Council meeting one night to talk to the Council and we said “Let’s form a group!” and in this past week we formed the ACAF [now AAF] and that’s where we are now today.

Ron: The focus on this program is youth in politics; you decided rather than to get radical about it you wanted to go through the process, the democratic process, tell us about that and how you’ve faired in that.

Jared: Yeah, to go any way other than through the process would sabotage what we’re trying to do. It would make us look bad, it would make the youth look bad in this city and that’s something we really don’t want. We want to give the youth an opportunity to learn the process, the government process, on a civic level and see how they through their…their…letter writing and their public speaking about this and their working in our organization, how they can change their city.

Ron: And what have been the results of your efforts?

Jared: Well, originally it was just going to be apartments, with mixed use, which the City Council wasn’t exactly clear on what their “mixed use” was going to be. Luckily we’ve gotten their attention in the past month, to say the least, and they have decided this week that they’re going to compromise with us and that they’re going to at least attempt to retain the theater itself while building housing over that and that’ something that we’re really happy about, that they’re finally listening to us. They’re still not at the point where we think they should be with public input but we’re working with them to go ahead on that.

Ron: The wheels of bureaucracy turn a little slow from time to time. Do you all have the patience to wait this out or are you looking or some instant results?

Jared: Oh you bet we’re here to wait this out. As I’ve said before to many people including members of the Council: If this takes days, weeks, months, years, a decade: we’re in it to win it and make sure that the community comes out on top on this.

Ron: Every organization like yours will be faced with some kind of opposition, how are you handling that? I understand that you had people on the council that took you to task a bit on some of the things you were saying and that type of thing, how are you handling that?

Jared: Well, the best thing about opposition, that you can do with your opposition, is to listen to them because the reason that you have opposition is because they’re as passionate about this as you are. And we welcome opposition, you know, we love to hear every from side we can. That’s the only way that we learn the whole part of the story. In that council meeting that we had, with the video that we put up on Youtube, of when I spoke to the Mayor and he kind of came back at me we really learned from that that they want to work with us and that we need to learn the idea of bureaucratic compromise with them and that’s something that we learned is extremely important.

Ron: Two other questions: what do you plan on doing here, what do you plan on putting here?

Jared: Well with The Avenue what we want to do is have a multi-purpose theater. It’s a new idea that’s really taking off in the theater scenes in other parts of the country and we’d like to start it here. It’s where you do film, stage plays, stand-up, comedy nights, independent films, concerts, anything involving the arts, even art galleries we can put in there and that’s something we want to do; not just a theater, but a community theater that emphasizes all kinds of arts.

Ron: And then how can we get a hold of you? People watching this program might want to be a part of your cause, can you tell us that?

Jared: Yes, one of our websites that you can go to is www.saveave.org, that’s S-A-V-E-A-V-E dot Org. You can follow us with updates literally every hour on the hour it seems on Twitter at www.twitter.com/saveave, that’s S-A-V-E-A-V-E. We are a partner with another group that was planning to work on the redevelopment of Downtown Downey, that’s on MySpace and that would be www.myspace.com/savedowneyave, that’s A-V-E. You can contact us on our e-mail which is savetheave@gmail.com, S-A-V-E-T-H-E-A-V-E at gmail dot com. And we welcome everybody whether you’re for us or against us; we want to hear from everybody. We’ve gotten international support. I just saw this week that we’ve gotten positive e-mails of support from literally every continent that someone is living on in the world. It’s great, and we want to hear from people.

The Latest…

Jared here.

Excuse my month long absence from this site, as I have been working busy offline with what is now the Organization Committee for the Avenue Arts Foundation.

The Downey Patriot has put out this article today talking about whether the Downey Civic Theater is a possible alternative, which in my opinion, unless prices can be cut signifigantly, then the answer is a resounding “No.”

Later tonight I will gather up all the articles and letters to the editor that have been printed since my last post.

Till then!

Unofficially official: The Avenue Cultural Arts Foundation (ACAF)

It’s unofficial…sort of!

Updates…

Evening everyone!

If you’re new here, let me bring you up to speed:

We’re a group of citizens spanning all ages and creeds that want to see The Avenue Theater’s performance space saved.

This week we formed The Avenue Cultural Arts Foundation, our mission is to provide a venue which will meet the cultural and artistic interests and needs of our community. We want to provide this service to the underserved in our community with an emphasis on all audiences and all kinds of artists being welcomed with open arms.

We’re currently staying up to see the new articles from The Downey Patriot about our “Save the Ave!” campaign and we’ll have them up within an hour of the first posts (they usually update at 12:05am PST on Friday, so about 2 1/2 hours from now).

On The Patriot’s twitter feed a tweet stated: “Mayor writes extensively about Avenue Theatre in tomorrow’s paper: “It really is not historic in any way.” and we are awaiting the release of this letter, which will be among our links during our late-night update tonight.

We will be at the Downey City Council meeting this Tuesday, June 23rd which will start at 7:30pm. The address is 11111 Brookshire Avenue and is within Downey City Hall. I’d suggest bringing some snacks as the last meeting went a little long. We’re currently aiming to have at least 100 supporters at each meeting from here till whenever the end of this campaign will be.

Tomorrow myself and several other members of our cause will be interviewed for CNN at 9:30am in front of The Avenue Theatre. The cross-streets are Downey Ave. and 3rd Street and the segment is concerning youth in politics.

Also don’t forget to check out a brilliant post about us by South African blogger Wogan May, who graciously set-up and is donating his time to keeping this website running; Thanks Wogan!

So friends look around and take a peek. Check out our Twitter, Youtube (especially the video of me speaking and Mayor Guerra’s rebuttal) and Myspace profiles and most of all give us your feedback!