Alta Live: Crenshaw at a crossroads

Los Angeles is a city known for its iconic boulevards (Hollywood, Sunset, Wilshire), but for the city’s black community, there may be no street more historic and revered than Crenshaw Boulevard. The connecting fiber that ties LA’s largest black neighborhood together is the connecting fiber of a new civic project called Destination Crenshaw, scheduled to open in 2025. Amid fears of gentrification and the erasures that come with it, Destination Crenshaw promises to repair, revitalize and preserve the essence of community through arts, culture and economic opportunity. Connect Alta diary Contributor Lynell George for a conversation with Jason Foster, President and Chief Operating Officer of Destination Crenshaw. The couple will check out George’s Alta Article “Crenshaw at a crossroads”; Discuss the past, present and future of this iconic LA neighborhood. and take your questions. Join us!

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About the guest:

Jason Foster is President and Chief Operating Officer of Destination Crenshaw. In this role, Foster oversees the nonprofit’s administration and operations, manages the organization’s finances and reporting, communicates with and supports the board of directors, and serves as the organization’s point of contact with public agencies, vendors and key community partners.

Prior to Destination Crenshaw, Foster was Director of Strategic Partnerships at River LA. He was responsible for developing the philosophy and programming of River LA’s strategic partnerships. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Foster holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and finance from Howard University in Washington, DC, and a master’s degree in business administration from the Metropolitan College of New York.

About the moderator:

Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist and author. She has had a long career in LA journalism as a contributor to both Los Angeles Times And LA Weekly– focusing on social issues, human behavior, visual arts, music and literature. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, Alta diary, SierraThe New York TimesAnd Smithsonianamong other things. She is the author of No Crystal Staircase: African Americans in the City of Angels (Verso/Doubleday), a collection of features and essays from her reporting, and After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame. She won a Grammy in 2017 for her liner notes Otis Redding Live at Whiskey A Go Go and is the 2020 recipient of a Distinguished Journalist Award from the Society of Professional Journalists/Los Angeles. your latest book, A Fistful of Earth, a Fistful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butlerwas a finalist for a Hugo Award. It was published by Angel City Press in 2020.•