CSULB Hosts Film Screening of The Oak Park Story

March 4, 2014

Screen Shot 2014-03-04 at 11.37.42 AMJoin a free screening event of The Oak Park Story this Thursday, March 6 at 6:30 p.m. A dialogue with filmmaker Valerie Soe and an added feature of her new short The Chinese Gardens will follow.

The short documentary Oak Park Story (2010) chronicles the daily lives of poor Mexicano, Chicano, and Cambodian families in Oak Park, a housing project in Oakland, California, and their struggle against their Stanford-educated landlord who routinely ignored and violated health and safety codes. The tenants, like Cambodian refugee Khlot Ry and undocumented immigrants Felix and Hortensia Jiménez, were forced to raise their families under squalid surroundings. When the unsanitary housing conditions led to the hospitalization of several children, 44 households banded together to sue the landlord, and they eventually won a land mark settlement.

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, the Program in American Studies, the Women’s Resource Center, and Chi Delta Theta in commemoration of Women’s History Month.

For more information about the event, please email linda.maram@csulb.edu .