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Today we're here with Memo Torres,
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the man behind LA Taco.
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Thank you for coming out,
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man. Thanks for having me.
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I appreciate it. I love me too.
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So I mean we love LA Tacos.
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You guys have been covering everything for culture and the city forever
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and then in the last,
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you know, couple months you've been such a resource about ice
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raids and I don't know,
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it's a cool journey to see.
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What you guys have been doing,
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so I wanted to ask first,
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we spoke with you before,
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we've been friends, but what's your background?
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Have you always been in journalism?
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I don't know. I get that question so much am I
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initially, you know,
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I, I came up as a taco journalist covering tacos in
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the city and not just tacos food.
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People are like, we don't cover tacos.
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I cover all kinds of food.
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I just eat. I'm really,
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I'm really good at eating.
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That's what I'm good at.
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I, yeah, but actually before that,
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I was a landscape contractor.
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So that's what got me around the city and as I was
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working around the city I would just go and eat tacos and
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hit up mom and pop shop that was,
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that was what I would look forward to every single day,
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not going and working but like where am I gonna have lunch
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Yeah so I mean let's get into it.
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the Trump administration and ICE has ramped up their attacks on LA's
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immigrant communities and you guys decided to make a major pivot and
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kind of just focus on,
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you know, covering what's happening in our city.
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Can you walk me through that shift?
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I think we found ourselves at an interesting intersection,
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what one of the things we covered a lot is,
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is, is local communities,
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local businesses, street vendors,
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so we found ourselves in an intersection where where Trump
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and ICE agents were attacking are literally the people that we com
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you know, represent,
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we write about and for us it was like.
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it just didn't feel to go on like as you know,
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business as usual. Let's keep talking about tacos and things like
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that when the people that we talk about are getting,
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terrorized, literally,
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it was like we just felt like we've been called scrappy,
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you know, we've been called all kinds of,
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but. You know we have one motto Elitaco.
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It's,, you're gonna have to bleep this out,
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but fuck it, I'm down,
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you know. So it's like if this is going down,
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if there's a protest and somebody needs to get out there,
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then we're down, you know,
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we get out there and that's our priority.
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we're all people from LA.
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We love LA. I think it's important that our voices get
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heard and people not understand what's going on.
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And for us we just felt the duty to step up and
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So I know that you guys also during everything that was happening
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you made a shift from traditional media to just becoming more
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social first. Thursday July 10th,
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the 35th straight day of the IC of LA.
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First part I'm gonna concentrate on everything that was a little bit
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more local and in part two we're gonna get into Camarillo and
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Oxnard where shit was crazy.
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What do you think the future of journalism is looking like in
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2025? I think the whole media world,
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journalism specifically, is at a point where they have to recognize
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that they're going through an existential crisis.
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We've gone from like papers there.
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Nobody really reads papers anymore.
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Everything went to websites,
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but now I think media,
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large scale media needs to grapple with the fact that is in
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denial that people really aren't reading articles anymore.
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They're not going to websites when the ICE raids happen.
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We realized that like,
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look, we need to get information out there quick,
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fast. We need to get it fast,
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we need to do service journalism to our communities and we need
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to meet them where they are,
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which is on social media.
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So ICE is in LA and you guys need resources.
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And Taco we got you covered.
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If you go to our IG profile and look at the highlights
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one of them says ICE and that has phone numbers.
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It has nonprofits, it has to dos and what to do
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So we pivoted and we took a risk to go social
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the nation has actually showed up for us,
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so we took that giant risk and it's,
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it's, we've gotten a lot of support because of that and
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it just kind of proves to show that if you meet people
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where they are, they will accept you,
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they will respond and will support.
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Yeah, so I mean something that the videos that I've
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just been seeing are,
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you know, street vendors and then being taken as they're working
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and we're seeing that across the city.
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So like have you seen ISIS actions affect LA's Latino economy?
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you go to Latino communities,
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streets are empty, you know,
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where you used to see streets with like 20 street vendors you
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might see a couple people aren't going out,
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restaurants are hurting. It,
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it's really affecting Latino communities hard.
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You go to car washes,
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car washes are empty,
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you know, people are afraid to go to car washes.
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people are afraid to go to work.
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It's having a drastic effect on our economy,
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and we're starting to see places starting to close.
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So it's, it's really sad.
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what we would call like ethnic cleansing in a way.
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I don't know it's like you're in the thick of it your
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whole team is constantly inundated with what's happening.
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What have you seen or what resources that has actually been useful
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and it's helped impact our communities?
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we, we have a whole list of resources I wanna shout
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Go to LA Taco.com/I.
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We've got resources for everything we've getting a lot of requests from
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people that wanna volunteer and help out.
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So tons of organizations we have at least 22 on there that
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you can help out either buying groceries and taking them to people
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immigrants homes that are afraid to come out and work.
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There's a big team of rapid response groups.
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I think there's like 1200 members in LA all being funneled through
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Chirla. Chirla is a great organization that you can help and
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fund. Know your rights.
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It's very few in everywhere,
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but there are instances where people get stopped from being taken,
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and that's because people know their rights and know how to assert
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their rights. So knowing your rights is super important.
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Yeah, OK, that's good to know.
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So my algorithm is a mess.
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I'm just seeing horrible things at all times,
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We work in the space that kind of covers the news and
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what's happening and that's kind of all you guys are really focusing
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on. I mean not all of it,
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but you guys are focusing on a lot of the horrible things
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happening to our communities.
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How are you taking a step back,
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trying to, you know,
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check out for a little bit?
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I tell myself this as much as I'm consuming,
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I'm,, my head's in that space,
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it can't be any worse than what the families are
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going through. And if ICE isn't stopping,
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I'm not stopping, you know,
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we gotta, we gotta find that strength and we gotta just
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every night when I do leave the office though,
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I, I shoot a lot of pool,
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I go to my local little dive bar,
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and I'll play around the pool,
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It's a good way to like just kind of focus on a
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game and get your head out of it for a little bit
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Well, I appreciate you coming out.
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I appreciate everything you guys have been doing and,
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where else can you know,
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everyone else follow you and be able to support?
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Yeah, just follow LA Taco.
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We do everything through there.
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My personal page is Elgo de Los Angeles or LA.
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depending on the social media,
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but yeah, just LA talk will just follow us there and
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all the information will be there.
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Beautiful. Memo tourists.
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Very good. Thank you,
Series