Save Our History Museum in Boyle Heights!

A message from our founder and director:

Many of you have been asking for some time how you can support our work and help maintain this unique space we have here at BOYLE HEIGHTS HISTORY STUDIOS - our museum and cultural center, that also so much more in terms of programming for our community. For the first time we are opening up the ability for people of the public to donate to help us sustain this essential resource in our community.

 

And this truth is; for the first time we really do need your support in order to keep our doors open and maintain the programming you have come to love; and that many of you believe is essential for the pride and joy of our community.

 

Let me make this clear, we are on the verge of shutting down imminently without your financial support, and your volunteering to help staff our museum as we re-open post-COVID.

 

For almost three-years now BOYLE HEIGHTS HISTORY STUDIOS has proudly served as our community history museum and cultural center, an oral history and music recording space, and meeting space for essential local programs and faith communities. We have welcomed literally thousands of people of all cultures and faiths to come to explore the history and current-day cultural heritage of Boyle Heights.

 

We are proud to say BOYLE HEIGHTS HISTORY STUDIOS is the first and only full functioning dedicated history museum in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles. Though many historical and cultural groups have aspired to this over the decades, together we simply made this a reality. And today we even serve as a clearinghouse of community organizing and non-profit community partners, working together to better our community and building inter-cultural ties in our neighborhood.

 

We are also the only active and operating space for the local Jewish community of Boyle Heights to meet; we are also the home of the BOYLE HEIGHTS CHAVURAH – the grassroots Jewish fellowship of East Los Angeles. It is our joy to welcome people for free meals on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

 

Not only have we made this all a reality, we have sustained it through the crisis of our lifetime, facing the challenges of COVID-19 through over two-thirds of our existence; our greater Eastside Los Angeles community of historical and cultural buffs have sustained us all the way in a most unique way.

 

Though first consider this: Since our inception we have never taken grant money, philanthropy endowments, government or private interest monies, nor even any COVID recovery money! And yet the entire time we have maintained a free museum, with free events all week long and especially during the various cultural holidays celebrated in the Eastside; Latino, Jewish, Japanese, Russian, Italian, French, Basque, etc., with all the food and drink always offered for free.

 

How have we been able to make this possible for us to not just keep alive our historic multicultural heritage of Boyle Heights, but also give people a literate taste of our shared traditions every time they walk into our studios?

 

It’s been entirely from our tours! Our operation is entirely funded by our historical walking tours which we offer once a week, hosted by myself, Shmuel Gonzales the Barrio Boychik. Guests donate as little as $25 for a historical tour once a week, and that has been our entire source of income.

 

That’s it, nothing more! Just modest support from enough people in our community to never have to fundraise or hustle for funding. We thank you for that truly historical level of support you have shown us. No one has ever come out to support a program as you have here, and we are truly grateful for that.

 

However, this business model has come with great setbacks since the start of the COVID crisis, forcing us at times even to shut down our tours which are the entire financial lifeblood of our operation. Things are also growing harder as my own already fragile health has been rapidly declining.

 

Now, many of you are still probably wondering about this basic question: If this is the case, why have I long been resistant to taking funds from grants, philanthropy and anything beyond the most modest of donations in the past? And why in a world of crisis should you support our work here and at this time, when there are so many nonprofit organizations and causes also urgently asking for support?

 

The reason we have done this work entirely grassroots has been to build the trust of our community and supporters, and raise the bar for local nonprofits and inspire them as we come into a new era in which the old models people that have taken for granted are now a dead-end.

 

The objective truth is that in Boyle Heights we have long lived in a community in which people are always frantically raising money for causes, but it most often doesn’t become of much and it always seems to get eaten up by “administrative costs.” We have had cultural groups and various historical societies aspire and even raise money for decades in order to service the community with a history museum, and yet they have never gone beyond just the fund-raising and still currently have nothing to show for.

 

In the face of this, public and private donors have now greatly lost faith in our local institutions, and we realized we needed to restore the faith of donors and inspire our local nonprofits with new models that meet the needs and ethics of the 21st century.

 

In the non-profit world people always ask what the local buy-in is: do people even care at all and is this project even really sustainable? The fact is that we have been sustained almost entirely from the support from local residents, buying into our tours and participating in our programming. Local people do care!

 

And beyond that: We are unlike the other nonprofits in our neighborhood who have been raising money for not just years but indeed for decades, asking for people to help them make a dedicated history museum and full functioning cultural center, and even taking a great deal of government money, and yet with nothing lasting becoming of it to date. We understand your frustration and disappointment entirely.

 

With that in mind, we set out with the intention of funding the site without outside support for three full years before taking public funds, in order to serve everyone without any limitations or demographic restrictions imposed by grants, and furthermore to build the trust of the community and future potential donors: to show it could be ultimately be achieved and sustained on a grassroots level. For people to see they will be supporting something that will truly last and stay to make a difference in our community, through thick and thin!

 

We are just one month shy of that three-year mark, yet we believe we have proven our point already, and built the trust of our community to ask for your support at this time.

 

Here at BOYLE HEIGHTS HISTORY STUDIOS, we are not asking you to give to something we aspire to or even promise to make. Instead, we have already built it! And we have fully proven its viability and essential need in our community.

 

We are not asking you to give towards some abstract idea and aspiration that might never be actualized, but instead we are appealing to you, our friends and partners, to sustain a vibrant center of history and culture, one that already exists and is thriving: we just need your support to keep it going!

 

Though this work is not cheap: our rent is over $3000 per month alone, and so it costs upwards of $5,000 a month to keep our museum and cultural center operating.

 

All this being paid for by the volunteer efforts of myself, Shmuel Gonzales the Barrio Boychik; as I take away no salary or paycheck, even though I am still physically disabled and struggling against homelessness. Nonetheless, it has been my wildest dream-come-true to make this center possible as a resource for the community and many other people like me who need a cultural and spiritual home. I’m proud to say that this work has been done by the least among us, with the help of some of the greatest people on earth, you the people of our Eastside community and our allies and partners.

 

We are proud to keep our doors open pretty much daily in order to welcome people in to learn about history, to share their stories and songs, to celebrate their culture and faith traditions. We are proud to also welcome daily local community partners and causes that are also in need of space to do their essential community work in offering resources and support. And of course we love that when people come in here for any reason that they are immediately immersed in the sights, sounds, smells and flavors of historic multicultural Boyle Heights.

 

Though we urgently need your support to keep this work going.

 

On behalf of the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, I want to thank you all for making this possible and for your generous support to help us maintain our work going forward.

 

At this time I also want to give you hope and a vision of our future:

 

Given that COVID has changed the way we operate museums and social programming; we are proud to announce that we are gearing up to launch our newest exhibit with the help of the UCLA Alan. D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies: we are going to be launching our Barrio Mobile History Studio, a newly updated and portable version of our exhibit “From Brooklyn Ave. to Cesar Chavez: Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights,” which will soon be deploy-able in various public spaces throughout the community, even outside. This is our most ambitious project to date!

 

We have so much to look forward to both in this space and outside of this space, as our work spills out into the community once again to inspire yet another generation to embrace our shared historical and cultural roots.

 

Thank you for your support!

 

Todah rabba / muchisimas gracias / with much gratitude!

 

 

B’shalom / en paz / in peace,

Shmuel Gonzales, the Barrio Boychik

Founder of Boyle Heights History Studios (& Tours),

and of The Boyle Heights Chavurah – the grassroots Jewish community of East Los Angeles