​LOS ANGELES

 

My Story

 

I Never Knew Real Life...

Until I Met My City

 

By MARYANN HUDSON 

 

                                              

As a census taker in Los Angeles County this past year, I've seen thousands of apartments and converted houses and backyard garage rooms.  I've seen thousands of parked cars crowding streets and neighborhoods full of people trying to keep up—selling shoes and stuff and food on corners splayed across folding tables. 

 

In Chinatown, above gated locked-down storefronts, I discovered steps in a back parking lot and climbed past bras and underclothes drying on makeshift clotheslines to find dank, narrow hallways with crusty carpet and apartments designated by adhesive-backed numbers on doors, that, when opened, were tiny rooms with the cluttered decor of a Salvation Army thrift shop.  Extension cords lined the walls and crawled over the carpet. 

 

Feeling somewhat awkward,  I wobbled in place in a hallway until a woman saw me and directed me to the manager—a Chinese man who welcomed me, then took me door-to-door and stood me in front of nicely-dressed Asian men with shirts tucked into pants and belts on a Tuesday at 11 a.m., even though they had nowhere to go and nothing to do.  None of them spoke English, but by using their language app and a lot of hand motions we somehow communicated.  They were respectful.  And kind.  And they wanted to be counted.  I left feeling good about that. 

 

There were nights I was in places that are so creepy that not even creepy people were around.  I have waited outside security-restricted buildings and in dark alleys where people enter to park and was sometimes eventually rewarded when someone finally arrived and let me in.  And, of course, I’ve had doors slammed in my face and other verbal forms of get-off-my-property by irate people who did the census online or sent it in and kept getting barraged by census takers; and doors not answered or quietly closed by those who fear or don’t trust the government anyway.   I get all of that.  But what I didn’t get, is that most of the rude people were white.  The women were the worst. More often than not, in these encounters, I  was embarrassed to be a white American. 

 

Merciless through it all was the pandemic, and I don’t blame anyone who wouldn’t open their door and spoke to me through window screens and doors cracked open two inches.  COVID-19 delayed the census count starting date from  April to August, but still kept the census date of April 1, 2020.   We only counted people who lived in a certain household on April 1, and with COVID lockdowns and breakdowns and people who had moved, many places were vacant, and April 1 seemed like years ago to nearly everyone.

 

Then, omnipresent through the daily report of rising COVID cases and deaths, triple-digit temperatures and suffocating air from the California wildfires was the litigious Donald Trump. With his request for a citizenship question shot down, he ordered agencies to use government records to determine the undocumented, then launched a courtroom saga to stop the census early so, if voted out of office, he could still eliminate illegals from the final count to favor Republicans in 2022 elections, House seats and in redrawing state electoral districts. It also meant we had less time to count traditional hard-to-reach groups, which would reduce federal funds for their communities. Our job depended on each courtroom decision, which seemed to change weekly, until the Supreme Court ruled for Trump, allowing him to stop the count two weeks early.

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Through all of it, I learned a lot about Los Angelenos, not from the residents in high rises or those in upper middle-class homes, but from those who've figured out how to exist in life with less than what they need, and seemed to respect I was at their door to count them as part of the country in which they strive to survive.   

 

I quickly learned the power in the word “please,” and they seemed to honor that.  Asking to include them showed respect. Or maybe they were polite just because I was a human standing at their door.   And I’m not sure if they all realized that being counted meant the federal government would consider them when it doles out money for services, or when determining how many representatives their state can send to Congress.  But most of the upper middle-class whites in the suburbs and the city knew why the census was important, and many reluctantly gave me any of their time, if that. 

 

 “How long will this take?” they asked.  Mostly, they complained about how disorganized the census program was and how I was the third or fifth or 50th person who came to their house, and they had already responded and gave an interview or filled it out online so quit coming. QUIT COMING. 

 

And it was true. The U.S. Census Bureau had ten years to produce an integrated computerized system, and blew it.  When I was at someone's door, the software was laborious and, at times, unworkable.  In the office, it was equally insufficient. People would show me the confirmation number they received when they filled out the census online and I would note it for the office or call it in to my supervisor, and still, the overnight computer system would override it and the next week another census taker was sent to their door. Sometimes the next day.  It was ridiculous. 

 

It was the Asians who treated me the best, whether in the suburbs or in the city.  Whether they were young or old.  The Koreans and Chinese and Vietnamese showed me respect and helped me find the count of neighbors—because most of them had some idea about their neighbors, which doesn't happen often in Los Angeles.  Most Asians didn’t want to give me their own phone number, but went beyond to call managers or owners for information about who lived down the hall on April 1, 2020.  They would hand me their phone and, yes, I thought about COVID.  I didn’t want to take the phone, but I did. 

 

If your total daily existence is confined to West L.A. or,  in a  suburb such as Santa Monica or Glendale, or, like where I live, in Pasadena, you may have no idea of just how many people live between the 10 and Hollywood freeways, west of downtown.  That zone, which includes Koreatown—is not only crowded, but toppling over. There are hundreds of streets and thousands of people going about their daily lives, trying to make it all work.  This zone had been completely undercounted in previous census years. But this time, when my suburban zone had counted 99.5% of households, we were sent to that zone and helped achieve a near 100% count.  I think we all felt good about that.  

 

I realized these are the people who are grateful to live in this country; who work the hardest for the least. I also realized that while I never think about living in this country, that’s all many of them can think about.  They want to be here, to stay here. 

 

These people showed the most respect for this country and to me. To them, I wasn’t an outsider, and, for a moment, neither were they. They were proud to be included. They mattered. Sharing that feeling was the real anomaly.

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Maryann Hudson is a freelance writer and former staff writer for the L.A. Times

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