LA vs. Belfast: How Do We Move Forward in a Divided City?

The L.A. upheaval took place in 1992. The Troubles ended in 1998. Ever since, leaders of Belfast and Los Angeles—two cities notorious worldwide for urban violence—have promised the end of bitter divisions within their cities. In 2013, the Northern Ireland government pledged to dismantle by 2023 all of Belfast’s “peace walls”—gates and fences and barriers separating Protestant and Catholic communities. But the walls still stand, and Belfast is too divided to even form a government.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, residents tell pollsters that race relations are deteriorating. And city government seems paralyzed in the aftermath of a historic scandal—a secret tape of public and labor officials making offensive and racist statements about virtually every ethnic group in L.A.

What explains the persistence of racial and sectarian conflict in these two cities? What strategies have worked in L.A. and Belfast to reduce divisions, and which have backfired? And what if anything can these two cities learn from each other, and from the world, about how to find reconciliation and achieve cooperative governance?

Panelists:

• Jody Agius Vallejo, Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, USC
• Joumana Silyan-Saba, Director of Policy and Enforcement for the Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department (LA Civil Rights)
• Duncan Morrow, Director of Community Engagement, Ulster University
• Stephen Wilson, Artist and Photographer, Peace Line Stories

Moderator:

• Joe Matthews, California columnist and democracy editor; Zócalo Public Square; founder and columnist, Democracy Local

Co-sponsored by the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, USC Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative, and Imagine! Belfast.