The Los Angeles Times recently reported that California Attorney General Jerry Brown charged "Bell leaders of secretly plotting to enrich themselves and conceal their lucrative compensation." Then the press reported the arrest of eight Bell officials for charges based on cheating taxpayers out of around $5.5 million dollars. District Attorney Steve Cooley said, "This was calculated greed and theft." Over the past few months, the Times has reported that the city manager of the mostly Latino working-class city was being paid nearly $800,000 a year and city council members around $100,000 a year for part-time work, entitling them to millions in state pension funds. At the same time, Bell residents were paying the highest property tax in the state, and Bell employees, barely earning minimum wage, were being laid off because the city lacked funds. Meanwhile, Bell police officers were being pushed to impound more cars to raise money for the city. When the first stories about the greed in Bell hit the news, a co-worker, who was born and raised in Mexico, jokingly kidded, "What do you expect when a bunch of Mexicans decide who's in charge."
Around the same time as the story of corruption in Bell, I read a news article about a guy named Joe Sanchez who Los Angeles was honoring for what he has done for our community. I wondered why we thrive on negative stereotypes. Is doing so an unavoidable part of our nature? Why don't we look at a situation through a positive rather than a negative lens? Instead of viewing the City of Bell through a stereotype that Latinos are greedy, why don't we expect people to act like Latino businessman and political activist Joe Sanchez?
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