This Tuesday, July 19, in the next Santa Ana City Council meeting, Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, the Councilman for Ward 5, will raise for discussion a proposed law that would classify all attacks on the Orange County city’s street vendors as hate crimes.
A born-and-bred Santa Ana local raised in the Artesia Pilar neighborhood by a family from Guadalajara, the 29-year-old community mental health worker has witnessed the recent wave of attacks on vendors across the city and beyond with recognizable anguish and frustration. With his new proposal, he seeks to provide greater protections, deterrents, and punishments against the racially motivated, targeted attacks that continue to threaten and endanger these staple businesses and hard-working neighbors, who are under constant danger in so many of our California communities.
L.A. TACO spent some time speaking with Hernandez this morning about what he’s proposing and what it could mean for our revered street vendors, both locally and across the state.
Hello Johnathan, we learned from Edin Alex Enamorado’s Instagram account that you’re proposing a law to make attacks on street vendors get charged as hate crimes in Santa Ana. Can you break down what you’re proposing and how you hope to see it passed?