For our 16th episode, we conversed with the powerful duo of Zen Sekizawa and Mario Correa, organizers and artists with the collective, J-Town Action and Solidarity.

We cover the genesis of J-Town Action and Solidarity, their efforts to fight back against gentrification in Little Tokyo, and the role art can play within the movement. Our candid conversation delves into the Atomic Cafe, Zen’s famed family restaurant, how art undergirds Zen and Mario's organizing and what it’s like being in a relationship in movement space!

Zen Sekizawa has been working as a photographer, director and artist in her hometown of Los Angeles. She is a second generation Angeleno and fourth generation Japanese Amerikan. Since earning her BFA in Photography from the Art Center College of Design in 1999, Zen’s practice has grown into exploring, critiquing and acting on the intersection of art, politics and community care.

Mario Correa is an artist based in Los Angeles. In 2001, he received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Mario maintains a practice that encompasses drawing, painting, printmaking and woodworking. Enlisting a wide variety of techniques and materials, he moves through genres of abstraction, still life, and portraiture with an emphasis on mark making and its relationship to the body.

In 2020, Mario and Zen helped establish J-Town Action and Solidarity, a grassroots collective dedicated to revolutionary organizing and building collective power in Little Tokyo. JAS has a weekly mutual event every Saturday afternoon in Little Tokyo with We the Unhoused as well as facilitating political education study groups, organizing direct actions, sweep defense support, self defense and art workshops

episode credits:

hosted by Jason Reedy

follow our guests Zen and Mario @JTOWNACTION

follow us on twitter @pplscityprop and @pplscitycouncil

follow our host Jason Reedy @AxumSelassie

PCP theme song: Adam Smith @AdamOfTheSmiths

recorded at the Robinson S.P.A.C.E @RobinsonSpaceLA

editing by Jason Reedy & sound mixing by Phillip Kim

mentions of Jason Bourne: too many!