Watts Labor Community
Action Committee

VISION: WLCAC envisions an economically and culturally rich community that is peaceful, healthy and a place where anyone would be happy to live, work or play.


CENTRAL AVENUE CORRIDOR DEVELOPMENT
As WLCAC approaches its 50th Anniversary in the year 2015, a tremendous vision will be realized under its Cultural Development Initiative.

The preamble to this initiative states that “although other communities enjoy the capacity to enrich healthy cultures, the culture of Watts remains mired in abject poverty.”

Nevertheless, utilizing the tools of “literacy, mental health, nutrition, mobility, housing, education, community service and employment”

WLCAC has demonstrated over its 46 year lifespan that souls over-exposed to long-term poverty may in fact heal. The Cultural Development Initiative is a bold expansion of WLCAC programs from focus upon individual souls alone to reclamation of the community’s soul as a means of accelerating the healing process.

By establishing Watts as a unique place with its own authentic culture, we have found the means to achieve community transformation, as opposed to transplantation.


MudTown Farms Phase II

In April of 2012, California State Parks announced the award to WLCAC of $4.9 Million in Proposition 84 grant funds for a new urban farm park and community center in Watts.

This is a dream realized for WLCAC and Watts residents, who have been working together for nearly a decade to build the project, which will

provide opportunities for everyone to enjoy: Recreation, education, events, healthy produce and green space.

The project will include growing grounds, an orchard, fitness equipment, a community center, learning facilities and more.

The urban farm park will be named MudTown Farms in honor of the historic name for the area, MudTown. This new farm and park space will bring hope, and with its new growth, a new meaning and honoring of Watts’ rich history.

MudTown Farms is a 2.5 acre site, and Phase III of development will include: a Cannery, General Store, Roadside Produce Stand.

MudTown Farms will not be simply an urban park or simply an urban farm. It will be a self-sustaining community center with education, job training, community gardening, farming, and entrepreneurship for stakeholders of all ages and backgrounds.

It is designed by and for the community it sits in, and will be upheld for years to come as a model for nurturing the spiritual, physical, and economic health of urban communities.

This project has come alive through partnerships with California State Parks, The City of Los Angeles Prop K programSouthern California Institute of Architecture, the Trust for Public Land, and Cal Poly Pomona, to bring the design and programming to fruition.

Donate by clicking the button below and selecting MudTown Farms as your designation, or contact us for other ways to get involved at (323) 563-5639.


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Watts Labor Community
Action Committee