After El Monte's long history of hate, community members are healing together

Since 2018, Pastor Bruce Mejia has led the First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, CA. Hundreds join him Sunday mornings and evenings to listen to him preach the word of God. His sermons, however, are fueled by conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and vaccines, along with misogynistic and homophobic speeches.

Mejia, who has described himself as "homo-hating," has also joked about the city he was preaching in saying, "Nobody will find us here in the ghetto."

El Monte is a city that lies in the San Gabriel Valley where Latinos make up 65% of the population, according to the 2019 census.

This isn't the first case of a hate group planting its roots there. Since the 1920s, several dangerous groups threatened the existence of Black and brown people.

The Keep El Monte Friendly Instagram account was created in January to rally community members to petition for the church to leave their city.

"First Works [Baptist Church] preys on low-income residents and children. They promote sexism, homophobia and anti-semitism," one post reads. "This group is a severe threat to peace in El Monte."

The Keep El Monte Friendly group held protests outside the church demanding that they leave their city.

Timeline of the different hate groups throughout the years.

The history of hate groups in El Monte is a long one.

The book "East of East: the Making of Greater El Monte," edited by Romeo Guzman, Caribbean Fargoza, Alex Sayf Cummings and Ryan Reft, is a collection of essays detailing the history of the city, including the presence of the El Monte Boys and the Klu Klux Klan members.

The essay, "Here Come the El Monte Boys" by Karen S. Wilson and Daniel Lynch catalogs the history of the El Monte Boys. In the late-1800s, vigilante justice and lynch mobs were all the rage in El Monte. A group called the El Monte Boys took justice into their own hands, and mainly Mexican men suffered most of their violence.

Wilson and Lynch wrote that this was a time when there wasn't yet a strong justice system in place in this region because the people living there were mainly squatters. Because of this, citizens created committees to help deal with criminal activity. In California, local militias could receive free weapons through the state. A formal organization called the Monte Rangers became recognized by the state. It is believed that because of this, the Monte Boys were formed.

In 1856, the white population was in fear of being overrun by the Latino population. The Monte Boys were the solution to their fears.

The group rode into towns on horseback killing whoever they deemed as criminals. The last lynching done by the Monte Boys was in 1887, according to Wilson and Lynch.

Fast forward to the twentieth century, when El Monte became the ideal place for white supremacist leaders to set up camp.

In the 1920s Klu Klux Klan members found it their responsibility to protect the morality of the region from non-whites. Then, in the 1960s, neo-Nazis set foot into the city with this same idea.

According to Dan Cady, a history professor at California State University, Fresno, who wrote the essay "Rise, Fall, Repeat: El Monte's White Supremacy Movements," El Monte's location played a central role in why white supremacist leaders navigated there. Not only is the city close to the greater Los Angeles area, but it was also the central link to the Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Due to conflict within the group, the Klan failed to convert all of El Monte into Klansmen, and push out non-whites from the city.

In the mid-1960s, the Nazis, unlike the KKK, did not strategically plan to end up in El Monte. George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party (ANP), opened a West Coast office in Glendale, CA because, in his words, it was a "white man's town."

He appointed a man named Ralph Forbes as the location's commander, but his stint in Glendale didn't last long. A year after his arrival, and after several court cases, Forbes and his family were evicted.

Michael Sedano, "El Monte, 1970." (Courtesy of Michael Sedano)

They moved to a two-story house in El Monte where the first floor acted as an ANP meeting place. Over time, Rockwell was trying to rebrand the ANP to attract more white American followers, changing the name of the party to the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP).

The NSWPP, however, was unable to overcome the public's disdain towards Nazis, leaving room for Forbes to be replaced by 19-year-old Joseph Tommasi.

"In this period, the El Monte Nazi house went from plain dilapidation to dilapidation featuring the Nazi flag and a swastika-stenciled exterior," Cady wrote in his essay.

The city attempted to fine Tommasi, while neighbors wanted him and his followers out for good, sparking protests. In January 1972, hundreds of people protested outside the home, while a line of 60 Nazis stood on the porch with rifles. Tommasi said that if any protestors step foot on his property he would have ordered the men to shoot.

The Nazis vacated the home in 1976 and vowed to move to Pasadena, but they eventually faded from public view.

Cady warned that the white nationalist ideology has the ability to evolve with the times and that folks should be intimidated because groups like these will come back.

"What's scary about this ideology is it jumps its whiteness," Cady said in an interview. "Sometimes you walk by [these white nationalist groups] and say, ‘hey, you're not white, why are you with these guys?'"

He continued to say the next cycle is multi-cultural.

"In El Monte, it probably isn't that the white people will come back, but the ideology will come back and find a home in that community," Cady said.

Today, however, residents of El Monte have come together to create Memories of El Monte, a community space.

"I think it's important to talk about the history to heal," co-founder of the space, Carla Macal, said in an interview.

Macal said the center is for "validating the history of people of color in El Monte" and "celebrating our identities."

Araceli Franco, a California State University, Los Angeles student, helps host healing workshops once a month at the space. She said there are many residents of El Monte, especially those who are undocumented, who face violence and discrimination, especially from law enforcement, and that this space can help those heal from their traumatic experiences.

"Being in a community is healing," Franco said. "A space like this could be part of the healing."

Azalia Gonzalez was born and raised in El Monte, and also feels a sense of responsibility in taking care of her community. She considers herself a neighbor to everyone in El Monte. This is what pushed her to volunteer with the El Monte (EM) Tenants Union, an mutual aid organization that started at the peak of the pandemic amid rent strikes.

"Our goal is community aid," Gonzalez said.

The group distributes groceries, hygiene products and other necessities nearly every month. This past summer, they collaborated with Memories of El Monte to host a large school supply drive.

Franco added that healing takes a lot of work, and it is much easier to do that with the support of a community. Despite the city's dark history, residents like those from Memories of El Monte and EM Tenants are rebuilding their communities and protecting each other in the process.