Associate Director of Youth Programs
Earl Carter and Ricky Washington wake up every morning at 5am to open their market located on the corner of 62nd and Normandie. There are community members already smiling and waiting outside for good coffee and great conversation. On any given afternoon, Mother’s Community Market serves homemade tamales and chili dogs, coffee and pan, and you are treated as family.
Earl and Ricky are lifelong residents of the area and are an indispensable duo in South Central for their work in gang intervention and organizing for peace across its neighborhoods. This year, they partnered to open Mother’s Community Market.
“Mother’s Community Market is our past, present and future. It’s our offering to the community that raised us. It celebrates where we each come from, and our ancestral homes in both the African and Latinx diaspora. We offer foods and items from both cultures. South Los Angeles has always been home for Latinx people, and as Black people we want to honor them as well. They are a part of the fabric of this community. And just like we want to celebrate Black history every month of the year–not just February–we want to celebrate Hispanic Heritage every month of the year–not just in September,” said Ricky Washington.
“Our hope for this market is that it can showcase the beauty of when our community comes together. And that it can be an example of unity for the younger generation that is still dealing with the ramifications of systemic racism and the wedge that it drives between Black and Latinx community members. Our generation has experienced all of that, the divestment in jobs, resources and services, the school to prison pipeline, incarceration and over-policing. All of those things create an environment where people can’t coexist in peace. Our hope here is that we can offer a space where we can continue the process of bringing folks together and modeling what South Los Angeles should be like,” said Earl Carter.