Commentary: The Eastside is fed up. And the politicians aren't listening

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Set us as preferred All of the Eastside neighborhood types that make the Eastside the Eastside showed up last night at Stevenson Middle School for that most Eastside of traditions:Give flailing politicians righteous hell.It was the first public town hall about the Lineage warehouse fire, which burned for nearly a week and left 85 million pounds of frozen food rotting across the street from residential neighborhoods.All 400 seats in the sweltering auditorium were filled, with an additional 300 people in the cafeteria.

Dozens more lingered in the parking lot and on the lawn.There were the activists who marched nearly a mile from the burnt-out warehouse to push past security and enter the auditorium, chanting “Shut it down!”There were taqueras like Monica Susteyta and Cristina Flores, who ran stalls on Union Pacific Avenue within sight of Lineage until the fire shut them down last month.Susteyta has yet to reopen.

Flores tried this week, out of financial desperation, but has yet to make a sale, “because there’s just too many flies.”“We can’t work, our kids can’t play outside.It’s worse than the pandemic,” the 41-year-old continued in Spanish.“The mayor said the smoke wasn’t toxic,” added Susteyta, 50.

“How was it not, when one cigarette is poison?”A mariachi played, highlighting the loss of gigs for local musicians, with backyard parties on hold amid the stench that still hangs over the area.Elderly immigrants showed off injuries they claimed were caused by the noxious air: strange blotches on their skin, temples rubbed raw due to watery eyes.And then there were Eastside lifers like 77-year-old Ross Valencia, who attended Stevenson just like his father and stood in line for two hours to secure a seat.“How many things have to happen to the Eastside?” the Navy veteran sighed, mentioning a May oi...