BBC reporter Anthony Zurcher has written a long article on the Los Angeles Armenian community of 200,000, specifically the community of Glendale, where the Armenians population constitutes 30 percent.
“Armenians first started arriving in California early in the 20th Century, as a direct result of the unrest in their homeland. They largely worked in the fertile agricultural valley in central California.
A few settled in Glendale. Friends and relatives followed. They founded a church. They opened shops and restaurants that offered the tastes and products of their homeland - including the ubiquitous small cups of thick, dark coffee and sweet, nut-filled pastries,” the article reads.
“What began as a trickle turned into a series of waves - a result of the war and economic disruption in areas the Armenians had subsequently settled. They fled the Iranian revolution in the 1970s, the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s, the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the Iraq War in the 2000s and, in the past few years, the Syrian civil war.”
“The Armenian community in Los Angeles is a patchwork of immigrants with different reasons for their arrival, different national experiences, all in different stages of assimilation into the American culture. It includes the Kardashian clan of reality television fame and Tigran Zakaryan, who is helping to build support for a proposed Armenian American Museum in Glendale; former California Governor George Deukmejian and Ardy Kassakhian, a Glendale city clerk running for a seat in the California legislature.
The experience of Deir ez-Zor unites them, however. It casts a shadow over the Armenian people to this day, and it influences and educates their politics, even in Glendale.”
They all remember about the Armenian Genocide. "For me, it's very important because my father's family was all killed in the genocide, so I never knew my grandparents; never knew my aunt and uncle. When we are in the United States, we are all Americans. We will do everything for this country. But that does not mean we will ever forget the genocide," says Glandale resident Zaven Kazazian.
According to the author, along with Wahsington’s reluctance to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the local Armenians face other difficulties as well because of their nationality. For instance, it is difficult for Armenian politicians to get elected because of their last names. Their opponents are often supported by California Charter Schools Association Advocates, whose members are also the schools founded by Fethullah Gülen.
Armenians held a march in Los Angeles commemorating the Armenian Genocide and did their best for schools to tell about the Genocide. The Turkish organizations certainly don’t like this.
Ardy Kassakhian first faced this issue at UCLA. According to him, he is facing off against Turkish interests once again, in the form of the million-dollar expenditures against him.
Now the Glendale city clerk says he's facing off against Turkish interests once again, in the form of the million-dollar expenditures against him. And much of the money has gone into negative direct-mail flyers that allege Kassakhian made ballot-counting errors as clerk.
"California is definitely in the eye of a lot of pro-Turkish forces,” he says.
