Lindsey Haley – Chicana Journalist & Playwright

Lindsey Haley is a Chicana journalist, playwright, poet and lowrider. She moved to Venice in her adolescence and still lives on the West Side today. Lindsey was writing cover stories for Lowrider Magazine at its peak in the 80’s, and still expresses her culture through writing.

“I think my first milestone was getting paid,” Lindsey said. “It was through Lowrider Magazine. I got paid $50. I was 24 years old. It came just in time ‘cause I had a flat tire.”

Lindsey was the only woman writing for Lowrider at a time when lowriding was not only taboo, but it was illegal. Governor Gavin Newsom recently passed bill AB-436 into law, making cars that are slammed to the pavement legal. While Los Angeles now loves to flaunt this organic homegrown culture, that definitely wasn’t always the case. 

“On Sundays you cruised PCH to go up to Temescal,” Lindsey said. “That made a lot of people mad on PCH. You got 6 lowriders and you have friends of friends of friends of friends going up PCH and riding 20 MPH revving their engines, and there’s people honking at you like ‘fucking Mexicans!” 

It pissed Malibu residents off, but that’s only if they could make it there. 

“The one thing about getting on PCH, you had to go through Santa Monica,” Lindsey said. “Santa Monica cops were real jerks. We would try to break up the line, so it would only be one lowrider and not a gang of us,” Lindsey added.  “If they saw a gang of us, they were gonna stop us all. And that happened. It was like you have to circumvent the police department, and then hurry up and get on PCH, and then meet up, and then go cruising.”

The extent of Lindsey’s writing doesn’t end with car culture. In fact, Lindsey would try to write about anything but cars for Lowrider Magazine.

“I was with them on and off for 8 years,” Lindsey said. “I had a good reputation and working relationship with them where they never turned any of my stories down. I would come to them with an idea and it would have nothing to do with lowriding, but it definitely had to do with Chicano culture.”

Lindsey never went to college for writing, or even finished high school for that matter, but she has always had a deep conviction for having her voice heard.

“I got into journalism; It was the easiest way for me to hone in on my writing skills, but still get published, and then still deliver a message,” Lindsey said. “For the last 40 years my writing has been predominantly in Chicano and Latino arts and culture.”

Maybe it’s the fact that Lindsey’s family tree has amazingly been able to keep their Mexican culture while being Americans for over 400 years, but she feels strongly that Chicano and American culture should be synonymous. 

“It is American Literature. To be Chicano, to be Chicana is an American experience. I am adamant about that,” Lindsey said. “Don’t pigeon hole us. Don’t have us at a bookstore under Latino literature. We’re Americans. I think I’m going to start using this term of “Euro-Americans,” because when our own community talks about white people they say “Los Americanos.” No. We’re Americans. This is our history here. What’s so frickin’ confusing, man!?”

Another contributing factor to Lindsey’s philosophies is pretty simple: Venice in the 60’s and 70’s.

“I just remember my first morning in Venice feeling like I’m exactly where I need to be,” Lindsey said. “Coming into Venice in the political heyday…in 1969, I was very well aware of what was going on.”

Soon after in 1970, things kicked off In L.A. and left lasting impressions. 

“I didn’t get to go to the Chicano moratorium. I watched it on the news,” Lindsey said. ‘One of the images I saw – it was black and white tv- this sheriff had reached over to this woman and was beating her with a billy club. I think that was the very first time I remember feeling rage and just swearing that I was going to do whatever I could to keep that kinda thing from happening. I was impressionable.”

Lindsey’s sense of justice has been passed down from her mother, Rosalina. Lindsey recounted some of the injustices her mother faced in the 50’s. One day, Rosalina was at a lunch counter with her white friend named Betty. Betty was served food while Rosalina was left waiting. When Rosalina asked why, the counter lady said, “We don’t serve Mexicans.”

Lindsey’s biological father was a white man from Arkansas. The reason Rosalina ended the relationship was because she was embarrassed to tell her husband about the injustices she faced in the white world. Lindsey’s mother held these things in for decades. Her biological father never knew why the relationship really ended. 

“They did something cruel to her and then she’s embarrassed,” Lindsey said. Years later her mother explained her fears: “Si a mi me trataban así, me dio miedo como te iban a tratar a ti.”

Lindsey was raised Mexican saying her first language was “Spanglish.”

“When I got to Venice, I kept the fact that I was half white a secret for a really long time,” Lindsey said. “ It was 1969. The white man was getting blamed for everything. I said, ‘I don’t even know this dude (her biological father). I lived right there in Oakwood and there were a couple white kids. Those kids got punked pretty bad.”

Lindsey still expresses herself through writing and speaking today. That rage of seeing Sheriff deputies hitting women on television as a child and the things her mother went through are still with her. 

“We’re still seen as the other. It pisses me off. I guess because it still pisses me off, I ain’t done yet,” Lindsey said.