Money, Money, Money

I have been watching and listening to the tragic goings on (for everyone on either side of the issue) with respect to the evacuation of the settlement at Gaza Strip – I have friends and acquaintances who are Israeli and who are Palestinian – so I refuse to take sides on this most heated of events. What I do instead is wonder at the history of our people, namely the American people, when it comes to telling folks to get out of the way because they would like their land – which could be argued as one small influence in the occupation of Gaza many moons ago, since it was a preponderance of Americans deciding to move to the homeland who settled there in the first place. Years later, that no longer matters because those born there are citizens through and through – it’s their home and it’s all they know. Who is right and who is wrong is a non-issue – but instead a tragedy for everyone that no one seems able to fix to the advantage of everyone or anyone involved. And of course there is the way in which we are receiving news about this event. I wonder at the way in which our American news media reports heavily on that which effects the economically advantaged – and yes, Gaza is a mighty Tony area of prime beachfront real estate for all who live there – and there is a huge population there – my point is that stories about what happen to low income residents anywhere in the world that happen to get displaced via governmental negotiation or flat-out takeover – get little attention.

For example, Chavez Ravine got airplay on PBS decades after the fact.

Now THERE is a bit of L.A. History with respect to the displacement of citizens that has bugged me for years –

Chavez Ravine was a tight knit community of Mexican Americans, named after Julian Chavez – one of the first L.A. County Supervisors in the 1800’s. There were three neighborhoods – Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop. They had their own schools and churches and maintained a small-town life within the larger urban metropolis that is Los Angeles proper. It was known as “the poor man’s Shangri La.” That should tell you right there that they were doomed. Poor and Happy are not states of being that should be encouraged to co-exist. In 1949, outsiders who viewed the area as an eyesore, earmarked Chavez Ravine as the location for the Los Angeles City Housing Authority to build a multi-thousand unit public housing project. Residents of Chavez Ravine were told that they would have first choice for these new homes which would include newly rebuilt playgrounds and schools. Under the power of eminent domain, they were paid little, if anything for their properties and were told to evacuate or be forcibly removed by marshals.

Enter McCarthyism or the “Red Scare” of the 50’s. Supporters of the public housing plan viewed it as a good opportunity to provide improved housing for poor L.A. residents. Corporate businesses that wanted the land for their purposes used the Red Scare tactics widely used at the time to characterize the project as a socialist plot. Frank Wilkinson, assistant director of the L.A. City Housing Authority and the man who personally promised the evacuated residents of Chavez Ravine that he would do right by them and that they would have first pick of the new homes, was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee, lost his job and was sentenced to one year in jail.

The housing project never happened. The land was eventually sold on the cheap to the Brooklyn Dodgers, who built Dodger Stadium, removing the last of the families that had refused to leave. Anyone protesting the removal of the remaining residents for the building of the stadium was accused by public figures (like Ronald Reagan) of being "baseball haters." April 10, 1962, Dodger Stadium officially opened.

NOW – years later, rumors abound that at least one wealthy developer has designs to raze Dodger Stadium in order to move the baseball stadium to downtown nearer to Staples Center and the new hub of activity that is building up and around downtown. The proposal for the land where the Stadium sits? Yup. High-end housing to match all the other aesthetically-challenged high-end apartment buildings going up all over town in place of what stood there before. Anybody seen those Canary yellow aparments over at Hollywood and Western, or those baby-shit yellow “Palazzo” apartments over by Park La Brea? Ew. (Incidentally, Park La Brea was originally government subsidized low income housing for returning WWII vets – now privatized, repainted and high-priced “luxury apartments and townhouses.” Where’d the vets go?)

Apparently there is a tragic shortage of luxury housing in Los Angeles. Little, if anything, is said in any of the papers however about the former low-income residents from any of these places that meet the wrecking ball who are being displaced to benefit the Hollywood Re-Beautification Project.

Ah, Capitalism.