Ya' Cousin Cleon
OG COUCH CORNER HUSTLA
LOS ANGELES — The protest at Mariachi Plaza didn’t seem, at first, like a declaration of war.
“Gentrification is not your next documentary topic,” the group recently wrote on its blog. Its leaders distrust the media, saying they’d “rather opt out and tell our story for ourselves,” and did not respond to interview requests.
“Gentrification is not a trend for the ‘woke wide web’ or for the detached subculture of the left to consume,” they continued. “It is a vicious, protracted attack on poor and working-class people. And we are engaging in class warfare that leaves our friends, families, and neighbors, homeless, devastated, deported or dead. So get with down friends and make s*** crack.”
In fact, the Feb. 7 event looked like the same sort of grassroots, anti-gentrification gathering that might have taken place in any big American city at any point over the past 10 years as higher-income transplants have increasingly colonized lower-income urban communities, remaking once marginalized neighborhoods in their own cold-brew-and-kombucha image.
But this one was different.
That’s because it was organized by Defend Boyle Heights, a coalition of scorched-earth young activists from the surrounding neighborhood — the heart of Mexican-American L.A. — who have rejected the old, peaceful forms of resistance (discussion, dialogue, policy proposals) and decided that the only sensible response is to attack and hopefully frighten off the sorts of art galleries, craft breweries and single-origin coffee shops that tend to pave the way for more powerful invaders: the real estate agents, developers and bankers whose arrival typically mark a neighborhood’s point of no return.
By “making s*** crack” — by boycotting, protesting, disrupting, threatening and shouting in the streets — Defend Boyle Heights and its allies have notched a series of surprising victories over the past two and a half years, even as the forces of gentrification continue to make inroads in the neighborhood. A gallery closed its doors after its “staff and artists were routinely trolled online and harassed in person.” An experimental street opera was shut down after members of the Roosevelt High School band — egged on by a group of activists — used saxophones, trombones and trumpets to drown it out. A real estate bike tour promising clients access to a “charming, historic, walkable and bikeable neighborhood” was scrapped after the agent reported threats of violence. “I can’t help but hope that your 60-minute bike ride is a total disaster and that everyone who eats your artisanal treats pukes immediately,” said one message. The national (and international) media descended, with many outlets flocking to Weird Wave Coffee, a hip new shop that was immediately targeted by activists after opening last summer.
There were four speakers: a mother of six who had won several court battles against the landlord trying to raise the rent on her East L.A. apartment; an organizer for the L.A. Tenants Union who urged listeners to support a proposed ballot measure that would overturn California’s major anti-rent-control law, a man who had led a recent rent strike at his building in Boyle Heights and an activist who spent every Sunday in Mariachi Plaza, handing out food and clothes to needy locals.
So far, familiar enough.
Yet throughout the event there were also hints that something less civil — and far more confrontational — was afoot. “F*** Hipsters,” read the shirts for sale. A few activists clutched bright red hammer-and-sickle flags. And behind the attendees stood silent men and women in black ski masks — “comrades,” said emcee Facundo Rompe, “who are here to protect us.”
Between speeches, Rompe — tall and lean, with the glasses, goatee and nom de guerre of a vintage leftist — took the mic and alluded to activities that might (or might not) transpire later that evening.
“Obviously I can’t tell you everything we’re going to do, because the cops have really big pig ears,” Rompe said as he gestured toward a pair of plainclothes officers watching from a silver car at the edge of the plaza. “But what I’ve found is that the only thing that works to stop gentrifiers is intimidation. The only thing that works is fear — the fear of harm. Because they are harming us.”
A New Generation Of Anti-Gentrification Radicals Are On The March In Los Angeles – And Around The Country | HuffPost
In Pilsen or East Austin or Boyle Heights, it’s easy to find locals, young or old, who are concerned about gentrification but confused by, or just plain opposed to, these new, more aggressive tactics. And if you ask experts who have been studying the phenomenon — or the more conventional activists who have been battling it for decades — they always respond the same way. Gentrification is a huge, even global, force, they say. Resisting it in the streets isn’t sufficient. You need a seat at the table — and a plan.
“The younger generation is fed up,” explains Byron Sigcho of the Pilsen Alliance, a social-justice nonprofit that has been fighting gentrification since 1998. “The frustrations they face are real; the issues are systemic and oppressive. They’re not able to go to school, they’re not able to find a good job. I understand their anger. But real issues need real solutions. We need to push for rent control, for affordable housing, for community benefit agreements, for policy change at the urban development level. We can’t just inflate the same divides we criticize.”
@JahFocus CS
These harsh realities aren’t lost on millennials of color — especially young men and women from gentrifying neighborhoods, where such inequities tend to be on vivid, daily display. To that end, a 2016 Harvard Institute of Politics poll found that only 42 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds now support capitalism; a third now identify as socialists. Among those who backed Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, the number was even higher — a full 54 percent — and minorities and people without a college degree were more likely to support socialism as well. @Paper Boi
@FAH1223
The rise of America’s first developer-in-chief, meanwhile, has fanned the flames, creating an atmosphere of at-all-costs resistance on the left — and a newfound sense of political urgency among women and people of color, who feel particularly unwelcome in Donald Trump’s America.
“Gentrification is not your next documentary topic,” the group recently wrote on its blog. Its leaders distrust the media, saying they’d “rather opt out and tell our story for ourselves,” and did not respond to interview requests.
“Gentrification is not a trend for the ‘woke wide web’ or for the detached subculture of the left to consume,” they continued. “It is a vicious, protracted attack on poor and working-class people. And we are engaging in class warfare that leaves our friends, families, and neighbors, homeless, devastated, deported or dead. So get with down friends and make s*** crack.”
In fact, the Feb. 7 event looked like the same sort of grassroots, anti-gentrification gathering that might have taken place in any big American city at any point over the past 10 years as higher-income transplants have increasingly colonized lower-income urban communities, remaking once marginalized neighborhoods in their own cold-brew-and-kombucha image.
But this one was different.
That’s because it was organized by Defend Boyle Heights, a coalition of scorched-earth young activists from the surrounding neighborhood — the heart of Mexican-American L.A. — who have rejected the old, peaceful forms of resistance (discussion, dialogue, policy proposals) and decided that the only sensible response is to attack and hopefully frighten off the sorts of art galleries, craft breweries and single-origin coffee shops that tend to pave the way for more powerful invaders: the real estate agents, developers and bankers whose arrival typically mark a neighborhood’s point of no return.
By “making s*** crack” — by boycotting, protesting, disrupting, threatening and shouting in the streets — Defend Boyle Heights and its allies have notched a series of surprising victories over the past two and a half years, even as the forces of gentrification continue to make inroads in the neighborhood. A gallery closed its doors after its “staff and artists were routinely trolled online and harassed in person.” An experimental street opera was shut down after members of the Roosevelt High School band — egged on by a group of activists — used saxophones, trombones and trumpets to drown it out. A real estate bike tour promising clients access to a “charming, historic, walkable and bikeable neighborhood” was scrapped after the agent reported threats of violence. “I can’t help but hope that your 60-minute bike ride is a total disaster and that everyone who eats your artisanal treats pukes immediately,” said one message. The national (and international) media descended, with many outlets flocking to Weird Wave Coffee, a hip new shop that was immediately targeted by activists after opening last summer.
There were four speakers: a mother of six who had won several court battles against the landlord trying to raise the rent on her East L.A. apartment; an organizer for the L.A. Tenants Union who urged listeners to support a proposed ballot measure that would overturn California’s major anti-rent-control law, a man who had led a recent rent strike at his building in Boyle Heights and an activist who spent every Sunday in Mariachi Plaza, handing out food and clothes to needy locals.
So far, familiar enough.
Yet throughout the event there were also hints that something less civil — and far more confrontational — was afoot. “F*** Hipsters,” read the shirts for sale. A few activists clutched bright red hammer-and-sickle flags. And behind the attendees stood silent men and women in black ski masks — “comrades,” said emcee Facundo Rompe, “who are here to protect us.”
Between speeches, Rompe — tall and lean, with the glasses, goatee and nom de guerre of a vintage leftist — took the mic and alluded to activities that might (or might not) transpire later that evening.
“Obviously I can’t tell you everything we’re going to do, because the cops have really big pig ears,” Rompe said as he gestured toward a pair of plainclothes officers watching from a silver car at the edge of the plaza. “But what I’ve found is that the only thing that works to stop gentrifiers is intimidation. The only thing that works is fear — the fear of harm. Because they are harming us.”
A New Generation Of Anti-Gentrification Radicals Are On The March In Los Angeles – And Around The Country | HuffPost
In Pilsen or East Austin or Boyle Heights, it’s easy to find locals, young or old, who are concerned about gentrification but confused by, or just plain opposed to, these new, more aggressive tactics. And if you ask experts who have been studying the phenomenon — or the more conventional activists who have been battling it for decades — they always respond the same way. Gentrification is a huge, even global, force, they say. Resisting it in the streets isn’t sufficient. You need a seat at the table — and a plan.
“The younger generation is fed up,” explains Byron Sigcho of the Pilsen Alliance, a social-justice nonprofit that has been fighting gentrification since 1998. “The frustrations they face are real; the issues are systemic and oppressive. They’re not able to go to school, they’re not able to find a good job. I understand their anger. But real issues need real solutions. We need to push for rent control, for affordable housing, for community benefit agreements, for policy change at the urban development level. We can’t just inflate the same divides we criticize.”
@JahFocus CS
These harsh realities aren’t lost on millennials of color — especially young men and women from gentrifying neighborhoods, where such inequities tend to be on vivid, daily display. To that end, a 2016 Harvard Institute of Politics poll found that only 42 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds now support capitalism; a third now identify as socialists. Among those who backed Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, the number was even higher — a full 54 percent — and minorities and people without a college degree were more likely to support socialism as well. @Paper Boi
@FAH1223 The rise of America’s first developer-in-chief, meanwhile, has fanned the flames, creating an atmosphere of at-all-costs resistance on the left — and a newfound sense of political urgency among women and people of color, who feel particularly unwelcome in Donald Trump’s America.
