The L.A experience opened up to me an issue I grew up around and in for the first 18 years of my life but never noticed, never paid attention and even more sadly never knew was a problem in the first place, this issue for me was gentrification. I grew up in Bangalore, India a sprawling metropolis located in Southern India of 7.8 million persons, where the concentration of population within the city is very high and the surge forward towards development and growth is always pushing. Gentrification to me growing up never occurred, I wasnt aware that certain rights were inalienable to individuals, one being the right to green and open spaces.
While we were in L.A the idea of green spaces, or spaces that were left intentionally without any development so the society that lived in that area could make what they could from, were seen as an inalienable right that was being encroached upon by the City of Los Angeles and especially so by the government and the Powers that would be. In L.A the push to make the city, like the one in the movies that the film industry propogates, has cost thousands of lives and even more clearly the lives of countless landmarks which were not seen for their true value. The gentrification of Los Angeles is more than a story of displacement and homelessness, but a story of injustice and the wielding of power irresponsibly by the sliver of those who control it. The search for development and making Los Angeles, at least look like the “city of dreams” , that it is sold as takes the process of gentrification from one of just pushing out the unwanted and bringing in the new and the more developed, to blaming the people and citizens of the city for not being able to cope with the system in place and get rid of them.
The removal of this “blemish” is truly more harsh Darwinian than required or should be as
ked of these populations, the evolve or persish mindset to how the city of Los Angeles treats the most helpless and marginalized, is rather abhorrent. Boyle heights is at the very epicenter for this battle, where the city in its infinite wisdom has placed a large sub station of the police Department and a very swanky new hospital when the school in the same area is heavily underfunded. Boyle Heights is also the neighbourhood within the L.A downtown district that has been home to the immigrant population that makes its way across the border legally or otherwise for over 60 years, beginning with the Jewish and Korean immigrants to today with the Mexican, Honduran and Salvadorian immigrants. The idea that the government is targetting the immigrant population and using their lack of resources and knowledge about the system to hoodwink them into seeling their homes, and even livelihoods, puts a spin of insidious and even evil to the larger story of gentrification.
The push for development is one that the entire planet seems to running after with much gusto and even more spirit, to prove that we can and have evolved into this 21st century in much flourish. But the idea we are doing this to our spaces of living for the betterment of the society that lives there, is a farce and a bold faced lie. The idea that development is for the people on the ground is one that the city of Los Angeles has changed, the development a lot of the times, seems to be to remove the “blemishes” that the 1% sees and is put off by, which range from the homeless, immigrants, low income housing etc. The “overlords” of Los Angeles in search for perfection within their city, forgot that much like the art that adornes the walls of the city, the imperfections bring out the true beauty within.
