Did We Lose the Battle For Los Angeles?
 

The Battle For Los Angeles was a record that symbolized a turning point in LA. It was the final point when the high water of vitriol and racism had started to finally recede after the Prop 187 bullshit. Gang violence was finally declining after a decade of civil war and martial law on LA streets. An entire generation of "Rock the Vote" folks had entirely come of age and were finally and legitimately stepping up to the dinosaurs.

However, it seems we stepped down, backed off or backed out. The corporate take-over of Los Angeles is cross the threshold and point of no return. We can't even have street art anymore, it gets zoned as commercial signage and is pursued by Clear Channel lawyers to get shut down. The new LA Metro will have systematic scheme rather than the LA tradition of street art at Metro stations. In fact, the original street art commissioned for every single stop along the first four MTA light rail lines makes up one of the largest street art networks in the world. Now? Nothing. We used to have cultural gatherings. Now we have corporate events. We used to have rallies and demonstrations, which peaked with the 2006 May Day rally which was one of the largest in American history. Now? We are all pushed by police brutality and extreme legal punishment to stay way from any kinds of protests. The city has had a plastic face lift, but none of the core and systemic problems have been rightfully addressed, most have been pushed aside. To issues of education reform, resolving gang violence, police brutality, civic responsibility, affordable housing, green public space, street art and murals, community events, and removing corporate take-overs of public lands, properties, services, and functions, the city has become largely indifferent and apathetic. I think the phrase to describe LA community activism and awareness in post-2010s is "Meh.."

Did we still have a chance Los Angeles? Or is this battle finally and utterly lost..

It'd be a tragedy if some of the classic LA street art was lost, by people like Chaz Bojorquez. That stuff represents a major part of the city's allure and mystique to people like me, who've never been to LA but who see its street art as being a far greater incentive to visit than Mann's Chinese bloody Theatre.

Dude, build and destroy is the LA model. For the past 200 years we have built remarkable cities and destroyed them and rebuilt them and destroyed them and rebuilt them. We are in the process of destroying and rebuilding, with this Georgia O'Keefe pastel New Mexico kind of look. However, much of the street art is neglected and even sometimes being replaced, and the entire culture from the top down is entirely anti-art. Art is only acceptable in LA as a commodity right now. The future designs, architecture, street planning, and green spaces are being designed more so with plastic uniformity in rejection of the traditional LA system of slightly organized chaos. The plastic take over is a symbol of the corporate, wealthy take over of LA. Its like we are trying to be Miami or something : /

The legal system has incarcerated 2 million worth (150,000 at any given time) of the more criminalized folks, deported about a million others. They took a lot of street folks kindness for weakness. Corporate take over of neighborhoods results in mass evictions from various buy outs. "Redevelopment" has built delightful 20 story condos and townhouses, which is a great future for LA, we need to go vertical, horizontal city planning has resulted in a merciless urban sprawl. However they price out folks in the neighborhoods that are supposed to be redeveloped. Where do these folks move? The Inland Empire, Stockton , Sacramento where like some kind of black hole these neighborhoods resemble a 1990s gang movie..

LA has essentially tried to bribe, force out, price out, or kill its way out of our decades of social and economic problems. What sucks most of all is in the immediate post-Uprising period, as a community we seriously got a lot done! Again, some scumbags in "power" took our kindness for weakness. Hopefully we have only lost a battle, and not the war.

Oh....this wasn't a Rage Against the Machine thread?

Actually...nevermind, I was right. It is.

WHEYY!

fuck you i won't do what you tell me?

No. Its a discussion about the corporate take over of Los Angeles..

I can recite every line from every NWA album, by heart.

We won, cuz. You did it.

....

EFIL4ZAGGIN is another LA gem but save such insights for Louder's hip-hop thread ;)

It'll be interesting to see what the local reaction will be if the authorities and planners try to remove stuff like this

We could have a protest with 500,000 people and alas, still the mural would probably be removed and replaced by an LED Clear Channel sign ;)

I think what the post-Obama political world has taught America is a lesson Angelinos learned after the Uprising in the mid-1990s. Even with immense societal support, with huge grass-roots movements, with overwhelming popular agreement, still, money trumps all this. In our city and state, we've had so many popular movements which have gained so much momentum, and yet NO political traction to actually implement as power. We have taken all the authority from government, from corporations, and yet still they yield all the raw power. In America it is the same, we have growing consensuses on political and economic transitions and changes, and yet we can't get forward on implementation. We've exhausted decades, centuries even, worth of traditionally successfully political mechanisms towards societal change, and yet nothing. We demand insistently for a decade to end the war(s), they carry on as ever. We demand insistently fair wages and pricing, we get gutted wages and increases in the cost of goods and services. We demand education reform and investment, we get 100,000 teacher lay-offs. We demand accountability for police brutality, instead officer-involved fatalities are up every year. Even the US Supreme Court has been demanding for TWENTY years that California abandon its unconstitutional prison system, which year after year Court determines as cruel and unusual punishment. Still the prisons grow, the schools shrink, the jobs decline. Sometimes RATM was right ;)

"Aint it funny how the factory doors closes, around the same time that the school doors closed, at the same time as a 100,000 jails cells opened up to greet you.."

So Cal has been fucked up for a very very long time.