LOS ANGELES, CA — Do you think the Yoga-Pants Mayor is going to sign the new anti-homeless ordinance 48.18 passed by a frustrated and exhausted city council? Yoga classes seem to be an outstanding aspect of gentrification culture. I currently survive in Highland Park, and I see hipsters every morning going to their yoga class smiling, with their rolled up yoga mats over their shoulders and wearing their skinny stretch pants. Meanwhile, this area has experienced skyrocketing rents. Homeless tents are all over the place.
Photo / Johnavalos Rios
As a Chicano senior citizen on social security who cannot find a place to live with my little dog Boogie Woogie, I worry that if I submit an application at one of the very few available “low income“ housing units, I will suffer many devastating disappointments. Will they allow pets? Will they let me have friends over and smoke weed? Will they check my credit history? (which I have none). Will they see that I have a “criminal” history? (I got arrested for joint of marijuana in San Antonio, Texas). Will they take all of my social security check? How will I pay for my dog’s and my CBD medications?
Ordinances are a form of police tactics. My Pachuco ancestors (Chicanos with strong ethnic style) recall the memory of previous ordinances, and these racist laws have not been inconsequential. In 1942 an ordinance was passed to direct the police to arrest anyone at the Taylor Yard (now a low income project, ironically) who constructed zoot suits for low income youth. This is a true story. No estoy loco. I am not crazy. Don’t take my word for it, look up “Zootsuit Riots”
Presently in Los Angeles, we face a city council that has run out of ideas. All they can do is try to look heroic in saving the homeless from death. It is easy to use police violence to forcefully place them in the newly announced “sanctioned encampments.” They hope to direct them to resources and permanent housing. Once again, the city council has failed leadership and has no innovative ideas as to what to do about the capitalist corruption and greed. Nobody is able to bring down the rent. Nobody even brings it up for discussion.
When the coalition of homeless supporters became aware of ordinance 48.18 they activated and met at the steps of City Hall while the Council members met upstairs. The council had their first round of discussion on the issue and most voted YES while 2 members voted NO. An amplified speaker was set up so that we, the “Scorched Earth Activists”, as we were penned by councilmember Gil Cedillo, could listen while gathered outside. Who was this vato (dude) calling us scorched earth activists? Que Chingados? WTH?
Generally, the whole council expressed frustration as to what to do about this dysfunction. Councilmember Cedillo (longtime chair of the housing committee) proclaimed “We can’t do everything to help everyone!” Cedillo, the number one target of many protests, represents Highland Park, an area where many low-income people, especially long-time Chicano residents, have continued to be displaced. So many young Mexican-American men died in Vietnam and left behind family in Highland Park.
Councilmember Paul Krekorian, a savvy attorney, tried to say that the council is developing the “art of the possible” with this ordinance because it will force the tent survivors to move into the sanctioned tent villages now opening up everywhere. The nonprofit group Union Station Homeless Services is opening up the new Madison Street Village and is now in charge of the whole city.
Finally, the council members of color used their social justice rhetoric. They spoke strongly against oppression and discrimination to the point where we are almost sure they are on our side. But in the end they voted yes with the rest.
Monica Rodriquez spoke with passion and confidence, “failure is not an option.” I as an activist see her as a failure for accepting over 100,000 dollars in campaign funds from police unions. Her words of support for her colleague Mike Bonin, who was once homeless himself, seemed to express compassion, but in the end she voted Yes, against the lonely NO vote of Councilmember Mike Bonin.
Nury Martinez, Chicana council president from Pacoima, lamented about the walkways and parks clogged with homeless tents, saying with frustration “so many years we have been having the same conversation!” It is difficult to understand her point. She throws out semi-emotional rhetoric on the need to protect the safety of the undocumented, but in the end she votes YES with everyone else.
Marqueese Harris Dawson provided more steamy rhetoric on the need to help homeless black folk, how the high amount of black homelessness is alarming. He spoke about the need for reparations for slavery and became emotional, but it was empty when in the end he votes yes.
Ladies and Gentlemen and all those in-between, I present to you the Madison Street Village, over near Vermont and Beverley near the 101 freeway in Filipino town. It indeed feels and looks like a concentration camp. It is hidden and surrounded by covered fencing and it is difficult to find the entrance. I can tell there are staff helping with the mobile showers and delivering things but it is very secretive. I tried to ask the staff who was the councilmember in control of this? There was no sign whatsoever. Usually there is a sign where the councilmember proudly claims to be responsible. But not here. The camp seems to be huge. There is a security guard who opens the gate like in the TV show Hogan’s Heroes….as in concentration camps.
Meanwhile back in Eagle Rock, the NIMBY homeowners, business folk and real estate agents are able to freely express their bigotry and arrogance through a longtime newspaper called The Boulevard Sentinel. For me, an older Gay brown man who literally cannot find a place in Highland Park, these commentaries are not inconsequential. They hurt. They suppress. They oppress. Perhaps councilmember Gil Cedillo was referring to “Scorched Activists” because our hearts are being scorched by the racism and bigotry of the rich and affluent.
Homeless people have feelings and they are very scorched by the comments coming out of Eagle Rock… I have nowhere to live in my Chicano homeland and I am scorchingly rejected by councilmember Gil Cedillo and Kevin DeLeon. I am made to feel that I am not wanted in Eagle Rock. The name “Eagle Rock” comes from a huge stone hill that projects the afternoon shadow of a diving eagle coming in to kill its prey. How ironic.
Editors Note: Artist, dancer and educator Johnavalos Rios says of himself, “I have been starting a journal on searching for housing as a gay, disabled senior with a little dog and a monthly Social Security check that won’t get me anywhere in Tongva [the original inhabitants of the Los Angeles basin] Land.”
