“Believing that hipsters can reverse the consequences of late-stage capitalism is a more attractive thought for city planners in cash-strapped cities than realizing that many American cities are, for now, screwed thanks to postindustrial decline and growing inequality. Gentrification may provide a new tax base, but it also reshapes what cities are, turning them into explicit supporters of inequality, reliant on it to self-fund, yet still unable to meet the needs of their poor. A real solution to the economics of American cities would require more work — more taxes, more laws, more intervention from the federal government. Those things are hard. Gentrification is easy.” — Peter Moskowitz, ‘How To Kill A City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood’

In the early morning of April 19th, 1999, sometime around 3:30AM, Kenneth Kurry Wilson was attempting to drop his nephew off in the predominately Latino SoCal neighborhood of Highland Park, CA.

After a long night of partying, he left his passed out nephew in front of his house, in the arms of his roommates, so they could help him up the stairs to their apartment. He then drove down Avenue 52 to find parking for his ’84 Fleetwood Cadillac.

As he scoured the streets looking for a parking space, he was spotted by six gang members in a stolen van. They belonged to a gang named The Avenues, which had been growing and living in the area since the 1940s. At this time in their history, though, the gang had become intent on keeping African-Americans out of what they felt was their “turf” — even those with no criminal or gang affiliation.

They watched Wilson slow and attempt to park, then the driver turned to the others and said:

“Hey, wanna kill a n****r?”

Three members then exited the van, charged the Cadillac with Wilson still inside, showered the vehicle in bullets, blowing out a tire, and its rear and side windows. Wilson took a bullet to the back of the neck, severing an artery and killing him almost instantly.

The Avenues gang took their name from the narrowly built streets that permeate the densely constructed blocks of Highland Park, around Figueroa Street. At that time, Figueroa was home to check-cashing businesses, small grocery stores, nail salons, nightclubs, and liquor stores — 40–50 years after white flight from the inner-cities to suburban outskirts.

While the actions of the gangs in Highland Park no more represents the activities of its working-class residents than the white-collar crimes in those more affluent areas of Los Angeles does, it is a reminder that Highland Park wasn’t always the safest, or most desirable, place to be.

Now it’s one of the hottest spots in LA for young, middle-class residents to grab a $6 cup of coffee and go bowling.

The Floodgates Have Opened

Los Angeles’ economy has always been one that twists, turns, and changes as rapidly as the films that provide its lifeblood fade away. From the sunny beaches of Venice — where celebrities, doctors, lawyers, artists, and musicians co-mingled amongst each other in the 80s, spawning what New York Times dubbed a “cornucopian cafe society” — to the industrial Arts District in downtown, which artists also took over in the 80s, nurtured, and turned into the powerhouse symbol of hipster-chic living it is now.

The advent of modern technology has coincided with the influx of millenials into LA, which has grown exponentially year after year, with more people than ever before coming here to live and work, not only in show business, but advertising, finance, and a host of other professions. This results in the hunt for affordable housing in low-income areas, which catches the eyes of not only those migrating to neighborhoods like Highland Park, Echo Park, and the surrounding areas (and to a lesser extent, South Central and west side cities like Venice), but also the for-profit land developers who have helped changed the landscape of various areas in Los Angeles. All in a very short amount of time, over the the last five to ten years.

But with change comes the displacement conundrum known as gentrification. Los Angeles’ housing supply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand since the 1980s, and now with scores of people moving here, the search for livable units intensifies, not only the hunt, but the mood of those looking to protect their neighborhoods.

This rampant displacement of peoples native to areas like East Los Angeles, and other affected neighborhoods who’ve already unassumingly conceded the issue, has pushed some of them to the point of what they see as an uprising, and unfortunately, sometimes violence. Masked socialist “freedom fighters” have protested, vandalized, and used strong-arm tactics to protect themselves and the people from what they see as an attack on their community and well-being. But this rapid wave of movement that these locals view as the evil arm of capitalism shoving them into a corner, having been seen as lower-class citizens receiving the butt end of imperialism for centuries, has a new face.

While gentrification is a term not easily defined, as emotion is added to the pot of either side’s argument, displacement itself is now hiding under what Jan Lin, Professor of Sociology at Occidental College, refers to as a sort of “neo-bohemianism,” with newer residents looking to help the communities they’re moving into, rebranding gentrification as some sort of “green,” community-focused movement, as opposed to the blatant “super-gentrification” happening in the downtown areas.

Up Next On The Chopping Block

Now, residents of Boyle Heights now feel they are under attack, and have organized and participated in the protest and banning of art galleries from different areas of the city, who they say are looking to capitalize on the cheap rent.

Arguments have ensued internally, with some citizens implying that they don’t agree with art coming under fire, accusing groups like BHAAD of not being able to differentiate between what “art” is, what they’re keeping out, and what they’re keeping safe.

What the members of the community who are on the side of the protesters realize, along with anyone who can spot historical trends, is that artists are the tip of the spear that begins the process of gentrification, and thus, displacement.

Samuel Brown-Vazquez, a Boyle Heights resident and researcher had this to say when asked about the ever-intensifying mood in places like East Los Angeles:

The resistance taking shape has employed a diversity of tactics. Liberal groups need radicals, they always have, to push the envelope, to raise awareness around a particular struggle they feel passionate about. The fundamental issue is private property laws protected by the constitution. Until these issues change, the struggles surrounding gentrification will remain in place. The people that oppose these changes largely do so on a racial or surface level: “hipsters go home; fuck white art.” They feel like their barrios belong to them and have been neglected for so long that they lash out at the ways gentrification manifests itself in modern urban cities. They are reacting to gentrification as it happens, they are not attacking the infrastructure that allows gentrification to happen in the first place, which is an economy that benefits from gentrification and not barrio [neighborhood] empowerment.

Nothing seems to be stopping the influx from happening, though. Lincoln Heights has watched housing prices slowly creep up, and low-income residents see construction units and scaffolding in downtown from afar as an ominous sign of what’s to come: downtown areas expanding outward, with the Arts District — which has become one of the most valuable and sought after real estate targets in the country — looking to leak into less stable areas across the river and bridge.

The Dirty Work: ICE As An Agent Of Change

If you follow the mainstream narrative that’s chronicling the ripple effect of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, you might think that mass deportations and muslim interment camps are just around the corner. Hysterics over the unexpected election turnout aren’t put to rest either, when reports of immigration “raids” fall across your Facebook newsfeed.

Should the threat of mass deportation materialize, those who would benefit from such a thing are easily those same neo-bohemian, green, community-centric hipsters who insist on wanting to be a part of cultural enrichment; those who undoubtedly denounce, condemn, and attack the new conservative ideals now occupying the White House.

The for-profit property developers, Beverly Hills art galleries, and middle-class professionals, all overwhelmingly liberal and left-leaning, would see a road paved with gold straight to the heart of the communities trying to deject them. Even if they wait for the landscape to change over the next 4–8 years, they would absolutely move in, only after the local mercado is replaced by a Pop Physique, and the nail salon turned into a micro-brewery.

Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings

My opinion holds no sway here: I am against the displacement of poor people, but I’m not necessarily anti-gentrification. My mother’s family has lived in Echo Park for over 50 years, and has been lucky enough to not be priced out of the neighborhood. I like that I can walk down to Blue Bottle Coffee on my way to visit her, and I take solace in the fact that my eighteen-year-old sister can walk to and from the lake after dark without the added worry of being harassed by roaming gang members.

But my subjective opinion has nothing to do with objective facts. The rate at which low-income peoples are being silently hushed into other corners of SoCal’s map is speeding up. Those with the most to gain from the thinning out of these people (largely from Mexico, Central, and South America) are wealthy land developers, entrepreneurial hipsters and artists (majority of whom are white liberals, lest the title of this piece drop the tag “White”), who now seek to reinvest — after de-investing and fleeing 60 years ago — in a culture that’s been established before, and without, them.

A culture that if, in some white nationalist’s wet dream, were gutted, would be forgotten, benefitting those who feel they’re not “gentrifiers,” but people aiding in the opposition.

Those who sit in their chic lofts, decrying Donald Trump’s actions, policies, and rhetoric as vitriolic and low-class, tweeting about the resistance from their iPhones; keeping one eye on the low-income zoo, waiting for their chance to pounce and rent out their spoils to an eager young hipster looking to surround themselves in a culture that they inevitably end up destroying.

These are the most vocal “agents of change” who want to carry cultural enrichment with them into already culturally literate areas. A progressive belief in a 21st century manifest destiny, that middle-class millenials bring enlightenment, all caught on a Snapchat story — simultaneously protesting an administration that will benefit Americans like you and I.

Spare me the sanctimony.