I’m from northeast LA. Born and raised. I love Los Angeles and grew up going to Dodger games with my dad, mom, and sister. Through the scorching heat of the summer when we would get sunburns and rub ice cubes on our legs, to when my dad would let me wander the stadium, to just being in awe of the fireworks that would launch from the hills behind the stadium, the Dodgers were always just part of being from the neighborhood. Sometimes it also meant something even larger that for me at that point of my life was a strange mix of “Showtime” and “Fernandomania,” lowriders and graffiti, and all things Los Angeles. As I grew older and became more conscious, I began to learn more about LA’s history and the displacement of the Mexican community in Chavez Ravine that was removed in order so that the stadium that I enjoyed as a kid could be built. By the time I entered graduate school and started researching evictions and gentrification, I realized that I needed to reconcile my personal history with my politics. What follows is my way of starting this process publicly.
Virtually the entire displacement of the population in Chavez Ravine (~1,800 families) occurred between 1952 and 1953 in order to build a large public housing complex named Elysian Park Heights for 3,360 families--a project that was supported by the AFL, the CIO, the NAACP, and the League of Women Voters. I point this out not to say anything about these organizations specifically, but only to emphasize that the Elysian Park Heights public housing development was a product of a larger New Deal progressive coalition in Southern California; and in fact, if built, it would have become the nation’s first racially integrated public housing development. U.S. Representative, Norris Poulson--a conservative Republican--ran for mayor explicitly on a platform against this and other public housing projects including Rose Hill. Poulson was supported by anti-communist groups like the Citizens Against Socialist Housing that believed that the proposed public housing project was part of a larger communist conspiracy to promote racial mixing and other things that they considered "anti-American." Almost immediately after being elected, in June 1953 Mayor Poulson (mayor from 1953-1961) scrapped the plan and the land sat *almost* vacant for years while future uses were debated and planned for.
Virtually the entire displacement of the population in Chavez Ravine (~1,800 families) occurred between 1952 and 1953 in order to build a large public housing complex named Elysian Park Heights for 3,360 families--a project that was supported by the AFL, the CIO, the NAACP, and the League of Women Voters. I point this out not to say anything about these organizations specifically, but only to emphasize that the Elysian Park Heights public housing development was a product of a larger New Deal progressive coalition in Southern California; and in fact, if built, it would have become the nation’s first racially integrated public housing development. U.S. Representative, Norris Poulson--a conservative Republican--ran for mayor explicitly on a platform against this and other public housing projects including Rose Hill. Poulson was supported by anti-communist groups like the Citizens Against Socialist Housing that believed that the proposed public housing project was part of a larger communist conspiracy to promote racial mixing and other things that they considered "anti-American." Almost immediately after being elected, in June 1953 Mayor Poulson (mayor from 1953-1961) scrapped the plan and the land sat *almost* vacant for years while future uses were debated and planned for.
Because approximately 5.5 million dollars in federal money (through Title I of the 1949 Housing Act) was used to purchase the land and "relocate" the folks that lived in Chavez Ravine, when the city got the land back from the City Housing Authority (at a loss of around $4.5 million), the deed required that it be used for "public purposes only." The main idea, apparently even up to 1957, was to turn the area into a zoo which would supposedly meet the requirement. And although the City approved a contract with the Dodgers on October 7, 1957, the idea of using Chavez Ravine for baseball didn't occur until later when, as the story goes, Walter O'Malley, owner of the Dodgers, flew over the broad, mostly de-populated site on a plane with County Supervisor, Kenneth Hahn (the father of future mayor James Hahn from 2001 to 2005) and identified it as his preferred future home for the team. As part of the deal between the City and the Dodgers--one that Eric Avila (2004) has shown was thoroughly corrupt--the Dodgers exchanged a 9-acre plot of land in the northern part of South LA (site of the original Los Angeles Wrigley Field and what is now Gilbert Lindsay Park and the Kedren Community Health Center) for the 315 acres of Chavez Ravine. In order to fulfill the public purpose requirement, the Dodgers also paid for the construction of a small youth center in the Ravine.
Most of the pictures being shared recently as the Dodgers step back into the World Series are of the last "hold outs" Manuel Arechiga, his wife Abrana Arechiga, and their daughter Aurora Vargas. There is available information on another evicted family, Victoria and Mike Angustian as well, and at least one article circulating which accounts for 20 families that were finally evicted when the Dodger alien ship was ready to land on Chavez Ravine as Judy Baca helped us envision. I'm not in favor of any of this and I'm definitely not making any statements about the comparative value of 1,800 versus 20 displacees, but I do think some history is a good thing especially when everyone I know and grew up with in LA is thinking about the team and what it means to be in the World Series as well as others who are concerned about continued struggles over gentrification and displacement in the city. In the end, the lesson for me is that it was actually a progressive coalition going back to the 1940’s that considered the Mexican community "blighted" and which successfully organized the displacement of the community in order completely remake the area according to their modernist "master" narratives of vertical housing communities. The Dodgers on the other hand were the main beneficiaries of this failed vision. As an organization, they were part of a competing, emerging central-city, pro-business redevelopment coalition (including of course, their biggest sponsor, the LA Times) that equally disregarded the Mexican community of Chavez Ravine and sought to construct a new downtown core oriented toward making DTLA a central part of a global city. To a certain extent, this coalition has endured through to the present and is evident in everything from the skyscrapers on Bunker Hill that were erected in the 1970s and ‘80s under Tom Bradley's administration, to the LA Live/Staples Center project in the 1990s under pro-real estate investment banker and mayor Richard Riorden, and most recently the emergence of numerous Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (LA ARO) that have effectively reshaped downtown.
Most of the pictures being shared recently as the Dodgers step back into the World Series are of the last "hold outs" Manuel Arechiga, his wife Abrana Arechiga, and their daughter Aurora Vargas. There is available information on another evicted family, Victoria and Mike Angustian as well, and at least one article circulating which accounts for 20 families that were finally evicted when the Dodger alien ship was ready to land on Chavez Ravine as Judy Baca helped us envision. I'm not in favor of any of this and I'm definitely not making any statements about the comparative value of 1,800 versus 20 displacees, but I do think some history is a good thing especially when everyone I know and grew up with in LA is thinking about the team and what it means to be in the World Series as well as others who are concerned about continued struggles over gentrification and displacement in the city. In the end, the lesson for me is that it was actually a progressive coalition going back to the 1940’s that considered the Mexican community "blighted" and which successfully organized the displacement of the community in order completely remake the area according to their modernist "master" narratives of vertical housing communities. The Dodgers on the other hand were the main beneficiaries of this failed vision. As an organization, they were part of a competing, emerging central-city, pro-business redevelopment coalition (including of course, their biggest sponsor, the LA Times) that equally disregarded the Mexican community of Chavez Ravine and sought to construct a new downtown core oriented toward making DTLA a central part of a global city. To a certain extent, this coalition has endured through to the present and is evident in everything from the skyscrapers on Bunker Hill that were erected in the 1970s and ‘80s under Tom Bradley's administration, to the LA Live/Staples Center project in the 1990s under pro-real estate investment banker and mayor Richard Riorden, and most recently the emergence of numerous Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (LA ARO) that have effectively reshaped downtown.
So, what do we make of this? I see a couple issues.
(1) Symbols are important. It's important that people develop symbols that remind us about the past and what we consider to be important. In this way, symbols are a method of remembering and the photos of law enforcement--on behalf of the Dodgers and the City--evicting the last families in Chavez Ravine are important reminders for us today. Judy Baca's image of the Dodger alien ship coming down on the Ravine as freeways strangle and divide the historic Mexican northeast LA community has crystalized that for many of us for a long time. As I understand it, adding insult to injury, displaced families from Chavez Ravine were originally promised relocation in the new Elysian Park Heights project--a promise that once the Dodger ship landed was never fulfilled.
(2) We should be careful about representation. Symbols present just as much as they hide and therefore they can easily become misleading. In discussing the long history of the Dodgers and the displacement of the families of Chavez Ravine it is important to highlight the nuanced, somewhat forgotten history of public housing in LA because it helps us see that progressive ideologies can be mobilized to implement unjust goals. In short, it’s not just about the Dodgers. Both of LA's competing political regimes were sufficiently anti-Mexican that they could displace the community--first on a mass scale without real scrutiny and in a way that is generally lost to history, and then again in a way that has remained important only because of the effort of the Chicanx movement to mark it as something we should remember. Therefore, today, as we think about gentrification in LA, much of which continues to displace historic Mexican communities in northeast LA, the larger story encourages us to be critical of ‘common sense’ ideologies of development that bring together a variety of political actors and which attempt to rationalize displacement for some supposed ‘larger good’ or ‘higher and best use.’ One that stands out in my mind particularly is the merging of new urbanist environmentalism with transportation, what planners have termed “transportation oriented development” (TOD). Without specific anti-displacement measures and genuine community involvement in planning process, efforts to increase transportation access and promote housing densities under the guise of sustainability can easily become forces of displacement through increased housing costs and a variety of neighborhood changes that make spaces thoroughly unwelcoming to long-time residents.
Looking back, I am ok with having a few contradictions in my life and I remain a Dodger fan in similar ways as many old-school Brooklynites have maintained contradictory feelings about the Dodgers after the team left the borough for Los Angeles. The Dodgers mean something for us because they represent something larger than the team itself. In my case, it’s my personal history that I am constantly reminded of, may family, friends, and home. However, at the same time, the story also exposes for me that it’s often easier to displace people from places than it is to remove both individual and collective memories of place as Dolores Hayden eloquently argued in her book The Power of Place (1995). I continue to wish and struggle for a time when our collective memories don’t have to be displaced from the places from which they are born in order for us to both celebrate and interrogate them.
(1) Symbols are important. It's important that people develop symbols that remind us about the past and what we consider to be important. In this way, symbols are a method of remembering and the photos of law enforcement--on behalf of the Dodgers and the City--evicting the last families in Chavez Ravine are important reminders for us today. Judy Baca's image of the Dodger alien ship coming down on the Ravine as freeways strangle and divide the historic Mexican northeast LA community has crystalized that for many of us for a long time. As I understand it, adding insult to injury, displaced families from Chavez Ravine were originally promised relocation in the new Elysian Park Heights project--a promise that once the Dodger ship landed was never fulfilled.
(2) We should be careful about representation. Symbols present just as much as they hide and therefore they can easily become misleading. In discussing the long history of the Dodgers and the displacement of the families of Chavez Ravine it is important to highlight the nuanced, somewhat forgotten history of public housing in LA because it helps us see that progressive ideologies can be mobilized to implement unjust goals. In short, it’s not just about the Dodgers. Both of LA's competing political regimes were sufficiently anti-Mexican that they could displace the community--first on a mass scale without real scrutiny and in a way that is generally lost to history, and then again in a way that has remained important only because of the effort of the Chicanx movement to mark it as something we should remember. Therefore, today, as we think about gentrification in LA, much of which continues to displace historic Mexican communities in northeast LA, the larger story encourages us to be critical of ‘common sense’ ideologies of development that bring together a variety of political actors and which attempt to rationalize displacement for some supposed ‘larger good’ or ‘higher and best use.’ One that stands out in my mind particularly is the merging of new urbanist environmentalism with transportation, what planners have termed “transportation oriented development” (TOD). Without specific anti-displacement measures and genuine community involvement in planning process, efforts to increase transportation access and promote housing densities under the guise of sustainability can easily become forces of displacement through increased housing costs and a variety of neighborhood changes that make spaces thoroughly unwelcoming to long-time residents.
Looking back, I am ok with having a few contradictions in my life and I remain a Dodger fan in similar ways as many old-school Brooklynites have maintained contradictory feelings about the Dodgers after the team left the borough for Los Angeles. The Dodgers mean something for us because they represent something larger than the team itself. In my case, it’s my personal history that I am constantly reminded of, may family, friends, and home. However, at the same time, the story also exposes for me that it’s often easier to displace people from places than it is to remove both individual and collective memories of place as Dolores Hayden eloquently argued in her book The Power of Place (1995). I continue to wish and struggle for a time when our collective memories don’t have to be displaced from the places from which they are born in order for us to both celebrate and interrogate them.