Search Results

Riot Redux: South Central, 1992

Janet L. Abu-Lughod

in Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles

This chapter examines the 1992 reuprising in Los Angeles. Although the narratives describing the events of the 1992 riot do not deviate much from those of 1965, current analysts, many of them African ... More

This chapter examines the 1992 reuprising in Los Angeles. Although the narratives describing the events of the 1992 riot do not deviate much from those of 1965, current analysts, many of them African American, are more sophisticated in interpreting the meaning of the revolt, albeit more pessimistic about any potential alliance between African Americans and Latinos in the changing terrain of Los Angeles politics. The immediate trigger also involved police brutality, but ignited only after a year's delay, revealing that the riot initially was a frustrated response to injustice, not just a reaction to ongoing brutality. It represented outrage over the court decision, whose legitimacy was deeply questioned, if not completely rejected. It was also a sign that little had improved for the residents of South Central Los Angeles in the intervening twenty-seven years.Less

The Watts Riot of 1965—the Beginning or the End?

Janet L. Abu-Lughod

in Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles

The Watts riot was neither the beginning nor would it be the end of interracial violence in Los Angeles. Racial and ethnic tensions have churned beneath the surface in multiracial Los Angeles ever ... More

The Watts riot was neither the beginning nor would it be the end of interracial violence in Los Angeles. Racial and ethnic tensions have churned beneath the surface in multiracial Los Angeles ever since the city was founded. The first riot erupted in 1965 in Watts, which was by then a largely “black” town near South Central Los Angeles, but it spread rapidly to adjacent areas. It is acknowledged to have been the worst in the series of riots that broke out in more than 100 cities in the latter 1960s. The second erupted in 1992 in South Central, just west of Watts. In many ways, the “riots” were quite similar to one another. Both erupted roughly within the same area, one in which deprived minorities were concentrated. The rioters engaged in arson and looting, as well as battles with motorists, firemen, and the police.Less

An Overview of Race Riots in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles

Janet L. Abu-Lughod

in Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles

Almost half a century has now elapsed since the 1960s when African American neighborhoods in more than 300 cities experienced civil disorders or ghetto uprisings. The book looks in detail at six ... More

Almost half a century has now elapsed since the 1960s when African American neighborhoods in more than 300 cities experienced civil disorders or ghetto uprisings. The book looks in detail at six major race-related riots/revolts, which represent distinctive types and took place within different spatially organized patterns of segregation. If space is one key to understanding such changes, time is of course the second. No city's experiences are independent of larger historical trends, even though they may be played out in ways that are relatively unique to place. This chapter reviews the temporal cycles of population movements and interracial relations, chiefly as they have affected coexistence and conflict in three cities—Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.Less

Explaining Differences: Predicting Convergence?

Janet L. Abu-Lughod

in Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles

This chapter draws the different themes together, comparing the relative success each city—Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago—has had in resolving the tensions that lead to riots. These differences ... More

This chapter draws the different themes together, comparing the relative success each city—Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago—has had in resolving the tensions that lead to riots. These differences are related to each place's unique history and governmental structure and the political culture it has evolved through social learning. It also examines recent trends in the three cities, focusing especially on policies designed to achieve greater control over offensive/provocative police behavior. Finally, the chapter looks at prospects for achieving social justice in the face of current trends in mass incarceration and the displacement of minorities, and the potential conflicts between blacks and Latinos in declining economies. Within each group, as in American society in general, class cleavages are becoming greater.Less

Humanizing the Image of a Zen Master: Taizan Maezumi Roshi

Dale S. Wright

in Zen Masters

Taizan Maezumi (1931–1995) was a seminal figure in the founding of American Zen Buddhism. Arriving in Los Angeles in 1956, Maezumi soon found himself sought by non-Japanese Americans interested in ... More

Taizan Maezumi (1931–1995) was a seminal figure in the founding of American Zen Buddhism. Arriving in Los Angeles in 1956, Maezumi soon found himself sought by non-Japanese Americans interested in the newly acclaimed religion called Zen. In 1967, he founded the Zen Center of Los Angeles which would become one of the leading Zen communities outside of Japan. This chapter raises many of the same questions that have been applied to classical Zen masters in relation to the life of a contemporary figure. In place of a few classic texts is an archive of contemporary documents, video documentaries, interviews with disciples and heirs, and a number of books written by Maezumi. The chapter culminates in reflections on the image of Maezumi Roshi and speculation about the viability of his teaching having the impact of other great Zen masters.Less

Deliberative Decentralization: Foundation Dollars and Los Angeles School Reform

Sarah Reckhow

in Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public School Politics

Foundation grant-making in Los Angeles, unlike New York City, has engaged a more diverse set of stakeholders. Despite the fragmentation of policy-making and leadership in the district, the social ... More

Foundation grant-making in Los Angeles, unlike New York City, has engaged a more diverse set of stakeholders. Despite the fragmentation of policy-making and leadership in the district, the social network of education policy leaders in Los Angeles shows a closely linked core of diverse organizations involved in education policy. New policies in the district are designed to bring the flexibility of the charter sector into public schools, and stakeholder engagement has remained strong.Less

All Politics Was Local: Grassroots Conservatism in Postwar Los Angeles

Michelle M. Nickerson

in Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right

This chapter documents the formation of conservative activist culture in Los Angeles after World War II. It outlines the historic recipe of political, economic, religious, and ethnic factors that ... More

This chapter documents the formation of conservative activist culture in Los Angeles after World War II. It outlines the historic recipe of political, economic, religious, and ethnic factors that made conservatism so powerful in metropolitan Los Angeles, and then examines the formation of conservative female political culture and consciousness. The grassroots right, already in formation at the beginning of the decade, actively contributed to the beliefs, practices, and institutions that would, by 1960, become known as the “conservative movement.” American conservatism was produced through discourse—political rituals, rhetoric, and performances—before it became a movement with a recognizable name. The activist right toiled locally, not only by concentrating their energy in metropolitan venues, but by generating and continually emphasizing ideals about local community decision-making in an age of government centralization at the federal level.Less

The Studio Beyond the Studio: Nature, Technology, and Location in Southern California

Brian R. Jacobson

in Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space

This chapter focuses on the transition to Hollywood and the peculiar reinvention of studio form and the emergence of both the studio backlot and the concept of “location” there between 1909 and 1915. ... More

This chapter focuses on the transition to Hollywood and the peculiar reinvention of studio form and the emergence of both the studio backlot and the concept of “location” there between 1909 and 1915. The creation of studio backlots, it argues, offered a working solution to the same basic tension that drove studio design two decades earlier: filmmakers still needed bright sunlight, and they continued to create technological spaces to regulate the sun and put nature on reserve for cinematic representation.Less

Pueblo to Metropolis

in Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels

The history of the Los Angeles area abounds with the gargantuan, the fantastic. Settled more than sixteen miles inland from a shallow, unprotected bay, it has made itself into one of the great port ... More

The history of the Los Angeles area abounds with the gargantuan, the fantastic. Settled more than sixteen miles inland from a shallow, unprotected bay, it has made itself into one of the great port cities of the world; lying far off the normal axes of transportation and isolated by high mountains, it has become one of the great railroad centers of the country; lacking a water supply adequate for a large city, it has brought in a supply from rivers and mountain streams hundreds of miles away. This chapter describes the arrival of adventurers from Spain and Portugal, the founding of Los Angeles, Mexican rule, the emergence of Los Angeles as a modern American metropolis, the quest for water, the city's participation in war, and the impact of the Depression after the 1929 stock crash.Less

From Annenberg to Gates: Education Reform in New York City and Los Angeles, 1990–2005

Sarah Reckhow

in Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public School Politics

Both New York City and Los Angeles received Annenberg Challenge grants to reform schools in the 1990s. This chapter explains the reform approach of the Annenberg Challenge in each city, compares it ... More

Both New York City and Los Angeles received Annenberg Challenge grants to reform schools in the 1990s. This chapter explains the reform approach of the Annenberg Challenge in each city, compares it to current reforms, and shows how foundation grant-making has increased in the last decade. A new set of Boardroom Progressive education philanthropies—the Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation—have adopted converging grant-making strategies. Compared to the Annenberg Challenge grants, the new grant-makers are able to leverage more resources in a more targeted way and empower new sets of actors in local education politics.Less

Influence Through Cooperation: The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Air Pollution Control in Los Angeles, 1943–1954

Sarah S. Elkind

in How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy: Business, Power, and the Environment in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

This chapter discusses the enormous influence enjoyed by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce (LAACC) over air pollution policy in Los Angeles County. For decades, city and then county officials ... More

This chapter discusses the enormous influence enjoyed by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce (LAACC) over air pollution policy in Los Angeles County. For decades, city and then county officials treated the LAACC as the representative of the public interest. The business organization achieved this status by assisting and supporting public officials as they tackled what became a chronic urban problem. The LAACC anticipated public policy needs and endorsed early proposals for uniform, countywide regulation. The group secured further legitimacy by enforcing voluntary smoke reductions by its members and sponsoring air pollution research and state legislation. Its proactive responses to air pollution were something of an anomaly; in other cities, business and manufacturing organizations had fought soot and smoke reduction on the grounds that reducing smoke would hinder profits and productivity.Less

The Sun Is Shining over Southern California: The Politics of Federal Flood Control in Los Angeles, 1935–1969

Jared Orsi

in Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles River was a picture of hydraulic order in the 1960s, attributed to the involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers. The corps brought considerable technical expertise and badly needed ... More

The Los Angeles River was a picture of hydraulic order in the 1960s, attributed to the involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers. The corps brought considerable technical expertise and badly needed federal money to bear on a problem that had confounded local efforts for more than two decades. But the emphasis on the corps's contributions is something of a deus ex machina, the engineering version of the cavalry inevitably riding to the rescue at the end of some 1950s Western movie. That emphasis misses the deeper questions of why the corps got involved at all and what enabled the federal engineers to have so much apparent success in taming the waters. In short, praising the technical wizardry of the Army Corps is accurate but incomplete; it obscures the many contingent factors of politics and climate that limited the range of options that could be imagined and implemented and that facilitated the engineers' success. These questions are important because within a decade, many southern Californians, including some engineers, were doubting whether the accomplishments of the midcentury technocracy were triumphs at all.Less

Protecting Air Quality

David Vogel

in California Greenin': How the Golden State Became an Environmental Leader

This chapter looks at the efforts to protect California's air quality. Public and business demands for automobile control in the United States originated in Los Angeles, and pollution controls for ... More

This chapter looks at the efforts to protect California's air quality. Public and business demands for automobile control in the United States originated in Los Angeles, and pollution controls for motor vehicles were essentially initiated by the state of California. Following a successful national political campaign that pitted the interests of California against the nation's automotive manufacturers, in 1967, Congress allowed California—and initially only California—to issue its own vehicle emissions standards. Thanks to the unique pollution problems of Los Angeles, the United States became and remains the only country to have two distinctive mobile-source pollution control standards. Many of the themes described throughout this book are illustrated in this chapter. These include the importance of both citizen mobilization and business support for stronger environmental regulations and the progressive development of the state's regulatory capacity, from the creation of the Smoke and Fumes Commission in Los Angeles in 1945 to the organization of air pollution control districts in 1947 and finally the establishment in 1968 of the California Air Resources Board.Less

Necessary but Not Sufficient: Storms, Environmentalism, and New Visions for Flood Control, 1969–2001

Jared Orsi

in Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Drainage Area (LACDA) lived up to its promise in 1969, preventing damages estimated at more than a billion dollars. As they had done with previous storms, flood controllers ... More

The Los Angeles County Drainage Area (LACDA) lived up to its promise in 1969, preventing damages estimated at more than a billion dollars. As they had done with previous storms, flood controllers assessed the 1969 gale as proof of the structures' success. However, their euphoria had faded by the mid-1980s. In a “LACDA Update” which the Army Corps mass mailed to Los Angeles County residents in September 1987, the corps warned, “Disastrous Flooding Could Return to Los Angeles County.” In a departure from a half century of treating flood control solely as an engineering problem to be dealt with solely by engineers, experts now called for public involvement. This change reflected two decades of political and environmental turmoil. First, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, environmentalists began mounting the first serious political challenge to flood-control engineering since the 1920s. Then in 1978 and 1980, comparatively minor storms produced catastrophic damage, leading engineers to rethink the technical soundness of LACDA. Together, the environmental activism and the renewed flood problems reopened the entire question of flood control for the first time in seven decades and injected nontechnical strategies and public involvement into flood-control planning. Although the old flood-control regime of reengineered rivers and expert bureaucrats by no means collapsed, the political and environmental turmoil after 1969 shook the foundations of the flood-control program that southern Californians had instituted in 1915.Less

Born in East L.A.: The Legacy of Loss and Exclusion in Southern California

Steven W. Bender

in Tierra Y Libertad: Land, Liberty, and Latino Housing

This chapter explores the urban geographies of Mexican American residents in East Los Angeles, and connects to later chapters addressing Puerto Ricans and Cubans in their urban hubs in the mainland ... More

This chapter explores the urban geographies of Mexican American residents in East Los Angeles, and connects to later chapters addressing Puerto Ricans and Cubans in their urban hubs in the mainland United States of Los Angeles, New York City, and Miami. The history of loss and exclusion in these geographies infuses the agenda for reforms discussed toward the end of the book. The Los Angeles story of Latino/a housing is one of ouster and exclusion, most vividly in the destruction of housing in the Chávez Ravine neighborhood to make way for Dodger Stadium, the similar destruction of residences in poor neighborhoods adjoining the city center for freeways connecting downtown to suburban residents, and in the spree of foreclosure-related evictions during the subprime mortgage crisis.Less

“New Edens of the Saxon Home-Seeker”: Los Angeles, Miami, and Semi-Tropical Urban Life

Henry Knight

in Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869-1929

This chapter focuses on how, into the twentieth century, cities and city life became increasingly prominent in the selling of Southern California and peninsular Florida, with Los Angeles and Miami ... More

This chapter focuses on how, into the twentieth century, cities and city life became increasingly prominent in the selling of Southern California and peninsular Florida, with Los Angeles and Miami emerging as iconic destinations within the semi-tropical states. The pair became the most widely promoted cities in Southern California and peninsular Florida with active chambers of commerce, employed semi-tropical metaphors throughout, and influenced one another in significant ways: in particular, the success of Los Angeles saw it become a model of inspiration for Miami boosters. While Los Angeles was a more spatially expansive city with a broader industrial base, both cities were imagined as near-tropical entities that were environmentally and socially different from and preferable to the industrial metropolises of the North and Midwest, replacing the latter's factory smoke, crowded streets, and fierce material struggle, with home-owning neighborhoods, pleasant avenues, and outdoor existences. Dependent on policies of racial exclusion and class stratification, from Mexican manual labor in Los Angeles to Jim Crow segregation in Miami, the selling of Los Angeles and Miami represented culminations in America's tropic of hopes: urban destinations were uplifting leisure and enterprising labor would together produce renewed Anglo-American communities.Less

Oil and Water: The Public and the Private on Southern California Beaches, 1920–1950

Sarah S. Elkind

in How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy: Business, Power, and the Environment in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

This chapter illustrates how most of Los Angeles' beaches and adjacent lands were in private hands in the 1920s; some private holdings dated from eighteenth-century Spanish land grants. Much of this ... More

This chapter illustrates how most of Los Angeles' beaches and adjacent lands were in private hands in the 1920s; some private holdings dated from eighteenth-century Spanish land grants. Much of this private land lay undeveloped and open for recreational use by local residents and visitors alike. The real estate and oil booms of the second and third decades of the twentieth century accelerated the development along the shoreline and constrained recreational access with a suddenness that surprised and alarmed Angelenos. Oil companies began drilling near the shore, then on the sand, and finally from piers that stretched out into shallow waters. Real estate developers erected fences and houses that blocked customary public access. These booms, of course, also brought more people to the region who wanted to use the beach.Less

Generations of Segregation: Immigrant Dreams and Segregated Lives in Metropolitan Los Angeles

George J. Sanchez

in New World Cities: Challenges of Urbanization and Globalization in the Americas

Los Angeles was built by immigrants from the U.S. South, Asia, and especially Mexico. After 1900 the city grew as a rail terminus, Pacific port, and tourist destination. It became a focus of film ... More

Los Angeles was built by immigrants from the U.S. South, Asia, and especially Mexico. After 1900 the city grew as a rail terminus, Pacific port, and tourist destination. It became a focus of film making and petroleum production, and developed booming defense industries during World War II and the Cold War. Marketed as the city of dreams, continuing immigration made it increasingly Mexican while Mexicans faced residential segregation that constrained educational chances, economic opportunities, and political participation. Fragmented urban administration allowed Realty Boards and County officials to limit Mexican-American (and African-American) citizenship despite national civil rights policies promoting integration and participation. When defense, energy, and other industries declined in the turn to globalization, African American (1973-93) and Mexican American (2005-13) mayors offered images of opening while enduring segregation constrained education, employment, and life opportunities for Mexican-Americans and African Americans. New immigrants from Mexico, Central America and beyond faced lives of marginality.Less