The “Food Ban” and a Tale-of-Two-Realities in the War on the Poor
Los Angeles, CA December 19th, 2013
Protesters, non-profits and local autonomous groups have been challenging an upcoming motion by two politicians that called for “City Departments [to] come together to determine a solution that addresses non-commercial feeding in the public rights of way”. A measure that targets the houseless, vendors and community groups while pretending to create solutions about health and public safety.
The motion was brought forward by Councilmembers Tom LaBonge and Mitch O’Farrel, whose track-record this year favors business improvement districts rather than community voices. It clearly requests the city council give the City Attorney Mike Feuer and the LAPD more authority to enforce restrictions on feeding people for free in public.
Critics pointed out that it doesn’t actually include the language of a ban. Autonomous groups feel differently, saying this would mean more permitting limitations restricting use of space and more barriers or red tape while giving police more power to harass and arrest. Whether clearly expressed in the language or not, this would effectively ban community self-organization around food without city/police control.
Others are bringing up “good” intentions of the ordinance, saying sidewalk feedings and assemblies restrict space for the dis-abled and are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Autonomous groups and communities who operate without permission from the city or police, wonder why more space and bigger sidewalks are not made available to the public? And, why not encourage real community dialogue and involvement surrounding the issue, instead of state intervention and police enforcement? But these questions are rhetorical, when just last year legislation passed criminalizing and restricting access to parks, granting more authority to the police with funding from Department of Homeland Security. Community alternatives won’t make anyone money, but I digress.
Despite the responses and damage control by LaBonge and O’Farrel, the motion awaiting city council approval shifts the blame of crime and poverty from the economic system onto impacted individuals, while simultaneously escalating against poor communities organizing themselves.
In fact, these motions — as well as injunction policies used by the city and police — show a trend in legislation indicative of a larger political agenda against the poor on the behalf of property owners and developers who wish to keep capital moving, growing and exploiting. It is an agenda — of fascism — that resorts to criminalization, police abuse, entrapment in the courts, ignoring hunger and basic needs to target and displace the poor while protecting profit, regardless of whether it results in imprisonment or death.
You don’t have to look too far to see the kind of inequality, selective representation and enforcement being talked about.
On Saturday, Dec. 14, there was a protest against the proposed food ban on Hollywood and Vine. Organizers with Monday Night Mission, who called for the protest, avoided food distribution in public as part of their protest to “maintain order” and keep their message under control. Instead, the goal appeared to be to get-the-media and build support and visibility for the homeless on Hollywood Boulevard, as a message to the Hollywood BID (Business Improvement District) that originally inspired the proposed legislation. This included an organizer-police controlled sidewalk-march and candlelight vigil.
Just a few blocks away, on the cul-de-sac at the end of Glen Tower just off Beachwood in the Hollywood Hills nestled quaintly in LaBonge’s district, another candle lit soirée was holding space. This event, a Holiday Trombone party was co-hosted by the Hollywood Orchard and the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association.
[Culdesac, Glen Tower]
Upon asking one of the volunteers, they explained that though a permit had been obtained to shut off the street and use the cul-de-sac, they did not require a food permit because the food was free. They also had alcoholic drinks available for free.
[Free food and drinks table at the Trombone Holiday Party]
I don’t think it’s unlikely or unfair to put forward that particular communities in the Hollywood Hills, and their activist groups, might enjoy a less-than-hostile relationship with the city or police. They might feel more comfortable working within established institutions, which have proven themselves inaccessible, bureaucratic, often racist and exclusionary or have access to capital or space to meet indoors without experiencing discrimination.
At the very least, they probably aren’t considered suspect when they request a permit to shut down a street, and in this event, there was absolutely no visible police presence for their public event. If they hadn’t requested a permit — the reason they did was to get a lamp post turned off — it is highly unlikely they would have met any repression by the police. Double standards to say the least.
Such stark contradictions show these measures for what they really are: actions to restrict accessibility based on the community you are in, whether you are deemed a nuisance or an asset to those in power and with capital. It shows that it does matter who your neighbors are, whether they are house-less, whether you feed your community for holiday entertainment or to meet basic-needs. And it demonstrates the agenda of selective enforcement by politicians and special interests against particular communities restricting their right to assembly regardless of their health or safety (or whether or not they will be fed).
What nobody seems to want to discuss is how the priorities of developers, the BID, private industry lobbyists like the Central City Association, and their politicians to restrict food accessibility, push out the poor and privatize space are the very same factors that create homelessness through “urban renewal,” raising the rent and pushing people out of their homes. Often utilizing hyper-policing, such as “Safer Cities Initiative” impacting Skid Row, to get their way.
[Protest Encampment at the site of the Central City Association (626 Wilshire) who lobbies City Council on behalf of banksters and developers to create favorable legislation] Politicians and business lobbyists prioritize the effects of homelessness on property value, rarely looking at homelessness as an effect of this economic system. Homelessness is the logical extension of a poverty-profit based system and the deprivation of resources. Who are the home-less except for those deprived of a home who do not fit within a predatory capitalist system?
“Thus capitalism is marked by homeless people living next to empty housing and hungry people seeing food exported or destroyed in order to maximise profit,” wrote The (A)narchist FAQ Editorial Collective. “Ultimately, if the capitalist does not make a profit then it is a bad investment — regardless of whether it could be used to meet people’s needs and so make their lives better.”
While charity based organizations are taking the argument back to basics trying to “humanize” the homeless, others feel as though we need to stop these cycles of blaming the victim and draw pointed criticism at such dehumanizing rhetoric. Choosing instead, to call out the “class war” that keeps under represented people constantly playing defense against targeted legislation by the political, and upper, class.
After all, our political system tends to consistently favor those with wealth, who are given space and whose voices are valued while the voices of the poor mean little to nothing. The politicians, regardless of which for-profit party they wear on their lapel, tend to be administrators for “key stakeholders” and the upper crust of the economic system while completely ignoring the experience and needs of the poor.
What does this mean about the role of law, prejudice, targeting and power? Who has the authority to speak to these issues and why are elected officials responding to the needs of business-lobby-groups by further privatizing space?
Whatever the case, the political system appears incapable of addressing inequality in any meaningful way. Instead of listening to the voices of oppressed peoples, or using their authority to carve out time and space for community-run forums, these “representatives” manage poor communities by usually manipulating their needs for political gain. In the long term, they are only interested in maintaining their position, whatever the immediate effects upon people experiencing the fallout impact of their policy change.
For example, during the organizing against the gang injunction in Echo Park, some of these same politicians, who often times have conflicts of interests, did not appear interested in hearing how increased criminalization affects poor communities. They continuously reaffirmed expanding power for the police, which isn’t really a practical or effective solution, unless you’re in support of the for-profit-prison-system-rape-culture-targeting of these communities.
[Early on the Gang Injunction struggle brought together different neighborhoods educating themselves to fight the expansion of DTLA via criminalizing injunctions which often just racially profile youth and displace long-term residents]
Since most of these politicians tend to profit from their positions with power, it isn’t a far cry from reality to put forward that the poor underclasses are not represented under the current political system. Their experience is often ignored or silenced.
But while it makes sense to view the opportunist political class as disconnected from the working class and poor, it’s practically unimaginable to believe that these individuals could disconnect themselves from their own career interests. This illustrates that their representation is not just a positional individual problem in need of replacement, but a structural and collective problem in need of transformative change.
Especially when elected officials time and time again would rather empower developers and corporations, with their lobby fronts and private security-police, enabling their agenda of displacement and policing of “undesirables” in gentrified high-rising communities.
In fact, at this point, it appears more likely the political system and its representatives are helping to facilitate mass targeting of our poor and under resourced communities.
[JR]